WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Chapter 12

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A tower rose high in the middle of Gwanghwamun Plaza.

Checkpoints and tall walls surrounded it.

They were there to keep hunters from fleeing after returning from a tower raid.

Dangerous loot was one problem, but hunters also used guns as standard equipment.

"Alpha Team returning! Is everyone all right?"

Staff in suits and uniforms rushed over.

They weren't here for me. They had come to greet Go Jiho's Alpha Team.

Go Jiho handed over his gun and equipment.

One hand was still clamped around my wrist.

"Uh, this person is..."

"Picked him up on the way. A rookie hunter. Probably isn't registered yet."

The team leader gestured for me to hand over my weapons.

Without complaint, I gave them my gun, grenades, and even my ammunition.

It'd be strange to take this stuff home anyway.

I was out of the tower now. I had to start living by the world's rules again.

"Um... a strange notification just appeared."

"That's him. The first person in the world with an EX-rank Basic Skill."

"... What? Is that true?"

"Oh, what was your name again?"

"Kang Hyun."

The other team members handed over their weapons without hesitation, so this seemed to be standard procedure.

I had only just begun to relax when a Hunter Association employee reached for my bag.

Go Jiho stopped them.

"No."

"Team Leader, inspection and questioning are mandatory for an unregistered hunter."

"You're terrible at interrogations. I'll handle it."

"Ah, yes..."

He was clearly trusted by the Association.

At least they didn't seem to be trying to take my things.

"Should we all shower first?"

"Yeah. I hate the third floor because of the stench of rotting corpses."

"Meet back here in an hour."

He took the team and me to a nearby Hunter Association building.

I'd heard they had built a huge one near Gwanghwamun, but this was my first time seeing it in person.

The Association even had bathhouses and gyms for hunters.

He casually tossed a backpack into a locker and locked the door.

"Don't worry. No one messes with a hunter's loot."

"... Is that so?"

"This job already puts your life on the line. Who'd enter the tower if hunters were treated carelessly?"

That was true.

I washed up in the bathhouse.

No matter how much I scrubbed, the stench of rotting corpses wouldn't come off.

It was a powerful smell, one that stirred my survival instincts.

"Don't take too long. That smell won't come out right away."

The moment I sank into the bath, my body began to tremble.

Not because of the temperature.

It was the feeling of finally being safe.

Things I'd taken for granted until now suddenly felt precious.

"Ugh..."

"... How did he end up going all the way to the seventh floor?"

"Could someone even escape the seventh floor alone?"

"He isn't in amazing shape. What did he do before this?"

"I saw him using an Eastern Bloc pistol earlier. He isn't a spy, is he?"

The Alpha Team members clearly had plenty they wanted to ask me.

But their leader stopped them from pressing the issue.

Honestly, I appreciated the consideration.

'Getting out of the tower doesn't make your injuries heal instantly.'

I looked over the small wounds I'd gotten on the third floor.

Still, I had the Regeneration skill, so they'd heal quickly.

'Oh, right. They said I got a Basic Skill.'

Transcendence.

I had no idea what it did from the name alone.

Fortunately, Complete Senses and Shadow Walking had given me a rough idea of how to use skills.

When I quietly tried to activate it...

[Please select a skill to transcend.]

'... Transcend a skill?'

From what I could tell, it temporarily enhanced one of my existing skills.

It was obviously versatile, which was nice...

But did that really qualify as an EX-rank skill?

Even lower-rank Basic Skills were incredibly useful, like teleportation and bait.

'No. Don't think weird thoughts.'

So what if it wasn't that useful?

I wasn't going back into the tower anyway.

Honestly, if I sold the loot I had, couldn't I live comfortably for the rest of my life?

The [Ever-Burning Heart] and [Hood of Hell] were exclusive items that only dropped from the seventh-floor boss.

Beating the boss itself was no big deal, but bringing the items out of the tower was difficult in itself.

The subspace pouch had always been a bestseller in the Tower Escape game...

And the Instant-Death Dagger was useful in its own way, though I didn't think it'd fetch much money.

It was good, but its uses were too limited.

'I can try out the Basic Skill later.'

After finishing my bath feeling refreshed, we gathered again in the Association lobby.

The hour hadn't felt long at all.

The bathhouse had even provided fresh clothes.

"Yuna's late again."

"She said she'd take a while earlier. Let's go first."

"... Go where?"

When I asked, Go Jiho draped an arm over my shoulder.

"The work's done, so let's get something greasy to eat. You like pork belly, right?"

"I love it."

We headed straight to a barbecue restaurant and took our seats.

There would be six of us once Kim Yuna joined, yet they ordered three charcoal grills.

The employee tried to say something, but the order shut them up.

"Twelve servings of pork belly and six servings of pork neck. Anyone drinking, order up."

"Four bottles of beer and two bottles of Jinro!"

"Rookie, you're not drinking?"

"I quit drinking."

I'd decided that when I entered the seventh floor drunk.

There would be no alcohol in my life from now on.

Once the fire was going, Go Jiho sat across from me and grilled the meat himself.

I'd worked part-time at a barbecue restaurant before...

Even to my eyes, he was pretty skilled.

As he cut the pork belly into thick pieces, he asked, "So how did you end up on the seventh floor?"

He was definitely good at interrogations.

In a situation like this, I had no choice but to answer.

"I stream the Tower Escape game."

I told him exactly what had happened.

As Go Jiho listened, he placed grilled meat on my plate.

"Eat while you talk. You said the friend who entered with you committed suicide?"

"It was the seventh floor."

"Then how the hell did you escape alone?"

"Oh, you'll find out if you watch my strategy video."

"Your video?"

This was the perfect chance to boost my views.

And buy myself some time to eat meat.

I borrowed his smartphone and played my strategy video.

"Escaping the seventh floor bare-handed? Wow, they made this game pretty accurately."

Perfectly grilled pork belly.

It was incredible to eat something that actually counted as food for the first time in a while.

The best I'd eaten inside the tower had been combat rations, cup noodles, and chocolate bars.

Kim Yuna arrived at the barbecue restaurant and sat beside me.

"Wait. You really killed the Hellhound Handler?"

Rather than giving a long explanation, I took the loot out of my backpack.

The Ever-Burning Heart.

The employees in the distance froze in shock.

It was famous loot, so the hunters recognized it immediately.

"The Ever-Burning Heart... You cleared the sixth floor with this?"

"What did you kill it with?"

"I picked up grenades and killed it with those. The moment I did, hunters swarmed in like a pack of dogs."

"You probably cleared the sixth floor through the surface section... but how did you get through it alone?"

When I told them about digging a snow trench, they ordered six more servings of pork belly.

Everyone ate an unbelievable amount.

Not only Go Jiho, but Kim Yuna never stopped eating either.

She was tall, so she didn't look especially delicate, but it was still an impressive appetite.

Then the conversation turned to the fourth floor.

'Come to think of it, did Yuki make it out?'

I remembered the Japanese woman I'd met on the fourth floor, and just then, the news came on.

[The Japanese government announced that a hunter possessing an A-rank Basic Skill had newly joined their ranks...]

[There has still been no reliable official announcement regarding the whereabouts of the EX-rank hunter.]

So she escaped.

The Direct Exit on the fourth floor must have opened not long after I left.

Something suddenly occurred to me, and I asked, "Team Leader, why are you a hunter? You used to be a soldier, right?"

"Yeah. Do I still look like one?"

"Of course. What kind of soldier were you?"

"It isn't well known, so you probably wouldn't know even if I told you. I was CCT."

"CCT?"

"First time hearing it, right? It's an Air Force thing. Combat Controller."

For some reason, Go Jiho said it with the faintest smug grin.

Was he unexpectedly in air traffic control?

I'd thought he was from a special forces unit like UDT.

"Then what about you, Yuna?"

"I wanted to be a travel YouTuber, but it cost more than I expected. Before I knew it, I was a tower-travel YouTuber."

"Haha..."

Was she the extreme version of an adventure travel YouTuber?

She was involved in internet broadcasting too.

I should get along with her.

At the very least, she had more subscribers than me!

If she'd been a franchise cafe advertisement model, she had to have at least five hundred thousand.

Go Jiho, who had kept grilling meat, asked, "What about your skill?"

"Right. Let us see that EX-rank Basic Skill."

"You can't use it in a place like this. It'd cause a scene. Show us later in the Association's testing room."

Thankfully, they weren't in the mood to grill me about it right away.

I took the chance to ask something I'd been curious about.

"Um, Team Leader, what rank of hunter are you?"

"I'm a B-rank hunter. But I've cleared the seventh floor."

"Oh. Really? That's a little confusing."

Were hunter ranks and Basic Skill ranks separate?

If you first escaped from the fourth floor, your Basic Skill was B-rank.

Even if you later cleared the seventh floor, your Basic Skill's rank didn't increase.

Go Jiho's Basic Skill was a B-rank enhancement skill.

It could temporarily enhance things that touched his body...

Apparently, it worked especially well with his equipment.

He gave me a simpler explanation.

"It's more accurate to say I've cleared the seventh floor. There are plenty of useless people with great skills. That's what happens when someone gets a Basic Skill by riding a team's coattails."

"Then what about Yuna?"

"I've cleared the sixth floor. I'm an A-rank hunter."

A short-range teleportation skill that could take someone with her was A-rank.

Then how powerful were S-rank and EX-rank skills?

Since we were talking about hunters, the topic of skills naturally came up.

"What are Kang Hyun's regular skills like? Do you have any unusual ones?"

"My Detection skill kept leveling up, and then an upper skill appeared."

"What? You even knew advanced skills existed? He's the real deal..."

Kim Yuna looked horrified.

They called them advanced skills here.

It was all the same thing anyway.

Then the idiot whose mask had been damaged snorted.

"No matter what, does it make sense to get an advanced skill right from the start? They probably heard about it somewhere."

"... I can see you've been flipping me off under the table since earlier."

"Huh?"

Thanks to Complete Senses, seeing through something like that was easy.

Kim Yuna jumped in surprise beside me.

"Can you see what's inside my bag right now?"

"That one?"

One look told me it was definitely a luxury bag.

I easily guessed what was inside.

"Makeup, a camera, perfume, a handkerchief, keys... Why do you carry a flashlight around?"

"You got everything right!"

Go Jiho had become completely serious.

He hadn't even touched his glass since earlier.

"That's practically X-ray vision. Can you see outside the restaurant too?"

"If I focus, I can see as far as the shop across the street. Five customers and two employees."

Go Jiho sprang to his feet.

He went to the shop across the street and came back. Then he faced Gwanghwamun, closed his eyes, and trembled all over.

"King Sejong, Admiral Yi Sun-sin... thank you."

"No, seriously, what's wrong with you, Team Leader?"

The idiot whose mask had been damaged groaned as if wondering why Go Jiho was making such a big deal out of it.

Honestly, I felt the same way.

But Go Jiho was dead serious.

"He brings us information without even moving."

In an FPS game, providing intel, information, was unquestionably a top-tier ability.

It was basically a cheat.

"Even so..."

When the idiot tried to keep talking, Go Jiho's face twisted.

He looked like he could kill everyone here by himself.

"How many times have I emphasized the importance of information during operations... No, forget it."

Go Jiho finally gestured at him.

"You're off the team."

"... What?"

"You nearly got us all killed on the third floor because of your reckless behavior. From now on, Kang Hyun will take your place."

"Y-you're serious? You're really telling me to leave?"

He looked around at the other team members...

But not one person took his side.

They must have been burned by him more than once.

'... I'm not going back into the tower, though?'

Footnotes:

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