WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈
Chapter 14
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Surprisingly, the Hunter Association had a room for streaming.
I looked around the facility, impressed.
Any Association member could use it...
The equipment even seemed better than what I had at home.
Not that I was a VTuber or a female streamer, so I guess that was only natural.
"Wow... Our tax money is actually being put to good use."
The only things I'd ever paid were health insurance premiums and the national pension.
Those counted as taxes too, didn't they?
Kim Yuna, who had promoted my appearance on social media, asked me, "What's the plan for the stream? Are you going to reveal that you're EX-rank?"
"Ah, that? I just decided."
I'd watched some news at the restaurant earlier.
[North Korea has publicly announced that it has secured an EX-rank hunter...]
[Cambodia and Indonesia have released similar statements.]
Countries that hardly seemed trustworthy were all announcing they had EX-rank hunters.
They probably had no proof at all.
What was this, some kind of sham-state certification event?
For reference, South Korea hadn't announced anything yet.
It was still uncertain whether I'd continue working as a hunter.
That made up my mind for me.
"Even if I say it on stream, I don't think anyone will believe me."
"So you're hiding it?"
"Yeah. I'll just say I became a hunter of a decent rank."
I could always hide the truth and reveal it later.
The reverse was impossible.
Kim Yuna looked a little relieved, but she still asked, "What do you mean by a decent rank?"
"Uh... Should I say A-rank?"
"There are only a handful of hunters in Korea with an A-rank Basic Skill, including me. Fine, I understand."
"Seriously?"
I hadn't expected A-rank to be that rare, even if it wasn't S-rank.
Go Jiho had said Alpha Team was Korea's best hunter team...
Yet its leader was B-rank.
Japan had assigned teammates to Yuki to make her an A-rank hunter.
Even A-rank seemed pretty tough.
'This might work out better. Calling myself an A-rank hunter should be enough to get famous.'
Kim Yuna expertly began setting up the camera.
"All set."
"Already? Aren't you going to use camera filters or anything?"
"I don't. We film in the tower too. It's not like we can use filters there."
I wasn't close with any female streamers.
Still, most of them used so many filters that the background warped.
Once I finished getting ready and started the stream...
Viewers began pouring in immediately.
My average viewer count had been a little under two hundred, yet there were already two hundred viewers from the start.
I assumed most of them were Kim Yuna's fans, but that wasn't the case.
[FogLakeSwimClub: You became a hunter? The streamer is doing another weird concept.]
[FiveSecondsToEscape: What happened to Escape Life?]
[SnowfieldThermalKit: What the hell? Why does the streamer look normal?]
[ExecutiveFist: Wait, did he seriously bring Kim Yuna for a collab?]
I explained as quickly and simply as I could.
"It's been a while, everyone. That day, Escape Life and I got drunk and entered the tower. The moment Escape Life woke up, he escaped from life on his own."
If I directly said he'd killed himself, the stream might get suspended.
Question marks naturally flooded the chat, but I mostly ignored them and kept going.
I pulled up the Tower Escape map I'd prepared in advance and showed them my route.
"So I started escaping alone from the fifth floor."
I also edited together my tearful escape story.
The parts on the seventh and sixth floors, where I'd suffered the most, had been cut out entirely...
Still, it had been more than enough hardship.
"After barely escaping the fifth floor, I went to the central lodging complex at Fog Lake on the fourth floor, but all the food had been looted."
[FiveSecondsToEscape: Escape Life really died? Didn't this guy bury him somewhere?]
[MageJudge: Like he'd go around killing people just because he entered a tower.]
[walker: He could've ditched Escape Life and run.]
[KingOfHoldingOut: So what if he did? You have to look after yourself.]
[Ropy: You escaped just because you played the game? Isn't that a lie?]
[MartialGodOfTheTower: But there's an active hunter with him. From Alpha Team too.]
Kim Yuna chuckled and waved beside me.
Come to think of it...
The quality of my chat really wasn't great.
There were this many people who doubted what their streamer said?
The viewer count had already climbed to a thousand.
It looked like Kim Yuna's fans had finally arrived.
"Then, in front of the Direct Exit on the fourth floor, I met a Japanese hunter. We talked for a while, and I told her how to enter the exit..."
[Liniar: Why didn't you kill her and loot her immediately?]
"..."
Even Tower Escape players shouldn't have been this awful.
I banned them right away and moved on to the third-floor part.
Only then could Kim Yuna add a few comments here and there.
"When I first saw him, I thought he was insane. I told him to put down his gun, and he immediately pulled the pin on a grenade."
"It was, um, an extreme situation."
[FogLakeSwimClub: Wow... The streamer was a real man.]
[RWBB: So are you going to work as a hunter from now on?]
[YunaBreeze has donated 10,000 won! Please keep our Yuna safe...]
The chat was racing by at a crazy speed.
It was hard to read every message.
Donations were flooding in too, and nearly ten were already waiting.
Had I ever received this much attention before?
It felt strange.
After wrapping up the hunter talk, I decided to move on to the main content.
"You want to know which Basic Skill I got? That's classified, so apparently I need permission before I can reveal it. Shall we start the main content now?"
"Huh? What else are we doing?"
"This is a Tower Escape game stream, so we're playing Tower Escape."
"What? Ah... You mean the game?"
Naturally, Kim Yuna, the guest, would be playing too.
This was actually the main event.
"From now on, we'll have an active hunter play Tower Escape! Will she be able to escape safely...?"
[MageJudge: What a nice thing to make an active hunter do.]
[Ropy: Isn't this a violation of the Geneva Convention?]
[Yuki: Benefactor??]
Fortunately, Tower Escape was already installed on the streaming computer.
It seemed other hunters had used it as stream content before.
Kim Yuna obediently did as she was told for now.
Whiiiiir!
The moment the game started, the computer fan spun like crazy.
Kim Yuna watched it uneasily. "Is this okay? The computer sounds like a plane taking off."
"It's normally like this. Tower Escape is closer to a pile of garbage code than a game..."
"Ugh..."
The game practically had no concept of optimization.
Kim Yuna struggled to keep her expression under control, then smoothly delivered a familiar line.
"Oh, right. Viewers who survived thanks to us, please subscribe and like. And send lots of donations too."
Was she saying that because monsters didn't appear in Korea thanks to hunters?
Impressive.
That day's stream ended with Kim Yuna suffering through a garbage game.
The peak viewer count was over three thousand.
Kim Yuna's fans had shared the stream link and come in droves, so their firepower was on a different level.
At this rate, the YouTube video would easily reach a hundred thousand views.
"Good work. Ah, your Association registration is complete, so you can go home today."
"Oh, really? You weren't trying to persuade me?"
"No. Don't worry about what Team Leader Go Jiho says. Follow your own convictions. Nothing good comes from sweet-talking someone who doesn't want to do it and forcing them into it."
"..."
She had a point.
For the first time in quite a while, I went home.
But...
When I turned off the lights and lay down, an unexpected enemy started tormenting me.
Creak, creeeak...
"Achoo!"
Ring-ring-ring!
Once I turned off the lights and lay down, all kinds of noises came from downstairs and next door.
It was because Complete Senses had made my hearing too sensitive.
The soundproofing had never been great to begin with...
Now it was bad enough that I couldn't sleep at all.
I thought it might be fine if I turned the skill off.
But the sense of danger I'd developed in the tower kept making it activate automatically.
'What is this? I slept just fine at the hotel... Ah!'
The hotel the Association had arranged must have had excellent soundproofing from the start.
I couldn't even sleep properly in my own home.
I'd gotten far too high-maintenance.
In the end, I turned the lights back on and started Tower Escape.
Whiiiiir!
The cooling fan spun like crazy.
Fight noise pollution with a noise attack.
I played almost out of habit.
Then I quickly felt something was off.
'... What is this? Was this game always this lacking in tension?'
It was classified as a hardcore game.
Still, it couldn't even be compared to escaping from the real tower.
My senses had been ruined.
No matter how much I played this game from now on, I would never feel the same enjoyment as before.
"Ah... I'm screwed."
I never should have entered a place like the tower.
The reactions I'd seen during the stream kept replaying in my head.
At this point, maybe it would be better to become a hunter...
'No. Don't think dangerous thoughts.'
I'd only escaped because I was lucky.
The idea of voluntarily crawling back into a tower was ridiculous.
I had to stop thinking nonsense and return to my normal life.
But it didn't even take three days for that resolve to waver.
[Shadow Walking skill transcended. Firmament Veil skill activated.]
I had been methodically testing what happened when I used Transcendence on a skill, one each day.
At last, it was time for an upper skill...
And something incredible had come out.
After feeling its effects firsthand, foolish confidence began filling my head.
'Wait, with this, I could escape whenever I wanted, couldn't I?'
Transcending an upper skill had made the backlash stronger too...
But its performance was overwhelming.
"Ah, but this is annoying. Why is there backlash when I use my Basic Skill?"
Go Jiho, who had been grinning beside me, said, "Your body can't handle it. Once your Physical Technique skill level rises a little more, you'll probably be able to endure it."
Honestly, I knew that instinctively too.
I just couldn't accept it.
"Are you seriously considering becoming a hunter?"
"... Team Leader, why do you risk your life to work as a hunter?"
Last time, the conversation had shifted to his background, so I hadn't heard a proper answer.
He replied without hesitation.
"Because no matter how I look at it, it doesn't seem like a war with North Korea will happen."
"What?"
I thought he was joking, but he wasn't.
"Someone has to do it anyway. So I, the one who's best at it, decided to do it myself."
"... That's amazing."
Honestly, I didn't think I could do it with that mindset.
"You should do what you're good at too."
"What am I good at?"
"You're an escape genius. Does it make any sense that you played the game a little, then escaped alone from the seventh floor?"
Hearing him say it like that kept weakening my resolve.
Especially after testing the Transcendence skill earlier.
"If I become a hunter, do I join Alpha Team right away?"
"Yeah. It takes around 120,000 gold every month to stop monsters from appearing in Korea. We earn an average of around 20,000 gold out of that, so our say carries considerable weight."
Twenty thousand gold?
That was completely insane.
I'd been horribly overcharged by the Interfloor Merchant...
But a single Tower Gas Mask sold for four hundred gold.
The regular price for Snowfield Troll Hide was around a thousand gold.
But twenty thousand gold.
Twenty Snowfield Trolls would have to be killed.
Those things had broken my arm even when I had an Instant-Death Dagger.
It could probably be gathered fairly quickly by going through major farming areas and collecting other loot...
But considering the cost of consumables and everything else, at least twenty-five to thirty thousand gold would have to be earned before coming out.
It was a completely different level of difficulty from escaping while only looking after myself.
At last, I made up my mind.
"I should get going now. Goodbye."
"Wait!"
Go Jiho grabbed my shoulder.
"If it's not you, we'll have to bring that bastard Choi Ilhyuk back."
"What?"
"Honestly, we helped you on the third floor, didn't we? So can't you save our lives just once too?"
This was driving me insane.
Go Jiho and Kim Yuna both seemed like good people.
If they kept entering the tower, they would die before long.
That was the kind of place the tower was.
Wouldn't me joining them just turn it into a buy-four-get-one-free deal?
Still, yesterday's excitement...
And Kim Yuna's advice kept circling through my mind.
She'd said I should make my own choice according to my convictions.
Viewers were sharp.
I couldn't make them excited any longer with something I no longer enjoyed.
Continuing as a game streamer was no longer viable.
I asked Go Jiho the most important question.
"Is being a hunter fun? Fun enough to risk your life for it?"
"What? Heh-heh..."
He gave a hollow laugh, but nodded.
"I've talked to a lot of hunters... You're the first person who's asked whether it's fun. Yeah. It's fun."
A strange heat gleamed in his eyes.
"North Korean special forces, Somali pirate bastards... Killing those bastards who defy me and taking every last bit of their loot is incredible. It's something you can never do outside the tower."
"..."
"Outside the tower, everyone bows to me too. The tower turns us into gods."
Tower Escape's almost sole advantage.
The overwhelming fun of farming.
I hadn't experienced it properly yet.
I'd been too busy getting myself out alive.
The conclusion I reached after all that thought was surprisingly simple.
"... I can try it out first, right?"
"Yeah. Enter with us one more time, then decide."
"Okay. I'm counting on you. But I barely have any gold right now. Do I need to sell some items?"
"No. New hunters receive support money instead."
"Support money?"
"It's just like farming. You reap later what you sow now. There might be a drought, or the crops could die from pests, but still. Shall we go to the Tower Shop first?"
Go Jiho gave a faint smile and took me to Gwanghwamun Tower.
Footnotes:
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