WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈
Chapter 19
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I could feel everything.
Things far away and nearby, things moving and still, even the faintest whisper.
Each piece of information transformed into several kinds of sensation and drove straight into my brain.
Violent sensations.
If I hadn't trained myself to filter sensory input, I wouldn't have lasted a second.
I focused on the information I needed for the fight.
Boom!
The grenade I had deflected earlier exploded outside the building.
I shot one of them through the window.
Maybe it was because of the flood of information pouring in.
I knew the result before I even pulled the trigger.
Pssht!
“Urgh!”
Just as expected, the hunter went down in a single hit.
The body armor the North Korean hunters wore was no help at all.
It didn't contain proper armor plates. It was stuffed with filler barely better than trash.
They'd be lucky if it stopped shrapnel.
“He's on the second floor!”
Return fire came flying at me, but I had already left the window.
I left the second floor to Kim Yuna and threw myself out the other side.
The protruding roof over the villa's first floor creaked as it caught me.
“Move in...”
Pssht!
“Aaargh!”
Another one went down to gunfire from a completely different direction.
For people with military backgrounds, they looked poorly trained.
Or maybe they were panicking because this was real combat.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
They fired back right away, but their aim was awful.
Those ancient AK rifles had terrible accuracy.
They should've been grateful the bullets even came out properly.
Even if they had hit me, they wouldn't have penetrated my body armor.
“Drive them in! There are fewer of those bastards than we thought!”
The officer said that and reached out toward me.
Rather than reaching for that rotten gun, they were about to use a skill.
I could see exactly what skill it would be.
‘Fireball?’
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The officer became riddled with bullet holes.
After emptying a magazine, I replaced it with a fresh one from my subspace pouch.
Click!
I couldn't stay outside too long, or they'd surround me again.
I went back inside through the front entrance, which wasn't booby-trapped.
The others saw it and rushed in, only to trigger the trap.
Boom!
A booby trap using a Claymore I had looted on the fifth floor.
It was much faster and deadlier than a grenade.
That killed four of them, making it two against five.
We were still badly outnumbered.
Even so, an inexplicable rush had taken hold of me.
Clink!
I threw smoke grenades everywhere, filling the first floor.
They saw their chance and rushed in...
But I could see them all perfectly.
Pssht! Pssht!
One of them was still behind the door.
The old wooden door couldn't completely stop the bullets.
They soon began firing wildly into the smoke.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
“Yuna!”
Flash!
Yuna, who had been waiting on the second floor, teleported me to her.
“There are four left.”
“What? Really?”
I wasn't some gunfight professional, but...
I had learned the basics of combat in Tower Escape.
Showing your face in one spot, then sticking your head out there again, was idiotic.
When a small group faced a larger one, you had to keep changing positions as you fired.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
“Argh, don't shoot!”
One of them had been hit by friendly fire.
Unfortunately, they weren't dead.
I froze at that thought.
I was disappointed that someone hadn't died.
Even I found that ridiculous.
But the morals of the outside world weren't much help in the tower.
Boom!
They kept detonating what few grenades they had left, tightening their encirclement.
Yuna and I teleported to the first floor again.
Flash!
I got behind them and shot another one.
Pssht!
“Aah...”
“He's behind us!”
“B-but we checked...”
“Fuck... I can't do this anymore!”
The one with the injured arm finally broke and ran.
I didn't bother shooting.
The area was full of monsters drawn in by the explosions.
“Aaaaargh!”
That left two.
They froze completely on the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Damn it, why's it so quiet...”
“T-there!”
Rat-a-tat-tat!
They emptied all their ammunition into a shadow cast in the smoke.
‘What's wrong with these guys?’
They said North Korea had two hundred thousand special forces personnel...
But if there were two hundred thousand of them, could they really be called special forces?
Seeing them now, apparently not.
Either way, it worked out for me.
Pssht!
I shot one of them as they tried to change magazines.
The last one tried to pull out a pistol, then dropped it on the floor.
“U-ugh...”
The remaining hunter had completely lost the will to fight.
I kept my gun trained on them and approached very slowly.
“Hands above your head.”
“O-okay! Just don't shoot...”
“Don't say anything unnecessary.”
There was an important question I needed to ask them.
Something I couldn't understand even with my Transcendence skill active.
“You passed through here earlier, didn't you? So why did you come back?”
I understood that they needed a safe hiding place.
But a place where other hunters had already settled couldn't be called safe.
Hadn't I even fired a warning shot earlier?
They trembled all over, but tried to explain steadily.
“At first, the gunshots sounded strange, so we thought you had suppressors. Since you didn't immediately come after us, we figured you were hunters with a lot to protect. I said we should leave, but the others kept insisting we had to fill our quota, so I had no choice.”
This was absurd.
They thought we had a lot to lose because I hadn't immediately shot them?
The tower had always been this kind of place.
I felt that anew as I placed my finger on the trigger.
“Wait! I honestly told you everything!”
“Then I'll be honest with you too.”
It was a place where even one mistake could be fatal.
I couldn't make the same mistake twice.
Pssht!
With an anticlimactic gunshot, the hunter's head slumped forward.
Only then did I release the skill.
Sssst...
Four Seasons, deactivated.
I almost collapsed to the floor.
[Complete Senses skill level has increased to 6.]
[Regeneration skill level has increased to 8.]
[Transcendence skill level has increased to 2.]
Right. Basic Skills could level up too.
“Kang Hyun!”
Yuna teleported me into a bedroom on the second floor.
She laid me on the bed and made me drink one of her Recovery Potions.
“Are you sure you're okay?”
“I... need to rest.”
I could truly feel that I couldn't move even a finger.
It felt as if everything inside my body had been drained away.
It was only natural. The skill let me see into the near future.
“B-but... I used it much longer than I did during training, and... I'm in better shape?”
“Oh, really? Maybe you're the type who's stronger in real combat. Want some water?”
“Thank you.”
Yuna gave me water, all while pointing a camera at me as usual.
“Everyone's going to be shocked when they see what our rookie just did. I can't show the bodies, but I can show the bloodstains and the wrecked building! And the loot too!”
She was really doing this in a building full of bodies.
Whatever else could be said about her, her mental fortitude was incredible.
“I'll keep watch while I collect the loot.”
“Okay.”
We had made quite a lot of noise. Would the monsters be a problem?
They normally didn't enter buildings, but...
We had fought so loudly that I couldn't be sure.
My Complete Senses skill wasn't functioning properly right now either.
It felt a little overloaded.
That made me incredibly uneasy.
“Ugh...”
As I lay limp on the bed, gunshots sounded from far away.
Pshh, pssht!
They were quiet enough to miss if I didn't listen carefully.
The sound of a compact firearm, like a submachine gun.
The suppressor muffled and scattered the sound, but it was strangely familiar.
‘They're here.’
After waiting a little longer, I finally saw Team Leader Go Jiho and the others.
They were all completely unharmed.
“...Hey, Kim Yuna. Why is Kang Hyun laid out? What did you do to him?”
“I didn't do anything! Kang Hyun killed everyone inside and outside the house by himself.”
“What? There were nine of them. Don't tell me you transcended Complete Senses?”
“Yes...”
Go Jiho grabbed Yuna and listened to everything that had happened since they split up.
After thinking for a moment, he made a decision.
“From now on, Kang Hyun is our team's deputy team leader. If something happens to me, Kang Hyun takes command.”
“...What?”
Wasn't Han Juwon, the machine gunner, originally the deputy team leader?
Was it okay to change that on the spot?
Han Juwon showed no particular dissatisfaction.
If anything, Han Juwon looked relieved to have shed a burden.
Yuna, who had been sorting through the loot, asked in surprise.
She sounded more shocked than opposed.
“What? Kang Hyun is really becoming deputy team leader?”
“When have we ever cared about age or experience? Speak up now if you have a problem with it.”
“...I don't.”
“Me neither.”
Han Juwon and Sang Hajun spoke in turn.
This was the land of courtesy and propriety, for heaven's sake.
Weren't they all being a little too open-minded?
In the end, I spoke as the representative of the opposition.
“I... have a complaint.”
“Is the rookie getting cheeky with me?”
“...”
He had just said they didn't care about age or experience.
Go Jiho explained why.
“Hajun and Yuna would never agree to be team leader. Juwon...”
“I'm not capable enough.”
Han Juwon said modestly, but Go Jiho corrected them.
“It's a position issue. Juwon usually handles flanking maneuvers or suppressive fire.”
Come to think of it, Han Juwon had been the one who flanked the enemy during the battle in the third-floor morgue.
“Kang Hyun, your skills are good, and you make decisions quickly. You'll be deputy team leader.”
“Ugh... if you insist, I'll do it.”
“Good. Let's look through the loot now. There probably isn't anything impressive.”
I hadn't expected anything from the North Korean soldiers' loot.
Their weapons and armor were pure garbage.
At least we got some consumables, like grenades.
Then Yuna, who had been diligently searching the bodies, came back looking excited.
“Look, it's a Smoke Pill!”
“What? Did these guys loot Fog Village?”
It was rare loot that only came from Fog Village.
A pill that permanently raised the user's stats.
It would probably sell for ten thousand gold in the shop.
Still, even if you took several, only the first one had any effect.
“Did they grab only this and run because of the rocket launcher...?”
“This one raises Agility, right?”
“So, who gets it?”
The team members naturally thought of taking it instead of selling it.
They believed they could earn ten thousand gold again whenever they wanted.
They really could call themselves Korea's best team.
The decision belonged to their captain, Go Jiho.
“Yuna and I have each had one before. Kang Hyun gets this one.”
“Agreed.”
“Let's do that.”
Thanks to that, I took the pill too.
[Your Agility permanently increases due to the effects of the Mist Pill.]
Go Jiho sat at the head of the bed and spoke.
“Just selling what we've already secured should bring in forty thousand gold. Rest until tomorrow morning, then let's skip the fourth floor.”
“Sounds good.”
We had fought too loudly earlier, so our location was probably already exposed.
It would be dangerous to do anything else on the fourth floor.
“It'd be best to raid the Abandoned Hospital on the third floor a little, then wrap things up.”
“What if we have to fight at the Abandoned Hospital like last time?”
“We can handle one more fight. Even objectively speaking, our team's combat power is high.”
When Go Jiho activated his skill, he was practically a human tank.
In close quarters like the Abandoned Hospital, there would be few who could match him.
“Let's take our time until you recover, Kang Hyun.”
“Okay...”
It was strange.
I had no strength left in my body, yet I felt quite comfortable.
Maybe it was because Complete Senses had been turned off, but...
I felt fulfilled somehow.
So this was what Go Jiho had meant.
The feeling of getting rid of everyone who opposed me and taking everything from them.
“So this was it.”
“...You get it too?”
He snickered.
He seemed to understand just from looking at my face.
“But, Team Leader.”
“What now?”
“Is there any way to raise the rank of a Basic Skill?”
It felt like a waste for a hunter as capable as Go Jiho to have a B-rank skill.
There had been no such feature in Tower Escape, but...
Veteran hunters might have information they were keeping to themselves.
Go Jiho quietly gave me water and answered.
“I think there's an item that can raise a Basic Skill's rank... but only the United States and China know the details.”
“Oh, really?”
“Even then, you can't raise it to S-rank or higher.”
That meant A-rank was the maximum.
Drowsiness washed over me, but I kept asking questions.
“Oh, and Yuna said she spends ten million won a month on living expenses alone...”
“Ten million won? Don't be ridiculous. That's a lie.”
“Gasp!”
A lie?
Had she shut me down that hard?
As I struggled with my sense of betrayal, Go Jiho added,
“She probably spends twenty million a month.”
“Ah...”
It hadn't been rejection. It had been modesty.
Trembling in fear and awe, I immediately fell asleep.
We went down to the third floor the next morning.
Footnotes:
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