WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Chapter 2

──────

At least there was one upside.

Solo play had its advantages on the seventh floor.

The monsters on the seventh floor patrolled regularly. The more people there were, the greater the chance of being spotted.

Everything else was bad.

I steadied my racing heart and went looking for a temporary shelter. If I didn't keep my head straight here, I'd die.

No rescue team was coming.

I had to escape on my own.

'...There!'

Luckily, there was an abandoned small theater nearby. It was on the outskirts of the seventh floor, and since no items spawned there, it was an unpopular area. I decided to use a small storage room inside.

'I need supplies.'

I'd come in completely empty-handed, so supplies mattered more than anything else. I grabbed every backpack and piece of equipment I could find from the bodies in the alley.

There was quite a lot worth using.

They must have died not long after entering the seventh floor, because most of their food and drinks were untouched. The monsters hadn't bothered taking them.

These things weren't worth anything.

Food and drinks spawned regularly in the tower anyway.

Otherwise, the monsters ate each other.

I spread out a sleeping bag in the cramped storage room and turned on a lantern. I piled trash in front of the entrance as camouflage, then covered it with dust.

It had really only stored cleaning supplies, so nobody would bother searching it that thoroughly.

[Stealth skill level has increased to 1.]

Seeing the new message put me at ease.

At least some of my game knowledge applied here.

'Then the map should be the same too.'

The buildings weren't exactly the same as the ones I'd seen in the game, but many of the landmarks still matched.

This small theater was one of them.

That should be enough to form a basic escape plan.

I'd secured some basic supplies, but combat gear was another problem.

I gave up on things like body armor right away. Since everyone had died from gunshots, not a single piece was intact.

Besides, in Tower Escape, wearing heavy, high-quality armor came with a Stealth skill penalty.

You could say that was only true in the game, but Tower Escape was obsessed with realism to an absurd degree.

After giving up on armor, I moved on to weapons.

That was a real headache.

There was still some ammunition left. Everyone seemed to belong to the U.S. military, so their equipment was standardized.

Every usable gun had been looted long ago, though. Only broken ones remained.

A good firearm was expensive in Tower Escape.

Even those performed far worse than weapons created directly by the tower.

"Hmm..."

In the end, I stripped the broken guns for parts and tried assembling one functional rifle.

My time in the military had finally come in handy.

The foreign-made firearms were unfamiliar, but assembling and modifying guns was basic knowledge in Tower Escape. I knew which parts were compatible and where they went, so I could put one together well enough.

[Sleight of Hand skill level has increased to 1.]

Sleight of Hand was a useful skill for everything from disarming traps to improvising supplies and opening safes.

There was nowhere it wasn't useful.

It seemed to level up more slowly in the game.

Maybe that was because the skill's level was still low?

Once I finished assembling the gun, though, I changed my mind.

[Sleight of Hand skill level has increased to 2.]

It was clearly faster.

Then I realized why.

'It's because I'm on the seventh floor.'

Skills leveled up faster on higher floors.

The situations were more dangerous and desperate.

Click, ting!

When I pulled the trigger, it made a reassuring sound. I'd even oiled it, and it seemed to work properly.

It should fire at least once.

The parts were in such poor condition that I couldn't guarantee a second shot. They'd probably been left out in the rain in some alley.

'But there's no suppressor.'

The Orcs and Goblins on the seventh floor would swarm endlessly if they heard a commotion. If I fired without a suppressor, the party would start immediately.

If there were ten Goblins and Orcs, and I killed three, how many would remain?

Seven?

No.

Thirty, after the others heard the noise and came pouring in.

Tower Escape was a brutal game.

Killing those minor monsters got you almost nothing while draining your supplies and stamina.

The whole point of the game was escaping.

Combat was the last resort.

Reality probably wasn't much different.

And since I was alone, I had to avoid them even more carefully.

At least Escape Life's handgun was intact.

He called himself Escape Life, yet he'd escaped from life before anything else.

As I planned my escape, I felt an overwhelming urge to make things easier on myself and escape from life too.

But I couldn't die like that idiot.

I had to keep going as far as I could.

If I'd given up every time things got hard, my life would have ended long ago.

While checking the remaining ammunition, I found a magazine caked with blood and dirt. I removed the bullets one by one and carefully cleaned them.

Then I heard heavy footsteps from downstairs.

Thud!

Who was that?

My heart pounded like crazy as I froze completely and held my breath.

[Stealth skill level has increased to 2.]

[Detection skill level has increased to 1.]

Thud, thump...

There were quite a few footsteps.

It wasn't just one or two people. Who could it be?

Monsters?

Or Hunters?

Other Hunters weren't exactly welcome either.

The tower was so dangerous that people in developed countries avoided becoming Hunters whenever possible.

But there were quite a few Hunters in Africa and Eastern Europe, where the economies had collapsed.

They were desperate and rough, so I wanted nothing to do with them.

Crash!

Nothing valuable spawned in this small theater. With no worthwhile loot to find, they seemed to be smashing whatever they could.

The footsteps drew closer and closer.

Fortunately, they didn't enter the room where I was hiding.

Choosing the small storage room had been the right move.

It was only large enough to lie down in. It was practically a closet.

[Stealth skill level has increased to 3.]

[Detection skill level has increased to 2.]

My skills leveled up as quickly as my heart raced.

Even after the footsteps faded, I listened closely for a long time.

I couldn't stay holed up here forever.

I'd be discovered sooner or later.

I had to finish preparing and escape as quickly as possible.

'Should I eat first?'

Most of the food was MREs, hardtack, and canned goods.

There was even some chocolate now and then.

Maybe because I was starving, it all went down easily.

"Phew."

I kept checking the equipment.

Then I found an unusual box in one of the backpacks.

It was the kind of box someone might use to store an important piece of loot.

It had been buried at the bottom of the backpack, so the looters must have missed it.

It wasn't very big, either.

Click.

Inside was a small dagger.

I'd never seen this item before.

It had an oddly fantastical design for a piece of military equipment from another country.

I grabbed the handle.

[Death Priest’s Ritual Tool]

It couldn't be appraised, so its effects were unknown apart from its name.

Still, there was no harm in keeping it.

After turning off the lantern and lying down in the dark, fear finally came crashing in.

Telling myself I couldn't afford to weaken, I remembered the script from my last Tower Escape strategy video. It had been about escaping the seventh floor with a single handgun, just like this.

[Tower Escape has two main kinds of exits. The first is a Direct Exit that takes you straight outside the tower. The second is a Descent Exit that lets you move down one floor.]

[Then we can just use the Direct Exit, right?]

[You can't use the Direct Exit on the seventh floor. It's in the middle of the Orc Military Base.]

That place had been impossible to clear even in the game.

Fully armed Orcs came pouring out without end.

So I needed to use a Descent Exit and go down to the sixth floor.

[But if you go straight down to the sixth floor, you'll freeze to death.]

The sixth floor was a snowfield covered entirely in snow.

I needed a Thermal Kit, which Hunters commonly carried.

The problem was that it was a consumable.

You could never have too many Thermal Kits, so none would be left in dead Hunters' packs.

Other people had already looted them all.

I could buy one from an Interfloor Merchant, but I didn't have a single cent.

That left only one conclusion.

[You need to kill another Hunter or a boss on the seventh floor. You need the items they have.]

[You're telling me to do PvP or fight a boss right from the start? That's insane.]

[This game never had any common sense.]

There were plenty of bosses on the seventh floor.

But the one I needed to kill was among the weakest.

The Hellhound Handler.

A boss that kept three Hellhounds at its side.

I'd killed it countless times in the game, but it wouldn't be easy in reality.

Tower Escape's bosses were fairly stupid because of the limits of their AI.

The standard way to beat them was exploiting that stupidity with cheap tricks.

It probably wouldn't move as carelessly as it did in the game.

As I seriously planned my escape, I felt an even stronger urge to make an emergency escape from life, just like Escape Life.

If I didn't go after a boss, I'd have to deal with another Hunter team. That would be much harder.

Tower Escape was an unfriendly, filthy, underhanded game, but it had its own kind of fairness.

A boss died if you put bullets into its weak point.

Then again, what living thing didn't?

After barely shaking off the urge to make an emergency escape, I forced myself to sleep.

The next morning, I ate a hearty breakfast and left the hideout I had used for the past few days.

I brought only the bare minimum.

The seventh floor was divided into eastern and western sections.

The small theater was in the west.

The Hellhound Handler was in the east.

There was a simple reason I moved in the morning.

The monsters grew stronger and more vicious at night.

I also had no way to see in the dark.

Rustle...

Sticking to areas with as little activity as possible, I finally reached the central area.

A checkpoint divided the eastern and western sides of the abandoned city.

It was crawling with Goblins and Orcs.

I could have taken the long way around, but every other route was more dangerous.

Once I got there, things felt even more hopeless than I'd expected.

I'd assumed there would be some openings unlike in the game.

There were none.

The place was blocked off by barbed wire and high walls, and guards patrolled constantly.

"Phew."

I wasn't trying to leave with some incredible loot or complete an impossible quest.

I'd be satisfied just getting out alive.

Why was that so hard?

Of course, I wasn't going to break through that checkpoint head-on.

Then I spotted the perfect place.

Hunters and monsters fought each other too, so a considerable number of corpses had piled up there.

This city was basically one massive garbage dump.

But since this was in front of the checkpoint, they cleaned the area regularly.

Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to shoot properly.

At least, that had been their behavior pattern in the game.

'No matter how much I think about it, this is the only way.'

Rustle.

When nobody was looking, I threw myself onto the pile of corpses.

I kept a military painkiller in my mouth.

From now on, I was a corpse.

Sure enough, several Goblins and Orcs soon came over, pulling a large cart.

That pathetic handcart clearly wasn't enough for all this.

Fine. They were the ones doing the hard work, not me.

Gulp.

I swallowed the painkiller and closed my eyes.

"Kyaak..."

Groaning in annoyance, the Goblins and Orcs began loading the bodies into the cart.

One Goblin kicked me in the knee along the way, but maybe because of the painkiller, I didn't so much as twitch.

Fatigue gradually overwhelmed me, and my consciousness began flickering out.

A while later, I woke to an unbearable stench.

The sun had already set.

'Ugh, the smell...'

The operation to cross east of the checkpoint had succeeded.

There was a pit on the eastern side that they used as both a corpse disposal site and a dump.

[Physical Technique skill level has increased to 1.]

[Detection skill level has increased to 4.]

My skills were still leveling up like crazy.

But these were not the Basic Skill granted after a hunter's first escape.

They would still help.

'Those bastards, why'd they throw me this far down?'

I struggled out from beneath the pile of bodies. Escape successful.

The backpack, rifle, and handgun had been taken, as if it were only natural.

There was no way they'd leave behind working guns.

They didn't even bother confirming kills because bullets were too precious.

Still, the dagger I'd hidden most carefully was intact.

Most of the consumables tucked inside my clothes were still there too.

It had paid off to choose things that weren't worth much even if sold.

[Night Vision skill level has increased to 1.]

After painfully getting to my feet, I began searching for shelter in the dark.

But it wasn't long before I heard a sharp barking sound from somewhere nearby.

Not the kind politicians made. A real dog's bark.

"Grrr..."

'Ah, fuck.'

At least I no longer had to worry about finding the Hellhound Handler.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried