WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈
Chapter 29
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Zero to Hero.
From zero to hero.
It was one of Tower Escape's more popular types of content.
The rules were simple.
A single sword or pistol.
Or no weapons at all...
You entered with only the bare minimum of equipment and escaped.
And you did it on a high-risk, high-difficulty map.
Tower Escape was fundamentally a game where you brought the loot you had farmed back in with you...
Zero to Hero went directly against that.
This was no ordinary challenge.
No matter how skilled a gamer was, they could die if luck wasn't on their side.
Even if they got lucky and found a weapon, they could still bleed to death because no healing items dropped.
Since it was content meant to entertain viewers, leaving through an exit immediately after entering was obviously cheating.
You had to fight and farm to some extent before people recognized it as Zero to Hero.
You couldn't call someone a hero just because they ran away.
As a Tower Escape streamer, I had naturally done it several times myself.
It had been fairly popular too.
But doing this in real life?
I'd refuse every time.
I'd already done it in real life.
On the seventh floor, no less.
Looking back, I'd been unbelievably lucky.
What if I hadn't picked up the Death Priest’s Ritual Tool the moment I started?
I wouldn't have been able to kill the Hellhound Handler.
I could have actually died when I played dead and passed through the guard post in the center of the map.
It was a miracle I hadn't run into another hunter at the hospital.
Even with all that luck...
I had still nearly died after getting surrounded by a horde of zombies on the third floor.
Who knew what would have happened if I hadn't met Alpha Team?
And now I had to do it again on the eighth floor.
It was ridiculous.
I wanted to quit right away, but a hostage was being held.
Fortunately, this eighth-floor run was a considerably eased version.
I could bring up to ten kilograms of equipment.
With my Subspace Backpack, the effective weight limit was twelve to thirteen kilograms.
That naturally excluded my body weight.
Feeling tense, I stood in front of a scale.
The hotel brought one over as soon as I asked.
It was a large, sleek electronic scale.
'First, I should weigh the Subspace Backpack.'
I would definitely bring the Subspace Backpack and Subspace Pouch because they reduced weight.
For reference, you couldn't put a Subspace Pouch inside a Subspace Backpack.
Beep...
[1.8 kg]
It was a sixty-liter backpack with three tactical pouches, but it was lighter than expected.
Was that because it had subspace magic on it too?
Next, I added my combat clothes and boots.
No matter what, I had to wear clothes.
[4.8 kg]
"Gasp!"
I'd already used up half the weight limit.
Did my clothes and boots alone weigh three kilograms?
I hadn't even included body armor...
Wait, did I really need to wear them when I entered?
I'd put them in my backpack, enter in my underwear, then take them out and put them on later.
Once I put the clothes and boots into the backpack, the weight dropped sharply.
[3.9 kg]
I saved almost a kilogram.
Subspace Backpacks really were great.
'I've packed clothes and the backpack, so next... food and water.'
Food and water might be available on the eighth floor, but I should secure at least two days' worth.
Two kilograms of food and two liters of water.
Four kilograms total.
Once I put them in a Subspace Pouch...
[6.7 kg]
"Ha, fuck. This is driving me crazy."
That number already had the subspace magic factored in.
I only had 3.3 kilograms left.
I couldn't put this off any longer.
I'd packed what to wear and what to eat and drink. Now it was time for weapons.
For this run, I chose the relatively lighter 2011 Nightfall Custom.
I attached a suppressor, packed the Instant-Death Dagger, and brought two additional eighteen-round magazines.
Including the rounds in the firearm and chamber, I had fifty-five rounds total.
It was nowhere near enough.
[8.3 kg]
Since I only packed light weapons, I had more room than expected.
Did it originally weigh over two kilograms?
I didn't even want to imagine what I would have done without the Subspace Backpack.
"Ah, Water Purification Capsules and medicine."
I planned to cover as much as possible with Regeneration...
But I didn't want to die from excessive bleeding, so I packed a Recovery Potion.
It was practically a cure-all for external injuries.
[8.7 kg]
"1.3 kilograms left."
There were still countless things I wanted to bring.
Was it time to start packing artifacts?
First, the Hood of Hell.
It boosted my Stealth skill, so I picked it without a second thought.
[8.9 kg]
"Good!"
After some thought, I put in the Ever-Burning Heart too.
It would help maintain my body temperature...
And last time, it had shown unexpected effects against ghost-type monsters.
Besides, the heart was surprisingly light.
[9.2 kg]
It weighed 0.3 kilograms even inside a Subspace Backpack?
I took back the compliment about it being light.
"That Hellhound Handler bastard should go on a diet."
Should I leave the remaining 0.8 kilograms empty for now?
I was supposed to get my gun customized later...
If I ended up with too much space, I could bring ammunition or grenades.
Just one grenade and one smoke grenade would fill that 0.8 kilograms right up.
Or I could bring a Gas Mask just in case.
Ring!
My phone rang, and I finished getting ready to go out.
Bravo Team was about to set off.
I'd agreed to lend them the Key of Snow in exchange for their 10,000-gold funding.
They planned to take a rookie in and make them S-rank...
What kind of person would they be?
I met Bravo Team in the hotel lobby and shook hands with the team leader.
"Thanks for lending us the key, Kang Hyun. I'll make sure to bring it back."
"Of course. Is the rookie... over there?"
The moment I saw the rookie standing behind them, I got a bad feeling.
They looked like the type overflowing with swagger and attitude.
Would this really be okay?
If Team Leader Go Jiho had been there, he would have kicked them out without a second glance.
Before I could say anything, Bravo Team's leader spoke.
"They may look like that, but they were the top performer of this class."
I'd heard they specialized in handling troublemakers, so I figured they knew what they were doing.
I lent the Key of Snow to the team leader.
"Good luck."
"Yeah, you too. I'll be back soon."
Bravo Team disappeared just like that.
The next morning, I arrived at the Hunter Association's training ground.
An instructor Go Jiho had personally recommended was waiting there.
Since Go Jiho was lying in a hospital room, someone else had been called in.
Apparently, he was the leader of an active CCT First-Tier Team...
Kim Yuna looked a little doubtful.
"Does being a good team leader automatically make someone a good instructor?"
Han Juwon, who had military experience, spoke up.
"If they're a member of a special forces First-Tier Team, they've probably trained Second-Tier personnel too."
"Oh, really?"
"..."
I wisely kept quiet in front of them.
They'd get angry if they found out I planned to enter the eighth floor alone.
I wasn't even sure whether they'd let me go.
It was better to keep it hidden until the very last moment.
The First-Tier Team leader got straight to the point.
"I'm Kim Haesol, Jiho's cohortmate. What do you want to learn?"
Hearing that he knew Go Jiho gave me a strange sense of closeness.
"First, please teach me how to use a dagger."
"A knife? Let's go over there."
Naturally, I wanted to make better use of the Instant-Death Dagger.
I was only bringing two weapons, after all.
He tested me right away.
"... Not bad. Try moving more directly. Keep it short and simple."
"Thank you. Ah, I have another question."
"What is it? Ask."
"Does the Mozambique Drill work against someone wearing high-end body armor?"
Since I would have to rely on a pistol from now on, I needed to know.
The Mozambique Drill.
A shooting technique where you fired two shots into the chest, then one into the head.
But people said even 5.56mm rifle rounds lacked penetration these days.
Would firing two much weaker 9mm pistol rounds into the chest really do anything?
Kim Haesol brightened at my question.
"That's a very good question. You can tell you've seen real action. Body armor technology has advanced so much these days that two shots to the chest won't do much. Especially against a veteran."
"Then what should I do?"
"These days, you fire two shots at the pelvis instead of the chest. The lower body usually doesn't have armor plates, right? You take away their mobility first, then finish them with a shot to the head."
"Ah..."
It was a good thing I asked.
After practicing a few times, an Association employee approached.
"Hunter Kang Hyun, your firearms are ready."
"Okay."
"What firearms?"
Instead of answering, I moved to the shooting range.
One of every type of firearm available in Korea had arrived there.
It was enough to surprise even Kim Haesol, who had served in special forces.
"What is all this?"
"Guns are the weapons that appear most often in the Tower. But I don't know much about how they work or how they're put together... so I asked for one of each to practice with."
I had struggled when I first handled an AK rifle in the Tower.
It was fortunate that it had been an AK. If it had been a more complicated or unfamiliar firearm, I wouldn't have been able to use it at all.
I picked them up one by one, learning their mechanisms and how they worked.
"How does this one load?"
"It uses a clip. You just push it in from the top. Wow, wait. I need to check the manual for this one too."
There were plenty of guns that even someone from special forces had never handled.
Honestly, I should have done this before entering the Tower for the first time.
It felt like hurriedly finishing overdue homework.
Kim Haesol's reaction was particularly strong.
"We asked CCT to get us this accessory, and they said absolutely not... No wonder Jiho left CCT."
It seemed CCT didn't receive the kind of full support hunters did.
I kept practicing until I could disassemble and reassemble all kinds of firearms.
Kim Haesol looked at a decaying Eastern Bloc gun and asked seriously.
"Does anyone actually bring this kind of crap in?"
The Tower's guns were basically illegal copies of firearms hunters had brought in.
That meant someone had brought in the original.
"They do. I survived thanks to one. Hunters from Eastern Europe bring them in a lot. This is the kind of stuff they have in their warehouses..."
"I see... Ah, with AK variants, it's easier if you hook the front of the magazine first."
Around the time Kim Yuna finished correcting her technique after receiving the advice, we heard that Bravo Team had returned.
[Bravo Team has returned! Medical and assessment teams, hurry...]
"Hm? They're back already?"
Something was strange.
It was only their second day inside.
Wasn't that far too fast?
Even with a rookie along, they should have done some farming while they were there.
We immediately went to see Bravo Team's leader.
For once, they looked angry.
"Ah, Kang Hyun."
"What happened?"
Before Bravo Team's leader could say anything while suppressing their temper, Choi Ilhyuk stepped forward.
Seeing this guy complain to us, he must have really felt wronged.
"No, that rookie bastard kept getting in the way and whining, so we couldn't even farm properly. We just came back early."
"What? How did they get in the way..."
"We'd be lying in wait, and they'd keep making noise. They saw a monster and started shooting without permission..."
This was incompetence on a completely different level.
I looked at Bravo Team's leader.
"You said they were the top performer of this class?"
"That bastard didn't do it because they didn't know better. Once they got into a real situation, they got scared and pulled that shit because they wanted to come back quickly."
Bravo Team's leader finally spoke and returned the key to me.
"But we used this well. Thanks a lot."
At that moment, an irritated voice came from where the employees were gathered.
It was the rookie in question.
"Why... why am I A-rank? We escaped from the sixth floor, so I should be S-rank!"
What? A-rank?
As I stood there in shock, Bravo Team's leader spoke.
"You pathetic bastard. You whined so much that we couldn't farm or stay there properly. Do you think the Tower would recognize that as clearing the sixth floor? Be grateful you even got A-rank!"
"..."
It seemed their rank had been lowered because their stay was too short and the loot value was too low.
I had no idea such a rule existed.
That wasn't properly implemented in Tower Escape in the first place.
Come to think of it, people had only started taking rookies to the sixth and seventh floors very recently.
Even then, only a team leader as much of a yes-man as Bravo Team's leader would take them along.
Normally, people obviously hated it because they were afraid of exactly this.
'Were countries with S-rank Hunters withholding information? Then the reason there hadn't been an EX-rank Hunter until now was also...'
I had fought desperately for over a week before getting out, so of course it had counted as a clear.
Bravo Team's leader looked ready to hit the rookie at any moment, so the Association employees forcibly broke them up.
After getting my key back and hearing the news, I moved to another location.
"Hunter Kang Hyun, a guest from HTT in the United States has arrived. They're currently on their way to the Association, so..."
"Ah, the gunsmith is here. Let's go right away."
"You're getting pretty international these days, aren't you?"
Messages in foreign languages kept coming into my YouTube channel and game streaming channel...
They were annoying, so I'd been ignoring every single one.
A few weeks later.
I finally challenged the eighth floor.
Footnotes:
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