WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Chapter 49

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In zombie movies and games, there were usually all kinds of zombies.

The ones that staggered around, of course, but also walking zombies, running zombies...

Tanks, Hunters, Witches, even zombies that used psychic powers or martial arts. There were all sorts of them.

Ghosts were monsters with just as many variations as zombies.

So what were the ghost monsters in the Tower like?

Think of the worst kind you could normally imagine.

Physical resistance was a given, along with their ability to fly around quickly. They even had enough intelligence to work as a team and exploit Hunters' openings.

The Manager, the ghost boss of the seventh-floor Underground Shopping Mall, had been tough enough to withstand dozens of shots from a weapon that targeted its weakness. Attacks that ignored obstacles were the bare minimum.

Fortunately, the ones in front of us didn't seem to be on that level.

Still, there were quite a few of them.

At least ten.

Just in case, I warned Yuki beforehand.

"Don't conserve your ammo!"

"Yes!"

Whoosh!

One flew at me without making a sound.

I moved in a short, efficient motion and slashed it with my dagger.

Psssh!

It scattered like smoke in an instant.

But another one fearlessly rushed at me.

They had a clear purpose. They wanted to take back the horn I'd stolen.

I cut that one down too.

Bang!

Yuki fired her shotgun from the side.

She had a chance to shoot about three of them at once, so she didn't hold back.

The ghosts seemed to have weak physical resistance. They scattered almost immediately...

Then, before long, they rose again from the shadows in the distance.

"Ah, Team Leader! They're reviving!"

An immortality gimmick?

I'd prefer it if they didn't give this kind of gimmick to trash mobs.

They had appeared the moment I picked up the horn, so were they some sort of quest-related monster?

Still, when they kept appearing ten at a time, I didn't know what else I was supposed to call them besides trash mobs.

'They really made this annoying.'

Normally, I would probably have had to fight them off while carrying the horn and escape the fishing village.

But I had the Death Priest's ritual tool.

The ones struck by my dagger couldn't appear again.

'Just as I thought. It has the power to stop resurrection.'

This dagger returned all life to its rightful place.

That included false lives like theirs.

The ghosts sensed the dagger's power, trembled, and shouted.

"Don't hesitate! Attack all at once!"

They flew at us together, making them easy targets.

I fired my gun like Yuki.

Baaang!

Maybe because it was the sawed-off version, but the gunshot was incredibly loud.

The barrel was so short that the gunpowder gases, the main source of the noise, escaped at much higher pressure.

Still, it was effective.

When I fired the buckshot, three or four ghosts disappeared in an instant.

Psssh!

I cut down the remaining one with my dagger, then broke open the gun to reload.

Click!

The shotgun smoothly returned to its original shape.

The hinge I'd installed worked perfectly.

'Well made.'

I'd tested it several times after modifying it...

But seeing it work properly in real combat felt different.

It wasn't a particularly difficult modification, so I shouldn't get too full of myself.

With that reminder, I cut down the others.

Slash!

Their numbers quickly shrank, and they became wary of my dagger. None of them dared approach any longer.

"Urgh, the treasure of our village...!"

Swish!

I threw my dagger and killed the one that had been rambling on.

Swoosh!

Then I summoned the dagger back into my hand.

It was my first time using it in real combat, but it worked better than expected.

"Aaaah!"

[You have laid all the residents of the Contaminated Fishing Village to rest. Upon escape, additional reward acquired...]

"Hm?"

I'd unintentionally completed an achievement too.

When I read the message, I saw that one Skill Card had been added to the clear reward!

"Wow, do they just hand out Skill Cards on the ninth floor...?"

"I'm looking forward to seeing what we get."

Once we cleared out all the monsters, I saw crystals scattered around the area.

The small Soul Crystals I'd seen yesterday.

They really were the ninth floor's main loot.

"I'll collect all of those."

Only then could I look through the other buildings.

[Appraisal skill transcended. Loot Expert skill activated.]

I'd been using God's Hand too often, so I had planned to conserve my Transcendence skills as much as possible while exploring...

But I had to use them at a farming spot like this.

Fortunately, I detected a firearm inside a chest in a nearby abandoned house.

I hurried over and opened it.

"Huh?"

But...

The locally acquired firearm was completely different from what I'd expected.

It looked like an old rifle, but the barrel was strangely narrow.

It was so narrow that I wondered if a bullet could even pass through it properly.

When I saw the ammunition left beside it, I groaned quietly.

"Ah, don't tell me..."

"What's wrong?"

"This is .22 caliber... A Ruger 10/22 Rifle."

.22 Long Rifle ammunition.

Commonly known as .22LR.

Despite the name, it was extremely small and not very long.

It was the classic example of a small-caliber round with very weak stopping power.

Even the 9mm Parabellum rounds I used in the Nightfall were about three times more powerful than these.

"Then... is it bad?"

"It's the worst."

.22-caliber ammunition was so small and light that there was a joke about people getting angry if you shot them with it.

At least there was a decent amount of ammunition. That was something.

The rifle itself was in terrible condition.

Even though it had been stored in a chest, it was half-rotted from moisture.

The metal parts needed work too.

Still, it was better than nothing.

I forced myself to think positively and picked up the horn.

"We've gathered most of the loot, so I'll call them soon."

"Yes!"

The third member of our team had already been decided.

I thought of Sang Hajun and blew the horn.

Bwoooooo!

With a low, majestic sound, a dimensional gate opened in front of us, and Sang Hajun arrived.

At the same time, the horn shattered into pieces.

"Hajun!"

"Good work, Team Leader. I saw everything from the Interfloor Zone."

Hajun greeted us as he took the Ruger rifle.

We left the fishing village and talked as we headed back to camp.

"Do they serve food there?"

"They give you food, but it tastes bad."

"That's unfortunate..."

Just having one more team member made me feel incredibly reassured.

Hajun moved like he hadn't spent two months away at all.

He had done fine during training too.

As we collected food nearby on the way back to camp...

My senses picked up something strange.

"Hm? Come over here for a moment."

Between the shipwreck and the fishing village, there was a small stone statue in the middle of the jungle.

The statue had a very unusual appearance.

It looked as if the person depicted in it and the surrounding area had all been turned to stone and preserved together.

I recalled what Queenbell Hartman had told me when he gave me information about the ninth floor.

"He said there were a temple and four statues on the ninth floor. This must be one of them."

"This is the key to opening the temple?"

He had said the temple would open once we manipulated all four statues...

But "manipulate" was a pretty vague word.

What exactly were we supposed to do?

I used every skill I had to examine the statue.

It was a statue of a man peeling bark from a tree.

The man seemed to be a Hunter.

He wore exploration gear and carried a weapon.

"A Hunter statue? That's unexpected."

"Shh. The Team Leader is concentrating."

There were no movable parts on the statue.

It didn't seem like we could activate it by pressing some button.

I closely examined the statue's incredibly realistic details.

"This man... did he starve?"

"Huh? Why do you think that?"

"His cheeks are sunken, and his stomach is hollow. He's also peeling bark off a tree."

"Ah, now that you mention it, I can see the shape of his bones beneath his skin!"

Anyone could tell he was on the verge of starvation.

He was curled up in front of the tree as if he didn't even have the strength to move.

Hajun cautiously offered a guess.

"Could this be a Hunter who died here and turned into a statue?"

"... That's really sad when you put it that way."

Dying alone of hunger in a place like this was horrifying to imagine.

I placed some of the food we'd gathered on the stone in front of him.

It was enough for one person to have a meal, at least.

Hajun looked at it and asked.

"... What are you doing?"

"Making an offering."

Then...

Flash!

A faint light came from the statue, and it soon turned into smoke and disappeared.

[Statue of the Starved Man dismantled. Until you escape the ninth floor, Stamina consumption and hunger will be slightly reduced.]

"Huh, this..."

So that was how you "manipulated" them.

It looked like he had eaten his fill and moved on.

Who would have thought Korean traditional culture would come in handy here?

"I heard the Korean Wave was really taking off these days..."

This really made me feel like I was becoming a Death Priest.

"You did well, Team Leader. Ah, there's prey over there. Is that a deer?"

Hajun pointed beyond the grass.

If it was a deer, the three of us could eat for about a day.

We could eat more than that if we only considered the amount of meat...

But the meat would probably spoil because of the weather.

We also didn't have the know-how to preserve it, and there was too much to do right now.

"I'll go. Hajun, go back to camp with Yuki first and scout the area."

"Okay."

The camp was built in a tree on top of a hill...

If Hajun installed his Glass Marble Camera, we would be able to monitor it remotely.

Whoosh!

I sped up and hunted the deer.

I couldn't use my dagger for hunting.

There had been several times when a corpse turned into smoke or powder.

Instead, I quickly sharpened a branch and used it as a throwing spear.

"Screech!"

Thanks to a Hunter's monstrous strength, it struck a vital point cleanly.

Like when I butchered the rabbit yesterday, I hung it from a tree to drain the blood while its heart was still beating. Then I skinned it and collected the meat.

It weighed over fifty kilograms, so it wasn't an easy job.

"Hup!"

[Physical Technique skill transcended. Inhuman Strength skill activated.]

Butchering and cooking were normally Yuki's jobs...

But I'd learned a little by watching during training.

'Maybe because it's a wild animal... This one barely has any fat either.'

It definitely wasn't food that could sustain us long-term.

"Yuki, I brought venison."

"Oh. Should I cook it right away?"

"Yes."

There was still a mountain of work to do.

Hajun had already installed the camera.

After I showed him how to lay the floor of the cabin, I inspected the Ruger 10/22 Rifle.

The tools for maintaining firearms were included in Hajun's luggage.

[Eye of Disassembly skill activated.]

Thanks to the skill, I could immediately see the problems with the parts.

Rust could be removed...

But the internal parts were the real issue.

Fortunately, the bolt was in relatively good condition.

The barrel and magazine were in terrible shape.

"Wow, this thing's completely ruined."

The barrel's rifling was so badly worn that it would be better to grind it all out.

I got to work with a round file.

By the way, these tools were made of Ultra-Alloy too.

The hard part was putting in all this effort to restore a gun that was only .22 caliber.

"If I'd known, I should've just brought one working gun..."

Hajun had plenty of other things to bring with him besides a firearm.

The Heavenly Elixir, an emergency potion, as well as a multitool, measuring tools, salt, and more.

Scrape, scrape.

I focused and used my skills to finish working on the barrel within an hour.

I'd ground out almost all the rifling, turning it into a smoothbore barrel...

But the barrel had been in such bad shape that this was the best option.

The magazine was even worse.

The Ruger rifle used a ten-round rotary magazine.

The rounds were so small that the magazine looked like a pencil sharpener...

And of all things, the most important and precise gear component was broken.

"Hajun, just use it by loading one round into the chamber at a time without the magazine. I'll fix the magazine later if we have time."

"Thanks."

Hajun took the gun without a word of complaint.

Even .22 caliber could kill if it hit someone in the head properly.

If a tougher monster showed up, we'd have to run.

"Ah, and it's a smoothbore barrel, so I can't guarantee accuracy past fifty meters."

"I'll wait until they get close, then shoot."

Had he learned positive thinking during his recovery period?

Then again, if a team member went through all that trouble to repair your gun, you wouldn't be human if you complained.

After lunch, Yuki and Hajun wove a roof from tree trunks and leaves to keep out the rain.

While they worked, I brought back timber to use for the walls.

Everyone was a capable Hunter, so they moved quickly.

We might finish the camp properly much earlier than expected.

Then...

"Kiiaaah!!"

A sharp scream rang out from somewhere.

I immediately stood up and grabbed my dagger and gun.

"Gasp!"

"Wh-What's wrong?"

The other two, who had been weaving the roof, jumped up in surprise too.

They looked genuinely confused.

That made me even more confused.

"What do you mean, what's wrong? Didn't you hear that scream just now?"

"What scream? I didn't hear anything..."

Yuki said.

Had I been the only one to hear it because my senses were better than theirs?

But that scream had been pretty loud.

Hajun immediately checked the Glass Marble Camera, but there was nothing in the direction I pointed.

"I can't see anything..."

"Was it an auditory hallucination?"

"... This is the Island of Sleeping Souls. That could happen."

True.

When I thought about it, there was no way the ninth floor would let us sit around camping in peace.

There had to be something that tormented Hunters.

A curse that accumulated automatically over time, like Soul Freeze on the sixth floor.

Feeling uneasy, I placed the completed roof onto the frame one section at a time.

Putting up the ridge beam had taken an absurd amount of work, even with my Transcendence skills...

But it had been worth it.

The moment we finished putting up the roof, rain poured down as if it had been waiting for us.

"Ah, let's get inside!"

"Wait a moment. We still need to put up a wall..."

Once we erected one wall with the prepared timber, it finally started to feel like a real building.

I burned more Bug-Repelling Grass and lay down my exhausted body.

It felt like heaven.

"It's still early, but... I'm going to rest."

"Mm, okay."

Yuki seemed oddly happy again today.

She seemed to get like this whenever she entered the Tower.

Of course, I wasn't in any position to talk.

We were this close to death.

Maybe that was why I felt so vividly alive.

Had my heart always beaten this powerfully?

My muscles screamed, and my bones creaked.

Even as my body sagged with exhaustion, every sense in me was sharp and alert.

A feeling I would never experience outside the Tower.

'Ah, come to think of it, my muscles probably don't need to hurt.'

How long had I slept while listening to the rain and feeling Yuki's warmth beside me?

When I opened my eyes again, it was already the middle of the night.

I sensed several things approaching the camp silently through the darkness.

The presence of enemies had woken me up.

Complete Senses had clearly picked them up.

This wasn't a hallucination or an auditory hallucination.

My sound sleep had been interrupted, but I didn't feel irritation or anger rising.

Even that was a luxury right now.

I just had to accept that what was coming had come.

I woke Hajun and Yuki, then took out my dagger and gun.

Footnotes:

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