WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Episode 63

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About two weeks had passed since the eleventh floor opened.

No hunter teams had challenged it yet.

At least, not officially.

It was probably thanks to our team's broadcast where we shared our strategy.

"If you can somehow get through the ninth floor, you can receive a skill on the tenth floor."

[HTT Official: They give you skills? Really?]

[AU D.squad: How good are the skills?]

"It varies, but they give you something suited to your performance on the tenth floor. The better ones are around B-rank basic skills..."

[Office Director Fist: If you bring a survival expert, couldn't you clear the ninth floor too?]

[5 Seconds Until Escape: Who knows? The ninth-floor boss is insanely hard.]

[Mage Judge: The streamer gave you all the information. If you're still whining that it's hard, you should quit being a hunter.]

[Fog Lake Swim Team: Easy for someone who's not even a hunter to say...]

[USA Hunter Federation has donated 10,000 USD!]

"Oh, thank you to the American Hunter Association for the ten-thousand-dollar donation!"

Maybe it was because our live viewer count had surpassed a million long ago.

Donations poured in from all sorts of official organizations as well.

"But how much is ten thousand dollars? One hundred thousand won?"

"No. Around fourteen million won..."

"What?"

Fourteen million won for a single ad.

They sure were generous... was what I wanted to say.

Why did they have to send it through Super Chat?

YouTube took thirty percent from Super Chats.

Since the money had come from the United States, more than twenty percent would be withheld there too.

Once everything was taken into account, I'd only receive about half.

"Come on, don't send it through here. Just send it separately."

"Shh. Kang Hyun, if you say that outright during a live broadcast, they'll suspend us."

"Oh. Is that so?"

Right. They wouldn't look kindly on someone openly avoiding their fees.

Hunter income was basically tax-deductible...

So getting hit with a tax bomb somewhere else hurt much more.

Even considering that, it was still undeniably sweet.

At this level of popularity, it became what people called automatic hunting.

I could make money as easily as breathing, receiving donations and video donations nonstop.

The viewers provided the content themselves, and the discussion kept rolling on its own. It was a crazy stage to reach.

[HTT Official: Russia gave up its technology monopoly thanks to Korea's Alpha Team. You deserve at least this much.]

Naturally, Russia hadn't announced that its technology had leaked.

Officially, they had accepted requests from both the United States and Korea and agreed to share the technology.

The technology had already gotten out, so they probably had to save face somehow.

"Let's get back to the explanation. I'll block Super Chats for a bit."

"Ah, okay! You get three hours of preparation time on the tenth floor..."

[Yuki: Isn't the platform's tyranny a bit much?]

"..."

I stopped explaining and looked at Yuki beside me.

Yuna did the same.

"Don't do it. Seriously."

"W-what?"

"Don't use Clone Technique to raid YouTube headquarters or something."

"You really don't want me to?"

"No."

After barely wrapping up the broadcast, an official letter from a foreign association had arrived.

Calling it an official letter was generous. It was more of a cooperation request.

"I told them to send these to the Association, not me."

"They're probably trying every possible route. What's it say?"

"Ah, there's some big event next month... I think they want me to speak as a keynote speaker. What's a keynote speaker?"

Even with the Tower's magical translation, things could be confusing sometimes.

It wasn't completely free of errors.

Yuki spoke from beside me.

"Isn't it the name of a speaker?"

"Must be a good speaker."

Yuna, who had been watching from nearby, let out a deep sigh and cut in.

"Keynote means core. It means the main presenter."

"Oh, Yuna, you're really fluent in English."

"Sure. Let's go with that."

People thought hunters were idiots who only knew how to fire guns...

We had intelligence and knowledge too.

I might've been a little lacking in those areas, though.

Still, I was overseeing Enchanting for the Korean Hunter Association, so it felt a little strange.

"Captain, what's this?"

"An Improved Soul Altar."

Since hunters were clearing the ninth floor based on our strategy...

There was a little more room in the Soul Crystal stockpile.

I received Soul Crystals from hunters and handled the Enchanting for them.

The Improved K-Altar could hold five pieces of Enchantment Equipment at once.

There were five common Soul Attributes, so hunters could choose the piece of Enchantment Equipment with the attribute best suited to them before entering.

If a rare attribute appeared, they could grant a trait to a skill instead of equipment.

"What's on the order sheet?"

"We need quite a few souls with the Escape Attribute."

Escape, which made the body lighter, was a popular attribute.

I drew my dagger and danced with the blade.

A ritual that turned even ordinary souls into souls with the Escape Attribute!

No matter how they had lived, they'd want to run away.

"Uh, not there. That's it."

Ssssh.

After mass-producing high-quality Enchantment Equipment, I studied the Magical Medical Technology that had come over from Russia.

At first, I thought it would be incredibly difficult, but it wasn't.

"What do you think, Captain?"

"It's unusual. Most of it says to grow a certain plant, process it a certain way, then feed it to a particular patient. It feels closer to horticulture than medical technology."

"Ah. Is that so?"

"I think it probably came from the Elf Race."

The shop side had undergone a complete upheaval too.

Not only had a huge number of products been added, but prices had dropped as well.

This would probably take some time.

The Association staff would handle growing the plants on their own.

As long as they had the foundational Dimensional Energy Reactor technology, there wouldn't be a problem.

"Should we start working on something for Yuki?"

"Ah, really? Great!"

Yuki's main weapon was currently a SPAS-12 shotgun.

This shotgun had a fatal flaw: reloading was inconvenient.

The loading gate only opened when you pressed a button on the receiver.

No matter how I looked at it, it had more drawbacks than advantages.

When I had looked at the weapons of the Orc hunters last time, most of them had used close-range weapons such as short spears and swords.

Close combat would become even more important on the eleventh floor.

At first, I had considered switching to a fully automatic shotgun.

After consulting Go Jiho, though, I gave up right away.

"Why aren't automatic weapons any good?"

"The whole automatic-shotgun category has been dead for a long time."

Shotgun ammunition was heavy, and box magazines were prone to feeding failures.

It was a weapon type that didn't suit automatic firearms in many ways.

The relatively recent USAS-12 had only come out around 1990, so its heyday had passed long ago.

"Then what did he recommend?"

"A Benelli M4."

The M870 was too old...

He recommended the relatively reliable Benelli M4 instead.

There had been a few other modern shotguns too.

I gave up on them because of failure cases I had never even heard of.

One used dual tubular magazines and broke while you manually switched magazines.

"Something must be wrong with shotguns as a whole."

Naturally, I gave it a full Ultra-Alloy custom job and added an Impact Enhancement Enchantment.

Yuki looked very satisfied.

"It definitely feels more comfortable."

I was about to go eat when the Interdimensional Communicator on the table began to ring.

Brrring!

For reference, it didn't work inside the Tower.

"Hello."

[Looks like you installed the Protective Formations well.]

It was Bellion, my senior Death Priest.

Following what he had taught me last time, I installed Protective Formations in the workshop, dormitory, and Association.

When I checked with Appraisal, I could tell they were working properly.

They completely blocked unwanted outside interference.

He had contacted me first again.

"Seems like you have a lot of free time."

"Being a Death Priest doesn't seem like such a busy job. Maybe it has good work-life balance?"

[I can hear everything.]

"Gah!"

The communicator's performance was pretty good.

Since I had the chance, I decided to ask some things I had been curious about.

"Do you have any advice for me as a senior Death Priest? Rules that only Death Priests have, maybe..."

[Rules for Death Priests? There aren't any.]

"Oh, really?"

[You just get rid of people who look like they shouldn't exist. Like you've been doing.]

There really wasn't any separate standard?

They were a looser group than I had expected.

"You don't gather together or anything, right?"

[That's right. We're all free spirits.]

It would be stranger if people with the power to stab the person beside them to death at any time got along and gathered together.

"Then is there some kind of selection standard?"

[The same as in your case. Didn't you meet Gillius, the First Priest, and receive a dagger from them?]

"What? Ah, right."

Gillius, the First Priest?

It was a name I had never heard before.

Still, it seemed ordinary for Death Priests, so I just agreed for now.

Bellion immediately began complaining about Gillius.

[They're such an unfriendly bastard. They were always strange, but the older they get, the more twisted their personality becomes...]

Something was strange.

From what Bellion said, it sounded like senior Death Priests selected new recruits...

But hunters from other dimensions couldn't meet on the tenth floor or below, could they?

Then why had the dagger been lying on the seventh floor?

The same went for the person who had given me the mask.

Maybe Death Priests were different somehow.

As I continued the conversation, it turned out Bellion thought I had become a Death Priest very recently.

Normally, you were chosen only after reaching the eleventh floor.

[You probably still haven't had time to settle in, but if you keep doing Death Priest work, a Death Priest's Sacred Relic will be delivered to you.]

"I see..."

Would the First Priest, Gillius, give me that Sacred Relic too?

I was incredibly curious.

But I couldn't ask outright.

Bellion explained things in surprising detail.

[The second thing you usually receive is a mask. It's extremely dangerous for people to find out you're a Death Priest, so be careful.]

"Oh, why? It seems like everyone likes them..."

[Hmph. Only lowly people feel that way. Death Priests may be heroes to the people, but to the establishment and nobles, we're no different from bombs.]

Thinking about it, that made sense.

[When people above them start dropping dead, the public celebrates no matter who it is. They spread rumors everywhere, then scatter like bugs when they're actually needed.]

It sounded like a very personal experience.

I had done well to hide it.

"How do other Death Priests usually live?"

[They vary too much for me to give you an answer. Some have joined hands with the establishment, and some have become kings outright.]

"What? Is that even allowed?"

[Neither has been doing that for a hundred years yet, so everyone is still watching.]

Did high-ranking hunters consider a hundred years normal?

Their sense of time was different.

More importantly, Bellion saying everyone was still watching meant they did keep in touch, at least a little.

Did they even have meetings?

The Association caused a commotion over meetings whenever anything happened.

[Meetings? You can call one, but people rarely do.]

"Uh... Is it because it's dangerous to gather so easily?"

[It is dangerous. What if I call one... and people decide the matter isn't important, or only a few show up because I'm unpopular? It'd be humiliating. If something like that happened, I'd seriously want to kill myself.]

"..."

For a secret society that had existed for at least hundreds of years, it felt way too relaxed.

Wasn't this basically a hobby club?

Then again, these were people who treated a hundred years as short.

They wouldn't live like fugitives.

Even if the establishment treated them like bombs, they probably had solid foundations and false identities within their own societies.

In some ways, it might have been scarier that they operated like a hobby club.

They had money, time, and social status, yet acted wholeheartedly without caring about profit or loss.

Unusually for me, I decided to be a little social.

I liked this Death Priest, Bellion, quite a bit.

He didn't seem like the type to weigh everything and use his junior.

"If you call a meeting, I'll go."

[Pfft, this little greenhorn...]

"By the way, when is my gift arriving? You said you'd give me one."

[Ah. Wait a little. Do you think breaking through the walls between dimensions is easy? Keep bothering me and I might just send you any old thing.]

I immediately shut my mouth.

He seemed pretty proud.

Surely he wouldn't send something cheap.

That night, I had a nightmare.

It wasn't one where monsters chased me.

Someone else cleared the eleventh floor before our team did.

"Gasp!"

After barely waking from the dream, I grabbed Heentteok, who had been squirming beside me.

I had stopped sleeping in the rabbit room...

But as the leader rabbit, Heentteok could freely come and go from the rabbit room.

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Squeee..."

I couldn't tell whether Heentteok felt wronged or sorry.

"Forget it. Let's go back to sleep."

Unfortunately, our team had to challenge the eleventh floor again before the gift arrived.

This time too, we entered the moment the re-entry waiting time ended.

Naturally, our equipment setup had changed slightly from our tenth-floor attempt.

Now that we had information, we could bring the right equipment.

"I'm ready."

"Me too. Is our policy toward other-race hunters the same as before?"

"Yes. We'll keep a safe distance and avoid attacking first as much as possible."

"We'll target the Sub-Temple first, right?"

"That's right."

There were three main regions on the eleventh floor.

The Great Temple, the Sub-Temple, and the Underground Labyrinth.

It might have looked a little sparse compared to other floors.

But each one was huge, so it wasn't really.

And it wasn't as if there were no other areas at all.

"Entering the eleventh floor with five people."

[Item Level Restriction 1750/1750. Passed. Would you like to enter?]

[You have entered the Tower's 11th floor. Upon successful escape, you will receive a gold bonus and skill experience.]

Flaaash!

A rotten smell heavy with dust.

My motivation was already rising.

"...Did we spawn in the Underground Labyrinth?"

Even the worst possible spawn location wasn't surprising anymore.

We had received the strategy, but not detailed terrain information.

At least we wouldn't have time to get bored.

Last time, we had retreated without gaining anything.

There wouldn't be any such disgrace this time.

"We're moving."

Soul Crystals all around us faintly reflected the light as if welcoming us.

Footnotes:

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