Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty - Chapter 72

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Chapter 72: Episode 72

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Fortunately, Notier was an Orc I could reason with.

"Can you demonstrate the Necrosmith technology?"

"That won't work. It's Kang Hyun's exclusive technology. It was lost to begin with, and wasn't it supposed to be forbidden technology?"

At some point, Kim Yuna had started speaking like a lawyer.

"If we show them something like that, everyone will want to use it."

"You don't need to demonstrate the entire process. You only need to prove that you aren't manipulating souls."

After thinking for a moment, I decided to explain a little.

"Before the manufacturing process, I prepare five or six pieces of equipment. The soul directly chooses one of them."

Sure, someone was waving a knife around beside it, but that wasn't important.

"Oh, so that's how..."

"That makes sense, considering the demand. Still, it sounds like it could only be used to make low-grade items..."

"What's wrong with that? You can roughly tell an intermediate-grade soul's Attribute just by its color anyway..."

The Death Priests attending the trial murmured among themselves.

"But he already received a mask and priestly robes?"

"It seems First Priest Gillius took an interest. It's been quite a while since he appointed a new Death Priest..."

He stood apart from the others, silently staring at me.

What a creepy, unpleasant guy.

Notier soon raised her voice.

"I will deliver the verdict. This technology is still in development, and it cannot be clearly proven that it desecrates souls. Taking into account the special circumstances of humanity, which recently joined the Tower, prohibitive measures will be deferred for thirty years. If anyone wishes to appeal, they must state their intent within thirty days..."

"No objections."

It had ended well, just as Bellion said.

I was relieved they had considered humanity's position too.

I exchanged brief greetings with the other Death Priests while looking them over. They all wore masks, but Death Priests could roughly recognize one another.

"..."

Then the man who had only been watching quietly approached me.

An Elf wearing a hood.

Step. Step.

He stared at me from right in front of my face.

Like I was some fascinating spectacle.

It wasn't as if his eyesight was particularly bad.

The other Death Priests saw him and began whispering.

"That's First Priest Gillius. When did he arrive?"

What? This Elf was Gillius?

The one who appointed Death Priests?

"Hello."

No answer came back, so my greeting was one-sided.

I already disliked this guy.

The Death Priest spoke in a completely hoarse voice.

"... What is so special about you?"

That couldn't count as a greeting.

Was he picking a fight?

His eyes were far too serious, though. He looked more desperate for an answer than anyone else.

That made it hard to answer casually.

"Shouldn't you be the one who knows? You're the First Priest who appoints new Death Priests."

"You are not a priest I chose. Your dagger was not made by me."

Gillius confirmed what I had suspected.

So Gillius hadn't delivered the dagger to me after all.

What he said next was hard to understand.

"The Tower chose you. Just as it chose me in the distant past... I have no idea why."

The Tower chose me?

Was that some kind of metaphor?

He didn't seem to be joking.

To begin with, I wasn't even sure he was capable of joking.

"I must learn why you were chosen, so I can learn why I was chosen."

"I don't know that yet either. But who sent me the mask?"

"I sent the mask. I respect the Tower's choice. You will not be unfairly discriminated against."

I could tell at a glance.

Gillius was sick.

His inner self probably wasn't much different from the ghost monsters I had seen earlier. Obsession and stubbornness were what drove him.

Compared to this man, Count Kwatum, driven by ambition, felt more human.

Notier walked over from behind.

"You didn't make him a Death Priest? No wonder he was glaring at you so strangely."

"... I wasn't glaring. I was just looking."

Gillius immediately made an excuse.

It seemed even the First Priest couldn't treat Notier carelessly. She must have enough influence to operate the Death Priest Court in the first place.

"Then I'll see you again later, young Death Priest. Though honestly, it'd be better if we never had a reason to meet..."

"We can meet for good reasons."

After saying goodbye to Notier, Gillius, and Kaifpel, who had acted as my lawyer, I left the stone chamber.

Creeeak.

"Huh, it's over?"

"Yes. It went well."

"It took a while."

After pulling out some snacks to fill our stomachs, we left the large stone chamber.

I was sick of the Underground Labyrinth, so we decided to head aboveground.

Our team specialized in long-range combat, so it was better to have a clear line of sight.

"Kiiaaak!"

"Kaak..."

Faint screams echoed from far away.

They belonged to other Hunters.

"It's starting again."

From the eleventh floor onward, cross-dimensional matchmaking began.

There was a one-month re-entry cooldown, but...

A huge number of Hunters entered the same map.

That was why, when we raided the outer temple last time, Hunters had kept crawling in one after another. Including the teams watching from the outskirts, there must have been over ten teams in that area alone.

Could all those teams really farm properly on the eleventh floor?

Of course not.

Then what happened to most Hunters?

The screams from earlier were the answer.

"Even if they let weaklings in, they can't farm properly anyway."

The monsters on the eleventh floor had to be killed with magic weapons.

On top of that, to farm properly, you had to visit a Sub-Temple or the Underground Labyrinth.

There were barely any places on the outskirts where you could pick up scraps. The exits were even concentrated around the outskirts, so it was common to run into other teams while escaping.

"They must have designed it this way on purpose..."

"That's vicious."

We continued along a forest path, talking quietly, when the sounds of battle came from a temple.

"Um... Team Leader?"

"Let's ignore it for now. It'll probably be too late even if we go."

"Probably."

Actively attacking other teams wasn't our team's policy.

Still, when we adjusted our route slightly to avoid the center, we quickly ran into another team.

An Elf team whose equipment wasn't in great condition.

Their weapons were decent enough, at least. Their equipment wasn't as bad as that of the Lizardman prisoner Hunters we had met before.

"Uh, who are those guys?"

"A race I've never seen. Let's just avoid them."

A lack of information tended to kill courage.

The other members of the Elf team seemed to think differently, though.

"Why don't we try them? I don't sense much mana from them."

"Aren't those the humans who just showed up? I heard a Dwarf team hit the jackpot after killing some of them."

Those idiots who got their guns stolen last time were causing trouble again.

They were probably already dead, but I wanted to kill them one more time.

Then another Elf stopped them.

"Haven't you heard the rumor that six Hunter teams were wiped out by them at the Warrior God's Sub-Temple?"

Six?

I remembered it being around three or four.

Rumors really did get exaggerated.

The Elves' haul today must not have been very good, because they couldn't let go of their greed.

"They must've been the advance party! Do you think the people who cleared every floor up to the tenth are the same as those who skipped ahead?"

Click, bang!

I couldn't stand listening anymore, so I shot the loudest one with my lever-action rifle.

Wasn't it incredibly rude to talk like that right in front of us?

For all I knew, they could have been stalling to pull something.

"F-fast!"

The startled Elves scattered in every direction.

I was considering whether to chase them down when a new presence approached from their direction.

"Another team?"

We took cover almost instinctively.

Han Juwon summoned a barricade with a skill.

Fwoosh!

"Oh, this is pretty reliable. We can block off one side."

"Team Leader, someone's coming... I think we should run."

Sang Hajun, whose face had gone slightly pale, spotted them first.

Beyond the Elves was an enormous Hunter.

They had to be at least two and a half meters tall.

"Wait... they're alone?"

I could only sense one presence from that direction.

The Elves caught between us and the newcomer panicked and fired arrows at them.

One opponent had to seem easier than five.

But that wasn't always true in the Tower.

"There are many souls wandering the Tower again today."

Whoosh!

The giant caught the arrow speeding toward them in one hand.

It was such an unusual race that gender felt meaningless.

Their skin was completely white, and a large Soul Crystal was embedded in the center of their chest.

One of the beings Bellion had warned me about immediately came to mind.

"A Reaper!"

The Elves finally noticed the Soul Crystal and screamed as they ran.

The Reaper moved at a speed that didn't match its huge body and destroyed their legs first.

Crack!

"Aaargh!"

When it swung its massive mace, legs snapped like dried stalks.

"Team Leader, what do we do?"

"Let's put some distance between us first."

Reapers were public enemies, no less than Undead Hunters.

The problem was that they were far stronger than any Undead.

They were supposed to operate from the fourteenth floor and above, yet they came all the way down to the eleventh and twelfth floors to slaughter Hunters of other races.

As soon as I heard about them, I asked Bellion.

"Wouldn't they lose more than they gained?"

[They're not the kind of bastards who care about that, which is why they're such a pain.]

Reapers were a race armed with a kind of religious fanaticism...

They used Soul Crystals to increase their own numbers.

"That's possible? Isn't that complete resurrection?"

[It's nothing that grand. In the process of getting a new body, their personality, memories, and senses are all twisted beyond recognition. You should think of them as completely different beings.]

It wasn't resurrection. They simply altered souls as they pleased and used them as weapons.

But the Reapers themselves considered it an immensely noble and sacred act.

They believed they were freeing the souls of lesser races and allowing them to be reborn as Reapers.

The Reaper easily endured the Elves' attacks and crushed another one.

"I have come to save your pitiful souls."

"Cut the bullshit!"

Crackle!

One Elf fired a lightning skill.

A transparent shield appeared around the Reaper's body and blocked it.

I examined that skill closely.

'That Barrier isn't the Reaper's skill.'

The Reaper hadn't used it directly.

A skull charm hung from its bizarre clothes like an ornament...

No. It wasn't a charm. It was a shrunken skull.

A Soul Crystal had been embedded in it, forcibly anchoring a soul inside.

"Kiiaaak..."

The skull let out a scream of agony as it used the skill in the Reaper's place.

It seemed it was treated as a Hunter rather than equipment, allowing it to use skills normally.

"Crazy... What the hell is that..."

Thump. Thump!

At the grotesque sight, the Death Priest’s Dagger began trembling on its own.

But...

Could I defeat something that could use five Basic Skills?

Then the Reaper looked at me and made a horrifying expression.

Its eyes went completely wild with rage.

"That aura... Could it be a Death Priest! You vile bastard!"

"What?"

Had I lived my life so wrongly that a Reaper would say something like that to me?

No way.

The Reaper swung its mace wildly as it charged toward me.

"How dare you put souls to eternal rest! Do you not know that every soul has the right to be reborn as a Reaper!"

The words sounded respectable enough.

Even as I prepared my gun, I couldn't resist arguing.

"Then why is that one around your neck crying?"

"Fool! That is a cry of joy. You should rejoice as well. I am merciful. I will crush that foolish head of yours and allow you to be reborn as a higher race. Reincarnating a Death Priest will earn me tremendous merit!"

Just as I'd heard, there was no reasoning with them at all.

Fortunately, I knew a language that would work well on this bastard.

And I was quite fluent in it.

Bang!

As the gunshot rang out, nearby Hunters came rushing over.

The hyenas that had been looking for prey were startled when they spotted the Reaper.

"A-a Reaper!"

"Get it! Killing one Reaper will change your life!"

"Kill it before it kills all of us!"

A public enemy worthy of its reputation.

We gladly joined the majority.

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