WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈

Episode 93

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We decided to keep talking over a meal.

It looked like this was going to take a while.

"Is there anything you want to eat? I'll order delivery."

Millon, the Orc Necromancer, brightened at my words.

"Ah, I'll eat anything. Really! Back where I used to live, I survived on stuff that was basically garbage."

"Is the undead dimension really that bad?"

"That depends on the Hunter Lord. My master, Aratib, is a Lich, so they have no interest in food."

A Lich, an extremely powerful mage even among high-grade undead.

So they didn't eat?

Millon called Aratib his master, but there didn't seem to be any respect in his voice. If anything, I could sense instinctive fear.

"Places ruled by Vampires or living Necromancer Lords are much better. At least those bastards eat something."

"No, I'm asking what you want to eat..."

In the end, we settled on meat.

Once the delivery arrived, Millon devoured it like a starved man, so it seemed he hadn't been lying.

I'd thought he was awfully skinny for an Orc, but it was just because he hadn't been able to eat properly.

As we ate, I sorted through my thoughts.

Honestly, I hadn't been afraid of an invasion from another dimension until now.

The Reapers had made that clear last time.

Even Reapers who were supposedly the best of the best in dungeons could be cleanly dealt with by ordinary militaries once they came to Earth.

But what about Necromancers?

An undead army wasn't much to fear, but a zombie outbreak or a plague was another matter. Modern humanity lived in absurdly dense conditions.

Ordinary epidemics already caused enormous damage. What if it was a Magical Plague?

And what if someone with ill will toward humanity deliberately spread it...

The damage would grow exponentially.

Of course, humanity's eight billion people would win in the end.

But if the losses were too great, could that really be called a victory?

'What a pain...'

"Wow, this meat is incredible! How can it smell this good without even a hint of a bad odor?"

Millon wiped his mouth as he spoke after finishing the meal.

He seemed deeply impressed by meat without even a trace of gaminess.

"Tell me more about Aratib. Why are they targeting this place? Is it just to gain more power?"

"Hm... My master is a Lich. And most of my master's subordinates are undead as well."

Millon began explaining it step by step from the perspective of a Necromancer.

"When you become undead, the first thing you lose is your senses. Warmth, emotional changes caused by hormones... You can barely feel things like that anymore."

Undead were creatures that moved through dark mana, not nerves and muscles.

"Can't magic fix that?"

"Powerful Necromancers can compensate for it to some degree, but... fundamentally, it's only an imitation. That's why undead obsess over slaughter."

A Necromancer powerful enough to become a Lich would have killed many times.

And killing was an intensely stimulating experience.

"They absorb other living beings' souls and use them to relive the sensations and emotions they felt while alive. But no matter how much they kill, it never satisfies their endless hunger."

So they repeated the cycle of killing for stronger stimulation.

Targeting Earth was both a career and a hobby for Aratib.

They'd really found their calling.

"But Modus didn't seem like that. Modus, the Coward King."

"Modus is crazy."

Millon said it like it was obvious.

I see. Even by undead standards, he was insane.

"By the way, you survived after meeting Modus? Even though you're a new race? As expected of a Death Priest..."

"... Tell me more about Aratib. How strong are they?"

"Master Aratib is one of the most powerful Hunter Lords in the entire undead faction. Their specialties are mass-producing undead and Magical Plague."

They excelled at the two things I was most wary of.

"Most Necromancers have a limit to the number of undead they can control. For example, mine is thirty. But my master has no limit. The more corpses there are, the better. Just like Mortis."

"Mortis?"

"Ah, Modus's girlfriend."

So Modus had a Necromancer girlfriend.

Of course, Mortis had to be strong too.

She had revived Modus, one of the most powerful Hunter Lords.

"I heard Liches have immortality?"

"More accurately, they can resurrect. Liches possess Soul Boxes. Those are their true bodies."

So a Lich's body was like a remotely controlled drone.

"But since that body is connected to the soul, you can completely erase a Lich by stabbing it with a Death Priest weapon."

Millon was even teaching me their weakness.

He must have really hated living there.

At first, I wondered whether Millon was lying to make us fight Aratib...

But he didn't seem loyal or devoted enough to lie while risking his life while trapped here.

It seemed several other disciples of Aratib had also been dispatched, so if we caught them and cross-checked their stories, we'd know the truth.

Then Go Jiho, who had been nibbling on snacks beside us, spoke.

He'd been retired for a while, but he still ate well, as though it took quite a bit to maintain that build.

"Where exactly is that troublesome bastard targeting? There aren't just one or two cities in our dimension."

"That's the problem. They've learned that the population of this dimension is beyond imagination."

If Aratib only intended to spread a plague and increase the number of corpses, there were countless suitable cities.

I'd heard the Dwarves only had a population in the tens of millions.

That was for their entire race.

To Necromancers, human cities probably looked like buffets.

There were cities with populations in the millions all over the world.

"Find out as much as you can about what Aratib wants. Get permission before you communicate with them, no exceptions. If you don't, we'll consider you a spy and dispose of you."

"D-Don't worry! But, uh, is there another volume of this thing called a comic book? It ended in the middle..."

"I'll get it for you."

We'd interrogated Millon enough.

After parting ways with him, I focused on work and training for a while.

It was still too early to clear the thirteenth floor, so we'd probably have to clear the twelfth floor again...

But this damn Spore Fog put us at too much of a disadvantage.

'The Spore Fog practically shuts down shooting.'

At the very least, we had to overcome that before moving on to the thirteenth floor.

The gimmick on the thirteenth floor might put us at an even worse disadvantage.

Even if we challenged the thirteenth floor, we'd eventually have to descend to the twelfth floor to use an exit.

I'd been having everyone except Sang Hajun train to raise their Detection skill levels.

But skills didn't just keep rising because you wanted them to.

In the end, I decided to solve the problem with equipment.

It would cost some points, but it was the easiest and most convenient option.

The Spore Fog on the twelfth floor couldn't be overcome with ordinary night vision goggles.

Light amplification didn't work, and thermal imaging was no answer either.

The spores were too dense to see through physically in the first place.

'How am I supposed to modify this?'

The answer was closer than I thought.

Sang Hajun and I could see through the fog perfectly.

Complete Senses and his Glass Bead skill.

They were mana-based techniques that were less affected by the Tower's environment.

Complete Senses was too complicated and far beyond what we needed, so I took one of Hajun's Glass Beads as a sample.

Could I somehow analyze and replicate it?

Sang Hajun came to watch while providing the sample.

"But can that really be copied?"

"Honestly, it'll be difficult."

If I had that kind of technology, why would I have been a Tower Escape streamer?

I'd have started a company long ago.

It might have been possible with Bellion's help, but...

Since it was one of our team's core skills, it would mean leaking our capabilities.

I decided to change how I approached it.

Making rough modifications to whatever was available in the field had always been my specialty.

"How is your Glass Bead connected to you, Hajun?"

"Hm? Well... Isn't it connected through mana?"

"Probably. I'm going to take this apart."

"Sure. I can make as many as you need, so don't worry."

I analyzed each component of the Glass Bead with Loot Expert.

The structure wasn't familiar, but it still gave me a rough idea of how it worked.

"Ah, this part acts as a lens. I'll remove this first... Where's the transmitter?"

There had to be something that transmitted information to Sang Hajun, the skill's caster.

I only found it after taking apart my third Glass Bead.

"This is it."

"It's bigger than I expected."

"It was integrated with the battery, so I got confused."

I understood the structure well enough, but that didn't mean I could mass-produce it.

Still, I could reconstruct part of it.

"I'm going to connect this to night vision goggles somehow. I'll try a wired connection first. If it doesn't work, I might have to throw away a pair of goggles..."

"Team Leader, you know those cost sixty million won, right?"

"Ah! Right. I'd forgotten... Why'd you remind me? Now I feel pressured."

"S-Sorry..."

I'd casually decided to modify military equipment worth sixty million won.

I'd really made it big.

At least it probably didn't cost that much anymore since exchange rates had fallen lately.

The Association was earning a huge amount of foreign currency from Tower technology royalties.

I got the manual and blueprints first, then read them carefully...

I didn't understand a thing.

I considered getting help from an expert, but it probably wouldn't make much difference.

There was no way to convert the Glass Bead's magical signal into an electronic one.

Without a receiving device, I couldn't display it on a screen.

Even Reconstruction couldn't do that.

How could I reconstruct something when I didn't understand the principle behind it?

"Ah, this is where I'm stuck."

After taking apart equipment worth sixty million won and thinking it over carefully, I found something close to a solution.

"Wait... If there's a component that acts as a lens, that means an image is formed through the lens first, right?"

"... So?"

"Instead of sending that image through the transmitter, we can just project it directly onto the screen."

"Ah... Like old cameras?"

I obtained cameras from different eras and took them apart.

I even dismantled old film cameras.

In the end, I stripped down the night vision goggles to their frame, installed the Glass Bead, and adjusted the lens so the image would be projected directly into the user's eyes.

"Oh... I think it works, more or less. I'll need to adjust things like magnification a little more."

"You actually did it?"

"Yuki, try wearing it."

"Okay!"

The test was a success.

Every time, Sang Hajun would have to make a Glass Bead and I would have to reconstruct it...

But the production cost was ridiculously cheap.

"Since there's only one Glass Bead acting as a lens, I made it protrude to secure as wide a field of view as possible."

"You really made this... So we don't have to train anymore, right?"

Kim Yuna giggled as she tried on the night vision goggles designed for the twelfth floor.

This training must not have suited her at all.

It used a mana battery, so it could operate much longer in the Tower.

In a way, we were only borrowing Sang Hajun's skill, but it had turned out pretty well.

In the meantime, other countries also contacted Necromancers or captured them outright, then shared the information with us.

The cross-checking confirmed that Millon had been telling the truth.

"Ha, this is seriously annoying... We don't even know where they'll show up."

"Can't they only be summoned to Towers anyway?"

"That's true."

We held a strategy meeting in the Association conference room while eating snacks.

"Why don't we say their dimension has oil? Wouldn't America solve the problem for us?"

"If they dig up corpses before they rot and turn them into undead labor, do you think there'd be oil?"

"Probably not."

Honestly, we were only throwing around jokes...

But the Association's higher-ups listened closely to us.

Unfortunately, we were the leading experts on this situation.

As team leader, I tried to organize our thoughts.

"The biggest problem right now is that we don't know where they'll appear, right?"

"Right. If they get summoned to some abandoned Tower and successfully launch a biological attack on a nearby city, their forces will grow exponentially. From then on, it'll be all-out war."

As Go Jiho spoke, a good idea came to me.

"... Then why don't we lure them in ourselves?"

"Lure them in?"

Go Jiho looked like he wanted to cover my mouth, but there was no better alternative, so he let me continue.

He regretted it almost immediately.

"We build a defensive line around a Tower, then have Millon pass along false information so they get summoned to Gwanghwamun Tower. If we engage them before they can do anything stupid, we'll win."

"Uh... Um..."

"Team Leader Kang Hyun! That's a little..."

The conference room erupted into chaos.

Footnotes:

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