WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈
Episode 99
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Thud, thud.
Heavy, threatening footsteps rang out clearly.
Countless smaller footsteps followed behind them.
That was probably the boss.
The Great Temple's boss was selected at random from several possibilities, so I hadn't bothered memorizing them all.
Honestly, my brain capacity wasn't that impressive.
I hadn't planned to challenge the Great Temple on the eleventh floor anytime soon.
'I should've at least looked into it...'
Thankfully, my various detection skills let me get a rough read on them.
[Silent Choir]
Just as I thought. It was the kind of boss that dragged a whole pack of minions around with it.
The worst kind.
Ever since firearms had been introduced to the Tower, even ordinary mobs couldn't be ignored.
Ignore them, and you'd end up with a bullet in your head.
Of course, the mobs weren't particularly skilled shooters.
I'd watched the Treants firing on the twelfth floor earlier, and more than half their shots had missed.
They'd probably received only basic firearms training.
The Orcs and Goblins on the seventh floor were much better shots.
Still, if they kept spraying bullets around, one would hit eventually.
And there was even worse news.
'Their presence feels strangely light. Lines of mana are trailing behind them.'
They felt vaguely like illusions or dolls.
That probably wasn't their true body.
The real body was still inside the Great Temple, while only a part of it had come out to hunt hunters.
'Would killing those things be pointless, then?'
Both my team and the German Julius Squad remained completely silent.
There were at least fifteen undead fully armed with firearms.
I didn't want to fight them unless necessary.
Then gunfire rang out in the distance.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
"Kiiii..."
The creatures turned toward the sound of the gunfire.
But that wasn't all.
'Hm?'
Mmmmmm...
Their mana rose slightly with a strange vibration.
They were already terrifying, as befitted a boss-level enemy.
Now they had grown even stronger.
The increase wasn't large, but it was unmistakable.
'They reacted to the sound.'
It was called the Silent Choir.
Could it gain strength from noise?
The timing of the gunshots and the change had lined up perfectly.
Now I had a rough idea of what was going on.
Normally, it would have been a boss you could hunt without much trouble if you stayed quiet...
But the gunfire had strengthened it to an absurd degree.
The choir itself was armed with firearms, so it could strengthen itself whenever it wanted.
'So no one has managed to kill it yet.'
It had seemed strange.
Hunters capable of challenging at least the thirteenth floor would naturally target the Great Temple.
Yet its boss hadn't been killed until now.
"Phew, it's gone."
"Team Leader."
My teammates looked at me without saying much.
It was time to make a choice.
The German team's leader approached.
"That looked like the boss. Are you planning to hunt it?"
"I'm still thinking about it..."
"I see. How about we hunt it together? It'd be very reassuring to have Korea's Alpha Team with us."
The German team intended to take it down.
They were determined to continue the raid despite this unexpected situation.
It seemed they still hadn't farmed enough.
Honestly, I wanted to pick up a few more things before leaving too.
I had a battle against Modus ahead of me.
"The true body is in the Great Temple."
"What? Are you sure?"
"I saw it clearly. We'll have to enter the Great Temple to get the loot anyway..."
"Then that works out perfectly. Let's go together!"
They had figured out we were considering it too.
Before going with them, though, there was one thing we had to settle.
"How will we divide the loot?"
"Fairly, fifty-fifty. What do you think?"
It was the cleanest arrangement.
No room for complaints, either.
Giving up half the loot stung a little, but I could put up with it if I considered it the cost of hiring five veteran hunters.
"We'll discuss how to divide all the loot afterward. Any payout will be based on Tower Shop prices. Is that acceptable?"
If someone didn't receive an item, they could receive that much gold instead.
The prices would naturally be based on the Tower Shop.
"... How do we decide the order of distribution?"
"We could take turns. We take one item each in the order it appears. If you pass, you get priority on the next item."
They seemed pretty familiar with the process.
Had they worked with other teams in the Tower often?
We had strangely rarely encountered other teams.
Then again, we had always been running at the very front.
"Fine. Let's do that."
"Good choice. Then let's clear it out and get out quickly."
"Wait. One thing before we leave."
I immediately shared what I'd learned.
It'd be a pain if something went wrong for no reason.
"Those things seem to gain strength from noise, so we should only use firearms fitted with suppressors."
"What? You figured out that much after seeing them once?"
Honestly, if you couldn't figure it out after one look, it would be hard to last long as a hunter.
The Tower was just that filthy and unfair.
"Damn, I don't have a suppressor."
"You have one on your pistol. Use only that."
Most of our team had suppressors, but Han Juwon's machine gun and Yuki's shotgun didn't.
That cut our firepower nearly in half.
The German team was mostly riflemen, so they were in somewhat better shape.
I'd wondered how they dealt with other hunters or heavily armored monsters with that setup, but it seemed they simply ran the moment they saw them.
Honestly, that was the right choice.
Kim Yuna asked from beside me to confirm.
"Which route are we taking? The surface?"
"No, underground."
It was possible to approach the temple through the underground cemetery too.
The problem was that you couldn't tell whether the temple had opened from underground.
We had been infiltrated through the underground area when we defended the Warrior God's Sub-Temple last time.
"I thought you said we weren't going underground earlier?"
"That was before we knew an enhanced boss was roaming the surface section. If we're taking the Great Temple anyway, it's better to clear the underground side too."
"Ah, right..."
Besides, I needed to see what the German team could do.
"Then this way..."
"Alpha Team is taking the lead? Thank you."
The underground area was a little maze-like, so the Great Temple was some distance away.
We decided to proceed carefully instead of rushing.
The boss's true body was in the Great Temple, so no one could steal the loot just because we took our time.
Bang, bang!
The faint sound of gunfire never stopped underground.
Everyone was in chaos.
There was plenty of cover, but the mobs came out carrying guns too.
"Monster ahead."
"Can we ambush them?"
"Easily. They're coming this way."
I pulled out the Nightfall Custom and a dagger.
I carried three guns, but this was the only one with a suppressor.
Still, it was more than enough to clear ordinary mobs.
"Kiii..."
A squad of skeletons shuffled in with aimless groans.
At the signal, we all struck at once.
Pfft, pssh!
Clang, clink...
Unexpectedly, the ambush timing was perfect.
As expected, they were a First-Tier Team trained in special operations.
'Their Stealth skill level seems pretty high.'
That was strange.
They weren't actively going out to hunt.
Yet their search skills were far worse than their Stealth skills.
An uneasy thought crossed my mind, but it was too early to be sure.
Maybe the teammate in charge of scouting had recently retired.
Apparently, that happened more often than you'd think.
As the team members searched the defeated undead, several of them spoke.
"Just like I thought. If you get ambushed, guns don't mean anything."
"There are ten of us now..."
"Oh, a Soul Crystal dropped. What should we do?"
The German leader gave me a meaningful look.
A Soul Crystal was difficult to call top-priority loot.
It felt like they wanted me to start the distribution first.
Our team had to take something now for them to receive the next item.
I accepted without thinking for long.
We would probably go through several more battles before reaching the Great Temple anyway.
"Should we take this first?"
"Yeah, Alpha Team should take it first. Let's settle everything after we're done."
"Fine."
There was no reason not to stockpile Soul Crystals.
We quickly finished collecting the loot and moved to the next area.
Then the atmosphere in a side passage changed.
"Hm? Someone's coming!"
Patter, patter!
Urgent but light footsteps.
A hunter team was fleeing from someone.
"Team Leader?"
The German leader's gaze clashed intensely with mine.
Our team's policy was not to attack first without a special reason.
Would the German team follow the same policy?
Thankfully, we didn't have to hesitate long.
The people fleeing toward us were human hunters.
They spotted us late and hesitated.
"Wait, ahead..."
I decided to reveal myself first.
They were the same race as us, and ambushing hunters being chased felt wrong.
"It's fine. Come this way!"
"Ah, people!"
The ones who came rushing in were Eastern European hunters.
There were only four of them.
Had one already been taken out?
Eastern European hunters had a poor reputation because of how ruthless they were, and the German team openly kept their guard up.
It made sense.
If these people had done something strange and gotten chased here, we might be treated as accomplices.
"Who's chasing you? Did you steal some loot?"
"What nonsense... They started chasing us the moment they saw we were human!"
"They suddenly said it was all our fault..."
The Eastern European hunters spoke as if they had been deeply wronged.
Their story was believable enough.
Human firearms had sharply increased the Tower's difficulty, after all.
We'd soon find out whether it was true.
Patter, patter!
I shouted at the non-human hunters pursuing them.
"Don't come any closer! We'll attack!"
"What... You're human too?"
"Kill the humans!"
The non-human hunters were trying to attack us too.
It seemed the Eastern European hunters had been telling the truth.
'Now I get it.'
Hunters had been driven underground by the monsters' gunfire.
Even the ones who should have been on the surface had all gathered below, so there was no way anyone could farm properly.
Then a perfect scapegoat and a plausible excuse had appeared.
They had an opportunity to hunt as a group, so there was no reason to hesitate.
That was how the Eastern European team had been attacked.
'There are a lot of them.'
There were fourteen of us, but more than thirty of them.
They had gathered in quite a group.
Most of them looked weak, but they were still a considerable burden.
Still, I had learned something while fighting the Reapers on the eleventh floor.
Their unity wasn't very reliable.
If I took out the strongest few, the rest would scatter on their own.
"Team Leader?"
"I'll handle this. Julius Squad, make sure you guard this room."
"What? You're going alone?"
We had to raid the Great Temple.
We couldn't keep getting chased around by people like that.
I activated the Pain Seal at full strength.
"Urgh...!"
Pain like my heart was being crushed.
Was a heart attack supposed to hurt this much?
I'd experienced it a few times thanks to the seal.
I could barely breathe through the pain, but it oddly reassured me.
If it hurt this much, it meant I was still alive.
When you stood in the middle of a battlefield filled with gunfire and screams, there were times when you wondered whether you were even still alive.
It wouldn't have been strange to get hit by a bullet at any moment.
I felt that even more strongly because the amount of information flowing in through Four Seasons, my transcended skill, was overwhelming.
Whoosh!
With level 10 Shadow Walking, I moved to their flank.
They were hunters, at least in name, so a few with good instincts aimed their weapons at me.
Some of them even held guns.
"Hey, he's on the side! Everyone, be careful!"
"His movement isn't normal. Should we get out of here?"
Look at them.
The moment things started going even slightly wrong, they were already thinking about running.
It was the right choice.
Using Four Seasons to analyze them properly, I noticed something strange.
'Huh? These guys...'
The next moment, I charged in.
Once I'd made up my mind, I had to push through with momentum.
Hesitate, and nothing got done.
"He's coming!"
An Elf holding a looted gun grinned and aimed it at me.
They hadn't shouldered it, but their index finger was resting on the trigger.
Click!
The gun produced only a feeble click.
"Huh? Why isn't this firing?"
As I sliced through their gun with my dagger, I offered some silent advice.
'Push the bolt forward, idiot.'
The Elf had managed to insert a magazine into the gun...
But the bolt was locked to the rear, so a round hadn't been chambered.
It wasn't like an Elf would have experience using guns.
The Elf holding the gun, now cut in half, saw my dagger and recoiled in horror.
"Gasp! Y-You're a Death Priest?! Spare me!"
"Move!"
An Orc from another team aimed at my chest and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
That Orc did manage to fire.
A rotten gun that probably used to belong to some low-level undead monster.
'Tch.'
I deliberately caught the shot on the plate over my chest as though it were nothing.
Even with a hunter's physical abilities, the impact wasn't nothing, but the Pain Seal was active, so I could endure it.
My next rebuke came from the bottom of my heart.
"Where did you get that piece-of-shit gun and piece-of-shit ammo?"
"... What?"
Even bullets of the same caliber came in different types.
That Orc wouldn't know.
Not even that the round they had fired was a hollow point.
High-impact, low-penetration ammunition for unarmored targets.
One shot could cause fatal damage, but it had practically no penetration power.
It could never pierce a hard plate with an Enchantment on it like mine.
Bang!
"Aaargh!"
With the Nightfall Custom in my left hand, I shot their arm and made them drop the gun.
Only then did the others understand the situation and begin backing away.
"Guys, not every gun is the same."
"Fuck... We don't stand a chance against him!"
"Of course not, he's a Death Priest! Run!"
The nearly thirty hunters fled in a rush.
I sighed inwardly and inspected my ballistic plate.
Maybe because it had been a hollow point rifle round, it didn't even leave a scratch.
"I think it's over."
"..."
The German and Eastern European hunters stared at me blankly.
Footnotes:
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