WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B.
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 17: 017
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Flash!
The bright light faded.
I slowly looked around.
The sixth floor looked exactly as I'd heard.
I stood in the middle of a large room, big enough to comfortably hold dozens of people.
Ahead was a narrow passage, barely wide enough for two Goblins to squeeze through.
Behind me were a Return Portal and a tightly shut door.
An hourglass hung above the door.
Shhh...
The sand in the hourglass began to fall.
Apparently, once all the sand had run out in about an hour, the door behind us would open and we could take the Escape Portal.
The goal of the sixth floor was to hold out by stopping the Goblins coming from the passage until then.
I looked at Hyeji and gave her instructions.
"Go wait safely in the back for now."
"Okay."
Thump, thump.
Wearing her baggy protective suit, Hyeji walked to the back and plopped down.
Then she began taking out her real equipment.
Click. Click. Click.
She pulled out what looked like scraps of metal plating and wheel parts from her bag.
Na Hyeji quickly assembled them, skillfully turning them into a collapsible cart.
Click! Click!
More equipment came out of her bag.
A large, sturdy pair of tongs.
She must have brought them to easily pull loot out of corpse remains.
I nodded.
'The gas mask and protective suit were ridiculous... but the collapsible cart and tongs look useful enough.'
Maybe she'd put some thought into it after all. She hadn't just wrapped herself up in layers.
She'd brought a cart and tongs to work efficiently.
Were the gas mask and protective suit simply over-preparation?
...No. She was definitely trash-tier.
What was with the protective suit and gas mask?
Anyone who'd served in the military would know how absurd those supplies were.
Ah. Hyeji was a woman, so she hadn't served.
Anyway.
"They should be coming soon."
I turned to face the passage.
Then I saw one.
Krrk. Krrk!
A Goblin slowly shuffled out from the entrance of the long passage.
Gripping a dagger backward, it approached the entrance, then charged at me.
Kreeek!
Tap, tap, tap!
The Goblin ran toward me with light footsteps.
I aimed my staff and cast magic.
It was Air Bullet.
Thud!
The Goblin died with a clean hole through its forehead.
Thump. Clang!
The dagger it dropped as it died rang against the floor.
"What?!"
Na Hyeji, who had been watching, let out a shriek.
As expected, she had taken off her gas mask because it had been bothering her.
She looked at me with betrayed eyes.
"You could kill them that cleanly?!"
"Well... yeah?"
"Then why did you do that yesterday? Why did you turn them all into bloody mush?"
"Because they came in groups. It was easier and faster to fire one big shot each than several small ones."
"No, but if you can kill them cleanly, it's easier to gather the loot..."
"Fighting is what's important. Gathering loot is secondary."
Besides, it wasn't like I was the one collecting it.
I had an automatic item-collecting pet, so why would I care how hard the loot was to retrieve?
Seriously, I didn't get it.
"Then... please kill them as cleanly as possible. It makes gathering loot easier. Please..."
"I'll try."
Hyeji looked desperate, but I had no intention of listening.
I needed to use Wind Cutter today.
'Come out already, you little Goblin bastards. Let me get a taste of Wind Cutter.'
I stood there and mechanically killed Goblins.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Each Goblin that came out of the passage had its forehead pierced and died.
Since it had only just started, they only emerged at a rate of one per minute.
I'd heard their appearance rate was low like this for the first ten minutes.
As time passed, though, the Goblins began appearing more frequently.
By around the twenty-minute mark...
Krrk! Krrk!
Kyaaaak!
Kiiik! Kik!
It would rise to around ten per minute.
They didn't just come at a steady pace, either.
Every few minutes, groups of dozens of Goblins would come rushing in all at once.
My eyes lit up.
'Now!'
Around thirty Goblins were crowded together in the narrow passage.
There were ordinary Goblins, Goblin Archers, and a few Goblin Warriors among them.
They were perfect sacrifices for my Wind Cutter.
I aimed my staff and fired Wind Cutter.
"Split in half and die."
Shrrrkkk!
A blade of sharp, compressed air sliced gracefully through the air.
It swept through the Goblin group rushing along the narrow passage.
Shrrk.
The Goblins collapsed all at once.
Over thirty Goblins fell forward, their upper and lower bodies separated as their guts spilled out in heaps.
Krrrkk?!
Kyaak! Keek...?
Krrrk...?!
Cut in half and fallen to the ground, the Goblins let out confused dying cries as if they couldn't understand what had happened.
One by one, their heads drooped as they died.
A quiet, deadly strike.
Wind Cutter magic was this silent and sharp.
My hand trembled as I gripped my staff.
"Ah...!"
That felt incredible!
Blowing things up with Fireball was fun too, but there was a different appeal to cutting them down like wheat with Wind Cutter.
Quietly and cleanly, shrrk!
What an elegant, refined spell!
Na Hyeji apparently didn't feel the same way.
"Aaah! What was that?!"
"Wind Cutter. What do you think? Cool, right? It flies over like shwoosh, then shrrk! Ah! I feel like a Swordmaster."
"That makes all the blood and guts spill out! No! It'll be hard to pick up the loot!!!"
"That's not my problem."
"Arghhh!!!"
Na Hyeji started whining again about having to gather loot from another mountain of corpses.
I ignored her.
If she didn't like it, she should've become a wizard instead of a porter.
She should've chosen her class better from the start.
'Still, this is kind of unsatisfying.'
I smacked my lips.
Getting a taste of Wind Cutter had been great...
But the Goblins were coming out too slowly.
A few dozen every few minutes was all?
It would be nice if hundreds came rushing in at once.
Other Hunters would have to form a formation, coordinate their teamwork, and struggle like hell against this difficulty.
For me, though, one click of Wind Cutter erased them all. It felt too easy.
Then a thought occurred to me.
'Should I just walk into the passage and kill them all?'
If the Goblins were coming out too slowly...
Why not go kill them myself?
Oh, good idea.
I should try it right away.
Step, step.
I slowly walked into the passage.
Na Hyeji asked anxiously.
"Um... Jiho? Why are you going into the passage?"
"Waiting here is too unsatisfying. I'm going inside to kill them all."
"No, just stay here! It's dangerous!"
"It's not dangerous at all."
One click of Wind Cutter could erase hundreds of Goblins. What was there to be afraid of?
While I was at it, I gave Hyeji a mission too.
"I'll kill every Goblin I meet as I go through the passage. Hyeji, pull the cart behind me and collect the loot."
"...You want me to go into the passage too?"
"Yes."
"..."
There was no need for a porter to sit here for the remaining forty minutes.
She should work during that time too.
Na Hyeji's face darkened at my words.
* * *
Hyeji and I began moving through the passage.
"Ugh... gross."
Na Hyeji had put her gas mask back on.
Holding the tongs, she began following behind me while gathering loot into the cart.
I led the way deeper inside.
Krrrkk! Keek!
Kiiik!
Not long after, we ran into a group of Goblins.
Wind Cutter again.
Shrrrkkk!
The Goblins' upper and lower bodies separated and tumbled to the ground.
I stepped over their scattered guts and continued forward.
The farther we walked, the more Goblin groups we encountered.
Kieeek!
Kyaak!
Krrrkk! Krrk!
Groups ranging from thirty to over sixty Goblins charged at us regularly.
Each time, I gave them one Wind Cutter.
Shrrrkkk!
Shrrk!
Shrrrk!
Thirty, fifty, even a hundred.
In a narrow passage like this, Wind Cutter was invincible.
As long as they came in a line, the blade of wind cut through every piece of flesh it encountered as it moved forward.
Drip.
Thud. Plop.
The Goblins' upper bodies rained down.
Their lower bodies soon tilted over limply.
Guts burst out and scattered...
I grimaced.
"Ugh. Wind Cutter feels amazing, but the corpses really are disgusting."
Dozens of Goblins lay cut in half throughout the already narrow passage...
It was a brutal sight.
The floor was so soaked in blood that it had begun to pool, splashing beneath my feet.
Their organs had been cut with extreme precision, leaving the cross-sections horribly exposed.
In some ways, they were even more disgusting than the corpses blown apart by Fireball.
There was barely anywhere to step, so I had to walk over bodies as well.
I glanced behind me.
Ughhh...!
Hyeji was trembling as she rummaged through the guts with her tongs.
I had no choice but to revise my opinion of her.
'She's following along better than expected. Is it because of the gas mask and protective suit? Maybe bringing those things was actually a good idea.'
So much blood had spilled in the narrow passage.
The smell was overwhelming, enough to make my head pound and bile rise in my throat.
The old Hyeji definitely wouldn't have been able to endure this.
Maybe the gas mask and protective suit were the reason she could keep going without vomiting.
In the end, she was putting that seemingly useless equipment to good use.
'Maybe she isn't trash-tier after all. Maybe she's just good at knowing herself...?'
You know how people say those who study well have excellent self-awareness, or metacognition?
They make study plans knowing their exact level and carry them out, so they learn efficiently.
They can clearly distinguish what they know from what they don't, so they make fewer false assumptions.
And Na Hyeji was the top graduate of Korea University.
As someone who'd been a study addict, there was a good chance her self-awareness was strong.
That was probably why she knew that porter work would be difficult without that much equipment, and spent hundreds of millions of won on supplies.
Still...
"Ugh... Jiho. Help me. That Goblin greatsword is buried too deep. I can't pull it out with the tongs..."
"Pull it out with your hands. You have gloves."
"Even with gloves, I can still feel some of the texture...!"
"Do you know those slime toys? Liquid monsters. They sometimes show up when you're scrolling through MeTube Shorts. Pretend you're touching one of those, not pieces of guts."
"Slime, my ass... Blegh! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
She still seemed trash-tier as a porter.
Even so, Hyeji forced herself to follow along somehow, gritting her teeth through it.
Well, she'd probably improve if she kept climbing the Tower with me.
Someday, she'd get used to corpses too.
* * *
I kept moving forward.
I cleaned up every Goblin I met with a shrrk of Wind Cutter.
Na Hyeji followed behind, whining while she gathered loot.
After we had walked for around twenty minutes...
I stopped.
"Why, why did you stop? More Goblins?"
"No."
"Then what is it?"
"The path is blocked."
"...?"
That was right.
After walking for twenty minutes, we had reached a dead end at the end of the passage.
There was nothing in front of me except a wall of packed earth.
Na Hyeji cried out happily.
"Then we killed all the Goblins, right? Wow! Let's go back already! I want to go home and wash up right now."
"..."
We had reached the end of the passage the Goblins came from, and it was a dead end.
It was enough to think we'd killed every Goblin on the sixth floor.
But something was strange.
'I'd definitely heard that a total of four hundred Goblins appear on the sixth floor. And an hour hasn't passed yet.'
Around forty minutes had passed since entering the Tower.
We had killed around three hundred Goblins so far.
There should have been twenty minutes and around a hundred enemies left.
Yet despite reaching the end of the passage, there was no sign of the hundred Goblins that should remain.
There were still twenty minutes left too.
Where were the remaining hundred coming from?
As I stared at the wall with a puzzled expression, it happened.
Hummmmm...
All at once.
Blue Motes began shimmering over the earthen wall in front of me.
"What?"
Why was there a Blue Motes pattern at a dead end?
Was it some kind of hidden magic?
I carefully studied the pattern.
'Four small squares inside a large square. Then four even smaller squares inside each small square...?’
It was a repeating pattern of squares.
Maybe I had gained some experience as a wizard by now.
The moment I saw that repeating square pattern, I could instinctively tell what kind of magic it was.
'This is... earth. Magic that controls soil and stone.'
It seemed that I'd found an opportunity to learn a new spell.
Footnotes:
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