WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 30: O Vulgar Slaughter, O Craven Survival. (8)
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Status Effect-Parrying.
We called it Status Effect-Parrying. In Korean, the name was shortened to Sang-sang Parrying.
It was a bug that exploited an in-game judgment error.
The “status effects” inflicted on characters were treated as attacks.
If you adjusted the parry timing precisely around that, you could strip status effects away from a character.
‘I used this all the time in my previous life, too.’
It was pretty handy.
With that bug, you could save money on potions.
Most problems could be solved with a single press of Parry.
‘Of course... there were some status effects that Parry couldn’t solve.’
Still, it worked on more than half of them.
It drastically cut the absurd potion costs needed to maintain characters.
I still remembered how the community reacted back then.
Everyone lost their minds.
[Title: A Bug I Found Today]
[Author: IPlayGamesToFindBugs]
I found a bug today.
I’ll call the bug [Status Effect-Parrying] or something.
I attached the recording at the bottom of the post.
[My porn is here.]
-> You brought us something wild again, lol.
-> How the hell do you even find stuff like this?
-> IPlayGamesToFindBugs) I found it while using Parry to play baseball with characters.
-> Fucking lolololol.
-> Playing baseball with Parry, what the fuck lol.
-> What the hell does this guy even do alone in the game, lol?
-> I can’t even begin to imagine what character-parry baseball is, lol.
-> The fact that I can’t imagine it makes it even funnier, lol.
[BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder! BugFinder!]
-> He’s a god!
[This one’s actually really useful, though? If you use it right, you might not even need potions.]
-> Nah, you still need potions. There are quite a few things the bug doesn’t work on.
-> Even so, it’ll cut potion costs way down.
I uploaded bug discoveries regularly.
For something I posted as a hobby, it received a surprising amount of love.
[Title: My Review After Using Status Effect-Parrying]
[Author: Anonymous (110.12)]
A bug BugFinder found.
They found another incredible one this time, lol.
I was clearing the 75th floor of Purgatory, and I ran out of potions while fighting the floor master.
Veterans will know this, but the 75th-floor master is a debuff-focused boss, right?
So I was wondering if I should just retry the run.
Then I suddenly remembered BugFinder’s post from yesterday.
(Recording attached.)
The controls were harder than I expected, but thanks to it, I cleared the 75th floor, lol.
[Whoa, that’s amazing, lol.]
-> As a newbie, I can’t even tell how they’re controlling it.
-> It does take quite a bit of skill.
[Every time they parry once, one status effect disappears from an allied character.]
-> Blindness, Fear, Bleeding, Suppression...
-> Is it one at a time because they’re all registered as separate attacks?
-> Yeah. The principle behind Status Effect-Parrying is that status effects are treated as attacks.
-> Normal Parry only deflects one attack at a time, too. That’s all it is.
[Still, I think you’d need to practice this a lot.]
-> Yeah, that shit’s really hard.
-> BugFinder makes it look easy, but if the timing is even a little off, it won’t activate.
-> You’d have to get used to it before using it in real combat.
[Anyway, thanks for finding a bug like this.]
-> For real, it’s handy.
-> I spent way too much on potions last month. At least I’ll be able to save a little now.
‘Honestly... I uploaded it because I thought they’d patch it quickly.’
When I first discovered the bug, I thought it would be fixed right away.
From the game company’s perspective, it was a fatal bug.
A bug that reduced the number of potions players bought...
Their customers were closing their wallets. There was no way they wouldn’t patch it.
‘They should’ve patched it.’
Ngme.
(Short for Ranne & Grandia Academy: The Märchen.)
It was a game that had tolerated countless bugs so far, but I thought it wouldn’t let this one slide.
I thought that was the right call, too.
‘But...’
There wasn’t a single mention of the bug in the next month’s patch notes.
They didn’t fix it, and they didn’t even announce plans to fix it.
At the very end, they even wrote this.
[Shout out to IPlayGamesToFindBugs.]
That was when I realized those people were truly insane.
What kind of official account gave a shout-out to a player threatening their source of income...?
It did earn them a legendary reputation as the ultimate good-vibes GOAT of a game company, though.
‘Anyway, thank goodness.’
If they had fixed the bug back then, I never would’ve had the chance to use it in reality.
I looked down at the warm body in my arms.
A little boy who couldn’t have been more than ten.
Just moments ago, he had been trapped in [Ghoulification]...
‘It actually worked.’
My Status Effect-Parrying had restored him to normal.
He had returned to his original form without a single scar on his body.
‘That had me a little worried.’
Honestly, I had my doubts.
It wasn’t like I knew everything or felt certain about every action I took.
Well... cries of grief were coming from all around me, so I threw out a desperate attempt with a whatever-happens-happens attitude.
‘I’d never even tried something like this in-game.’
Usually, status effects meant debuffs like [Blindness] or [Bleeding].
‘I knew [Ghoulification] was one of the status effects, but... I never imagined Status Effect-Parrying would apply to it.’
There was never a situation in-game where you parried a ghoul.
And Status Effect-Parrying didn’t succeed every time, either.
Divine Pressure, Instant Death, Baptism, and so on.
Status Effect-Parrying didn’t work on advanced status effects.
The difference between those and ordinary status effects was probably that they only activated under special conditions.
The accepted theory was that the developers had designed them carefully to prevent errors.
‘Honestly... I was worried [Ghoulification] might be that kind of effect, too.’
Luckily, Ghoulification seemed to belong to the “ordinary” category.
The card I’d thrown out with a whatever-happens-happens attitude had come back as a jackpot.
I carefully set the child down.
“My son... Ah, my, my son...!”
“Huh? Mom!”
Pitter-patter.
The boy scrambled out of my arms and threw himself into his mother’s embrace.
The woman clutched that precious warmth to her and broke into sobs.
Maybe she couldn’t believe this was real.
“Ah... Jeri, Jerian...”
“Mom, why are you crying...?”
She hugged him over and over, pressed her face against his, and rested her forehead against his...
It was such a warm scene of motherly love that my heart tingled.
I smiled beside them.
Feeling pleased, I tilted my head.
“Kid, is anything bothering you?”
“Huh...? What do you mean?”
“I mean, does your body hurt anywhere?”
“I’m fine. Nothing hurts... More importantly, Mom’s crying. A lot.”
“Don’t worry. She’s crying because she’s so happy. You’re a very loved child.”
“Yeah! I love Mom more than anyone in the world!”
“What a good boy. Give your mother a big hug.”
I reached out and lightly ruffled his hair.
His eyes sparkled brightly.
There wasn’t a single scar on his body.
‘I see...’
The aftereffect of removing Ghoulification.
Vampires and ghouls naturally possessed regenerative abilities.
As long as they kept receiving blood, their wounds healed steadily.
Of course, once the damage passed a certain point, even that became useless...
‘His wounds healed while he was a ghoul. Then I used Status Effect-Parrying on him, so he returned cleanly without a single injury.’
Who knew it could be used this way?
I filed that new knowledge away.
“Thank you... Thank you, oh my God. God...”
The woman muttered it again and again.
She held her child tightly in her arms and refused to let go.
“Thank... hngh, hngh...”
Her words were crushed beneath her sobs.
As though I understood, I patted the woman’s back.
Her crying blossomed like irises.
“Hngh, sob...”
As I received her thanks, several people who had been watching approached.
Two people were the first to speak.
“Vikto... Ah, no. Commander Garulik?”
“S-Sir Garulik...?”
Carmilla and Kantas.
They stood there with their eyes wide open.
Carmilla’s expression was especially worth seeing.
“H-How...?”
How, indeed.
As a vampire, Carmilla understood just how absurd what she had just seen was.
“Y-You turned a ghoul back into a human? There isn’t even a record of anything like this in vampire history! Even the True Ancestor, who vanished in ancient times, could never have performed such a miracle...”
“Haha, you seem very surprised.”
“How could I not be surprised?!”
“That’s true.”
“How did you do it? Was it related to that strange power you always display?”
“I’m afraid that’s a trade secret.”
“H-How can that be...?!”
Carmilla stiffened in shock.
To tell her to calm down, I gently patted her head.
“Ahem.”
I cleared my throat a few times to draw everyone’s attention.
Carmilla was still out of it, as was Kantas.
Behind them stood the others, though I had no idea when they had gathered.
“What... What happened?”
“That child was definitely a ghoul, but he turned back into a human...?”
“Is that possible? You can turn ghouls back?”
“That’s impossible...”
“Really...?”
“Can it be done...?”
Their murmurs were soaked in tears.
They were the people who had been weeping before the pit just moments ago.
“Everyone.”
Their eyes focused on me.
Eyes fixed on nothing but me.
““...””
They shone as though full of hope.
Tears gathered, blurred their vision, ran down their faces, then cleared away.
Again and again, hot streams marked their cheeks.
As though begging me to answer right now, they wanted the answer to a question they hadn’t dared ask.
They were so desperately pitiful.
So I understood their plea.
“Will you all help me?”
And...
I had no intention of betraying that plea.
“You all need to return home together.”
The pit.
To the lives trampled beneath it, and the broken branches scattered there.
To all of you who had suffered and wept through such pain.
“Didn’t I promise? That I’d get every one of you home safely.”
May my Misunderstanding be a blessing.
May this moment remain an encounter with a miracle, rather than a curse.
“Now, then.”
The orphanage.
My teacher.
My friends.
Burned.
The salvation I never had.
“Who wants to grab a ghoul and throw it over here?”
Such was my prayer.
Footnotes:
“Sang-sang Parrying” is the Korean contraction of the full term, Status Effect-Parrying. “BugFinder” is the community’s short nickname for IPlayGamesToFindBugs.
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