WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 332: The past (11)

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Dok Su-hee and Zetter. Zetter and Dok Su-hee.

The two of them knew each other's abilities inside and out. Zetter had taught Dok Su-hee how to use her power without setting limits on herself, and Dok Su-hee had helped Zetter train to handle a wide range of variables.

They were also the strongest fighters in Team Alpha. While the others had abilities well suited for use in modern society, these two had abilities that were not only useful but overwhelmingly powerful in raw force compared to everyone else.

"Don't use the poison."

"...Wasn't planning to."

That might have made sense back on Floor 3, when she had nothing. But Dok Su-hee's Inventory was far more expansive now, and it held every kind of weapon treated as military-grade. Naturally, that included poison gas.

Zetter was the one who'd connected Dok Su-hee to the US Department of Defense. Being able to use firearms inside the Tower was an enormous advantage, and Dok Su-hee's ability reached maximum destructive potential when paired with modern weaponry.

So the current Dok Su-hee could take down most players with a single handgun. While everyone else swung swords or spears inside the Tower, Dok Su-hee could just fire off rounds, bang, bang. Modern weapons were the source of her strength.

But poison gas didn't work on Zetter. With his Adaptation ability, poison of any kind was simply not a problem for him, and if Dok Su-hee put on a gas mask, all she'd accomplish was limiting her own vision. If anyone took damage from it, it would be the other teammates watching from outside the meeting room.

In the end, Dok Su-hee didn't have many options. No, as far as Zetter was concerned, she had none at all.

Bang!!!

The Desert Eagle. Sure, there were handguns stronger than it, but the Desert Eagle was still a terrifying weapon in its own right. A firearm with power absurdly overkill for use against a person.

"Dok Su-hee."

It didn't work on Michael Zetter.

Zetter caught the bullet, aimed precisely at his eye, right out of the air. His reflexes and raw strength had long since left humanity behind.

"Give it up. You know it's meaningless."

Guns were supposedly effective against players, but not against Zetter. In fact, there wasn't much on Earth that could actually harm him. Part of it was that his ability was simply broken, but the bigger reason was that Zetter had already completed his Adaptation.

To prepare for every possible situation, Zetter had thrown himself into the fire, over and over. He'd suffered serious injuries training to dodge bullets. He'd had to chug potions after inhaling poison gas trying to adapt to it. There was even a time he passed out trying to adapt to water pressure, and a teleporter in a diving suit had to pull him out.

But all of that was in the past. Zetter's Adaptation was complete now. Whenever necessary, he could reshape his body on command, transforming it into whatever form matched the crisis in front of him. Zetter had already reached the level of a monster.

Zetter didn't die. Even if he took damage, it would only ever be minor. He might feel pain. That was all.

Both Zetter and Dok Su-hee knew this. By ordinary means, you couldn't even wound him, let alone kill him.

"..."

And Dok Su-hee had one power that wasn't ordinary. Her Synthesis ability.

Dok Su-hee knew about Zetter's Adaptation. It let him read an enemy's attack and reshape his body into whatever form best countered it. Did that mean he could only adapt to one enemy at a time? No, not at all. Zetter could transform his body without limit, as long as his mana allowed it.

That was exactly what Dok Su-hee was aiming at. Zetter's fighting style was brutally efficient.

First, Michael Zetter looked at whatever weapon the enemy was using. Then he transformed his body to counter that specific weapon. It conserved mana, sure, but it also let him respond more effectively to the enemy's primary weapon. It could theoretically expose an opening, but Zetter's insane reflexes made that a non-issue.

Once Zetter had seen an attack, he never let it land on him again. Beating that kind of ability was simple in theory.

Hit him, once, with something he'd never seen before.

Synthesis. The power to grant one tool's property to another tool. The hidden weapon buried inside Dok Su-hee's Inventory ability.

This was the one thing even Michael Zetter didn't know about. She'd never shown it to anyone in Team Alpha, never used it in front of them. She'd used it exactly once, on Floor 3, and there had only been three witnesses. Outside of them, no one even knew the ability existed.

One single chance. Fail, and she'd die.

"...Here goes."

Wasn't that just the nature of a player's life? Fail, and you die. Succeed, and you win everything. Being a player, especially a top-tier player, meant always walking a blade's edge.

Dok Su-hee.

She'd made up her mind to bet everything.

Shhhk!

A thick blanket appeared out of thin air. Dok Su-hee's Inventory trait let her summon anything stored inside it, freely, into open space. She used the ability for all kinds of purposes, and surprisingly, something as mundane as a blanket turned out to be a real nuisance from a player's perspective.

Cut it, and it hangs in the air for at least a second, blocking your view. Shove it aside with brute force, and since it's just cloth at its core, too much force just punches through it instead of pushing it back. And spending mana on something like this felt like a waste, in its own way. It was too effective an attack for something so simple.

Booooom!!!

None of that applied to Zetter. He simply swung his fist, absurdly fast, generating a shockwave, and the recoil sent the blanket flying instantly.

And yet the meeting room shook without collapsing, thanks to Zetter's inhuman control over his own strength. He'd used force with perfect efficiency, precisely enough to blow away only the blanket.

"Ha!"

Blankets were still overflowing. As long as Dok Su-hee willed it, she could conjure as many as she wanted into the air. She spammed blankets one after another, partly just to buy time.

Bang! Ratatatat!

In the gaps, she pulled a rifle from her Inventory and sprayed it, or hurled a dagger at Zetter's blind spot, aiming for the back of his neck.

"Hm."

Of course, none of it did anything more than annoy him. It didn't work at all. Not the bullets. Not the dagger. Not the blankets. Not the poison.

Michael Zetter hadn't called himself the strongest for nothing. He really had adapted to everything, and could handle it all. As long as a country didn't have nuclear weapons, Michael Zetter could confidently take on the entire nation and win.

If Dok Su-hee dropped a chunk of iron on his head right now, or set off a bomb right in front of him, Zetter would come out fine. A monster wearing a human shape. A broken cheat character running an invincibility exploit. That was Michael Zetter.

There was exactly one reason Dok Su-hee was still standing. Zetter wanted to subdue her, not kill her. If he'd actually wanted her dead, she would already be dead.

Not yet.

And still, Dok Su-hee's eyes burned with fighting spirit. She was waiting for her chance. The one moment she could kill Michael Zetter.

If the timing lined up, Zetter would die. Dok Su-hee believed that, and so she endured. She would be the one who won.

"..."

Michael Zetter read that look in her eyes too. In a situation this lopsided, still refusing to give up, still burning with that much fight? Something had to be up her sleeve.

I'd better prepare for it.

Probably. There was something Zetter didn't know about. Some secret weapon whose mere existence let her stay confident of victory. Zetter drew up more mana than usual, reinforcing his Adaptation even further. And to keep her from having any more time, he closed the distance to Dok Su-hee fast.

And that was it.

"Now."

The one moment Dok Su-hee had been waiting for.

Shhhhhrrk!

In an instant lasting no more than 0.00001 seconds, Dok Su-hee's outfit changed. Her casual hoodie became a thick protective suit. A minigun appeared on the conference table, and her mouth filled with small capsule-shaped potions.

In the empty air, dozens of grenades appeared, pins already pulled.

Boooooom!!!

As if perfectly timed by calculation, the grenades didn't detonate all at once but exploded in a staggered sequence. Zetter got caught in the storm of shrapnel, but never faltered, and lunged straight at Dok Su-hee.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!!!

The minigun spat fire. The attack was aimed at his head, specifically his eyes, but Zetter covered his face with his palm and blocked every single bullet.

Silicone oil spread across the floor where Zetter was about to step. Silicone oil was an extremely slippery liquid with all kinds of uses, but Zetter stomped down with vertical force, shattering the floor beneath him instead of slipping.

A sharp spike sprouted between Zetter's hand and his eye. It came too suddenly to react to, but Zetter deformed his own eyelid and knocked the spike away. All of this happened in barely a second. That was the difference between Zetter and everyone else.

There's a limit to how much a person can do at once. It was already impressive that Dok Su-hee had thrown out this many gambits in half a second. An ordinary player would have frozen up and been caught off guard.

But time flowed slowly for Zetter. He could respond to every situation with total composure, and in fights between players where split seconds decided everything, he always held the advantage.

Crunch!

Zetter closed the distance and crushed the minigun flat in his thick grip. In that opening, Dok Su-hee took a step back, and a steel wall rose up between them.

"..."

A thick steel wall. Normally, you'd need something like a laser cutter to get through it.

Craaaaack!!!

Zetter reshaped his fingertips into sharp points, drove them straight into the wall, and literally tore it apart, left and right.

The wall split open with a spine-chilling sound, leaving a gap wide enough for a grown man to pass through, and plenty of room for Michael Zetter, if he shrank his body down just a little, to clear in a single leap.

"Dok Su-hee."

"..."

"Give it up."

There was no more room to run behind that wall. The meeting room hadn't been spacious to begin with, and she'd already let Zetter close the distance.

In her hand was the same Desert Eagle as before. Her hand trembled as she gripped the pistol tight.

"I don't want to kill you. Dok Su-hee. There's still a chance."

Zetter reached his hand through the gap in the wall. Dok Su-hee stared down at that hand for a moment, then said,

"...Screw you."

She raised the pistol and fired.

How foolish, Zetter thought to himself, reaching out a hand to block the bullet. Once he blocked it, he planned to step through the gap and knock her unconscious.

"?!"

But something was different. The color of the incoming bullet, the force behind it, something was off. A faint bluish tint...?

I won, Dok Su-hee thought.

And she smiled, sure of her victory.

Adaptation was practically invincible. Defense against blades. Defense against explosions. Defense against poison. She'd assumed all of it was covered. If it was Michael Zetter, that Michael Zetter, she'd figured he would have prepared for anything.

So the only thing that could work was an attack he'd never expect at all. A hidden strike that even Zetter's reflexes could never counter. Meaningless if Zetter had prepared for it, but something he definitely hadn't.

Lightning.

Dok Su-hee had used Synthesis to infuse the bullet with lightning.

Objects stored in her Inventory remembered the exact moment they were saved. That was why her Inventory was packed full of things like grenades an instant from detonating, or bullets caught mid-flight. Of course, none of that would work on Zetter.

But a lightning rod, caught in the exact instant a bolt struck it. A lightning rod holding an absurd amount of current and voltage, preserved whole. And a bullet with that exact property synthesized into it. Lightning stretching out from that bullet at ten kilometers per second.

Flash!

There was no way to dodge it.

Footnotes:

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