WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Abandoned Tank is a Disaster-class Awakener ◈
Chapter 19
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Japan was not the only country growing desperate.
Right after footage of the battle with the Guardian of the 25th floor reached Japan, similar trade requests came in from several other countries.
They willingly paid America a high price, and their reactions were always the same afterward.
Active goodwill toward America.
As if they had realized something. As if they had realized a truth they did not want to know.
Of course, some countries did lodge protests.
There was nothing in it that could be called a method for clearing the Guardian.
Could they really sell a video like that?
Those were the complaints.
But.
“Clause 4 of the contract.”
Miller did not even blink.
“The American Awakeners Association does not guarantee success in clearing a Guardian based on the materials provided.”
And there was one more thing.
“Furthermore, we guarantee that the materials provided are the original recording of Awakener Kang Seong-un actually defeating the Guardian.”
None of that was wrong.
The footage was real, and there had been no editing.
There were no omitted parts either.
How had I defeated Karganon?
I had beaten him down with overwhelming strength.
There simply had not been the secret clearing method they had expected.
As a result, even when protests came in, they could not make it an issue under the contract.
‘So that’s it.’
I felt I was only now beginning to understand why Miller had emphasized the lack of a success guarantee from the start of the negotiations.
He had expected something like this from the beginning.
And thanks to those efforts, the American Awakeners Association’s warehouse quickly filled up.
* * *
A few days later, I visited Miller’s office at the Association again.
A stack of documents that had not been there before sat on one side of his desk.
“It looks like you gathered quite a lot.”
At my words, Miller took off his glasses and set them on the desk.
“Quite a lot may be an understatement.”
A broad smile formed on his lips.
Then, as if showing off, he pushed several sheets of paper toward me.
They were not ordinary documents.
Elixirs.
Relics.
All kinds of consumables.
The pages were packed with lists of what had been obtained by trading footage of the clears on both floors, along with the Guardian challenge approvals for the 25th and 26th floors.
“We intend to focus a considerable portion of the resources secured this time on the Vanguard.”
His finger pointed to four names in turn.
They were the names of the four people who were originally meant to become part of the Vanguard with me and clear the Tower.
“Mr. Kang will open the way.”
Miller tapped the desk once with his finger.
“Then this Vanguard will follow behind him.”
Once more.
“After that, another party will climb as well.”
His gaze grew calm.
“One person pulls the Tower forward, and the resources and information gained in that process foster those behind him. The people who follow will bring back new resources in turn.”
He paused briefly.
“Then America will finally take its place as an Awakener powerhouse.”
Miller had no intention of wasting the resources he had secured.
He was turning the gains obtained through me back into America’s strength.
“...”
I looked down at the documents for a moment as I listened to that grand plan.
Memories from before my regression.
And the changes that would occur because of me.
Various thoughts ran through my mind.
“Hmm.”
Miller, who had been watching my expression, lost his smile.
Before I knew it, he had returned to the cold, calculating president of the American Awakeners Association.
“That is not an expression I like.”
“What sort of expression do you mean?”
“The expression someone has right before putting the brakes on my excellent plan.”
“...”
He was incredibly quick to notice things.
I took my eyes off the documents.
“President Miller.”
“Yes.”
“The concentrated investment in the Vanguard...”
Miller raised an eyebrow slightly.
“...Could you put it on hold for a while?”
“...”
A brief silence passed.
Miller was not surprised.
Instead, he picked up a pen.
Then he merely rested it on top of the allocation plan.
“How long is a while?”
“It will not be long.”
“Hm.”
He slowly stroked his chin.
“Interesting.”
“What is?”
“Just moments ago, we were discussing creating the strongest Vanguard in America.”
Miller spoke leisurely.
“And yet Mr. Kang is telling me to stop that plan.”
“...That is correct.”
“Then there are not many possibilities.”
He folded down one finger.
“Either the plan I made is terrible.”
A second finger.
“Or Mr. Kang has suddenly lost interest in strengthening the nation’s power.”
Then, for the third possibility, Miller smiled.
“Or.”
His gaze fixed on me.
“You know of someone who should receive resources before this Vanguard does.”
As expected, there was no need to explain.
“It is not certain yet.”
“That means.”
Miller gave a sly smile.
“There is a chance it will become certain.”
I did not answer.
He seemed to take even my silence as an answer.
Honestly, it was difficult to offer certainty.
It involved information about the future that was soon to come, and it could potentially cause someone serious harm.
Of course, one could say the Vanguard was already suffering harm by not receiving resources.
‘They...
...have a fatal flaw.’
I had not known at first.
But after digging through my memories for a long time, a few certainties and a few predictions had surfaced.
Of course, I could not be completely certain because I had changed the future, and I did not know what would happen now.
That was why I could not help being careful about bringing it up.
“...Very well.”
Yet Miller’s answer came quickly.
“You will not ask?”
“I would like to.”
Miller spoke with complete composure.
“Very much.”
“...But?”
“There must be a reason Mr. Kang is not telling me now.”
He closed the allocation plan.
“Even if I force an answer out of you, the future will not arrive any faster. Besides...”
It was the calm that came with experience.
“It is not as if we are using it elsewhere. We are merely putting it on hold. Surely I can wait for something like that.”
It was not that he was not curious.
He simply knew how to wait.
And when the time came to make a decision, he would act then.
“Are you...really alright with this?”
I asked again out of concern.
Perhaps I was overstepping my bounds as nothing more than an Awakener.
It could offend him or sour our relationship.
“Mr. Kang.”
As if he had noticed my feelings, Miller looked at me.
“More than missing a good investment opportunity.”
A relaxed smile hung on his lips.
“I greatly dislike spending money first when there is a better investment opportunity available.”
* * *
I had finished what I needed to do at the Association.
So, as Miller had said, I resumed what an Awakener should do.
Climbing the Tower.
Flash!
The light that had covered my vision faded.
The sight before me immediately stole my attention.
It was closer to a massive garden than a forest.
Silver grass grown up to my waist rippled in the breeze, and flowers I had never seen in reality bloomed abundantly among it.
Flowers with blue streams of light flowing through glass-like transparent petals.
Red flowers with tiny embers instead of stamens.
Purple flower buds as large as human heads slowly opened and closed as if breathing.
Pale pink flowering vines hung long from every ancient tree overhead.
Drip.
Sunlight pouring through the massive leaves struck petals and dew, shattering into thousands of rays.
The air carried the mixed scents of wet soil, rich grass, and strangely sweet flowers.
An unreal space filled with rare and beautiful flowers.
And small lights floated among them.
Blue.
Light green.
Purple.
Several hundred spheres of light, larger than fireflies but smaller than fists, drifted leisurely between the flower beds and trees.
Judging by the scenery alone, it could have been called a painting or a paradise.
But I knew from experience.
Those lights were the most troublesome things here.
As I was lost in thought.
[Checking the current number of challengers.]
[Four or fewer challengers have been confirmed.]
[You are challenging the trial with fewer than the required number of people.]
[Clear rewards will increase according to the danger adjustment.]
...
The warning messages for a solo clear began to appear.
[Clear danger has been adjusted to the maximum level.]
[Experience gained on this floor has been adjusted to 300%.]
[The final reward grade will increase significantly.]
[The reward pool exclusive to solo clears has been unlocked.]
[We pay respect to the challenger who undertook the trial alone.]
This was another solo clear.
I had especially high expectations for the 27th floor.
Step.
The moment I took a step into the beautiful scenery.
Kik!
A sharp shriek burst out as soon as I moved.
The floating lights all stopped at once.
Their round glow distorted, revealing the forms hidden inside.
Gray skin.
Arms and fingers long for their bodies.
Mouths split all the way to their ears, filled with needle-thin teeth.
Two pairs of translucent wings trembled wildly on their backs.
Pixies.
Their name might bring small, cute fairies to mind, but in person, they were closer to tiny winged demons.
Kikik!
Kik, kikikik!
Several hundred of them laughed.
Then.
Pop!
They vanished.
Whoosh!
A light streaked across before my eyes.
When I turned my head, it was already atop a tree on the opposite side.
Another slipped in behind me.
One more was overhead.
Another was at ankle height.
They were fast.
Even compared to the previous floors, the nature of their movement was different.
They could fly through the air, and there was almost no preparatory movement when they changed direction.
A normal heavily armored warrior could spend an entire day trying to locate them without it being strange.
But.
『Giantification』
Crack!
A heavy sound rang out from inside my body.
My bones lengthened, and my muscles swelled.
My viewpoint rose in an instant.
The Black-Iron Armor expanded along with my body, covering my giant form.
Thud.
The ground rumbled low from a single step.
Kik...!
The laughter of the Pixies flying around me briefly stopped.
【Kang Seong-un (Super Novice)】
Level: 42
Strength: 486
Agility: 480
Health: 610
Available Status Points: 40
Skills Possessed: +1 Transcendent Body, Giantification, Shell
Agility of 480, amplified by Giantification.
That stat alone was on the level of a main damage dealer who had passed the 50th floor.
“I had quite a hard time with them in the past, but...”
I had struggled with the Pixies’ flight and movement speed before, but things were different now.
Boom!
The ground exploded.
Several Pixies jerked their wings in surprise.
But by the time they noticed, it was already too late.
One that had been flying dozens of meters away until just moments ago was pulled before my eyes in an instant.
Kik!
The Pixie hurriedly turned right.
I did not follow it.
The angle of its wings changed before its body moved.
Seeing the direction its balance shifted, I moved in ahead of it.
Slash!
The greatsword passed through.
The Pixie split in two.
Tap!
I stepped on a tree trunk once.
Crunch!
The thick bark burst beneath my foot, and my body shot forward again.
Above me, one.
Slash!
The greatsword moved at the speed of light and cut down the Pixie.
Kiiik!
The shrieking Pixies scattered in every direction.
They flew quickly.
But I was faster.
Boom!
Every time the giant Black-Iron Armor charged through the flower beds, the ground shook.
Yet my body was not sluggish in the least.
I lowered my body.
Stepped forward.
Each time I shifted my center of balance, my giant body changed direction with unbelievable lightness.
A Pixie shot upward.
I jumped as well.
Thud!
The dirt beneath my feet sank deeply.
I rose above it in a single leap and swung my greatsword downward.
Pop!
Another light went out.
As I fell, I twisted my body.
The greatsword’s path drew a half-circle.
Shhk!
Three split apart at once.
The moment I touched the ground, I lunged out again.
Every time I kicked off the ground, my massive body devoured distance as if it were vanishing and reappearing.
When a Pixie turned left, I was already there.
When it retreated, I blocked its escape route first.
In truth, the Pixies’ weakness was their durability.
They had overwhelming speed, but their durability was no better than paper.
Therefore.
Swish, swish.
I snuffed out the lights around me without pause.
Thud, thud!
Small corpses fell onto the flower beds.
Then.
[You have gained sufficient experience.]
[Level has increased from 42 → 43.]
[You have received 5 Status Points.]
A level-up.
Pixies had low durability, but their speed and magic gave them relatively high experience among monsters of the same level.
On top of that, the solo-clear adjustment tripled it.
As long as I could sweep them up like this, they were the best prey.
Kiiik!
The surviving Pixies instantly widened the distance.
Their small hands all pointed downward at once.
Magic power seeped into the ground.
Rumble!
The ground beneath my feet shook.
Crack!
Thick roots burst up through the earth.
My ankles.
My calves.
My thighs.
My waist.
Roots as thick as human torsos wrapped around my Giantified body one after another.
Crack!
In an instant, my entire body was buried in tree roots.
This was what made Pixies truly troublesome.
They were not merely fast.
They were creatures specializing in restraints, even among nature-based magic users.
In a normal party, this was where the supporter had to step in.
Purification.
Restraint removal.
Mana disruption.
They needed to use removal-type skills to free the vanguard’s feet.
Otherwise.
Kikikik!
The Pixies widened the distance.
Magic gathered around them.
Whoooong!
The wind compressed in midair.
Sharply spinning blades of wind formed.
Crack!
Boulders rose from the ground, their ends sharpening into points.
Crack!
Thin branches quickly grew from the trees and hardened like spears.
Their method was to bind their targets, then beat them down from a distance.
It was certainly troublesome, and it was a good strategy for making up for their paper-thin durability.
That was, if their opponent was a conventional Raid Party.
I looked down at the roots wrapped around my arms.
“Not a chance.”
I grabbed one root with my right hand.
Kikik!
Several Pixies laughed.
It was a binding root infused with magic power.
Something difficult to cut even with a blade.
They must have found it amusing that I had grabbed it with my bare hand.
So I exerted strength.
Creak!
The thick root stretched taut.
The Pixies’ laughter stopped.
A little more.
Crack!
It tore away like a thin vine.
Next, I grabbed the root around my waist with both hands.
Then pulled.
Crack!
Fibers burst, and bark scattered in all directions.
The trunk as thick as a human torso could not withstand the force and split down the middle.
Arms.
Legs.
Waist.
I grabbed and tore apart every root that bound me.
Crunch, crack!
As if I were snapping thick ropes rather than roots.
By the time I tore off and threw away the final root with unbelievable brute strength, the Pixies’ magic had already been completed.
Kiiik!
Dozens of spells poured down at once.
Blades of wind cut through the air.
Stone spears burst from the ground.
Thick branches rushed in like arrows.
And it was too late to evade.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Wind, stone, and wood exploded in succession against the Black-Iron Armor.
Petals and dust burst up like an explosion.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The attacks poured down again and again.
But they could not even reach my armor.
A few faint cracks appeared and vanished across the invisible barrier surrounding my body.
『Shell.』
A permanent shield with durability equal to my Health.
With my Health greatly increased by Giantification, even the Pixies’ concentrated fire was easy to withstand.
Boom!
Seizing the brief opening while they attacked, I kicked off the ground.
I erased the distance and was already in the middle of them.
“Now it’s my turn, right?”
I swung the greatsword.
Whoooong!
The force of the blade alone flattened the flower bed to one side.
And the Pixies within it split apart as well.
Shhk!
A mass of lights went out.
They scattered.
I pursued them.
I cut one down, stepped on a tree to change direction, and caught two more.
I jumped ahead of one trying to fly up and blocked its path, then crushed another that had been driven into the ground as I landed.
Thud!
I advanced again.
A giant body.
Heavy armor.
A greatsword and shield.
Even carrying all that weight, nothing hindered my movements.
Instead, once that weight met speed, every part of me became a weapon.
A Pixie burst apart if my shoulder grazed it.
If it was caught by the flat of the blade, its bones were crushed with it.
Those that folded their wings to flee were caught and cut down.
If they bound me, I tore free.
If they fired wind at me, I charged in while taking the hit.
If they launched stone spears, I knocked them away with my shield.
If tree spears rained down, I took them with Shell and closed the distance.
The Pixies’ strength was their speed.
Their weakness was their frail bodies.
But what if their opponent was faster than them?
What if even binding them only led to them tearing free with brute force?
What if they did not stop even after being bombarded with magic?
From that moment on, this could no longer be called a clear or even a battle.
It was a massacre.
Of course, the victims were the Pixies, not me.
Kiiiiik!
The surviving Pixies all turned at once.
Toward the outside of the garden.
More precisely, toward the direction beyond this area’s combat zone.
‘It has started.’
Pixies had a peculiar habit.
When their numbers dropped below a certain point, they gave up fighting.
And once the surviving ones fled beyond a certain distance, they scattered into light and vanished.
Normally, giving up the pursuit here was the standard approach.
They were incredibly fast.
Trying to chase down every fleeing Pixie would easily split up the Raid Party and waste time for nothing.
But I was different.
To me, Pixies were not monsters.
They were experience.
Experience bundles that died from a mere touch.
With the solo-clear adjustment, the experience gained was tripled.
Far more remained than I had killed.
I could not let those bundles of experience leave the garden.
First, I looked toward the cluster of lights moving east.
Then I stepped forward.
I had taken only one step, but in the next moment, I was already dozens of meters away.
Kik!
Kikik!
The Pixies turned their heads too late.
The greatsword flashed horizontally.
Shhk!
Seven lights went out at once.
The rest hurriedly rose higher.
I turned my body in response.
My toes brushed the ground.
My center of gravity lowered, then exploded outward again.
Boom!
This time, west.
The giant Black-Iron body that had been at the eastern edge just moments ago crossed the garden in an instant.
The wind followed a beat behind.
Whoooong!
I appeared ahead of the Pixies fleeing west.
Kik!
They stopped abruptly.
I swung down my greatsword.
Slash!
The cluster of lights split apart.
There was no time even to draw back my sword.
Using my right foot as a pivot, I turned my body.
North.
Tap tap tap!
Petals rose into the air too late.
My body was already gone.
Three Pixies tried to escape over the canopy.
I stepped on the tree trunk.
Crunch!
The thick tree dented deeply.
Using the recoil, I shot my body upward.
The next moment, I had surpassed the Pixies’ altitude in one go.
I swung once.
Shhk!
Three lights went out at once.
I did not land.
I twisted my body in midair and stepped on a diagonally extended branch.
Then.
Boom!
I headed south.
The Pixies scattered in different directions.
Considering their movement speed, it would have been normal for many of them to escape from the garden.
But whenever lights scattered, I was waiting in front of them.
The Pixies left first, but I moved later and arrived first.
Agility of 480 was a stat far beyond the Pixies’ speed.
Of course.
Flash!
The last group was just about to cross the boundary.
“Hup!”
I threw the Black-Iron Shield in my left hand like a disc.
Thanks to Strength just as terrifying as my Agility.
Whoooong!
The Black-Iron Shield became a black line that cut through the wind.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
It burst apart the last group of Pixies trying to cross the boundary.
[You have gained sufficient experience.]
[Level has increased from 43 → 44.]
[You have received 5 Status Points.]
Listening to the final level-up message, I slowly raised my head.
The garden had glittered with hundreds of spheres of light just moments ago.
But now, not a single light remained anywhere around me.
Clear time: 3 minutes, 13 seconds.
Once again, I had finished well within five minutes.
‘Did it work?’
The moment I thought that.
[All Pixies in the Mysterious Garden have died.]
“...?”
A message I had never seen before appeared.
Then new lines soon followed.
[All Pixies in the Mysterious Garden have failed to escape.]
[The ecological balance of the Mysterious Garden is collapsing.]
The wind stopped.
The silver grass went still.
The branches and petals also ceased moving, as if the entire garden were holding its breath.
Then.
[The queen of the Pixies has detected the deaths of all her subjects.]
[The Pixie Queen is enraged.]
Rumble!
The earth shook.
The beautifully blooming flowers all lowered their heads.
The silver grass darkened, and the roots of the ancient trees began to writhe above the ground.
At the center of the garden.
A flower bed that had held nothing rose violently.
Crack!
A single massive flower bud broke through the ground.
It was over ten meters tall.
Dense green magic power pulsed like a heartbeat within its tightly closed petals.
Thump, thump, thump.
Something was awakening inside.
[The Guardian of the 27th floor, the Pixie Queen, directly intervenes in battle.]
I looked at the message and chuckled.
‘As expected, it will not be that easy.’
On both the 25th and 26th floors, a clear time of five minutes had been the condition for the Guardian to appear.
But on the 27th floor, that condition had suddenly changed.
To total extermination.
That was the new condition.
As expected, the Tower did not always give the same answer.
Rumble!
As I thought that, the massive flower bud split apart.
Its petals opened one by one.
Flash!
Dazzling light leaked through the petals.
And within that light.
Rustle.
One, two... four enormous wings slowly unfolded.
The hundreds of eye-like patterns covering them all stared at me at once.
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