The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor - Chapter 12

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈

Chapter 12

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-In the end, we're perfect cases for being used as consumables.

-Seriously, are we all really alike?

└ At least I am.

Most of the posts were similar.

So were the comments.

‘Consumables...’

The topic currently being discussed on the board.

The hypothesis was that the people risking their lives there, struggling while actually dying and coming back to life, might be beta testers or lab rats in some kind of clinical trial.

They had spent well over a week repeating the same things in the same place, so it was not strange for pessimistic talk to come up.

But the reason that topic had surfaced in the first place was the shared trait someone had noticed while talking to others.

Orphans. Or single-parent households.

Even if they had parents, they were practically as good as absent.

People their families had cast out, or people with no family left to support.

People without stable jobs or broad, deep relationships.

‘In other words, people whose disappearance from the world would not cause any major change, and who would not have anyone mourning them.’

Of course, maybe it was not quite that bad.

At least someone might worry about them. Still, they said that although the extent differed, their situations were generally similar.

‘Me... Hmm.’

If people found out he had vanished...

Would anyone worry about him?

Seo Hayeon.

His younger sister might worry, but he did not think she would go looking for him.

His mother... he did not know.

She would probably find out that he had been diagnosed with cancer, but since he had disappeared too, would the recipient be changed to her?

‘That'd be pretty unfair.’

He gave a short laugh and shook his head.

‘Come to think of it, I had cancer.’

He had forgotten.

Probably ever since he came here.

‘I’ve been running wild like this, and still nothing hurts.’

The scratches from wolves or climbing trees hurt more, if anything.

Of course, even those sensations felt somewhat dulled, like the senses of a viewpoint far removed from his body, thanks to Multiple Viewpoints.

‘Is it because this is an avatar?’

Maybe this body was not his real body.

Seeing how people came back to life even after dying, it seemed entirely possible.

Then where was his real body?

Various thoughts crossed his mind.

-They say this is the first floor of a tower, but we still don't even know how to get to the second floor.

└ Yeah. How do we get to the second floor?

└ Aren't they making it right now?

└ Are you insane lol

The community users had many questions.

The board still only had Koreans on it, but apparently the people they had encountered in their areas had also all been Korean.

-Are areas divided by country?

└ Does anyone have dual citizenship?

└ Someone asked that before, but nobody came forward.

Posts and comments continued to pour in.

Seo Hajin skimmed through them for a while before closing the window.

There were many questions, but none of them seemed to have a satisfying answer.

‘If we're testers and experimental subjects of some kind, there is one thing that's certain.’

He needed to become stronger.

They had released dangerous beasts around them and provided levels, skills, and everything else. The direction was clear.

The system wanted them to grow stronger.

Or maybe it did not. But it had laid out a path that led that way.

‘Let's hunt.’

Seo Hajin checked his current level.

He might gain another level today if things went well, so he decided to stop wasting time and move again.

Then, around evening, he truly did level up once more.

He found a safe place and checked his Status Window.

[Awakener: Seo Hajin]

[Unique Ability: Multiple Viewpoints]

[Avatar Name: Juggernaut]

[Level: 8]

[Skill Slots: 3]

[Inventory: 30]

[Cooking], [Detoxification], [Cartography], [Heavy Attack], [Accuracy Correction], [Find Water], [Crafting], [Basic Material Processing]

[Passive: Slaughter Record]

[Passive: Strength Enhancement]

He was already level 8.

The changes so far were that he had gained one Skill Slot at level 6, and that he had converted one skill into a Bound Skill.

‘There was something like that too.’

It had probably been at level 7.

Among the level-up rewards, there had been something strange instead of a skill. After looking into it, he found that it was an item that converted one of his existing skills into a Bound Skill.

The skills offered alongside it had been somewhat underwhelming, and being able to use one skill without putting it in a slot was a good enough benefit that there was no reason not to choose it.

Still, he had briefly considered which skill to choose. It would be best to select something useful to always have equipped, or something bothersome to swap in and out.

‘It would be nice to bind Cartography so I wouldn't have to switch it out, but that'd be a waste.’

He had considered binding Cooking, Crafting, or material processing to turn them into passive skills, but if Skill Slots increased by one every three levels, there was no real need to do so just because he was short on slots right now.

In the end, two choices remained.

[Detoxification] and [Strength Enhancement].

Originally, he had intended to choose Detoxification. It probably would not make him immune to every poison, but if it became a passive skill, he thought he would have less to worry about when it came to poison.

However, Detoxification consumed stamina by default.

He had already tested it. When he put it in a Skill Slot, his stamina consumption increased slightly even under normal circumstances.

Naturally, the drain was greater when he was poisoned, but it consumed stamina even when he was not.

‘If I'm not careful, it'll be like walking around with a debuff on myself.’

He could recover stamina by eating, but having it constantly drain did not sound appealing.

Maybe later, once his level was high enough that the cost was unnoticeable. But not now.

So he chose [Strength Enhancement].

Once he selected it, the skill moved to the Bound Skill section, and its description changed.

Originally, it had been similar to an ordinary low-grade skill, but after becoming a passive skill, some of the wording changed and more was added.

[Passive: Strength Enhancement]

[Increases base strength and grip strength]

[Increases strength gains from avatar level-ups, physical training, and similar activities.]

[Can be enhanced by combining identical skills]

That was its current description.

Originally, it had said nothing about level-ups or physical training. Those lines had been newly added.

‘It didn't mention grip strength before either.’

Once it became a passive skill, the strength he felt in his body changed immediately.

The way it felt to clench his fist, the way his body moved, everything felt different.

There was even an unexpected change. The weight he could carry had increased.

The weight gauge did not display an exact number, but he felt that he could carry at least thirty kilograms more.

Even if he carried roughly 120 to 130 kilograms, he would not enter an overloaded state as he had before.

‘So I can carry more to improve Heavy Attack's efficiency without becoming overloaded.’

That was not the only advantage. Just reducing the chances that he would have to throw away perfectly good items to manage his weight gauge was fortunate.

‘It can even be enhanced.’

That line had been there before it became a passive skill, but it remained.

What he needed to check, though, was whether a non-passive copy of it could also be used to enhance it.

But buying one from the marketplace just to test it would cost quite a bit, and if it turned out not to work, the transaction fee to resell it would not be small either.

“It would've been nice if it came up this level-up.”

He focused on one of the options he had not chosen yet.

“I didn't expect it to appear twice in a row.”

[Skill Binding Conversion Ticket]

-Converts one skill you possess into a Bound Skill

When he first saw it, he had thought it was an extremely rare function. But seeing it appear twice in a row, perhaps that was not the case.

He looked through the other skills, then confirmed that none would sell for much on the marketplace.

An earlier level-up had also offered only ambiguous choices, so he had picked one and sold it.

This time was much the same.

In the end, he chose the Skill Binding Conversion Ticket.

‘Should I save it instead of using it?’

He turned the small charm-like item over in his fingers, then shook his head as he considered putting it in his inventory.

‘If I save it too long, it'll turn to shit.’

Things were fine for now, but he had no idea what might happen.

Even in the current forest, there were more places he had not explored than places he had.

‘If I die, it all disappears.’

At least, everything in his inventory disappeared. On the other hand, the only things that remained after death were skills equipped in Skill Slots.

‘And Bound Skills remain too.’

If he converted a skill into a Bound Skill, it meant locking in one skill so he would not lose it even if he died.

‘Then Detoxification really is the right choice.’

He did not regret choosing Strength Enhancement before, but he remembered that he had encountered more poisoning situations than expected while traveling through the forest afterward.

There were countless poisonous insects and toxic plants he had never known about. Some even poisoned him by scattering something like pollen without him touching them at all.

‘The real-time stamina drain is unpleasant, but there were plenty of situations where I would've been in danger without Detoxification.’

He decided to think about it differently.

If he died and lost Detoxification, would the situations he faced afterward really be better than having his stamina slowly drain in real time?

“...I'm always hungry anyway. Being a little hungrier won't make much difference.”

He would recover the lost stamina by eating.

Nodding, he converted Detoxification into a Bound Skill.

Like with [Strength Enhancement], the skill description changed.

It seemed to change even more than before.

[Passive: Toxic Adaptation]

[Analyzes poisons and develops resistance]

[Resistance to the relevant poison accumulates upon exposure]

[Upon reaching maximum resistance, immunity to that poison is gained]

[Continuous stamina consumption occurs during detoxification and resistance development. This does not apply to poisons you are immune to.]

[Can be enhanced by combining identical skills]

“This seems insanely good.”

It did more than simply cure poisoning. It could grant resistance to a specific poison and even immunity.

It even applied retroactively.

‘I got poisoned that much?’

Under the skill, the Adaptation Record showed the poisons he had been exposed to so far and his accumulated resistance to each.

It seemed that the higher his resistance was, the faster detoxification became. To raise it, he would probably have to be poisoned by that particular poison.

‘It'd be stupid to deliberately poison myself just to raise this number, right?’

It might be worthwhile if he could raise it all the way to immunity, but that would likely take considerable time and effort.

Besides, poison was not so easy to obtain. Unless he found it nearby, he decided not to go looking for it.

“Wow. But I'm already hungry.”

He had already been slightly hungry.

With the skill's effect added, it was not just his imagination. He really was hungry.

He chewed and swallowed some meat he had cooked in advance to ease his hunger, then looked at the wolves that could not even wait that long and had gathered again.

“Hmm. I think I could fight while eating now, but... it's better to be careful.”

As he wondered if he might bite his tongue or choke if something went wrong, he suddenly recalled a cooking method he had not tried yet.

‘Smaller than minced... No. If I dry it completely and grind it up, I can make it into powder.’

Maybe he could make some kind of shake.

It would probably taste awful, but at least he could eat, or drink, it quickly.

“I'll try it after I deal with these guys.”

The fighting began again.

A system notification he had never seen before appeared that evening.

[The ruler of Area 2, Grassland Plains, the ‘Giant Stray Dog,’ has been defeated.]

[Area Level increases by 1.]

“...?”

Seo Hajin had been looking for a place to rest as evening approached. He stopped walking when he saw the unfamiliar notification.