WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 13

──────

Related discussions were already underway.

And just as he had expected, someone had taken down the boss monster in the rabbit field.

-What changes when the Area Level rises?

└ The monsters seem a little stronger. The rabbits got faster, at least. If you're unlucky, they don't die in one hit anymore.

-So the rabbit field was Area 2. Didn't know they were divided by number.

└ Where's Area 1?

└ Don't they count from the north?

└ If it's the north, that would be the place with the mountains and forest. Is anyone there?

└ Too many damn wolves spawn there, so nobody goes.

└ Tigers roam around there too, right? Tons of people died after going there.

‘The northern field.’

There was even talk about where he was.

They seemed to think this place was Area 1.

‘So there was a reason I haven't seen anyone.’

This was an avoided area.

He had suspected as much.

Looking at the board, other areas usually had non-aggressive animals like rabbits, birds, and mountain goats. This place had nothing like that.

‘They said there are Aggressive Mobs there too, but not many of them.’

In the end, people naturally gathered in weaker areas.

The place with the most active users right now was probably Area 2, where the boss had just been defeated.

‘There are fields with relatively weaker monsters, but the terrain around those places is a little awkward.’

-But if they count from the north, the rabbit field can't be Area 2. Right below it is the rocky mountain, and there are different places east and west too.

└ Yeah, the rabbit field is at the very bottom.

└ Then I have no idea how they divide them.

Either way, the important part was that the entire area was not one connected area.

It was divided into several areas, each with its own boss. Defeating one raised the level of that field.

-You still couldn't take down one stray dog?

└ They call it a stray dog, but it's bigger than a bullring bull.

└ Oh.

└ We barely got it this time too, after ganging up on it.

It had only been possible because there were so many users.

As for drop items, they apparently did not fall onto the field. They were placed directly into inventories based on contribution, such as damage dealt.

-What did the boss drop?

└ Don't know. Nobody who got anything has posted proof yet.

└ Then it must have dropped something insanely good.

└ Yeah, probably.

-Hey, when the Area Level rises, I think it's not just the monsters getting stronger. Their numbers seem to increase too.

└ I was thinking that too. There are definitely more stray dogs now.

Before, the stray dogs had been scattered across the plains in manageable packs.

Their detection range was reasonable, and their packs were not especially large, so people could keep their distance or quietly avoid them.

But after the field leveled up, the packs had grown larger. The general feeling was that people would now have to watch their surroundings even while hunting rabbits.

-We should probably start moving in groups.

-Soloing is going to be hard. Should we change fields?

Some people were already saying things like that, though others called it exaggeration.

“Everyone's been hunting pretty easily.”

He had no intention of looking down on the other users.

Still, compared to what he had experienced, they clearly seemed to have lived with more room to breathe.

Apparently, some had even built camps with wooden fences around them.

‘If they did that here, they wouldn't be able to leave the fence.’

No, more importantly, could they even maintain its durability if wolves kept pounding on it? Wouldn't they have to keep buying lumber from the marketplace and using it up?

‘Hm. I don't know.’

For now, he knew that defeating a boss monster raised the field's level. It would probably work the same way in the field where he was.

‘If I kill a tiger, the wolves will get stronger and more numerous?’

He was not particularly worried.

If anything, he looked forward to it a little.

As his level rose, more wolves avoided him. They would run away, then bring back even more wolves, which only made things more troublesome.

“If they came at me right away, hunting would go faster.”

Still, a stray dog larger than a bull.

Which was stronger, that or the tigers here?

After thinking about it for a moment, he gave a faint laugh.

No matter how he looked at it, he could not imagine a stray dog beating a tiger.

Even so...

He did not particularly want to change fields.

‘Level 10... no, maybe Level 15 would be enough to take one on.’

The changes gained through leveling were not limited to skills and functions granted as level-up rewards, or items dropped by monsters.

He had not felt much difference when gaining a single level, but once he passed Level 5, he had become certain.

‘My base stats increase when I level up.’

Strength, stamina, defense. His physical abilities without skills or equipment were clearly increasing.

At first, he had thought the increase came every five levels.

But after recognizing the difference, he had run small tests whenever he leveled up.

‘It really changes every level.’

It just was not obvious from a single level.

The more he leveled up, the stronger he became with the same equipment and skills.

‘Why else would the wolves avoid me?’

There was a reason for it.

Seo Hajin nodded and drank a bowlful of protein shake.

After confirming that he could grind meat into powder, he had initially mixed it with water and nearly thrown up. It tasted that bad.

After that, he had gathered whatever somewhat sweet ingredients he could find nearby, ground those into powder, and mixed them in.

But what truly made its current flavor possible was the Mountain Goat Milk he bought from the marketplace.

Immediately south of the field where he was, in the rocky mountain cliff area located in the center of the overall area, large numbers of mountain goats lived.

Mountain Goat Milk was one of the items they dropped when hunted.

Its scent and taste differed from cow's milk.

Still, it was much better than water.

When he added it to the Cooking skill, it finally tasted somewhat like a shake.

It still had a strange flavor, mixed with a faint gamey smell and a dry, bitter aftertaste.

Even so, compared to chewing meat, he could absorb far more calories in the same amount of time.

“The downside is that it makes my stomach gurgle.”

He had made himself a barbarian warrior build, but he had not considered the particular state of an East Asian gut.

Still, fortunately, he did not seem to be lactose intolerant. He digested it well, and quickly.

“The problem is that this has to go into it.”

He looked at the fruit taking up an inventory slot, which he picked whenever he found it and gathered bit by bit.

Poisonous fruit.

Eating it naturally caused poisoning.

But without it, he could not add sweetness to the shake.

“It's a good thing I made Detoxification passive.”

In the end, it was a shake containing poison.

Naturally, the more nutrients he absorbed, the more stamina it took to clear the Poisoned condition.

Looking only at the result, it was only slightly better than chewing and swallowing meat.

But Wolf Meat was so abundant that he had enough to throw away, so this was clearly better.

‘My poison resistance is steadily increasing too.’

At this rate, his resistance to that poison would probably max out before long. After that, he would become immune, and the stamina-reduction debuff would decrease sharply.

‘Instead of mixing powder into Mountain Goat Milk, what if I powdered the milk too, then mixed it with the shake powder?’

The thought suddenly occurred to him.

What if he made it into a finished product first, then mixed that with water to drink?

It might taste a little bland, but it could also reduce the faint gamey smell caused by the Mountain Goat Milk being too rich.

‘I can try it later.’

He could not stop hunting.

The news that another field had advanced somehow made him feel tense.

‘Even if it is a field with rabbits and stray dogs, stronger monsters and higher numbers mean users have more monsters to hunt.’

There were many users too, of course, but their leveling speed would clearly increase compared to before.

‘It doesn't feel like it is pushing competition, but falling behind is definitely dangerous.’

There were people who hunted other people.

The dead lost everything they had.

Just thinking about that made it difficult for him to rest comfortably.

While he sat down and caught his breath, someone else would be constantly killing monsters and accumulating experience.

“Whew. Let's go again.”

He gripped his club once more.

It felt a little lighter than when he had first picked it up. That was probably due to the strength gained through leveling and the Strength Enhancement that had been incorporated as a passive skill.

Crunch!

“Oh.”

As he became more comfortable wielding the club, he began to target the strike points that occasionally appeared over parts of a wolf's body.

They were something he had previously ignored. Even when he aimed for them, they were difficult to hit, and trying to do so often interfered with his natural movements.

They were part of the Nemesis effect granted by [Slaughter Record].

Only now could he properly use that additional function.

Of course, he was still far from perfect.

The strike points had become a little larger than at first, but accurately hitting one on a violently thrashing wolf was not easy.

Bang!

Still, whenever he landed one properly, it produced an enormous sound unlike normal and an equally dramatic result.

A wolf he had only lightly clipped had its neck snap with a crack and died on the spot.

Ignoring the items that fell to the ground, Seo Hajin moved toward the other wolves.

The battle continued.

He could now hit roughly one out of every five strike points that appeared.

He rarely made a complete miss.

He only tried when he thought he might hit a strike point, or at least land a normal blow even if he did not.

‘I have to hit something, at least. If I make a pointless swing, the opening is too big.’

Even now, he was in a dangerous situation where he could be attacked in concert at any moment.

Even though he could look down from above, or perhaps precisely because he could, he understood even more clearly when he was in danger.

“More of them running away as my level rises really isn't good for me.”

It would have been nice if they had fled completely.

The problem was that they ran away, then brought back stronger ones.

Now there were so many that even the short periods he had after wiping them out, when he could rest and make repairs, were steadily shrinking.

‘At this rate, I might not get any time to rest at all.’

He might have to keep fighting without stopping, like some auto-hunting game.

If it really came to that, he would not even have time to climb a tree. He would need to find another method.

‘Still, is that place the best option?’

* * *

After a field boss was defeated in a certain area, the community board filled with related posts from people who had video or photo recording functions.

While resting and eating something, Seo Hajin watched them and tilted his head slightly.

“There wasn't any strategy to it. They just ganged up and killed it.”

The stray dog really was larger than a bull.

That was not an exaggeration, judging by the video.

But such a large body also made for a very large target.

From some distance away, countless arrows flew in from all directions.

Perhaps because everyone was around the same level, aggro constantly bounced from one direction to another. The boss monster could not lock onto a single target and only stumbled around in the middle.

Maybe it had low intelligence, or perhaps that was because the field level was still low.

The important thing was that even during all that, there were people trolling or acting like dead weight.

‘They should have killed it before doing anything else.’

Did they think getting a little closer would let them pick up even one more drop item?

Several people kept approaching the boss.

At first, he thought they were melee damage dealers, but watching their behavior made it clear they were not. Some were even killed by arrows from users who should have been allies.

Maybe that was the trigger.

Arrows that seemed to follow suspiciously deliberate paths, too suspicious to be accidents, began striking the users who had moved inward.

The dead naturally dropped Personal Effects, which stirred up someone else's greed.

Those who were quick on their feet rushed to collect them, and more arrows followed, aimed at them.

Some succeeded in grabbing something and escaping.

Others failed, adding their own Personal Effects to the pile.

“Numbers really are power.”

Even amid all that, the boss monster was steadily being taken down. Hundreds of users swarmed around it.

“Why is everyone over there?”

Even as he said it, he understood the reason well enough.

Especially now.

The northern field where he was was an avoided area.

It was a dangerous area, with pack-hunting Wolves as the main monsters, along with leopards and tigers.

Even people who had begun here seemed to avoid the area on a restart if they could not escape alive and were killed.

Of course, that did not mean other areas lacked stronger monsters.

‘They say bears spawn in the eastern forest.’

There were Wolves there too.

But they seemed to be wolves that had spread there from the north rather than spawning in the eastern forest.

That seemed even more likely because people said that after clearing them out once, they did not see them again for a while.

As for the bears, the main monsters there, they were classified as conditionally non-aggressive mobs. They did not approach first unless someone got within a certain distance.

Wolves were similar in that regard, but their detection ranges were vastly different.

‘And the population is different too. There aren't many bears, but each one is strong.’

As it turned out, most of the various lumber listed on the marketplace came from logging in the eastern forest.

There were plenty of trees where he was too, but there was no way he could leisurely spend time chopping them down.

In the east, apparently, people could.

‘Now I understand why they log even though no items drop from it.’

It gave experience.

Not much, but each tree gave about as much experience as one bear.

Logging was not likely to be easy or quick, but bear hunting was no different. Everyone had simply chosen according to their circumstances.

Of course, logging did not provide items like food or hides, so they sold the lumber on the marketplace and used the money to buy things listed by others.

The rabbit area whose field level had just risen also had trees, aside from the eastern forest.

Those trees also gave experience when logged, but the atmosphere there had changed somewhat after the field leveled up.

-The monsters give more experience, but the trees are the same. I compared them, so I'm sure.

└ It would be weirder if the trees leveled up too.

└ Fair.

Unless new, tougher and larger trees appeared, the existing trees did not change along with the field.

So the loggers in that field were considering what to do. Compared to rabbit hunting, chopping trees was now much slower for gaining experience.

“Hmm.”

As users discussed all sorts of things, Seo Hajin came to understand more clearly what kind of situation he had been enduring through the level discussions scattered among their posts.

“Everyone seems lower level than me?”

Maybe high-level users simply had not verified their levels yet, but most of the levels he had seen so far were around 5.

At most, around 7.

Seo Hajin looked at his Status Window.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried