WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 15
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Similar but different days passed.
There were other fields where people attempted boss hunts after the rabbit field, but the results had apparently not been good.
There were various analyses of the cause, but the conclusion was simple. There were not enough people.
The rabbit field had always had the largest number of users, and it still did.
The user camp, which had once been little more than a makeshift shelter, had undergone serious construction at some point and become a proper refuge surrounded by a wooden palisade.
No matter how sturdy the fence was, it could not stop mobs from respawning. They had reportedly struggled with mobs appearing inside the fence afterward.
But someone had acquired a skill that could solve that problem, and people said that at least the area inside the fence was now safe.
Of course, that was only possible because it was a field mainly populated by non-aggressive mobs. Building a permanent refuge like that in another field was impossible.
Everyone knew that.
That was why even more users gathered there.
But contrary to everyone's expectations, no additional boss had been defeated in that field even after the twenty-four-hour respawn time passed.
They said the boss had not become overwhelmingly stronger just because it had leveled up. The problem was division among the users.
A large crowd had gathered, but the people in that crowd had not united as one.
Various parties and clans.
Interest groups gathered under their own names.
Naturally, they prioritized their own interests, causing friction with other groups. Bloody incidents were reportedly happening quite often.
Now, when someone tried to challenge a boss monster, more people hung back at a distance, waiting to loot the Personal Effects if someone died, than people willing to lend a hand.
A stalemate followed naturally.
Many people kept hunting steadily, but the gains were uncertain compared to the time they invested.
[Levels get insanely hard to raise later on]
-What level are you?
└ 5
└ Just get one more. You unlock another Skill Slot then
└ Yeah, I know, but it takes forever
└ Aren't there any parties doing mob pulls? I heard they let people tag along for Points
└ Join the wrong one and you'll die and get cleaned out
└ That's why you need to go with a verified group. Search the board, someone probably compiled a list of trustworthy parties
└ Be careful with those. Apparently there are traps mixed in
[It's better to grind for money and buy skills from the marketplace than level up]
Even if your level stays the same, better skills plus upgrades make you stronger
-That's true
-Then you die and get cleaned out
└ Also true. Your level stays the same, but you end up naked
The same kinds of conversations continued today.
Even after all this time, many users remained at roughly the same levels. Poor hunting efficiency was part of the reason, but aversion to hunting itself and fatigue from it also played no small part.
The people who kept hunting consistently were mostly groups that gathered members into parties and hunted together.
Fewer and fewer people hunted alone, especially in remote places.
Everyone already knew that there were people who hunted other people.
But it was equally clear that even those who did not do such things rarely let a poorly prepared lone traveler pass by untouched.
Travel alone, and you get robbed.
They had to stick together, but there were few people they could trust.
In the end, those who could not belong anywhere either went to fields with conditions bad enough that no one else came, or gave up hunting entirely and made money through logging, gathering, and similar work.
[What's with the gold dust on the marketplace]
Who drops that?
-It's not from monsters lol
└ Yeah?
└ There are people panning for gold dust by the river over there
└ Gold comes out there?
└ Barely any
-The people panning for gold dust are insane. It doesn't even give experience, why do that?
-Seriously, why? Isn't it pointless unless someone buys it?
└ People do buy it
└ ?
└ The people making magic tools probably buy it. Apparently gold has good mana conductivity or something
└ Ah, so putting gold on a staff isn't just for looks
└ Yeah. They carve magic circles and circuits and stuff. Apparently it's better if you use gold
Everyone was surviving in their own way.
Some were somehow acquiring or making things for themselves, while others tried to take those things from them.
[Is Juggernaut insane or what]
What's with all the wolf hide on the marketplace
-He's been like that since yesterday
-The supply never goes down lol
[Juggernaut is in the northern field, right?]
It makes no sense otherwise
-Isn't that basically item duplication lol
[Watch out for Juggernaut]
More people have been eyeing that area lately
-Not just eyeing it. I heard some people are scouting it out before trying to rob him
└ For real?
└ Yeah, but apparently they got killed by a tiger
└ Hahahahahahaha
[But how does Juggernaut list all that?]
Can he even carry that much in his inventory?
-Storage Crates are being sold on the marketplace these days
└ What's that?
└ Woodworking people make them. You can put items inside, and they don't disappear when you list the crate on the marketplace
└ Really?
└ But if it gets too heavy with stuff inside, you can't put it in your inventory. If you don't hide it properly, it becomes public property
└ Ah
└ Usually clans buy those. It's safe if they keep them inside their base buildings
“Storage Crates? How do they make those?”
Seo Hajin had been taking a break while browsing the board. After seeing someone's comment, he searched the marketplace and found that the items really were being sold.
There were not many in stock, and they were fairly expensive. They probably required special materials, or the crafting process was complicated.
“You won't starve to death if you just focus on woodworking.”
If he had not had another option, he might have bought one. For now, he merely nodded at the fact that such things existed.
[Passive: Personal Subspace]
-Creates a dedicated space isolated from the real world
-Interior Area: 32 blocks (expanding)
-Maximum Stay Time
-Stay time gradually recovers while not inside
He took in the words displayed in his Status Window. What had originally occupied one Skill Slot had become Bound.
It was what he gained upon reaching level 10.
The level-up rewards had offered four questionable skills and one chance to refresh the selection.
Naturally, he refreshed it, and the new choices included a conversion to Bound status.
‘There were some skills that looked pretty good, too.’
Still, he chose the chance to bind one because he had personally experienced the usefulness of Dimensional Shelter.
Since it was equipped in a Skill Slot, he would not lose it even if he died. But he wanted to make it permanently Bound instead.
The skill had changed into a passive.
For one, its name changed from [Dimensional Shelter] to [Personal Subspace].
The detailed explanation was similar, but the way its internal space expanded was somewhat different.
As before, it could be enhanced with Points, but there were now two methods.
One was to spend a thousand Points at once, as before. Unlike before, though, it expanded by only five blocks at a time instead of ten.
The other method did not consume Points all at once. If he put them up as something like construction costs, the interior space would gradually expand one block at a time.
‘One or two blocks per hour? Sometimes it expands by more than two blocks at once, so it's hard to calculate the average.’
Still, it was clear that its capacity grew more than twice as much as it would through an immediate upgrade.
He was not short on space yet, so he chose the gradual expansion method.
Of course, he could still use the immediate expansion function while the gradual expansion was underway.
‘The problem is that I don't have enough Points.’
In any case, his current subspace was thirty-two blocks.
Even after making a space two meters wide, three meters high, and five meters deep, two blocks remained.
When he entered, wolf hides were piled high along one side. Farther in, a considerable quantity of wolf tendons sat on a crude display shelf.
There were assorted things like meat, medicinal herbs, poisonous herbs, and mushrooms, but those two were the most plentiful by far.
At the very back was a crudely made toilet. He had not made it himself. He bought it from the marketplace.
It had an ocher color and a rough, uneven surface.
Still, for something made by firing pottery, it was quite usable and fairly durable.
It was closer to a chamber pot than a toilet, but at least it resembled one in shape.
With his stay time reaching twenty-five minutes when fully charged, he no longer had to search for a safe place in the middle of a fight just to relieve himself.
“It's a little unfortunate that increasing the stay time got moved to a separate upgrade... Once I have more Points, I should keep increasing that too.”
Even after converting it to a Bound Skill, he had spent more than two thousand Points on upgrades.
Yet he still held more than a thousand Points. That was related to why his nickname came up on the board.
[Items Currently for Sale]
-Wolf Hide: 282
-Damaged Wolf Hide: 42
-Wolf Meat: 391
-Wolf Tendons: 109
-Wolf Bone Powder: 32
“Hide sells well.”
After replenishing what had sold, he checked the stock piled up in his subspace.
“Demand still seems to be holding up.”
It had not originally been this way.
Killing a Wolf did not guarantee a hide drop.
But that had changed, thanks to [Slaughter Record].
-Current Record-
Wolf: Stage 11 Nemesis effect active
1. Impact force increased by 55%
2. Damage taken reduced by 55%
3. Grants a Critical-Hit Chance
4. Loot drop rate increase can be allocated
Current: Total
-Current Allocation-
Wolf Hide: 35%
Wolf Tendons: 15%
The Nemesis effect had already reached stage 11.
The option added at stage 10 was the benefit of increasing loot drops.
At stage 10, the total was 30 percent.
At stage 11, it rose to 50 percent. Since he could allocate it himself, he had set it up like this.
‘Hide and tendons sell the best.’
There was little demand for bones, so selling the ones that dropped normally was enough. But until now, demand for hide and tendons had seemed greater than supply.
With the amount he acquired increasing, things were finally starting to reach some balance.
Of course, increasing hide drop rates by 35 percent did not mean a hide dropped every time.
But they definitely dropped more often than before.
Naturally, that made earning Points more worthwhile.
‘The problem is that regardless of demand, everyone's about equally broke.’
Earning Points was not easy.
Only a limited number of people earned Points through hunting, which meant the amount of Points released by those people was also limited.
‘But I can't just not sell them.’
Unlike his inventory, items could not stack in his subspace. There was inevitably a limit to how much stock he could keep.
‘Unless new users enter from somewhere, the people already here are probably all there is.’
It was still a topic that came up on the board these days.
Why were there only Koreans here?
There were questions, but no answers.
All they could do was suspect that there were similar test areas elsewhere, perhaps divided by country.
‘They say there aren't any dual citizens, so that part is hard to figure out too.’
It was still unclear how they could leave this place. All they could do was survive as best they could under the circumstances.
Even so, some people were preparing for what came next. Perhaps they might retain their current abilities even after returning home.
‘Would that really happen?’
If it did, there would be at least close to a thousand superpowered people in the world.
‘That's only in this area.’
If similar things were happening in other countries, the number would be much higher. What would happen to the world if people like that were released into it?
‘No. Maybe the world will have become strange enough that it needs them.’
Having finished his thoughts, he checked his subspace, which had become thirty-three blocks in the meantime.
“If this stays after we get back, there'll be countless ways to use it.”
Still, he did not know whether he could keep hunting there, so it would be best to earn as many Points as possible here and enhance it first.
‘We'll be able to go back, right?’
The thought suddenly crossed his mind, but he shook his head and brushed it aside. This was not the time for negative thoughts.
* * *
He realized he was not leveling up four full days after reaching level 10.
No matter how slowly levels rose later on, enough time had passed for him to already be level 11. Yet there had been no sign of it.
He closely examined his Status Window and only then realized that his level-up was locked.
“There's a lock at level 10.”
It was not that he could not go any higher.
He simply needed a specific item to remove the level 10 lock.
The problem was that the specific item was a key dropped by a boss monster.
The item whose purpose no one had properly known was actually an item that removed the level-up lock.
“So I have to kill a boss after all.”
Of course, there was another way.
It was the method he was using now.
[You have purchased the item.]
[You have purchased the item.]
There were a fair number of listings for Key Fragments.
He had originally thought they came only from the several chests dropped when a boss died.
But later, it seemed that regular mobs had a minuscule chance of dropping them in fields where the boss had been defeated once.
That was how the supply accumulated.
Since no one knew where to use them, and there was no point in holding fragments, many people sold them on the marketplace.
Some people gathered them to make keys, but they decided it was better to sell them and keep the Points since they would lose the keys if they died anyway.
As time passed, more and more became available, and marketplace prices gradually fell.
Some tried to stockpile them in preparation for the future, but there were not many of them.
-Why buy those? If you have money, buy skills
└ Yeah. Who has Points to stockpile junk items?
Thanks to that, he bought a large number of Key Fragments.
He also obtained keys made by combining them.
[Number of Keys Required to Remove the Level Lock: 1]
[Would you like to remove the lock?]
It took one key to remove the level 10 lock. He bought extras because there was a good chance similar locks existed later on.
‘The reason no one knows this is probably because no one else has reached level 10 yet.’
Eventually, people would certainly reach level 10. When that happened, the keys listed on the marketplace would disappear.
Maybe there were already others.
Seo Hajin knew that other people had quietly been buying key listings besides him.
It could have merely been speculative stockpiling, but perhaps it was not. As marketplace listings began to decrease, they bought even more openly.
Listings disappeared in an instant.
People who noticed that something was strange even removed the items they had listed.
Questions appeared on the board asking whether a use had been discovered, but no one had given the answer yet.
“Whew.”
He let out a relieved breath.
If he had not obtained them in time, he might have had to challenge the boss at level 10.
‘No matter how I think about it, that doesn't seem right.’
He had considered various methods until now, but none seemed adequate for dealing with the tiger.
It was not just a tiger. It was a boss monster.
It was probably stronger than it looked.
“...”
His gaze turned toward Companion No. 1, tearing into rabbit meat off to one side.
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