WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 3
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‘It really feels like I’ve entered a game.’
A hefty chunk of meat.
A thick bone that looked like a leg bone.
Apparently, he could not recover an entire Wolf. Instead, each one dropped random items like these.
‘One of them was even a bum.’
Two had dropped items.
One had not.
A status window naturally appeared at the edge of Seo Hajin’s vision, teaching him how to collect them.
‘There’s an inventory?’
Couldn’t they have explained that from the start?
They had plenty of time. There had been the whole avatar setup process, too.
[The inventory consists of 20 slots by default.]
[Each item occupies one slot. There is a maximum carry weight regardless of the number of occupied slots.]
[You may carry more than the maximum carry weight, but penalties will apply. Excessively exceeding the limit may restrict movement and mobility.]
He did not need to pick up the items himself.
If he recognized them nearby and thought about them, they automatically entered his inventory.
‘A looting feature. That’s nice.’
It seemed he could not loot items owned by someone else. That was only natural, but he wondered whether he would ever come across anyone else’s belongings.
‘Other people would mean other entrants. Are they scattered around somewhere in here too?’
The area was enormous.
They also seemed to have been placed randomly, so meeting anyone would not be easy.
Hoo.
The heavy breathing from fighting three Wolves settled after only a brief rest.
‘Good thing I enhanced my lungs.’
No problems had arisen from his customization. As the system had expected, it seemed to have applied properly.
But the downside had revealed itself right away.
He did not feel as if he had moved all that much, but he was already getting hungry.
At first, his stomach had hurt a little, and he wondered if shrinking his intestines had caused a problem. But that was not it.
This was definitely hunger.
The only thing he could eat right now was the Wolf Meat he had gained from the battle.
[Wolf Meat: 3 (15 kg)]
‘One chunk is five kilos.’
He did not know which cuts they were.
They were simply large and thick. Fortunately, when he had approached them to loot, he had not smelled much blood or any gamey odor.
‘Won’t know until I try it.’
He adjusted his grip on the club.
The difference was that he now held it in one hand instead of both. In his other hand, he held a thick, hard bone nearly as sturdy as the club.
[Wolf Leg Bone]
It was not a weapon.
Still, it felt usable as a substitute for the club, so he had taken it out to test it.
Grrr.
One of the Wolves circling him began to approach.
Had they waited until now to give him time to rest? Or were they hoping he would tire himself out?
‘I’m not that tired.’
Some of the scratches from the previous fight had already closed and scabbed over.
‘My recovery is fast.’
He kept that in mind as he entered the next battle.
There were only two Wolves this time, but another two were approaching from behind, making it more dangerous than before.
Crunch!
Still, his attacks had grown fiercer despite the danger.
He was gradually getting used to how much strength he needed, and the Wolves’ movements were becoming easier to read.
But that was when things became dangerous.
Reminding himself not to let his guard down, Seo Hajin whittled down the Wolves one by one.
He received several minor wounds in the process, but the worst was a somewhat deep claw mark on one thigh.
It was not enough to make him limp.
The bleeding was not severe either.
What made him think he could not keep going like this was new information he spotted from above.
‘Mobs are respawning?’
Movement had appeared where there had been none before.
It was roughly thirty meters away.
He had not failed to notice something approaching.
Movement that had not existed was now there.
As if to openly announce the respawn, a faint pillar of light appeared over that location, then vanished.
The problem was their numbers.
If only the ones he had killed first were returning, there should have been three. Yet the movement he spotted there was nearly double that.
‘Did it include the ones I killed afterward too?’
That thought changed shortly afterward.
“Damn.”
The Wolves that respawned after that numbered at least five as well. The system offered no explanation, but he could infer something.
‘It seems like I shouldn’t stay in one place.’
The monsters’ detection range was roughly a hundred meters.
At this rate, they would locate him and approach the moment they respawned.
If more monsters respawned than he killed, continuing to hunt in one spot would not be a good choice.
‘I need to move.’
An ordinary person would not have noticed.
They would have realized something was wrong only later, after a delay.
Thanks to Multiple Viewpoints, Seo Hajin caught on comparatively early. Before another respawn could occur, he chose a direction and started moving.
‘There are mobs in this direction too... but I don’t have a choice.’
This was not beginner difficulty, no matter how he looked at it.
The other entrants were probably having a hard time too.
‘Without seeing from far away like I can, even the first hunt wouldn’t be easy.’
Was dealing with Wolves rushing at you from right in front of your face easy? Even subduing a stray dog on the street was difficult.
Thud!
He kicked away a Wolf that leaped at him from the side, then drove a broken leg bone into another Wolf’s neck.
Wolf bones had passable durability.
They were definitely worse than the club, and they often broke in the middle after he struck with them for a while.
But the broken bone had its uses too.
Like now, he could use one as something close to a dagger.
‘Is it a downside that they use separate inventory slots?’
Hunting while moving.
He stumbled a little at first, but gradually adapted at the cost of minor injuries.
‘If I give up looting items, I could probably move faster...’
That did not seem like a good choice.
It did not look like moving quickly would let him escape the monsters completely.
And this forest.
He did not even know where it ended.
At this rate, he might have to swing his club until he collapsed from exhaustion.
‘No. I’ll probably die of hunger before that.’
What had initially felt like simple hunger had turned into something more substantial.
After taking down another Wolf and collecting its items, he thought of the Wolf Meat in his inventory.
‘Should I eat it raw?’
That was too risky.
He did not even know whether the meat was safe to eat, and chewing raw meat would not be easy.
The Wolves around him would not patiently wait while he chewed it, so his focus in battle would naturally suffer.
‘Even I don’t have unlimited concentration. I’ll make mistakes eventually.’
The one saving grace was that he was gradually becoming more proficient at hunting Wolves.
At this rate, he might soon be able to optimize it, like so many things he had done before.
Tedious or messy work.
The driving force that had let him repeat such tasks easily, without much trouble.
It had been possible because he viewed himself from high above and turned himself into a character.
Thinking about it, this was no different.
Other than his life being directly at risk.
‘From a distance, tragedy becomes comedy.’
It sounded like something said about him right now.
He swung his club upward into another Wolf’s jaw, feeling the bone shatter as he leaped to the side.
At nearly the same moment, another Wolf pounced on the spot where he had been. With him gone, it slashed at empty air and collided with the fellow Wolf whose jaw had been shattered, tangling them together.
Seo Hajin moved farther away in the meantime.
He roughly counted the movements following or surrounding him from a distance, stopping at around thirty.
‘At this rate, I’ll die.’
He had to stop fighting.
But how?
Looking around, he stared at the towering trees packed densely throughout the forest.
‘Can I climb one?’
Until now, they had only been part of the background, or something that protected his back and gave him a measure of safety.
But if he could get up there, it would change things. At the very least, he could catch his breath.
‘They’re tall. And thick.’
Even the lowest branches were more than five meters above the ground. If he kicked off the trunk and jumped, could he grab one? He could not be sure.
‘Hmm.’
Then another idea came to him.
He looked at what he held in his hands.
The club, still sturdy.
And the broken bone.
‘Let’s try it.’
* * *
To put it simply, it worked.
He pressed sharpened, broken Wolf bones against the tree like nails or stakes, then hammered them in with the club.
Right after finishing a battle, during a much shorter break than before, he quickly moved and tried it.
It did not work at first, but after ruining more than ten Wolf bones, he managed to drive in two.
They were not embedded deeply and hung loose, but they were enough to step on once and climb.
And now.
He was around twenty meters above the ground.
Sitting with his back against the trunk on a branch thick enough to lie on, he looked down at the Wolves surrounding the tree.
“Would it have been better to make myself small and nimble?”
If he had, he might have chosen to climb a tree from the beginning. Thoughts and judgments usually followed one’s own body.
But then he would not have been able to fight the Wolves properly, and it would have been harder to see this window now.
[Your experience is full.]
[Please choose one of the following options.]
[-You may choose two as your first reward.-]
Experience.
Items were not the only thing he gained from hunting.
There was no separate display for it, and he could not see anything like a level, but apparently it existed.
Having filled it, something displayed five options and told him to choose one.
Specific images with no explanation.
They resembled roadside signs, so he figured they were probably Skills or Physical Enhancements.
‘This one is probably Strength Enhancement.’
An arm holding a dumbbell.
An emphasized bicep.
It was obvious what it was.
“I’m already strong enough, but who knows what’ll happen later.”
He had set his muscles a little lower while making himself taller. If he was going to be a barbarian warrior, he should be stronger.
Still, he looked over the other images first.
1. The one he had already seen, ‘probably Strength Enhancement.’
2. A foot in a shoe, with wind trailing behind it.
3. A chef’s hat with a knife and fork on either side.
4. A black figure drinking a suspicious green liquid, smiling and giving a thumbs-up. A skull was drawn on the bottle.
5. A backpack, with +5 written beside it.
‘They’re intuitive, at least.’
Number two was probably increased movement speed.
Number three was Cooking, or something related to gourmet food.
Number four meant it was okay to drink poison, so maybe enhanced detoxification, or suicide?
‘Suicide doesn’t seem likely. Detoxification makes more sense.’
Number five was obviously an inventory increase.
It even kindly said five extra slots.
‘Hmm.’
He had planned to prioritize Strength Enhancement, but the others each seemed to have their own benefits.
‘It’s a world similar to Earth, but subtly different. I don’t know if I might eat something bad and get sick.’
A detoxification ability would be useful.
More inventory slots would naturally be useful too.
Movement speed, on the other hand, was clearly good under normal circumstances, but being faster would not make movement easier in his current situation.
‘I’m surrounded anyway.’
Even now, dozens of them prowled around the tree. Some had lost aggro and turned away, but quite a few remained.
“I’m curious about number three. I hope it’s a Cooking Skill.”
It would be a disaster if it were just a skill for eating deliciously, but the chef’s hat made Cooking seem more likely.
‘If it is...’
Could it make the Wolf Meat filling one inventory slot edible?
‘By process of elimination, I’ll rule out movement speed for now. And I don’t need more inventory slots yet, so the backpack is out too.’
That left three.
1. Probably Strength Enhancement.
2. Probably Cooking?
3. Probably Detoxification?
‘Hmm.’
After staring at the system window for a while, he slowly clenched and opened his right hand.
“I wasn’t lacking strength.”
If anything, he had been trying to control it.
The club he had handled so carefully had started to feel like it was losing durability.
He would probably have to fight using Wolf bones afterward, so Strength Enhancement did not seem urgently necessary.
‘I might regret this later, but if I keep hunting, another chance will come.’
It had clearly called this a first reward.
That meant there would be more rewards.
Next time, he would only get to choose one, but he could worry about that then.
“Okay.”
Seo Hajin selected two icons and pressed the confirmation button. After another confirmation prompt, two chip-like coins appeared in his inventory.
They were round and about the size of his palm.
The images from the choices were engraved on their front and back.
Only when he held them in his hand did item descriptions finally appear.
[Life Skill: Cooking]
[Can process ingredients or cook food.]
[Can combine multiple ingredients.]
[As proficiency accumulates, the quality of cooking improves.]
[Can be enhanced by combining identical Skills.]
[Physical Enhancement: Detoxification]
[Can detoxify poisonous substances.]
[Detoxification consumes stamina.]
[Can be enhanced by combining identical Skills.]
“Thank goodness.”
Just as he had expected.
Cooking and Detoxification.
Using them was simple.
Like the inventory, there was a slot where he could insert Skill Chips.
“So that’s how it works.”
They were not consumed to learn them, but inserted into slots. Looking closer just in case, he found that Skill Chips were, as expected, items that could be traded with others.
“But I only have one slot.”
He was a little disappointed that he only had one Skill Slot, but Cooking was not something he needed to keep equipped all the time, so it was not a major problem.
“I should normally keep Detoxification equipped.”
Still, he equipped Cooking first.
A new window opened, along with further explanations.
Fortunately, he confirmed that he could cook without even starting a fire.
Footnotes:
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