The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor - Chapter 35

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 35

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‘This really is handy at times like this.’

Thanks to Soul Resonance, he shared some of the Wolf’s, Black Leopard’s, and Tiger’s senses.

His body had already grown stronger as he leveled up. On top of that, his senses had been enhanced as well.

He normally kept them deliberately dulled, but when necessary, he could focus and heighten them like this.

Rustle, rustle.

The sound of snow grew louder.

Beyond all the miscellaneous noise, he could hear someone’s footsteps, breathing, even faint murmuring voices.

“Let’s just give up.”

“Why would we give up? We barely escaped.”

“We won’t last long if we keep going. We’ll die anyway.”

“Even if we die, we should die as far away as possible.”

Their voices were hoarse with exhaustion.

He had suspected as much from above, but they appeared to be a man and a woman.

For now, they seemed to be companions.

They had clearly escaped from somewhere.

And though they did not seem to know it yet, their pursuers had already closed in considerably.

‘They seem close enough to catch.’

There were around five pursuers.

They were moving in several directions, so he could not count them precisely. There might have been more.

Still, they all had a similar demeanor. They sounded cheerful, like they were enjoying themselves.

‘That’s just how villains are.’

People who enjoyed hunting other people somehow had something in common, even in their faces.

He had seen that same unpleasant smile plenty of times himself. Of course, those smiles never lasted long. They always ended with a different expression.

‘Should I step in?’

He considered it for a moment.

The people running away obviously looked like the weaker side, but being weak did not guarantee that they were good people.

So he watched a little longer. After hearing more of their conversation, along with the pursuers’ voices as they gradually approached from afar, he was able to make up his mind.

‘So it really was exactly what it looked like.’

It seemed the human hunters had established a camp.

He did not know exactly how they operated, but they appeared to have built a base somewhere, abducting nearby users and forcing them to work.

The reason nothing had appeared on the forum was probably because they monitored people in real time and prevented them from opening the System at all.

‘Do they kill anyone suspicious right away?’

There was still plenty he did not know.

But one thing was certain.

If the people chasing them found him, they would not treat him kindly either.

‘Come to think of it, the people who ran away from me earlier were dressed similarly.’

They had resembled the current pursuers, not the escapees.

Had they come all the way to the outskirts to search for the runaways, spotted him, and fled? That was entirely possible.

‘That’s right. That person over there.’

He recognized one of the people who had run away earlier among the pursuers.

Their appearance was too distinctive to forget.

‘Green hair really stands out.’

In a forest, it might have looked like camouflage.

But it was winter now, a world of white with barely any green leaves left.

There were still some conifers, but it was not an appearance that could be hidden by standing among them.

‘I’ve confirmed where both sides stand. Now I just need to decide where I stand.’

He checked their weapons.

He noted their numbers and locations, and memorized who among them looked the strongest.

There seemed to be an unspoken division between the one giving orders and the ones receiving them.

The person who made others obey with a look or a jerk of their chin without saying anything was probably the superior of that group.

‘Should I get involved?’

The question still remained.

But he shook his head and smiled.

‘There’s no reason not to.’

They seemed to have been hunting people professionally already. And this was not a place where law or morality applied.

‘Besides, I’m not a good person either.’

Just a moment ago, he had been bundling useless junk with survival essentials and forcing people to buy it. He had plenty more junk waiting to be listed.

‘It just means I have a reason now.’

That was enough.

* * *

Crunch, crunch.

The sound of boots stepping on the thin layer of snow covering the brush.

The man had been walking without much thought until the sound suddenly caught his attention, making him look down.

“...”

The group beside him was chatting among themselves.

Most of it was hollow boasting about how successful they had been outside, the kind no one believed or cared about.

“Hey! If you’re done taking a walk, let’s go home!”

“Yeah, yeah. We came too far.”

Someone shouted from far away.

Snickering followed.

It was probably the group that had been pursuing from another direction, farther ahead than them.

“Why did we even come all the way out here?”

When someone who had been passionately bragging complained anew, the others agreed.

The man agreed too. They could have caught them much earlier. There had been no need to come this far.

But things had gotten a little complicated in the middle.

Members of the group assigned to guard and patrol the field’s outskirts had started talking about seeing the boss of the Northern Forest.

They always talked nonsense, but blasting it all over the forum was another matter. It had delayed the pursuit while they worked to get the forum under control.

‘Are they idiots or what?’

The man thought of the people still desperately running away.

They were posting exposés on the forum as they fled, but as always, the people monitoring things in real time had buried them under flood posts.

There were always trolls on the forum.

With winter here, more people stayed indoors instead of spending time outside, so naturally the rate of new forum posts had increased.

Any exposé someone posted would be pushed onto the next page by dozens of people simultaneously posting troll bait, spam, and pointless nonsense.

And no matter how convincing or desperate the exposé was, they could make their bait posts resemble exposés too, passing it off as some kind of trend.

They had been doing this all along.

Since before winter even came.

Even after seeing enough of that, they had attempted to escape.

Were they idiots? Or did they think this was their only chance?

‘They intend to get as far away as they can before they die.’

He could guess.

When they died, they would probably choose to restart nearby instead of restarting in a random location.

‘They’ll make the restart delay as long as possible, then hold out until the pursuers withdraw.’

If they restarted randomly, they had no idea where they would end up. Since the man and woman had fled together, they would naturally not want to be separated.

‘Love, huh.’

To think they could do that even in a situation like this.

Then again, they said love bloomed even during war. The man slowly shook his head.

‘But love can’t overcome everything.’

Their love was about to face a harsh test.

He could roughly imagine what that process would look like.

He did not like it, but he too was only one person trying to survive day by day in this place.

‘If I can’t change things, I adapt.’

That was how he had always lived.

Outside, and here.

There was no need or reason to change.

Maybe the only thing different from then was this body.

The man lightly pressed down on the quiver rattling at his waist. Today, even such minor noises bothered him.

That was when a low scream came from far ahead.

A muffled groan, a strangled sound leaking out in short bursts.

“What? Are they killing them?”

“They’ll respawn nearby anyway.”

The people in his group who had heard it reacted similarly. They assumed the others were killing them first, stripping them naked.

But soon, the front went quiet, and the atmosphere became a little strange.

If something had happened, they should have shouted to let everyone know. But there was no report.

“Hey! What’s going on over there?”

Someone shouted.

No one answered. The man who had shouted spat on the ground and cursed under his breath.

“That was this way, right?”

They had been heading there anyway.

They could go and see for themselves.

And soon, they did.

They saw several torn-apart corpses lying over the white snow, with blood scattered carelessly around them.

“Uh...”

One of their group, someone said to possess a tracking-type skill, suddenly crouched in one spot on the ground.

They started to say something, then began trembling.

It was already cold, so trembling was not strange.

The problem was their face and eyes.

“...?”

Curious, the man approached. Without needing an answer, he understood and made a similar expression.

Footprints scattered across the snow.

Neither their size nor shape belonged to a human.

And they belonged even less to a creature found in this forest.

“It’s obviously not a Wolf.”

“Bears... aren’t around here.”

They knew the tracks were not human.

But many of them did not know what they belonged to. They talked freely, listing animals they knew.

But those who had frozen the instant they saw them had identified what kind of predator they belonged to from the complete shape of the tracks alone.

“Was it real?”

Someone spoke.

He checked the face of one of the bodies lying on the ground.

“Yeah. It was this bastard.”

“What was?”

“The guy who posted on the forum. The one who said the Northern Forest boss had appeared.”

“A Tiger?”

“...Are these Tiger tracks?”

Only then did the others flinch in alarm.

They hurriedly grabbed their weapons and protective gear, but it changed nothing.

What they saw here was only the result.

No. It might still have been part of the process.

“Argh!”

A scream rang out again.

Not far from there.

It was probably another group that had been pursuing from a different direction.

“Go!”

Someone shouted.

But they headed in the opposite direction from the scream.

“How are we supposed to deal with a Tiger? We need to get out of here and report to the base first...”

“Yeah. Right.”

The man who had been watching indifferently from one side once again confirmed the nature of this group when no one even mentioned saving their comrades.

‘I’m no different.’

Muttering that to himself, he pulled out the bow slung diagonally across his torso and lightly nocked an arrow.

“What are you doing?”

Had the person standing nearby found his actions strange?

They stepped back and asked, but as more people began to watch their surroundings warily, their expression stiffened and they copied him.

They belonged to the same place, but they were not companions.

And they had enough sense to realize something was wrong when they saw corpses scattered around here.

Gulp.

There was a high chance a Tiger was nearby.

But it had not eaten the corpses and had simply left them at the scene. That meant it was not hunting because it was hungry.

They edged away.

They spread out from one another.

If necessary, they would not hesitate to attack and incapacitate someone else if it gave them a chance to escape alive.

No one considered fleeing together.

Even if they had, everyone had already committed to a different idea.

“Let’s split up.”

“Yeah.”

No one mentioned informing the forum.

The base would probably respond just as it had when the post about the Tiger had first appeared.

‘They need proof.’

The man noticed someone who appeared to be taking pictures of the scene and thought that, but even then, he realized something else and hurried away.

‘The screaming stopped.’

The Tiger had clearly finished another hunt, or perhaps another game.

How many groups remained?

Three directions? Four?

If it had been three, then this group was next.

Whoosh!

Their thoughts had been similar.

Everyone except those slower to react sprang off in different directions.

Someone climbed a tree.

Perhaps they thought even a Tiger could not climb there. They had given up on moving and sought immediate safety instead.

Maybe that was the smart choice.

The Tiger might target the ones moving on the ground first.

Crunch, crunch.

But after the man had already traveled a considerable distance from the scene, he realized that the low scream that followed had come not from the ground, but from above.

‘Something’s wrong.’

More screams followed, or perhaps shouts.

At some point, the man felt a chill run down his spine.

It was not a skill.

Just pure survival instinct.

“...”

When he glanced back as he ran, he clearly saw it standing among the trees in the distance.

Its body slightly lowered.

A massive Tiger with its head thrust forward, swaying from side to side.

Its eyes were fixed directly on him.

‘I’m going to die.’

He would be ripped apart.

Or eaten alive.

Even though he was not in a situation where he would die just yet, countless memories and possibilities flashed through his mind like a panorama.

But none of them offered any way out of this.

He was not faster than the Tiger, nor was he stronger.

“Aaargh!”

What was even worse was that screams continued somewhere else despite the Tiger looking at him right now.

‘There’s more than one?’

Could there be two Field Bosses?

No, it was strange enough for the boss from another field to come here in the first place.

‘Do more bosses appear when the Field Level rises? But there was no talk of that in the Rabbit Field to the west.’

Maybe those people had hidden the information.

The Feral Dog boss there was relatively easy to defeat.

“...!”

What stopped those thoughts was the Tiger, which seemed to be prowling around but had already closed a considerable distance.

More precisely, when he spotted something half-hidden by the fur around its neck, the man could not help remembering a rumor that had briefly passed through the forum some time ago.

[Juggernaut has a Tiger with him?]

I saw them from far away. Juggernaut was walking with a Tiger. Did he tame it?

- He’s probably being chased.

- Ah, lol. He’s begging it to spare him.

- lololol

Most people had laughed and moved on, but some had taken the story quite seriously.

‘It was real?’

There was definitely something around the Tiger’s neck.

It was probably a taming item.

He did not stop to consider whether it was possible to tame a Tiger, the boss of a field.

If it really was possible, though, he knew there was only one person who could have done it.

“Juggernaut!”