The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor - Chapter 36

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 36

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When the man slowly turned his head, what he saw was not Juggernaut, but another well-known member of that party.

Vulcan.

That was probably the name.

“Give me information.”

“What kind of information...?”

“Anything.”

“Uh...”

He wanted to ask Vulcan to at least narrow it down, but that would probably make him a snack for the Tiger currently grooming itself with those enormous front paws.

So the man rambled off whatever came to mind.

Juggernaut had not come himself, instead sending a subordinate. The man assumed they intended to take over the Area, so he squeezed out everything he knew about the situation here, including the number and scale of the groups settled in the region.

“Two Clans and their subordinate groups.”

“Technically, there are three Clans. We don’t know much about the last one. They don’t do anything outside. They just stay tucked away in a corner.”

“What do they do there?”

“Logging.”

“Hm?”

“They only focus on their own survival. As far as I know, they don’t bring in outsiders and make them work like the others do.”

But the man added that he had never seen them himself. He had only heard rumors.

“Then ordinary Loggers only belong to that Clan, while the rest...”

“Right. The rest all do this.”

They captured people and used them as slaves.

At first, they used something like a contract. Later, they used whatever was precious or desperately needed to the person as leverage.

In severe cases, they repeatedly killed people until they no longer dropped Personal Effects. The man and woman they had been chasing were apparently one such case.

“If they died that much, wouldn’t they use Random Restart?”

“Even with Random Restart, it’s rare to cross a field boundary. You just start farther away.”

They said that if someone died near another field, they could sometimes restart across its boundary. But since the Clans had practically taken control of the entire field, it did not mean much.

“There’s a limit to how far you can go. This case was just unusual.”

Vulcan furrowed his brows for a moment after hearing how many people were being forced into labor and exploited, but did not say much.

Still, he occasionally made small corrections, saying some information differed slightly from what he had heard.

That was enough for the man to guess that someone elsewhere was undergoing a similar interrogation.

‘How are they communicating?’

The question suddenly occurred to him.

Maybe Juggernaut had a Skill or tool that allowed him to communicate with someone outside the message board.

“There might be inaccuracies, but I’m not lying on purpose. I have no reason to.”

“Don’t you have loyalty to your Clan?”

“As if something like that exists.”

The man laughed.

A Clan was nothing more than a collection of villainous nobodies. Even the people at the top did not expect loyalty from them.

“We only came together for our own benefit. A guy like me just wanted to survive.”

“By squeezing other people dry?”

“Was the outside world any different? It’s all the same, there or here.”

“I never treated people like slaves.”

“It’s a world where people come back after dying. Murder has become cheap. Everything else is treated even more lightly.”

The man showed no guilt.

He only seemed bleak about how things had turned out.

Though Vulcan was questioning him, the man did not seem to expect that he would be spared once the interrogation was over.

Then he spoke.

“You’re going to kill me, right?”

“I’m considering it.”

“...Want to hear this too before deciding?”

“Go ahead.”

The man made an offer.

He would remove one of the Skills currently equipped in a slot. In return, could they let him go?

“Even if you take everything in my inventory, it won’t be worth as much as this. Of course, my Personal Effects would give you five more inventory slots, but even taking that into account...”

“Equipped Skills don’t drop even if you die.”

“Right.”

“What Skill is it?”

“One boosts the piercing power of projectiles. Arrows, anything that flies and hits a target. It works on all of them.”

“Hm.”

“The other one... This might be a little questionable.”

“Tell me.”

“It cuts system fees in half. When you buy something from the marketplace, you pay a fee to the system, right? It reduces that by half.”

“Only the fee?”

“Hm? Well... It says it reduces the Points paid to the system by half. But the marketplace is the only place it would apply right now. Or maybe the fee when Points are transferred between users.”

That was why he had called it questionable.

When Vulcan asked why he had it equipped, the man gave a short laugh. He needed to buy firewood as soon as it appeared on the marketplace.

“Don’t you have any other Skills?”

“Not on me. They’re in storage at the base. But you’re not going to come all the way there with me.”

“Right.”

“Of course, if you kill me, you’ll find out whether I hid anything. But I’m not betting my life on that.”

“I’ll take the system-fee one.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait... Here.”

The man removed the Skill from his slot and handed it over. Then he stepped back, trembling as his gaze shifted between the Tiger and Vulcan.

“Will you report what happened when you return to the base?”

“I won’t if you tell me not to.”

The man said that once he returned, he would gather his things and run as far away as possible. He had a rough idea of what Juggernaut intended to do here.

“You’re going to kill them all, right?”

“......”

Vulcan did not answer.

The man seemed to take that as an answer. He nodded and slowly took another step back.

“Can I go?”

“You gave me the Skill. The deal is settled.”

“...Thank you.”

“Run. Like you said.”

“Okay.”

The man ran desperately.

Deals and promises only held as long as the stronger person allowed them to.

No one would complain if such things were broken here. For now, all he could do was run.

He put his bow, quiver, and miscellaneous gear into his inventory and focused only on fleeing. At some point, he looked back.

Neither the Tiger nor Vulcan chased him.

He had survived.

But what mattered was what came next.

‘Informants aren’t welcome anywhere.’

He had given them everything.

Everything he knew.

So returning would not make him safe. Some people would return to the Clan headquarters, whether they had died or begged for their lives in a similar way.

‘I need to get back before the restart waiting time ends.’

He would return, gather his belongings, and leave.

For now, that was all he needed to think about.

* * *

Hrrmph.

As the user fled into the distance, Sangun made a displeased sound. But when Vulcan stroked it, the sound turned into a purr.

“Everything depends on the circumstances. A questionable Skill that only reduces marketplace fees for one person can have an incredible effect for someone else.”

[50% Discount Membership]

- 50% discount on amounts paid to the system

- Discounts do not apply to transactions or payments between users. Only fees may be discounted.

The description was simple.

He had wondered whether it might not work, but after equipping it in a slot, it clearly did. The cost of expanding his Subspace had been cut in half.

“So Points really aren’t consumed as resources. They’re payments made to the system.”

Previously, expanding five Blocks at once cost 1,000 Points. Now it cost 500. Expanding slowly cost half of that again.

“So expanding in bulk now costs the same as letting it expand gradually.”

That was huge.

No matter how well he earned Points, he did not have enough to throw around on Subspace expansion.

He had only occasionally used the instant expansion function when he absolutely needed more space, carefully considering how many Points he had.

But now that burden had been cut in half...

“This is enough to let him live.”

He had not forgotten that the man was a villain.

But honestly, it did not matter to him.

Could letting him go harm him later? No. In truth, killing or sparing him would probably lead to the same result.

“I already have enough Personal Effects.”

He had obtained more than ten Personal Effects from the other pursuers he killed. After moving around, he found there had been more villains than it had looked like from above.

There were still several people elsewhere begging for their lives, so he might gain even more Personal Effects.

“Let’s head back soon. We’ve gone too far.”

Grrr.

He saddled the riderless Sangun and climbed on. Then he quickly crossed the forest to return to the other Avatar.

The person begging for their life there had been similar to the man from before, but unfortunately, the outcome was different.

That person could not offer any Skill or function useful to him. They only vaguely promised to do anything if spared.

When the mood turned bad, they started threatening him, saying things would happen if he killed them. He saw no need to listen further and put an end to it.

“Some had died twice.”

Had they thought he would leave soon? Or thought he would not collect all those Personal Effects?

There were people who had restarted nearby instead of using Random Restart.

Three of them, no less.

“Right. It’s too cold.”

It would not be easy to restart naked and return to their base.

They had apparently considered that and taken a gamble, only to lose once more.

‘Adding all of these will give me around seventy more slots... Hm. I don’t need them right away.’

There were still more unused Personal Effects Bags in one corner of his Subspace.

Items from the Northern Forest were limited anyway. Once he stopped running out of inventory space, he had simply begun stockpiling them.

‘The stock goes in the Subspace.’

So this time, he added them there as well.

While checking, he found around seventy Personal Effects Bags gathered in his Subspace.

‘More villains came than I realized.’

Villains who had entered the Northern Forest to target him.

They had left behind that many Personal Effects Bags as gifts.

‘They said you can’t list them on the marketplace, but you can trade them privately.’

He might be able to trade them there.

He had heard there were Clans that were not villainous.

‘And some people need inventory space immediately.’

He collected only the corpses with relatively intact limbs from among the bodies scattered around him and stored them in his Subspace. Then he sent the Avatar at the scene to the rest area and moved only Vulcan separately.

He arrived beneath a large tree.

Using the massive trunk as a windbreak, a man and woman sat in front of a campfire.

Juggernaut was already there.

He did not bother hiding his main Avatar.

He might have been able to pretend that only Juggernaut’s subordinates had come, but such a setup would be troublesome and complicated.

‘It’s not like the north will be taken from me just because I left for a while.’

Everything he had was on him.

The shelter behind the waterfall was only a dug-out cave. Nothing was left there.

‘Subspace is really nice.’

Thinking that, he watched the two people stiffen when they noticed Vulcan approaching.

They had already seen Sangun, but this was probably their first time seeing someone ride one.

“H-Hello.”

The woman hesitantly greeted him first. What had her name been? It was an English-style name, but he had forgotten it even after hearing it.

“My name is Diane.”

“Vulcan.”

He had no intention of finding fault with a Korean person for choosing an English name. He had named his own Avatars things like Juggernaut and Vulcan.

‘That’s what game IDs are like.’

Still, at least she had chosen something that sounded like a person’s name.

Among the villains he killed today, there had been someone with numbers in their name.

When he asked before killing them, they said they had saved multiple Avatar types marked with numbers when setting up their first Avatar, then forgotten to remove the numbers before starting.

‘That can happen.’

After nodding, he made it look as though he and Juggernaut exchanged greetings, then left with Sangun.

More precisely, he entered his Subspace just as he disappeared from the man and woman’s sight. That left only Juggernaut outside.

‘That was a pretty useful experience.’

He had never put such a large distance between his Avatars as he had today. Even when he had tried to cross a field boundary before, they had not been that far apart.

‘When they get too far apart, it’s better to separate my viewpoints. I should split them once they’re about one kilometer apart.’

A new experience.

A few new principles based on it.

At the same time, Seo Hajin looked once more through Juggernaut’s eyes at the man and woman eating warm food.

He had talked with them enough.

He had obtained all the information he could get from them.

The information they could not provide had been obtained from villains with loose tongues.

But he would not kill them just because they no longer had value, nor would he abandon them to fend for themselves.

“You said you know the location, right?”

“Yes. We were originally trying to go there too. But the pursuit party caught up with us on the way...”

Of course.

The direction the escapees would head was obvious, so they had likely blocked that route first. But even knowing that would happen, the two had no choice but to run.

“Opportunities like that don’t come easily.”

“I see.”

They knew the location of the Clan camp belonging to the Loggers, who were surviving independently rather than acting as villains.

Seo Hajin intended to go there.

The first reason was that he wanted to meet normal users. But the greater reason was that their camp was close to the habitat of the Bear, the Area Boss of this region.

‘Since I came all this way, I should at least see a Bear.’

The man and woman seemed to feel a complicated mix of gratitude, awkwardness, and slight fear after being saved by him and given warm shelter, food, and clothes.

Maybe they could no longer trust people.

It did not matter.

“Let’s consider this an advance payment.”

Juggernaut reached into his clothes and took something out, handing one to each of them.

An old bag.

Someone’s Personal Effects.

“Ah.”

“I heard you’ve died too many times and no longer have inventory space.”

“That’s right. We don’t have a single slot.”

“...Can we really use these?”

“They’re an advance payment. If you get me safely to the Logger camp, I’ll give you something else as the remaining payment.”

“Ah.”

If things went well, they could recover up to ten inventory slots. That would at least be enough to live as Loggers.

The man and woman quickly nodded.

They began bustling around as though they wanted to leave immediately, but Juggernaut remained seated.

“Let’s rest a little longer.”

“Pardon?”

“You might be able to get more bags.”

They did not understand what he meant.

Maybe they thought he was waiting for the exhausted pair to recover more. But Seo Hajin had not meant it figuratively.

About two hours later, he caught several more villains who had held out longer than the others before restarting in the same place.

‘I knew they’d be here.’

There was a limit to how long someone could endure without restarting.

He had heard that if they exceeded the waiting limit, they would automatically restart in a random area.

‘Are no additional people coming from the villains’ base?’

He had actually been looking forward to that a little.

They would not leave their base empty and send everyone out, so he thought they might send a scouting party and a small force.

But perhaps they had not received a proper report, or maybe they had received one and ignored it or were discussing it. Either way, there was no reaction.

‘The message board is quiet too.’

Eventually, he decided to leave.

It was already deep into the night, but the man and woman said it was actually better now. There were no nocturnal predators in this forest.

“There aren’t Leopards or anything?”

“No. I heard there are some in the north, though. Is that right?”

“There are. Black Leopards too.”

They put out the campfire and cleaned up the area.

They said the camp was quite far from here, so they would have to walk for a long time. But Juggernaut had no intention of walking there.

“Argh!”

The two people were startled when two Sanguns suddenly appeared out of the darkness, but seeing the saddles on each of them seemed to calm them a little.

“You tamed two of them.”

“Taming items don’t drop easily.”

“Ah... So if they did, you would have tamed more.”

Sangun was more than large enough to carry both of them.

It had already been big, but it grew even larger after evolving once.

‘The Humanization type did not appear.’

The man and woman awkwardly climbed on, one in front of the other.

Fortunately, the man unexpectedly had experience riding horses as a hobby, so he took the reins.

“I did a little horseback riding as a hobby...”

“You must be rich.”

“No, not really... It’s more like something you see in dramas.”

“Dramas?”

“A hidden illegitimate child. You know the kind.”

“Ah.”

He suddenly remembered the topic that had once been popular on the message board, that the people here were all those with no one waiting for them.

The man seemed to be similar.

He said that just because the woman who gave birth to him was his mother, it did not mean she cared for him. He had only been the pretext and means that had gotten her the life she enjoyed now.

“I have no complaints. I don’t have a normal family, but I did get things other people can’t.”

“Everything has pros and cons.”

“Exactly. Haha.”

The man laughed.

Then he said he did not know how long it had been since he had laughed like that.

“Shall we pick up the pace?”

“Faster than this? Honey, are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

They did not reach Sangun’s top speed, but they accelerated to a light run, an easy canter.

Horses and Tigers felt different, but perhaps his claim that horseback riding had been a hobby was true. The man handled Sangun reasonably well.

Along the way, they encountered scouting or guard parties of villains from unknown Clans several times.

Each time, the man and woman became certain that they were no longer the ones being pursued.