WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 38: 038
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Somehow, he had come to take it for granted.
That killing monsters would always yield pelts.
It was because he had grown accustomed to the Nemesis effect.
“Bosses should drop them, shouldn’t they?”
That was why he had planned to kill it just once before leaving.
It was not an Area appealing enough to settle down in. He had only intended to take some loot, or at least a souvenir, to remember the visit by.
But it had not dropped.
The Boss Chest and various other things had appeared without issue, but the Giant Brown Bear's pelt had not.
“One of the lackeys it kept around did drop one, though.”
He could not just leave like this.
So he decided to stay another day.
Surely it would drop tomorrow.
But the following day, even before the boss respawned, he had a bad feeling.
Unwelcome guests appeared in his aerial view, and no matter how he looked at it, they were not positioning themselves to help with the raid.
One of them was even faintly spreading poison through the air. If Detoxification had not activated, he might not have noticed it at all.
‘Looks like they see me as a treasure goblin.’
Had they not heard about the Tiger?
He had thought a day would be enough for the rumors to spread, but perhaps that was exactly why it drew even more greed.
‘Taming items go into Personal Effects when someone dies.’
So before the boss monster appeared, he cleaned up the area first.
He gave three verbal warnings. Anyone still there after that was dealt with.
He ignored their protests that they had not done anything.
That was precisely the problem.
“I told you to leave. Three times.”
Roughly fifteen people died, excluding those who had moved far enough away. When another three died after approaching for the Personal Effects, nobody else came near.
The raid itself ended quickly.
It was the same place where the boss had first been killed yesterday.
This was only a Level 2 field. Even a boss monster was not much different from yesterday's, at least not to him.
“Oh.”
Fortunately, the Giant Brown Bear dropped its pelt today.
He had been wondering whether to stay longer or leave if it did not drop. Now, he did not have to think about it.
“Let's go.”
He had accomplished everything he came here to do.
His system map had expanded reasonably well, he had watched Beavers from a distance, and he had hunted Bears.
His next destination was not a return to the northern forest.
He would head farther south and enter the Wasteland field.
‘Since I'm already out here, I might as well make a full circuit.’
That was the plan.
He would loop east, then south and west, before returning to the northern forest.
His secondary goal was to hunt the boss in every field he crossed. He was looking forward to it.
But people kept getting in his way.
They ambushed him in the forest, laid traps, and even used hostages as bait.
“I'm trying to keep this civil. Why do they keep doing this?”
The farther he went, the more fiercely they reacted. He wondered why, until he found that they had their reasons.
“So their base was this way.”
One of the Villain Clans had its base directly along the route Seo Hajin was taking.
From their perspective, it probably looked like he was marching on their headquarters for revenge.
“Hmm.”
He did not bother correcting that misunderstanding.
Instead, he decided to make it a fact.
“I've built up enough justification either way.”
Saving people while he was at it would be good for his reputation too. There was also the shallow calculation that they might become his customers later.
And so, the Villains' Watchtowers were destroyed.
Even their relatively sturdy outpost could not last an hour before collapsing.
What shocked them was not how quickly the outpost fell.
It was the sight of the rubble vanishing somewhere in an instant.
“...Subspace?”
Someone's thought.
A simple Inventory could not possibly hold all that. It would require Subspace, and quite a large one at that.
And so, the rumor that Juggernaut possessed Subspace spread at the same speed the Villain Clan crumbled.
New Firewood listings under Juggernaut's name began flooding the marketplace.
- Huh? No forced bundle this time?
ㄴ Stop typing and buy it.
ㄴ Already did.
It was another couple of hours before people learned that the Firewood was not made from Northern Forest trees, but from dismantling an eastern Villain camp.
[What the Villains Did in the Eastern Field]
[I Lived as a Slave for Months]
[Why the Loggers Couldn't Sell Firewood]
Posts with similar titles began pouring in.
At first, people thought they were the usual rage-bait posts. Quite a few actually were, but it gradually became clear that this was different.
A Villain group numbering at least in the hundreds had been kidnapping nearby users and doing all sorts of things to them.
Among the victims were quite a few people who had kept their Filming Skills equipped, gathering evidence as they waited for the day they would be freed.
The photos and videos they had taken were uploaded to the board.
Naturally, there was no consideration for the idea that the accused were people too and had rights. No blurring, either.
There was consideration for the other side.
The victims had endured horrific things. What had been done to them could not be shown as it was, so parts had to be edited or censored.
* * *
Boom!
- Juggernaut!
- Juggernaut is here!
- You should call him Sir Juggernaut!
- Juggernaut oppa!
‘The oppa part is a little much.’
Shouts came from every direction.
This was already the third prison facility.
The people here already knew the situation through the community board. When Juggernaut's party smashed through one side of the fence and appeared, everyone welcomed them.
There were few surprise attacks and little resistance.
Those with quick instincts had already fled. The guards who remained barely numbered more than ten.
“I surrender! I... Aagh! I surrendered!”
Nobody had said they would accept that.
They needed to say something that made sense.
Seo Hajin killed the Villain in front of him with Juggernaut's club, then looked over the other Avatars and pets.
‘Nice weather today.’
The sky was clear.
It made looking down at the ground much easier.
Fences collapsed here and there.
Prison doors were broken down, and people were freed.
Some Villains took hostages.
Some people shoved themselves toward blades, saying they did not care if they died. Someone really did die, but others subdued the Villain in the meantime.
Piercing screams followed.
People who had died and restarted found their own corpses, touched them, and merged back into one.
It was not a skill.
He had only recently learned that when someone who had died touched their own corpse, the corpse vanished.
Apparently, it had no effect other than removing the corpse. It did not grant Points, and it had nothing to do with Personal Effects, which appeared separately as bags.
But things were somewhat different there.
Perhaps because those people had died so many times that they no longer dropped Personal Effects, their corpses still had the clothes they had been wearing.
When they touched their own corpses, the bodies vanished and the clothes they had been wearing transferred to them.
They were rags, barely fit to be called clothes.
Still, without even that in this cold, they would not last long before suffering hypothermia.
Some people searched for their own corpses. Others killed Villains and took their Personal Effects.
Some told Juggernaut's party members where the Villains' hidden warehouses were. Several Villains hiding there struggled desperately before being taken out.
One person belatedly changed their expression, stopped resisting, and tried to bargain.
Before they could finish, an axe blade lodged in their forehead.
“Why is this yours?”
Why did they think they could bargain with warehouse supplies that were not even theirs?
After checking the dead person's Personal Effects, Vulcan realized that they had been planning to use the torches and oil inside to set the place on fire if necessary.
“They might've had a slightly better chance of surviving if they'd set it on fire and run.”
The warehouse contained food and various supplies, but none of it was particularly impressive.
There was naturally no Condition Maintenance Effect.
The food was only frozen chunks of meat and plants resembling potatoes.
“Use this as you see fit.”
Juggernaut ended up taking some supplies from his Subspace and giving them to the people there.
Most of it had been taken from places he had raided on the way, so there was almost no financial loss.
In fact, he was making money thanks to dismantling the fences surrounding the facilities.
The Firewood made from them was listed at a very reasonable price, making it quite popular.
‘The board is noisy.’
As he continued destroying several more facilities, he learned that the remnants of the broken Villain Clan were joining another Villain Clan that still remained.
“That direction is different.”
There were kidnapped victims there too.
But he had not set out to save people in the first place. They had simply been along his route and made themselves troublesome, so he dealt with them while he was at it.
‘Still, if I save some people and not others, there could be fairness issues.’
It was not because of the loot piled in his Subspace.
It was even less because of the three-digit number of Personal Effects Bags added to one side of it.
“Ahem.”
Anyway, that was not why.
Rather than deal with them halfheartedly, he thought it would be better to sweep them out properly and reduce the chance of future trouble.
“You can use this as a blanket, then wrap it around like this and fasten this button here, and it turns into a cloak.”
“Oh.”
In one corner of the clearing, Stone handed out Wolf Pelt cloaks while explaining how to use them.
They were made from low-grade pelts, but they were still quite good at blocking the cold wind.
Elsewhere, people had already started fires and set pots over them.
From what he heard, they planned to recover their strength here before heading to the Logger Clan farther away.
Nobody intended to return to the Treehouse.
If they remained in the forest, the Villains would obviously regroup.
‘They must have a lot to think about too.’
The Logger Clan.
He knew they were being cursed at now that people had learned they had stood by while this happened.
But the Loggers did not seem to be offering excuses or apologies.
He had briefly seen someone mention that it was their leader's decision.
‘They weren't good, but they weren't evil either.’
Maybe standing by was evil in its own way.
It would look that way to the victims.
Seo Hajin had nothing to say about it.
He only thought things would get quite noisy from now on.
* * *
“How can a person tear down buildings like that?!”
The resentful shout was almost a scream.
Of course, they could do it too if they put their minds to it.
Their bodies and abilities had already surpassed ordinary humans.
But there were limits.
When it came to demolishing buildings, they were about as effective as electric drills.
Juggernaut was on the level of a medium excavator.
And it was not just him.
They seemed somewhat weaker, but his subordinates were each formidable in their own right.
Someone guessed they had to be at least Level 30.
It was absurd.
Even after forming a party and concentrating as much experience as possible on one person, reaching Level 20 was not easy.
But nearly seven people?
Where would they even get enough Keys for that?
‘Ah.’
As the man ran without stopping, he remembered again that his opponent was Juggernaut.
A monster who had hunted all day in Northern Forest for months.
There were even rumors that he had begun hunting at night at some point.
If he monopolized boss monster raids with a single party again and again, perhaps he could gather enough experience and Keys.
‘That's not important!’
Rough thorny grass scraped his cheeks, leaving cuts.
Those damned things survived even in the bitter cold of midwinter, making everything more difficult.
‘I need to report this quickly.’
A small number of people had escaped when their base collapsed.
The Clan Master and other key executives were among them.
The reason the base had fallen so quickly was because they had not defended it in the first place.
The man had been sent as a messenger and scout to ask another Villain Clan still in the field to take them in.
But what he saw was not welcome, hostility, contempt, or indifference.
Something completely unexpected was unfolding there.
Pant. Pant.
In the temporary forest camp where the defeated members had gathered, he finally arrived and caught his breath before hurriedly looking for the Clan Master.
Even while fleeing, the Clan Master had kept the women he usually kept close by his side.
Now, the Clan Master was sprawled out comfortably inside a tent heated enough to feel stifling from the Firewood burning within.
“How did it go? Will they take us in?”
“Well...”
Honestly, it was difficult not to let his expression change when he saw that sight.
But once he remembered that he was one of the villains too, he thought perhaps it was only fitting.
“They were doing something insane.”
“Something insane?”
“They were... killing the slaves.”
“How many?”
“All of them.”
“...All several hundred?”
“Then they made them restart and kept killing them again.”
“They're gathering corpses.”
The Clan Master understood the plan.
Everyone knew that clan had a Necromancer.
Their clan was far smaller in scale, but the Necromancer's presence was why they had not been able to deal with them easily.
“User corpses don't last long, do they?”
“Yes. At most, about an hour.”
“You know. Since the countdown starts once they raise them with a curse, they plan to pile up as many as possible and wait.”
“Yes.”
“Then what about us?”
The Clan Master asked again, then shook his head.
“No. If we go there, we'll end up the same way.”
“That was how it looked. I saw corpses from our side too, people who seemed to have fled there...”
“So you turned around?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That was the right choice.”
Then where would they go?
The Clan Master thought for a while, but it was not an easy question to answer.
In the freezing winter, there were not many places where they could escape the cold and find food.
“We should head west.”
“West means...”
“Toward the river. We can at least be self-sufficient there for a while.”
If they broke through the frozen river, there would be some fish beneath it.
And according to what people said on the board, Juggernaut was heading south. Going west would be better if they wanted to avoid him.
Aagh!
That was when it happened.
Something suddenly broke.
The scream mixed into the sound startled the man, the Clan Master, and the women at either side.
“I'll check what happened...”
The man could not finish.
Something flew in, smashing straight through one of the tent poles.
Instead of collapsing downward, the leather roof flew sideways with the pole.
The scene outside, now exposed, was clearly different from before the man entered the tent.
Crash!
Kra-boom!
“It's a fucking monster!”
“Juggernaut is here!”
Everyone was running in every direction.
It did not seem like fighting or resisting was even an option.
There was no choice.
The two Tigers rampaging around were bad enough, but Juggernaut's subordinates were strangely powerful too.
They seemed even stronger than before.
Maybe they had acquired new Skills. Every time they swung their weapons, a terrifying sound rang out, and incredible destructive force exploded from the point of impact.
The poorly assembled wooden barricades shattered without resistance.
The tent, slightly less sturdy than the Clan Master's but still fairly solid, had its poles split in half with a single casual slash.
“This is insane!”
Buildings were not the only things being split apart.
Blood and screams filled the area.
Yet Juggernaut, the one creating this hellscape, wore an indifferent face without a trace of emotion.
‘I'm finished.’
The man decided he would think about the Clan after he survived.
Fortunately, he had a fast movement Skill.
He had been exhausted while traveling there, but he had recovered somewhat while catching his breath and reporting.
Juggernaut's group did not seem to chase down people who fled.
Of course, those who moved slowly while gathering whatever they could were cut down without exception.
But those who abandoned everything from the beginning and ran survived.
“It's over.”
How far had he gotten from that hell?
His clothes were a mess from forcing his way through the rough bushes, and his exposed face and forearms were covered in cuts.
But he had survived.
Thinking only of that, the man checked his surroundings and chose a direction.
‘Let's go to the river.’
The Clan Master was probably dead, but his thought had not been wrong.
Juggernaut had originally been heading south.
‘The reason he suddenly came this way... A predator must have gotten a taste for blood.’
He would probably head for the one remaining Villain Clan.
That place was also far from the river.
Which meant the river was the direction to survival.
Having made up his mind, he began moving.
Perhaps he let his guard down for a moment. He failed to notice a trap at ankle height.
It was an extremely simple rope trap.
It had probably been set to catch escaped slaves.
But he was the one caught in it.
“Fuck...”
His ankle was caught tight, leaving him hanging upside down in the air.
He hurriedly pulled a dagger from his Inventory.
But as he began cutting the rope, an unwelcome sound reached his ears.
Snort.
What emerged from the bushes was a large Bear with dark fur.
“...”
This was not Bear territory.
Even within the same field, there were designated places where Bears appeared.
But he remembered that the boss had been killed for two days in a row recently.
‘Has the population increased?’
If their respawn locations had increased along with their numbers, then finding a Bear here was not impossible.
And now, that Bear had noticed him.
“...”
When their eyes met, instead of cutting the rope, he hurriedly raised his upper body and gripped the rope with both hands.
The branch above, where the rope was tied.
If he could just climb up there, he might survive for the moment.
Swish!
But something suddenly flew in and cut the rope binding his ankle.
He fell with a Thud!
He hurriedly untied the rope around his ankle, but his expression was not bright.
What had just happened was not someone helping him.
They had done it because they wanted the Bear to eat him.
To keep him from climbing the tree.
And that was exactly what happened.
He moved desperately, but the Bear pounced faster than he could free himself and stand.
He did not die without resistance.
Unfortunately, he was not strong enough to face a Bear alone.
His feeble resistance turned into louder screams.
“...”
The Bear's meal ended quickly.
From a nearby tree, Companion No. 1 readjusted their grip on the bow, quietly descended to the ground, picked up the Personal Effects Bag left behind, and disappeared.
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