WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 4
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[Please select an ingredient.]
[You selected ‘Wolf Meat.’]
[You may process or cook it.]
[1. Grilled Wolf Meat]
[2. Dried Wolf Meat]
[3. Pressed Wolf Meat]
[4. Mince]
[5. Dice]
[6. Slice Thinly]
‘So there’s simple processing besides cooking. Maybe I can use this as an ingredient in other dishes.’
He wasn’t worried about the ingredients spoiling.
He had not received a notification that the meat had gone bad yet, and even if it did, he would have more ingredients by then.
“Let’s grill it first.”
Cooking was quick.
There was a loading time, but it only lasted a few seconds. Naturally, it was much shorter than actually grilling meat over a fire.
The resulting dish, called Grilled Wolf Meat, was exactly what it sounded like, a large chunk of meat grilled whole.
“Ah. I should’ve sliced it before grilling it.”
Thankfully, he could slice the cooked meat afterward. He put a piece in his mouth, chewed, and frowned slightly.
“It tastes bad.”
It had a faint, strange gamey smell.
It was not bad enough to be inedible, but it was the sort of thing he would not eat even if it were free.
Maybe he could eat it if someone paid him. Of course, that would probably depend on the person.
“Still, it’s edible.”
He chewed and swallowed.
There was obviously no salt or seasoning, so he repeatedly forced the dry meat into his stomach like a machine.
Then came something mildly surprising.
His extreme hunger gradually faded, and his digestion was so remarkable that he could feel the meat being digested in real time.
‘This doesn’t feel like my imagination.’
The muscle aches that had begun to set in faded away, and he actually felt stronger.
Even the small injuries that had scabbed over but not fully healed seemed to be recovering faster than before.
“There’s no health gauge, but eating helps with physical recovery too?”
Hajin nodded and kept eating.
There was still plenty of meat. Usually, one out of every two wolves he killed dropped meat, and sometimes one wolf dropped two chunks.
‘Minced grilled meat is awkward to eat. If I grill it after slicing it thinly, it seems to burn.’
The easiest method was grilling it first, then slicing it thinly. The method he had happened to try first turned out to be the best.
‘So I’ve gotten past the first hurdle, more or less.’
He looked around.
From above Juggernaut’s line of sight, he surveyed the forest through Multiple Viewpoints.
He occasionally spotted animals other than wolves, but none seemed to approach him the way wolves did.
‘They must be aggressive mobs.’
What should he do from here?
Should he keep hunting until he found a chance to climb a tree, as he had until now?
‘Climbing up wasn’t easy either.’
One of the wolf bones he had used as a foothold was already broken. Getting down was easy, but climbing back up would be difficult.
‘Wolf bones are easy enough to get, but... hmm.’
He looked around at the branches, leaves, and thin vines winding around one side of the tree.
‘Could I use those as rope?’
It would be nice if they made climbing up and down easier.
With that thought, he opened his inventory and counted his remaining bones.
‘Let’s try something for now.’
He grabbed a broken bone.
Its fractured edge was sharp. It was not as good as a blade, but it was enough to force even a somewhat tough plant to snap.
He pulled down vines, snapped them off, and shredded them into softer fibers.
His hands moved awkwardly, but he managed to twist the fibers into cord. By fastening wolf leg bones at intervals, he made a crude ladder.
The sun was already setting by the time he finished.
The only reason he had picked up speed at all was because he discovered that he could use the Cooking skill to shred vine fibers.
‘So I can process things that aren’t edible too.’
Looking at the skill description again, it only said he could process ingredients or cook them. It did not say the ingredients had to be edible.
If that was true, he could cook anything. Even inedible food or bizarre dishes would probably be possible.
“I should’ve just made a knotted rope.”
Night had fallen completely.
A little moonlight filtered in because he was closer to the sky, but it was still hard to make out his surroundings.
Using part of the temporary rope he had made, Hajin tied one of his legs around a branch to secure himself. He gathered more nearby vines and kept working.
In the end, he stopped because he had used every vine within reach.
“I have some leg bones left, but this is awkward.”
The rope ladder he had made was just under five meters long.
It was an underwhelming result for the time he had spent, but he had made the rope thick enough to account for durability.
‘If I drive wolf bones into the lower part of a tree, I can use those as footholds, then connect to the ladder.’
Connecting the ladder all the way to the ground might actually be more dangerous. The wolves could damage it.
‘Where should I set this up?’
He would not install it permanently on this tree.
He had no intention of staying here, and he could not afford to.
‘Once it gets light tomorrow, I’ll have to keep moving while hunting.’
If he found somewhere promising, it would be better to try there.
‘I want a structure that is easier to remove and reinstall than a fixed installation.’
He spent the night thinking over how to make that happen.
He considered getting even a little sleep, but being up in a tree did not seem completely safe.
‘There could be leopards. Or venomous insects.’
Venomous insects, or poisonous snakes.
It would not be strange for there to be such things here.
Thinking about it, getting the Detoxification skill had been a wise choice.
‘First, I’ll switch in Detoxification.’
He cooked all the remaining meat in advance.
He assumed it was natural that each processed form and type of dish would take up separate inventory slots.
As he chewed and swallowed pieces of meat, the night grew deeper.
* * *
It rained briefly at dawn.
A sudden shower passed through, but it left a noticeable effect behind.
‘The branches are slippery.’
He had planned to climb down as soon as it was light, but decided to wait a little longer. If the branches and trunks of other trees were slippery too, he would not be able to climb them easily.
Instead, he did what he could from there.
Carefully moving along the branches he had been unable to reach during the night, he gathered additional vines.
He used them to extend and reinforce the ladder, while winding the rest into coils that filled an inventory slot.
‘I should make a knotted rope too.’
If he found himself without time to prepare a ladder, he would need a rope he could loop around a nearby branch and grab to climb up.
Climbing a rope was not easy, but he had done it a few times during his military service.
‘My body is bigger now, but I’m stronger too. I can do it.’
Making his hands and fingers larger had also been useful. If he had not paid attention during customization, even gripping a thick wolf bone in one hand would have been difficult.
“I tied knots at intervals, so climbing should be easier.”
By then, the branches had mostly dried.
He tightly tied a hook made from a piece of wood and wolf bone to the end of the rope, then tested it by throwing it over a higher branch.
“Good.”
Perhaps because it was made from tough vine fibers, it could comfortably support his full weight.
He stored the grappling rope in a separate inventory slot and finally headed down the tree.
There were no wolves around it.
They had taken shelter from the rain, or their aggro had reset and they had spread through the area, but they had not forgotten about him.
The moment they saw him climbing down, they began approaching in groups as if it were only natural.
‘My body is fine.’
He had known even before entering this place that staying awake for about a day would not cause problems.
Besides, ever since this ability had shifted between being a defense mechanism and a superpower, he had tried various things.
One of them was whether he could still use that sense while his body slept.
The answer was no, but he could manage a partial compromise between sleep and wakefulness.
A kind of Light Sleep.
If he rested in a hazy state where he was only barely asleep, his unusual senses remained active.
Of course, resting that way did almost nothing for fatigue compared to proper sleep, but it was better than not resting at all.
He had rested like that in short stretches the previous night.
Not much had changed.
His Multiple Viewpoints remained active even in Light Sleep.
The downside was that he was sluggish for a moment when he had to wake up and move.
‘And... there was water this way.’
The night was much quieter than the day.
Beyond the cries of animals somewhere in the distance, all kinds of natural sounds carried more information at night.
The sound of water he had heard from somewhere was one of them.
He had wet his throat a little by using leaves during the dawn rain, but he had not properly rehydrated.
“It’d be nice to have a canteen.”
Could he improvise a waterskin with what he had in his inventory?
‘The wolf hide is raw, so I probably can’t use it... If I had a proper knife, I could hollow out a piece of wood.’
He thought he might be able to manage something with broken wolf bones, but decided to try it later when he rested in a tree.
Thwack!
With a blow to the side of one wolf’s head, his second day began.
Why he had been brought here, what they wanted from him, and what he needed to do to return.
None of that mattered right now.
His only goal was to deal with the wolves rushing in to surround him again while moving before it was too late.
Crack!
The Beginner's Club finally broke after enduring as much as it could.
Rather than throwing it away, Hajin put it into his inventory. Then he took out wolf bones he had prepared in advance and continued fighting.
A wolf bone had questionable durability. It would break after striking something hard around ten times at most.
Still, by that point, there was a good chance he would have hunted another wolf and acquired more bones.
‘The broken ones are useful in their own way. Like this.’
He drove a broken wolf bone into the nape of one wolf.
When he twisted it with force, the wound opened and blood gushed out.
The wolf would die even if he left it alone, so he did just that and dealt with the rest.
“A barbarian warrior really was the answer.”
The wolves he had killed so far, and the wolves still pouring in without end.
Considering everything, a character with high immediate combat power was the right choice.
The downside was his body’s poor fuel efficiency. The hunger that came after moving around a little was no joke.
At some point, after repeatedly fighting and moving, the sound of water grew closer.
Then the message from yesterday appeared again.
[Your experience is full.]
[Please choose one of the following options.]
He was gradually becoming accustomed to combat itself, so even while his avatar fought, he had enough room to check the system choices through Multiple Viewpoints.
‘Other people can’t do this, can they?’
They would probably only get a chance to check after securing somewhere safe.
‘Hmm. But this...’
As expected, the options were only pictures.
Some were ones he had seen yesterday, but the rest were new.
1. Probably a strength enhancement.
2. A figure reaching out with a magnet symbol above them.
3. An open scroll and a pen, with a map drawn on the scroll.
4. A figure holding an index finger to their lips and tiptoeing quietly.
5. A heart, with an ‘HP+’ symbol above it.
‘The magnet probably lets me loot from farther away, and this is Cartography? Come to think of it, there was no minimap function.’
The other was probably stealth or reduced movement noise. The last one was clearly an increase in health.
‘Having to choose one out of five makes this harder.’
None of them would be bad choices.
Still, considering his situation, a few were not immediately necessary.
‘Strength... is still fine. Increased looting range isn’t necessary yet either.’
Cartography would be useful. It would be nice to have.
Stealth, or reduced movement noise, felt questionable for now. There was no guarantee aggressive mobs would not react just because he made less noise.
‘They noticed me from a hundred meters away even when I wasn’t doing anything.’
They had sensed something other than sound.
Maybe his scent?
Or perhaps they simply knew he was there.
‘If mobs respawn, this isn’t an ordinary world.’
After eliminating the others, two choices remained.
Cartography.
Increased health.
He chose Cartography.
At first, he had intended to choose the health increase.
Since he could not get proper sleep, he thought raising his baseline health might make up for it.
But while he could restore his health by eating meat, there was no solution for a map beyond remembering everything in his head.
‘Will getting the skill unlock a minimap?’
Surely he would not have to draw it himself somewhere. That would not even be a skill.
The ominous possibility made him hesitate for a moment, but he did not change his choice.
When he checked the skill he received, thankfully, it did not lead to what he feared.
[Cartography begins.]
Two things appeared.
A small minimap opened in the lower-left corner of his vision.
The other was a larger map that he could open and close separately.
It displayed the areas he had traveled through so far, and its range matched the extent of his vision.
‘It links with Multiple Viewpoints.’
Normally, it seemed to map only as far as his avatar could see with its two eyes. In Hajin’s case, though, it covered the areas he had surveyed from above, making the map much wider.
There was still uncertainty based on distance.
Nearby areas were detailed, while distant areas showed only rough outlines.
‘Still, this is great.’
At least he no longer had to worry about wandering into the wrong place or going in circles. Though he would not have done that anyway if he used distant terrain as landmarks.
‘My unique ability is broken.’
The fight continued even then.
His brief attention to the system had left him with more minor cuts, but nothing fatal.
‘Is there no level system?’
He looked again and again, but saw nothing like that.
Even after filling his experience twice, his status was still Provisional Awakener.
He could operate the system and use skills.
Yet he still was not an Awakener.
‘What do I have to do to lose the Provisional tag?’
What would change once it disappeared?
With those thoughts in mind, Seo Hajin looted the items dropped by the dead wolves.
Footnotes:
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