WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 56: 056
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[People Plotting to Kill Juggernaut]
Not long after the group chat was created, a list of everyone in it was posted on social media. The underhanded discussions from the chat were included in full.
-letsㅋㅋruinㅋㅋjuggernaut'sㅋㅋreputationㅋㅋso no one helps himㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴHuh? Reputation? Whose?
-Keep chipping away at Juggernaut's image? Does he even have an image left to chip away at? He was the guy who sold rocks as flint with winter firewood.
ㄴlololololololol
ㄴEven the freed slaves were like, "That's a little..."
ㄴBut I still have that rock.
ㄴThrow it away already lol
ㄴI hit it, and it did make sparks.
ㄴMost rocks make sparks.
Everyone knew Juggernaut used social media. Naturally, many people sent him the post's link or copied its contents into messages.
[Juggernaut's Response]
"Thank you for the tip."
And that was it. When I asked what he was going to do, he said he'd think about it.
-He seems to be deciding which club to use to beat them.
ㄴClang!
Similar posts about Juggernaut's response continued to appear, until someone shared something a little different.
[He's asking people to buy lots of his new product?]
-?
-What is this? What did Juggernaut make?
ㄴWhy, what is it?
ㄴSearch Juggernaut in the marketplace.
ㄴYou bastard lol
-Why is there ramen? What is this?
-Anyone tried Juggernaut's ramen? Give a review.
ㄴIt's so-so.
ㄴDoes it taste bad?
ㄴNot bad, but not good either. Back then, it would've been too low-quality to buy with money.
ㄴWhat about now?
ㄴThree Points is cheap.
ㄴSo that's why it sold out.
Juggernaut had started selling ramen.
No one knew what it was made from, but the noodles were closer to dried noodles than fried instant noodles.
There were two kinds of soup powder. One had a rich flavor like beef bone broth, while the other had the spicy kick of fish stew loaded with red pepper powder.
Neither flavor was particularly appealing.
Still, many agreed that the imitation fish stew was better because of its spicy edge.
The price was three Points per serving.
It was a launch discount, though. He said the price would rise to five Points later.
-Looks like he can't mass-produce it.
ㄴYeah, probably.
ㄴI'll buy some next time he lists it.
-I don't think I could eat it twice.
ㄴYou tried it?
ㄴYeah. It's so-so.
ㄴIt's so-so, but you'll think about it again sometimes.
That was exactly right.
If someone asked whether it tasted good, the answer was no. Still, after some time passed, it was the kind of thing they would want to try again at least once.
There were no similar foods available, and the users knew that.
People with Cooking skills made various foods, but producing enough to sell beyond what they ate themselves was not easy.
-I can roughly guess how he made it, but making it to sell is difficult.
ㄴWhy?
ㄴThe economy of scale doesn't work.
To match Juggernaut's price, someone would first need a large supply of ingredients, storage for them, and space to work.
It was already beyond what a personal Inventory could handle. At minimum, they would need something like Subspace to match that price.
-You could do it if you wanted. But you'd be much better off hunting instead.
ㄴI did the math. Even logging would earn more than that.
-Then how does Juggernaut do it?
ㄴIsn't he making his lackeys work?
ㄴThey all looked like they could hold their own. Won't there be a coup someday?
ㄴWho knows lol
-What's with the ramen all of a sudden?
-Is he going to bundle ramen with firewood this winter?
ㄴThat actually sounds worth buying.
ㄴBetter than rocks.
As all kinds of reactions continued to appear, Seo Hajin stood looking at a machine placed in one corner of Subspace.
One side had been damaged, exposing strange bundles of wires. It had already been several days since he finished repairing it.
"I think it's ready to run properly now."
The device had been badly damaged from the moment it came out of the box.
Fortunately, it had come with blueprints and a manual. Later, another copy of the same product, damaged in a similar way, had appeared.
He searched through the piles of junk and scrap from another world that he had collected over time, found compatible-looking parts and wires, and attempted repairs.
It was like joining the intact front half of one car to the intact rear half of another to make one working vehicle.
It would have been illegal in reality, but no one here cared about that.
Of course, having blueprints and plausible parts did not mean he would succeed right away.
The work itself had taken several months.
Since he had not devoted himself to it alone when he could not be sure it would work, the actual time involved had been even longer.
But there was another reason he had finally succeeded. He had belatedly remembered something he had forgotten.
"There was an easy way, but I took the long way around."
Like the equipment in his Inventory, items stored in Subspace could be repaired by consuming materials from the same item.
He would have thought of it easily if it had been a club or a Glaive, but the machine was so complicated and strange-looking that it had never occurred to him.
When he checked, the same rule applied to machinery. He had consumed one broken device and a bundle of junk to restore one intact machine.
The broken devices had not all disappeared, so even if it broke again later, he would likely be able to repair it by consuming them.
"So it's made by the same company as the Arc Recycler."
He did not know exactly what company it was.
Still, it seemed to be a fairly impressive one in that world.
'They seem to specialize in technology for breaking down and reassembling matter... We don't have anything like this, do we?'
The Arc Recycler did not physically grind matter. Instead, it broke matter down with mana. It could then store or remove each component and the mana separately.
This machine, on the other hand, was smaller and had a use more closely tied to daily life.
[Arc Sustainer]
"More survival than daily life."
Its description called it a "military and relief-use matter decomposition and food synthesis device."
It broke down organic matter and food ingredients, removed toxins and impurities, then reprocessed them according to the user's selected settings.
Unlike the Arc Recycler, which returned matter to mana and resources, this one specialized in making something out of the materials it broke down.
'It can break things down too, but instead of extracting mana, it consumes mana.'
If he had not used the Arc Recycler to obtain mana and charge batteries, it would have been difficult to operate the Sustainer properly.
It was definitely smaller than the Arc Recycler. With some effort, two people could carry it between them.
'It's a little bigger than a double-door refrigerator.'
There were no particular limits on what ingredients he could put inside. It accepted anything from plants and grains available nearby or in the marketplace to animal meat and bones.
Of course, edible ingredients were needed to make food. He either did not put in anything inedible or set the machine to separate it out during processing.
'There's another difference from the Arc Recycler.'
It could not dispose of the toxins, foreign matter, and scraps it separated out by itself.
In the end, he had to throw the accumulated waste away nearby.
If that made him uncomfortable, he could simply put it into the Recycler afterward.
Hummm.
Noodles were produced one after another with a low vibration, neatly piling onto a tray beside the machine.
Oil, whether animal or plant-based, was not difficult to obtain. At first, he had tried making something closer to fried instant noodles, but the taste had been strange, so he eventually switched to dried noodles.
'The noodle ingredients are different from the start.'
He had not found a grain similar to wheat yet.
The main ingredients in the noodles were tuber plants from the ground constantly dug up by rabbits, various plants gathered aboveground, and several grains bought from the marketplace and cultivated in Subspace.
He had made a reasonable effort, but the limits were clear.
Just getting the noodles to hold their shape without falling apart was a considerable achievement.
At first, they often dissolved into porridge the moment they entered the soup. The soup powder had gone through similar trial and error.
Fortunately, he had found plants that could somewhat replace peppers and garlic, and he could rapidly cultivate them with mana in Subspace.
That did not mean he could grow large quantities overnight, so limited production was unavoidable.
Still, he was steadily acquiring mana cultivators. Things would improve over time.
The problem was that even selling the ramen for five Points would not make much money.
It was better to find meaning in having a way to consume the food ingredients piling up in Subspace instead of throwing them away.
"Still, it's good that I can link it with the Arc Recycler."
When breaking down ingredients, it was better to process them in the Recycler first rather than putting them directly into the Sustainer. That process also extracted mana.
If he used the Sustainer to break them down, the mana would not be preserved and would instead be consumed during processing.
So he put the powder and materials obtained from the Recycler into the Sustainer, then processed them into noodles and soup powder. That was the whole process.
It was not particularly complicated, so after giving the newly added companions some training, he could have them handle it full-time.
'It'll be difficult to break through Level 50 for a while.'
Rather than wait indefinitely for enough Keys to unlock the Avatar level cap, it was more efficient to use some of them to evolve pets.
The Companion line had now grown to five, and he had added several more Workers.
There were two Wolf hunting teams. Naturally, each group also had a Wolf Rider leading it.
The rabbit population had not changed.
Perhaps because everyone who returned home said pets would be useful, tamed pets were now rarely listed in the marketplace.
Even rabbits were apparently helpful in their own way. They could tell whether something their owner brought back was edible and whether water was clean.
'It means this is the kind of world they live in.'
Several large cities were apparently still functioning back home, but that also meant many areas were not.
He had even seen posts saying that water was not properly supplied in some places, and people had to secure food directly from their surroundings.
'Wouldn't that count as an apocalypse?'
In any case, he had not tamed rabbits himself, so their numbers remained the same.
The same was true for Black. It was still the only Black Leopard-type pet.
He could increase their numbers if he decided to tame more, but based on Black, there did not seem to be much need.
'It feels like it pulls its weight, but also like it doesn't.'
Lazy, but clever.
It usually stretched out quietly and loafed around, but whenever he had nearly forgotten about it, it would accomplish something useful.
"And..."
Vulcan turned his head.
Sangun, recently tamed, was resting beside others of its kind in a similar pose.
'It wasn't easy.'
A high-grade taming item had appeared for the first time in a long while, and he tried it immediately.
But the boss Tiger's level had become so high that subduing and taming it without killing it was extremely difficult. He only barely succeeded after several failures.
The newly tamed one had also evolved once, becoming similar in size to the others.
There were now three Sanguns.
'There are still plenty of people asking me to sell one.'
Almost no users were unaware that he had tamed the boss Tiger and rode it around.
Just as people wanted to buy tamed Eagles, many asked him to sell Sangun. Some of the amounts offered showed that they had worked quite hard to earn them.
Even so, they were not enough to make him hand Sangun over.
He would not sell one even for more than 100,000 Points.
He did sell Wolves little by little.
Since he was still steadily taming them, he sold them at reasonable prices, mainly to people he had become somewhat friendly with.
Reasonable still meant 2,000 Points per Wolf.
These days, killing one rabbit gave around two Points, so it was money that required hunting nearly 1,000 rabbits.
'Rabbits these days are beyond being rabbits.'
They had grown to a disturbingly large size.
When they were small, he could lightly lift them by the ears. Now, when they stood on their hind legs, they looked like slightly smaller kangaroos.
Still, they only seemed disturbingly big while hunting. They evaporated after dying, so there was no real problem.
In fact, if they could be tamed, they would clearly be more useful in a fight than the old small rabbits.
'They eat that much more too, but winter is still far away, so it isn't a problem.'
Separately, quite a few people were now trying to find the old small rabbits, which had become harder to see.
Some probably wanted to use them immediately, but more seemed to be thinking about after they returned home.
'Home.'
Recently, another raid team had met the conditions and left this place.
The more people left, the harder it became for those remaining to leave. As ordinary mobs grew stronger, Boss Mobs also continued to grow stronger.
Meanwhile, users' levels and combat power had nearly stopped at a certain point.
In the end, insufficient combat power had to be made up for with numbers.
But even that was becoming difficult.
Most people who had intended to meet the raid requirements had already done so and left.
Far more users remained now, but fewer wanted to raid, so even gathering a team had become difficult.
The unspoken rule of never forming a party with Villains had even begun to fade. People were filling teams however they could to keep raids going.
Seo Hajin thought that if the overall Field Level rose by about ten more stages, normal raids would no longer be possible.
'Even now, there seem to be plenty of users getting wiped out without accomplishing anything.'
They could restart after dying.
The problem was that mobs had grown strong enough to kill them again as soon as they restarted nearby. More and more users were choosing Random Restart.
If they were lucky, they might begin in Giant Lake Field. If not, they might have to die again and again before finding somewhere safe.
There was another method, of course.
They could wait on relatively safe high ground and call a taxi.
The taxi was naturally Eagle Taxi.
But the number of Eagle Taxis, which had once increased quickly, began to decrease at some point.
More people had returned home, but the rising Field Level also made Eagles harder to tame. The limited number of taxi drivers naturally led to higher fares.
If they lacked the Points to pay, they had to negotiate by offering equipment, items, skills, or something else.
'It was good that I bought them in advance.'
Seven Eagles sat in similar poses in one corner of Subspace, nodding off.
Five had been bought from TrueFinal.
The other two had been found in the Personal Effects of visitors who had come with less-than-good intentions.
'Won't anyone else come?'
That was why he was not particularly worried about the concerned messages people sent him on social media.
Part of him was even looking forward to it.
Unless they had a special movement skill, he knew they would have difficulty reaching this place by land.
"Without Subspace, pets have no choice but to be stored in an Inventory."
In other words, if they died, the pets would become his.
Perhaps because of that, people kept talking about plotting and gathering an attack force, but no one actually entered the northern forest.
It would probably stay that way.
Would they only enter the northern forest when they took part in a Sangun raid?
'Hm. Maybe they could come together then.'
There would be at least a hundred of them.
Still, he was not afraid. If he tested the waters and decided it was dangerous, he could simply enter Subspace.
[The Giant Catfish sleeping at the bottom of Giant Lake in Area 5 has been defeated.]
[The region's level increases by 1.]
"Oh."
Another raid notification appeared.
But this time, it was Giant Lake Field.
Bosses in other fields could be overwhelmed by numbers, but the fishing field was different.
"How much did they get this time?"
It was impossible to raid that field's Boss Mob normally. One person had to pull it up alone with a fishing rod.
Anyone could try, but hooking it did not guarantee they could catch it.
In the end, there was only one place people could go.
The longtime residents of the lake field.
They brought the so-called famous fishermen into their parties and shared the achievement with them.
Every Giant Lake raid so far had been handled by them. It probably would not change much in the future.
'They said there are skills specialized for fishing.'
He thought he had heard that some people started in that field and had done nothing but fish ever since.
'They say once you get into fishing, you can't get out.'
He had visited once when he traveled around the fields before. He had not stayed long enough to get particularly interested, but he had liked the quiet atmosphere.
'It probably isn't like that now.'
People were gathering from every direction.
It would probably become even more crowded in the future.
* * *
Ramen was neither expensive nor luxurious, but the people who bought it were still valued customers.
Taking their opinions into consideration, Seo Hajin diversified the way he sold ramen.
The menu itself did not change.
There were still only two flavors, rich and spicy.
But instead of selling noodles and soup powder in wooden bowls as before, he added a product that was already cooked.
Marketplace listings were connected to Subspace or an Inventory and received the Condition Maintenance Effect.
Even if he listed them for a long time, he did not have to worry about them cooling down or becoming soggy.
Whenever someone bought one, they could eat it in a state similar to freshly cooked ramen.
Quite a few people requested finished products because they lacked cooking-related skills or found it bothersome to make a fire and boil water.
'It's a reasonable suggestion.'
Using his Cooking skill, he placed freshly boiled ramen into bowls and listed it in the marketplace.
After some minor trial and error adjusting the amount of ramen and water, cooked ramen now sold better than uncooked ramen.
"Sold out again today."
He produced and sold around 500 bowls of ramen a day. At first, it had been around 200 bowls, but production grew as the work became familiar and he secured more ingredients.
The discount event had already ended, and he now charged five Points per serving. That meant he earned 2,500 Points a day from ramen alone.
Honestly, it was not much money considering the effort involved. He could get 2,000 Points just by selling one tamed Wolf.
But unlike Wolves, which he could not sell to just anyone or in unlimited quantities, ramen was different.
'It sells steadily every day, and it disappears once people eat it. There's no chance it will come back to hurt me.'
People had belatedly begun trying similar businesses. But they could not compete with his prices.
'From growing the ingredients to making ramen, everything is integrated inside Subspace. I don't even need to handle it myself.'
These days, his focus was not on a side business like ramen production.
It was on his main job, which earned far more Points. Hunting.
'I've nearly taken control of the upstream area now.'
It was the region farther north, above the waterfall.
It made up roughly 30 percent of the entire northern forest, and he occupied it completely.
The word control was not an exaggeration. His subordinates' hunting operations ran together without gaps.
There were already ten Wolf Riders.
With twenty Wolves in each group, the number of Wolves hunting Wolves had exceeded 200.
There were nearly thirty reserve Wolves for rotations, rest, or sale. Even now, he tamed Wolves whenever taming items came in.
'I need to expand Subspace more.'
It was already expanding at a frightening pace, day after day.
But he needed even more room to house hundreds of Wolves at once.
Pets did not need sleep, so he ran hunts almost twenty-four hours a day. But conditions might change once he returned home.
'How am I supposed to save a million Points at this rate?'
Points continued to pile up steadily.
There were probably few users earning Points faster than him.
The problem was that his expenses were also high.
Most of it disappeared into the cost of expanding Subspace.
'It is nice, though.'
He complained, but as Subspace expanded, the Rest Area with unlimited stay time expanded too.
The Rest Area had started out at the level of a tiny room. It had passed the size of a small studio apartment and was now large enough to make separate rooms inside.
Of course, he had not actually divided it into rooms.
It would reduce heating efficiency.
'I should prepare for winter early.'
He had even considered insulation for the walls and ceiling.
He had not stopped at installing a fireplace. He had rebuilt the floor and implemented ondol-style underfloor heating. It had only been test-run so far.
'It's hot now.'
The severe cold had retreated, and spring had come.
Before he knew it, spring had passed as well, and the weather was gradually getting warmer.
Signs of the Rainy Season were beginning to appear, so more people were watching the northern region, specifically the riverside.
'It's obvious what they're thinking.'
Wolf pull hunting.
During the one season a year when it was possible, the Rainy Season allowed them to gain levels quickly.
Its usefulness had already been proven last year.
Heavy rain kept the scent of blood from spreading far, and while Sangun stayed away, they drove Wolves toward the riverside.
The key was to make packs of Wolves and groups of Crocodiles kill each other, then collect the experience and items generated in the process.
'But this year will be very different from last year.'
They would understand once they came here.
They would see how much the Wolves had changed. And the Crocodiles were nothing like they had been last year either.
'It isn't impossible to lure them.'
He could do it.
But there was no reason to go through the trouble of heading all the way to the riverside. Continuing his current hunting operation was much more efficient.
'Steady. Don't overdo it.'
Visitors came to the northern forest about ten days later.
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