WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 57: 057
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“Let’s begin!”
“Go!”
There were roughly three hundred people.
That was an excessive number for hunting a single Tiger.
But what followed seemed to answer why so many people were needed.
“Argh!”
“Keep your distance!”
“Where are the tanks?!”
“Watch the rear too!”
“Are you not holding back the Wolves?!”
“Where the hell is the rear?!”
A complete mess.
They had somehow gathered enough people, but many had never worked together before. The raid was not going in the direction they wanted.
Large and small Wolves rushed in from every side.
Among them, the red-furred Wolves and the larger Wolves were nearly as dangerous as Sangun.
In fact, more people died to Wolves than to Sangun.
It seemed they restarted and returned immediately, but quite a few died again in the process.
Then, as always, arguments broke out over collecting Personal Effects.
They had probably agreed to return them to the dead. Without that principle and trust, no one would cooperate.
But not everyone would agree with that arrangement. And if someone else’s Personal Effects fell into their hands, greed was unavoidable.
Arguments erupted over Personal Effects Bags with some or all of their contents missing. Some even claimed that nobody had picked up or seen the Personal Effects at all.
The hundreds who had arrived at the Northern Forest in high spirits gradually dwindled as time passed.
Someone had probably filled their pockets along the way.
Still, the Sangun Raid continued somehow. It rattled along, but it was moving forward.
Most of those who died were unaffiliated individuals who had joined without much trouble. As that dead weight disappeared, the raid almost seemed more organized.
A few hours later, the force had been cut nearly in half from when they first arrived.
In the end, they brought Sangun down.
At least those who died had one consolation. If they had contributed to the raid at all, they would share in the achievement no matter where they were afterward.
Those who had joined specifically for the raid had already cleared some space in their Inventories before coming, expecting they might die.
“Whew. We finally got it.”
“We have to do this nine more times?”
“Is this your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Ugh. You’re in for a rough time.”
With the boss defeated, Sangun would not appear in this field again until this time tomorrow.
Many people planned to return to their bases after the raid, but unexpectedly, some groups remained at the scene.
“It means it won’t be around for a whole day.”
Pull Hunting along the riverbank.
The greatest danger in making Wolves fight Crocodiles was Sangun rushing over after smelling blood.
Now that it would be gone for a day, there would be no better time for Pull Hunting.
Some headed for the riverbank.
Others waited for Eagle Taxis.
But there were also people who belonged to neither group. Several leaders were guiding about fifty people.
“With this many, we can handle Juggernaut too, right?”
“More than enough.”
They wore confident expressions.
They had not gathered a bunch of random stragglers. Their lowest level was 30, and their highest was 40.
In fact, they were stronger than The First Clan, the first people to return home.
But they had joined the raid late because the raid itself was not their goal.
-We’ll raise our levels as much as possible before returning.
When the return conditions were first announced, their Clan Master had decided on that policy early.
Returning quickly might not be a good thing. It would be better to strengthen themselves here as much as possible before going home.
Those who disagreed left.
Some joined The First Clan and returned home early with them.
Those who remained agreed with their master. They had decided to gather again under the Clan’s name once they returned home.
They did not care whether it was an apocalypse or anything else.
If anything, a situation like that was all the more reason to stick together.
“It would be nice if we could talk things out.”
They had come here not for the Sangun Raid, but to recruit Juggernaut, who was supposed to be beyond it.
No. More precisely, their bigger goal was to pull away the people under his command rather than Juggernaut himself.
-Juggernaut overshadows them, but every one of his party members is unusual too.
They were at least on Juggernaut’s level.
Recruiting even one of them would be a major help to the Clan.
It was the plan their master proposed.
It was adopted through discussion and a vote, and that was why they were now in the north.
“Where do we go now?”
“Didn’t they say above the waterfall?”
“We didn’t see anyone there when we flew over earlier.”
They had not hurried because the information they secured beforehand did not match the actual situation.
Juggernaut was nowhere to be seen.
Neither were the members of his party.
The only things they had seen while flying over were clearings throughout the Northern Forest and Loggers working there.
“Those are probably pets.”
It was already known.
If a Wolf pet evolved, it could be customized into the Beastkin type.
That was probably why they all looked similar.
“We can’t touch them.”
“Right. They’re Juggernaut’s private property.”
They had come to recruit Juggernaut’s party members or subordinates, so friction with him was unavoidable.
Still, it would be best if they could do it quietly, without any major conflict.
“Let’s first get somewhere without these damn Wolves.”
Wolves were still attacking from every direction as they talked.
They could kill them without much trouble, but the long raid had left them with considerable injuries and fatigue.
“Let’s go toward the waterfall. There weren’t any mobs there.”
“Let’s do that.”
They reached the waterfall, secured a temporary base, and searched the surrounding area from there.
But they could not find Juggernaut, much less his party members.
That remained true even after they used the Clan’s Eagles.
“Where did they go?”
“Maybe they knew in advance and hid?”
“There’s no reason for them to hide. We didn’t come to attack them.”
“They wouldn’t know that.”
“Ah.”
Even so, it was strange.
Juggernaut was not someone who avoided a fight that came to him. At least, that was what they believed.
But Juggernaut did not appear even after a full day passed.
Not even when the Boss Mob respawn time ended and posts began appearing to gather another raid team.
They joined raid after raid and stayed there for several more days, but eventually had to leave without meeting Juggernaut or his subordinates.
They wanted to stay longer, but participation in the raids kept falling. They could no longer guarantee the next raid would succeed.
“No reports of them being seen in another field?”
“No. None.”
“That’s strange. They can’t be dead.”
“I’m telling you, they’re hiding.”
“Juggernaut doesn’t seem like a coward.”
“You can tell our level just by looking at us. They must have spotted us from far away and hidden.”
“Hm.”
Those who returned empty-handed spread a rumor that Juggernaut was a coward, but it did not become a major issue.
The updates about the situation in their hometowns, posted on social media, drew far more attention.
* * *
Clang! Clang!
“There’s a gold vein in a place like this.”
Juggernaut stopped swinging his pickaxe.
His other Avatars continued working beside him.
He was underground near a mountain range close to the Area boundary, in the northernmost part of the Northern Field.
Recently, Black had picked up some Gold Ore while wandering around as usual.
It looked like an ordinary rock, but the system identified it as Gold Ore. It did not stack with regular stones in the Inventory.
After asking Black where it had found it, Seo Hajin inspected the location and began digging in earnest.
“I don’t think the concentration is very high... I’m not sure. Is this considered a lot?”
He did not need refining equipment or facilities.
The Arc Recycler could separate most resources.
He worried that larger amounts might overload the machine, but fortunately or unfortunately, they were not finding that much.
Over roughly a week, he extracted a little over 100 grams of pure gold from the Gold Ore mined by his Avatars working in shifts.
“But how much is this worth?”
He was mining it, but he did not really know how expensive it was.
Naturally, he had never owned or handled gold back home.
“Still, gold is gold.”
Who knew?
It might even be useless.
In disaster movies, food sometimes became more valuable than gold.
“They said the world isn’t completely ruined.”
The world was chaotic, but it had not entirely collapsed. Major cities were still functioning, so gold’s value probably had not disappeared.
Besides, leaving a gold vein unmined felt strangely like neglecting his duty.
“How could I not mine gold when it’s here?”
It was cooler underground than above ground.
There was some humidity, but it was not difficult to breathe.
The problem was that once the rain began in earnest, this underground space could flood quickly.
He needed a precaution, such as completely sealing the mine entrance.
“Either seal it off, or clear out the surrounding area and turn it into an open-pit mine.”
He muttered that, then shook his head.
An open-pit mine would be easier, but it would draw attention from other users.
Especially now, with Eagles flying through the sky. There was even less privacy.
“Okay. I have a general idea now.”
He did not plan to keep mining like this.
He had focused on this for the past few days and barely hunted, which had put him at a relative disadvantage.
From now on, he planned to use pets instead of mining himself.
The problem was deciding which pets to assign to the work.
“Rabbits are good at digging when it’s dirt... but they can’t mine rock like this. Their claws would wear down or fall off first.”
Pets’ physical injuries regenerated naturally, but if they were pushed into excessive labor, their recovery speed would not keep up with the damage.
“Should I reduce the number of logging sites?”
It would not make much money right away anyway.
He already had plenty of wood stored away, enough to last through winter and beyond.
Perhaps he should close one logging site and send its workers here.
After thinking it over, he became convinced that was the most reasonable approach.
“I need to make more workers too.”
Unlocking the level 50 lock would be delayed a little, but it would be a long time before he could return home anyway.
“Yeah. Let’s do that.”
He called over several workers.
At first, there had only been a few. Now, more than five worked at each of several logging sites.
He initially considered closing one logging site and bringing everyone from there, but it seemed better to take one or two people from each site.
He asked whether any wanted to work in the mine, then rearranged the workers at each logging site so their numbers would remain roughly even.
“Use these for now.”
“Yes, Master.”
Their starting equipment was ordinary pickaxes.
They did not need carts to carry the ore or rails for easy transport.
The pets had Inventories, and he could collect anything stored inside into Subspace whenever he wanted.
“What do you think? Should we block the entrance or build up a mound to stop rainwater? Or should we cut away the area and make an open-pit mine?”
“If possible, an open-pit mine would be better, but it will bring trouble.”
“Flies will gather.”
Just as he nodded, another worker spoke.
“I see it differently.”
“Really?”
The Wolf Beastkin looked similar, but they sometimes had different thoughts.
Even if they were system-bound items, that was why he tried to respect their opinions as much as possible.
“People may look, but they won’t decide to come here and do anything.”
“Hm.”
“Strong Wolves patrol the area, and it will not be easy to openly covet what belongs to Master.”
“That’s true.”
Touch Juggernaut and die.
He had not intended it, but somehow that became his public image.
Maybe that image could actually help in a situation like this.
“Also, mining is different from picking up an item from the ground. You have to establish a proper site and work continuously, so people won’t rush in on a whim.”
“Right. They would have to build a proper base.”
“And most importantly...”
“Most importantly?”
“Unlike us pets, I think Master and the others would dislike tedious, repetitive work.”
“Hm.”
He quickly understood what that meant.
Users and pets were different.
Come to think of it, there probably were not many users willing to swing pickaxes in terrain like this.
Still, that thought was half right and half wrong.
There were users who liked grinding too.
“I heard there are mines in the Wasteland too. Rabbit Field as well.”
“I see.”
“And I don’t dislike simple repetitive work.”
“Ah.”
After considering their opinions, Seo Hajin decided to make an open-pit mine his ultimate goal and begin work.
“At least it doesn’t respawn like trees or mobs. If we keep cutting away at it over time, it will eventually become one.”
Altered terrain did not return to normal.
That was somewhat disappointing.
If the ground regenerated too, he could mine gold endlessly.
‘But if terrain regenerated, I wouldn’t have been able to expand the cave near the waterfall before.’
Everything had its pros and cons.
He nodded briefly, encouraged the new miners, and returned to the surface.
“Of course it’s raining.”
The weather was gloomy.
Normally, a raid success notification should have appeared around this time, but there had been no news since yesterday.
‘Did they move to another field?’
He opened social media and only then learned that the Northern Forest raids had run into trouble.
It was not only the north. Even forming raid teams had become difficult.
“Not that many people have left overall, but the Field Levels have already gone up too much.”
They should have approached this systematically.
It would have been more efficient if they had gathered people properly from the beginning and achieved the conditions together on a large scale.
But that was only hindsight.
Even if they had gone that route, unexpected problems could have appeared.
‘Hmm.’
As he scrolled through older posts on the social media board, he came across the rumor that Juggernaut was a coward.
‘What is this all of a sudden? Ah, is it that?’
He remembered how people had once suggested ruining Juggernaut’s image so that nobody would help him.
This was probably part of that.
But perhaps because the scheme had already been exposed, nobody seemed to support it.
“Hm?”
A different topic was causing more of an uproar now.
It was about Giant Lake Field and fishing.
-These bastards have been living easy.
└ What do you mean, living easy?
└ Try it yourself.
He wondered what was happening, only to find it was a topic that had come up once before.
The concept of fishing was unusual.
‘The process is similar, but the result is different.’
Fighting a fish that had taken the hook was like normal fishing, but everything changed once it was pulled onto land.
It was not the ordinary method of catching a fish and putting it into the Inventory.
Until it rose above the surface, there was no way to know what kind of fish it was.
There could even be duds.
Something had clearly taken the bait. They struggled against it as it thrashed in every direction, but when they finally pulled it above the water, there was sometimes nothing there.
‘It’s not that the fish simply got away.’
It was like Schrödinger’s cat, whose life or death could not be known before opening the box.
Until fishing was over, they could not know whether they had caught anything, or what they had caught.
‘Wasn’t this already common knowledge?’
There was a reason people were suddenly calling it easy money.
Its Field Level was lower than other fields, but it had still been steadily increasing.
Perhaps because of that, people were sometimes fishing up Item Boxes.
“You can fish up Item Boxes too.”
But just hearing about it made him think they must be incredibly rare.
People seemed focused only on the possibility of fishing up boxes, accusing others of hiding an easy-money spot.
“Do they all have nothing better to do?”
There had already been plenty of users gathered there for some time.
If there was easy money to be made, everyone could just fish.
‘There are rankings too?’
Someone had even shared an easy-money ranking list, which apparently changed regularly.
“During the Rainy Season, pulling Wolves to hunt Crocodiles is easy money? It’s true, but...”
The problem was that Pull Hunting had become much harder than before.
The Wolves’ detection range had widened, and each one’s reaction speed and burst acceleration were no joke.
“Well. They’ll figure it out.”
There did not seem to be any other major issues.
He closed the window, sorted his Avatars as usual, and resumed hunting.
A few hours passed.
After a familiar boss-clear notification, a notification he had never seen before appeared.
‘Level 100?’
Certain fields had reached level 100.
And the message said that measures would follow.
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