The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor - Chapter 6

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 6

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Swoosh!

Seo Hajin quickly pulled in the vine rope.

A firmly secured shaft was attached to the end.

It was a wooden pole about five feet long. A sharp bone spearhead was fixed to its tip, with a fish flapping wildly on it.

"Easy."

With Multiple Viewpoints, he could look down from above and see exactly where the fish were.

He had hurried because if he took too long and the spearhead came loose, he could lose both it and the fish.

This time, though, it stayed intact while he reeled it in. He secured a fish as thick as his forearm.

"Nice."

He had designed the bone spear for hunting wolves.

Somehow, it had become a fishing harpoon instead.

Above the waterfall was a stream nearly as large as a river, with a rocky outcrop in the middle like an island.

That rocky island connected to the cliff beside the waterfall. After sleeping, he only had to climb the rock face to reach it.

Most wolves did not bother swimming through the current just to get to him. That gave him enough time to try harpoon fishing.

Occasionally, more aggressive packs did swim over, but the result never changed.

'They're not surrounding me. If they come one at a time, that's even better.'

There were two types of fish in his inventory.

One looked like a cross between a mackerel and a tuna. The other resembled a crucian carp, except it puffed itself up like a pufferfish.

He had already confirmed that both were edible.

Neither was poisonous, and they tasted better than wolf meat.

Even while fishing, though, he knew it was not good to stay in one place for too long.

For one thing, despite only hunting the wolves that came at him in dribs and drabs, he could see more and more wolves respawning.

Fish, on the other hand, did not seem to respawn in greater numbers no matter how many he caught.

'Does that only apply to monsters?'

Chewing on a piece of grilled fish, he replaced his slightly dulled spearhead with a new one.

'Fish don't seem to give experience.'

Were fishing proficiency and harpoon proficiency not a thing here? As he considered it, he looked over the map and his surroundings before choosing a direction.

'There are only two choices.'

He decided to follow the waterway.

Upstream or downstream.

He chose downstream.

'Upstream is getting closer to those rocky mountains. Something about it bothers me.'

There were fewer and fewer trees he could climb to rest in.

There might be crevices between the rocks, but they did not seem particularly safe.

Downstream, meanwhile, was filled with even larger, denser trees. They felt imposing, but he could not avoid hunting altogether. It seemed better to go that way.

'I need to keep hunting and gaining experience.'

For now, all he could do was cling to the uncertain hypothesis that filling his experience bar would eventually lead to something.

"All right. Let's go."

After catching one more fish, he silently thanked the little rocky island and climbed down the cliff.

Naturally, the wolves gathered across the water rushed after him. Looking down from above, he could tell roughly where they would meet.

'Three completed spear shafts. Twelve spearheads...'

He checked his inventory.

He needed to calculate what would be used up in battle if he wanted to respond smoothly.

Well-sharpened bone spearheads were essentially ammunition to him. He always had to keep track of his spares.

* * *

He got his second equipment item that afternoon.

Fatigue had piled up from the continued fighting when he spotted a faint green glow. When he checked it, he found something he had never seen before.

Come to think of it, he remembered seeing something similar when he had obtained the hooded vest. Equipment drops probably announced themselves with light.

[Wolfskin Bracer]

"It goes on the arm."

It was a piece of armor.

Wolfskin had its limits, but it would be better than bare skin.

He usually used his left arm to ward off attacks, and it had accumulated plenty of scratches. He equipped the bracer on that forearm.

It fastened with strings tied above and below the arm.

It felt a little loose at first, but after some time, it fit him properly.

The hooded vest had been the same.

It had originally been a little small, but it had stretched slightly after he put it on.

Perhaps equipment items naturally adjusted to their wearer's body. If so, that was something to be grateful for.

"Oh."

The leather bracer was quite satisfying.

Perhaps because it was made of wolfskin, it blocked slashes from wolves fairly well.

He did not think it would stop their teeth, though, so he did not risk testing that.

[Your experience is full.]

[Please choose one of the following options.]

Another welcome notification followed.

Only the third time so far.

He looked over the listed images.

'Two are repeats.'

Cartography and Strength Increase.

He recognized those two. The other three were new.

1. A wind symbol above a fist.

2. A person clenching both fists and screaming.

(The eyes are red, and they seem to be roaring.)

3. A circle drawn around a person.

(Arrows point inward from outside the circle, and it is marked 10m.)

'Wind Fist? Is it an attack speed increase?'

It was vague.

If it was attack speed, could he not just swing faster himself? Attacking faster was not automatically an advantage, either.

What if it instead imbued his fist with the power of wind?

'That doesn't sound great either...'

The image of someone screaming with red eyes seemed like a Berserk-type skill. It might suit a barbarian, but it felt like it would come with side effects.

'This last one... It has to be that, right?'

Monster awareness range.

The 10 meters probably meant it reduced that range by that much. From one hundred meters to ninety.

'Is that meaningful?'

They would run into each other while moving anyway.

It might be worthwhile if it cut the range by half or so.

'Well, if skills of the same type can be combined and enhanced, it could become useful later.'

It was not worth choosing right away, though.

He needed to prepare for what lay directly ahead, not make long-term plans.

"All right. I'll choose this one."

Strength Increase.

He selected it.

'But with only one skill slot, swapping them is annoying... Huh?'

Why were there two slots?

He checked again.

There really were two.

'There was only one when I rested earlier.'

He had clearly seen it while using Cooking up in a tree. The only thing that had changed since then was that he had filled his experience one more time.

'Does gaining experience three times add a slot?'

So he was not meant to live with only one slot forever.

Gladly, he inserted Strength Increase into the new slot.

The change was immediate.

It was not overwhelming, but he had undeniably become stronger.

That was useful for both fighting and running away.

He could produce the same force with less effort, or hit harder with the same amount of strength.

It also let him exert more force when fleeing up a tree or urgently creating distance.

Hunting naturally became easier.

Of course, there was another effect.

His inventory had been overloaded.

'Oh.'

Once his strength increased, the weight his inventory could store increased with it.

He was still just short of overloading it, but he would have definitely exceeded the limit before.

'Going a little over isn't a huge problem, but it's inconvenient.'

In the end, he decided to keep Strength Increase permanently in one of the two slots and swap the other according to the situation.

* * *

He found traces of another person around evening.

After wiping out another wolf pack that rushed him without hesitation, he headed to the water's edge to quench his thirst and saw it.

'A crocodile?'

What rose above the water was unmistakably a crocodile's head.

It barely protruded above the surface, its indifferent yet sharp eyes fixed in one direction.

It did not seem to be threatening or hunting him, but his instincts warned him that getting closer would be dangerous.

There probably was not just one, either. He used his view from above to inspect the area and found several more scattered around it, though none were particularly close.

'I can still drink if I avoid them. But the water won't seem so clean anymore.'

When he had only seen fish, he had not thought much of it. With larger creatures in the water, it felt less clean.

Of course, he did not drink it raw.

Just as he could cook meat without a fire, Cooking allowed him to make both "boiled water" and "water boiled and then cooled."

'Hm?'

As he searched for a reasonably safe point between the crocodiles, he spotted a sack he had not expected to find here.

It was made of some unknown hide, its mouth tightly tied shut with a cord.

It looked large enough to hold two soccer balls. Partially submerged, it bobbed at the water's edge.

'Is it empty?'

The way it moved with the current made it seem as if there was nothing heavy inside.

'It doesn't look completely empty, though...'

It could have been a trap someone had set.

He approached cautiously, then used his wooden spear to pull the sack onto land.

'Doesn't seem like it was a trap.'

When he brought the sack in front of him, a small system window appeared above it.

[Personal Effects of the Deceased ‘Caitlyn’]

'Personal effects...'

There were games like that.

When a character died, their belongings fell into a bag. Once they restarted, they had to go back and retrieve it.

The situation reminded him of those games. He wondered whether people could restart after dying in this world, then shook his head.

'No.'

Either way, someone had clearly died and dropped this.

He had been wondering whether he should welcome people when he encountered them or stay wary, but it seemed he would have to think about that longer.

'There's not much here.'

The sack opened like an inventory, letting him see inside.

There was an old cloth outfit similar to what he had first worn, a wooden club, and several apple-like fruits that had apparently been picked somewhere.

'Did a crocodile kill her?'

He quickly realized that was not the case.

One of the fruits had bite marks, so he thought it had been left unfinished. It turned out to be poisonous.

'She died while eating it.'

What was this, Snow White? A poisoned apple.

Still, he had Detoxification. If he had nothing else to eat, he could probably eat these.

'At least they're sweet.'

He took a tiny bite. It tasted good.

At the same time, a system message related to poisoning appeared, then quickly disappeared.

'I need to check whether Detoxification is equipped before I eat this.'

He put the cloth outfit and club into his inventory too.

Caitlyn's name had made him wonder whether the deceased was a woman, and the clothes and club were both accordingly small.

'I don't know about the club, but the clothes might stretch if I wear them. If not, I can tear them up and use the cloth.'

The club was about thirty percent shorter than the one he had started with, but it seemed suitable for swinging like a baton.

'Couldn't she hunt?'

Seeing no other loot or hunting materials, he roughly guessed at the situation the woman had faced.

It could not have been easy for a woman alone to fight wolves. Perhaps she had fled around desperately before finding the poisonous fruit.

'Still, she somehow managed to escape. Most people would be surrounded right from the start.'

Maybe Caitlyn had possessed a unique ability.

After considering that and other possibilities, he approached the water as originally intended and replenished his supply.

Then, right after that, he made an unexpected discovery.

The sack that had held the dead person's belongings, not the belongings themselves, could be used to expand his inventory.

'Five slots?'

Rather than storing it in his inventory, using it as a consumable increased his number of inventory slots.

'It's good, but if this is how it works, people might start hunting each other too.'

He used it right away, increasing his inventory by five slots.

His original twenty slots became twenty-five, though his maximum carry weight did not increase.

'Why is that thing creeping over...?'

He spotted the crocodile approaching from a distance in time and stepped away from the water. Once he had moved far enough, he saw the forest wolves approaching again.

Maybe they had territories too.

It felt like the wolves did not come when he was in the crocodiles' territory.

'Is there an in-between zone?'

Somewhere neither side approached.

If such a place existed, he could travel more comfortably.

Thinking he should investigate that as well, he tightened his grip on the spear.

By sunset, he had killed more than twenty wolves.

His inventory inevitably became overloaded, so he had no choice but to discard some items.

It was not all a loss, though.

He found another item he had never seen before.

'A dog collar?'

It did not look like something for walks.