WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 7
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The wolves had changed.
Before, they rushed in the moment he entered their awareness range, surrounded him, then attacked one at a time or in groups. Now, they were acting a little differently.
‘They’re still coming in packs, but... they’re holding back?’
They still circled from a distance.
Some bared their fangs and watched him like prey, but a few now seemed more wary of him.
‘Is it because of that dog collar item?’
The thought crossed his mind, but an item stored in his inventory probably could not affect the outside world.
His next theory was that it had something to do with all the wolves he had hunted. Like how even vicious dogs went quiet the moment they caught the scent of a dog catcher.
‘I wash whenever I get the chance, but maybe the smell’s stuck because I don’t have soap.’
Had the scent of wolf blood soaked into him?
He had thought it might attract wolves, but perhaps it was making them afraid instead.
‘Not sure.’
What mattered was not letting his guard down.
He treated the wolves that approached and the ones that did not with the same caution.
Then, for the first time since arriving here, he saw wolves run away.
“Oh.”
He did not chase them.
It was not just one wolf fleeing, and there were still wolves he had to deal with.
‘They don’t keep running forever.’
Watching from above, he saw the wolves that had fled return from somewhere else with reinforcements.
‘Letting them escape could be dangerous, then.’
He could manage them for now, but if too many wolves gathered, things would naturally become dangerous.
‘Shouldn’t my experience be full by now?’
The required experience clearly increased at higher levels, but he thought it should have been enough by now.
Perhaps his guess was right. After killing a few more, a welcome notification appeared.
[Your experience is full.]
[Please choose one of the following options.]
One of the icons was unusual. Until now, they had all had plain silver-gray borders, but this one alone had a green border.
‘Do skills have ranks? Makes sense that they would.’
The picture itself was simple.
A person swung a long object that could have been a club or a sword, striking with all their strength.
‘It’s probably some kind of heavy strike skill.’
Some of the other icons looked useful too, but he could not pass up a skill he guessed was for striking, especially one with a green border he had never seen before.
‘I have no idea what this thing hanging from the weapon is supposed to be, but it can’t be anything weird, right?’
He chose the green skill.
[Attack: Heavy Attack]
[Consumes stamina to deliver a powerful blow.]
[Impact increases according to carried weight.]
[Can be enhanced by combining identical Skills.]
“Ah. That thing hanging from the weapon was a scale weight.”
It seemed to be drawn in a cartoonish style.
If that was the case, it would have been more intuitive if it had a label like “1t” on it. A little disappointing.
‘Still, I don’t think I chose wrong.’
He replaced Detoxification in its slot with it.
Nothing changed immediately, but he could clearly feel that he could use the skill whenever he wanted.
‘Now.’
A wolf rushed at him clumsily.
Hajin slipped aside and redirected its forepaw, then swung the club in his right hand straight down at its head.
The club, one of the Personal Effects dropped by a deceased entrant, was a little short for him. Still, it struck with a heavier sound than he had ever heard before, crushing and caving in one side of the wolf’s skull.
Crack!
Perhaps it had triggered an instant-kill judgment. The wolf vanished as it fell, leaving an item behind.
Some wolves that had been about to rush in stopped and hesitated.
“Keep coming. I’m busy.”
He was satisfied with the skill.
It was a striking skill, so it was awkward to use with a spear, but he could always make more clubs later.
‘There are trees everywhere.’
If he hollowed out the end of a branch, wedged in a stone, and secured it, he could make a better blunt weapon.
Still, perhaps because the skill consumed stamina, his legs nearly gave out after a single blow.
He recovered quickly, but it did not seem like something he could use endlessly in a single battle.
‘Even so, this is great.’
Having a proper finishing blow was what mattered.
Considering the stamina he would otherwise spend grappling with enemies, the stamina spent on a single strike was not all that much.
‘Better to finish quickly, rest, and eat something.’
That was exactly what he did.
He charged the wolves that had been hesitating and killed them one by one.
Leaving the fleeing wolves alone, he looted the items and quickly left the area.
‘But does this mean being overloaded is unavoidable?’
If his striking damage increased with the weight he carried, it would be better to travel as heavily loaded as possible.
‘I think I can handle up to about a hundred kilograms...’
At least the weight in his inventory did not affect the outside world.
If it added to his own weight, even climbing trees would not be easy.
* * *
Heavy Attack was incredibly useful.
If he entered battle after eating plenty to replenish his stamina, he could use it to clear enemies faster than before.
Of course, more wolves were running away, but his hunting speed had definitely improved.
That was not the only reason.
At some point, the wolves began to grow fewer. The forest looked the same, but there were fewer wolves, and other things started catching his attention.
Feline predators.
There were leopards he occasionally spotted, as well as creatures resembling wildcats, only much larger.
He had not seen one directly, but he had even found tracks that seemed to belong to a tiger.
How did he know they were tiger tracks?
The moment he saw them, a chill ran down his spine. Maybe it was ancestral experience data written into his genes.
‘Was heading upstream the right choice?’
He changed direction.
His way was to choose safety, even if it meant losing time, rather than keep going just because it was too late to regret it now.
He retraced his route.
He had no desire to walk into a tiger’s territory on his own.
‘What good is having an Attack skill? Every hit from a tiger would be on the level of an Attack skill.’
Even if he was a barbarian warrior, his brain was not barbaric.
After pushing back into the wolves’ territory, he hunted nearly a hundred wolves over the next several days.
Then things changed again.
More and more wolves fled. Eventually, they stopped approaching him from the start. They would first gather more wolves from the surrounding area, then swarm him.
He had not stayed in one place waiting for them to respawn, yet he had reached the point where he had to face similar numbers again.
“Well, I’ll worry about that later.”
Near sunset, as usual, Hajin sat high in a tree on a thick branch, his back against the trunk. Only then did he check the experience notification that had arrived that afternoon.
Even with multiple fields of view, the more enemies he faced, the less room for error he had.
If he stared at the system in the middle of all that, his real body could take a serious hit. No matter how curious he was, he had held back and put it off.
“Green again?”
Oddly enough, this time all five skills presented to him had green borders.
He did not know whether he was simply lucky or whether it was because this was his fifth level.
There was another surprising change.
“Why can I see these?”
Unlike before, when only icons had been displayed, each icon now showed its skill name.
‘I had been guessing based on the pictures.’
What had changed?
He put off his choice for the moment and checked the system. He quickly found the difference.
[Awakener: Seo Hajin]
[Unique Ability: Multiple Viewpoints]
[Avatar Name: Juggernaut]
[Level: 5]
[Skill Slots: 2]
[Inventory: 25]
It was gone.
The “Provisional” tag was no longer there.
He was simply an Awakener.
The level, skill slots, and other details that had previously been hidden had also appeared beneath it.
That was not all that had changed.
The system had gained quite a few functions.
Among them was something he had wondered about, a community linked to other Awakeners.
The message boards had a rough, old-fashioned style rather than the feel of a modern internet site.
Still, for someone whose days had been nothing but killing wolves, eating meat, climbing a tree, and spending the night there, interacting with others was very welcome.
‘We haven’t met in person, but that might actually be better.’
There were posts on the boards, but not many.
There were no more than ten pages in total, and the same few usernames posted and commented over and over.
“Ah.”
He soon realized why.
To view or use the boards, one had to become a full Awakener. That meant there were not many people at level five.
‘Then I’m fairly quick too.’
Still, since people were already posting, he did not seem exceptionally fast.
‘There are people using bows too.’
The boards allowed users to upload photos and videos, but they said a related skill was required to use that function.
‘There are skills for taking photos and videos too.’
Thinking again about how many strange skills there were, he looked at a picture someone had uploaded of a bow and arrows.
The user had first used a crude wooden bow they had made themselves, then later began using a bow dropped by a monster.
They said their archery was terrible, but it was still nice not having to fight enemies up close.
-I’m insanely jealous of that bow.
-I want a bow too. I’ve done a little traditional Korean archery.
-How do you get arrows? Make them yourself?
↳Yeah, you can make them if you have a woodworking-type skill.
↳Just woodworking?
↳Woodworking is all I know about. Maybe weapon crafting works too?
↳You can’t use metal arrowheads with woodworking alone.
↳Yeah, you have to make the heads separately and attach them.
There were not many posts.
Most were casual chatter mixed with complaints.
Even those who had removed their Provisional tag first and begun using the boards did not know exactly where this place was or how to return home.
Still, they had gathered some information.
There was even a post titled something like “Must-Read Information for Newbies.”
It was not long, but it contained genuinely useful information. The revision timing was listed at the bottom, perhaps because it was updated regularly.
‘There’s no date.’
It only divided time into things like Day 3 and Day 4. It did not state what month or day it was.
Someone had suggested recording real-world time, but the opinion that they could not rule out this place having a different concept of time from Earth had won out.
“Restarting is actually possible?”
The most surprising information was that dying here did not mean truly dying.
If someone died before removing their Provisional tag, they returned to the space where they had set up their avatar. If they wanted, they could create a different avatar and enter again.
Once the Provisional tag was removed, the level reset penalty disappeared. Even so, they could not avoid losing a little experience upon death, having their maximum inventory slots reduced, and dropping Personal Effects.
‘If you make your avatar wrong, you could die and start over.’
Still, having his level reset and losing everything he owned was a pretty serious penalty.
At least the skills equipped in his skill slots remained even after death.
There was something else that remained too.
‘Points?’
They were apparently points earned from hunting monsters.
He had wondered whether there was such a thing, and there really was.
He had not seen them before, but apparently they only became visible after one became a full Awakener.
‘They accumulate from before, but they only unlock after you become a full Awakener.’
[Points Held: 312.58]
‘It goes to two decimal places.’
Apparently, the actual value extended beyond two decimal places, but only two digits were displayed. How had they figured that out?
‘Did someone check every time they hunted? They must be really meticulous.’
Seo Hajin also learned that the points he had accumulated were not low compared to other users on the boards.
If anything, they were on the high side.
Naturally, stronger monsters and beasts gave more points. The person claiming to have the fewest points on the boards had not exceeded one hundred yet.
‘There’s a threefold difference?’
It turned out that they had hunted large numbers of small, weak monsters.
‘So there are things like rabbits too.’
It ultimately came down to the difference in starting locations, but he did not envy the others now.
‘There must be pros and cons.’
For one thing, almost none of the small, weak animals attacked first. They instead ran far away when they sensed something else nearby, which made sense when he thought about it.
That was not combat. It was real hunting.
No matter how weak they were, catching and killing something that ran away could not be easy.
The user with relatively few points was the Awakener who used a bow.
Hajin did not know what they did in the real world, but they said they had a woodworking-related Unique Ability.
Thanks to it, they had used nearby trees to make a crude bow as soon as they arrived and started hunting.
‘It wouldn’t have been easy if they had come here, would it?’
A crude bow made by hand.
Could it hunt the wolves here?
If they hit a vital spot accurately, they might do some damage, but even hunting one wolf would be difficult.
‘A lot of people think it’s random.’
Everyone seemed to have similar thoughts about how their entry location was determined. They believed it was random.
‘If you enter again after dying, you might end up somewhere else. I’m curious, but going back empty-handed is a bit much.’
After checking various things, he thought he had been luckier than most.
In particular, he only now learned that seeing a green skill before his fifth level-up had been lucky.
‘All five being green is normal.’
Apparently, everyone else had experienced the same thing.
Some had even seen blue instead of green.
‘So only green or higher appears for now.’
He also learned that users could exchange or trade items with one another through the system’s marketplace function.
Bartering was possible, and points could also be paid as currency.
No proper market price had been established yet, but the system apparently showed approximate values.
Hajin entered the marketplace just in case and found that small items had already been listed.
Footnotes:
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