WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 9
──────
Several rounds of feedback followed.
After buying the completed item that had been listed, he requested a few revisions and put it back up. The other party would buy it back, modify it as though repurposing it, and remake it.
By dawn, he finally had three completed long-handled hammers.
-I'll save the base blueprint. If you need more, place an order anytime.
└ You can save blueprints too?
└ Yes. Each crafting skill has a limit on saved blueprints. The base limit is 100, so there's plenty of room.
└ I see. I'll keep that in mind.
└ Though I might need to remove it later to save other things, so you could keep one intact, sell it to me, and commission the work that way.
└ That's an option too. Understood.
The repeated feedback was because the other person did not know his physical specs.
They had chosen the thickness of the wood based on an average adult build, but it was too thin for his hand, so it had to be made larger.
The length also felt slightly off, and one adjustment led to another.
Fortunately, they did not charge extra for those changes. If something similar came up again, he decided to commission the same user.
“Oh. Another one sold.”
A notification popped up saying some of his listings had sold. He had put up some wolf hide and wolf bones, the cause of his overloaded inventory. It seemed that people who processed hides were the main buyers.
-Juggernaut only hunts wolves or what?
└ Look at the quantity lol
└ No wonder that commissioned weapon looked so insane
└ He's probably a barbarian warrior?
└ Don't know about barbarian, but he's definitely a warrior
Considering Heavy Attack, keeping his inventory overloaded would have made sense. Still, he decided it was better to sell while he could and began clearing it out.
‘The number of users will keep growing, and hide prices will fall.’
It was best to sell while he could still get a decent price. More would keep coming, so there was no problem.
Besides, Heavy Attack enhanced a weapon's striking power. It did not say it affected total damage.
That meant he had to consider the difference between hitting something with a small club and hitting it with a proper hammer like this.
‘Even if the added multiplier drops, it'll be fine as long as the base striking power is stronger.’
That was why he had paid to commission the weapon.
He ran a hand over the Stone Warhammer that would be his main weapon for a while.
‘A little cold.’
He opened his inventory and put on the repaired hooded vest.
That was why he had kept some wolf hide instead of listing all of it. He needed it to repair the equipment he was wearing.
‘Does repair take longer when durability has dropped further?’
He did not know the exact criteria yet, but he would learn as he repaired more things.
After putting on the well-repaired bracer, he looked toward one side of the faintly brightening sky.
The view from above, which Juggernaut's eyes could never see but his multiple fields of vision allowed him to, was magnificent.
Once again, he wondered why he and the others had been sent to a place like this. There was still no information about it on the board.
He could only assume that something would turn up as he kept leveling or exploring the area.
‘For now, it seems ridiculously huge.’
Meetings between Awakeners seemed extremely rare. Nobody had seen people from other countries, either.
‘Come to think of it, the community only seems to have Korean people. Where did everyone from other countries go?’
Were areas divided by country?
Could they have split them up like that?
If so, what happened to people with dual citizenship?
Did they just separate the message boards?
As he tilted his head, a crackle of brush suddenly caught his attention.
It was not far away.
Someone was moving quickly.
‘A person?’
His vision was limited by the trees, but the presence felt different from any beast he had encountered so far.
They were not coming his way.
They would pass by at a slight distance.
Then, for one brief moment, someone emerged from the brush.
‘It is a person.’
Long blond hair.
Pale skin.
At first, he thought it was a woman, but the build he saw next clearly belonged to a man.
‘Going for an elf look?’
If he had made his ears pointed too, he would have looked like an elf straight out of a movie. It did not seem like he had gone that far.
The problem was that the man did not seem to be simply traveling. He realized that because more people followed behind after a short interval.
‘Was he running away?’
There were two, maybe three people chasing him.
The wolves around them were bound to draw aggro, so too many presences were mixed together for him to judge the exact number.
‘It almost looks like they're all fleeing together... but I don't think so.’
From the postures and expressions he caught glimpses of, their intentions were obvious.
‘People really are dangerous.’
He did not intervene.
They were running too fast for him to find an opening, and the number of wolves gathering nearby was no joke.
It was simply regrettable that the first living people he had found had appeared under such unwelcome circumstances.
‘Still, I should go check.’
The one fleeing and the ones pursuing.
He did not yet know who was the victim and who was the aggressor.
What mattered was that someone would likely die soon.
Which meant loot would be left at the scene.
‘It's a chance to increase my inventory slots.’
First, he checked their direction.
Where they were headed.
Then he gave up on tracking them.
‘That's tiger territory.’
Trying to gain a few inventory slots could cost him everything he had worked to gather. No matter how many there were, they did not look capable of dealing with a tiger.
‘Their clothes look like starter equipment, too.’
He felt uneasy.
He had seen people nearby, and knowing they were not good people made it hard to focus entirely on hunting.
At least his multiple fields of vision let him scan the area from above whenever he wanted, but it inevitably divided his concentration.
‘Hm.’
He had still learned something.
He had fought while moving, but he had never tried running away before. It seemed that once he got far enough away, even inherently aggressive monsters would stop chasing him.
‘Will that ever come in handy?’
Not now, at least.
Instead, he saw some of the wolves that had been aggroed by those people and headed his way spot him and change direction.
“I should test it in real combat too.”
Seo Hajin had been sitting in a tree until then.
He considered climbing down, but decided to wait a little longer in case the people who had run off returned.
Another sales notification appeared, so he checked the system marketplace. A message from the buyer caught his eye.
It was originally a chat window beneath the listing for bargaining, but someone had written something unrelated to the item for sale.
[TemptationOfMySisterInLaw: Are you hunting in the eastern forest? If so, be careful. Villains are gathering there.]
‘They really gave themselves a game ID like that.’
It was the sort of name one often came across in online games, something that sounded like it belonged in a morning soap opera.
The content caught his attention more than the name.
-Villains?
└ People who hunt people. Doesn't matter if you're not in the eastern forest.
‘How would I know whether this is the east or not?’
He had been steadily making a map using his mapping skill.
But he had not seen the whole area.
“Ah.”
He checked the board, wondering if there might be something. Users had posted information about the scenery around them, along with rough sketches of their surroundings.
There was also a crude map of the area pieced together from that information, rough sketches, and maps posted by users with mapping skills.
It still looked like a collection of fragments that did not quite fit together. Some parts were not connected, and even connected areas often looked strange.
Still, it gave him a rough idea. He looked for what people meant by the eastern forest.
‘This doesn't seem to be it.’
Where he was seemed closer to the north of the whole area. The shapes of the mountain ranges in some of the sketches resembled the view before his eyes.
‘It doesn't seem likely those people came all the way here from the eastern forest.’
There were probably wolves over there too.
Still, it was useful information.
‘To bookmark the post... there.’
The post was being updated often.
He bookmarked it so he could check it whenever needed. Though he was not in the area, he started to type a message thanking the person for the warning, then stopped.
-You're the villain, you fuck, lol
A new comment appeared beneath the listing.
He was about to ask what that meant when another comment followed.
“Ah.”
It turned out the warning comment had been bait, a way to estimate someone's location based on how they responded.
“If I reply that I'll be careful, then I'm in the eastern forest. If I say I'm fine, then I'm somewhere else.”
The user named TemptationOfMySisterInLaw did not refute the accusation. Instead, they deleted their comment.
“Deleting the comment doesn't make that name any easier to forget.”
He shook his head and thanked the commenter who had exposed the truth. Looking again, that user's nickname was no ordinary one either.
[BoobsAreGoodUgh]
“...”
Even if this was not the eastern forest, that did not mean there were no villains here. The group he had seen earlier was probably that sort.
Their outfits had barely changed from the beginning. He did not know whether they had not hunted properly or had simply been unlucky.
‘No choice. I just have to stay careful.’
* * *
Crack!
The sound and sensation of bone being crushed traveled straight through his grip on the club.
A slight recoil, then the feeling of smashing through it with absurd ease.
‘I missed?’
He had aimed for the head, but they were so fast that he struck slightly farther back, around the nape.
Yet its neck broke without resistance.
The wolf's head twisted at an unnatural angle. The body collapsed, then soon vanished.
“This is good.”
That strike had not even used Heavy Attack. It was a basic attack.
The club itself was incredibly powerful.
The wolves that pounced on him next met similar ends.
‘Its durability is... decent.’
It would likely need repairs after one battle, after dealing with around ten wolves.
Ordering three from the start had been a wise decision.
He put it into his inventory, set it to repair using the wood and stone already inside, then took out another intact club and continued onward.
‘It's definitely different.’
Was it thanks to the [Slaughter Record] skill?
Both the damage he dealt and the damage he took differed from before. There was also an effect called Intimidation.
[When confronting the target species, Intimidation is continuously applied, causing them to lose their will to fight: The effect grows stronger as its stage rises.]
Until now, as he grew stronger, some wolves had run away and brought back stronger wolves.
Intimidation did not even let them run. It made them lower their tails and watch him cautiously instead.
Of course, they had not completely given up on attacking. When the pack grew large enough, they still slipped into the fight.
‘If I keep hunting, it'll get even more like this, right?’
If he kept raising the Nemesis effect to Stage 3 or higher, would they eventually give up attacking altogether and keep their distance?
‘That might become more troublesome.’
If that really happened, instead of the wolves charging at him, he would have to run over and beat them to death.
For now, though, he was simply satisfied with the club. He kept moving, following the footprints on the ground, the trail left by the group of people he suspected were villains, the people he had seen earlier.
The trail broke off here and there, but it was still no problem to follow.
“That way?”
Pant, pant.
A wolf poked its head out from beyond the brush.
It was not charging at him. It wagged its tail obediently instead, and around its neck was none other than a [Crude Beast Collar].
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
