WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The World Is Not a Game ◈
Chapter 14
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* * *
Hyeokjin passed through the fragments of the goddess's exploding head and landed hard on the ground on the other side.
With the lower parts of both arms missing, his balance was off, and he staggered slightly. Then he straightened up and turned to look behind him.
The goddess's body was twitching, spraying foul purple fluid from its shattered neck. It swayed unsteadily for a moment before toppling backward.
A powerful tremor shook the ground.
With the goddess's ruined neck right in front of him, Hyeokjin activated his artificial eye's scanning function, even as the purple fluid spraying from it drenched him.
The warp fluctuations were very quiet, and there were no signs of life. It was completely dead.
“An S-rank monster, the Goddess of Nightmare, down in exactly eleven seconds. We could put that in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest S-rank monster kill.”
Chuck glanced at a wristwatch to check the time, then straightened a disheveled white fedora. Nikki, who had been hovering on her broom, had also landed by then. She brushed off her clothes and nodded in agreement.
“I agree. I can't believe we used to struggle so much against these things. Well, honestly, that wasn't easy either. But having a team made up entirely of S-rank Closers certainly gives us a lot less to worry about. How about changing our combat doctrine against the Goddess of Nightmare? With this much firepower, we could just focus our attacks and kill it when it starts preparing its whispers, instead of putting up mental barriers.”
“If we try that and hear the goddess's whispers without mental barriers, we'll fall apart completely. We already have a proven combat doctrine. There's no need to take needless risks trying something new.”
The team chatted as though nothing had happened, despite having endured a mental attack that would have traumatized an ordinary person for life. But they weren't completely immune to psychic attacks either.
They were human, suffering from trauma and having nightmares in their sleep. Still, if this much could break them, they would never have reached S-rank in the first place.
‘Hmm. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be particularly toxic.’
After scanning the purple fluid covering him as well, Hyeokjin used telekinesis to shake off the scraps of the goddess's flesh and the soot clinging to his body.
The goddess's bodily fluids gave off a very strange smell. The scan hadn't detected any particular toxicity, but if Hyeokjin entered the dungeon covered in this stuff, the smell might give him away to the monsters.
While Hyeokjin busily cleaned himself, Dhanush turned away from a conversation with another teammate, looked over at him, and grinned.
“Hey, Hyeokjin! That was pretty impressive back there. By the way, what's that thing on your hand? I've never seen a weapon like it.”
“It's a beam weapon called an Incineration Cannon. It's powerful enough to work on S-rank monsters, and since it runs on warp energy, it's effective against monsters in incorporeal form too.”
“Yeah, it certainly packed a punch. But do you have to throw it away after one use?”
Following Dhanush's glance toward the remains of the exploded prosthesis still attached to his left forearm, Hyeokjin shrugged lightly and ejected the wreckage.
“No. I can keep using it if I lower the output or deploy its special heat sinks. I blew up the prosthesis on purpose this time, so I could use the blast wave to dodge the goddess's slashes and use it like a grenade.”
“Really? But what are you going to do without arms? Do we need to pull back and get you fixed up first?”
“No, there's no need.”
Hyeokjin looked at Nikki, and she gave a small wave of her hand in understanding.
Black mist gathered in front of Hyeokjin, forming a small arched doorway in midair. A moment later, something with a metallic sheen shot out of it.
It was a pair of gauntlet-shaped prosthetic arms.
The same kind of Incineration Cannon prostheses Hyeokjin had been wearing.
When he held out both arms, the gauntlets attached themselves to the joints at his elbows with a Click! After briefly testing their movement, Hyeokjin wiggled his fingers for Dhanush to see.
“I brought a few spares.”
“Heh. Very thorough, Mr. Raven.”
Dhanush grinned and nodded in satisfaction, but his smile didn't last long.
The space around them suddenly began to distort. It was a sign that monsters were about to emerge from the shadow world.
As everyone steadied their breathing and began to suppress their presence, Chuck clapped once to get the team's attention.
“All right, same as before. Stay concealed until Dhanush finishes the wide-area scan. If a fight breaks out, we'll reveal ourselves and work together. Understood?”
The Closers nodded silently instead of answering. The graphene optical camouflage attached to their skin and clothing activated, making their bodies blend into the colors around them like chameleons.
It was like watching ice melt rapidly in hot water.
Chuck nodded after confirming that the Closers' figures and presences were quickly fading away, then spoke while likewise vanishing from sight and suppressing any trace of a presence.
“Good. Let's head in.”
The Closers stepped into the invisible rift in space.
* * *
The first thing that greeted Hyeokjin on the other side of the rift was a rush of air from the shadow world.
It was thick and foul, like breath spilling from the jaws of an enormous monster. The moment he inhaled it, his hand instinctively closed around the filter canister on his gas mask.
Most air tainted by warp energy caused unpleasant emotions, but this was far worse.
It felt less like breathing air and more like inhaling malice given physical form.
It was as heavy as molten lead, and simply breathing it wore away at his nerves.
Hyeokjin swallowed a groan at the disturbing pressure and quietly held his breath. Before long, Dhanush's low voice came from nearby.
“There don't seem to be any monsters within a two-hundred-meter radius.”
“...Don't seem to be?”
“This place is strange. It's almost as if space itself is alive. It's hard to say anything for certain. I'll keep watch for now.”
“Can't be helped, then. I've put up an optical concealment barrier covering a ten-meter radius around me. Everyone, come over here and switch off your individual camouflage.”
Chuck sounded uneasy and appeared on the ground like a mirage, followed by the hidden Closers nearby, their colors spreading into view like running paint.
Hyeokjin switched off his camouflage too.
His body appeared like paint spreading through clear water. He slowly opened and closed a hand, then looked around again.
They were the first humans to enter an SS+ rank dungeon. The landscape was so bizarre that Hyeokjin could hardly put it into words.
“It's like shadows flickering in candlelight.”
The others nodded in agreement with the Closer's remark.
The shadow world was dark overall, but it wasn't completely black.
A faint light with no visible source filled the space, and every object flickered in dark shades like a shadow cast by that dim light.
In a way, it also looked like muddy water slowly creeping along.
At the moment, they seemed to be standing in the middle of ruins surrounded by the remains of enormous structures. But those shapes were gradually collapsing and changing into others from moment to moment.
‘This really is the perfect place to go mad.’
A ringing sound like the resonance of machinery came from somewhere. Hyeokjin briefly closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
Irritation and dread seeped into his mind like a fine drizzle. If the mental attack from the Goddess of Nightmare outside the dungeon was a drill meant to shatter the Closers' minds in one blow, this environment was hydrochloric acid.
It couldn't smash something apart all at once like a drill, but it steadily ate away at the outside until cracks finally formed.
He was holding out for now, but if he stayed here, disaster would come sooner or later.
‘...This is no time to stand around in a daze.’
Hyeokjin shook his head, driving away the dread rising within him. Then he opened his eyes, went down on one knee, and placed a hand on the foul substance that made up the ground, which resembled filthy water.
Just as Dhanush was responsible for detecting monsters, Hyeokjin had a job of his own.
Rear support and detailed environmental analysis.
It was something only he could do, thanks to the alchemical organ inside his body.
He drew on his warp energy to activate that organ and began analyzing the properties of the substance in his hand.
After some time, another Closer approached him.
“How's the environmental analysis going, Hyeokjin? Have you detected any poisons we should watch out for?”
“No. How should I put this... It's hard to pin down.”
“Now you're being vague like Dhanush. What's so strange about it?”
“According to the analysis, this tar-like black slime can't be defined as having any single set of properties. It's as if countless properties coexist in it. It'll be faster to show you.”
After answering, Hyeokjin scooped up a handful of the substance flowing across the ground and concentrated.
His internal alchemical organ activated, changing the warp energy within the substance in his hand and giving it a physical form.
Finally, he fixed the properties of the transformed material in place.
When the process was complete, what lay in his hand was no longer a sticky black substance, but a metal that gave off a cold, piercing gleam.
“That's...”
“Moonlight iron. I made it through alchemical transmutation.”
Hyeokjin handed over the piece of metal so the Closer could see for themself. They examined it with an expression of disbelief.
“Shadow metal” was the name given to metals found only in shadow worlds. Of those metals that didn't exist in the real world, moonlight iron was the most useful.
Conductivity, ductility, rigidity, warp energy conductivity...
It was an ideal metal, perfectly combining properties that should have been physically unable to coexist. A miraculous substance that real-world physics couldn't explain. It was considered the ultimate industrial material, but it was so incredibly rare that it cost around two hundred times as much as gold by weight.
“...It's real. With this incredible warp energy conductivity, there's no doubt it's moonlight iron.”
The Closer examining and testing the metal Hyeokjin had handed over sounded slightly dazed. Silent shock spread through the team.
Watching their astonishment, Hyeokjin scooped up another handful of the black substance flowing across the ground.
“This black material all around us can be transformed into every warp material discovered so far. The conversion efficiency is incredible too. I think we could literally call it the ultimate raw material.”
“That's good news. We can use as many resources as we like and focus entirely on clearing the dungeon.”
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