WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
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◈ The World Is Not a Game ◈
Chapter 16
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Sighs rose from all around at Hyeokjin's answer.
Three weeks. For Hyeokjin, who was an S-rank in name only and effectively an A-rank Closer, even lasting that long would be impressive. Still, it was hard not to feel disappointed.
As Hyeokjin stood there looking bitter, Nikki came up beside him, gave his shoulder a light pat, and grinned.
“Hey, Vanilla! You're a grown man, and you're getting depressed over something like that? Cheer up! Considering all the supplies and equipment you can make for this dungeon expedition, bringing you along wasn't such a bad deal. At your level, even three weeks is an impressive stretch!”
“...I can't tell whether you're mocking me or comforting me, but thanks anyway.”
Hyeokjin sighed at Nikki's less-than-comforting words. After hearing everyone's answers, Chuck, their leader, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then slowly nodded and spoke.
“All right. For the next two weeks, we'll gather as much information about this place as possible. In the meantime, Hyeokjin, make everything you can. Weapons, potions, ammunition, all of it. In two weeks, we'll use what we've learned to reassess our schedule. We'll decide whether to press on with Hyeokjin, or simply give up on him and wait for an opportunity while surviving on the resources he leaves us. Any other opinions?”
The Closers shook their heads. Seeing that no one objected, Chuck nodded.
* * *
Qualifying to enter a dungeon, or rather, a shadow world, was far from easy.
Decades ago, when Hyeokjin was still in high school, dungeon fantasy novels had been popular. In those stories, a high school protagonist would suddenly gain superpowers, then head into a dungeon with friends as casually as if they were going on a picnic. “It's a dungeon! Let's go make some money!”
Nothing like that happened in reality.
Modern people felt needless guilt and struggled even when killing domesticated animals that couldn't fight back.
Sending such weak people, completely unprepared, against monsters that charged at them with open hostility was quite literally suicide. Even if they somehow survived, they were certain to suffer serious trauma. If things went badly, they might even turn violent against civilians.
For these reasons, every country had strictly controlled who qualified to become a Closer.
To stop Closers from dying pointless deaths in shadow worlds, and to prevent harm to civilians, governments had “selected candidates with extreme care” and “trained them thoroughly.”
In the United States, for example, anyone who wanted to become a Closer had to pass a basic character assessment, then complete a “formal training program” combining the training courses for noncommissioned officers and astronauts. They also had to undergo “basic physical enhancement surgery.”
Once shadow worlds began encroaching back into reality, governments had rushed to churn out Closers through accelerated programs. Their quality had fallen considerably since then, but Closers were, in fact, highly skilled personnel whose training required enormous effort.
For this reason, higher-ranking Closers tended to be intelligent and well educated.
There were a few who knew nothing but fighting despite their high rank, like the silver-gauntleted Closer on the final roster. But they were a tiny minority.
Even an A-rank Closer had enough knowledge of shadow worlds to handle most situations.
If that was true of A-rank Closers, it went without saying for S-rank Closers, who stood at the very top.
They were the first to enter and explore the most dangerous shadow worlds. To survive, they couldn't merely “know a lot.” They had to be “experts” who could quickly assess and draw conclusions about things they had never seen before.
Much like astronauts venturing into the unknown reaches of space.
Fortunately, ranged ability users who had awakened the supernatural powers known as “magic” had highly developed intelligence. They also had more room to build up detailed knowledge than melee ability users did.
As a result, every ranged ability user on this SS+ rank dungeon expedition was more than merely “well educated.” They were respected experts with doctorates in fields related to shadow worlds, such as geology and ecology.
Among these learned doctors, the “Black Witch,” Nikki Malkova, was an authority on topology and theoretical physics, fields related to her ability to distort space.
She was the one who had discovered that spirit-type monsters, which ordinary physical force couldn't affect, weren't actual ghosts. They were monsters that leaped into a subdimension. She had also devised a warp-aspected ointment that made them easy to destroy.
A few years earlier, she had even won a Nobel Prize in recognition of these achievements.
This “brilliant, distinguished doctor” had pushed through countless experiments with the other Closers' help. For days, she had busily scrawled mathematical formulas about space onto the paper substitute Hyeokjin had made, working through calculation after calculation. In the end, she had found a way for them to navigate this space.
“So this ‘unidentified pressure’ we've been feeling is the pressure a three-dimensional being experiences when it comes into contact with a higher dimension.”
It was their fourteenth day inside the shadow world. They were in a large, dome-shaped metal shelter, roughly fifteen meters in diameter, which Hyeokjin had worked hard to build with alchemy.
Nikki stood at the large round table in the very center, looking at the teammates gathered before her.
She had dark circles under her eyes and badly matted hair. The smells of body odor and energy drinks rolled off her.
Looking nothing like her usual neat self, she placed a hand on the heap of papers covered in formulas on the round table and began to speak.
“Think of a life-form living on a two-dimensional plane. Something like this sheet of paper, for example. Well, paper is actually a three-dimensional object, but it's thin along the z-axis, so let's call it close enough. Anyway, this paper lived flat against a two-dimensional space, the table. But what would happen if a two-dimensional life-form like this came out into three dimensions?”
Nikki pinched the edge of the paper between her thumb and index finger and lifted it. Under the pull of gravity, the sheet bent into an upside-down U.
She waved the bent sheet and grinned.
“It bends like this, because of gravity. For paper that's spent its whole life lying flat in two-dimensional space, bending like this would be a new and unfamiliar kind of pain. The pressure we're feeling is similar to what this paper is experiencing. Well, discussing the direction gravity acts in would take us off on another tangent... Anyway, just remember that they're similar. A detailed explanation would get complicated again. Yaaawn.”
Nikki paused, yawning tiredly as she rubbed her bloodshot eyes with one hand.
Hyeokjin handed her the artificial tears he had prepared. She nodded her thanks, immediately put the drops into her dry eyes, and blinked before continuing.
“At first, I only thought this was ‘a region of distorted space-time.’ It never even occurred to me that it could be ‘a mathematically higher dimension with another spatial axis.’ Topology may be my specialty, but honestly, I thought all that talk of a fourth spatial dimension was kind of bullshit. But judging by the experiments we've done so far, there's no doubt. This is a ‘higher dimension’ with another spatial axis beyond the X, Y, and Z axes.”
“Excuse me, I have a question.”
One of the melee Closers raised their hand during Nikki's explanation, sounding puzzled.
When Nikki gestured with her chin for them to continue, they slowly began to speak.
“You said the pressure we're feeling is because we've entered a higher dimension, right?”
“That's right.”
“I know this is like teaching a fish to swim, but I majored in mathematics back in college, so I studied dimensions a little. If we're really in a higher dimension, though, I think the pressure should be much stronger than what we're feeling now... Well, honestly, higher dimensions have only been theoretical until now, so it's hard to say.”
“You're right. We'd be under much stronger pressure.”
Nikki nodded in agreement with the Closer's point.
A few Closers watched the exchange as though they had no idea what the two were talking about. Nikki smacked her lips lightly, then held up the sheet she still had in her left hand for everyone to see.
“Well, I was just going to touch on this and move on, but judging by those looks, I'd better explain. Listen carefully. I happened to use a sheet of paper as an example, but unlike paper, a life-form on a two-dimensional plane wouldn't have a top or bottom surface. You could see straight into it. Only the lines around its edges would separate the inside of its body from the outside. What do you think would happen the moment a creature without a top or bottom surface entered three dimensions?”
As she asked the question, faint black mist formed on both sides of the paper in her hand. Shredded scraps of paper burst from the mist with a Frrrt!
Once the scraps had scattered through the air, all that remained in Nikki's hand was a ruined sheet with its center gone, leaving only a thin border around the outside.
“Its insides would scatter into another dimension, putting on a little disintegration show like this. The same goes for us. The moment we enter a higher dimension, all our organs and blood would burst out along another spatial axis, Pop, pop, pop! We don't have skin covering that higher-dimensional axis. Of course, everyone here would immediately use warp energy to hold their bodies together, but the strain would be enormous. We'd be forcibly holding together bodies that were trying to fall apart. That's what that Closer was asking about.”
“Then why can we keep our bodies intact without much strain, even though we're in a higher dimension?”
“Because the spatial distortion here is shallow. This place has more than three dimensions, but it isn't that much higher. You could call it about three and a half dimensions? Ah, to explain this, I'd have to explain fractal dimensions and extra dimensions...”
Nikki frowned as though the thought alone gave her a headache and scratched irritably at her hair, sending dandruff falling. The Closer who had asked the question raised a hand to show that she didn't need to continue. Nikki nodded.
“I'll explain that later.”
After taking a small drink from the glass of water on the table, she continued.
“Anyway, I first thought, ‘This place might be a higher dimension,’ while we were placing the spheres of light Chuck made around the area to look for patterns in the space-time distortions. And as you all know, that was when we encountered our first monsters.”
Everyone frowned at Nikki's words, recalling what had happened.
They had encountered their first monsters on their third day inside the shadow world.
And what they had witnessed then had defied everything they thought they knew about shadow worlds.
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