Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 39: The Tower's Trial: 11th Floor "Please leave."
"What?"
*
- Thud...
When I came to my senses, I was outside the cathedral.
"Ah, no way..."
I had dreamed of a contract with a top-tier Constellation, but it was not to be.
"What in the world was that?"
- Yeah, what was that?- If you don't know, how are we supposed to?- So when are you gonna make a contract with a Constellation?
[Dohee Tuna So Delicious has donated 100,000 Won]
You must have made a contract behind our backs. Open your status window, Do-hee. "No, I really didn't! Status Window!"
I opened my status window and scanned it thoroughly for anything out of the ordinary.
"Okay, first, my stats... nothing's changed. My other traits are fine too... huh?"
<[SSS-rank] Sacred Onahole Body> : Opening Progress: 14%
<[???-rank] ???> : Unopened
- Ah, that?- Right, that was there. What is it?- Is that a trait only Lee Do-hee has?- Nah, other people have stuff like that too.
It was a so-called Unopened Trait.
It wasn't as unusual as one might think.
Most Awakeners live their lives with such traits. What people call a "second awakening" is usually just one of these unopened traits finally unlocking due to some specific event.
What were the conditions for unlocking it?
It was different for everyone.
That's why most Awakeners lived with the thought, 'If I can just unlock a good unopened trait, my life will be set!'
"Is this related to it...?"
No, it's more likely because of the contract from my past life.
I wasn't sure.
The contract I'd made with a Constellation in the past was still unusable, and now I couldn't even make a contract with a new one... Wasn't this just too sad?
"Uhm... I don't know either, so shall we move on?"
- lololol- For real, nobody knows.- How the hell do you not know your own trait!! "Hey, all I see is a question mark! How am I supposed to know?!"
- He's got a point, fuck lol- Ah...- Lee Do-hee's Constellation contract was a bust~~- She's just setting it up to reveal some OP trait later.- Seriously, with this much build-up, there's a 100% chance it's gonna be some OP shit.
"Hoo... Well, let's worry about that later... In that case..."
- Straight to the 11th floor?- You can go to the 11th floor as is, anyway.
"Nope. Let's go pick up a weapon."
- Pick up?- ?? You left a weapon somewhere?
A rule of the Tower.
For every five floors you clear, you gain one item slot.
At the 10th floor, you have two. At the 20th, you'll have four. That's how you get more space to equip items.
Once a weapon is equipped in an item slot, you can summon and dismiss it at will, as if from a subspace, and the weapon's stats and special skills are added to your status window.
You can use items without equipping them in a slot, but you won't receive the stat bonuses or special skills.
Of course, just having it in the slot isn't enough; you have to be holding or wearing the equipment for the stats to apply. In the case of armor, it doesn't provide defense for areas it doesn't cover.
Naturally, this wasn't possible during the tutorial.
One might ask, "Doesn't this make rich people totally overpowered?" But there are actually many trials where you can't use equipped weapons, and some even restrict your stats. Rich people just live like rich people; very few of them would risk their lives climbing the Tower.
Also, once an item is equipped, it cannot be changed until the trial is over, and once a slot is filled, it can't be changed at all.
Normally, the proper course of action is to get a weapon as a reward on the 11th floor and equip it then, but going back and forth is a pain.
"Yes, that's right. I have a weapon waiting for me."
And my weapon is probably better. I'll get armor on the 11th floor.
- ??- When did she do that?- Who paid for it??- When?
"Daddy-Long-Legs left it for me."
Daddy-Long-Legs.
Me.
- Ah- Ooh?- He's finally being useful!- Hah... who is he, really?
I had mentioned him once during the Choi Tae-soo incident, so the viewers understood without needing a detailed explanation.
"Hmm, where was that secret underground base again...?"
- Is this okay, though?- For real, won't the giant guilds come running?- It's dangerous if there's a lot of stuff inside.
"There's nothing much. Just a few weapons, probably."
In truth, the 10th-floor stash was just a storage for mediocre weapons.
It was a place where I'd collected weapons that were too good to sell but that I no longer used, with the intention of giving them away to promising newcomers for free later.
The items here were either weapons I used when I was soloing the lower floors or ones I'd tossed aside as soon as I got them. There was no risk of my identity as Daddy-Long-Legs being exposed.
I left the town and walked slowly, enjoying the scenery.
The sunlight was perfectly warm.
A cool breeze blew.
There was a reason so many Awakeners lived here.
Most of all, I loved that there wasn't a single bug in sight.
Feeling the refreshing wind, I walked south from the town for about ten minutes.
"Here we are."
- ???- Here?
A single small grave.
The grave had no headstone, no name.
It's because a virtual character from inside the Tower died...
She was a friend I met back when I was climbing the Tower, completely immersed.
No, she was my lover.
Diana...
Since she was a person from inside the Tower, she would have forgotten me and been revived within a trial, but...
For some reason, even that fact felt so lonely that I had made this grave for her.
And if I dug a little with my hands right below it...
- Clunk!!
A wooden door leading underground appeared.
- What's with the grave? There's nothing on it.- Kinda lonely.- Guess there's no body? Looks like just a mound of dirt.
"It's nothing. I'm going down."
It was a crudely made basement, the walls just bare stone.
Rummaging through my memories, I reached for the wall and flipped a switch. Mana flowed into the luminous stones on the ceiling, and light filled the room.
And there they were: seven types of weapons on display racks.
A sword, a spear, a hammer, an axe, a greatsword, a shield, and a glaive.
"I'll just pick one spear and store the rest for now."
I picked up the spear, seeing it for the first time in a long while.
The sturdy spear that had been responsible for my early-game clears.
In the end, I couldn't protect Diana with this spear, but it was a good spear.
"The name of this spear... is Diana."
- It's Dojester's Spear, you bitch lololol- ?- ????- Huh? Wait, this thing is OP as hell!!!- Daddy-Long-Legs...- Wow;;- What's the skill???- Wait, are the other weapons on this level too??
That's right.
If the weapon's performance wasn't great, I wouldn't have bothered coming all this way to get it.
The average Awakener's stats on the 10th floor are around 20-30, so for a weapon used at this stage, it's completely overpowered. I made this stash after I passed the 60th floor, so of course it's inferior to the weapons from back then, but didn't I say it was too good to sell?
"Ahem... Anyway, the name of this spear is Diana. I'll use this to climb up quickly."
Besides, you can't use weapons on the 11th floor anyway.
Normally, a weapon or armor is given as a reward on the 11th floor. Perhaps the Tower considered using a weapon on this floor to be cheating, because the 11th floor trial is one where you can't use equipped items.
I slowly walked back and entrusted the remaining weapons to an employee at the Awakener Association in town for safekeeping.
And then...
"Starting the timer now!"
It was finally beginning.
168 hours.
I had to reach the 20th floor in just one week.
If I can just clear the 11th floor quickly, it's possible. Please let it be an easy difficulty...
There were quite a few floors that could be cleared through sheer force.
[Do you wish to enter the 11th Floor? The recommended number of participants is 4.]
And from the 11th floor onward, parties were possible.
There was no such thing as the difficulty being lowered just because you went in alone. In fact, since you had to do the work of four people by yourself, the difficulty was higher.
But the rewards were better.
That's why I had to do it alone.
I wasn't going to team up with a giant guild to climb to the 79th floor, so I had to show everyone that I could clear things by myself.
Plus, I could raise the reward grade. This was exactly the picture I wanted to paint.
"I will challenge it alone."
[The Trial of the Tower will now begin.]
Let's go...
*
[Tower Climbing Support Gallery]
---
[Title]: Hey, it's your bro. Came to tell you about the 11th floor.
[Content]: The theme of the 11th-floor trial is a prison break. The official strategy is usually to start a riot with the other prisoners and destroy the prison. But if you just escape without getting caught, you get the True Ending. Easy, right?
[Comments]:- Piece of cake.- Nothing special this time?- Doesn't seem like it'd be hard even solo.- What the hell are you guys above me talking about... this place is similar to the 1st floor. ㄴ Similar? ㄴ 30% death rate, it's a fucking brutal difficulty. You'll see lol.- Just hearing about it makes it sound so easy lol.- Sooo easy~- Don't you come back here again.- Ah, this asshole spoiled it. └ OP: Fuck, you guys asked me to tell you.
*
My consciousness faded for a moment, then returned.
[You are a death row inmate. Escape from prison before you are executed.]
"Ah..."
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the inside of a bus.
I could hear the rumbling of an engine.
It must have been a prisoner transport bus. The windows were blocked with iron bars and screens, and each seat was partitioned.
My hands were cuffed, and there was something tied around my neck.
"Wait a minute... a bus?"
- Wow... you're fucked, Do-hee!!!- S-rank, grats grats grats.- Holy shit lololol- Of all places, why the 11th floor...
The more advanced the technology, the harder it is to break out of prison.
A medieval wooden prison is B-rank, a modern-era prison is A-rank, and a modern prison with CCTV is S-rank difficulty.
"Haa... Dammit. Let me check my status first."
My body felt strange, too.
"This is so fucked..."
My Strength was fixed at 10, and my Divine Power was reduced to 0.
It was probably because of this suspicious necklace.
This isn't just the modern era.
You should never assume that "modern" means the same as modern-day Earth.
It just meant the level of civilization was comparable. It could be a strange world that, despite being modern, had superhumans, mages, heroes, or hunters.
No, on average, the probability of it being a strange world was much higher.
"Hah... this is so fuck—"
- BANG!!!
"Hey! Shut your mouth, Number 69748!"
Whoa, that scared me...
Someone had slammed the back of my seat hard.
I turned around to see a man in a blue uniform glaring at me with a terrifying expression.
A prison guard...?
In any case, standing out wouldn't do me any good.
The goal was to escape this place as quickly as possible.
I kept my mouth shut, and before long, we arrived at the prison.
"Everyone out!"
- Whirrrr...
The partitions opened, and the prisoners filed out in a line.
What, I thought they were all women... there are men, too?
"Whoa~ This year's batch is all well-developed~!"
"You're telling me. Hey, hey, look at that pinky's tits. Hehehe..."
"I'm gonna fuck the shit out of her later."
This seems like some kind of messed-up world...
It looked like I'd landed in a trashy setting.
The guards felt less like police and more like gangsters.
I got off the bus and followed the guards' lead into the building.
I need to get a good look at this place.
Not starting inside the prison itself was a kind of advantage.
A large guard tower on each side, a thick iron main gate that's impossible to open by hand. The outer walls are electrified, making escape impossible... I'm so fucked.
Nothing about this was easy.
Even the walls weren't concrete; they looked incredibly sturdy, as if made from some kind of alloy.
"Hey, watch where you're going!"
As I was looking around and walking slowly, a woman behind me yelled at me.
"Huh?"
"What are you looking at, you fucking bitch?"
A woman with short, golden-blonde hair and the tough look of a delinquent who'd smoked her fair share of cigarettes glared at me, spewing curses.
Her face and body were pretty, the type you'd see on Instagram, but she had a rotten personality.
Hmph... Is this what they call a battle of nerves?
I wanted to keep a low profile, so I let it slide for now.
"Fat ass like a pig, slow as hell..."
You just wait...
I really hope I end up in the same cell as that bitch.
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