Chapter 337: Chapter 292

Editor: Tide

Proofreader: Hydragea

Tutorial 89th floor (1)

I couldn’t get all the information about who and how many beings there were in the Hundred Gods Temple and the Pantheon from Kirikiri.

It was obvious. Kirikiri would only tell me a certain amount of information, depending on the information points I’d collected. To get more information points, we had to clear the stages again.

I thought it would be better if these information points could be expressed in numbers. I’d pondered this many times before, but I didn’t know that I’d think the same after clearing the 60th floor.

“Heng.”

“What kind of response is that? Just tell me about the next stage.”

Kirikiri grinned. Perhaps she was satisfied with the situation in which I was anxiously waiting for my answer. “The next stage is what you wanted.”

“Wanted?”

“It’s a little unusual. Usually, the challenger is a member of the Hundred Gods Temple. But this time it’s the opposite.”

Are you saying that the stage is being held from the opposite side of the Hundred Gods Temple?

It was certainly interesting. If I had reached Earth without going through this stage, I would have been disappointed.

“Am I going to become a source and complete myself? Devour everything in sight?”

There were two ways to complete oneself after being swallowed by the source: to regain one’s mind by controlling one’s desires or regain one’s mind after devouring whatever they desired. Of course, the difference between the two methods was huge.

“No, it’s not like that. It’s the role of the servant.”

A servant?

“You’d better take your time and attack.” That’s all Kirikiri’s advice was.

More than that had to be checked after I’d enter the stage.

* * *

╔═══════════════╗

[You’ve entered the 89th floor’s stage.]

╚═══════════════╝

The 89th-floor stage was a large stone chamber. There was a rough patch of discarded furniture, and the floor was filled with broken wood, making it challenging to move around.

“This is a place that reminds me of the old days,” Hochi mumbled.

Hochi explained to Yong-yong, who looked at him in a confused manner, “My house resembled this once upon a time. ”

Oh, that’s what you were talking about. I could feel my conscience hurt at that moment.

Hochi’s ‘house’ was the 60th-floor residential area that I had made a mess out of. Surely, it was a similar situation back then.

Hochi had spent years on the messed-up 60th floor. I would have said it was short, but for Hochi, who was newly born, it would be clearly imprinted in his memories. It was embarrassing.

While I was coughing in vain, a message about the stage appeared just in time. It was indeed fortunate.

╔═══════════════╗

[The 89th floor’s stage begins.]

Explanation: One day, you, who was living a normal life, was summoned into an unknown community.

The being that summoned you promised to make your wish come true if you used the extractor inside the cavity to extract the target’s energy.

You are yet to decide whether the promise will be to return home or get a new life.

But one thing is for sure. You must obey the orders of the being that summoned you.

For the sake of your wishes that have not been determined yet, and to survive on your own.

You can collect energy through an extractor.

You can also purchase manpower and traps with the energy collected to protect the extractor.

Prevent the invasion of various enemies and observe the extractor to gather energy from the target.

-Clear Conditions:

Protect the extractor.

Use an extractor to collect energy.

╚═══════════════╝

Somehow, I felt a sense of déjà vu from the description of the stage. It was a story that I’d seen a lot somewhere.

Being summoned endlessly. Wanting to buy traps and soldiers to stop the enemy.

It seemed like a standard defense game. The stage description focused on a thing called ‘extractor’. I quickly found out what the extractor was.

A man-sized mechanical device was seen in the middle of the planks of wood on the floor. Looking at its bottom, it seemed to be embedded into the floor.

I approached the extractor. There were several words marked with holograms.

[Dungeon Status]

[Dungeon Management]

[Energy Status]

[Purchase and sale]

I could tell by looking at them.

“This is a dungeon,” Hochi, who came to my side, murmured. It was so obvious that even Hochi noticed. This extractor was the core of the dungeon, and the primary goal was to protect it.

A game of defense and management strategy that acquired energy through an extractor to block enemies.

I asked Hochi, whose eyes glistened beside me, “Would you like to try?”

“Can I?”

Of course he could. Recently, both Hochi and Yong-yong had been targeting the stage. Kirikiri had also advised me to not clear it up quickly, and as such, I decided I wouldn’t be the one to clear it.

I wasn’t interested in this dungeon, so I asked Hochi, who was pressing the hologram windows of the extractor one by one and excitedly calling Yong-yong to do the same.

“Looking at the dungeon’s condition, it seems pretty spacious. We can build a lot of traps. Small fries will get taken care of by the traps, and Yong-yong and I will only have to deal with enemies who manage to reach the last room.”

I nodded at Hochi’s words. It was a well-thought-out strategy.

If I were my old self and had risked my life to go up one floor after another, I would have rushed and wiped out all the enemies that existed here and sought to conquer the area. Now, there was no need to do so. I just had to make sure nothing went wrong while I watched over Hochi and Yong-yong.

* * *

“No, Yong-yong. We’ve got to set up more traps rather than buy more manpower. The traps would be more helpful.”

“But I prefer having a lot of soldiers.”

There were more conflicts in opinion than I’d thought there’d be. Hochi preferred a trap-oriented attack, and Yong-yong just liked to have a lot of soldiers.

The dungeon was attacked one or two times a day: sometimes adventurers, sometimes soldiers. There were various kinds of enemies. There were even visitors who took the wrong way and entered the dungeon and those who wanted to join the dungeon for the sake of personal desires.

In that way, I blocked the visitors and coaxed them into making them my subordinate, while Hochi and Yong-Yong developed the dungeon. Maybe because they were on the same level, they sometimes argued with each other, as if they were playing a game together.

They looked happy. I even thought about making a game like this myself. Of course, I was not talking about computer games. In fact, I wanted to design spaces, put people in, and play around with them. [1]

Of course, if I made it myself, it would be a little dangerous for ordinary people to do it. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that there must be someone who wanted to do it.

It had already been three days since the 89th-floor stage had begun. Kirikiri had asked me to take it easy, but it took longer than I thought.

Hochi and Yong-yong poured all the energy coming into the extractor in the dungeon’s defense and interior upgrades, even though they didn’t even care about the need to collect energy from the target. At this rate, I couldn’t guarantee when this stage would end.

I liked it when Hochi and Yong-yong were having fun, but honestly, it was a bit boring. So I thought about what Kirikiri had said. I could get information from the stage.

I had a rough idea of what information it was. She said the stage would be carried out as a servant. In other words, the challenger had been summoned here and the being who owned the extractor were considered a complete source with the energy produced through this extractor.

The energy was being pulled from deep underground by the extractor. The power felt in this energy was similar to the source. Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same.

I didn’t know if it was the limit of the extractor or because it’s a fake source as always. In any case, it was clear that the identity of the energy was closely related to source power.

“That’s strange.”

“What is?”

“I thought the power of the source came from a person.”

Just like faith. Of course, I’d heard several times that it was influenced by the level of civilization. Even so, I didn’t think it could get it this way. It felt like my common sense was being destroyed in many ways.

If you had the equipment, you could get power similar to the source easily.

“I think it’s plausible,” Hochi remarked.

I left the hologram window to Yong-yong and Hochi approached me.

“It’s the land. It’s home to the people who live here. Maybe...” Hochi trailed off.

I asked hastily, “Maybe, what?”

“Maybe this land is the whole world for those living on this planet. It’s like in ancient history, if you travelled far enough you’d reach the end of the world? Kinda like that.”

It certainly was. In fact, there was no need to go back to the old days. Before confirming that the Earth was round and thinking that there might be different civilizations and creatures in the endless space outside the Earth, people thought Earth was everything in the world.

Because for them, Earth was everything. Because whatever occurred beyond the universe would not reach them, and their world would be limited only to the Earth.

“The feelings people harbor for their land, for their hometown, and for their world is as good as faith. Maybe that’s related to the source. At least, that’s what I think.”

Is that so?

Hochi spoke in a pretty confident manner, but I didn’t particularly agree.

“I suppose so. You wouldn’t know since you don’t have any attachment to your hometown.”

It was funny. Hochi, who was born in the Tutorial, was telling me about his feelings about home.

But it was true. As Hochi had said, I didn’t have much attachment to my hometown whether it be Korea or Earth.

“Don’t be so on the edge. Someday, you’ll know everything.” Hochi said and went back to Yong-yong.

“Who’s on edge?”

I belatedly opened my mouth to give an excuse, but Hochi refused to listen to me. The words that had lost its way hovered around me with nowhere to go.

* * *

“You’re bored, aren’t you?”

“Mhm.”

Hochi came to talk to me. It’d already been 15 days since the stage began, but I felt like I was going to die due to boredom.

“Get out.”

“Get out?”

Wow, am I being kicked out now?

I felt like I was being kicked out of a house that was in my name on my wife’s command. It was unfair.

“You don’t have to be upset again. I’m telling you to go out if you’re bored. I just happened to have to go out and do something,” Hochi looked at me and said with a tired look on his face.

First, I asked what was going on.

“What is it?”

“This.” Hochi offered me a purple jewel.

“It’s a token,” said Hochi.

“If you use it, your soldiers will appear. Usually, it’s standard for them to defend the dungeon, but they can also attack. I need to release soldiers outside, so I have to be near the village situated outside the dungeon.”

So, the plan was to create a disturbance outside to distract the attackers a little. There was so much to it.

“If you use this, are those soldiers summoned just to make a disturbance?”

“No, I heard it’s like a package full of soldiers. If you use it, you’ll have a subspace, and your men will multiply little by little inside the space. Then, when the area is filled with people, I’ll send a certain number of men outside to attack the surrounding area.”

It was more complicated than I thought. “But if you get rid of the space, your soldiers will be exterminated.”

“The subspace doesn’t disappear unless you break the nucleus(core) deep inside the subspace.”

It was so difficult to use that I wondered if this was necessary. It’d be better just to release some monsters instead of making it so tough.

“But the soldiers continue to reproduce unless you close the subspace. If the enemy is not capable of killing all the men in the subspace, the soldiers will attack the enemy endlessly. It’s perfect to draw the enemy’s attention from the dungeon. But most importantly, animals ‘change’ when around the subspace.”

“Change?”

“Wild animals will become ferocious and turn into monsters.”

The source monster I met on the 40th floor had a similar ability: to turn the surrounding creatures into monsters. It seemed as if that was the same as entering the subspace and hiding its identity.

Had the monster become the motif of the token? As Hochi said, I approached the village outside the dungeon and used a token.

I would get to know immediately after using it what it was. And what information did Kirikiri say I needed to find out on this stage?

“This is the gate.”

The subspace that showed up in the place where the token was used, had a very similar appearance to the gates that had appeared on Earth.

Tutorial Floor 89 (1) Finished

Note/s from Imagine:

[1]: Sounds Awfully like a certain place Hojae was stuck in for a long time, I wonder what that place is called, I can’t remember.

*This translation belongs to Centinni.*