Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 49

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Admin Who Uses Cheats Climbs the Mythic Tower (49)
It was as if she were viewing the scene from high above, through a camera lens.
A single flower blooming from a plant as vast as heavy machinery.
A woman lay full-length across the petals, eyes closed in repose.
“Ye-rin! Ju Ye-rin!”
Mu Saeng lurched forward without thinking.
Every instinct screamed at him to wake her at once.
[Shut up, Kim Mu Saeng. Stop right there.]
It was Warshu who cut him off.
In that moment, Hildegard’s eyes widened.
‘……Impossible. I thought he was merely observing some part of the tower. But this isn’t just observation—!? A passage? Is this a—?!’
It couldn’t be. Such a thing was impossible.
One couldn’t even observe the tower’s interior from outside it.
Though the precise structure remained unclear, even attempting anything similar was precisely why Clairvoyance and Five-eyed Vision—not to mention Eight Seconds—were treated as such vital, closely guarded secrets by both sides.
Just as Hildegard’s hand rose unbidden to cover her mouth, Mu Saeng caught on.
“Wait. Warshu, couldn’t we just—.”
[The moment you intervene, it’s over. This is already dangerous enough. Be grateful that neither the left eye nor the right eye found Ju Ye-rin.]
“—Damn it. But still…”
[Kim Mu Saeng. You haven’t forgotten our contract, have you? Now is the time to close this.]
Warshu spoke with finality.
A thousand thoughts, a thousand emotions.
And beneath them all, a body straining to act.
Barely holding all of it in check, Mu Saeng asked quietly.
“Search. So you remember the coordinates too, Warshu?”
[Of course.]
He hadn’t missed a word Warshu said, even through it all.
Still, Clairvoyance and Five-eyed Vision hadn’t located Ju Ye-rin.
Warshu could show him Ju Ye-rin directly only because he possessed Admin Authority—the ability to ‘search’ that data itself.
Mu Saeng gazed again into the void, into what lay beyond.
He fixed in his mind’s eye Ju Ye-rin as she lay motionless, as if asleep, and everything around her.
Clairvoyance and Five-eyed Vision sense each other.
They might detect whatever function Warshu was using. If so, they’d have the advantage.
“Close it.”
Mu Saeng decided swiftly.
At that same instant, the passage that had shimmered in the empty air—the one that connected to Layer 58 of the tower—vanished.
[……Thank fortune the contract holder isn’t a fool.]
“……Even now, you—.”
[But let me tell you one more thing. They won’t see Ju Ye-rin again. Likely never.]
“What?”
Perhaps Warshu was gauging Mu Saeng’s reaction before speaking.
He revealed it then.
[It’s a Twist, Kim Mu Saeng. Layer 58 is Nested.]
The tower itself was not in its proper state.
“That’s absurd.”
But it wasn’t Kim Mu Saeng who spoke—it was Hildegard Schmidt.
* * *
At that same moment elsewhere.
“……Ah.”
“Hmm?!”
Two people in different places both flinched.
One stood alone in a dimly lit chamber.
Innumerable cables and leads ran from the helmet he wore, its visor showing only the slimmest line of his mouth.
-What is it, comrade? Discovered something new?
Outside that dark space, a flurry of Awakeners hastened about, analyzing the data he was observing.
“No, that’s not it.”
-Then what? Did Five-eyed Vision do something? You said you were already tracking him.
Cheon-ri-an, an Awakener affiliated with the Chinese Central Party, codename Clairvoyance.
He couldn’t find words to describe the unease he’d felt just moments before.
“……That’s right. Or rather, no.”
O-ryun-an—the Awakener who possessed an ability nearly identical to his own, codename Five-eyed Vision.
He had never actually met him, yet through Clairvoyance he knew.
When two people used their abilities on the same point, they could sense each other’s presence.
In other words, until moments ago when Clairvoyance was observing Layer 58, he had been feeling the existence of Five-eyed Vision.
―So which is it, yes or no? Your report should be in clear, certain language. You haven’t forgotten the protocols, have you, comrade?
“My apologies. But it’s difficult to explain something I’m experiencing for the first time with perfect clarity.”
―Do your best to make us understand.
Yet what he had just experienced, what Clairvoyance himself had undergone, defied easy articulation.
Clairvoyance paused to gather his thoughts.
And at that very moment, Five-eyed Vision was experiencing something similar.
“It wasn’t Clairvoyance?”
In the World Awakeners Association headquarters, this brightly lit room required passage through several security checkpoints just to approach.
Five-eyed Vision blinked all five of his pupils rapidly as he muttered.
“No, Clairvoyance must be right. But aside from that……. There was something else. No, not so much ‘was’ as…… well…….”
“Take your time. Explain step by step. Did the Central Party awaken a new ability? Some other individual besides Clairvoyance―did they, I mean, gain an extra ‘eye’?”
The room was bright, yet the faces of those within it darkened.
If a new Awakener comparable to Clairvoyance had emerged from the Central Party, or if Clairvoyance’s own ability had been enhanced―
One Five-eyed Vision could not match them.
The balance would shatter.
What had been mere simple deterrence, intelligence gathering, and espionage until now could escalate into actual physical conflict!
“No, that’s not…… that’s not the feeling I got. There’s only one eye. Besides me and Clairvoyance, there couldn’t be anyone else.”
Five-eyed Vision shared their sense of crisis, so he shook his head and extinguished the immediate fire.
Four people surrounded him, and they asked in unison.
“Then what? What do you mean by ‘something else was there’?”
“I saw something.”
“You saw it?”
“No, not so much ‘saw’…….”
Five-eyed Vision paused to find the right words.
At that same moment, Clairvoyance was also gathering his thoughts.
The World Awakeners Association and the Chinese Central Party.
The two eyes in the Eight Seconds lineup―the only two who possessed them―spoke simultaneously from their two opposing, hostile factions.
“It was closer to the feeling of something striking directly into the brain…….”
“Rather than observing the external, the internal was understood immediately. In other words, it acted directly on the ‘brain’, not on an ‘eye’.”
While they sensed themselves observing Layer 58 with their ‘eyes’, and felt that the same ‘eye’ was also observing Layer 58, suddenly there came a sensation.
It was not an eye.
The brain. An image imprinted directly on the brain.
No one around Five-eyed Vision and Clairvoyance grasped that description clearly.
It could hardly be otherwise.
Most importantly, what mattered to them now was not the phenomenon itself they had just felt.
“……Ahem, so? This ‘brain’ thing―did the Awaker using it get reverse-traced?”
The World Awakeners Association and
the Chinese Central Party asked.
―Where was this brain, comrade?
The two eyes answered.
“Northeast Asia―ah, Korea. Yes, Korea.”
“Japan……. No, South Korea.”
* * *
“So the tower is twisted like a dungeon, right?”
[Incompetent fools, how are they even managing maintenance.]
At Mu Saeng’s question, Warshu grumbled.
His irritated clicking sounds continued, as if dissatisfied with the tower’s current state.
Mu Saeng pressed further.
“What does ‘nested’ mean exactly? So I can go there, Warshu?”
[……Did you already forget that I searched and memorized the coordinates, Mu Saeng?]
And Warshu answered.
That he could go.
That he could find it.
Moreover…….
[You can reach the nested Layer 58 by using that ‘twist’, starting from several layers below Layer 58. I don’t yet know which layer exactly―.]
“Layer 39!? Layer 39! So from there I can reach Ye-rin right away?”
[―So you already knew. Kekekeke!]
The tower’s administrator confirming that Mu Saeng could reach Ju Ye-rin without climbing all the way to Layer 58!
Mu Saeng found himself clenching his fists without realizing it.
‘Layer 39, then. Something went wrong there. That’s why Ye-rin—.’
But doubts still lingered.
He’d secured Ju Ye-rin’s location.
He’d found a route to reach her.
“But Ye-rin herself—she’s safe, right?”
The actual condition of that Ju Ye-rin remained unknown.
At Mu Saeng’s question, Warshu immediately shook his head.
[That, I don’t know. I only traced the path.]
It was an answer that could stir frustration and impatience in Mu Saeng.
Enormous plants spreading outward.
A single flower those plants had bloomed.
And within it, Ju Ye-rin lying as though asleep.
‘……Asleep? Given Ye-rin’s nature, she might actually doze off.’
The worst scenario: death.
Mu Saeng could have suspected she lay there dead, but he didn’t.
That reasoning rested on clear logic.
A flower blooming in the Polar Region—that was unmistakably Ju Ye-rin’s awakened ability.
If she were dead, her awakened ability couldn’t persist.
Therefore, she was alive.
The only question was whether that ‘sleep-like state’ truly meant actual slumber.
Or whether she’d been forced into an unnatural sleep against her will.
Mu Saeng paused to consider.
Crunch-crunch-crunch—!
But he didn’t have the luxury of deliberation.
A massive horn began tearing through the cracking ice.
A creature resembling a narwhal in appearance, yet capable of spinning that horn like a drill and firing it as a ranged projectile—and most crucially, a massive monster that destroyed the very ice Awakeners stood upon!
Three missiles hurtled toward it!
Three missiles, fired from nowhere!
The Black Armor closed distance to the monster in an instant using a jetpack.
A pair of light blades erupted from both hands, swinging down repeatedly.
“Screeeeee—!”
Only the monster’s death cry remained.
A burst of steam—!
The Black Armor approached Mu Saeng and Warshu again.
“The perimeter’s cleared for now…….”
Then she removed the armor, revealing Hilda beneath.
This was why Mu Saeng could converse and deliberate with Warshu relatively at ease.
Hilda had withdrawn of her own accord.
“If you have more to discuss, I can take another patrol.”
She hadn’t insisted on staying to hear every word.
Mu Saeng swallowed dryly, watching the massive monster’s remains—no corpse, simply vanished.
This was the power of one called Eight Seconds.
“No, that’s all. We’ve reached a conclusion.”
“A conclusion~? What did you decide?”
“Just…… climb the tower a bit faster.”
Ju Ye-rin’s condition?
He could worry about that later.
[Kekeke, right. No matter what you agonize over, that’s the only answer left, Kim Mu Saeng.]
“Yeah. Ye-rin is…… alive, anyway.”
Among Eight Seconds, there exists one who specializes in healing.
Not particularly connected to Korea, but wasn’t Mu Saeng now shaking hands with more than just Geum Byeong-chul?
Hildegard Schmidt, the representative of Metalline, was here.
More than that, she’d been watching Mu Saeng carefully.
More precisely, ever since she’d been astounded by Warshu’s ability, she’d been considerate enough to step back herself.
Mu Saeng’s prediction was accurate.
“Then that’s fortunate. I thought I might be able to help at least a little with that determination.”
Hilda, as if she’d been waiting, fiddled with something from the Black Armor and produced it.
Before Mu Saeng could even tilt his head in confusion, she thrust what she held in her hand forward.
“I didn’t come all this way for nothing. Here.”
“Oh, finished already?”
Mage Maia’s original Scarab and three replicas of it.
With this, Mu Saeng had now obtained a total of four “construction units.”
But that wasn’t all.
The short sword sat snugly in its sheath.
No longer the shabby Slaken’s Fang it had been, but a weapon now functionally perfect, truly Mu Saeng’s own…….
“What? SR-rank!?”
It had been returned to Mu Saeng now as SR-rank — no longer merely S-grade.
Hildegard smiled faintly and began her explanation.
Whatever she said, murmuring on, Hildegard explained, though Mu Saeng couldn’t grasp it all.
Only one thing became clear.
An expanded arsenal of Scarabs and an SR-rank weapon!?
‘Layer 39…… Good. I know what I need to do now, what I’m capable of doing……. I’ll go in sure.’
Mu Saeng’s eyes burned with resolve.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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