Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 59

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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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Cheating Admin Climbing the Mythic Tower (59)
Laughter and easy chatter drifted through the camp as if they’d simply stepped away from the city for an outing.
Watching the party members huddled around the crackling bonfire, Moo-saeng rose quietly from his seat.
“Where are you going?”
“Just for a walk.”
Hyun-gu asked, and Moo-saeng answered lightly as he moved away.
Floor 20 had a relatively mild climate, but now that full night had fallen, there was still a faint chill in the air.
Of course, such temperatures barely registered with Moo-saeng.
It wasn’t just a matter of Resistance.
“Wash, you’re really not going to tell me?”
[Screee? What?]
In eight hours they’d all break camp and climb together to Floor 21.
“Floor 21. The Quest has changed.”
There, Moo-saeng would face a Quest different from the one he already knew.
The problem was that Wash hadn’t mentioned anything special about it.
[Kekekeke. Anxious, Kim Moo-saeng? Should I tell you?]
“Anxious isn’t quite the word, it’s more like…….”
Wash clicked and chirped at him.
But before Moo-saeng could dwell on Wash’s mocking tone, he shrugged and answered.
“We should honor our word.”
It was the kind of remark that would make Wash pause.
A contract.
They weren’t here to play.
Each floor had to be cleared with maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
For that, information was essential — and Moo-saeng, who’d been a dungeon sherpa and had grown stronger than any Floor 20 Awakener should be, was adamant about this.
[……No fun at all.]
“We’re not climbing the Tower just for fun anyway, are we? Actually, that’s precisely why I’m asking. You know that better than anyone, and you’ve said nothing until now……which means you’re not just teasing me or testing me. Something else is going on.”
Moo-saeng laid out his thinking as Wash grumbled.
His unease had a clear source.
Was Wash deliberately withholding information to test Moo-saeng’s abilities?
Was Wash simply enjoying watching how he’d respond?
Neither seemed right.
That wasn’t Wash’s nature.
Moo-saeng knew that well enough now.
So there was only one reason left.
“You can’t be sure yourself, can you? About what’s changed?”
If Admin Authority couldn’t be used, then even Wash wouldn’t know.
Wash clicked his beak thoughtfully.
[Right. There’s a Giant-kind Slayer trigger, so a change will definitely happen……but I don’t know the structure or exactly how it’ll shift. Best case is just an increase in individual numbers. Worst case is…….]
All he could say was that the Quest change involved Giants somehow.
Still, some things were predictable.
For Moo-saeng now, the easiest change would be facing more Giants.
And for Moo-saeng now, the worst would be…….
“What’s the worst case?”
He got his answer the moment they stepped onto Floor 21.
[Floor 021]
[Giant-kind Slayer detected.]
[Quest has been altered.]
[Judgment of Blood: The Grudge of Giantkind]
[Trial Subject: Kim Moo-saeng]
[Observers: Park Hyun-gu and 9 others]
[You must pass judgment against the slayer Kim Moo-saeng.]
[Should any observer interfere, total combat will commence.]
Wash looked at the system message and spoke.
[This is it.]
In the center of a colossal circular Arena, only Moo-saeng and Wash stood.
* * *
“Kill hiiiiim!”
“Rip apart that vile slayer at once!”
“Don’t kill him — torture him until he begs for death!”
A roar erupted, and with it came blood-chilling declarations pouring from every direction.
The Arena overflowed with giants of every conceivable variety.
One-eyed Cyclops, two-headed ogres, giants covered entirely in fur, rock giants pieced together from jagged boulders…….
“Quite the spectacle,” Moo-saeng muttered.
At the sight of thousands upon thousands of giants wailing in unison, even he could only shake his head in disbelief.
Wash, watching the same display, looked ready to lose his mind.
[……You do remember what I told you, Kim Moo-saeng?]
“Huh? Yeah.”
[And yet you’re already reacting like this?]
Among all unpredictable variable Quests, Trial was the worst possible form.
There was no time limit.
It wasn’t about enduring and surviving.
Nor was there a clear structure of who needed to be eliminated.
You were simply the subject of judgment.
“Look, trouble’s already started happening anyway, so what’s wrong with being a little nervous? Besides, turns out my idea of telling everyone to just sit tight is working pretty well. Oh, there they are.”
Moo-saeng had already heard all this from Wash yesterday.
He’d even passed the warning along to his party just in case.
Don’t panic. Follow only the system messages.
Never act independently under any circumstances.
Most importantly, don’t fight unless given explicit orders.
Moo-saeng waved toward his party members huddled together in the center of the spectator stands.
Wash, unable to contain himself at the sight, squawked in protest.
[Kyaaak! You uncivilized wretch! Now’s not the time to be waving your hand around! If you’re not careful—.]
“I know, Wash. That’s exactly why I’m testing things right now.”
[-What?]
He fell silent at once.
Moo-saeng was no fool.
He understood perfectly well how dire the situation was.
“Communications are down, that’s the thing. They’ve probably realized it’s an emergency on their end too. No matter what I told them beforehand, people can panic under this kind of pressure. So I need to confirm positions first, share status updates, get them reassured. Even with Hyun-gu there, that’s just how people are.”
The Grade A Artifact made by Metal Rhine wasn’t functioning.
Cut off from each other, they must be in a state of profound unease.
“They can’t just go running around……. Setting aside the Contribution Rate question entirely.”
That’s why Moo-saeng was forcing an air of composure, waving to them reassuringly.
Even while participating in party play, Floor 21 had shown no system messages about Contribution Rate calculation—nothing of the sort.
If Park Hyun-gu and his group, now classified as observers, were to cause even the slightest disturbance…….
[Then yes. All the giants gathered here will march straight toward the human kingdoms immediately.]
“Exactly.”
It would be over.
There were thousands of giants inside this Arena alone.
Outside the Arena? And what exactly is this place to begin with?
A deep, resonant sound reverberated through the space.
The roar echoed with devastating weight.
The countless voices that had been describing various ways to kill Moo-saeng fell silent in an instant.
A being capable of stopping even these proud giants—intelligent though they might be—with just their presence.
Every gaze among the giant-kind turned as a figure fifty percent larger than any other giant strode into view.
[Take a good look, Kim Moo-saeng.]
Wash spoke.
Moo-saeng nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll remember this. Even Steve King never saw this.”
[That’s right. And someday……. Kim Moo-saeng, he is the boss of Floor 77 you will one day have to face.]
The apex of all giants.
The one who reigns supreme above the chieftain of every giant-kind.
The boss of Floor 77, until now unrevealed to humanity, now stood revealed before them.
“Human. Kim Moo-saeng. Slayer of my kin. The sentence is death. Have you any final words?”
Then he spoke.
* * *
When Moo-saeng first heard this from Wash, he couldn’t believe it.
No time limit? And no Clear condition either?
What kind of Quest is that? Does such a thing even exist?
The moment Moo-saeng posed the question to Wash, the answer already crystallized in his mind.
“First, I must clarify that I have never massacred your kinsmen. I—. I did face two Cyclopes, two of them. But the situation was fundamentally hostile toward me, you understand.”
In other words, the method of clearing was open to interpretation.
The system message itself makes no distinction.
It simply said to ‘pass the Trial’ by any means.
When Moo-saeng heard the story up to that point from Wash, the first thing that came to mind was argument—legal argument.
If this was a Trial, then. If this was a court of law.
“I confess that it is regrettable to the Cyclopes present, but I assert that my actions constituted the most primitive form of self-defense—self-preservation in a life-or-death situation. In other words, self-defense.”
If he could secure an acquittal, wouldn’t that be it?
So Moo-saeng was able to proceed with the defense he had already prepared.
The giants in the stands rose up in unison, hurling jeers.
“What nonsense—we’ll tear him to shreds—.”
“Crush that tiny human at once—.”
“Silence.”
Of course, with just those two words, not a single giant dared make another sound.
The overwhelming charisma made Moo-saeng swallow hard without thinking.
“That argument has merit.”
The supreme among all giants nodded.
At that moment, Moo-saeng knew for certain.
‘That’s it. Reason works. It doesn’t just work—he’s not governed by emotion alone.’
His heart wanted to prostrate itself crying ‘Surely you are the great Giant King!’ but such extravagance would be dangerous.
Moo-saeng did his utmost, stringing together every plausible argument he could muster.
“Exactly! I may lack eloquence—forgive my simplicity of speech—but the point is, to survive, well, excessive defense? And given the disparity between myself and a Cyclops, it couldn’t even be called excessive defense, so it was negligence rather than intent—.”
“Yet many of my kinsmen have fallen. One, two—no, more than that.”
But the casually dropped words made Moo-saeng tilt his head in confusion.
There had been no giants during the recent fortress battle.
They hadn’t arrived yet at that time.
Elsewhere? He had never encountered giant-kind while climbing the tower.
“No, I—I faced only the two Cyclopes—.”
Moo-saeng was about to assert this.
“……But humans, there and in places beyond, are they not endlessly slaughtering our kinsmen? Human, Kim Moo-saeng. You stand as their representative, and so you shall be called the Giant-kind Slayer.”
The Giant King had wrong-footed him entirely.
This pattern, this understanding…….
‘He comprehends the tower. Damn it—can even brilliance become a curse? Like the mage Maia.’
The same pattern as Maia, the mage of Floor 55 Dungeon?
Does one need to reach the rank of a Floor 77 boss, the supreme leader of all giant-kind, to understand the tower’s nature?
But now was not the time for such speculation.
Even so, he had to make his defense.
“No, wait. That logic doesn’t hold. If you’re speaking of climbing the tower itself, then yes, perhaps that’s true. But that’s their responsibility, isn’t it? You can’t lump me in with that.”
It was true that Awakeners climbing the tower were killing giant-kind.
Likely the Awakeners suffered losses in turn, but that wasn’t the point he needed to make now.
“Human representative? With respect, there’s someone called Steve King. He’s the highest-climbing human in the tower right now—shouldn’t he be the representative rather than me?”
The notion that he should bear all responsibility as humanity’s representative.
Why?
He’d only climbed to Floor 21.
It was true he was unusually strong for a Floor 20s Awakener thanks to hidden and additional conditions, but ‘even so’ there were far too many stronger than him.
If strength was the measure, beings of the caliber of Eight Seconds should bear the burden of representing humanity.
More specifically, if one counted by floors? Moo-saeng’s logic was sound.
Shouldn’t Steve King bear total responsibility for every incident and accident that occurred in the tower?
Moo-saeng’s argument was reasonable.
Yet the Giant King did not accept it.
“No, human Kim Moo-saeng. It is you.”
“But why should I—.”
And the Giant King’s reasoning was equally sound.
“Because you hold a contract with Wash. That alone makes you responsible.”
The Giant King spoke.
The name of Wash, the tower’s administrator.

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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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