Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 60

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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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Climbing the Mythic Tower with a Cheating Administrator (60)
Kim Moo-saeng turned his head without realizing it.
To look at Wash.
To see if he’d laugh with a cackling grin.
Or adjust his Black Horn-Rimmed Glasses and show some resolve.
Anything—he just wanted to see him do something.
“……Wash?”
Not that he’d ever seen this composure fracture, not once since being sent here.
Gulp.
Kim Moo-saeng swallowed hard.
There had been hints before—talk of keys, of administrators.
Some beings had understood Wash without needing it spelled out.
Slayken must have sensed at least a fragment of what Wash was.
The mage Maia hardly needed explanation.
Though she existed in Floor 55 Dungeon, not Floor 55 proper—a state Wash himself called a Bug—she had grasped the concept of what he was.
The Blue Dragon warranted the same assessment.
Yes, it emerged around Floor 20 by tower reckoning, but as a high-order lifeform transcending mere floors, it had sensed Wash’s existence and been startled accordingly.
Kim Moo-saeng had sent Wash there precisely because he’d thought a dragon might meet that threshold.
So a giant king of such intelligence should be capable of grasping the Administrator concept—or so he’d believed……
Yet the Giant King spoke.
“Wash……. What brings you here now, Administrator.”
He knew the name.
More than that—Wash and this king were acquainted?!
Only then did Wash break his silence.
[……Murometz. How sharp you’ve become. Or rather—isn’t the fact that you weren’t even reset on that memory itself proof of how sloppy administration has grown?]
Murometz. The apex of all giants.
The frown of that solemn arbiter finally twitched.
“Hear me, human Kim Moo-saeng.”
“Y-yes?”
Even Kim Moo-saeng, caught off guard by the sudden invocation of his name, stammered.
Murometz continued.
“You have said that humans climbing the tower are slaughtering the giant race. You have also said that this is merely the burden of individuals.”
Kim Moo-saeng’s argument.
And Murometz’s own rebuttal to it.
“But I say this: if there exists an entity that allows the tower to be climbed, then the one who designed it must bear that responsibility. And I say further: that responsibility is yours to share as well, human Kim Moo-saeng, who has contracted with the designer.”
A being who understood the concept of the tower.
A tower-dweller who comprehended not merely that the tower was managed, but that it had been designed by someone.
“Have you anything more to say?”
Murometz’s logic was flawless.
Both Kim Moo-saeng and Wash fell silent.
* * *
“What……is he saying now?”
“I can’t hear it well from here either…….”
The personnel in the center of the audience gallery were equally bewildered.
They could see Kim Moo-saeng standing alone in the distance.
They could grasp that some tremendous giant had entered and was engaged in conversation with him.
But the specifics of what was being said remained inaudible to them.
Not that the content of the conversation was what truly mattered to them anyway.
“In any case, he’s at a disadvantage, isn’t he? Regardless of what’s happening, Kim Moo-saeng is in a bad position, right?”
The certainty that this situation was far from favorable.
If Kim Moo-saeng was disadvantaged, what of their own lives—they who were bound to his fate?
“Or couldn’t Kim the representative just sweep them all away? He’s done it until now!”
“Yeah, and there are a lot of giants, but wouldn’t taking out their leader do the trick?”
Grasping instinctively that they were being backed into a corner, they too had to devise a way out.
From a position where they couldn’t even perceive Murometz’s existence or the chasm between them, such a reaction was inevitable.
“That would be the worst thing possible. Staying quiet is what helps him.”
“Exactly. At the very least, Kim the representative needs to make the first move. Or rather—even if he does move first, unless he signals us to intervene, we should stay put.”
Save for two people: Park Hyun-gu and Shin Hyun-dong.
Complete faith in Kim Moo-saeng.
Shin Hyun-dong’s slight frame trembled, yet still he insisted on this trust.
Their reasons for believing in him, however, differed slightly.
“Besides, you all saw it yourselves. If we get involved, it becomes an all-out war? Something like that. I don’t know what exactly…… but either way, you get this feeling that it’d be the ‘worst-case scenario,’ right?”
Shin Hyun-dong was factoring in a more pragmatic consideration.
The possibility that their hasty intervention could backfire.
Only after hearing Shin Hyun-dong’s words did everyone recover a measure of reason.
“But…… that doesn’t mean we should just sit back and do nothing!”
Still, a lingering anxiety couldn’t help but remain.
“It’s fine. Come on, you’ve all been watching so carefully up to now, and yet here you are.”
And it was naturally Park Hyun-gu’s role to soothe that worry.
Noh Ye-rang responded with a sharp edge to her voice.
“Anyone can see we’re in a disadvantageous position. How is that fine?”
“It is.”
Park Hyun-gu answered with knife-like certainty.
His posture was almost loose, his expression almost at ease.
So brazenly unshaken that Noh Ye-rang had nothing left to say.
Park Hyun-gu tilted his chin toward Kim Moo-saeng, as if reading her thoughts.
A trust rooted in reasoning of an altogether different order from Shin Hyun-dong’s.
“When he’s quiet like that—that’s when it’s scariest. His head, mouth, and hands can all be out of sync, but they still churn along smoothly. But when he does nothing and focuses entirely on thinking? You know what that means? I’ve lived through it my whole life. Kim Moo-saeng when he’s like that—”
Park Hyun-gu continued.
“—he’s probably finished calculating how to strike back by now.”
At that very moment, Moo-saeng took a step forward.
* * *
Moo-saeng took a deep breath.
There was no hint of a smile on his face.
Yet it was unmistakably different from how he’d appeared mere moments before—no longer simply shadowed and dark.
“You’re right.”
“……Should I take that to mean you have nothing to say?”
A flash of light crossed Murometz’s gaze.
Moo-saeng waved his hand at once.
“No, no! I do have something to say. Basically, Wash is—”
[Kim Moo-saeng. There’s no need to explain.]
It was Wash who cut him off.
And Murometz as well.
“No need to explain. Your current state or anything like that is none of our concern.”
“……Understood.”
At that point, Moo-saeng was certain.
‘Wash is another Administrator? In any case, he’s in conflict with things like that.’
Or perhaps he’d realized it the moment he set eyes on Wash.
That Administrator Authority Execution had never been invoked in this situation.
That the power of an Administrator couldn’t be used.
From there, he’d quickly reached the conclusion: Wash ≠ the current Administrator.
“No matter how things stand now, the sins of the past don’t simply vanish.”
Murometz added this one point.
Moo-saeng nodded in agreement.
“That’s right. It’s not as though he’s paid the price. And something like ‘I was ordered to do it’—that won’t fly…… will it?”
Wash was a former Administrator but is no longer one—this doesn’t hold.
That someone above him ordered him to do it and he simply obeyed—this doesn’t hold.
Moo-saeng noticed Wash flinch at the mention of ‘someone ordered him,’ but he didn’t dwell on it.
“Wasting time listening to obvious truths.”
Murometz exhaled with a low rumble and began to rise from his seat.
“Then I’ll carry out the sentence—”
“Which is exactly why!”
At that very moment, when Murometz seemed poised to kill Moo-saeng on the spot.
Moo-saeng spoke.
“I acknowledge the crime…… while also—”
There was no escaping.
Not as long as he remained with Wash.
But he wouldn’t abandon or forsake Wash either.
He certainly couldn’t simply die here.
It seemed like a situation with no way out.
“I’m requesting a stay of execution.”
But in the conversation with Murometz.
In the way Murometz looked at Wash and treated him.
“……A stay? For how long? And why should I do that?”
Kim Moo-saeng had finally found his opening.
“Because there’s something you want, Murometz.”
[Hmph, Kim Moo-saeng……. You-.]
“What I want, you say……. And you believe you know what that is, human Kim Moo-saeng.”
Murometz posed the question.
The subtle shift in his tone from moments before — Kim Moo-saeng caught every nuance of it.
If that were true, he could escape this situation.
No, not merely escape execution at this moment.
“Yes. What you want, Murometz, is……revenge. Against those beings imprisoned in the Tower. Or summoned? Either way……. Against the Tower’s Administrators. I can deliver that for you. So until then, I ask for a stay of my execution.”
He pressed further.
He drew Murometz into his camp.
Murometz’s eyebrows twitched.
Wash had not even thought to straighten his crooked Black Horn-Rimmed Glasses.
But Kim Moo-saeng did not stop.
Because now was the only moment to lay bare the foundation of this reasoning.
“You’re not merely angry because I killed two Cyclops. You’re furious about the unjust treatment of your people. And you’re not blaming it simply on the human who committed murder. It goes deeper — the fundamental cause, the root problem……. In the end, your anger is directed at the Tower itself.”
Murometz said nothing.
If he denied this claim now, he could not pin responsibility for the slaughter on Kim Moo-saeng.
So he had to accept it.
Murometz’s brow furrowed.
After a long pause, he finally spoke.
“……But that alone, human Kim Moo-saeng, gives no reason why I should entrust this to you-.”
“Wash said it, didn’t he? That he isn’t performing a Reset.”
Kim Moo-saeng interrupted Murometz’s words, answering as if he had anticipated this objection.
Clearly he had known this would come.
“The term Reset must have been unfamiliar to you, yet you didn’t ask him to explain it. That means you understand the word, and at the same time, you’re worried about it, aren’t you? That such a situation might occur. If it does, all your current anger, all your accumulated efforts……. The knowledge and information you’ve built up by not Resetting for such a long time would likely vanish. And you don’t want that, do you? So if you grant me a stay of execution, I’ll deliver your revenge.”
He knows about the Administrators.
He understands Wash as a distinct entity.
Then he cannot help but feel dread at Kim Moo-saeng’s claim.
No — if he could have pursued revenge against the Administrators, he might have attempted it long ago.
But the fact that he hasn’t until now?
It could only mean he’s aware of his own powerlessness against them.
“How should I trust you.”
This was all Murometz could say.
And at this moment, Kim Moo-saeng laughed.
A broad grin spread across his face, corners of his mouth rising.
“You referred to me and Wash as having a Contract relationship, didn’t you? And you recognized that we used a specific contract document……. Which means you also know about the Abyssal Contract, yes? You could use the Abyssal Contract for our revenge proxy agreement as well. Assuming you have one, of course.”
Kim Moo-saeng spoke.
He glanced at Wash, whose mouth now hung open in astonishment.
Then he turned his gaze back to Murometz.
“If you don’t have one, an ordinary contract is fine. I may not look it, but……. I’ve made my living — and nearly died — by contracts. You need not worry about my faithfulness to the terms. What we’ve already accomplished with Wash, simply reaching this point, should be proof enough.”
Kim Moo-saeng shrugged his shoulders.
Then toward the apex of all giants.
The one who ruled above all the heads of giant-kind.
“Hahah, isn’t that……. Rather a good deal?”
he asked.
Murometz did not answer.
Rather, he could not answer.
“Kuhahahahahahahaha!”
The vast arena had to shake with his laughter.

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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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