Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 65

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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 (65)
The faces of the Southeast Asia One-Way personnel were twisted in distress.
Slip past Geum Byeong-chul and Geum-seong’s elite and flee? Impossible.
And considering they were foreigners, all manner of restrictions and punishments awaited them from the Korean government….
It was only natural they’d slip into a state of panic.
“Sir, sir. What should we—”
“Shut your mouth. Just keep Geum Byeong-chul’s daughter from running away.”
But one man—Lee Jeong-gi—was different.
In his mind, the method to slip through the encirclement had already formed.
And Geum Byeong-chul knew what he was thinking.
“Heh heh, so you’re trying to take Su-ah as a hostage? Still the old man whose schemes are running in circles.”
Geum Byeong-chul knew.
Lee Jeong-gi wore a savage smile.
“I wonder if you’ll say the same standing before your daughter’s corpse?”
“In a situation where self-defense can be proven, you think a mere goblin’s tricks will work on my daughter?”
It was different when Geum Su-ah was alone.
With this many witnesses present, he couldn’t carelessly breach the Nevada Treaty.
Rather, even the Nevada Treaty itself allows the most immediate execution in situations of self-defense.
The World Awaker Association would scrutinize it gravely, but there was no possibility the situation would tilt in Lee Jeong-gi’s favor.
Knowing this was why the Southeast Asia One-Way personnel looked troubled.
The reason the tension didn’t ease was due to Lee Jeong-gi’s very nature.
“So…let’s see if you can say that even standing before your daughter’s corpse—”
From the Oni, a crimson aura began to surge forth.
And in that instant.
“Lee Jeong-gi.”
Crack—crack-crack-crack! Spark-spark-spark!
In the vicinity of the aura Lee Jeong-gi was releasing.
Near every member of the One-Way Group.
White electricity materialized and began to flow.
That was not all.
Geum Su-ah was already standing beside Geum Byeong-chul.
A spatial displacement executed in an instant, so swift that even she was bewildered!?
“Ah!? No, Father.”
Geum Su-ah immediately gripped her father’s arm.
White hair, slicked back with pomade, was now standing on end.
Without pupils, from those white eyes alone, sparks crackled and flickered intermittently.
“If you try anything reckless…right here, right now, every single one of you dies.”
Geum Byeong-chul spoke.
Whoosh—and in that instant, all electricity vanished.
As the electricity that had served as illumination faded, the surroundings felt even darker.
Within that darkness, still emanating a crimson aura, were red eyes.
“…Give me my grandson back.”
Lee Jeong-gi spoke.
Geum Byeong-chul shook his head lightly.
“A child reared poorly must pay the price, mustn’t he?”
“Then what do you want?”
“You didn’t even read the official letter we sent? Give up the One-Way License. And of course, material compensation is expected.”
It wasn’t simply compensation for the hotel fire.
The honor of Geum-seong, tarnished by this accident during the conference.
Geum Byeong-chul’s personal ambitions.
He was demanding all of it in exchange for Lee Eun-woo’s life.
Lee Jeong-gi laughed softly.
“…Speaking such nonsense with a straight face, are you?”
“Heh, mind your language. You’re not mistaking rough speech for strength just because you’re that old, are you?”
Geum Byeong-chul replied curtly.
But Lee Jeong-gi was Lee Jeong-gi.
“The one who once crawled on the ground now putting on airs and pretending to be refined—that’s an even greater delusion. Live as you were made, as you were made. Geum Byeong-chul.”
An old Awakener who knew Geum Byeong-chul’s past.
The two faced each other.
Their mouths closed.
Both Geum-seong’s people and One-Way’s people.
A silence so thick you could swallow hard, and mounting tension.
In an instant.
Crash-crash-crash-crash───────!
The crimson Oni burst forth, obliterating every wall of the dead-end alley in its path.
It closed the distance in a heartbeat, moving so fast that Geum-seong’s people couldn’t even deploy their restraint weapons.
─────, ─────, ─────!
Three flashes of brilliant light.
“Krragh!?”
“Aaahhh!”
“M-my eyes! My eyes!”
The lower-ranked Awakeners, caught off guard by the electrical explosion, found their vision damaged.
In less than a second, Lee Jeong-gi had attacked Geum Byeong-chul seven times, and Geum Byeong-chul had blocked with three skills—but the crucial point was that Lee Jeong-gi’s true aim had never been a simple ambush.
“Tch-hah, old dog, quite the form for someone running.”
By then, Lee Jeong-gi had already vanished.
Geum Byeong-chul turned his head toward somewhere beyond Geum-seong’s encirclement and laughed.
“Father! Aren’t you going to chase after him……?”
Geum Su-ah had also seen Lee Jeong-gi break through the cordon and escape.
She knew the direction, too.
With Luminous, she could snipe from this distance.
“Never mind. With your technique, civilian casualties wouldn’t be too severe anyway, would they, Su-ah?”
Yet Geum Byeong-chul shook his head.
A judgment made by Geum-seong’s chairman, weighing multiple factors.
“But… I could still minimize the blast radius to—”
Geum Su-ah tried to persuade him, masking her embarrassment, but.
Geum Byeong-chul was already walking toward those who remained.
“Heh-heh, which is exactly why I keep telling you to practice more. In any case……our Southeast Asia friends here and I have more to discuss.”
Lee Jeong-gi ran alone.
Leaving seventeen members of the Southeast Asia One-Way Group behind.
He’d received Awakeners in support, and yet he fled solo, abandoning them?
“Who’s the second-in-command under Lee Jeong-gi?”
At least the guild called “Korea One-Way Group” would cease to exist now.
The Thailand One-Way Headquarters—which had effectively unified all of Southeast Asia and harbored one of the Eight Seconds—would no longer maintain their license.
The financial compensation for swiftly extinguishing arson damage?
That was pocket change in Geum Byeong-chul’s eyes.
What he had truly desired, he now possessed at this very moment.
Only Geum Su-ah found herself nursing a small regret, smacking her lips ruefully.
“As for Lee Eun-woo’s disposition, then… I suppose we hand him over to the police. Kim Moo-saeng won’t be pleased about it, though.”
And……
‘Huff, huff, crazy monster of a bastard.’
Left shoulder.
Right side.
And right cheek.
Lee Jeong-gi, bearing burn wounds on three places as though seared by massive irons, ground his teeth in frustration.
The crimson Oni had to devise the next move.
He had to obtain another card that neither Geum-seong nor Geum Byeong-chul nor Geum Su-ah could ignore.
Only then could he save his grandson.
At least until now, no such card had come to mind.
While “that card” was finishing Floor 20 within the tower, events were unfolding outside it.
* * *
[Floor 22]
[The enemy is no mere monster—a tropical jungle]
[Defeat Curupira.]
[Time Remaining: 480:00:00]
[Multi-person Climbing adjustment applied.]
[Contribution Rate calculation commencing.]
Floor 22’s time limit was a full twenty days.
Of course, more time didn’t necessarily mean it would be easier.
They’d have to find and defeat the boss over twenty days in an Amazon-like jungle.
“……Moo-saeng, what’s that?”
“Just watch.”
But Moo-saeng calmly retrieved something from Sherpa’s pack instead.
A rolled-up object that resembled a whip.
Crack-crack-crack────────!
He simply cracked it through the air.
What was he doing?
Park Hyun-gu and the others opened their eyes wide, waiting for something to appear in the sky, but nothing changed.
Instead, Moo-saeng—who had just cracked that whip-like object—was now pulling out an outdoor collapsible cup and pouring tea…….
“That’s……it?”
“Yeah. Now we just wait.”
Moo-saeng answered Park Hyun-gu’s question lightly.
Then he began passing the collapsible cups around to the party members.
“Here, everyone have a nice cold drink. It’s all included in what you’ve paid, so don’t worry about it.”
Shin Hyun-dong, who had taken the cup somewhat bewilderedly, asked a question.
“I’m sure you’ll handle it admirably, but……isn’t it common knowledge that just finding a Curupira takes an enormous amount of time?”
A primate-type monster roughly three meters tall, with reddish skin.
Moo-saeng nodded and replied.
“Yes. The hairless, red body is quite distinctive. They’re usually positioned in the opposite direction from similar-looking red howler monkey troops, so finding the monkeys is actually the fastest way to locate a Curupira.”
“So that whip-cracking just now was calling over the red howler monkeys, or something like that?”
“No, nothing like that. Ah, everyone come over here. You’ll get bitten by insects. Without repellent you’re in real trouble. Amazon mosquitoes are no joke, you know? And that’s not even counting the bloodsuckers—the regular bugs alone are terrifying.”
Moo-saeng offered no explanation.
There was no need to explain.
[Cackle-cackle-cackle! You’ve got Floor 22 completely figured out, haven’t you, Kim Moo-saeng? I had a feeling from the way you lured those idiots whose names I don’t even remember!]
Floor 22.
Floor 22 Dungeon.
A place Moo-saeng could never forget.
The very place where he’d lured and wiped out all the first-string Awakeners and first-string candidates of the Korea One-Way Group, including Park Do-hyun!
〈Slay Kraken’s Tongue (S)〉
Master of all serpents, the Slay Kraken’s Tongue. No snake can refuse its tremor.
From the very beginning, when he learned how to clear Floor 22.
When he heard what the hidden condition was, the method of swift victory had already bloomed in Moo-saeng’s mind.
‘Ah. Found it.’
Through the Slay Kraken’s Tongue, he sensed the state of the snakes he was controlling.
He had found the red howler monkey troop.
He had found the two chimera jaguars.
He had found the three pools where the bloodsucking mosquitoes swarmed.
In that moment when the positions of the snakes felt like a map in his mind…….
‘It cut off.’
The consciousness of the snakes heading in a particular direction severed.
From the red howler monkey troop in the southeast toward the northwest.
The Curupira was there.
Screee, screeee—.
“So this repellent is made from wha—.”
“Everyone stay here and wait! I’ll be back within thirty minutes.”
“—Yes? Suddenly? Where are you going?”
“Hm? That’s an oddly redundant question. Where am I going? Of course—to clear Floor 22!”
Moo-saeng laughed dryly as though confused by such a question, then bolted off.
Watching his figure disappear in an instant, everyone stood in stunned silence.
“I thought I was starting to understand Kim Moo-saeng…….”
“Seriously. That’s exactly it. Every time something like this happens, I realize I don’t understand him at all.”
“Is it even possible to clear Floor 22 in thirty minutes? Even someone like Geum Su-ah would struggle to wipe everything out with an area-wide skill, wouldn’t she?”
A man beyond comprehension.
A specimen of such extraordinary caliber that ordinary people couldn’t even predict or imagine him.
Shin Hyun-dong chuckled and sat down.
“That’s precisely why it’s good, everyone. We just trust Kim and wait.”
“Hah, well said. Where can you find something this easy? It’s like a show—you just turn off your brain and enjoy. So if that’s the case, remember Floor 21? Stat points just cascaded in like vines falling loose?”
Park Hyun-gu felt the same way.
At least one thing was certain.
Though they were E-rank, they were people who had acquired Confusion and Fear Resistance from the rewards of Floor 21.
They might harbor doubts about Moo-saeng’s methods.
Not to doubt it, not to grow anxious, not to tremble with fear.
“Shorts, then… If you compare tower climbing to watching shorts, the other Awakeners would beat you to death.”
“But what’s even funnier is how apt the comparison is. Ah, well then, let’s rest a bit.”
Just as they found spots and sat down to take a break.
“Then I’ll just catch a quick nap—”
[Congratulations!]
[You have achieved the Clear condition.]
[Time Remaining: 479:31:30]
[Calculating Contribution Rate.]
[Kim Moo-saeng: Contribution Rate 100%]
[Others: Contribution Rate 0%]
“—… Faster than shorts.”
Cha Jin-pyo, who’d been about to lie down, could only shake his head from an awkward half-crouch.
Floor 22 cleared in just twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds?
On a condition that gave them twenty days?
Kim Ji-yoon spoke up.
“We’re on the second evening now, aren’t we? We’re going until tomorrow night?”
It was a tower they’d entered planning to spend three days on.
Yet they hadn’t even finished the second day.
Those who’d started on Floor 14 were now on Floor 22.
“By the time we leave the tower, won’t we be past Floor 25?”
“No, we won’t.”
“For real. Should we make a bet?”
“Over or under Floor 25? Any takers?”
“Obviously under! How much are we betting?”
The comparison to shorts was no longer the issue.
What truly proved it was the peace of mind and perfection that came from the way they could face tower climbing with such composure.
―Since we’re running late today, let’s go up to Floor 23 and camp there. Everyone good with that?
It was proof of the stability and flawlessness that Kim Moo-saeng’s ‘carry’ brought them.
“… Surely not, no matter what, Floor 25 can’t—”
For the party members who’d wagered on staying under Floor 25, the pace at which they were ascending felt dizzying—almost unsettlingly fast.

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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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