Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 86

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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 Mythical Tower with a Cheating Administrator (86)
What Murometsu had sent was, you might say, a sort of messenger.
Or perhaps a gift?
Strictly speaking, it was merely Moo-saeng fulfilling one of the contract conditions he had proposed in reverse within the Abyss Contract, but at least in this moment, whether messenger or gift, it was nothing but the greatest joy to him.
“Hey, what’s with that expression? Moo-saeng? Are you laughing or crying?”
A face where confusion and tension had transformed into delight and exhilaration.
Watching Moo-saeng’s facial muscles shift, Soo-ah couldn’t help but flinch.
“Pfft, hehehehe…… Kya! You see, you’ve got to make good contracts. Right, Soo-ah? You’d agree too, Chief Yoon?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Of course contracts are important, but—if you’re referring to the contract about the Floor 67 Dungeon information—”
“No, no, that’s not it. Though that’s important too, puhahaha! What is this really—”
And yet his joy was premature.
────────────…………
“─…… Huh?”
Around the moment when he sensed something in the air had changed.
Moo-saeng realized that everyone from Geum-sung, including Soo-ah, had gone still.
Not merely paused in motion or speech.
Frozen. Stiffened?
To be precise, it was neither.
[Gahahaha! You’re startled just because I’ve stopped time a little, Kim Moo-saeng?!]
Download Rate: 81.9%
Wash could now, through Execute with Administrator Authority, even stop time within the dungeon.
A yellow rubber duck drifting effortlessly through water as if nothing were amiss.
“Wash, you……”
Seeing Wash’s form, Moo-saeng found his words catching in his throat.
It had only been a few hours since they’d last seen each other.
Yet somehow it felt like a reunion of separated family.
Fortunately, there was no need for Moo-saeng to speak first.
Whoooooosh———!
Wash flew rapidly toward Moo-saeng.
[I didn’t even toy with the Abyss Contract, and I spouted all sorts of useless nonsense to Murometsu! This damned bastard! You! I never even predicted I’d recover this much of myself in this way!]
Then, spreading both wings wide, Wash embraced Moo-saeng’s face and spoke.
[It’s thanks to you, Kim Moo-saeng!]
The first words of gratitude Moo-saeng had ever heard from Wash.
When entering the dungeon: 75.1%.
And now: 81.9%.
A Download Rate increase of nearly seven percent.
In other words, Wash had recovered that level of power from their original body.
How joyous that must be. How extraordinary.
From Wash’s expression alone, Moo-saeng could understand, and so his eyes grew hot despite himself.
Of course, Moo-saeng was not one to cry in a situation like this.
“I thought it’d look like a rubber duck and smell like rubber, but it doesn’t seem to, huh?”
A light remark to hide embarrassment, to conceal joy.
[Kwak, kwak?! You say something like that at a time like this?]
Wash instantly widened the distance, frowning.
“Well, it’s exactly because of a situation like this that I say something like that.”
Moo-saeng chuckled watching Wash.
The goal had been to raise it by about one percent.
By trailing after Geum-sung a few times and repeating the process, he’d hoped to reach around eighty percent by the next tower climb.
But the more they did this, the riskier it became.
Moo-saeng had an increasingly high probability of being pinpointed by the All-Seeing Eye.
And Wash would have a high probability of being exposed to multiple targets within the tower.
From that perspective?
“Tell me the details, Wash. How did this happen? More importantly, what can you do now?”
In a single attempt, they’d exceeded the final goal, and now Moo-saeng and Wash had managed to eliminate a considerable level of risk.
Grinning at Moo-saeng.
[Gahahaha! Let’s go through it one thing at a time.]
Wash too grinned and fluttered his wings.
In that single flutter of wings.
────────────…………!
Kim Moo-saeng had no choice but to be startled again.
The dead gomchi were coming back to life.
Geum Soo-ah and the Geum-sung members, who had been frozen just moments before, were now swimming backward and fighting.
“…… Rewind? Time?”
Kim Moo-saeng found himself in the same situation.
The difference from Geum-sung’s side was that Kim Moo-saeng had become two.
One Kim Moo-saeng here with Wash in the present. And another Kim Moo-saeng following the rewound time as it played out.
Stopping time.
Rewinding it.
The ability to separate spirit and body like an out-of-body experience.
[Watch and listen for yourself, Kim Moo-saeng.]
The Tower Administrator with a Download Rate of 81.9% had spoken.
* * *
[Download Rate 75.9%]
“…… Wash! I’m picking up a different signal. We’re being tracked—or rather, they’re homing in on your signal. I’ll cut it!”
Hildegard cried out urgently.
A pattern similar to what had been detected in the Underground Space last time was showing up.
She had some vague sense of how dangerous that had been, so she moved immediately to shut it down.
[Leave it! You can leave it alone!]
But this time, Wash stopped her.
“Excuse me? Leave it alone?”
Hildegard looked at Wash with an expression of utter bewilderment.
And Kim Moo-saeng leaned into Hildegard’s line of sight.
“So what you’re saying is, she can’t see me right now?”
Had she ever looked at someone’s face this closely, stared this intently before?
Yet Hildegard’s eyes were not looking at Kim Moo-saeng.
They were fixed on what lay beyond him—”the Wash from the past timeline.”
[Kyakya-kack, quite right. There’s no need for this less-civilized female to see the full extent of my power, is there, Kim Moo-saeng?]
“True enough.”
The present Wash and the present Kim Moo-saeng exchanged a light conversation.
And then the past Wash spoke again.
[Same series…. And residual data logs from the past. If those at the top had gotten wind of this, it wouldn’t be like this.]
“Then—?”
[Probably something that happened to me in the past…. Or perhaps something that was done to me….]
The past Wash murmured.
The present Kim Moo-saeng scratched his chin.
“You’re saying a lot, aren’t you? Wash, you’re excited too.”
[Kwak, kwak-ak. No. I already explained quite a bit during the last download, didn’t I? The judgment—made with perfectly frigid logic—is that it doesn’t matter if this less-civilized female learns this much.]
“Well, let’s call it that. So anyway—”
[Download Rate 76.0%]
[Partial Administrator Log Recovered]
[Detection Target: CX-Ω Series Administrator Residual Log]
“—So that’s how it is…. The moment this appeared….”
Around the time the past Kim Moo-saeng discovered the past Geum-sung members and the seven gomchi.
The aura of light surrounding the past Wash separated.
Hildegard now clamped her lips shut as she watched.
The light began to take on a form.
The present Kim Moo-saeng looked at it and murmured.
‘A teddy bear…. Why do all these administrators look like children’s toys or dolls? Even Wash wouldn’t bring this up, would they?’
No—he barely managed to suppress the urge to murmur it aloud.
Kim Moo-saeng’s eyes darted sideways and met Wash’s gaze.
[Kwak~ak? What kind of unpleasant thought are you having now, Kim Moo-saeng?]
Wash glared at Kim Moo-saeng.
Kim Moo-saeng quickly shook his head and shrugged.
“Ah, no. Nothing at all. Wow, your… friend here is quite magnificent.”
[Talking about friends, are we? Kyakya-kack, you came in much later than me. Should I call you junior? Subordinate?]
Wash, swayed by that topic change, spoke while looking at the teddy bear-shaped aura of light.
And soon a voice came from the teddy bear.
[Wash…. You really did survive. I kept hearing from Murometsu and couldn’t believe it.]
“But that’s not the tone to use with a senior, is it?”
[Crash! You think we’re human!? We don’t express respect in some crude, primitive way with words alone!]
“I…”
Kim Moo-saeng swallowed the retort that it was the more primitive approach.
Either way, he had to focus on what the teddy bear made of light was saying.
[Dudu…… Couldn’t escape, then.]
Before laughter could escape at the name Dudu, Moo-saeng asked quickly.
“So communications went dark at this point?”
[Right. Dudu got transferred carrying massive amounts of data logs and something went wrong. That’s also why that oversized serpent fish split into seven.]
“What about the Giant Venta Stingray?”
[That one was already there. It didn’t have particularly aggressive tendencies, so I didn’t mention it, but gah-ha-ha-ha! I never anticipated that beast’s offspring would end up in trouble.]
And in that way, Moo-saeng could naturally grasp the errors in Floor 67 Dungeon.
The past Wash spoke.
[How much did you tell Murometsu?]
[Everything. Even the message to relay to the contract counterparty.]
Dudu answered quickly.
To Moo-saeng’s ear, it wasn’t a particularly satisfying answer, but Wash seemed to consider it sufficient and moved directly to the next question.
[Gah-ha-ha-ha, I’ll certainly pay the price for not resetting. How many are left?]
[Wash, same as when you escaped.]
[……So with you deleted, there should be 11 entities remaining.]
[No. Eight entities. There are three more remaining as Residual Logs in the tower besides me.]
[Eight entities…….]
[Still, for you it’s fortunate, Wash. One of those three is Baibei.]
[Crash.]
The past Wash nodded.
At that point, Moo-saeng had to interject quickly.
“Wait, hold on. Why are we flying through this so fast? This is incredibly important information—”
[There’s no need for you to know everything right now, is there, Kim Moo-saeng?]
“—Yeah…… I suppose not. Okay. Fair enough.”
He could ask about the details later.
In any case, what Moo-saeng could deduce now was three things.
Eight entities remained at the tower’s peak—they were the Administrators.
There were three more Residual Logs creating this current situation.
And one of them was Baibei. Whatever that meant, it was good news for Wash.
‘And…… Hildegard would be thinking exactly the same.’
Right behind them, Hildegard was listening with those emerald eyes wide as saucers.
As though she wouldn’t miss a single syllable.
As though she wouldn’t dare interrupt and spoil these esteemed beings’ conversation.
‘Think about it the other way—someone so desperate to cling to information…… isn’t the type to betray.’
Wash hadn’t explained everything to Moo-saeng either.
She said she would explain gradually.
If that was the case, there was no way Wash had told Hildegard everything in the time it took Dudu to relay her message to Moo-saeng and vanish.
In other words, Hildegard might be desperate with curiosity.
To satisfy that intellectual hunger, she would stake her life on Moo-saeng’s side—on Wash’s side.
Moo-saeng asked casually.
“Residual Logs—if it works this way now, does that mean Murometsu can boost the Download Rate three more times?”
The full structure still eluded him, but he could interpret it to mean there were three more opportunities like this one—chances to spike the Download Rate.
[That’s right. Gah-ha-ha-ha-ha.]
Wash laughed as she answered.
Moo-saeng didn’t laugh back.
“But Murometsu said we shouldn’t download from outside the tower anymore. We just got lucky this time—contacting Dudu like this, finding your signal—if another Administrator had found it first, we’d be in serious trouble.”
There had been a clear warning in what Murometsu conveyed.
Whether it was a dungeon or Metaline’s Base, conducting a Download was extremely dangerous.
Moo-saeng had known it was risky from the start, but he understood the warning to mean that threat had become far more explicit.
[Crash? Murometsu left a message like that? Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Just one more moment, one last time—exactly as Murometsu said.]
And Wash spoke.
Toward Moo-saeng, who tilted his head in confusion, Wash explained.
[He said not to do it outside the tower. Then we do it inside the tower. If Baibei is there…… just once. We can manage it.]
“Huh? What?”
[We might be able to recover more than 10% in one go. Gah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!]
“What? What?”
It was a bombshell declaration that left Kim Moo-saeng’s eyes wide.

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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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