Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 45

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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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Chapter 45
“Is this the place?”
After crossing a shallow stream and climbing the hill, he finally reached his destination.
Pushing through the thick undergrowth, he spotted the goblins settled on relatively level ground.
‘Not that many, huh?’
Counting what was visible, there were just over fifty.
Judging by the number of huts, there might be seventy once the rest came into view.
‘I thought a Goblin Lord would have hundreds under him.’
He’d been prepared to rework his strategy, but it didn’t look like he’d need to.
‘And they all look like hell. A good number of them don’t even seem fit for combat.’
Now he could understand, to some extent, why the thirteen men from the village had tried to take them on.
‘Even so, throwing thirteen people at them with a Goblin Lord in the mix is a bit much.’
Only one of them had died, which was nothing short of a miracle.
What a reckless decision that had been.
‘If the goblins are in this state, the Goblin Lord is probably not in good shape either. Maybe that’s why?’
Hyeonjun kept his body low and continued his reconnaissance.
He intended to find the Goblin Lord and check its condition.
‘There it is.’
A large hut built with trees as its pillars.
The Goblin Lord was sitting with its back against one of those trees.
‘It’s definitely not in perfect shape.’
Its muscular body was covered in wounds.
It seemed it had lost a battle against another goblin group and retreated all the way here.
‘That explains why the goblins look like that. And why there are so few of them.’
Having reached his conclusion, Hyeonjun immediately drew his dagger.
He meant to take down the Goblin Lord first.
‘Cut off the head, and the rest will scatter in confusion.’
That was assuming he could kill it in one strike.
If the commotion drew the goblins over, the fight would drag on.
[Activating .]
Hyeonjun kicked off the ground.
The Goblin Lord was still sitting there.
His target was its neck.
‘In one blow.’
The Goblin Lord was a D-Grade monster.
Under normal circumstances, it would be hard to take down in a single strike, but in a weakened state like this, it should be possible.
Swish!
Hyeonjun slipped past the Goblin Lord like a streak of light.
He felt the faint sensation of flesh parting at the tip of his blade.
Pressing down on his toes to brake, Hyeonjun turned around.
As though a cleanly cut fruit were coming apart, the Goblin Lord’s head began to slide slowly off its shoulders.
[Mission Update Notification]
[Floor 1 Mission]

– Wipe out the goblin pack that has settled near the village
– Slay the Goblin Lord
– Receive confirmation from the village chief
The mission notification announced the Goblin Lord’s death.
At the same moment, the Goblin Lord’s head thudded onto the grass.
‘One down.’
Hyeonjun quickly harvested the Goblin Lord’s spoils.
‘No Magic Stone, then.’
Monsters that appear in the tower are known for not dropping Magic Stones.
That’s why all the rewards come from the loot taken off their corpses and from the compensation that comes simply with clearing the tower.
‘I wonder what the clear reward will be.’
Could the village chief be the one who hands out the clear reward itself?
If you think of the mission as a kind of quest, that’s a real possibility.
‘Did I turn it down for nothing?’
Hyeonjun packed all the spoils into his bag with a nagging unease and started walking toward the goblin pack.
Once the leader was taken care of, the rest would be easy.
“Kerrruk!”
Hyeonjun strode boldly into the heart of the goblin horde.
The goblins who had been resting scrambled to grab their weapons and closed in around him.
‘So about thirty of them can actually fight.’
The rest were non-combatants.
Hyeonjun crooked a finger at the goblin among them who looked like their captain, a warrior.
“Come here.”
“Kerrrruk!”
.
.
.
“Hah.”
Hyeonjun caught his breath briefly and slipped out of the goblins’ quarters.
A foul stench of blood rode on the breeze and seeped into his nostrils.
‘So that clears the first floor.’
All that was left was to report back to the village chief and get confirmation.
For the sake of a smooth confirmation, he had brought the Goblin Lord’s head along too.
“Ah.”
The entrance to Initium Village.
He ran into Derek again, who was swinging a long stick.
“Are you already done?”
“I brought back the head. Want to see it?”
Derek nodded calmly.
Hyeonjun showed him the Goblin Lord’s head, which he had carried in a leather pouch of the sort the goblins used.
“Wow. You really caught it.”
“That was nothing.”
“What’s ‘nothing’?”
“It means easy.”
“Oh…”
Derek’s eyes sparkled.
He seemed to enjoy learning something new.
‘It’s too realistic to think of him as just an NPC.’
Hyeonjun was struck by the feeling that he wasn’t carrying out some quest, but had entered another world and was functioning as a part of it.
‘I’m going to keep thinking about him even after the mission is over.’
The boy Derek was a little peculiar, unlike the typical children his age.
Those quirks made Hyeonjun feel a certain bond with him, despite their brief time together.
‘It’s a shame to just end things here.’
After some hesitation, Hyeonjun decided to spend a little more time in this world.
“Is that a sword?”
“Yes. I made it myself. It can’t cut anything, though.”
“Let me see.”
Hyeonjun took the wooden sword in his hand.
‘I wonder if the skill will recognize this as a sword.’
It had the shape of a proper sword, but whether the System would register it as one was a separate matter.
[Activating .]
The target of the analysis was the wooden sword in his hand.
“Gah.”
Just as expected, a severe headache came crashing down.
Though he had braced himself to some extent, he ended up dropping to the ground anyway.
“Mister, are you okay?”
Hyeonjun raised a hand to hold back Derek, who was coming toward him.
He gritted through the pain for a while.
Then Hyeonjun got to his feet and swung the sword a few times.
A weapon he had never used before settled into his hand as if they had been together for years.
[You have acquired .]
He had successfully picked up the skill.
Hyeonjun paused to catch his breath.
‘Even the second time isn’t easy.’
He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to manage a third time.
Hyeonjun endured the lingering faint pain in his head and called out to Derek.
“Derek. Watch closely.”
Drawing on what he had learned through his own experience, Hyeonjun walked Derek through a rough outline of swordsmanship.
“Oh, oh wow!”
For that moment, Derek reacted just like any other kid his age.
“Now you try.”
Derek copied him exactly.
Hyeonjun had meant to correct the flaws, but Derek picked it up surprisingly well.
‘He’s got talent.’
And so the crash course went on for a while.
“Alright, that’s enough for today.”
“Could you teach me a little more?”
“This much is enough. Figure out the rest yourself by practicing.”
“Got it. Thanks for teaching me.”
Leaving Derek behind, Hyeonjun headed for the village chief’s house.
As he walked, the men of the village began trailing after him one or two at a time, and before long, every man he’d seen earlier had gathered.
“Did he really catch it?”
“Isn’t there a rock inside that bag?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
With the men tailing him in a way that wasn’t quite tailing, Hyeonjun reached the village chief’s house.
When he knocked, the village chief came out.
“You’re back already?”
“Please, see for yourself.”
Hyeonjun held out the leather bag to the village chief.
The chief eyed the bag suspiciously, opened it a crack, and flinched.
Staring back at him with wide-open eyes was the dead Goblin Lord.
“W-what? He really did catch it?”
“No way. He actually killed that thing?”
“Village Chief! Let us see too!”
Villagers shouted from behind.
The chief turned the leather bag over without a word.
Thud.
Rrrroll, rrrroll, rrroll.
The Goblin Lord’s head, which had been inside the bag, rolled to the villagers’ feet.
“Eek!”
“It’s, it’s real!”
“They really killed the Goblin Lord!”
The villagers, who had been recoiling in horror, quickly raised their voices in cheers.
“Yaaaaay!”
“We’re finally safe!”
“Hurray!”
The villagers rushed toward Hyeonjun.
As if they’d never doubted him, they surrounded him and poured out their joy.
Even the village chief broke into a broad grin at that moment.
‘This feels rewarding.’
The reaction was so warm that he felt no other reward was needed.
No matter what compensation he received, he could never feel this way.
[All Missions have been completed.]
[You have cleared <1st Floor>.]
Just then, a message appeared, and the sound cut out abruptly, as if time had stopped.
The cheering villagers froze in place.
[Starting Settlement.]
The scenery around him began to blur and fade.
Soon Hyeonjun was plunged into complete darkness.
“Too bad. I wanted to stay a little longer.”
Maybe I should have said goodbye to Derek.
It was only something the Tower had created, after all, but it still weighed on him.
“Being annoyingly realistic, aren’t you.”
Hyeonjun grumbled at the Tower.
Before long, the Settlement ended.
[Settlement complete.]
[Settlement Details]
-Completed all missions quickly and accurately.
-The villagers were deeply moved by your good deeds.
<Clear Rank: S>
<Reward: D-Grade Magic Stone 30kg>
“……S-Grade?”
Hyeonjun doubted his own eyes.
A tower’s rank was judged by how quickly it was cleared.
So he had naturally assumed that a high-grade clear was out of the question.
“Not B, not A, but S-Grade……”
A result he never saw coming.
Clearly, the <Primordial Tower> judged its trials by a standard unlike any other tower.
There was no other way to explain it.
“Different kind of tower, so I suppose that makes sense……”
Hyeonjun was still dazed.
Only then did his eyes drift to the reward.
“Oh, Magic Stones.”
Monsters inside the tower didn’t drop Magic Stones, but the clear reward was a different matter.
“They’re giving out a lot, aren’t they?”
Normally, the Magic Stones you could get from monsters were measured in grams.
It depended on the creature, but thirty kilograms was roughly what you’d gather after surviving three days at an average Hunting Ground.
It was far too generous a payment for taking down a few goblins.
“Thank goodness. The NPC’s reward isn’t the clear reward.”
If he got something from an NPC, that would count as a sort of bonus.
From now on, Hyeonjun resolved, he’d make sure to grab whatever he could.
Thud.
A heavy leather sack dropped in front of Hyeonjun.
Inside, it was packed with Magic Stones of remarkably good quality.
“Heh heh heh. No wonder it’s S-Grade. A reward like this already on the first floor.”
Just as Hyeonjun reached for the leather sack, it happened.
[Would you like to register your clear record on the Ranking?]
“Ranking, huh……”
A Ranking System that could grant Buffs. But Hyeonjun didn’t feel any real need to register.
‘Getting S-Grade is nice, but there’s no room left on the first floor.’
Rankings were determined solely by clear rank, and unless you had a higher rank, you couldn’t push anyone out.
The first-floor Ranking was already crowded with S-Grades.
Even if he registered, he’d be buried among all those S-Grades, somewhere near the back.
Which meant no benefits at all, naturally.
‘I’d need a higher grade, and since no such grade exists, it’s effectively impossible.’
That was why the advanced nations were willing to risk their lives climbing towers.
Reach S-Grade quickly and claim a spot in the rankings, and you’d gain a Buff that lasted practically forever.
“Hmm……”
As he hesitated, Hyeonjun suddenly remembered something he had forgotten.
“This is the Primordial Tower, though.”
It differed from ordinary towers in everything, from its methods down to the standards for setting clear ranks.
Wouldn’t it have a separate Ranking of its own?
“Wait. Then could I get the Ranking Buff too?”
The Primordial Tower’s Ranking Buff raised the Stats of every Awakened who obtained it.
That Buff was precisely why so many nations were scrambling to climb the tower.
“Th-then let’s just try.”
With a trembling heart, Hyeonjun attempted to register on the Ranking.
[Set a nickname to use for the Ranking. If no nickname is set, your name will be registered instead.]
“My real name’s kind of awkward…… Derek? Derek works. Sounds decent.”
[Registering <Derek> on the Ranking.]
[Error. Registration on the Ranking failed due to insufficient users.]
“Huh?”
So the Primordial Tower did have its own Ranking after all.
The problem was that there were too few people, so registration wouldn’t go through.
Well, with only one participant, deciding who ranks first was a rather silly idea to begin with.
“Then what happens now?”
[Registering the user’s ranking to a different tower.]
“Ah. So I’m joining an existing tower.”
I’d expected to enjoy the privileges of being first place.
Unfortunately, that’s gone down the drain.
“Well, there was never any guarantee I’d get buffs from the Primordial Tower in the first place.”
Hyeonjun took it in stride, not terribly disappointed, accepting the reality with a shrug.
Soon, a stream of messages appeared before him.
[The <Primordial Tower> is the starting point of all towers. Therefore, the records of the <Primordial Tower> take precedence over the records of all other towers.]
[Ranking registration successful.]
[Congratulations. You have become the new first place on the first floor of the tower.]
“⋯⋯?”
Hyeonjun blinked at nothing, dumbstruck.
The messages had flashed past in an instant.
They hadn’t really been that fast, but reading them just once was not nearly enough for him to make any sense of them.
“⋯⋯First place? Me?”
.
.
.
At that very moment, outside the tower.
Every Awakened on Earth saw the same message appear before their eyes.
[Derek, Awakened of South Korea, has taken first place on the first floor of the tower.]
[The Conqueror’s Blessing (Stage 1) is bestowed upon South Korea.]

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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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