The Buffs I Raised Are Too Strong - Chapter 23

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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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Episode 23.
“Here it is.”
The place Baek Yul-heon pulled up to was
a shabby building.
“Hyun Chae-rin is here?”
“There was an eyewitness account. I came to check it out myself too.”
“And?”
“She was here.”
At Baek Yul-heon’s words, my sister’s eyes narrowed.
“What kind of place is this?”
I studied the building carefully at her question.
Rusted exterior walls, cracked bricks.
I’d believe it if someone said it was under demolition.
A person living in a place like this?
I certainly couldn’t.
My sister seemed to think the same way.
“Even if someone’s going to lose their mind, they should do it gracefully…… I mean, unemployment’s not that bad, it’s not like she’s staging a protest or anything…….”
Unemployment.
Before she said it, my sister’s tone had grown a touch more careful.
Perhaps because she herself had faced the threat of unemployment just two months ago.
There seemed to be some common ground.
Though it didn’t look like that common ground would move her to actually sympathize.
‘Unemployment, huh…….’
A sigh.
It escaped unbidden.
The reason Hyun Chae-rin had suddenly vanished.
I heard it from Baek Yul-heon.
She’d apparently failed the attempt at the 40th floor five times over.
Well, less extreme than my sister’s case, but.
Hearing that she’d never experienced a climbing failure before made it understandable.
A top student who’d earned nothing but perfect scores her entire life had suddenly failed the Grade 9 rating five times.
It might not be quite fair to compare Tower Climbing—which splits into just success or failure—to a Grade 1 versus Grade 9 test score…….
But the shock would be comparable.
Especially since, unlike mock exams or school tests,
ten or more failures at Tower Climbing meant game over.
The end of your life as an Awakener, plain and simple.
No guild in this world would accept an Awakener who couldn’t climb any higher.
“Well, thinking about it that way, going mad wouldn’t even be strange…….”
“Huh? Going mad how?”
“It’s nothing.”
I turned my gaze from the building to Baek Yul-heon.
His expression was grim.
One of the Guild members, and the second strongest force at that—no wonder his heart was heavy.
I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I sympathize with the situation, but if she keeps living in a place like this, her health will deteriorate. As an Awakener, that’s the end. It’d be better to force her into a psychiatric hospital, even if we have to drag her out…….”
“W-what? A psychiatric hospital?”
“If she’s been living in a building like this, her condition must be severely deteriorated. It’d be best to pull her out by force and admit her to a hospital.”
“No, no—living? I think you two are both misunderstanding something here.
Misunderstanding?
My sister and I locked eyes.
Then, realizing we’d arrived at the same thought,
my sister spoke first.
“So she’s not homeless here because she lost her mind over unemployment?”
“H-homeless!?”
Baek Yul-heon looked shocked.
I found myself at a loss for words.
‘……She wasn’t?’
“Sigh…… Yeah. I didn’t explain well enough.”
Baek Yul-heon rubbed his forehead and began his explanation.
To put it simply,
This building is a front for a certain place—its entrance.
Hyun Chae-rin lives holed up inside that certain place.
Hyun Chae-rin hasn’t lost her mind.
In her own way, she’d barricaded herself here to find a way forward.
“Does that make sense now?”
After listening to Baek Yul-heon’s lengthy explanation, my expression was.
‘What is he talking about.’
I didn’t understand a thing.
I turned my gaze toward my sister.
“……??”
She was even more lost than I was.
She mumbled for a moment, then quietly raised her hand.
“So…… where exactly is this certain place?”
“Yeah! That’s it!”
The moment I spoke up, my sister responded immediately.
She’d probably been wondering where to even start asking.
At the sudden loud voice, Baek Yul-heon quickly covered my sister’s mouth.
“Mmpf!?”
“Shh! Shhhh!”
With his hand over her mouth, Baek Yul-heon scanned the surroundings.
As if wary of something.
‘Is someone nearby?’
I too looked around.
A desolate landscape.
A few buildings similar to this one stood scattered about.
A neighborhood where you’d never expect to see another soul.
Once Baek Yul-heon sensed the quiet surrounding us, he finally lowered his hand, reassured.
“Phew…….”
“……What was that about?”
“Ah…… sorry about that.”
“No. Explain, please.”
“……Not here.”
“Then where would be better? Do we get back in the car? But if you keep your mouth shut in there too, I’m going to get annoyed.”
My sister’s expressionless face.
Goosebumps rippled across my shoulders.
Baek Yul-heon looked the same way.
“……We can’t make a scene around here. No loud talking, no bringing the car close.”
“So that’s why you parked the car so far away and walked here?”
“Yeah.”
A breath.
Baek Yul-heon exhaled the air he’d been holding.
“We’re going into the building to find Hyun Chae-rin. After that, I’ll tell you everything.”
“……One A-rank Awakener, one Former Awakener, one Buff user. With that lineup, what exactly are you so scared of?”
He’s counting me in too.
I felt oddly moved.
And honestly, I felt the same way my sister did.
What could he possibly be afraid of?
With my sister around, even a mob of thugs wouldn’t stand a chance.
If there was something to be afraid of……
‘The Management Bureau, or an Awakener stronger than my sister?’
The first didn’t make sense.
There’s no way the Management Bureau would be in a place like this.
That left the second.
Baek Yul-heon answered with a serious expression.
“Yeah. You should be scared. Whether it’s me or you, one wrong move and there won’t be anything left to bury.”
“……?”
Hearing those words, my sister didn’t say anything more.
No more playful banter.
No more conversation at all.
At Baek Yul-heon’s gesture, we entered the building.
* * *
The inside of the Building was surprisingly clean.
The cracked concrete and rust on the exterior remained as they were,
but something about it felt like human hands had touched the place.
For instance, cobwebs or signs of wild animals—you wouldn’t find a trace of them even if you scrubbed your eyes and looked.
“……Ugh.”
Yet my sister’s stomach seemed to be turning.
“There’s a strange smell…….”
“Tell me about it.”
That was something I felt too.
Like a sewer stench, you might say?
It wasn’t quite that bad, but breathing it in continuously was deeply unpleasant.
Baek Yul-heon continued wandering through the Building’s interior without so much as a glance at our complaints.
“But where exactly is Hyun Chae-rin? What are we even doing here in the first place?”
“…….”
Silence.
My sister’s stress had climbed to its breaking point.
‘……This is dangerous.’
At this rate, there was a real possibility my sister would demolish the entire Building herself.
Just as the detonation button seemed to draw near,
“Found it.”
Baek Yul-heon, who had maintained his silence, finally spoke.
My sister and I quickly gathered near him.
“?”
At the end of Baek Yul-heon’s gaze sat something like a Handle.
Embedded in the bare floor.
Suspiciously obvious.
“What is this?”
“Just keep watching.”
Baek Yul-heon grasped the Handle with a grave expression,
and pulled.
Crack, crack-crack.
“Nngh——!”
“……Guild Master?”
Veins bulged across Baek Yul-heon’s forearm.
Beads of sweat began forming on his forehead.
I felt a sense of wrongness in the sight.
My sister felt it too.
“What in—?! Is there an elephant hanging off the end of this thing? Even if he’s gotten old, an Awakener shouldn’t struggle with just a Handle……!”
He may not be active anymore, but he’s still an Awakener.
In his prime, he’d even reached higher floors than my sister had.
Yet here he was, straining against it.
‘What’s he pulling against?’
If it had merely been a Handle driven into the concrete, he would have torn it free easily.
He would have shattered the floor around it and wrenched it up.
But that wasn’t the case, which meant
something was connected to the end of the Handle, and something lay beneath this concrete floor.
“Hyah——!”
Baek Yul-heon let out a sharp cry.
A gust of wind pressure erupted around him.
Whoosh!
At the same moment, the Handle was yanked upward.
“A Chain……?”
What had been connected to the Handle was a Chain.
With Baek Yul-heon’s pulling force, the Chain rose as though it were a living serpent.
And shortly after,
Creak-creak-creak!
“What—what is that?”
My sister stumbled backward in shock.
The floor where my sister had been standing cracked in a perfect square.
The entire building began to vibrate.
A square-shaped crack slowly rose from the floor upward.
When the trembling finally ceased.
Ding—
In its place stood an elevator shaped like a coffin.
“……What on earth is this?”
An elevator.
There was no other way to describe it.
What Baek Yul-heon had pulled was the trigger to activate this elevator.
My sister took a defensive stance, utterly bewildered.
Baek Yul-heon, as if familiar with it, stepped into the open elevator.
“Get in.”
“……What exactly is this?”
“The entrance.”
His explanation was remarkably terse.
He offered no further elaboration whatsoever.
Just the command to board.
‘……Is this what technology looks like?’
I tapped the side of the elevator.
An elevator rising from a concrete floor—
What level of advancement had technology reached here?
Or rather, in what direction had it advanced?
“Where are we going on this thing?”
“Underground.”
……His explanations had been sparse from the start.
Would he elaborate once we boarded?
I carefully stepped onto the elevator.
“So Hyuk.”
“……I’m getting on.”
My sister, looking thoroughly uneasy, tapped the elevator floor tentatively.
Then, wrinkling her face considerably, she boarded.
Once I confirmed that my sister and I were fully inside the elevator.
Baek Yul-heon pressed the only button.
[B 100]
‘……B100?’
The moment that registered—
Whoosh—
“Huh……?”
Weightlessness.
My body felt as if it were floating up.
And then.
“Aaaah!?”
No.
Not weightlessness—free fall.
The elevator was dropping.
“Guild Master!?”
“So Hyuk, grip the handle tightly.”
The handle!?
I looked around frantically, but there was no handle in sight.
Then something touched my head from above.
Tap.
“Ah.”
The ceiling.
There was a handle mounted perfectly on the ceiling, easy to grip.
I seized it with both hands.
“Aaaah……”
Only after gripping the handle did my heart settle somewhat.
Fear still gripped me just as intensely, but nonetheless.
My sister and Baek Yul-heon stood there in perfect composure.
Is this what Awakeners are always like?
As you climb the Tower, do you stop feeling fear, stop sensing the threat to your life?
‘I’m an Awakener too.’
No, it’s clear these people are simply abnormal.
Fifty floors, a hundred, two hundred — fear is fear, no matter how high you climb.
Floors.
Lost in thought about the Tower, I noticed the numbers on the display panel before my eyes.
88, 89, 90.
The digits changing at a rapid pace.
That’s…
‘Floor numbers.’
Underground B88, B89, B90.
What that means is…
We’re nearing the bottom.
“Aren’t we decelerating!?”
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
The deafening noise swallowed my voice whole.
I squeezed my eyes shut and focused every nerve on the handle.
And then…
Ding.
…gun.
…hyuk-gun.
“So Hyuk.”
“…?”
“We’re here.”
She was smiling, lips curled upward, watching me dangle from the handle.
The Buff I Raised Is Too Strong
Author |
Naengmyeon-hwachae
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Samyang C&C
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Editorial Department
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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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