Chapter 10

Infinite Skill Copying with EX-Grade Interpretation Chapter 10

“A Cyclops?”

If that thing is here...

I’m not exactly an expert on monsters, but there were still a few things I’d heard about.

If that guy is here, then probably.

“Around the twentieth floor...?”

That was pretty surprising.

I knew the tunnel stretched on for a long time, but even just the passage leading upward could take me all the way to the twentieth floor?

I couldn’t help being impressed by the structure of the tunnel system, so vast that even the spirit couldn’t fully grasp it.

If one path leads upward, then where do the other two lead?

To answer that question, I sent the spirit down the central passage.

But even the spirit couldn’t fully map out the tunnel system, which stretched on seemingly without end.

‘For now, all I can tell is that this one goes upward too...’

Just like the nineteenth floor where the Cyclops had been.

The tunnel in the middle also led upward.

But I couldn’t tell how high it went.

That left...

The passage opened on the far left.

“For now, this one doesn’t look like it goes downward either.”

At a glance, none of the three passages seemed to lead down.

The tunnels were a little different from what I had expected, which left me confused, but even so, I didn’t stop exploring.

I needed as much information as possible.

Didn’t they say there was nothing in the world that was truly useless?

‘If I can at least figure out where each one leads, I should be able to find some way to use them.’

With that thought alone, I slowly squeezed myself into the tunnel.

_____________

To put it simply, the last tunnel was...

“This isn’t an ant nest, so what the hell is this?”

Without even exaggerating, it was more confusing and spread out wider than an ant nest.

Its range covered the tenth floor.

The tunnels split into dozens of branches so that you could travel all across the tenth floor, and there were quite a few exits as well.

You could find this tunnel from anywhere, and you could leave through it from anywhere.

Put another way.

‘If I really wanted to run, there’s no way they’d ever catch me.’

If I imagined playing hide-and-seek while escaping from an entire guild on the tenth floor, I was confident they would never catch me.

Appear in the east, then in the west.

I could show up at the entrance to the tenth floor, then appear again at the exit.

The tunnels were genuinely long enough to drive a person insane.

─Creeeak.

I opened the bark covering one of the tunnel exits and briefly stepped outside.

“Hey, did you find them?”

[Using the skill ‘Shadow Step (A).’]

The moment I stepped outside, I heard a voice and immediately concealed myself.

Someone came running over in a hurry.

A man wearing a black robe ran around until he was out of breath and spoke to someone who seemed to be his companion.

“No... over there.”

“If you’d found them, would you be saying that?”

“Fair enough. Then where the hell did those bastards disappear to?”

‘It’s those guys.’

They were the guild members I had seen before through the spirit’s eyes.

The lunatics who had attacked the Scabbard Guild.

Apparently, they were desperately searching every corner because they hadn’t been able to find the two people I had hidden.

“Ha, then... maybe they already went down?”

“We’ve deployed people from the tenth floor to the twentieth. There’s no way they got out.”

“Damn... then where the hell are they? I told you to finish them off properly.”

‘They’ve completely deployed people above the tenth floor...’

Just as I had expected, they had apparently sealed off the tenth floor entirely so the two couldn’t escape.

So no one could enter or leave.

But there was one question that came to mind.

‘Can they really do this?’

A guild was basically a massive group formed when powerful hunters banded together.

If they were strong enough, they also operated like companies, taking control of parts of the city and making money.

But there wasn’t just one or two guilds like that.

Even if they had the manpower, actually carrying this out was another matter.

Attacking the Scabbard Guild?

That was possible.

Guilds regularly stabbed each other in the back and killed one another inside the Tower for profit.

But taking control of an entire floor of the Tower was a different story.

Other guilds had schedules too, and they would come here to hunt monsters. How could they possibly avoid conflict with them?

If a major guild came here on an expedition and ran into these guys...?

There would almost certainly be bloodshed in a different sense.

“Damn it, we don’t have much time... The other guilds really don’t have any expedition schedules today, right?”

“There weren’t any besides the Scabbard Guild. Still, find them quickly. We can’t keep running checkpoints forever.”

‘So I was right...’

I could tell that these guys didn’t have much time either.

The pursuers and the pursued.

One side needed to finish everything before the other guilds noticed.

The other needed to survive or escape while avoiding their eyes.

But without food, a prolonged battle would actually put them at a disadvantage.

‘In the end, this is a fight where one of the two sides has to die.’

“Ugh, all this shit just to capture the guild master’s daughter.”

“If we catch that bitch, everything will be solved.”

“Exactly. Damn it. Let’s go smoke.”

Daughter? Guild master?

At that moment, another piece of the puzzle seemed to fall into place in my head.

Why had only those two survived after the Scabbard Guild was attacked?

Why were these bastards so desperate to capture them?

Everything made sense once I heard that she was the guild master’s daughter.

‘They were trying to capture her and use her to negotiate?’

Even if the Scabbard Guild had been attacked, it was still at least a mid-sized guild.

They would have plenty of members besides these two, and they wouldn’t be weak either.

Capture the guild master’s family to force negotiations against them.

What a perfect scenario.

Right, that must be why they were willing to deploy this many people and accept the losses.

The thought gradually brought a smile to my face as well.

Because if she was a good bargaining chip for them, then ultimately.

‘That means she’s a card I can use too, doesn’t it?’

Somehow, it seemed I had saved someone important... which meant I could squeeze even more out of the Scabbard Guild.

This could get me much more than just a connection.

“All right. Right, I need to report in. Huff, huff, this is the tenth-floor exit team. Nothing unusual.”

‘That’s...’

It was a peculiar object, a square stone with another stone embedded in the center.

Normal electronic devices couldn’t be used inside the Tower, but that thing...

[Using Interpretation.]

[Mana Stone Radio]

─Radios containing the same mana can communicate with one another.

─Current battery: 54%.

‘A mana stone radio? So that’s the thing guild members use?’

I had wondered how they communicated inside the Tower while commanding so many people, and it seemed they used that device.

[This is the twentieth-floor team. No trace of the Scabbard people... We’ll concentrate more manpower on the lower floors.]

‘They’re concentrating their manpower below.’

That was certainly a reasonable choice.

All they had to do was station people below and prevent anyone from leaving.

Which meant.

─Tap.

“So what were we talking about earlier? Right, so... Huh!?”

“What? What happened?”

“No... Something shoved me. Whatever, forget it.”

The two looked around for a moment, then disappeared from sight.

I quietly looked down at the mana stone radio that had been hanging at one of their waists until a moment ago, and was now in my hand.

Looks like.

I can make good use of this radio.

_____________

As I passed through the narrow tunnel and approached the shelter again.

I started hearing voices.

[Mister... are you okay?]

[I’m fine. Yuri... what about you?]

[I’m better off since you protected me, but... where, uh, where are we? There’s no way a place like this exists around the tenth floor... Have we already been kidnapped?!]

[Calm down. If we’d been kidnapped, they wouldn’t have just left us like this.]

Apparently, the two had woken up.

─Creeeak.

I opened the hinged barrier blocking the tunnel and slowly appeared before them.

“E-eek!? A-a person.”

“You’re...”

“Yes. I found you two from the Scabbard Guild and brought you here. How are you both feeling?”

I naturally walked past them while glancing over.

They were both standing, but neither looked well.

Apparently, the potion couldn’t heal all of their internal injuries.

I poured the potion remaining in the cauldron into bottles and handed one to each of them.

“It’s a potion. Drink this and you should feel a little better.”

“Thank... you.”

“You’re the one from before.”

The woman apparently remembered seeing me, because she looked at me in surprise but still accepted the potion.

“A potion...”

“The color’s a little unusual, but it’s good for you.”

I deliberately drank some of the same potion in front of them, and only then did the two relax and take it into their mouths.

It seemed whatever had happened before had made both of them much more cautious.

“The effect... This isn’t something sold on the market, is it? If that’s the case.”

“Tsk, Yuri. Don’t we have something to say first?”

The middle-aged hunter with red hair and a greatsword almost as large as a person strapped to his back approached me first.

His huge frame and pale face... Even though I had treated him, his complexion still looked poor, probably because of his wounds.

But even though he looked like he might fall over if someone poked him, his presence hadn’t weakened at all.

Enough that I felt like a fist the size of my head might come flying at me at any moment.

─Grab.

“Thank you, truly... If it weren’t for you, we would have died there without a doubt.”

“Ah, yes...”

His enormous hand moved quickly and clasped my right hand.

Heavy.

No, fucking hard.

Is this really a human hand?

Isn’t this just a rock?

Does he worship boulders or something?

After shaking hands for a moment, my gaze gradually shifted toward the back.

Wavy purple hair and striking clothing that gave off the impression of a witch.

And the light armor she wore over it.

For a moment, my attention focused on the girl, whose overall appearance was extremely distinctive.

Then there were her catlike, sharp eyes, watching me and the middle-aged man in turn while she crossed her arms.

After hesitating for a moment, she also spoke and held out her hand to me.

“Ah, th-thank you. Back then, I really thought I was going to die, so I said a lot of weird things, didn’t I?”

“It’s fine. Anyone could’ve done that.”

‘So you’re the guild master’s daughter.’

Unlike the man’s, even with some calluses, her hand still felt soft.

It was clearly the hand of someone who had been raised in comfort.

“Then...”

─Creeeak.

─Thud.

I pulled out a chair, dropped into it, and crossed my legs.

I looked up at the two of them with as arrogant a posture as I could manage and smiled.

‘There’s no reason to be intimidated just because they’re higher level than me. Without me, these people are dead anyway.’

Whether they meant to or not, the pressure radiating from the two of them was intimidating, so I put as much force into my expression as possible to keep from shrinking back.

“All right, now that you’re both awake... Let me introduce myself first. My name is Lee Yeonwoo.”

“I’m Kleb.”

“Yuri. Just call me Yuri.”

Kleb and Yuri.

I briefly committed both names to memory and continued.

“As you’ve probably already noticed, we’re still inside the Tower. You know that, right?”

“Yeah... The mana concentration is high.”

Judging from her witch hat, she seemed knowledgeable about magic, and apparently understood the situation itself.

Then there was no need to drag this out.

“So what are you going to do from here?”

“What?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re on the tenth floor. And outside, the place is crawling with people trying to kill you.”

“So those bastards really are...”

“They’re everywhere. When I checked earlier, I heard they’ve got checkpoints set up from the tenth floor to the twentieth.”

At those words, both of their faces darkened.

Calling it treatment was generous. Their bodies were still badly damaged.

How could severe injuries like those be healed all at once?

I had only patched up the outside enough to make them look relatively normal.

With their current strength, the two of them couldn’t break through those lunatics and escape the Tower.

“Then... if we just hold out as long as possible.”

“With those wounds? And we don’t even have food, so we won’t last a week.”

Injuries that severe needed proper treatment.

And hiding out here?

Why should they, when I own this place?

Besides, we didn’t have food, so we couldn’t hold out for long.

So what choices remained?

None.

They knew that too, because their expressions only grew darker.

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do? Are you telling us to prepare ourselves because we’re going to die soon...?”

[Interpreting true intentions.]

[I don’t want to die. I really want to live a long life. I seriously don’t want to die.]

‘As expected, her will to live is strong.’

I had worried she might tell me to fuck off and reject whatever I proposed.

But the person I was negotiating with had a strong desire to live.

That made things much easier.

Perhaps because she was looking at the situation realistically and realized there was no future, tears gradually began welling in Yuri’s eyes.

Who could laugh in a hopeless situation like this?

Which meant it was my turn to step in.

“That’s why. Let’s make a deal.”

“A deal...?”

“Yes. I’ll get you out of this hellish situation and send you outside the Tower.”

At those words, both of their expressions changed from moment to moment.

They looked at me as if I were insane, then stared blankly as though trying to confirm whether they had really heard me correctly.

I simply told them again.

“I know a way to get past that murderous lunatic guild and get you outside. Do you want to make a deal?”

At those words, silence hung for a moment before.

“How?”

They asked again.

I understood their position.

Someone weaker than them... a hunter was claiming he had a way, a way to get them past those people and descend. How could they believe that?

If it were me, I probably would’ve told him to stop talking bullshit too.

However.

“So what are you going to do?”

They had only two choices.

Die, or trust the person in front of them.

Those were the only two options.

“The payment...? You want something from us, don’t you? That’s why you saved us and suggested a deal.”

I nodded.

Who in this kind of world helped someone out of pure goodwill alone?

What I wanted in return... wasn’t difficult.

No, it was one thing these two could definitely do.

“Let me meet your guild master.”

“What? You think that’s easy?”

“Of course. If it’s you... you can do it.”

I looked at Yuri as I spoke.

If even the Scabbard Guild master’s daughter couldn’t do it, then who could?

Realizing that I knew her identity, Yuri didn’t continue speaking.

Instead, the look she gave me held surprise and, at the same time, a meaningful glint.

In the end, what they extended toward me wasn’t a blade, but a hand.

“Very well. Yuri and I will arrange the meeting... and if you need help, we’ll assist you.”

“Good. Then just trust me.”

I clasped hands with Kleb.

“So what exactly is this method of yours?”

“Yeah. How are you planning to get us through this fucked-up situation?”

“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

And it was a very good plan.