Chapter 110

CHAPTER 110

[Achievement: A Great Ascent!]

How low should you keep your posture?

Where should you place your center of gravity?

“Is this hard?”

It wasn’t impossible.

Hadn’t an achievement just popped up for it?

If an achievement existed, it must mean any ordinary person could do it.

After testing things out a few times at the base of the garbage hill, carefully placing his feet here and there, Seojun naturally figured it out.

For solid support, where the next step should go.

• Taewoo, just lololol don't ask.
• Why does everything look easy for that streamer? lol

“Hey!”

• Didn't he just use footwork techniques? lol
• Heavenly Demon Dominating Step! (on top of a garbage pile)
• Pffft hahaha no but why are you griefing people in a co-op game, you lunatic lololol
• Seriously, why is anyone friends with a guy like that? lol

Footwork techniques, my ass.

Turning his head to look at Taewoo’s chat, Seojun spoke.

“So it’s hard?”

• Definitely a carry account.

“I’m not a carry account! Hah!”

Taewoo started climbing the garbage mountain.

This time, instead of carefully searching for footholds, he charged ahead boldly just like Seojun.

He had probably concluded, after watching Seojun, that the secret lay in that confidence.

Thud.

Taewoo’s doll avatar immediately face-planted without hesitation and slid back down the garbage pile.

Shrrrrk.

“Oh dear.”

• Streamer... short and impactful lol
• Help him already.

“Help him?”

“It’s fine! Don’t come over! I’ll just crawl!”

“Alright. I’ll help anyway.”

“Stop!”

“Maybe the route I took was different. I’ll try going down and back up from your side.”

Taewoo, who had been crawling upward inch by inch, looked up at Seojun.

Step.

Step.

Seojun came down as if he weren’t paying any attention whatsoever to his balance.

In reality, he was paying attention.

But when had he ever been clumsy at using his body?

The garbage shifted slightly beneath him, but he never fell.

In fact, it was intentional.

Seojun passed Taewoo, then climbed back up.

Taewoo stared blankly at his retreating back.

“This is exactly why I told you not to come down...”

By the time Taewoo finally crawled his way to the summit, Seojun had passed him a total of three times, going back and forth.

• Hahaha okay I finally get today's stream concept.
• I mean, there are people who can walk tightropes in real life, but that streamer is good at literally everything lol
• Experiencing firsthand what players of Dawn of the Chivalric Alliance and the Assassin Guild feel whenever they're around him lol

When both of them reached the top, narration began to play.

Taewoo’s suffering didn’t end there.

Neither did Manager Kim’s.

[Dammit. Why did we climb all the way up here?]

[Because you can see better from high places. And this is the closest point to the disposal chute. Most importantly, the protagonist of our game was supposed to come here too.]

[Yeah... that makes sense. But that chute still looks pretty high.]

The character looked around.

Then Seojun’s character spotted a hook embedded in the garbage tower, grabbed it, and pulled hard.

Crackle.

The garbage piled in one corner slid away.

A long rope was revealed.

[What's that?]

[A grappling rope. The protagonist's item.]

[Oh, that thing? Then why are there two of them? There was only one in the game.]

[Probably because our being here wasn't a coincidence.]

That sounded meaningful.

Seojun’s character handed one grappling rope to Taewoo, then began spinning the hook.

His target was the disposal chute.

Whoooosh!

But the rope was too short.

The hook failed to reach its destination and snapped back toward Seojun, winding itself around him like a retracting wire.

[How... did you do that? That looked pretty awesome.]

[It just worked.]

[Really? Let me try... Huh? It works for me too? Ha. And you're saying this isn't actually a dream?]

[Can you stop talking about dreams already? This isn't a dream. You know that.]

[Yeah. Fine. Fine. Then what do we do now?]

[I don't know either... but.]

[But?]

[If we're going to find any clues... we probably need to meet the protagonist of this game. Since these ropes are still here, the game hasn't even started yet.]

[That actually makes sense. We never finished making the game, after all.]

[...]

[......]

“If I were in the same situation, I think I’d look for the protagonist first too. Or the final boss.”

Then again, the final boss was obviously going to be somewhere far away.

• Streamer would 100% go crack the final boss's skull.
• Nah, the streamer is the final boss.
• ???

[By the way, why did the lights suddenly come on in this disposal plant earlier?]

[That would be...]

• He's literally the final boss.
• No matter when or how he got transmigrated, anyone facing this guy would be completely screwed.

Just then—

Bzzzzzz!

The massive front gate, as large as a floodgate, began to open.

And as if to prove the gate’s enormous size wasn't for show, a gigantic toy entered through it, overwhelming them with blazing headlights and the roar of its engine.

“It looks like a tutorial boss.”

At the same time, Seojun’s view, which had been watching the cutscene, returned to normal.

The information they learned afterward through the narration was simple.

A garbage compactor truck.

A vehicle that gathered trash together and compressed it into a single mass.

In reality, it was basically just a truck that drastically reduced the volume of waste.

But the version that appeared in the game was a little different from reality.

No—

Very different.

It was more like a garbage-compactor robot.

Or a toy.

“It sweeps everything up with that thing, and if you get caught in it, your character dies.”

Seojun pointed at the front of the compactor robot.

“It gathers everything, stuffs it into its body, and crushes it. If you get swept up, you're done for.”

A rectangular body and head.

At the front were two arms connected to a long, threatening scraper-like plate.

To the manager of this area—and from the game developers’ perspective—it was nothing more than an idea that had never been fully realized.

Anyway, those arms could probably only move forward and backward.

[Why is that here?! We never even implemented the graphics for it!]

[Does it even make sense that we ended up here in the first place?]

“Exactly. None of this makes sense. Fortunately, those arms aren't separate pieces, so they can't move side to side.”

The robot’s arms were a single integrated unit.

If it were a person, it would be like clasping both hands together and gluing them permanently.

The problem was that instead of hands, they were giant scraping blades.

[Ugh! It saw us!]

[Where do we run?!]

[Wait! Didn't you give it some kind of weak point or something?]

[I don't remember!]

“That probably means we're not supposed to fight it yet. It'll tell us later, right?”

The chat exploded with questions asking why he seemed to know so much about the game.

But this much was just common sense, wasn't it?

The blinding headlights emitted by the compactor robot turned toward them.

And at that moment, the toy eyes embedded in its head changed.

From (^^)

to ( / )

“It’s angry.”

“It’s angry.”

Seojun and Taewoo spoke at the same time.

Then the compactor robot charged straight at them.

It didn’t look like it could climb the garbage mountain.

After all, it had wheels instead of legs.

So instead, it raised that enormous scraper—

BOOM!

—and slammed it into the garbage mountain.

Then it opened the hatch in its torso, swept the garbage inside, shoved it into its body, and closed the hatch.

With a violent rattling noise, it compressed the trash in an instant.

Then it spat the compressed mass out the back and struck the mountain again.

BOOM!

The vibrations reached all the way to where they stood atop the mountain.

The mountain's height visibly decreased.

And as the mountain was rapidly being shaved away, the next stage of the tutorial appeared.

“It says to jump to the hill next to us. Hmm... a double jump?”

A green marker appeared on the neighboring peak.

Another appeared floating in the empty air between the two peaks.

“Oh. Seojun, I think you're right. It wants us to double jump.”

“How exactly are you supposed to double jump?”

Taewoo played lots of games.

Maybe he would know.

Fortunately, because it was still the tutorial, the garbage mountain looked unstable but not as though it would collapse immediately.

“Is it like lightness skill?”

“Hmm.”

“Other games have it too.”

“They do, but every game handles it a little differently. Usually, when you try to kick off empty air, it feels like a platform appears beneath your feet automatically. Then you jump off that.”

“In that case...”

There was only one thing to do.

Try it.

“I’m going first.”

Seojun pushed off the ground and leapt into the air.

The moment he jumped, he felt that his jumping power was dramatically stronger than normal.

Maybe it was because he had a toy body.

Its physical specs were high.

Thanks to the unusually long hang time, Seojun calmly focused on the sensations in his feet while suspended in the air.

It feels like something is catching my foot.

A platform?

But the angle was slightly off.

If he kicked off now, he would probably launch himself headfirst into the garbage mountain like a rocket.

Within that brief moment, Seojun figured out how to make minute adjustments to the platform's angle.

Then he timed it.

And performed the second jump.

If something came down to pure physical sensation, Seojun simply couldn't fail.

By moving his legs without actually exerting enough force to push against the air, he could make tiny adjustments to the angle.

Whoosh!

A clean landing.

Seojun dug his feet into the trash and landed successfully.

“Whew. This one's pretty difficult.”

Surprisingly, it was harder than lightness skill.

• He pulled it off on the first try again.
• Most people are familiar with double jumps because they appear in lots of games, but very few can do it perfectly the first time.
• Well, what do you expect from him? Just keep succeeding already lol.
• Seriously, every game has different jump height and angle-adjustment speeds. Even if you're experienced with double jumps, you'll usually fail until you adapt to the game's physics lol.
• Like that?

Taewoo shouted as he jumped.

But Seojun had already clicked his tongue after seeing Taewoo's footing slip at takeoff.

“Huh?”

He could already see the outcome without needing to watch.

Yet unexpectedly, Taewoo successfully executed the double jump and landed below the peak where Seojun stood.

About halfway up.

“Ha! See that? Even if I mess up the jump, I can recover.”

Taewoo immediately started showing off.

His avatar stretched out dramatically as if taking a bow.

Then—

“Nicely done.”

Seojun gave him a thumbs-up.

Since his friend rarely offered compliments like that, Taewoo was delighted.

“You all saw that, right? The Heavenly Demon himself acknowledged me.”

And then—

Taewoo noticed the meaningful smile forming on Seojun’s face.

A sudden sense of dread filled him.

At some point, the hand that had been giving a thumbs-up had changed.

Into a farewell gesture.

BOOM!

While Taewoo was looking up at Seojun, a gigantic barrier suddenly dropped from the sky and blocked his view.

A barrier?

Why was that there?

Ah.

Right.

“Hey! Don't tell me you intentionally—”

• His cheerful expression makes him even scarier. The fact that he immediately saw an opportunity to farm donations makes him a monster lol.
• Considering how fast his brain works, he might've killed him just because he spotted a donation-farming angle in that split second lol.
• But would that actually work?