WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Irevi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Upbeat Newbie the Infinite Regressors Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 19: Puppet Master
──────
Puppetmaster, Giuseppe Gepettina.
The Nexidra Continent, the world where she lived, was one where magitech had flourished. Rather than pure magic, dollmaking technology had developed instead.
That was why everything in Nexidra revolved around dolls.
Prestigious families, academies, professions.
Dollmaking had developed over a long period and become so specialized that one had to devote an entire lifetime to mastering a single field.
Prestigious core families that researched only dolls’ central power sources.
Mana Thread Manipulation academies that focused solely on teaching mana thread control.
Meisters who specialized in crafting doll frames, and circuit designers who handled only the mana circuits engraved into dolls.
It would not have been an exaggeration to say that the phrase “double major” did not exist in Nexidra.
At least, until Giuseppe Gepettina revealed her talent.
As they said, an awl could not stay hidden in a sack.
She had once scraped by day to day with street puppet shows, but she would eventually rise to the position of Puppetmaster.
Double major?
Why not tho?
She had literally mastered every field of dollmaking.
The one-of-a-kind title granted to her alone, the Creator of All Dolls.
Puppetmaster.
Back then, Gepettina felt as though she had the whole world.
She had been happy.
Until an unprecedented virus called Mana Rampancy struck the Nexidra Continent.
* * *
“...Ah.”
Gepettina opened her eyes in the street.
Nothing felt real.
Could that horrible sight truly have been real? Humans and dolls alike losing their minds and slaughtering each other?
That could not be.
She thought she had had a long dream.
After staring blankly for a moment, hollow with disbelief, she fixed her gaze on the translucent window that had suddenly appeared.
[Infinite Regression Gallery]
“What’s this?”
But the Infinite Regression ability she had Awakened to forced the cruel reality upon her.
It had not been a dream.
It was a future that would surely come someday.
Gepettina clenched her tiny hand and made a vow.
She would escape her fate of destruction and reclaim the happy days of making dolls in a peaceful world.
Run 1, Run 2, Run 3.
The regressions continued.
Run 4, Run 5, Run 6.
She became accustomed to the laws of infinite regression.
Run 7, Run 8, Run 9.
The repeating world was driving her mad.
People no longer felt like people.
The same lines.
The same actions.
Soulless automatons acting according to predetermined logic.
To her, people and dolls were no different.
On top of that, she had not even found the slightest clue toward developing a cure for the virus. She did not even know where the outbreak had begun.
The regressions went on.
After experiencing hundreds of regressions, Gepettina carried out her prescribed routine while thinking, ‘Maybe I’m a doll too?’
Her desire to press that suicide button, the one Solo Hero, the Head mod of the Infinite Regression Gallery, supposedly knew about, only grew stronger.
* * *
Then an abnormality occurred in her usual regression routine.
She found a lead on a group conducting secret research.
To Gepettina, exhausted by countless regressions, it looked like the only path out of this cursed fate of destruction.
“Obviously. It was you people.”
When she raided the hideout of that secretive group, who had been running around to avoid being caught, she saw it.
Chemical agents and reagents entirely unrelated to dollmaking.
And a demonic magic circle drawn in blood.
Without even needing to take out a doll, she unleashed mana threads and literally slaughtered the secret group.
Step. Step.
Her small feet left bloody footprints as she walked between the corpses.
“Ha! Just like I thought!”
She looked through the research journal.
There was no way she, who had spent her whole life researching a cure for Mana Rampancy, would fail to recognize it.
The evidence was far too obvious.
At last, after all those long regressions, she thought she had found a lead that would bring her to a happy ending.
But the more she read through the journal, the more something chilled her.
“This is less a virus development journal and more...”
Fliiip.
“It’s like the cure I was trying to develop. Wh-what is this, exactly?”
She could not control the trembling in her eyes.
According to Archmage, if two Infinite Regressors existed in the same world, their timelines would collide and reset their regression points.
That made no sense.
How could this group have gained information about the future and be developing a cure for a virus that did not even exist yet?
She only learned the answer after searching the hideout for a long time.
Making a contract with a demonic being was one of the gravest, most unforgivable crimes.
Gepettina had not slaughtered them for no reason merely because she saw a magic circle.
Yet she could only collapse at the scene of the massacre she had caused, overcome by indescribable emptiness.
“An Outer God...?”
There was a simple reason she had failed to find the source of the virus despite hundreds of regressions.
The virus had been scattered by a transcendent being from beyond the universe.
This secret group had made a contract with a demonic being to see the future. To escape their predetermined fate of destruction, they had been offering sacrifices to prevent the Outer God’s descent.
Not innocent victims.
Those who knew the truth of the world and had resolved to sacrifice their own lives.
“What is this? What even is this?”
But as was always the case with contracts with demonic beings.
The demon had never told them anything about Puppetmaster, Gepettina.
That was the result of it all.
Gepettina thought she heard the phantom laughter of a demon waving a monkey’s paw beside her ear.
“Th-this isn’t the time.”
Gepettina immediately pressed the Regression Button and regressed.
It could still be fixed.
If they joined forces, they could stop the destruction!
But that hopeful future vanished beyond an eternal timeline.
“Huh?”
Her regression point had become fixed at the moment when she committed the massacre.
* * *
When the offerings stopped, the Outer God’s descent came even sooner.
Gepettina tried every possible method to resist, but there was no way she could reach divinity.
In the end, she accepted her fate and gave up.
She chose to flee.
She lacked the courage to press the suicide button, and she had no way to stop the Outer God or its virus.
So she built a massive underground ark and shut herself inside.
Archmage’s help had been invaluable in that process.
Still, she could not save everyone.
Only those within her reach.
That was her limit, and her atonement.
“Good morning, everyone.”
“Good morning, Lady Gepettina!”
“Gepettina, you’re cute as ever today.”
“I’m older than you.”
After being exposed to Mana Rampancy while trying too hard to save people, she had forcibly stopped her body from growing in order to suppress the virus.
Those she had saved regarded Gepettina as something like a cute goddess.
But even as she looked at them, Gepettina felt nothing in particular.
To an Infinite Regressor, people who could not perceive regression were no different from dolls.
That was why only the Infinite Regression Gallery users, whom she had never even met, could be truly living beings.
Gepettina shut herself in the ark and threw herself into making dolls and browsing the gallery.
Those were the only two ways she could look away from that terrible reality.
One was browsing the gallery, and the other was making dolls.
.
.
.
.
Countless regressions passed.
“Lady Gepettina has been smiling more lately, hasn’t she?”
“She has. I wonder if something good happened.”
Something had.
A huge event, at that.
It was because a newbie named Amor Fati, the Infinite Regression Gallery’s sole hope, had appeared like a comet.
These days, Gepettina had shut herself in her workshop to browse the gallery, leaving all ark management to her dolls.
“Ahhh! Newbie! That was so close this time!!”
This was already the twentieth try.
Twenty attempts at the newbie bashing their head against Floor 1.
In the meantime, the newbie’s growth rate had been incredible.
Normally, it took years to go from controlling one mana thread to two.
Even with talent, one could only reach two threads in six months, three in a year, and so on.
But in just over five months, the newbie was already controlling five mana threads.
How could she not lose her mind over it?
Fighting back and forth with Archmage, who had helped her during a difficult time, had now become part of her daily routine.
“Ahhh... The newbie’s going to be upset again.”
Besides, Amor Fati was not normal.
That was saying something even by Infinite Regressor standards.
He was seriously obsessed with the Tower.
He would regress and train like crazy, then become less and less sane as his entry date drew closer.
She had seen countless Infinite Regressors on the gallery, but she had never seen a newbie as strange as this one.
Of course, there was also the fact that he had repeatedly broken the laws of infinite regression that had never been broken before, and that every gallery user’s hopes rested on the locked function.
But she meant he was strange in terms of personality.
The minds of Infinite Regressors were structured to gradually break down with each regression.
Even she no longer felt that people were people.
But the newbie was different.
He was not someone who would break down over something like infinite regression.
“Hang in there, Newbie!”
He had faced such ridiculous difficulty on nothing more than Floor 1.
It would have been understandable for him to resent the world, but the newbie had shouted, “Even better!” and entered the Tower.
An ordinary Infinite Regressor would either be consumed by an obsession with becoming stronger, tears of blood in their eyes, or fall into despair.
In that process, their minds would evolve to become selfish and make absolutely certain they never suffered a loss.
But the newbie had none of that.
Even the way he carried out regression routines was special.
ㄴPoisoned My Blade) Newbie, how about going with a completely insane bastard concept this time?
Seeing Poisoned My Blade’s comment, Gepettina swung her adorable fist through the air and shouted.
“It was supposed to be my turn to suggest a routine idea! Why’s Poisoned My Blade butting in?!”
ㄴPuppetmaster) Go away. It’s not your turn;;
To Infinite Regressors, regression routines were nothing more than tasks to be handled compulsively and efficiently.
Every Run, they felt like completing daily quests in a game popular on the ark.
To Infinite Regressors, if there was no butterfly effect, people were nothing but NPCs.
In other words, they repeated the same lines and actions.
Eventually, the people they met while carrying out routines became quest NPCs to interact with and process.
ㄴAmor Fati) Poisoned My Blade’s turn comes after one full cycle though
ㄴAmor Fati) What was it again? Puppetmaster’s idea?
ㄴPuppetmaster) (Ah, I see. You don’t know, do you? meme)
ㄴAmor Fati) Oh right, it was this concept. Confirmed lol
For some reason, the newbie was always excited, changing costumes and concepts every time.
It was as if he enjoyed life like a game.
Thanks to that, the Infinite Regression Gallery had become genuinely fun lately.
The newbie was growing into everyone’s savior, and he absorbed every bit of knowledge he was taught.
But the biggest reason was the positive energy he spread all over the Infinite Regression Gallery.
* * *
Around twenty more tries were added.
Forty tries in total.
The post everyone on the Infinite Regression Gallery had been waiting for went up.
[Wooooo~]
[Author: Amor Fati]
(A thumbnail of the corpses of the three orc brothers tightly bound in mana threads, with Amor Fati thrusting his face toward the camera and making a V sign)
(A photo of a Tower message saying that all stats had greatly increased)
(A photo of A-rank Magic Stone and A-rank Skill Jewel rewards)
(A photo showing that 80% remained until the Infinite Regression Gallery’s second locked special function was unlocked)
(A photo stating that shop points would be awarded)
So it really was true that Tutorial rewards are ridiculous, and the Floor 1 rewards came out just like everyone predicted?
I’ll open the Skill Jewel when I get home, and it seems like locked functions unlock automatically as you climb the Tower.
But that’s not the important part.
I’m no longer confident.
Confident that I’d lose to a strength build, that is lololololololololololol
Honestly, against physical-damage orcs, whether they’re ranged or melee, I could probably wreck even ten at once?
Wow, but I seriously never imagined the difficulty would go up this much because of one fucking Shaman.
I’d like to deeply thank Archmage, who taught me curse defense magic, Puppetmaster, who taught me Mana Thread Manipulation, Dungeon Rogue, who gave me a dagger, and every other Infinite Regression Gallery user who helped me.
And now, I’m going to begin today’s main event.
(A photo of a roulette wheel waiting to be spun)
Let’s gooo~
The Infinite Regression Gallery’s comment section exploded, if only briefly.
Gepettina hurriedly summoned her masterpiece, Pinocchia.
“Yes, Mother.”
As always, Gepettina smiled while looking into empty space.
Keeping her gaze fixed there, she opened her mouth.
“Pinocchia. Today, you might meet your master and get to go outside.”
Footnotes:
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