WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 133

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The regressor is tired (8)

"Choi Ji-won, right? I have a proposal. Let's completely wipe out the dwarf village. What do you say?"

This was the worst-case scenario I'd been dreading. Players who'd been holding back finally exploded and decided to overturn the dwarves.

"What did we do wrong? We just got here and got discriminated against, persecuted, and those bastards went off the rails. Are we supposed to just take this lying down?"

As the man speaking gestured toward the back, about twenty players revealed themselves. Their clothes were blackened with dirt and dust, and their faces were stacked with deep fatigue.

"...Felix?"

"..."

Among them was the German player Felix, who avoided our gaze as if he knew what he was doing was immoral.

"I gathered all the players on floor 11. You can tell by looking at them, but everyone's exhausted. Today's the day we stop putting up with this senseless hostility."

The man continued speaking with great momentum.

"Some people want to massacre the dwarves, but I think that's going too far. However, we players need to seize control of the fortress. Are we going to leave our lifeline in the hands of those crazy dwarves? Hero of floor 2, Choi Ji-won. If you're with us, we can very easily..."

"Wait. Hold on."

Ji-won stopped the man's words with a serious expression.

"We just finished talking with the shop owner. Please calm down a bit."

"...Were they willing to talk?"

"Yes."

Ji-won, having swept her gaze over the players gathered in a cluster, recited the conversation she'd just had with the shop owner.

"So, we just need to wait three more days?"

"That's correct."

"..."

The man hesitated, apparently not expecting that they'd already spoken with the dwarves. Then a woman who'd been watching from behind raised her voice.

"We can get out of floor 11? Fine. That's good. But what about the rewards we're not getting?"

"...I don't understand what you mean."

"The floors ahead are designed assuming we cleared floor 11 properly, aren't they?"

"..."

This time, it was Ji-won's turn to be at a loss for words.

Right. Probably, from floor 12 onward, the difficulty would be set assuming they'd finished farming properly on floor 11. Things like needing sturdy armor, sharp weapons, camping sets.

"What about the disadvantages we'll face from clearing floor 11 empty-handed? I need to take something with me."

As the woman said, if they simply cleared floor 11, it could come back as a massive snowball later. For people who had to prepare thoroughly because they didn't know the future, it was an unbearably anxious choice.

"Right."

"We need at least one weapon, don't you think?"

The other players nodded repeatedly, seemingly agreeing with the woman's words.

"...Even so, violence isn't the answer."

"Why not?"

"Because the dwarves are the ones making the passage stones. More precisely, the shop owner is making them."

"..."

When Ji-won brought up the passage stones, all the players' murmuring stopped.

"Just suppose the dwarves stopped making passage stones. We'd clear it successfully because we have passage stones. The next people to come would also clear it by picking up passage stones lying around. But what happens after the passage stones run out?"

"...Couldn't we make them do it? In the absolute worst case, through torture or..."

"You think they'd make them just because you told them to? The dwarves are extremely stubborn. They said they'd rather die than be oppressed."

Ji-won had felt it from her conversation with the shop owner just now. The dwarves weren't just ordinarily stubborn, true to their craftsman nature.

In fiction, dwarves sometimes appeared as slaves to dragons or humanity... but they also appeared as a single-minded race that could never be enslaved. The dwarves on floor 11 were clearly the latter.

"Whatever we do, we can't oppress them."

"..."

When Choi Ji-won put it that way, the opinion to overturn the dwarves lost its strength.

"Fuck, so what are you telling us to do then?"

Immediately after, what filled that space was erupting indignation.

"What did we do wrong? Those bastards just went off the rails the moment we arrived. We didn't do anything wrong, so why do we have to be like this? Right?"

"..."

"Why do we climb the Tower? Sure, to get stronger, but ultimately, isn't it to save humanity? So why do we have to endure this treatment? Why do we have to accept disadvantages? Huh?!"

Right. It was hard to blame these people. They really hadn't done anything wrong.

Players and dwarves. I understood that both sides felt wronged. The actual perpetrators had disappeared somewhere, leaving only victims behind to hate each other.

"...I'll wait for now. There's no other option anyway..."

"Huu, I have to eat grass for three more days?"

Moreover, the players hadn't completely lost their reason either, understanding that waiting was the best option. The fact that they barely calmed down and sat on the ground was proof of that.

"...Jun-ho."

"...Yeah."

"What do we do about this..."

Only then did she look at me and lightly bite her lower lip. She must be troubled more because she empathized with both sides.

"First, let's gather as much information as possible... and regress."

Just as I was about to enter into discussions with Ji-won.

"...Ji-won-ssi. I have a confession to make."

"...?"

Some player with a haggard appearance tapped Choi Ji-won's shoulder.

Who's this guy now?

"I killed him."

That was the first thing the man who identified himself as Mason said the moment we reached a secluded spot.

"This..."

Mason fumbled around in his clothes and pulled something out. At first I thought it might be something strange, but looking closely, it was a brightly colored red mushroom. One with a bite mark left in it too.

-Mad Jester's Smile [C+]

-A mushroom traditionally used in drug manufacturing. It contains chaotic mana, earning this name because people who eat it laugh like mad jesters.

"I really, really didn't do it on purpose..."

Mason, who'd knelt neatly as if he'd wronged us, shed tears like chicken droppings.

"Out of simple curiosity... I took one bite of this mushroom my friend got from the forest..."

"And then?"

"When I woke up from the ecstasy... my body was covered in blood too... and in front of me was a dead dwarf..."

The man now dripped not just tears but snot too, banging his head on the dirt ground and sobbing.

"At first, I just hid it out of fear... but... thinking that all of this happened because of me... out of guilt..."

"Wait a moment. Hold on."

I placed my hand on Mason's shoulder to calm him, forcibly lifted his upper body, and met his gaze.

"Did you know there were two murders?"

"...Yes."

"Which one was it?"

"The first one..."

The man answered sincerely while looking at me wondering who I was. However, if this man was the real culprit, the story got a bit strange.

"I heard from the dwarves that at the time of the murder, there were people who hastily spent money and left."

"Those people... I heard they made a fortune after obtaining rare minerals..."

"Just a coincidence?"

"Yes..."

"..."

Fuck. I cursed inwardly without realizing it. Was that just a coincidence? And the real culprit is here?

No. It was too early to conclude this man was the real culprit.

"Why didn't you run away sooner?"

"...I felt guilty, but also I had no money."

"Didn't you take what the dwarf had?"

"When I woke up, there was nothing... neither the dwarf's belongings nor mine..."

"Fuck."

This time I let the curse slip out loud. It was because the situation was so absurd.

I didn't know how much to believe this man called Mason's words... but assuming he was telling only the truth, there was a high probability this man had also been used.

"Did anyone encourage you to eat the mushroom?"

"...Yes... a Chinese friend named Jang Roe..."

"Ah..."

I scratched my head in frustration, but reality didn't change just because I did that. I asked Mason reluctantly, just in case.

"...So, where did that Chinese guy go?"

"...He disappeared somewhere after the second murder..."

Ah.

"How did you even make it here?"

"...My trait is S-grade..."

"..."

Sweet potato. I couldn't gather my thoughts in this overwhelming festival of sweet potatoes.

Should someone this stupid be allowed to make it this far just because their trait was good? Recently, there were so many whiny posts online about people not getting good traits, and in that moment I understood their feelings completely.

"What are you going to do now?"

"...I'm going to turn myself in to the dwarves..."

"Go ahead then."

"...Yes..."

After the man with reddened eyes rubbed them and got far enough away, Ji-won and I let out deep sighs. If that man's words were true, there was a separate real culprit for the dwarf murders.

I could roughly picture the flow of the truth. Jang Roe had grasped that this man called Mason was a sucker. He happened to have a mushroom with drug components and spotted suitable prey too. (It was a bit suspicious that he conveniently had a mushroom to use.)

Anyway, Jang Roe, who'd been timing things, fed Mason the mushroom and murdered the dwarf. He roughly gathered the valuables and smeared blood all over the staggering Mason's body.

When Mason woke up, he probably assumed on his own that this was a tragedy he'd created while intoxicated on the mushroom. No wonder the first murder had such clear evidence.

If this hypothesis was true, there was a very high probability Jang Roe had also committed the second murder.

"That guy Jang Roe. Can we find him?"

"What would we do if we found him?"

At Ji-won's question, I shook my head.

If we went to reality and found the real culprit? What would we do once we found him?

He'd be a player too, so whether we could even find him in reality was questionable, and he wouldn't confess with his own mouth that he did it.

We're not elementary school students, would he really appeal that he's such a bad guy? Besides, since he's Chinese, finding him wouldn't be easy either. They use different internet stuff there.

And even if we found him, beat him up, and gave him satisfying punishment...

That wouldn't help restore the ruined floor 11 in any way. It would just be venting anger.

"Whew, this is tiring."

This wasn't an ordinary sweet potato. If there was a novel with that guy Mason as the protagonist, I could confidently say the comment section would already be filled with dropout comments.

A top-tier player bastard was toyed with by one psycho, and the snowball that rolled from that resulted in floor 11 being ruined.

A deep emotional rift had already formed between the players and dwarves, and it seemed distant for floor 11 to function as originally intended.

Would the dwarves' anger be resolved if we explained this situation well to them? No way.

In the end, it was still a fact that a player committed a crime.

A tangled and twisted situation.

The clever plan to solve this situation was...

"...I think I can solve it."

"Can you?"

"You might have to suffer a bit, Ji-won."

Thinking about it carefully, there was one. However, this method required Ji-won's full support. It was a method I didn't want to choose if possible, but... there were no other options.

"I'm fine. As long as it's not too weird."

Ji-won shrugged her shoulders like a winner. Since she seemed genuinely okay, it should be fine.

"First, my plan is simple. I'll force the dwarves and players to stick together."

"Is that possible?"

"I learned one thing in the military."

"...?"

"The easiest way to build camaraderie among awkward comrades is..."

At school, at work, in the military. The easiest way for people to become close was...

"Having a common enemy."

Precisely, becoming close while cursing out superiors.

Right.

If there was a common enemy, we could solve this situation. If only to resolve the crisis they faced, they'd be forced to rub shoulders and develop a sense of solidarity.

But was there a common enemy right now?

No.

If there wasn't one...

We'd have to create one.

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