WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 159

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The regressor grows stronger (4)

After seeing the number [25], I said nothing and stepped straight onto the elevator, then entered [5]. The other players stumbled around trying to stop me but couldn't manage it in time. Was it okay to just go in like that? It was fine. The bespectacled woman had figured out the rules and would explain things to the rest.

Hum.

"Hmm..."

During the short ride the elevator took, I let myself drift into thought.

Honestly, I already had a feeling about who the traitor was. The person had lied from the very first test.

Aside from me, the other four were teammates. That meant the person who would most likely take the hit from the betrayal was one of the teammates.

From that, I could infer a few things.

First, the person didn't hold their teammates in particularly high regard. The mindset was clearly that their own gain mattered more than whether their allies suffered for it.

Second, the person had clearly anticipated that floor 12 would create conflict among players. They placed their lie early and then sat back to watch how things unfolded so they could decide how to respond. There was no other reason to start lying from the very first test.

And in fact, hadn't the other players also looked at floor 11 and assumed floor 12 would have a similar structure? I had thought the same thing.

So the plan was to plant the idea that there was a liar from the start, and then from there a little bit of behind-the-scenes maneuvering would make it child's play to frame someone. The finer details could be adjusted as the situation developed.

In other words, the liar was gutsy and sharp. A dimmer person would have first taken stock of how the tests worked and then started lying in the second round. The fact that they had lied from the very first test proved they had a quick mind.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened, and I set aside my thoughts, letting chill seep out from my body as I walked toward the black mannequin.

Halt.

The mannequin, which had been about to rise, froze in a half-crouch the moment it was exposed to my chill. So this force works on mannequins too.

The fact that even something closer to a machine than a human being could be frozen in place suggested a great many possibilities. It meant the effect would likely carry through against much harder enemies further down the line as well.

Thud.

After lightly driving my sword through the motionless mannequin's forehead, I returned to the elevator and continued the train of thought I had been following.

Why had the culprit thrown down a [20] in the final test? Probably... because I looked so overwhelmingly strong, right? Odds are they had bet on the highest reward thinking, "this guy will carry us anyway." If I didn’t have regression, actually carrying the group through might have been possible too.

"There's only one person it could be."

So the traitor was the bespectacled woman. The short-haired girl had enough confidence in her own abilities that she had no reason to lie. The mole guy and the acne guy simply weren't sharp enough to think through this kind of long-game strategy and roll the dice on it from the start. There was no one else it could be.

"Hmm..."

The problem, though, was that I had no way of confirming any of this. Since the bespectacled woman had already taken fright and stopped lying, every trace of that betrayal had effectively ceased to exist. Even if I confronted her now with, "You were planning to betray us all along, weren't you?", I wouldn't get a straight answer.

And even knowing she was the culprit, going after her for it was its own problem. She's the traitor, she made my life harder, so I punish her? If I were to hand down some kind of sentence, what would I even base it on? Korean law? My own personal judgment? Neither option felt right.

On top of that, every act of betrayal had already vanished into the past. Going after her now would just be bullying. She herself wouldn't understand why she was being targeted, and I would be left wondering whether this was even the right thing to do.

Well, there was always the option of hiding my strength until she made her move, then revealing it the moment she betrayed me to expose everything. That way I could punish the traitor and learn how she had reasoned her way into the betrayal. But wasn't that approach just too sadistic? Basically: "I want to destroy you, and since you're not betraying me right now, I'll wait until you do, then destroy you." Thinking about it, it was a spectacularly villainous idea.

Hum.

"Oh, you're back. We worked out the rules, would you like us to explain?"

"Don't bother."

The elevator doors opened. Ignoring the bespectacled woman's somewhat warmer approach, I settled back into the metal chair and resumed keeping up my image. The fact that the liar had changed her mind wasn't simply a matter of one troublemaker disappearing from the picture.

According to the information the Association had given me, the difficulty of the next test was determined by the highest reward chosen in the previous test.

But the bespectacled woman, who should have lied and chosen [10] in the original run, had been broken, and since I had also chosen [5], the highest reward selected ended up being just [5].

That result showed itself when all the players finished and the second test began.

[5] Elixir of Experience (Small)

[10] Custom Item Box (A- to C+)

[15] Elixir of Experience (Medium)

The [10] and [15] rewards were the same as in a previous cycle, but the [20] reward had disappeared and a new [5] reward had appeared. This was the snowball effect of the bespectacled woman giving up on choosing [10].

"Hmm."

The second test had a lot of overlapping rewards from before. But what if I chose [15] this time? What if the next test's rewards came out as [15], [25], and [35]?

Rewards I had never seen before would appear. It would mean a whole new range of possibilities opening up.

Having decided, I chose [15] and the protective barrier dissolved. Ignoring the others' tense expressions, I turned toward the elevator, and the number showing was [60].

"I-I chose [15]..."

"We chose [10]...!"

It seemed only the short-haired girl had chosen [15], while the rest had gone with [10]. Based on all the data I had accumulated, that was an easy enough difficulty to clear without taking any damage.

"I'll go first."

My mind made up, I stepped quickly onto the elevator, input [15], and took down the mannequin in no time before returning. The black mannequin had locked up the instant it was exposed to my chill, most likely because the difficulty was low enough that it had no built-in resistance.

This power was second to none for lopsided fights. Without a single word spoken, just by letting a faint cold seep out of me, weaker opponents simply could not move.

After I returned to the starting point and held the atmosphere with a calm, heavy presence, the remaining four players held a quick huddle among themselves and then got onto the elevator on their own. As a small bonus, I had also dialed down the intensity of the mist so that the cold I was putting out wouldn't interfere with their performance.

"This isn't too bad."

"Phew, I was tensing up for nothing."

The players cleared the second test without trouble, just as I had expected. A flicker of cockiness began to creep into their eyes, but the moment I let out a slightly stronger pulse of cold, that impure feeling vanished without a trace.

-Then, before starting the final test, each person will select their reward. Please take your seats.

"Let's sit."

"Y-yes."

The players glanced around and found their seats. I had been in my chair the whole time, so there was no need for me to move.

A short wait later, a protective barrier enclosed us each and a message window appeared.

[15] Teleportation Scroll

[20] Book of Possibilities (Unique)

[25] Scroll of Appraisal

"Hm?"

Up until now the final test had always gone up in increments of 10, but for some reason this time it was going up by 5. Was it possible that the increments of 10 had been a penalty for always choosing the hardest difficulty? Maybe 5 was the standard interval all along.

Either way, that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that the Book of Possibilities I had been after was sitting right there at [20], and that [15] and [25] were brand-new rewards.

"..."

Both of these new rewards were quite tempting. The Teleportation Scroll let you tear it to transport yourself to any space within fifty meters, and the Scroll of Appraisal supposedly let you examine and read a detailed description of anything in the world, not just items.

"Still, right now it's [20]."

Tempting as the other two were, I pressed [20] for the time being. After all, the whole reason I had been running through this test was to use the Book of Possibilities to find a direction for my training.

-All climbers have made their selections.

With that done, the number on the elevator read [90]. The short-haired girl had chosen [25], I had chosen [20], and the rest had all gone with [15].

Then again, the short-haired girl had been choosing what she actually believed in this whole time. She was strong, and her mental fortitude was solid, so the influence of the Awe trait probably had less of a grip on her.

"Th-then... would you like to go in first? We don't mind going later."

"..."

But now that I was about to challenge the [20] difficulty enemy, I couldn't shake a nagging sense that something was being wasted. I had toppled the [20] difficulty easily even before I had any real command of the chill. Now that I was considerably stronger, it was going to be almost embarrassingly simple.

Right, there should be at least a little spice. Without hesitation I stepped onto the elevator and punched in [40].

"Wh-what?"

"40?"

Back on a past floor, the mole guy had once snapped at me for taking away other people's chances to grow. Sorry about that. But this time I need to take it a little. I'm not killing anyone, and it'll all disappear when I regress anyway, so give me some room.

Using the sound of the elevator in motion as background noise, I checked over my body's condition. At full output I could pour out mana for maybe three seconds at most. But this time my goal wasn't to burn everything at once. I wanted to fight for a long time and let it run.

Hum.

The elevator doors opened. Inside the white space, the black mannequin was already standing. The way it gripped its spear in both hands was an unmistakable combat-ready stance.

"It's been a while."

That sharp, electrifying feeling I hadn't felt in some time. Just from the posture alone I could tell. This mannequin was strong. To give it a rough ranking, it was just below the top-tier players I had encountered on floor 11. Upper-mid-tier, by my estimate.

No elaborate setup was needed between us. The moment I stepped off the elevator and drew my sword, the spear-wielding mannequin charged.

Bang! The spear drove through the space where my head had just been. I dodged the thrust and tried to grab the shaft of the spear at the same time, but the mannequin spun it in a quick rotation to pull it back before I could get a hand on it. Still, that opened a gap.

I gripped my sword tight and put just the smallest trace of mana into the swing. The ice crystals that scattered along the path of the blade were beautiful.

"...!"

The mannequin had initially moved to block my slash, but it must have sensed something, because it pulled back the spear and bent sharply at the waist to duck under it. As improvisations went, it was impressive, but.

Crack!

Impressive or not, it couldn't dodge my kick. The mannequin, struck clean on the shin, skidded and tumbled across the floor a couple of times before coming to a stop.

"Hmm..."

The overall flow was going the way I had planned, but a vague unease lingered in me. Something was... different. I decided I needed to fight a bit more before I could put my finger on it.

After about five more minutes of intense back-and-forth, the fight ended when I cut a deep gash across the mannequin's chest.

The black mannequin went still, and the elevator doors opened. But I stayed where I was, standing in place and looking down at the mannequin.

From the outside, it might have looked like a fierce battle that ended with me barely coming out on top, but in truth I had been dominating from the very first exchange. Perhaps a bit too completely.

"Strange."

The mannequin's movements had been off throughout. Its reactions were half a beat slow, its footwork was occasionally out of place, and the force behind its spear was weaker than it should have been. How to put it... its technique was excellent, but the body wasn't keeping up. Given the presence it had projected at the start, the win had come far too easily.

I was turning the problem over in my head when my gaze landed on the pale white mist lying across the floor.

"Ah."

So that was why it couldn't move properly. The black mannequin had not been fully able to resist my chill.

If an opponent at this level couldn’t hold out against it, then anything below a certain threshold... I'm going to win far too easily, aren't I?

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