WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 164

──────

The regressor grows stronger (9)

People can endure anything as long as they have a goal. That is an eternal, unchanging truth.

Throughout life, everyone sets goals, big and small. As modest as buying a piece of clothing they like, as grand as getting married, having children, and living happily until the very end. The reason people can push through the tedious and the grueling is that they are always moving toward something sweet at the finish line.

Therefore, the easiest way to plunge someone into despair is also...

"...Hasn't it been more than three days?"

"Yeah."

To snatch it away right when they are about to reach it. That was exactly the state the players walking through the wasteland were in. It was now the fourth day, well past the three days the mustached man had promised, and they were still trudging alongside the carriage.

If they had been told from the start that it would be five days, seven days, or even ten, it would have been easier. But they had conditioned themselves to believe that three days was all they had to last. Realizing they had to endure beyond that... the human mind deteriorates at a frightening pace. Negative thoughts creep in like smoke.

Normally, the irritation would build, arguments would break out, and eventually, full-blown infighting would erupt. When the human mind is pushed into a corner, it tends to produce behavior that defies all reason.

"How much farther do we have to go?"

"Bored out of my mind."

But the players currently walking on Floor 13 were... just rolling with it. Their mental states were perfectly intact, and they didn't look particularly tired either.

"Wow... is she really a monster?"

"Hey, she can hear you, idiot."

Ji-won marched at the front with her companion. It was because she had been eliminating every single threat before it could reach them.

During the day, she and her companion would cut down every creature that attacked, and at night, she volunteered for watch duty, protecting every carriage single-handedly. Thanks to her, the players were able to conserve both their stamina and their sanity.

In truth, if it were just raw physical endurance, going three days and nights without sleep was doable. The other players were superhumans too, capable people in their own right.

But the real bottleneck was mental fortitude. Keeping your senses dialed up to maximum at all times, standing watch through the night without giving your mind a second of rest? That wasn't something just anyone could pull off. Even if someone gritted their teeth and somehow stayed on their feet through sheer stubbornness, they would look like a walking corpse by the end of it.

"..."

The Ji-won leading from the front right now looked completely fine. Her eyes were clear, her senses razor-sharp, and her steps were full of energy. Her body being fine could be chalked up to potions, but how were her eyes still that sharp?

"This world is seriously unfair. I heard she was a kendo prodigy even before she entered the Tower. And her trait is broken on top of that?"

"Hey, are you really in a position to say that? You were some nobody who lucked into a good trait and turned your whole life around."

"Mm... fair enough."

While some players murmured among themselves, watching Ji-won from behind,

"Uh... Bung-bung."

"What?"

"You really don't sense anything at all?"

"You know that's the third time you've asked me that, right? Stop being annoying and just walk."

Bung-bung snapped back, scrunching their brow in irritation.

That was the thing. The secret to how Ji-won was preserving her mental fortitude was a brilliant little trick called "switching off with Bung-bung."

You get tired keeping your nerves on edge all the time? If you have two minds in one body, just take turns and rest. So during the day, Ji-won took control, and at night, Bung-bung did. Right now it was daytime, but Ji-won had said she wanted to rest, so Bung-bung was currently out.

Bung-bung, in particular, seemed to have retained something from having been a sword, because they showed zero signs of fatigue even during monotonous, repetitive work. According to Ji-won, Bung-bung genuinely couldn't understand why staying alert and doing nothing was supposed to be tiring. Perhaps Jun-ho had been thinking about it too much from a human perspective.

"Mmm..."

In any case, Bung-bung's answer of "I don't sense anything at all" was thoroughly deflating. Four days had already passed, and there hadn't been a single sign of anything unusual.

He had expected they wouldn't reach the village of Calada on day three. After all, no timer had been counting down three days on the message window. It was just something the mustached man had said off the cuff.

"This is way too suspicious..."

But what really nagged at Jun-ho was how absurdly smooth the journey had been. It had been genuinely, truly smooth sailing. Suspiciously so, to the point where his doubts were growing like weeds.

Attacks? Every single one had been a herd of animals with glowing red eyes. Well, they exceeded normal animal capabilities, so "beasts" was probably the better term. Regardless, every attack had consisted entirely of beast stampedes, and between Jun-ho and Ji-won, they had been deflected with ease. Fast and strong but devoid of intelligence, the creatures were nothing more than oversized targets.

There had been no raiders who were human, delivering ominous lines with some deeper significance. No mysterious rumbling from inside the carriages accompanied by human voices. No arrows tied with letters thudding into the carriage walls. Nothing.

"There has to be something..."

There had to be something he was missing. Just like every other floor of the Tower so far, there had to be some hidden reef designed to sow discord among the players, drive them to fight each other, and ultimately push them toward ruin. Some unfair mechanism that heavily rewarded the liar while penalizing everyone else. He just hadn't identified it yet.

If he thought about it in the simplest possible terms, maybe the cargo inside the carriages was actually a trap. Like, opening the cargo triggered a bomb. That would make sense on paper. But it was too, too simple. Far too easy to predict.

"Day one, was it? Should we have not killed the cattle? Maybe we should've just let them crash into the carriage... no, that doesn't make sense either..."

"Hey, why are you overthinking everything? Dumbass."

"Shut up, Bung-bung."

"Okay, you too."

Ignoring Bung-bung's teasing, Jun-ho dove back into his thoughts. It felt like there was a piece of meat stuck between his teeth, he could sense it there, but no matter how much he prodded with his tongue, it wouldn't come out. He had definitely missed something...

But no matter how hard he wracked his brain, no clear answer materialized.

"Something... something..."

"...Jun-ho. The sun's already set. Shouldn't you get some sleep?"

"Shut up, Bung-bung."

"...Jun-ho?"

"Sorry. It was you, Ji-won."

In the end, another day slipped by.

The next morning. Daytime.

"That was a close one."

Jun-ho stood among a field of dead eagles, rolling his shoulders. The latest attackers had been a flock of eagles, and their feathers had been razor-sharp. He had nearly cut his hand trying to grab one mid-flight. If not for the Transparent Gloves, he would have had to regress.

"Whew, these ones were a bit tougher."

"Everything up till now was just weak."

The other players were collecting themselves as well. Nobody was wounded, but the attack had done a good job of snapping everyone back to attention after they had started to relax. If there had been any players lacking in skill, they would have taken serious damage.

"Hmm... should we rearrange our formation? It feels like the difficulty is about to ramp up. Instead of just loosely surrounding the carriages, maybe we should distribute our combat power..."

Ji-won was also thinking that this might just be the beginning and moved to reposition the players, when,

Thud.

"...The horses stopped?"

"They weren't even eating, why'd they suddenly stop?"

The horses pulling the carriages had come to an abrupt halt. These were the same horses that had moved like machines rather than living creatures until now. They had never once stopped during the day, only at night. The moment the players tensed up at the anomaly,

Creak.

With a sound like paper tearing, the air warped grotesquely, space twisting in on itself, and

"Oh, are you the adventurers? Thank you so much for all your hard work."

As the twisted space peeled away to reveal a village built from wood, a kind-looking nun emerged and greeted them warmly.

"...?"

"...Huh?"

The air ripping open was shocking enough, but having a homely-looking woman in a nun's habit pop out of it doubled the bewilderment. Of course, whether the players were confused or not, the nun cheerfully guided the carriages into the village.

"Not a scratch on the carriages. God must have guided the way. I'm glad none of you are hurt, either."

"Uh... is this the village of Calada?"

"These are dangerous goods, so thank you for escorting them safely."

Ignoring a player who was fumblingly trying to ask a question, the nun grabbed at the air with both hands, as if pinching a piece of fabric. When she drew her arms together like pulling a curtain shut, the space sizzled and warped again, and the nun and the village gradually turned transparent. Along with the carriages they had been guarding all this time.

"...What?"

"Is it over?"

And just like that, twenty players were left standing alone in the middle of a barren wasteland.

One dumbstruck player walked up to where the village had been, but all they could do was knock on something solid and invisible in the air. It wouldn't let them through. A protective barrier? A ward? A spell? Whatever it was, something was sealing off the village entrance.

"Can we break through if we hit it?"

"What if we actually got played? That woman might have just stolen the carriages from us."

Just as the agitated players were about to resort to force, a message window appeared before their eyes.

-You have cleared Floor 13.

"...A portal appeared."

A blue portal materialized in midair alongside the message. Anticlimactic as it was, it seemed they had successfully cleared Floor 13.

"That's it? Floor 13 was kind of easy."

"Riding the Ji-won bus was a pleasure."

"Everyone, great work out there."

The moment the portal appeared, the players piled in one after another without a backward glance. The skinhead was the last to go, giving Ji-won a respectful nod before stepping through. Once he was gone, only Jun-ho and Ji-won remained in the wasteland.

"The scenery here is actually really nice, but I was so tense the whole time I didn't notice any of it."

The tension finally drained from Ji-won's body as she plopped down onto the sand. Jun-ho carefully lowered himself beside her, making sure not to scrape himself on the rough ground.

"One thing's for sure... we definitely missed something."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. Common sense says there's no way that's all there is. There has to be a route we didn't notice. The moment we get back to reality, let's start gathering intel. Can you still reach the Association?"

"I can. Want me to contact them as soon as we're back?"

"Let's do that."

After soaking in the view for about five minutes, the two of them stood up and headed for the portal. Jun-ho took one last long look across the wasteland, then stepped through and returned to reality. Up until that point, he had been feeling pretty good. They had managed to clear Floor 13 in a single run.

But after they returned to reality,

"They're saying there's no hidden route."

"...There isn't?"

"Nope. Every other group of players just survived for five days and it ended too."

"..."

...There was no way that was right.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried