WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 166

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The regressor wanders (2)

In truth, he understood it on some level. The fact that he might have already cleared Floor 13 perfectly. And the fact that what he was about to do might be entirely meaningless.

But if he didn't resolve this nagging feeling, he wouldn't be able to stand it. He didn't want to ignore this sense that something might still remain. In novels and such, there was always the concept of a "regressor's intuition," wasn't there? And right now, that intuition was telling him that Floor 13 still had something left.

"The horses stopped?"

"These guys wouldn't even eat, so what's going on now?"

He had waited five whole days just to confirm it. After witnessing the horses turn into monsters and regressing, he had endured five long days of walking through this wasteland, bearing the monotony, all for this very moment.

Rip.

With a sound like tearing paper, the empty air crumpled as though someone were crushing a sheet of canvas, revealing a gap in the space.

"Oh, are you the adventurers? You've worked hard."

A nun with a warm, gentle expression emerged from the gap.

"The carriage doesn't have a scratch on it either. God must have guided you. I'm glad no one was hurt. It's a dangerous cargo, so thank you for escorting it safely."

She began leading the carriage into the village, just as she had done before. The other players were all too overwhelmed by this bizarre situation to move.

"Wh-what are you doing!"

"Out of the way!"

Jun-ho quickly launched himself through the gap in the space and managed to force his way inside the barrier.

"You can't do this!"

The nun was startled and tried to grab him, but the moment he let the chill radiate from his body, she seized up and couldn't move.

"What are you hiding!"

He used that opening to sprint to the nearest wooden house and flung the door open.

"P-please spare us..."

"We'll give you whatever you want..."

But all he found inside was a terrified man and woman trembling in fear. Nothing suspicious in sight.

Just in case, he heightened his senses to check for any hidden passageways, but he couldn't detect anything. No, it was still too early to jump to conclusions.

He quickly left the house and headed for the largest wooden building this time. When he first opened the door, all he saw was dried meat, fruit, and other provisions. At a glance, it looked like a storehouse, but...

"I knew it."

His senses, sharpened to their limit, picked up a figure sprawled in the corner of the building. Given the absence of any sound and the bizarre posture, it was clearly not alive.

Convinced he had finally found something, he approached the figure with the corners of his mouth curling upward.

"The mustached man?"

What lay sprawled in the corner of the building was... the mustached man who had appeared at the start of Floor 13. Though calling it a "man" didn't quite feel right. It was a well-crafted wooden puppet.

"..."

He searched through the other buildings as well, but aside from frightened people and a few more wooden puppets, there was nothing. As if... it were just an ordinary village where people lived.

"Did I read it wrong?"

But if it really was just an ordinary village, then why had they been asked to bring that dangerous box leaking dark energy? That didn't make sense.

While Jun-ho stood dumbfounded in the center of the village, lost in confusion, he spotted the nun, having regained control of her body, running toward him in a frantic rush.

"Everyone, run! I'll hold him off! Go to the place I told you about before!"

With trembling hands gripping a mace, the nun bared her hostility toward him. In the meantime, the villagers who had been hiding in the wooden houses began fleeing somewhere.

"Why… why are you doing this! At a time like this! Weren't we supposed to be on the same side!"

"...Do you know what that box is?"

"You must know as well as I do that it's a box containing death energy."

"Then why are you transporting it here?"

"You came here on &#$%-nim's commission, and yet you pretend not to know? You must have seen that person's puppet, so aren't you afraid of the consequences?"

The first part was inaudible because of the Tower's filtering, but the puppet seemed to be someone's symbol. The nun was under the impression that Jun-ho had recognized the symbol.

"Then, this mission really was just a simple escort mission? There's no hidden backstory or anything like that?"

"...What are you talking about?"

By this point, the nun must have sensed something was off too, because she slowly lowered the hand holding the mace. She seemed to have realized he bore no ill will.

Having entered an impromptu ceasefire, the two of them were able to exchange a lengthy conversation, but the longer the talk went on, the more miserably Jun-ho's expression contorted.

"Really, there's really nothing? Something like, I don't know, a demon or..."

"...I can't say with absolute certainty, but there should be nothing like that."

He didn't grasp everything due to the filtering, but according to the nun, this truly was nothing more than a simple "escort mission." Since the death energy was bound to attract monsters to attack the carriage, they had hired adventurers. That was all.

"More importantly, why did you barge into this village? It's not as though this is the first time you've seen a village structured like this."

"...I'm sorry."

The nun glared at him with piercing eyes, demanding an explanation. Jun-ho gave her a deep bow, then quickly bit down on the inside of his cheek. Because it was so... so utterly humiliating.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 13.]

"Jun-ho. Honestly, if you were getting screwed over on every single floor, I'd say that makes even less sense. It's not like this Tower was custom-built just to mess with you."

"..."

"Let's be real, it's true that we're overwhelmingly stronger than the average player, right? If the difficulty is something the two of us can't crack together, then what are the other players supposed to do? It's only Floor 13, you know?"

Ji-won watched his visibly sullen state and offered her comfort. Jun-ho sat in silence, eyes fixed on the ground, accepting her words.

"I asked a ranker I got close with at the Association about it separately, and apparently the reason other players kept the box a secret was... most of them abandoned whatever player got weakened by the box's debuff. They felt guilty about it, so they couldn't bring themselves to report it to the Association honestly."

"...When you put it that way, it does make sense."

"And there weren't any of those 'hidden' elements you keep talking about on Floor 11 or 12 either, right? Maybe the angel who designed Floors 11 through 15 just has this kind of style. Don't overthink it."

"That may be true, but... honestly, I still feel like there's something I haven't found."

He wondered if this was some kind of neurosis. After repeating regressions over and over, suffering through all manner of hardships climbing the Tower, stumbling into a freebie like this just made him uneasy for no good reason. It still felt off, like there was still something left to uncover.

"It's because you've had such a brutal climb up the Tower. If I think about it from my perspective, Floors 2 and 4, and 11 were the special cases, but the other floors were easy clears like this one."

"...That's true."

"If you're really that anxious, I think regressing a few more times is fine. But... we've got a lot of floors left to climb, so I don't think it's good to waste too much mental energy here."

Ji-won was right. It wasn't as if there was some clear crisis looming, and it wasn't as if there was an enemy they hadn't been able to defeat. It was just a feeling of unease. Honestly speaking, it seemed more like his own mind was warped than there being any actual hidden elements.

"Let's just clear it. I think that's the right call."

"Yeah?"

Having sorted out his thoughts, Jun-ho took a short week-long break, then regressed to clear Floor 13. After that, he moved on to Floor 14 without any lingering attachment.

Floor 14 was a floor where ten people had to cooperate to complete some kind of machine. The catch was that ten different materials were needed to build it, and the difficulty of obtaining each material varied wildly. The path to retrieve the easiest one, the "cogwheel," had wolves along the way, while the path to retrieve the hardest one, the "core," was swarmed by weapon-wielding trolls.

The most textbook approach would have been for all ten people to stick together and make ten trips, but... they just decided to split up and bring the materials back individually. How did they get the hardest material, you ask?

"...Ji-won, you're back already?"

"It wasn't that hard, honestly."

With Ji-won around, what was there to worry about? A floor that probably would have taken two weeks if they'd grouped up as ten was cleared in a single night.

The rewards were an Elixir of Experience, potions, and a C-grade trait called "Excellent Cardiopulmonary Endurance." Its effect was, true to its name, improved stamina.

"The rewards have been really good starting from Floor 11."

"I can tangibly feel myself getting stronger. And it's not even that difficult."

The other players were all thrilled, saying the rewards were incredibly generous. They even expressed hope that Floor 15 would be just as sweet.

"Jun-ho, what do you want to do? Want to regress a few more times and see if there's something hidden?"

"...I'll regress exactly twice more and then decide."

After two more regressions, this floor appeared to have no hidden elements either, just like Floor 13. The nagging feeling hadn't completely gone away, but... he couldn't exactly regress dozens of times just because something felt off.

"Mental health is important for a regressor, after all..."

If the situation were truly dire, that would be a different story, but this wasn't that kind of situation. Having cleanly made his peace, Jun-ho followed his routine to check the surrounding conditions, loosely tied up his affairs, and then,

"Shall we go?"

"Yeah. Let's go."

With a light heart, he ascended to Floor 15.

[Entering Floor 15.]

And looking back, this was the beginning of countless changes to come.

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