WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 190

──────

The regressor reflects (5)

Just another ordinary day on Floor 16.

"Anael."

"Yes! Jun-ho-nim!"

I was leaning against the large rock at the center of the front courtyard, talking with Anael.

"I've been going over this and something doesn't add up... the phrase [Specialization Acknowledged] appeared on my Swordsmanship trait. What does that mean?"

"Is that him? That person?"

"Hey, they can hear you."

I ignored the whispering players drifting past without a second thought, and tilted my neck slightly to the right.

"Honestly... I don't think there's been any major development in my swordsmanship. The basics of my sword style were all established back on Floor 5, when I was trading blows with my doppelganger. What I did with the chill was just applying that same foundation. So why would a strange qualifier show up now, after all this time? Well. Only if you're allowed to tell me."

Those days had given me more than enough time to take stock of myself, and I had found myself reconsidering what I actually had to work with. What I possessed, and what I didn't. Out of that came a question that kept surfacing: why had my Swordsmanship become A-grade?

"Hmm... I don't know all the details of your situation, and there are things I'm a little hesitant to answer completely!"

Anael, bright as ever.

"So I'll tell you only as much as I think is alright! Is that okay!"

"Of course. I'm just grateful you'll say anything at all."

"First of all, traits are never perfectly independent of one another!"

"...What do you mean by that?"

I leaned in a little.

"Just as it's impossible to move only your ring finger in isolation, traits influence each other! When one trait grows, another can grow alongside it, and when one disappears, another may disappear with it!"

"...Is that right?"

"Yes! You mentioned the foundation of your swordsmanship was already there... recently, haven't you gained a new power? Something of that nature?"

"I did. More precisely, I'd say I fully awakened to a Fortuitous Encounter."

"Fully awakening to that power must have had an effect on your Swordsmanship trait! Since Jun-ho-nim is a swordsman, you'd naturally use that ability in combination with your sword, wouldn't you! The result is essentially the same as your swordsmanship having been enhanced!"

"Ah..."

Traits. Everything else. All of it connected. Obvious, maybe. Interesting, depending on how you looked at it.

"Thank you. This is helpful. I'll have to tell Ji-won later."

"Not at all! I'm glad I could be of help!"

"Right, right. See you tomorrow."

"Yes! Of course!"

Worth keeping in mind. I said my goodbyes to Anael, stood up, dusted off the back of my pants, and started walking.

A long exhale.

Everything felt familiar now. The forest where autumn leaves drifted as though fall would never end. The cool, brisk air. The roughness of the fabric against my skin.

"Hey! Did you make up with your girlfriend? You two have been going around separately lately."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Ha ha ha ha! You really expect me to believe that? See you at dinner!"

"Good grief... alright. See you later."

Even the easy greetings from passing players felt natural now.

"Nice air out here..."

Four and a half months since entering Floor 16.

Ji-won still hadn't made a mark on the rock.

The first month, I just waited. I had faith in Ji-won, and the hope that if I was patient, results would come.

By the second month, unease had started to creep in. Watching familiar faces disappear one by one made it hard not to feel anxious, and the things people were saying about Ji-won around us weren't exactly charitable. Even so, I wasn't in a rush. Not yet.

People far less capable than Ji-won were managing to push through. Kids calling themselves geniuses were shaking it off and moving on in a week. The Ji-won I knew, falling apart here. I couldn't even picture it.

Her age, the path she had walked, every side of her I had seen, all of it proved the kind of person Choi Ji-won was. I never doubted her.

And then the three-month mark passed, and...

"Hey... Ji-won?"

"Oh, oh... Jun-ho..."

Ji-won swallowed a mouthful of greens, glancing sideways at me.

Seeing her so deflated... honestly, some doubt did creep in.

"How's it going?"

"...Jun-ho, should I try learning the spear? Would that let me clear it?"

"No. It won't work either way."

"..."

"..."

"Come on, you know that was a joke. I mean it."

"Really...?"

"Of course. I trust you. Though the part about the spear not working, that part was genuine."

The silence just now had been a joke. I was looking at the situation from a slightly different angle.

"For starters... the way I see it, you've grown incredibly strong. Far stronger than when we were fighting on the mountain."

"Really? I still feel like I'm nowhere near where I need to be..."

"Well, it's just how it feels to me. But think about it, I cleared Floor 16 by picking up a tiny trait I'd barely even noticed, and you're still stuck here. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

If there was a problem, it wasn't with Ji-won. It was with the conditions of Floor 16 itself.

"I think the conditions for 'strength' here might be something else entirely."

I hadn't been idle the past three months. If anything, I had been running around, throwing myself into gathering information.

"The truth is, the clear condition for this floor is unclear."

At first I assumed a change needed to appear in the status window. Then I assumed you had to grow stronger by some percentage. After that, I considered the possibility that growth in both mind and body was required.

All of it was guesswork, of course, and getting a real answer required real information. Where to get that information was obvious.

"I handed out some items to people who were about to leave Floor 16, swapped stories, had what you'd call interviews. Gathered all kinds of things."

The reputation I had as Ji-won's companion, unofficial as it was, turned out to be a great help. People generally approached me with goodwill, so getting close to them wasn't difficult.

After talking with practically every player except a handful of stubborn contrarians, I arrived at a conclusion that genuinely surprised me.

"The speed of clearing Floor 16... has almost nothing to do with talent."

By my measure, there were perfectly ordinary people who cleared it in a week, and clearly talented players who barely squeezed out after more than a month. There was even a rumor going around that Association President Michael Zetter had cleared Floor 16 in a single day. If that was true, talent alone couldn't be what decided it.

"Someone who gave up on their talent early and switched from spear to axe took a full month to get out... someone who drank an Experience Elixir they had been saving and raised their level made it out fast. Then someone who copied that exact move couldn't get out at all. And I barely got a little stronger and cleared."

The more I gathered, the clearer it became that the standard for 'getting stronger' on this floor was hopelessly vague.

"Even asking Anael got me an 'I can't answer that'... so this standard is clearly the heart of Floor 16."

A temple with a quiet, peaceful atmosphere. What did the person who designed this floor want from us, to have built something like this? What did they want, to have locked us away in this forest?

"The Tower is a trial for humanity..."

The words the angel had spoken in the Tutorial. The archangels who designed each floor had always had some guiding philosophy behind them.

Floors 1 through 5 placed high value on humanity's will to grow. Accordingly, there were an enormous number of hidden pieces scattered throughout, and the better you performed, the more rewards you could carry away.

Floors 6 through 10 tested situational judgment. Charging in headfirst was a good way to die at the hands of fantastical monsters, but taking your time, looking around, using your head. those floors became surprisingly manageable.

Floors 11 through 15 prized cooperation. Those floors could be cleared with relative ease when humanity, as a community, worked together and functioned as one. Even the monsters from Floor 15 made sense if you saw them as a test of humanity's capacity to cooperate. The creatures that appeared on Earth were structured so that players who had gained great power needed to step forward and shield ordinary people.

So what about Floor 16? What did Floor 16 want?

What value did that noble archangel want to see in us, to have designed a floor like this? Training? Ji-won had trained until she was sick of the word.

"Training is a battle against yourself. It is the process of forging, tormenting, and sharpening the being called 'I.'"

If training was a battle against yourself... then its standard would be...

"Each person's own standard..."

Mumbling to herself, Ji-won suddenly grabbed Bung-bung and shot to her feet.

"What, what's wrong?"

"Jun-ho."

"Yeah?"

"I think I finally understand."

"...No way."

Watching her smile like she had figured it all out, I felt my own vision slowly beginning to clear.

Floor 16's clear conditions stretched differently for every person, like a rubber band pulled to a different length. If each person had their own separate standard, what was it determined by?

Why, of all people, had Ji-won been stuck here for so long?

One answer surfaced.

"Floor 16..."

Ji-won, who held herself to the strictest standards, never stopped pushing, and had always lived by her own unyielding sense of fairness and justice.

"Isn't it a floor where your own subconscious sets the standard?"

She may have been strangling herself with her own hands all along.

And this realization kept us on Floor 16 for one more month.

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