WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 196

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The regressor coasts (4)

"...Does that even make sense?"

"I know... just a moment. Let me look into this a little more. Could you wait a bit? This is the first time something like this has..."

"Oh. Sure."

I turned away from the management angel, who was tapping intently at empty air, and made my way over to the haughty angel, who'd gone stiff as a board. A nudge in the side with my elbow.

"Hey. Um."

"Yes, yes..."

The haughty angel nodded back, face drained of color. My first instinct was to ask whether this kind of thing happened often, but their reaction said it all. Obviously not. If it did, they would've fixed it long ago.

Ask about the cause and they'd say they were still checking. Ask what to do next and they probably hadn't figured that out yet either. Sitting down beside them and waiting was the only real option.

About ten minutes passed. A cool breeze tickled through my hair.

"What's going on?"

"No idea... there are two angels..."

A player or two who'd been training nearby drifted over to see what the fuss was about, right around the time the management angel stroked their chin and walked over to me.

"Well... I have a rough idea of what caused it. But I'll need your cooperation to confirm. Would you help me out?"

"Sure."

"Could you open your status window for me?"

"...My status window?"

A chill settled in. An angel, a management angel, no less, asking me to open my status window. What if I opened it and they caught a glimpse of the Regression trait, and suddenly everything flipped?

"Ah, nothing like what you're imagining. At our level of authority, we can't see a climber's status window. You'd need an archangel for that."

My worry must have shown on my face, because the management angel was quick to reassure me. I kept my sword finger-ready, just in case.

"...Status window."

The magic words, barely above a whisper.

[Name: Kim Jun-ho] [LV: 74]

[Traits]

-Regression [EX]

-Flash Step [S]

-Heart of Lightning Flash [S]

-Curiosity [A]

-Awe [A]

-Hero [C+]

-Meditation [A+]

-Swordsmanship [A] [Specialization Acknowledged]

-Chill Affinity [A]

-Mysterious Aura [E]

-Quick Reflexes [C]

-Excellent Cardiopulmonary Endurance [C]

-Right Mindfulness [C]

Not much different from before. The achievement level had ticked up slightly.

"Huh?"

Wait. Meditation had jumped to A+. Had what I just did counted as a form of Meditation?

One eye on my status window, the other watching the angels from the side. Neither reacted. So they really couldn't see it.

"Does your status window open properly?"

"Yeah. It does."

"Then it's not a connectivity issue with the Tower... it's a judgment error on entry."

The management angel scratched the back of their head, troubled, though something in their manner had eased as well.

"You have a Mana-related trait, don't you? Something in the sensitivity range."

"Er..."

"That seems to be the cause. You probably felt something off instinctively and severed your connection to Floor 17. The entry judgment for Floor 17 requires watching the angel's video all the way through. Fortunately, this is a listed precaution."

"..."

The management angel sorted it all out themselves, nodded once, and left it there. Nothing for me to add, so I just went along with it.

"That said, what do we do now? This is beyond what we can resolve at our level. An archangel would need to come, and they're currently out. We've sent word, so if you could wait just a little longer?"

Measured and unhurried, laying it all out like a manager called in to handle a complaint.

"Of course."

Polite enough. In reality, meeting an archangel was the last thing I wanted. The angels were friendly, sure, but the god who built this Tower was more or less confirmed to harbor malice toward humanity. The archangels, as that god's closest subordinates, were probably cut from the same cloth.

So I had to regress. But…

Regression.

How would regression work in a situation like this?

Two possibilities.

First, the fact that I'd entered Floor 17 would be erased entirely, and I'd regress back to the moment I first entered Floor 16.

Unlikely, though. My understanding of regression was that it operated on 'records.' It always anchored to the moment I first stepped onto a given floor. Having my status change to 'never entered Floor 17' wouldn't logically shift the regression anchor back to Floor 16.

"Hmm..."

That said, if regression anchored to the last floor I'd actually entered in the Tower's records, my thinking held. But if it anchored to 'my current state,' things got a little more complicated.

The angel had just said my current state was 'cleared Floor 16, not entered Floor 17.' If the Regression trait worked off my current state, it might think, ‘huh, this one hasn't entered Floor 17 yet?’ Better send them back to Floor 16. Similar to some automatic routing system kicking me back one stop.

That would be a genuine return to Floor 16. Lots to think about if that happened, but since it hadn't yet, I stopped there.

Second, even after regressing, I'd still be on Floor 17.

That was the 'records' version. Whatever strange limbo I'd fallen into, the anchor would still be 'the moment I entered Floor 17,' so damage would return me there regardless.

Even within that, the possibilities branched further.

Was Regression's anchor absolute, sitting above the Tower's system, immune to system errors?

Or if I tried to enter another floor and the same glitch happened from the start, would I actually regress to the previous floor?

Or was the regression point decided by some process too layered to make out from where I stood?

And in the absolute worst case: Regression just breaks entirely and stops working.

Let's not think about that one. That would be genuinely screwed.

Everything was guesswork. And there was only one way to check.

Snick.

A regressor isn't supposed to spare their own body.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 17.]

"How well do you know yourself?"

Floor 17.

Relief, maybe. Or disappointment. Either way, the moment I came back from the regression, a familiar man's voice reached me.

I reached instinctively for the edges of my soul. There it was, the same thin Mana thread, barely connected, same as before.

If I severe it here, the management angel would show up again, same as last cycle, calling it a bug. No point repeating the same thing, so I sat quietly and listened.

"The house you live in. How much do you truly know it? The living spaces, certainly. But under the bed. Between the walls. Beneath the floorboards. Do you know those parts, the ones that go unseen?"

A thought surfaced while the voice continued. Judging by how the management angel had behaved, the angels couldn't intervene directly in the Tower's system. More precisely, the Tower operated like a machine, a single device, and the angels maintained it. The same way a fast-food employee can't fix a broken kiosk themselves, the management angel could only wait for whoever was in charge when the system broke down.

Filed that away. Tower as machine, angels as maintenance crew. A quick read of how to handle things going forward.

"Prove it."

I'd been drifting in my own head. By the time I surfaced, the mental video had ended and reality had returned. The Mana thread that had been faintly connected to my soul was gone too—dissolved on its own once the video finished.

Good to know.

I walked straight to the village center and greeted the angel. The haughty angel, who'd been about to launch into some explanation, received my greeting with a sour look.

No hesitation. I walked up to the large rock, placed my hand on it, and poured Mana in.

Sizzle.

The spot where my hand touched flared blue, letting out a sound like meat hitting a hot pan. The angel, who'd been watching to see what I was doing, slowly went wide-eyed.

"There. Done. Open a portal."

Real man behavior.

Don't waste time.

-You have cleared Floor 17.

Back in the real world.

I sat down across from Choi Ji-won at the dining table and walked her through the whole thing. Her expression pinched the moment I started.

"...That could've gone terribly wrong, couldn't it?"

"I mean, that's kind of always how it is with me."

"Hey!!!"

"...Sorry."

Talked her down and moved on. What actually mattered was the new understanding I'd come away with.

"So mana, turns out, comes from the soul."

The experience of looking inward at myself in that empty void.

"There was something like a connection. A thread, I guess. I could feel it. Faint, but there—and somehow I could tell."

The moment I became aware of my soul's shape.

"And since the soul seems to stay intact through regression, I'll need to be careful. Any damage there is permanent."

Everything I'd walked away with from Floor 17, compressed and delivered—how rare the experience was, what it meant, why Ji-won needed to reach the same understanding herself.

"...Oh."

Of course, Ji-won didn't look like any of it had sunk in. Not that I expected it to. Even I wouldn't have grasped it without the time I'd put in, so there was no use expecting her to get it right away.

"Oh, and about regression's entry judgment..."

This was the real point.

"When I enter Floor 18... I'm thinking about deliberately severing the connection. If I can manage it."

"...Are you insane?"

"No, listen. This could be huge."

Testing whether it was possible to regress to a previous floor. That was the plan.

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