WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 199

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The regressor runs into trouble (2)

"Roughly speaking, it's Eastern-flavored, at least..."

This world wasn't identical to China, but the similarities were there. Different place names, different people, different nations, yet the lifestyle and architecture matched closely enough. An imperial court seemed to exist as well. Calling it "wuxia-style" wouldn't be off.

The difference, though, was how martial artists were treated. Why not "people of the martial world"? Because no martial world existed here.

This world saw martial artists as social misfits, psychopaths and lunatics. Their treatment was harsh enough to rival how Jews had been handled in medieval Europe. Things had gotten so bad that even a common bandit like the shaggy one in front of me felt entitled to look down on them.

"Those guys are pure madmen, I tell you. They pick fights with anyone just to sharpen their skills, wagering their lives on it... they brawl inside inns and private homes, breaking everything in sight... and they go tearing up whole mountains looking for some elixir or another..."

The shaggy bandit clicked his tongue. Face-down with his head pressed to the dirt, and yet he still had breath to spare for mockery.

"Because of those bastards, the prisons can't keep up. Not that thieves like us do honest work either, but the common folk are only dying because of those martial artist scum."

"What about the non-interference pact between officials and martial artists? Where did that go?"

"...Those fancy words are a bit hard to follow..."

"The arrangement where the imperial court and the martial world agree not to meddle in each other's affairs."

"Ha, why wouldn't they interfere? The imperial court hates those people most of all. Bandits like me, you pay us off and we let you go. But those guys kill people just to practice their techniques."

"...No pushback from the martial artists?"

"What's pushback going to do? Sure, they're somewhat strong, but the moment an army comes marching, three generations of their family are dead."

The shaggy bandit rattled off curse after curse, then abruptly turned his head and eyed me carefully.

"Um... you're not a martial artist, are you? Or do you have acquaintances who are...?"

"...No. Nothing like that."

Watching the bandit treat martial artists like dirty strays, I felt something uneasy settle in my chest.

Was it because the martial artists here weren't strong enough? Or was there some mechanism I wasn't seeing?

This world was also one destroyed by the Tower. If those who could be called the strong, the martial artists themselves, were in this sorry of a state, well, I suppose it wasn't all that surprising.

"Hmm... right. Thanks."

"No, no, sir... heh heh. Forgive the impertinence."

Leaving the bandit wringing his hands behind me, I started walking toward the nearest village. The village the shaggy bandit had pointed me to. If it turned out to be a lie, someone might actually die today.

For now, I had to understand this world before I could find the Administrator.

A week had passed since entering Floor 18.

Life here was... awful. "Awful" felt like exactly the right word for it.

For starters, there were no modern conveniences of any kind. Latrines for your business. Sleeping crammed together with countless other travelers. Food that wasn't just tasteless but made your stomach turn.

It drove home, once again, how blessed ordinary life really was. If they'd dropped me into the wilderness for a camping trip from the start, I could at least convince myself, "well, it's camping," and make peace with it mentally. But this place was genuinely... filthy. I missed the temple meals from Floor 16, and the clean temple buildings where I’d actually been able to sleep.

Not having a real way to earn money was another problem. No connections, no name, and everything about me screaming outsider. Nobody was going to hand work to a person like that. I could have robbed someone and been comfortable quickly enough, but my conscience wouldn't allow it. In the end, I had no choice but to scrape together travel money doing odd jobs.

On top of all that, I hadn't run into Choi Ji-won in all this time. Honestly, if our physical abilities were the same, Ji-won was still stronger than me, and she had Bung-bung on top of that, so I wasn't particularly worried. She was a sharp woman. I trusted her.

"Ridiculously vast..."

This was why I kept emphasizing "world." The land here was genuinely, truly enormous. Unlike previous floors, there was no protective barrier hemming in how far you could travel. Finding one person in a place like this was like plucking a star from the sky. The odds of stumbling into Ji-won while wandering seemed lower than the odds of meeting her after clearing the floor altogether.

Of course, not everything had been negative. During my travels, I'd crossed paths with another player.

How did I know they were a player? The moment I saw them. Everyone here was East Asian, black hair, yellow skin. A Western face with bright yellow eyes appearing out of nowhere had to mean player.

"Oh, another player! First one I've seen! Good to meet you!"

"How long have you been here?"

"About a month, give or take?"

I let the Western player's excitement run its course, then dropped the question I'd been sitting on.

"Aren't you frustrated?"

"About what?"

"That after all the work getting stronger, they threw you into a weak body."

Floor 16 trained technique. Floor 17 trained mana. Players had worked hard to grow strong, and then the angel had taken all of that and dropped us into frail bodies incapable of using any of it.

Sure, sturdier than an ordinary person, but nowhere near a superhuman's build. More like being handed the body of an adult who exercised occasionally. And the mana was laughably scarce on top of that. Any other player would have been, rightfully, furious.

"Actually, I think it's great?"

"...Excuse me?"

The complete opposite of what I’d expected.

"I'm saying there's no better place for training your skills."

The man snorted and launched into his explanation.

"Think about it. Back in the real world, even when we want to 'train,' there's nowhere to actually do it. Building a training ground on Floor 1 only goes so far. Finding reliable players to spar with is hard, and whether the other person can control their strength properly is always uncertain."

"...That's fair."

"But here, in an ordinary body, getting to fight against other ordinary hostile people, isn't that perfect? Compared to our physical abilities, the mana here is actually quite generous. The intention comes through loud and clear, use your mana to fight."

"...Mana is generous?"

"What? Of course. It's close to the level of my actual body."

"...Oh. Ah."

Only then did the massive misunderstanding I'd been carrying around click into place. Other players' mana wasn't deficient just because their physical abilities were fixed.

[Stats]

[Strength:XX] [Agility:XX] [Intelligence:XX] [Vitality:XX] [Mana:XX]

That was how other players' stat windows looked. Normal players killed monsters to level up, then invested the stat points they earned into their status windows. Naturally, most put them into Strength or Agility, anything with immediate returns. Or a few into Vitality to sustain themselves in combat.

Mana? Players with excellent traits did invest in it to use their traits more frequently, but the priority was low. There were no mages in the Tower right now. That kind of fragile profession hadn't survived Floor 4. "Battle mage," at best.

But I, due to all my eccentric behavior across regressions, had an "achievement level" higher than everyone else's. According to Ji-won, that had the effect of raising all stats evenly. Which meant, naturally, my mana was far, far greater than the average player's.

"..."

So it was only by my own standards that mana felt desperately scarce. From an ordinary player's perspective, the mana here was actually sufficient. And with that, this floor's concept made sense, too.

Use the weapon techniques from Floor 16 and the mana from Floor 17, and see how strong an ordinary body could become when combining both. Feel out in practice how far your own skills could actually reach. Just look at that player over there. He was ready to bury his bones in "training," exactly as the archangel had intended.

"Ah, well... good luck to you."

"Yes! Thank you!"

So the unfair disadvantage, in the end, was limited to me alone. I'd asked this man whether he knew anything about the Administrator, but the answer was no.

Another week passed.

Two weeks was a laughably short time to explore an entire world, but long enough to get reasonably accustomed to one. The army training camp could attest to that.

This was the nearest major city in the area. Word had it that strangers with no connections could only find work in a big city, so I'd drifted here, and yesterday I'd even pulled off a task for a wealthy household.

The result: a considerably heavier coin purse.

"One plate of jiaozi, please."

"...We require payment upfront here."

"Here."

"Yes! One plate of jiaozi!"

Probably the dirty clothes. I tossed coins at the waiter and settled into a seat. In a wuxia inn, you'd think about ordering bamboo leaf liquor too, but money was money. Filling my stomach was all I could manage for now.

Why jiaozi and not mantou, you ask? Turned out mantou here was just a lump of plain flour with nothing inside. No wonder they were cheap.

"Your jiaozi!"

"Thank you."

The jiaozi, on the other hand, were a complete food, stuffed with a little pork and vegetables. One plate covered carbohydrates, fat, and protein all at once. The taste was laughably inferior to modern dumplings, but edible.

"Heh heh..."

A quiet, dark chuckle. I picked up a jiaozi with my chopsticks. Not just one, two at once, in fact. Look at that gloss. Look at that oil. Six whole hours tracking down a lost cat, and every single minute had been worth it.

Mouth stretched wide open, about to pack it full of happiness, when:

"...Could you spare just one bite?"

"...Pardon?"

A man, similar to me, no, even scruffier, slipped into the seat beside me and asked for a jiaozi, just like that. His clothes said he wasn't a proper beggar, but he was somewhere on the road leading to one.

"...Hey."

A plate of jiaozi earned through blood and sweat. Whatever sympathy I'd once had for strangers had evaporated over the past two weeks.

I was about to refuse flatly. Then my eyes caught the man's hands.

Calluses. Everywhere.

He was not an ordinary person.

"...Is it really out of the question?"

This man was the first martial artist I had ever encountered here.

And also:

-You have met the Overseer.

The first Overseer I had ever met.

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