WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 200

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The regressor runs into trouble (3)

The word "Overseer" carries a lot of weight. It’s not a light title.

An Overseer is someone who looks down from above. Someone who oversees and constantly evaluates others, judging whether each person is doing their part. An Overseer's qualifications are always in doubt. The moment someone thinks, "Who does this guy think he is?", their authority crumbles. Which is why Overseers generally work hard to maintain an air of strictness and dignity.

"Oh man, oh man..."

So the fact that this man who looked like a beggar, wolfing down dumplings, was the "Overseer" was hard to believe. What exactly is he even supervising? He's the one who could use some looking after.

"Thank you for this. Since fate has brought us together, shall we introduce ourselves? I go by Jang."

Having polished off roughly half the dumplings on the plate, Jang dipped his head in a bow. His loosely tied hair flopped against the tabletop with a smack.

"...I go by Kim."

"Then Kim hyung it is. That was a fine meal, thanks to you."

"We've barely met. What's this hyung business?"

"During my training I was terribly hungry and shamelessly imposed on you... I thank you for your generous forgiveness."

"..."

My words slid right off him. He offered his thanks again anyway. Round eyes, large ears, and a face that was soft and circular all over - he had a genuinely likable look. He didn't seem very old either. Twenties or thirties, maybe.

Right. What was lost was lost. The money here meant nothing to me anyway. What actually mattered was clearing Floor 18 itself. And right now, the key to that, the "Overseer," had rolled right into my lap.

<Floor 18>

-On Floor 18, all climbers' physical abilities are equalized and fixed.

-Submit a reward that exceeds the Overseer's standard.

I still had no idea what the "Overseer" was supposed to do, or what "a reward that exceeds the standard" even meant. But this man was clearly the key. I needed to build some kind of rapport with him.

"Training, huh. Sounds rough. Oh, one more plate of dumplings, please."

To build rapport, you always start small. Small talk first, work your way in from there. I made casual conversation and ordered another plate. Reckless spending that might leave me sleeping on the street tonight, but passing up this chance was out of the question.

"I don't know much about it, but there are different kinds of training, aren't there? What kind are you doing?"

"Ah, I am a practitioner of the Taoist school."

"...Taoist?"

I vaguely remembered covering Taoism back in middle school. The details were fuzzy, but I thought it had something to do with abstaining from worldly desires.

"...But if you're a Taoist master, shouldn't you be avoiding meat?"

"There is nothing in this world you are not supposed to do."

"...?"

"Balance. Moderation is what matters in all things. Tipping too far in one direction always causes trouble."

Jang helped himself to another dumpling, perfectly at ease. Come to think of it, his robes were the flowing, billowing kind you'd picture on a Taoist master. Right. So that was the shape of it—a rule-breaking monk who ate meat, or an eccentric who refused to be bound by convention.

My original plan had been to warm up to him gradually before carefully feeling out his intentions. But with someone this easy-going, diving straight to the point should be fine.

"Can I ask you something?"

Talking around things, or coming right out with them. This type would prefer the latter.

"Do you happen to know what an Overseer is?"

Now, what would he do, hearing it put that plainly? Others here seemed unaware they were inside the Tower, going about their lives as they always had.

So what about this man? Would the Overseer know this was the Tower?

"I do know the word... but isn't it a title they use on construction sites?"

The answer was no. He didn't seem to know he was the Overseer, let alone that he was inside the Tower.

"Hmm..."

This complicated things. If he knew he was the Overseer, the "reward" would have had clear parameters. Submit this, you pass. Submit that, you fail.

But if he had no idea he was the Overseer? There was a good chance the "reward" had no fixed standard. Or this could all be an act. I'd have to keep watching.

"Is there anything you might want? A gift, maybe, or some goal you're working toward?"

"A gift, you say? This plate of dumplings is more than enough for me. Chasing too many things at once only leads to trouble."

"Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all."

"...Sorry. That's a bit sudden."

Jang's expression shifted and he leaned back slightly. My mistake. I'd pushed too hard, too fast. We'd only just met, after all. I was a stranger who'd done nothing more than buy him some dumplings.

"That is..."

Just as I caught my error and moved to apologize:

"But if you are curious, I will tell you. Have you heard the phrases 'the soft overcomes the hard,' or 'use softness to conquer hardness'?"

Jang straightened up and looked me directly in the eye. Even through his threadbare appearance, something unmistakable seeped out of him. The air of a man with genuine depth.

"...I've heard 'the soft overcomes the hard.'"

Softness overcoming hardness. I'd run across it in wuxia novels before. But why was he bringing it up now?

"When people are asked to name the most effortlessly flowing thing in the world, they usually name water. Because it is soft, refreshing, and clear."

"...That's true."

"And yet the drops that fall from an eave bore holes in the cornerstone, and a raging storm tears old trees up by the roots. The softest thing defeats the hardest."

He picked up his water glass and let drops fall onto the tabletop one by one. Drip. Drip.

"Water is soft, but slap it hard with your palm and your palm is the one that stings. The water takes no damage. Softness overcomes hardness. I want to recreate this through the power of inner energy. That is my goal."

"..."

"But achieving it with a mere human body has been difficult. My inner energy is pitifully insufficient. Perhaps if I consumed some fine elixirs, something might change."

He gave a wry nod, then caught himself. "I'm joking," he added quickly, scrambling to walk it back. But the real feeling had already slipped out.

"Thank you again. I've imposed on you. Well, I'll be on my way."

Jang finished the dumplings and disappeared. I didn't try to stop him. It would have been pointless. Right. This kind of difficulty was exactly what made it worth calling a "task."

Elixirs. That would not be easy to come by.

Let me say it again—the martial artists here are weak. No sects, and not even a trace of the unspoken code that keeps government officials out of the martial world. They wander like duckweed, closer to wild animals than anything else.

So even if elixirs exist in this world, they do not belong to the martial artists. Most are offered to the imperial court or purchased at great cost by wealthy noble houses. Even I knew this much, and I'd only been here two weeks.

But if obtaining one was the task for clearing Floor 18.

I would get him one, whatever it took.

Wuxia novels are full of legendary elixirs.

The 10,000-year Polygonum, aged across ten millennia. The Fire Crystal, where a volcano's heat is absorbed directly into stone. The Ice Crystal, where a glacier's cold condenses into solid form. Man-shaped ginseng, snow ginseng, thousand-year ginseng, and others of their kind, wild ginsengs born with a miraculous aura.

The same held true here. Elixirs circulated, but only in the rarest quantities. And of course, they were priced so far beyond reach that ordinary people could not even dream of them.

Something like Shaolin's Great Revival Pill or Huashan Sect's Plum Blossom Pill was out of the question from the start. No martial arts sects meant no one making refined pills in the first place.

My primary goal came down to finding these elixirs.

Before long, I could feel it. Finding them directly was going to be hard. Next to impossible, actually.

"Who gave you permission to go digging around here?"

"Get out! I said, Get out!"

Search any mountain and herb gatherers came out screaming. The prospect of an elixir that could change your life drove idle men swarming into the hills, and the turf wars between them were endless. Naturally, the gatherers backed by local officials claimed the wider territories, and newcomers like me could not even look around a supposedly blessed mountain without running into trouble.

"This is our patch!"

"Yeah! Drop what you have and clear off!"

The mountain bandits were a separate headache. Where there were people genuinely hunting for herbs, there were bandits ready to strip those people of what they found. A real nuisance, from where I stood.

Did I lose in a fight? No. I won.

In a straight fight with my full attention, I could handle a group without much trouble. The ones who used bows or poison needles I could dodge if I spotted them in time. Even with everyone fixed at the same physical baseline, I had far more experience points, and a small amount of Mana available to boot.

"That him?"

"Yes, hyung-nim!"

But bandits being what they are, take one down and the man above him comes rolling in with his crew to bother you again. After that happened three times over, they started sending enough men that no single person could hold out against them. What good was fighting well when thirty people surrounded you on all sides? Staying completely unhit against thirty at once was impossible even in the movies.

The only ways out were to never encounter bandits in the first place, or to kill every last one and shut their mouths for good. Both were options I could not take, so I gave up on searching the mountains directly for elixirs.

Instead, I chose a method more fitting for a regressor.

A method only a regressor could pull off. One that could be made to work through repeated regression.

"...Let's make money."

The plan was to buy the elixirs.

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