WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Regression is Too Much
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Chapter 212
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The regressor endures (9)
“Regression... what?”
“More importantly, what is your name?”
“...Call me Professor Kim.”
“That is enough.”
I ripped flesh from his cheek without hesitation.
[You have taken damage.]
[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 21.]
I think the word choice carries a lot of meaning.
To choose means to pick one thing, and picking one thing means giving up another, and that means one day you will regret what you gave up.
There is a scene like that in a Batman movie. The woman he loves and a prosecutor full of justice are tied up in different buildings. There is not enough time to save both. Batman can save only one person. Time to choose.
“Ugh, this is frustrating.”
I hated situations like that ever since I was young. Couldn’t you pick both? If you twisted things just right somehow, couldn’t everyone get a happy ending? Why did someone always have to fall into despair?
Then I grew up, learned how reality worked, and realized it again. You cannot choose both.
“Hey, let’s play soccer!”
“Our field is dirt. If you fall, your knees get scraped. Jun-ho, let’s just play basketball.”
PE class. Soccer, or basketball.
“Are you going humanities or science?”
“Umm...”
Humanities. Or science.
“My senior told me if I go Army, I should go in as a driver, so I got a Class 1 license.”
“You don’t know the Air Force is easy mode?”
“The Air Force is three months longer, idiot. Just join the Marines with me.”
Army. Air Force. Navy. Marines.
Beyond those major crossroads in life, there are still moments where you have to choose. Which snack to buy. Which chicken menu to order. Work hard, or flop down and sleep.
Picking both sides is just an illusion. Maybe that is why I was so happy when I got Regression. It opened up the possibility of choosing both.
In the Tutorial, I saved everyone. Same on Floor 4. On Floor 11, I mediated the conflict without a single death, and on Floor 12, I honed my strength and still carried a traitor with me to clear the floor.
And now, the Tower forces a choice on me again. Expose the truth about the girl to the world. Or sacrifice one girl for humanity’s future.
“I will do neither.”
I checked the weapons I had. Regression, which guarantees endless time and attempts. A scabbard that draws out weapons through emotion. Solid armor and Transparent Gloves. A full status window packed with skills, and balanced stats built through my achievement level.
Most of all, mana control gained by repeating endless time. More precisely, the ability to manipulate mana at the level of the soul.
“This is it.”
I got a feel for where I needed to go. The answer was mana. To be exact, I wanted to move in a direction that erased the “seed of conflict.”
“I just have to erase all of Areum’s mana... completely.”
Someone could call it a military-style solution. Still, I think this is best. No matter what method I use, one day storms will hit the life of a girl named Areum. I have to erase the source itself for her to have a chance at a human life.
Could I do it?
No, that question means nothing to me. Ordinary people agonize over choices because of opportunity cost.
And what I put on top of opportunity cost is only my sanity. I should avoid overspending it, sure, but this is not the time to hold back either.
“I’m doing it.”
I sat on a bench right away, closed my eyes, and focused.
If it failed, I would keep doing it until it worked.
The first plan I made was, “Affect the soul and erase mana.” You might ask, couldn’t I just erase the mana roughly and be done with it? That was exactly the problem. I couldn’t.
The body is the vessel that holds mana, but the soul is what gathers it. That was my realization from Floor 17. Or maybe not just mine? Some amazing people probably already knew it, so calling it “mine” might be too much. Let’s say “the first among humans on Earth.” No, I cannot be sure of that either. Anyway.
“...”
When I close my eyes and focus, I can feel a soul that matches my body shape exactly. Mana spreads through my whole body along that soul shape. Some parts, like the heart and brain, have denser concentrations.
So yes, the body holds mana, but the reason it gets held in the first place is the soul. Which also means if I do not affect the soul, mana will gather again.
To remove mana from Areum, I had to be able to touch her soul.
Could I? It was possible in theory. Wasn’t Floor 17’s very entry structure built to shake a player’s mana? Reach a high enough realm, and you can control another person’s soul.
Still, I hit a wall from the very start. Feeling someone else’s soul was brutal on its own. I did not know how, so I had to grind time blindly.
“Can you give me your hand for a second?”
“...I like women, though.”
“That is not what this is, so hurry.”
I ran experiment after experiment. I do not even remember how many regressions I repeated. At least fifty? Since I always regressed right before meeting Areum, fifty days of staying was probably accurate.
“...”
Even after a hundred days of effort, I still could not feel another person’s soul. I needed to feel it first before I could affect it, but I could not even do step one, and I felt my will breaking. I might have underestimated how hard it was to feel someone else’s soul. Maybe people inside the Tower did not have souls at all.
“There is no answer like this.”
The moment I sensed failure, I changed strategy. Mana and soul cannot be separated. If someone has mana in their body, they have to have a soul too. If mana is shaken, the soul suffers, and if the soul suffers, mana twists too.
My old method was affecting the soul to remove mana. The method I tried now was affecting mana to affect the soul. A simple shift in perspective.
“H-help... please help me, oppa...”
“I’ll help you, so come here for a second.”
When I focused to the extreme, I could feel a faint flow of mana inside Areum. It was like a candle that would go out with one tap, closer to tiny droplets falling one by one. If it was this weak... maybe even a beginner like me could do something. If I could just guide it with my own mana somehow.
“Hah, hah, haaah...”
“A-are you okay?”
No. It was extremely difficult. The biggest problem was that my mana was cold. To avoid harming that fragile girl, I had to suppress that cold with everything I had. But once I focused on that, I could not move the mana itself.
“H-help... please help me, oppa...”
“...You might have to help me.”
If there is something to learn from failure, it becomes fuel for success. Finer. More precise. More perfect.
Mana used in combat can be rough. You tear off big chunks and slam them into the enemy. This work was different. I had to use the absolute minimum mana, suppress it, and move it at the same time. It was not much different from surgery.
How many times did I repeat regression like that?
“...I touched it.”
I succeeded in making contact with Areum’s mana without directly harming her. Her mana was warm, light like cotton candy. Faint mana that felt like it would scatter if you blew on it.
“Now I just have to remove this.”
“...What are you doing?”
“This is... not going well...”
Of course, “affecting mana so the soul can never gather mana again” was another story. The clock hands rewound again, and I improved bit by bit, very slowly.
Smash mana with mana and force it out hard. Fail.
Weave mana like a hook and pull it out. Initial success, but mana gathered in the body again, so fail.
Use a tiny bit of chill and freeze only the mana. Fail.
Fail. Fail. Fail.
At that point my mind started shaking. Doubt rose: what was I even doing? The urge to quit and move on flooded in. The objective fact circles in my head that this girl is not deeply tied to me.
I can look away. I can give up. Even if I save her now, she will suffer on someone else’s Floor 21 anyway. To put it cruelly, Areum can be seen as a kind of “ready-made product.”
“...”
But by my theory, a being with mana is a being with a soul.
Meaning... this girl is one person with a soul.
That fact stopped me from giving up.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m working up my courage.”
If I quit now, nobody would blame me.
Nobody except me.
And because I was afraid of disappointing myself, I chose courage.
Courage to walk a faint road with no end in sight. Courage to do what I believe is right. Courage to keep going even when it is hard.
Finer.
Sharper.
More cutting.
My mana, now close to a scalpel, sliced away the mana circling near Areum’s heart. The mana hesitated, then returned to the area near her heart, and I cut it again.
As I repeated the same process over and over, the cut mana returned more and more slowly. Again, again, again.
Then at one point, the mana I kept cutting scattered away. I waited to see if it was temporary, but there was no sign of mana gathering again.
Success.
“Oppa... people are...”
Only then did I return to reality. I was gripping Areum’s hand tightly, and familiar men had surrounded me. Had this much time already passed? Sweat running down my forehead stung my eyes.
No, I cannot show weakness. Focus. The image I need is already set.
“There.”
I used my normal voice. I just mixed in a natural downward gaze.
As if it were obvious, as if this was the natural order, as if it were common sense, I looked down at him. Filled with that feeling, I walked up to the man at the front.
“Take me to Professor Kim.”
“...Professor Kim? Who is that?”
“...”
The other agents looked confused, but the man acting as leader stiffened immediately.
“...Who are you?”
I put a light smile on my face and spread mana in all directions. The chill touching the air naturally became mist and settled softly over the ground. The pressure I recreated from Kang Chan’s terrifying killing intent spread all around us.
What I imagined was the immortal sage who gave me snow ginseng.
“Just guide me.”
It was time to tie everything off.
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