WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 232

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The regressor is mentally weak (11)

After clearing Floor 23. My studio apartment.

"..."

Choi Ji-won was not there. I had cleared early by using a trick, so if anything, that was to be expected.
If I waited, she would come.

"...Maybe I should play a game or something."

I clutched my throbbing head and threw myself onto the bed. I had paid good money to replace the mattress, so it was soft enough to rival the beds on Floor 1. My stressed brain desperately needed rest.

"Nice."

Having a lover is great, but you still need time alone.
Honestly, if I told Ji-won I wanted some time to myself, she would respect it, but I felt bad saying it, and lately we had not had any breathing room anyway...
I enjoyed a rare, blissful break.

One day. Two days. Three days. Four days.

"...No way, right? It can't be. It's Choi Ji-won."

By then, the comfort of being alone had shrunk, and the anxiety had grown bigger.
I could not even leave the house in case she came back while I was out. I stayed holed up in my apartment, killing time with movies that were not even entertaining.

Did she die? No, she did not. It's Choi Ji-won. That Choi Ji-won.

She was alive. I was sure of it.
Then what was this anxiety inside me?
There was the heavy mental damage from Floor 23, and then this too...

"..."

Had Choi Ji-won become too precious to me?

In these repeating regressions, she was the only companion who could understand me. The pillar that always held me up. The woman I loved. Earth's hero.

Now it was hard to imagine life without her.
Being together had become the default.
A future without her... scared me.

Calling it dependency would not be wrong.
Most lovers have a little dependency, do they not?

"My condition is bad too. That's true."

And it was true that I had gotten much worse. My mental state had weakened...
Like before, I still struggled to remember people's names.

Once time rewound, we would be strangers anyway. I would repeat the same actions anyway.
So why memorize names? Why remember faces?
Even when someone told me their name, it went in one ear and out the other.

"..."

I had decided to see people as people, but had I ended up like this again?
Lately, it did not feel like I stepped up to protect people out of warmth.
It felt mechanical.
Just because that was what I was supposed to do.

"Why did I want to climb the Tower in the first place?"

I searched through a dusty warehouse of memories.
A precious memory sparkled in one corner.

"...I wanted to become a hero."

These days, duty moved me more than ambition, but I really did want to be a hero.
I wanted to save the world and be praised.
Of course, right now I could not step forward openly because I could not let anyone find out about regression...

Still, when eyewitness posts about me went up online after I cleared the Tutorial, or when I saw online reports about an immortal sage trailing white mist...
it felt pretty good.
My chest tingled, and the corners of my mouth slowly crept up.

"Maybe... I should get popular."

Liking situations where people looked up to me was, in a way, proof that I was still human.
It meant I acknowledged that other people existed.
In novels, those cold-blooded psycho regressors never cared about how anyone saw them.

Right, popularity. Let me get some popularity.
Like Ji-won said, revealing my identity was not ideal, but being popular with people would definitely help my mental health.

Should I wear a mask and run around saving people?
The whole "dark hero" thing had strong loser vibes, but it was still dependable comfort food that always worked.

Or maybe I should lean into the immortal sage gimmick. A plain immortal sage was not stylish enough, so I would go with "Immortal Sword."
What was it again, there was this character called Sword Immortal Lu Dongbin in a novel I read, and he was insanely cool.

"Heh heh."

Just indulging in gloomy fantasies made me feel better. In my imagination, I was the strongest version of myself.

S#.1 Central Seoul / Day

Among the rubble of collapsed buildings, multiple players were fighting a massive monster.

They were giving it everything they had, but they were losing.

Player 1: "Ugh, at this rate..."

Player 2: "Watch out!"

The player acting as the tank was flung back.
They were outmatched now. Despair settled over everyone. Right when they all gave up and squeezed their eyes shut.

A mysterious man appeared and split the monster in half with a single slash. His face was hard to make out, but the faint mist spreading around him looked oddly mystical.

Player 1: "W-who are you?"

Mysterious man: "Who am I, you ask?"

Player 1: "Y-yes. I know all the S-grade players, but..."

Mysterious man: "You don't need to know."

The mysterious man coolly vanished with Flash Step.
Only then did the players snap out of it and rush to find him, but all that remained was the frozen monster split in half and mist blanketing the ground.

And that was the beginning of the legend of the "Immortal Sword"...

"Heh heh heh..."

It was fun.
Childish, but fun.
Rolling around on the bed and daydreaming had its own trashy charm, and before I knew it, it was already bedtime.

Maybe not now, but later, when we were waiting for the monsters' invasion and preparing for it, we would probably have more free time. I would try it then. Take care of my mental state, have fun, and protect my privacy too. Three birds with one stone.

Then the next day.

"Ji-won!"

"Jun-ho!"

Choi Ji-won came back.
She looked a bit tired because of the Penalty, but she seemed mostly fine.
(When I looked in the mirror on my first day back, I was honestly a little shocked.)

"Are you okay? Why were you so late?"

"W-what are you talking about?"

"You did not kill anyone, right? All ten people on Floor 23 were human. Did you know that?"

"I know, I know. More importantly, are you okay, Jun-ho?"

"Of course. I'm fine."

Ji-won put her hand on my forehead and checked my complexion. My condition had gotten a lot better by now, so it probably did not show. I also hoped she would not worry.

"More importantly, why did Floor 23 take you so long?"

"Aren't you just fast? I... cleared it really easily."

"...What do you mean?"

"So, in my case..."

When Choi Ji-won entered Floor 23, a woman was waiting by the campfire.
The floating text had changed to [2/2] too.

But Floor 23 still did not start. There was nothing to do, so Ji-won and that woman spent the time chatting about this and that. Using know-how from her girls' middle school and girls' high school days, she got close to her in no time.

"I'm really good at becoming friends with older girls."

If she had been alone, it might have been different, but with someone there, enduring it was not that hard. Choi Ji-won waited by the campfire endlessly, and after one day, or maybe two...

"The white mist rushed in... and I lost my memory."

Choi Ji-won lost her memory because of the white mist. No, it did not stop there. New memories were layered on top.

The two at the campfire became eight. The memories of those two days were completely wiped away. Even though they had been split into two and eight from the very beginning… the Tower erased all those memories.

There were two False Entities in there. Normally, anyone would be fooled.

"But... Bung-bung remembered everything."

"...What?"

Maybe the pure white mist did not work on non-living things, or maybe it did not work because Bung-bung had two personalities. While Choi Ji-won was confused, Bung-bung secretly told her, "Ji-won, there were two people at the start."

"...No. That's cheating."

So... on a floor where white mist erased memories, she kept her memories? This was... this was... cheating.

"Since I knew all ten were human, I deliberately avoided conflict… Then I endured the Penalty and held out for five days, and suddenly this mass of tentacles started squirming up from underground.
I killed it, and that was the end. It was dangerous because it stayed hidden, but its actual combat ability seemed weak."

"...So the thing giving the Penalty was that tentacle mass, and it comes above ground after five days... meaning the structure is just survive five days?"

"Right. There was a university professor among the people with me, and he put it like this. Floor 23, unlike a normal mafia game, gives you absolutely no information you can use to infer the culprit. In that situation, the most rational move is to do nothing."

"..."

"Well, it's sophistry. But I think that is what the ones who designed the Tower intended. If deduction is supposed to be based on clear evidence… and the situation is impossible to deduce in the first place,
then the right answer is not forcing deduction. It's not deducing at all."

Ji-won shrugged. While talking, she had naturally taken off her armor, then went into the bathroom and changed into comfortable clothes. She came out and flopped onto the soft bed. She said she was fine, but she had clearly been worn out.

"Probably... a lot of people will die here. When everyone's on edge, even tiny things start to look suspicious."

"...Yeah."

"What about you, Jun-ho? How did you clear so early?"

"Ah, me?"

I did not want Ji-won to worry, so I answered with a mix of truth and fiction.

"I just got lucky. On day two, people were fighting, and a floor block got torn up. There was a deep tunnel under it."

"...Really?"

"Yeah. I did not even regress much. Just twice.
Look at me right now. I'm perfectly fine. I did not get hit by the Penalty that many times either."

"...That's a relief."

"Exactly. A relief. Anyway, I'm really, really fine, but Ji-won, are you sure you shouldn't rest? Aren't you tired?"

"I am kind of tired. Can I sleep a bit?"

"Of course, of course. I'll go to the convenience store and come back."

I left my apartment, relieved that she had not noticed how unstable my mind was. Sharing hard times and getting comfort is good too… but I did not want to reveal that I was developing dependency symptoms on Choi Ji-won.

I was fine as long as I was with her anyway.
I could endure it.

"Will you be okay?"

Bung-bung asked Choi Ji-won, lying on the bed. Would she really be okay?

Choi Ji-won's sharp senses had caught Kim Jun-ho lying, just like in the Tutorial. The difference was tiny, but humans send signals when they lie. And Choi Ji-won had the senses to notice them.

"I'm okay."

In truth, Choi Ji-won was not entirely innocent either.
She had also intentionally hidden something.

Choi Ji-won...
No, Bung-bung knew what the Penalty really was.
Bung-bung had seen the Penalty directly.
And Bung-bung told Choi Ji-won about it.

The Penalty… showed you yourself being abandoned. It showed the person most precious to you betraying you and leaving.

Why did people react differently on Floor 23? Their own mental strength was part of it, but another reason was that each person reacted differently to being abandoned.

Choi Ji-won knew. In the Penalty Kim Jun-ho saw... she must have appeared there. She must have coldly abandoned Kim Jun-ho and hurled cruel words that tore down his dignity. Because that was exactly what happened to her.

Choi Ji-won knew. Kim Jun-ho's mental state... was probably far more shaken than it looked.

Even so... she said nothing. She tried not to make Kim Jun-ho worry. If Kim Jun-ho could not do without Choi Ji-won.

"...It'll be okay."

They just had to stay together.

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