WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 238

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The regressor is brave? (6)

I checked the situation one last time. My mana was at about eighty percent. I had not rushed to get here, so I still had plenty in reserve. The wrist holding my sword was still fresh, and I still had the will to fight.
At least according to the system, this was still the "starting point."

"Haa, haa."

My breathing quickened from tension. With her back turned to me, the female-shaped figure kept dancing in a grotesque way. Crack, crack, her joints snapped loud and clear.

"Now?"

I spread my mana low and wide. Mist rolled out from me in a circle. It spread softly, then stopped right before reaching the ghost. Just short of range. I had to move.

One step from the boundary between the hospital room and the hallway. Then another.
Now she was inside my chill's range. The creeping mana touched her body.

And then.

Clunk.

The ghost exposed to my chill froze in an instant. The body that had been bending and snapping wildly in every direction went completely rigid.

"Hoooo..."

Now. This was my chance. I kept the restraining mana on her while focusing on my sword. I was aiming for the head. I would blow that skull apart.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Was it because we were still too far apart? To launch a slash that would keep its killing power all the way over there, I needed a long stretch of concentration. The ghost still did not move.

Four seconds. Five seconds. Six seconds.

The ghost's head creaked, creaked, creaked, then twisted one hundred eighty degrees. She kept her back to me and turned only her head. She looked straight at me. A huge smile curled on her lips, and her eyes were misaligned and out of focus.

Seven seconds.

Right before my mana-packed sword swung down,

Tak, tak, tak, tatatakatak!!!

Like a wind-up doll with broken gears, the ghost started charging at me while repeating stop, move, stop, move!

"Waaaaah!"

She already looked terrifying, running like fast-forwarded footage, but this stop-and-jerk charge was far worse. That incomprehensible motion, that grotesque rhythm, stabbed straight into my instincts.

No way. She was resisting my mana that much? That had never happened before. My hand shook, but I could not back down here. If I retreated now, I would just go back to square one. I had to face her.

"D-die!"

I screamed like a third-rate villain resisting the protagonist and swung my sword. The scream was pathetic, but the mana blasting out from my blade was vicious. A razor-edged mana slash that froze air, froze space, and tore flesh.

Whoosh!

"...!!!"

But the ghost, still charging down the hallway with tak, tak, tak steps, flipped her whole body and dodged my slash, then stuck herself to the ceiling and started crawling! Her agility was absurd for something that had just been hit by my chill!!!

Panicking, I fired mana in every direction, but the ghost moved left and right in ways no normal life-form could ever mimic, dodging every attack with ease. The gap between us vanished in an instant.

Why was she this fast? No, ghosts did flicker out and disappear sometimes, but was that just pure speed all along?

That grin stretched across her face was not just a grin.
Was that the composure of the strong, the boredom of a veteran fighter, the absolute confidence of a master...?

She was not simply charging me either. She twisted and bent her body mid-rush as if dancing, and the elegance of that movement was beyond words. I should have realized it when she clung upside down to the ceiling. I realized it too late.

Slash!

The ghost snapped her dangling, bone-exposed arm, and a streak of blood shot toward me. It froze in midair from my mana, but frozen blood flying at me was still dangerous.

Crack! Instead of making a big motion, I smashed the incoming blood with my right elbow. I trusted my dwarven armor, and I did not want to expose an opening.

Siiiiiik.

But was that enough? The ghost, now smiling wider than ever, stopped on the ceiling and leaped down. Like paper scattering in the wind, she fluttered unpredictably up, down, left, right, dancing as she rushed me.

"Aaaahhh!!!"

I poured mana into my sword, forced my eyes wide, and met the ghost's gaze. I had to cut her. I had to cut her. With this strike, I had to split her in half. I would kill this ghost here and return to reality.

Right... now!

Slaaaash!!!

A violent slash loaded with full force. The wall split, the hallway split, the air split, but

"...Huh?"

The ghost... was gone. She had vanished at some point.

"...Damn it!"

Only then did I realize my mistake. The moment I attacked, the moment my own arm blocked my view, she fulfilled the condition of "leave my line of sight."

No way. From the beginning, that ghost was not aiming for my body...
Her goal was just to block my vision...!

"Not yet...!"

This could not be the end. I quickly twisted my body backward and blasted chill in all directions. Pushed this far, it was finally time to use the trump card I had only imagined, and

"..."

But the ghost was not behind me either. Not on the ceiling, not on the floor, not even in the rooms I had not checked.

A wind from somewhere made the ropes hanging from the ceiling sway.

I stood there blankly, let out a long breath, then started breaking through the wall and moving forward again.

I had only passed the first hurdle.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but the hallway had turned twelve times so far. What mattered was that every turn had been to the right. In a normal corridor, turning right four times should bring you back to the start, since each turn is ninety degrees. This place was an exception.

Was it only the space that was strange? No. As if this corridor could not stand seeing someone walk through quietly, it spat out another incomprehensible aberration every set distance.

The first thing I ran into was the truth-telling book. On its first page was a figure modeled after my body. On the next page it said, "Those who do not speak truth shall burn."

I flipped another page. "If you had to kill one, your friend or your lover, who would you kill?" At the same time, Choi Ji-won and my high school friend looked down at me from empty air with blank faces. It looked like a setup where even choosing "correctly" would still cause mental damage, and lying would burn my body.

The next thing I encountered was a door that would only move if fed more than a certain amount of blood. The giant door blocking the corridor pulsed like a living creature. Looking closely, swollen blood vessels bulged all over it, and shapes like human faces silently screamed from different spots.

It said I had to offer at least three liters of blood to pass through.
I had no idea what that door would do with the blood.

The last thing I saw was a four-legged monster with a smooth, featureless face area. It trailed me from far behind and obsessively collected strands of my hair. The instant it gathered exactly ten strands, it rushed me to flay my skin.

Up close, its skin was not its own. It wore another human's skin as an outer layer, and the face part of that skin sat on the back of its head, making it look faceless from the front. I figured those ten strands had some ritual meaning, and once the condition was met, it came to strip my skin.

"Hoo."

If you are quick, you probably noticed my description just now was in the past tense.

That is right. I cut all of them down with my sword. With overflowing mana and an unshaken mind.

I tore apart the book that threatened me to tell the truth. The moment I ripped it in half, something like a grotesque soul burst out from inside. I froze it with mana. Physical attacks might not work, but apparently mana did. The soul vanished.

I cut down the living door too. The moment I split it in half, blood flooded out from the crack like a torrent, but it froze before touching me. I made sure it was dead, then moved on.

The skin-flaying monster? It was fairly agile, but once exposed to my chill, it was nothing more than a meal. I only confirmed it was the skin-flaying monster because I killed it first.

After I killed it, the outer skin peeled away from the inner body, and the body inside looked like a clump of black maggots. I blasted full-power chill and froze the whole thing solid. I had not missed a single maggot, so it was safe to say it was completely dead.

That was the situation.

The weak monsters on Floor 24 were not strong enough to face me. With my mana restriction gone, I was basically overpowered. Strong enough to be compared to me when the Hero trait stacks are active. Trash ghosts like these could not block my path.

Ghosts in horror games are only ghosts against helpless victims. What could they possibly do against a sword-wielding superhuman?

"Who can stop me?"

Unless it was that dancing ghost with the smile...
nothing could stop me.

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