WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 241

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The regressor is brave? (9)

Floor 24 had changed. It had definitely changed.

I first noticed something was off when I reached the spot where the dancing ghost was supposed to be.

"If I show it a mirror..."

I set the large human body model down for a moment, then carried over a full-length mirror and tucked it under my arm. My physical abilities had improved, so carrying heavy things was easier now, sure, but I still only had two hands and two feet. There was a limit to how much I could move at once.

"They say there's a clue on the clinic bookshelf... not my problem."

I held the mirror out in front of me and slowly leaned into the corridor.

Come on out. Stop dancing, scream, and run... despair at a regressor's infinite information advantage...?

"Huh."

But the dancing ghost was not there. It should have been thrashing around in the distance, about halfway down the corridor... but it was gone.

Just in case, I turned around, pulled the rope dangling in midair, and even stepped back into the corridor without the mirror, but the dancing ghost never appeared. The blood-soaked floor was clean too.

"...What is this?"

Even with a strong sense of unease, I kept moving forward. I did not throw away the full-length mirror, because I still thought the dancing ghost might ambush me. What the hell was going on?

Up to that point, it was still just unease and suspicion. But when I also failed to find the notebook that burned liars and the living door, suspicion turned into certainty.

The aberrations that used to block the corridor were gone. Completely.

"...What?"

At first, I wondered if all monsters had disappeared. So I went back to the starting point, the hospital room, and let the handcuffs catch me.

Click.

"Huh?"

"Surgery will now begin. This is a frontal lobotomy."

"Uh, uh, aaaaaaaaah!!!"

Unbelievably, the psychiatric patient who thought they were a doctor still existed. Thanks to that thing, I had to feel that horrible sensation again, like something digging past my nose and into my brain.

Still, that confirmed it. Not all aberrations were gone. Only the aberrations I had met and cut down had disappeared.

"...I already gathered two key fragments... so now there's one left."

Because of that, Floor 24 had become easier. Ridiculously easier. The gatekeepers that should have blocked my path were all gone, and I already knew where the key fragments were. There was no reason to get lost.

"Hmm."

Of course, the difficulty of Floor 24 was not what mattered. Something else did.

Was I okay?

This was the first time something I did before regressing changed the result after regression. By common sense, it made no sense for future actions to alter the past.

"No, maybe not the first time."

There was a similar case with the U.S. warehouse. But that looked like either the butterfly effect of my actions or Dok Su-hee's doing, so I set that aside. Inside the Tower, this was the first time it had shown up as such a direct result.

Could this be it again... did memory retention affect it? Did the dancing ghost regress too... and keep its memories... no, that made no sense.

An archangel? Was this an archangel's doing? On Floor 15, the old man said, "Don't abuse regression around archangels." If an archangel had secretly been watching me nearby, and that led to memory retention... then maybe, to stop Floor 24 from being destroyed this cycle, it removed the aberrations in advance?

If that was true, then not only had my regression been exposed, it meant all angels were watching me. In one word, I was screwed.

"...I don't think that's it."

Still, that possibility seemed slim. For one thing, I had only regressed once. It only looked like multiple regressions because of Floor 24's own properties. In reality, I had barely gone through one cycle.

And thinking back on what the old man said, he spoke as if he felt it more and more as regressions repeated. I did not hold strong emotions toward an archangel, and there was no clear reason they would catch on to regression.

Also, even assuming they really did notice my regression, if I were them, I would have just let Floor 24 collapse. Not remove ghosts like this.

Nothing is more important than obtaining fatal information about your opponent, except hiding the fact that you obtained important information. If they realize their weakness was exposed, they can respond. A weakness is most effective when you strike while it is still fully exposed.

Or maybe not? What if they expected that and then went another layer deeper with mind games... I didn't know. Either way, the hypothesis that "an archangel noticed regression" had a low probability.

"Most likely... the 'destruction' stayed in place."

Honestly, it seemed more plausible that the aberrations I killed in the previous cycle had died permanently. The evidence was that only the monsters I fought had disappeared.

The angel had said that all originals of the aberrations stored in the Center of the World were lost. If that remained true even after regression, it was convincing enough.

"This is still a disaster either way."

But this side had its own problems. For starters, the archangel must have noticed the destruction. Souls precious enough to be stored in the Center of the World had all vanished one day, and no culprit was visible?

Even if they couldn't notice regression now, eventually they would reach me. No, maybe they already had.

If they decided to leave me alone, fine... but what if they decided to remove me? If an archangel set a trap to crush me, could I even escape it?

The moment you notice a well-made trap is already too late. At that point, there is nothing you can do. Maybe I was already too late. Unknown fear surged in and choked off my breath.

-Whoooosh.

Maybe my mind was shaking, because a bleak wind blew through the hospital corridor. Get it together. Nothing was confirmed yet. These were all just hypotheses.

"...Where was the last key again?"

I needed to meet the angel. Then pry out information.

What the archangel intended... and how I was supposed to respond.

-You have cleared Floor 24.
-Clear rewards will be provided after moving to Floor 1.

After collecting the key fragments, I passed through the door that appeared and came to my senses in Room 404, the one I had seen in the previous cycle. The angel was gone. Only a blue portal remained.

So rewards were originally given after going to Floor 1. I'd check later.

"Um... Angel-nim? There's something I want to ask."

I sat on the old bed and called out to the angel. No answer came back.

"Angel-nim? Hello?"

I waved my arms around.

"Angeeel-niiim?"

I bounced up and down in place.

"Hey!"

Even when I was practically shouting, the angel did not appear.

When you thought about it, that was normal. How often did a real game admin show up just because a user called for one in chat? Admins appeared when there was a problem.

"Hoo... Angel-nim. I'm going to sleep now. I'm going back inside."

If meeting the angel required causing trouble, I was willing to cause trouble.

"I heard this too... you know how if you punch a hole in the wall inside the starting room, a duplicated hospital room appears, right? But if you rip out the entire section connected to the corridor, then the duplicated hospital room links to the corridor..."

"Climber-nim, what seems to be the issue?"

Only then did the angel quietly appear. It was the same short-haired angel with glasses from before. Expressionless as always.

"Um, could I ask just one question?"

"...Please keep it short."

"Is Floor 24 normally this easy? There wasn't much there."

I asked and immediately watched the angel's face. A deflecting lie, panic, anything, all of it was information.

But the angel's answer was truly... unexpected.

"Floor 24 has always been this kind of floor. Since long before you humans could even imagine."

"...What?"

"It is an easy floor, filled with Archangel-nim's mercy. Is there a problem?"

The angel did not look like a liar. This angel truly believed Floor 24 had always been like this.

"Th-then... what about these rewards? What are these rewards? The notebook? The eyeball? They are weird. Where did they come from?"

"...Where did they come from?"

"I mean, there has to be some source, right? You're suddenly giving us these alien items."

"..."

The angel's face, expressionless the whole time, twisted a little. It was the kind of face an adult would make when a child asked, "Mister, what kind of person are you?" A look of being hit with a question so obvious the angel had never thought deeply about it.

A moment later, the angel regained composure.

"All are arrangements by Archangel-nim. They are items containing deep, far-reaching intent that beings like us cannot even dare imagine. Please use them well."

"Soo... you're saying Archangel-nim didn't give any separate notice?"

"Yes. There was none. It seems your business is done, so please clear Floor 24 quickly."

"...Yep."

The Tower itself had gone through a major transformation-level incident. Yet the angel looked like they knew nothing. Maybe... the archangel didn't know either.

After returning to reality.

"You really don't remember?"

"...Yeah. There wasn't anything like that last cycle either. No way... did regression fail this time..."

"No, no, that wasn't it. I even made you watch a horror movie on purpose, and you were super cute. Your scream went hiiik..."

"Th-that's embarrassing, stop there."

As shocking as it was, not only Choi Ji-won but Bung-bung also had no memory of Floor 24, including the dancing ghost. The important part was that they still recognized that we had regressed. They just remembered the cycle differently from me.

I could accept ghosts disappearing. But memories changing too? That meant the world itself had changed.

I quietly opened the internet and checked Ghost Wiki, and it was the same there. People remembered nothing about the dancing ghost or the book that burned lies. As if they had never existed.

The wiki was created before my regression. Yet they still didn't know.

"..."

What was the cause?

Souls? Was it because I attacked while focused on my soul? But if that were true, then every being I fought after Floor 17 should have disappeared forever. But that wasn't the case. This disappearance had to be due to the unique nature of aberrations as fragile entities.

Again, what was the cause?

The angels did not notice. Choi Ji-won did not notice. The archangels also... for now, seemed not to notice. Only I could perceive this change.

Let's ask a more fundamental question. Unless I regress multiple times at close range, the archangels cannot detect regression.

Then it was only logical to see regression's power as higher than the archangels' power. Until now, nothing could affect regression except regression itself.

But now, my small action went beyond regression and altered the past. What caused it? Simply striking souls? That did not feel right.

A regressor's intuition, my own human intuition, told me this:

Only the Center of the World could solve this question.

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