WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 246

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The regressor is certain (5)

Choi Ji-won failed to keep her promise. She had confidently said three regressions would be enough, but she ended up doing four.

"...Let's try just one more time. I have something to test."

No, make that five now. In between, she kept running all over the place, calling people here and going out there, busy nonstop.

Anyway, Choi Ji-won regressed five times. On the last one, she came back to reality in barely ten minutes.

"Why did you come back so fast?"

"Nothing much. I need to go somewhere for a bit."

The moment she cleared, she disappeared again. I thought she'd be right back and waited, but she left around lunch and only came back around dinner.

"Where did you go?"

"I met one player, and I also met Cheol-jin ajusshi. I had something to test."

After firmly saying preparations were complete, Choi Ji-won told me we had to regress quickly.

"Regress? Why? If you're going to teach me that... technique, wouldn't it be better to teach it now?"

"There's a reason. Let's regress now."

"...Okay."

I accepted it, figuring she had her reasons, and regressed as she said.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 24.]

"So, ready?"

Once again, we were in Choi Ji-won's house. We sat facing each other in the living room.

"Want to know why I said I'd teach you the technique after I regressed?"

"Yeah, I do. That technique... looked finished anyway."

"All right. I'll explain from the start."

Choi Ji-won tapped her head with her left hand.

"First... I don't remember Floor 25 at all right now. Only fragments of the emotions I felt and went through there are left."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean even if I try to talk about Floor 25 now, I can't, because I know nothing."

I'd never cleared a floor and then returned to the past, so I hadn't known this, but according to her, even if you clear a floor, you lose that memory when you return to the past.

"So what I tried last time was this... I went to someone who had cleared Floor 25 and asked them to write a memo about Floor 25 and show it to me."

Back then, Choi Ji-won hadn't entered Floor 25 yet, so naturally she couldn't read the contents. Still, she stared hard and memorized the memo's shape.

"Then I entered Floor 25. At that point, the 'information restriction' on Floor 25 should've been lifted. So what do you think happened?"

"...You could read the memo?"

"Wrong. I still couldn't remember what was in it. I think it was blocked."

Her first plan had been to show me a memo with "how to clear Floor 25," then make it so I could recognize that content after I entered Floor 25.

"Since memos aren't items, I can't bring them into the Tower... so I also tried engraving text onto an item from the Tower, but that didn't work either. Well, nothing I can do about that."

Her first attempt failed. So she had no choice but to move to the next plan.

"Wait, what? You said you had no plan. You said you'd just muscle through."

"That was about poison. Also, do you know how much thinking kendo takes? Your body matters, sure, but mind games are insanely important."

People tend to assume athletes are dumb, but she said if you want to reach the very top, you need brains too.

Then, as we talked, I felt a sharp sense that something was off.

"Hold on, poison?"

"Yeah, poison. Why?"

"How are you able to talk to me about poison?"

That was right. Until now, Choi Ji-won had never been able to directly mention poison. I had only guessed it. Poison was directly tied to Floor 25's concept, so mentioning it should have been automatically blocked.

"Jun-ho, that's the key."

As if I'd hit the exact point, Choi Ji-won smiled in satisfaction. She brought over a pillow and hugged it like a doll.

"I don't remember Floor 25 at all right now. What's there, what happened, how I cleared it... I remember none of it."

"...And?"

"And yet... I remember the 'technique' I made vividly. Because a technique exists whole on its own."

"No way..."

"Exactly. I made a 'guess' by looking at the technique I created."

The order was different.

At the point where Choi Ji-won had already cleared Floor 25, she couldn't talk about Floor 25. She had knowledge of it, and any words that could have given me hints were filtered out so I couldn't hear them.

But what if she had not cleared Floor 25 yet?

"I don't know either. But... I look at the technique I made and infer backward. Like, Floor 25 must be like this and this. If it's just someone who knows nothing talking, wouldn't it be weird for that to get filtered?"

Her "guesses" did not get filtered. Choi Ji-won also didn't know Floor 25, same as me.

"I don't know what kind of principle this works on. Still, if it works, we should use it, right?"

"O-oh..."

"I can say this because I know nothing right now. Floor 25 is a floor full of poison gas. The core of my technique is the lungs. You attach a kind of purification filter to the lungs and slow poison absorption as much as possible. So shouldn't the key be gas, not liquid?"

Her technique centered on strengthening the lungs, and through that she reverse-engineered the answer: poison gas. Simple method, strong result.

"Did you... plan even this?"

"Half and half. If it worked, great. If not, whatever. That kind of feeling. The worst case was not being able to teach you the technique at all, and I regressed because I was worried about that. More importantly, focus. I'll teach you now."

Still seated, Choi Ji-won began explaining the technique she had made. Its name was Mana Filter.

Mana Filter was similar to making a net inside the lungs. She said the key was letting air pass through while blocking poison.

"You're learning fast."

"I've got experience."

As expected of "the Earthling who's used mana the longest," I learned the technique quickly and fully mastered it in three days.

"Still... this isn't perfect. It has a time limit. I don't know how it'll be in practice, but at least in theory, that's how it is. You'll have to read the situation and use it well."

"Okay."

Now I had at least the minimum setup needed to survive Floor 25. All thanks to Choi Ji-won's sacrifice.

"Thanks. I'll be back soon."

"Yeah."

I regressed quickly, cleared Floor 24 in an instant, and...

"I'll be right back."

Headed to Floor 25.

-You have entered Floor 25.

When I opened my eyes, I saw walls covered in vines. One glance was enough to give the impression of age and decay. How long had this place been abandoned? It didn't look like human hands had touched it for days, probably much longer.

"Hss, haa."

Everything in my field of view had a green tint. It wasn't my eyes going weird. The air itself, filling the space, was green.

This is just something I once heard, but poison gas is originally colorless and odorless. So giving it this green color could almost be called mercy. What a strange place to be kind.

"Hoo."

Every time I inhaled and exhaled, something kept catching in the Mana Filter. Maybe because it was such a delicate technique, it took real concentration. Keeping Mana Filter active while also wrapping mana around my whole body made my head throb. Roughly... twenty minutes was my limit.

Still, thanks to mana, I was free from poison's effects for now. At least I could avoid the disaster of regressing again right after regressing. The fact that no damage message had popped up yet was already a blessing.

<Floor 25>
-Defeat the King of the Maze and escape.
-Poison has spread throughout Floor 25. At first you may not feel major symptoms, but moving will become harder over time. Ordinary people die in about one hour. Climbers die within two to three hours. Please be careful.

"Oho."

The message window rose in front of me. So Floor 25 had two main goals.

First, kill the King of the Maze.

Second, escape the maze.

The poison spread across all of Floor 25 seemed to serve as the time limit. If an ordinary player came in, they'd have to do everything they could to escape before being too poisoned to move.

"Pretty nasty."

If you got impatient, you'd breathe faster, which would speed up poisoning too... so this floor was about staying calm and not getting eaten alive by the time limit. Of course, I'm the exception. The moment my mana runs out, game over. I have to clear this floor within twenty minutes.

Normally, this would be hopeless. Is clearing it in twenty minutes even possible when others get two hours?

"Okay. That's sorted."

But I already knew it. Floor 25 could be cleared in ten minutes.

Choi Ji-won didn't tell me that. Choi Ji-won showed me. I saw her come out in ten minutes with my own eyes.

If she did it,

I can do it too.
"Shall we go."

The moment I released my mana and took a deep breath, the metallic stink of blood rose from deep in my throat.
Now it begins.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 25.]

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