WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 259

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The regressor is troubled (6)

You have entered Floor 26.

I regressed and returned to the moment of first entry on Floor 26.

"That's Choi Ji-won."

"Who's that next to her?"

A plaza that looked like a colosseum built from pure white marble. The crowd surrounding the center of the plaza pointed at us and murmured among themselves, and one woman among them started walking toward us with brisk steps.

"Choi Ji-w..."

"Let's go."

"Yeah."

Of course, we didn't respond to any of that. We just opened the blue portal right away and cleared Floor 26.

"..."

"..."

The woman's hand, extended as though for a handshake, trembled pathetically in midair.

"Did they just... leave the moment we walked in?"

After returning to reality, we took a short break, then each went into our own Floor 1s and split up. Both of us needed some time alone.

"Phew..."

Before really getting started, I renovated my Floor 1 into a steaming bathhouse. My Floor 1 basically took the shape of a large hotel room, and I'd imagined that opening the door here would lead into a huge bath.

"..."

Bathing alone in a bath this big felt a little eerie, but it also had its own kind of romance to it. There was a reason some people never left Floor 1. Living there, you could satisfy most of your needs.

Glug, glug, glug.

Hot water poured from an ornate lion-shaped statue. Building a bath like this in reality would take a mountain of money. If I really put my mind to it, I could probably make enough to build one even now, but with monsters invading, constructing a building wasn't exactly the wise move.

"Or is it?"

Since I was going to protect Korea anyway, maybe it would be fine to build it? All I had to do was take down the tiger. With Choi Ji-won and me fighting together right now, I figured we could beat the tiger.

But thinking "since I'm going to protect Korea" made me feel kind of embarrassed, and also a little excited. Like I'd become some honorable figure devoted to nation and people.

I never used to be the type who liked stepping into the spotlight. How did things end up like this? No, maybe it wasn't that I liked stepping forward, it was more that I never had the chance to. That "mysterious immortal sage" plan I'd mentioned before, there was no way someone who cooked up a scheme like that actually hated attention.

I don't think I hated stepping forward. I think I was scared of the situation where I stepped forward, things went badly, and I got blamed for it. No, isn't that just how people are? Even someone with a strongly introverted streak needs a proper amount of attention. A cactus can get by on less water, but that's not the same as needing none at all.

"What?"

Was it because I let my mind wander on useless thoughts?

The water, which had been sending up curls of hot steam, was suddenly running lukewarm. Looked like mana had leaked out. When I lost focus and lost control of my mana, chill sometimes leaked out like this. It was similar to how Choi Ji-won's hair would sometimes puff up frizzy, like she'd rubbed it against a balloon, from overusing Heart of Lightning Flash.

"That's enough of that."

That was plenty of idle thinking. My body was clean now, too. My insides were nice and warm.

The reason I'd regressed.

It was time to actually put the training ground to use.

Thinking about it rationally, the fact that time flowed slowly in this training ground wasn't much of an advantage for me. My time, as a person, was effectively infinite. What wasn't infinite was willpower, and that space didn't offer any boost to willpower.

So this feature favored other players more than it favored me, and it was even a loss for Choi Ji-won, who could use more time than others, albeit in a somewhat limited way. If everyone except us came out ahead, you could fairly call that a loss for us.

Going forward, players above Floor 26 would be facing us having made real technical progress. Just as I'd grown stronger by making use of infinite time, they too would grow stronger by investing plenty of time of their own.

They would no longer be "ability users who know how to use a weapon." From now on, they had to be seen as "warriors who understand their weapon." Their hesitation about taking another life would have shrunk considerably too... most of them would have already experienced killing, or would be ready to do it if it came down to it.

I couldn't call my own talent mediocre, but I couldn't call it the greatest under heaven either. And like every field, growth slows down once you pass a certain threshold of strength. The gap I'd opened up using time gained through regression would gradually shrink.

Choosing "I'll just regress like crazy too, and get way stronger" here was the worst option. I'd already spent an enormous stretch of time inside the Tower, and my mind had slowly started to wear thin. I could get stronger, sure, but it would pull me further from my actual goal: staying strong while keeping my humanity intact.

Still, this training ground wasn't purely bad for me either. It handed everyone else a "time advantage" while imposing the restriction of "no physical growth." For me, it imposed the restriction of "you gain no time advantage," but it handed me the benefit of "you take no damage no matter what you do."

"Let's give it a shot."

Right. It had been a long, long time since I'd gotten to train properly. The last time I unleashed everything I had, swordsmanship and mana both, at full power, was Floor 12. Ever since then, I never got the chance to run into my own limits.

This place was different. Here, nothing I did could hurt me. Other people tore their muscles, scraped their mana down to the last drop, and still lost chances to grow further... but for me, that was impossible anyway. My physical growth was entirely tied to the status window. While other people watched text like "Your strength has increased by 1 as a result of training," I'd been searching for answers by repeating regressions.

My strength lived in the numbers written on my status window. (Even if I couldn't actually see them.) And it depended on how refined my techniques were.

And this training ground existed to let people polish their techniques. The time had come to test the true "full power" I'd only ever imagined until now.

There was a lot I wanted to try, but the very first thing on the list was...

"S-grade traits. You two."

The application method for the S-grade traits that had been sitting there like a useless burden this whole time.

Heart of Lightning Flash. And Flash Step. The two S-grade traits I'd earned back on Floor 2.

Of these, "Heart of Lightning Flash" was one Choi Ji-won used enthusiastically, to the point it had basically become her signature move. Watching her strike me down with lightning back on Floor 11, while I was posing as the Grim Reaper, seemed to have made a real impression on her.

Why don't I use such a good trait myself, you ask? It's not that I don't use it. It's that I can't.

Heart of Lightning Flash [S]
Upon activation, consumes all possessed mana and replaces it with Lightning attribute mana. All physical abilities, including reaction speed, are drastically increased, and all attacks inflict additional lightning attribute damage. The user periodically takes damage for the duration, and 'Heart of Lightning Flash' persists until all Lightning attribute mana is depleted.

You can tell from the description, but this was originally meant as a last resort, a final doping technique, something closer to a mutual-destruction finishing move. It's the kind of skill where, right before losing, the hero's companion says "this is goodbye" and burns themselves up.

Choi Ji-won could use it freely because her Sword and Soul as One trait let her endure the strain on her body, and because she and Bung-bung split the load between mana duty and physical duty. If I used this in reality, I'd regress in 0.1 seconds.

"Whew."

But what about here? In this space where nothing made me regress no matter what I did, couldn't even I make use of Heart of Lightning Flash?

"Heart of Lightning Flash."

I murmured that, thinking I wanted to activate Heart of Lightning Flash.

Crackle.

That was all it took. Just from the thought alone, mana began moving on its own like it had a will of its own, writhing wildly. For someone like me, who never had an offensive trait of my own and always had to wield mana directly, it was strange, and honestly hard to adjust to.

"O-ohhh...!"

Sparks flickered through the air. My heart pounded rapidly. My blood vessels burned with a stinging pain, then went back to normal, then stung again, over and over. A high ringing noise droned in my ears.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It felt like my whole body had turned into a heart. From the tips of my toes to the top of my head, everything pulsed thump, thump, thump, in rhythm. The edges of my vision tinted blue, and right around when I felt flashes of light sparking near my heart, where the most mana gathered.

Right around then.

"Huh?"

My mana, which had been about to turn into crackling lightning, started resisting.

The chill, or the cold mana, refused to move, as if it hated this crackling sensation. It planted itself in place like a massive block of ice and knocked away the status window's attempts to change its nature into lightning.

Honestly, even I didn't know the true nature of this chill. It was just a trait I'd picked up naturally from spending so long on Floor 10's snowy mountain, not some Fortuitous Encounter I'd deliberately sought out. I'd never heard of another human wielding a power like this, and even now I just used it like some kind of personal technique... but I still didn't know where this power came from.

"Uh, uh?"

But the thought that hit me right at that moment was that the source of this power might be far greater than I'd ever imagined. The status window was kneading my mana every which way to try to change its nature, but the chill was clamping down around my heart and resisting with everything it had.

"Aaargh..."

My body took the full brunt of the damage from the fierce clash between the two. The training ground's effect meant I didn't regress or break down physically, but I felt, vividly, the sensation of cold and crackling energy colliding inside me. The war that started inside my body kept spreading outward, until cold wind and sparks were locked in a tug-of-war all around me.

If this were real life, I would've regressed at two hundred percent certainty. No, forget regression. I'd be dead. This is a hundred percent death sentence. Doesn't matter how high my Vitality stat is, doesn't matter if I have a trait that toughens up my body, this is not a level of damage anyone could endure.

I waited endlessly for it to end. One hour. Two hours. At first I summoned a huge water bed to wait comfortably, but the moment I saw the bed freeze solid, I switched to a regular spring mattress, and waited another two hours. Then I saw the spring mattress catch fire, so I lay down on the bare floor and waited two more hours.

"..."

I summoned a huge TV a good distance away and watched a movie, and only realized the brawl between the status window and the chill had ended when I got up.

"Well, that's a first."

The winner of that long, drawn-out battle was the chill.

The trait 'Heart of Lightning Flash' is transforming.

Heart of Eternal Winter [S+]
Your touch will freeze even time itself.
Upon activation, greatly amplifies the cold of your mana. Physical abilities, including reaction speed, are drastically increased, and additional correction is added to every movement. The user periodically takes damage for the duration, and 'Heart of Eternal Winter' persists until all mana is depleted.

I had... gained a completely new trait.

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