WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 264

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The regressor proves himself (4)

"...An uninvited guest has arrived."

The dark mage reached out and gripped an ominous staff. Thick robes hid most of the body, so barely any skin showed, but the small sliver of purple, wrinkled fingers made it clear this was not human in shape.

"..."

Tok. Tok. Tok.

The dark mage tapped the staff three times. The first tap revealed a magic circle hidden beneath the floor. The second brought life to bone fragments scattered everywhere. The last conjured black hands that burst upward in a swarm, wrapping around the dark mage. I couldn't tell exactly what it was for, but it looked like some kind of protective barrier.

Clack. Clack.

Clatter. Clatter.

Bone fragments, no, skeletons, filled the cave. The weapons in their grips were caked in rust, chipped in dozens of places. But to a living creature, that made them more dangerous, not less. Get cut by one of those, and death would come slow and agonizing.

"Get lost!"

Thwack!

A large rock thrown by the French woman shattered a skeleton. But even with its ribs blown to pieces, the skeleton slowly rose again. Its hollow eye sockets stayed just as empty as before. Those things knew no fear. No hesitation. They would simply keep closing in, slow and steady, to claim a life.

But fear wasn't absent only from the skeletons.

"Fight!"

"Win!"

"Seize it!"

"Waaaaaaagh!!!"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The warriors beat their chests in rhythm. Their shouts rang through the cave loud enough to hurt the ears. Saliva dripped from their mouths, and the hands gripping their weapons clenched so hard the veins had gone past bulging, turning blue.

Now.

This moment, right now.

This single fight was the reason they had lived. The clan's long-held wish. The grand finale.

Ordinary humans spend most of their lives searching for a reason to live. These people were different. Their purpose, their destination, their finish line, all of it was right now. This exact moment was what they had lived for, to win.

"Let's go!"

"Let's go!"

"Let's gooooo!!!"

One warrior, unable to contain his excitement, charged out alone. He turned into a beehive of skeletal attacks in seconds.

"Let's... go..."

Even as the light died out of his eyes in his final moment, he kept gnawing on a skeleton's bones. That was the signal.

"Waaaaaah!!!"

"Aaaaaaah!!!"

Around fifty warriors charged forward. The rest of us, who had been staring blankly, moved late but moved all the same. Right. Let's win this. Let's help them win.

"The head's the weak point!"

Through the war cries ringing in my ears, Choi Ji-won's voice came faintly. Just as she said, I smashed a skull with my elbow, and the skeleton stopped moving.

"The head is the weak point!"

"The head!"

"The head!"

The revelation spread to the warriors too, and a vague hope that they could actually win sparked up here and there. Just break the heads. Break every head, and the same trick would work on the dark mage's head too.

It was a wave. A wave staked on life and death, and I let myself be carried along with it too. I had to hold back on using chill as much as possible to avoid hurting allies, while still killing skeletons the fastest and most efficiently I could.

Should I cut them down? Even wrapped in mana, the blade would take damage. So then.

"Scabbard and all."

I kept the scabbard, the reward I'd gotten on Floor 3, sheathed over the blade and started swinging the sword wildly. Not cutting. Smashing.

Thwack!

Crack!

Other players who'd reached the same conclusion as me started standing out here and there. Skulls disappeared like they'd been fed through a blender, and the front line surged forward.

"We can't afford to lose!"

"Let's go!!!"

Compared to us, the warriors were... ordinary. Muscular, well-trained fighters, sure, but they couldn't use mana, and their weapon skills weren't exactly impressive either. Just standing bravely against the skeletons right now was worth some praise.

"Give it everything!"

The Captain shouted, wounds covering his body. The skeleton horde had already thinned by more than half. At this rate it was a comfortable win. The warriors had held their ground admirably, and the players had thrown their full firepower straight at the bone horde. That thing over there was already as good as dead.

Just as I thought that.

"Watch your back! It's a betrayal!"

Choi Ji-won's voice rang loud through the cave. It carried urgency. It carried conviction.

"Huh?"

Being about the closest person to Choi Ji-won, I caught a faint wrongness in that voice and went on alert.

But-

"What?"

"Shit, so they really were cannibals?"

Two Italian men surrounded by skeletons turned around without thinking at the sound of the words. It was Choi Ji-won speaking, after all, and they hadn't felt much threat from the skeletons to begin with. The chaos of the melee had probably scattered their focus too.

Yeah. Carelessness. A tiny opening exposed by their own carelessness.

"No! It's a trick!"

Choi Ji-won's reaction came too late. The two Italian men's reactions came even later.

A massive hand suddenly burst up from the ground. Red skin, long claws, unmistakably a demon's grip, and it snatched both players in an instant.

"Fucking hell!"

The man who managed to react, though late, had his ankle caught. In that split second, a flood of thoughts must have crossed behind his eyes.

Shhk!

"Aaaargh!"

He cut through his own shin and barely tore himself free from the grip. Screaming as he did, he reached into his pouch, clearly planning to escape the immediate crisis first and heal with a potion after.

"U-uh, uh..."

The other man, though, had his weapon arm, his right arm, caught. He had no free weapon to cut himself loose with, and having his most-used arm seized froze his thinking on the spot. People tend to freeze when hit with something they never expected.

"Mana! Use your mana!"

The French woman screamed even while smashing skeletons.

"Hurry! Cut your arm off! Use mana!"

"B-but..."

But- the words that could follow "but" were endless. How am I supposed to fight without my right arm? What do you mean, use mana? Isn't there some way out of this without cutting anything off? I don't know what he meant to say.

But he hesitated. He agonized. He froze.

And the price for that was steep.

Shhhk!

With the sacrifice, the man who'd escaped by cutting off his own leg, the demon had time to spare, and another hand shot up, gripping the torso of the player whose arm was caught.

"Fuck!"

"No!"

I gathered mana thick and tried to lunge forward, but I felt an ominous presence under my feet and had to jump back instead. A massive hand burst up right where I'd been standing a heartbeat before. I sliced through it immediately, but it had cost me a breath.

Choi Ji-won had missed her timing too. Around her, no fewer than three hands had risen at once, and she shredded all of them in the blink of an eye.

Grip.

But for the dark mage, a blink was more than enough.

"Ah..."

The captured player squeezed his eyes shut. The massive hand wrapped around his torso tightened. Crunch, crunch, crack. Sounds that should never come from a human body.

Thud.

Something like a shriveled apple core dropped to the ground. One player, gone.

"One uninvited guest, gone."

A shabby voice slipped out through the gap in the black robe. The dark mage had figured out that we trusted Choi Ji-won. So it mimicked her voice to create a split-second opening, and it hadn't wasted that opening, cutting our threatening enemy count down by one.

The skeletons had been time-buying from the start. The warriors were barely a threat either. This was the fight between the dark mage and us, and it had just scored the opening point.

"Step back."

Blue lightning crackled off Choi Ji-won's body. She'd activated Heart of Lightning Flash, and it was as good as a declaration that she was going all out from here.

"Let's go!"

"Let's gooooo!!!"

But the warriors showed no sign of stepping back. They pushed forward as if it made no difference whether they got hit by Choi Ji-won's lightning or by a skeleton. Our allies had become an obstacle.

A colder person might have decided to kill off the allies in the way first and think it through later, but Choi Ji-won wasn't that kind of person.

"I said get out of the way!"

The French woman was doing her best, but calling it a huge help would be a stretch. Judging by the crudeness of her technique, she probably hadn't made full use of her Floor 26 rewards. She simply hadn't put in enough time training for combat.

"Ugh..."

The Italian man who'd lost his leg was chugging a potion. His fighting form looked much better already, but for now, he was out of the fight.

"..."

And the remaining one couldn't speak at all.

"Jun-ho! Can you restrain these people for me?"

"...Are you sure?"

I could create a situation where Choi Ji-won would be free to go all out. If I spread chill wide enough, the warriors wouldn't be able to move.

But from what I'd quietly tested mid-fight, my chill was less effective against skeletons. Not useless, just weaker. Why does that matter?

If I used just enough power to restrain the warriors, only the skeletons would keep moving, and the warriors would get wiped out entirely. But if I froze the skeletons too, I'd need to burn through way more of my own strength, and it might hurt the warriors directly. A heart attack, maybe, something like that.

Right. This was probably the dark mage's design all along. Make us worry about our allies so we couldn't fight properly, mimic our voices to create openings. Call it vile, and it was vile. Call it clever, and it was clever. A fittingly dark-mage sort of method.

Since the board had already been set up this way, I supposed the situation turning against us was unavoidable.

At times like this,

"See you in a bit."

all you had to do was set the board up again.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 27.]

"I've got something urgent to say. Before the people show up."

The warriors were a clear hindrance.

"I have a plan. There's somewhere we need to go right now."

Five players. One dark mage. Strip away the small fry, and we win.

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