WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 269

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The regressor proves himself (9)

[The Floor 27 clear reward is granted.]

-Floor 27 Clear Reward
-You can obtain 200 contribution ranking. Cannot be used redundantly.

"So dumping it all on one person isn't possible, huh. Can't regress and use it over and over either. Guess clearing it multiple times doesn't stack up a ton of contribution."

Choi Ji-won said this while touching a small box labeled 'Clear Reward.'

"They said it gives 200 contribution... I thought if we just funneled it all onto one person, we could buy some crazy expensive item at the shop. But looks like that kind of trick doesn't work at all. Guess we'll need to be a bit more careful about this, huh?"

"..."

"If we buy an expensive item, we have to fight without gear while climbing the Tower, so that's a disadvantage. If we buy a cheap item, contribution doesn't build up, so we can't buy an expensive item later. Feels like we need to think really strategically about this... ugh, my head hurts."

She'd been browsing through various items on Floor 26, carefully weighing which purchase would be the most efficient.

"Using contribution right now to get stronger isn't a bad idea either... but if I borrow your word for it, aren't we pretty 'over-specced' already? I think saving up the contribution might be better. What do you think?"

"..."

"Jun-ho?"

"Ah, yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about something for a second."

"...If it's something important, want me to give you time to think?"

"Would you? Thanks."

The truth was, I hadn't been paying attention to a word Ji-won said. My stomach had felt uneasy the whole time, like something was stuck in it.

Before we came back to Floor 26, I went over the conversation I'd had with the dark mage inside my mental space again.

A dark mage who played with human lives. What I'd said had mostly been to win the argument in the moment, fueled by my own revulsion toward him. That he hadn't done his best, that he shouldn't act all high and mighty, that he was garbage, all that.

But was it not sincere at all? That wasn't true either. To some degree, I still believed the dark mage hadn't done his 'best.' More precisely, I believed he hadn't chosen the 'best method.'

Did he really have to use human lives like that? Did he have to deceive fellow humans and burn them as fuel?

I thought the dark mage had crossed a line he shouldn't have crossed. No matter how dire things got, I believed you shouldn't treat other humans like livestock. My revulsion toward that had been intense, and anger had boiled up in me. There were things you were allowed to do, and things you weren't, weren't there?

"The part where I can call myself... justified, ends right about here."

But I shouldn't have asked the dark mage whether he'd truly done his best.

Setting aside that moral line, the one about cultivating humans and using them as pawns... if you excluded crossing that line, the dark mage really had done everything he could.

"Hah."

The world had been on the verge of ending, and there hadn't been many options to choose from. The dark mage probably hadn't had much room to choose either. The mere fact that it had come down to relying on a dark mage at all said something about how cornered the world had been.

Above all, the word 'failure' isn't a synonym for 'didn't do your best.' All those times I regressed after getting screwed over by one thing or another, had I not done my best? No. And yet I still failed. Because that's just what humans are like as creatures.

Right. What I'd done was a kind of deception. Like some silver-spoon kid looking down on someone born poor, saying, why do you live like that, why don't you just try harder.

Do I not do my best? No, I always do my best too. If anything, I put in more effort than most people, for longer.

To clear a single Floor perfectly, I repeat regressions, gather information, analyze the situation down to the smallest detail, and only then get the ending I want. This whole time, I think I'd been quietly assuming, "I worked hard, so of course I deserve good results." I think I'd been thinking that whatever I got was the fair product of legitimate effort.

But there are people in this world who never get the chance to try hard in the first place. People who can't afford to invest the time needed. You can't scold a child born in the slums who starved to death at age three for not trying hard enough. You can't lecture a young man born inheriting his parents' debt for failing to prepare for his future.

Did the dark mage want to kill people? I don't know. Maybe he did want to. He's a dark mage, after all.

But setting the moral yardstick aside, I couldn't lecture him for not doing his best just because he failed. Again, failure doesn't mean you didn't try your hardest.

"Was I always... this arrogant?"

That regression had dulled my mind. That I'd just been spouting angry nonsense. That it was just a cheap shot to win an argument. There were plenty of excuses available, but I decided not to make any. Because the fact was, I'd been wrong.

When did it start? I was pretty sure I used to be the kind of person who, hearing someone else's story, would think, "that could happen to anyone." I thought I still was that kind of person. So when did I change?

At some point, regression must have started feeling ordinary to me. Riding a streak of success, having famous people on TV acknowledge me, being able to bend fate with a wave of my hand, all of it must have started to feel like some natural-born right.

I'd started thinking of myself as special. It was true that I was special, but I'd mistaken that for being the result of my own greatness.

I felt my own inadequacy keenly. I'm not a superhuman. I'm not a hero. I'm an arrogant, conceited fool. I'd sworn to myself, "let's become someone I can be proud to face," and yet I hadn't kept that promise.

"Ji-won-ah."

"Hm?"

"Something happened..."

I gathered up all these worries and asked Choi Ji-won for her thoughts. Out of everyone I knew, she was the person closest to what I thought was the ideal moral compass.

"Jun-ho-ya. There's something you're getting wrong."

Ji-won let out a sigh.

"I'm not some superhuman like that, okay? I just try hard too. To keep my promises."

"But... I..."

"I do think you made a mistake. Your thinking went off in the wrong direction, that's true too. But you can just fix it, can't you?"

She spoke gently while laying her hand over mine.

"How could anyone be perfect? Making mistakes, going off track, that's just what it means to be human. Isn't the important part whether you doubt yourself when you're wrong, and whether you're willing to come back when you realize you've gone astray?"

She added that the dark mage wasn't exactly in a position to act as high and mighty as I made him sound either.

"As long as you stay aware of just how special your power is, and keep reminding yourself that it's a power no one else has, I don't think there's a problem. You didn't actually mean to pull that kind of 'deception,' did you?"

"..."

Ji-won had said it plainly, too. That what I did had been a mistake, a kind of deception. That regardless of everything, I shouldn't have talked that way to someone who'd made his own effort to try to save the world.

At the same time, she'd added, you can just fix it. Right. I can just fix it.

"Thanks."

I just needed to get better. I just needed to grow. Realizing I'd gone off track was already a real achievement in itself.

Philosophers always stress the importance of reflecting on yourself. Staying vigilant, and holding onto the will to keep improving, that was all it took.

"Kind of shameless of me to say this myself."

Words like these should come from a third party, really. Saying them myself feels a little embarrassing. It's like clapping for my own performance.

Still, I'm glad. Glad I get the chance to correct my mistake. Being given the chance to fix a mistake at all is a stroke of luck. In that sense, I might be the luckiest person in the world.

"Let's go."

[You have taken damage.]

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

Footsteps. Footsteps.

A dark cave. Footsteps echoed.

"..."

The dark mage pulled out his staff. An intruder. How many...

"One?"

Right. One. The footsteps of a single person. An intruder walking at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, soon arriving at the cave's inner chamber.

At last the intruder's identity was revealed. A man. A young man wearing strange clothes made of cloth. A sword hung at his waist, marking him as a swordsman, but the atmosphere clinging to his body was strangely mysterious.

"Hey."

Clearing his throat, the man spoke first.

"Sorry. I told you that you hadn't done your best."

"...?"

The dark mage stared at the man in bewilderment. Regardless, the man kept going.

"I was... arrogant. I dismissed your effort. I still don't think your way of doing things was the right way, but I shouldn't have said it was the 'wrong way.'"

"What is this, showing up out of nowhere to say something like that?"

"Just because doing my best gets me the best result... I mistakenly assumed it worked the same way for everyone else. I'm sorry."

He bowed his head. The dark mage's fingers, which had been twitching to attack, went still.

"So, in my own way, I want to make this up to you."

The man took off his transparent gloves and pointed toward the cave's exit with his bare hand.

"Let's go outside."

"...?"

"Let's go outside."

He'd done wrong. He'd made a mistake. He'd been arrogant.

The man admitted his own mistake.

But at the same time, that the 'best' he'd talked about, back in that erased span of time, really did exist.

"Let's go kill that Ice Dragon."

He meant to prove it.

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