WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 274

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The regressor proves himself (14)

"Feed the dragon an elixir and... heal it?"

"Yeah."

"Then what?"

"We talk. We figure something out. It's not like we've tried it before."

"Hmmm..."

My "throw the elixir at it" plan didn't seem to sit well with Choi Ji-won, but she agreed there was nothing left to try.

"Killing it isn't an option, so I guess we don't have a choice. But Jun-ho."

"Yeah?"

"If this fails too... what then?"

"..."

Choi Ji-won didn't add anything else, but her point was clear enough.

This might not be the "right answer" I'd been searching for. We didn't need to defeat the dragon. We weren't saving anyone's life. We weren't fighting to protect something precious. She just didn't want me spending any more of my sanity on this.

"Then I'll give up, I guess."

I understood exactly where that worry came from, so I nodded without pushing back. I wasn't going to obsess over something that couldn't be done. There was plenty else to do.

Only then did Choi Ji-won smile, satisfied, and pull a small glass bottle from inside her coat.

"Let's try it."

An elixir.

There was nothing special about the idea of just throwing the elixir straight into its mouth. That thing was stupid, it kept its mouth wide open every time it tried to roar, and we'd already reached the point where we could beat it in a fight.

I didn't mind spending the elixir either. When I regressed later, it would come back. All I had to do was watch how this attempt ended, then regress. Everything worked that way for me, a regressor. The only cost I ever paid was my own sanity. Which, depending on how you looked at it, made it precious enough.

So after another round of the tedious process — convincing the players again, convincing the Captain, convincing the black mage, mobilizing the villagers —

"Straight at it!"

We finally stood face to face with the Ice Dragon. The pressure it gave off still made my skin crawl. How to put it... not so much fear as some instinctive urge to recoil. That was closer to it. Recoil.

"---!"

But no matter the gap in power, a dragon that had lost its intelligence and fallen this low was nothing more than a giant beast. A pitiful animal being hunted down helplessly by humans. I'll give you your mind back.

"Dodge, now!"

"Got it!"

Killing a dragon was hard, thanks to that tough hide and those sharp claws, but throwing an elixir into its mouth was much, much easier. All I had to do was dodge its snapping jaws and slip the elixir in. I threw the bottle, glass and all, straight into the dragon's snapping mouth.

"Back off!"

"Got it!"

We put some distance between us. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

"...Did it work?"

"What's happening?"

The Ice Dragon's thrashing slowed. Players were climbing up from the base of the mountain, unable to resist their curiosity after watching from below.

"..."

"..."

At some point the dragon stopped moving entirely. Only its breathing remained, loud and ragged. Its eyes were shut, and the white powder it had been shedding was gone. Was its reason coming back? Why wasn't it moving? The dragon lay flat on the ground, still as if asleep, and stayed exactly where it was until the players waiting in the village arrived.

"Did it work?"

"What's going on here?"

"Well, so..."

-...

Just as I started to explain, I heard something. Like a heartbeat. Like a drum.

"...Uh."

A massive jewel hovered right in front of my face. No, not a jewel. A reptile's pupil. The dragon had opened its eyes.

'This place...'

The dragon murmured. Just that alone seemed to shake something deep in my chest. Like standing in front of an enormous speaker.

"Did the dragon just talk?"

"I think... it did."

Not through a voice, but through some kind of mana pulse. Still, the dragon's reason had returned. The plan had worked.

'No, wait, this is, ah, ah, no, no, this can't be...'

"What's wrong with it?"

But something was off. The moment its reason returned, the dragon threw both claws up to clutch its head and looked up at the sky, desperate.

'No, it can't be, because of me, all this time, no, ah, aaaaah!!!'

"Dragon! Hey!"

'I'm sorry, ancestral spirits, I'm, I'm sorry!!!'

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The ground shook hard. The dragon was slamming its head against the earth. I couldn't read a reptile's expression, but that voice carried despair, terror, and regret all at once.

'It's me, it's my fault, ah.'

We kept calling out to it, but the dragon didn't seem to hear. Or maybe it heard and simply ignored us.

"So that's how it was."

The black mage spoke quietly.

"The Golden Dragon must have swallowed something it shouldn't have. Losing its mind like that can't have been the intended result. The strongest dragon, consumed by cold, plunging the continent into crisis... and as a result, the world got folded into the Tower. No wonder it feels guilt."

'Ah, aaah...'

No matter how many times it slammed its head down, the dragon's hard body didn't take so much as a scratch. But its pupils changed. Something in them went hollow.

'I'm sorry, everyone.'

The dragon spoke. Almost to itself. And right after, its heart stopped. The mana that could freeze the world scattered into nothing. Instead of everything freezing over, snow began to fall from the sky. Pure white snow.

That was the end. The dragon never moved again. Probably forever.

[Impossible Achievement!]

[Calculating reward. Please wait a moment.]

"..."

"..."

A cold silence settled over everyone. Who could have guessed that the moment the dragon's mind returned, it would ignore every word we said and simply kill itself?

And an impossible achievement, on top of that? It did seem impossible, honestly. Getting hold of the elixir was one problem, and getting it into the dragon's mouth was an entirely different one. What an absurd turn of events.

"It's done now!"

The one who broke the silence first, surprisingly, was the Captain.

"Lower the ward! Let's check outside!"

"..."

"So what if asking the dragon something didn't work out! This is enough, isn't it!"

"He's right."

The black mage agreed readily and swept his staff through the air. The translucent ward slowly faded away.

"Over there."

Everyone turned their tense eyes toward where the black mage pointed. Right at the spot where the ward ended stood a fairly large wooden building.

"...Let's go take a look."

The group headed for the wooden building in an odd, uneasy mood. There was no one inside.

"There's a lot of stuff here."

"Hmm."

There were plenty of documents that could piece together the situation. While the other players stood there confused, not understanding what was going on, I picked up one of the scattered papers and read it closely.

"He failed."

"..."

According to the documents... the plan had failed. The disciple wasn't as capable as the master, wasn't fit to be the one to seal the Ice Dragon. The pages were filled with one man's despair, terror, and bitter grief.

The black mage's fifteen hundred years had been... completely meaningless. He hadn't stopped the ruin.

"Look at this!"

Only then did the Captain shout, triumphant.

"Your plan failed! We were used by you! You're garbage! You deserve to die! Agree with me!"

The Captain jabbed a finger into the black mage's chest again and again, spitting out his anger. But the black mage ignored the Captain completely and looked at me instead.

"Regressor, you were wrong. I failed."

"..."

"But I'll admit it. Like you said... there might have been a better way. Maybe if I'd poured the continent's full strength into curing the dragon instead... the world wouldn't have ended. You were right. My method wasn't the best one."

The black mage nodded. He admitted it, calmly, that his method hadn't been the best.

"Hey! You idiot! You! You need to die!"

"But I said from the start. Success or failure never mattered to me. I did this for my own satisfaction."

Yet the black mage looked nowhere near defeated. If anything, some other emotion, far from despair, seemed to bloom in him.

"Artificial life forms don't hold souls."

The black mage said slowly.

"None of these people were made. They're just slightly unusual humans, that's all."

"What are you trying to say!"

The black mage's wrinkled face shifted, little by little.

"My goal was always twofold."

His eyes narrowed.

"Recognition from those who climb the Tower. A last flailing attempt to do something worthwhile with the one chance I had left."

His cheeks lifted.

"And revenge against those bastards."

It was a chilling, grotesque expression, but if it had to be named, it was something close to a smile.

"Regressor. I probably deceived you."

He said this looking straight at me.

"Did I tell you a black mage invaded our clan? Judging by your face, I did. The one who invaded was my grandfather's grandfather. His goal was to wipe out the clan and take my body for a new life. He said the bloodline had to continue for a body-switch to work."

"..."

"In the end I managed to kill him, but it left a bitter taste. Yes, I, along with my entire clan, was raised for that purpose. To be used by someone else. Isn't that just wonderfully awful? Being raised with a purpose from the moment you're born."

A strange sound came from him. Air leaking from a balloon? No. It was laughter. The black mage was laughing.

"Y-you bastard...!"

"Delightful, isn't it."

Laughing with that wheezing breath, the black mage reached over and patted the Captain's back, the Captain frozen stiff, overwhelmed by the mood.

"So I got my own revenge too. I decided to end this cursed clan with me. In the most noble way I could manage."

"Don't tell me..."

"That's right. These people, all of them, are my children. My own blood. Where do you think their genes came from? Where do you think their souls came from? Everyone inside this ward is the last bloodline of our clan."

The black mage went on.

"Failure stings. It's painful. So in whatever timeline vanished before this one, I probably said some things meant to hurt you. I'm not the type to accept losing gracefully. But it's fine. Even half a success is something, isn't it?"

"..."

"Trusting everything a man like me says is its own problem, but at least this part was sincere. I meant to die from the start. And I am a wicked man."

What happens to a soul offered to a demon? Was the "mercy" the black mage showed the warriors' clan real mercy at all? Inside that mental world, was everything he said actually true? Just as I twisted logic to win an argument, hadn't the black mage twisted his own logic too?

"The reason I helped you was so I could watch that bastard fall into despair. That's all there was to it."

This place was a massive grave, an altar offering his own clan to a demon, and the black mage's final act of self-satisfaction.

It was his last gambit, serving the world and taking revenge on his own clan at the same time.

I couldn't call the black mage purely evil. But he definitely wasn't a good man either. People were never meant to fit into a single word. I'd forgotten that.

"So when the time comes, I'll die soon enough anyway. Go on. I want to savor this moment."

The black mage burst into wild laughter. The Captain stared at him, dumbfounded. In the distance, the villagers were approaching.

"..."

I felt I no longer had any right to interfere, so I simply walked away in silence.

It felt like I'd come too far to judge who was right and who was wrong.

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