WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 277

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The regressor advances (3)

"...Zetter?"

"Zetter, did you say?"

Everyone who'd been quietly murmuring among themselves turned their heads at once. Choi Ji-won's arrival had been big news, but Michael Zetter showing up was a different kind of story entirely. If Ji-won felt like a celebrity, Zetter felt like a politician.

"...Aren't you supposed to be in the middle of a war?"

"I found some time to spare."

Zetter sat down naturally, poured soju into an empty paper cup, and knocked it back in one go. He seemed to be copying what he'd seen others do.

"On the rooftop. Could I have a word. Ji-won-nim, and Jun-ho-nim."

He spoke seriously.

"...Sure."

We nodded.

The sky was dim. Dawn was near, which meant the wind on the rooftop cut cold.

"..."

"..."

This kind of cold was nothing, but the chill in the air felt like it was giving shape to the temperature of our mood.

"You probably wouldn't die even if you jumped from here."

Michael Zetter murmured, looking down over the edge of the roof, as though it were nothing at all.

"Isn't it strange, how unfamiliar that feels. The fact that we've drifted so far from being human."

"How did you find out we were here?"

Our guard was up for a simple reason.

How had Michael Zetter gotten here? An uninvited guest nobody had called, showing up out of nowhere.

"One of the people Park Cheol-jin-nim invited posted it on social media."

"...Ah."

"They deleted it right away, but our intelligence is quite good."

Zetter revealed the source without hesitation. But that wasn't an explanation.

"Knowing is different from showing up. Let me rephrase the question. Why did you come?"

In this cycle, I hadn't had any conversation with Michael Zetter or Dok Su-hee about this. Our last meeting had ended right after I gave out the Medal.

Why, then? Why show up now, without a word, this suddenly?

"I came because there's a question I want to ask. I had the feeling time might be running short."

Zetter dropped the crumpled paper cup he'd been holding this whole time over the edge of the roof.

"I'm aware this is sudden. But this really is my last request."

He pulled an elixir from his coat and set it down in front of Ji-won and me.

"This is..."

"An elixir. It belonged to a player who went through Floor 4 with Ji-won-nim."

"..."

"Please. Could you hear the whole story first, and then answer my question?"

"And this is the price for it?"

"That's right."

I knew the value of an elixir better than anyone else here. Even for someone like Michael Zetter, an elixir was a massive expense.

"...Fine. I'll listen. I'll worry about the question after."

Which was exactly why I was curious. What could he possibly want to tell me, that he'd hand over something this precious just to make sure I heard it out?

"What I'm about to tell you."

The story he wanted to tell.

"Is a story about my past."

A story about himself.

Plenty of people knew the man named Michael Zetter. And the words used to describe him were just as varied.

"Michael Zetter? Hate to say it, but that guy's not right in the head. Showed up alone to prom, spent three hours just eating snacks, then left without a word. You know what's actually scary though? The number of girls who had their eye on him could've filled a whole school bus. Oh, and guys too."

A high school classmate.

"Zetter? That guy carried a 1.5-liter bottle of coke around camp like it was a can. Asked him why he bought the huge size, and he said bigger was more cost-efficient. Then one day donuts went on sale and he bought a whole box and ate nothing but donuts for three days straight. Is that even human?"

A fellow soldier.

"Zetter, Zetter, huh... Sergeant Zetter's a weirdo. First time I ever saw a man chew on larvae in the jungle because they're protein-rich. Wasn't even like we were out of food. Cold combat rations might taste like garbage, but they're still better than larvae, aren't they?"

A special forces team leader.

Whenever people described Michael Zetter, the words "weirdo" or "efficiency" never failed to come up.

He cared about efficiency to an obsessive degree, pulled stunts nobody could make sense of, and never cared what anyone thought of him.

But at the same time.

"Zetter's just, like, hilarious. He drops these random weird jokes out of nowhere, and it's just absurdly funny... you know what I mean? The joke itself isn't funny, it's just, the guy himself is funny, so it ends up funny."

He'd gone to prom alone and still walked away Prom King at Trout High, the school's biggest social star.

"You can trust Zetter. Even on his first time doing something, even on the hard jobs, he'd just get it done. Whenever something big went wrong, you'd just think, well, it'll work out, Zetter's here... That kind of relief. Juniors followed him, seniors trusted him. That's the kind of man he was."

The one man the entire unit trusted without question.

"Zetter's... a true patriot. Loves the weak, protects justice, always does his duty. The kind of man who looks like he walked straight out of a comic book."

When it came time to form the Player Association to manage the people summoned to the Tower, he'd gotten an overwhelming number of recommendations for the president's seat despite his relatively young age, purely because people trusted him that much.

Michael Zetter was.

"Will you take the president's seat?"

"I will. For my country."

A man who deserved to be called a hero.

The first Tutorial to ever occur on the planet Earth targeted Americans. Whether it was pure chance, or because the country held the greatest national power, or some other reason, nobody knew.

"Where are we? My phone's not working!"

"I'm suing over this. I have a meeting right now!"

But it was an undeniable fact that 201 Americans, including retired special forces operator Michael Zetter, were summoned into the center of some clearing.

"...Status window?"

"Wh, what is this!"

And that they'd all woken up at almost the same moment.

Later, people would come to call it the First Tutorial. That the survivors of this particular Tutorial tended to have unusually strong traits was later accepted as something close to established fact. The same reason explained why America managed to pull ahead in the player industry down the line.

Even people born with such exceptional talent weren't in their right minds the moment they woke up. In a situation like this, even the ones who could pretend to keep their heads straight were themselves no ordinary people.

"Everyone, your attention please!"

"Wh, what is it."

"I'm a former Delta Force operator and military specialist, Michael Zetter! The current situation is suspected to be a terrorist incident, so I'd like everyone to gather here! I'll walk you through the relevant guidelines!"

And Michael Zetter was one of those no ordinary people.

Officially, a unit called Delta Force didn't exist. And former special forces operators weren't supposed to reveal their identities. But Michael Zetter ignored every one of these fine details. This was an emergency, and what mattered now was moving efficiently.

Zetter's steady, settled eyes swept the surroundings fast.

"Save, please save me..."

"What's going on? Does this have something to do with the government?"

About 180 or so civilians showed extreme panic and clinging dependency.

"..."

"..."

About 20 or so people, whether from training or sheer willpower, managed to keep some grip on themselves, staying at a distance and focusing on Michael Zetter.

"My head, my head is..."

"Hm."

One person swayed excessively. One stayed excessively calm. In total, there were roughly 200 people here.

"First, everyone stay calm! Plenty of civilians lose their lives from acting rashly because they can't handle their own panic! Calming your mind comes first! Look at me! Look at my muscles! Even someone like me dies if I get shot. If that's true for me, what do you think happens to you?"

"Oh, ohh..."

"Just as I thought..."

Even with all two hundred pairs of eyes locked on him, Michael Zetter's voice held steady. His eyes flashed sharp, his manner stayed firm. He still had enough composure left to throw in a little humor. That overwhelming self-assurance settled into rock-solid trust for people who were seconds from losing their minds.

Good God.

Of course, it was all an act. He'd stepped up because he knew a leader needed to stay unshaken especially at a time like this, but the truth was Zetter knew just as little as anyone else. He was spitting out textbook lines to calm the chaos in front of him, but inside, his mind was more tangled than anyone's.

I don't remember the moment of abduction. This isn't any ecosystem I recognize. There's no trace of surveillance equipment. And aside from nationality, the abducted show no other common thread. Where is this, and what do they want?

"If terrorists show up, comply first. There isn't much we can do right now. Our goal for now is to buy time until rescue arrives from our home country..."

His head and his mouth were running on separate tracks. On the surface, Zetter looked flawless, and what he said was textbook-correct. That would've been true, if this were an ordinary kidnapping and terror situation.

"Hello! Greetings to all you lowly humans currently wasting your lives away in style!"

"...A fairy?"

"The tooth fairy?"

"No, what in the world..."

Zetter had always thought of himself as living a life different from other people's, a strange one. But even that didn't compare to what he was experiencing now.

"One of you needs to clear Floor 66 of this Tower. Otherwise humanity will be de... de... what was it. Ah, destroyed! Got it?"

"My tongue trips up since it's my first time," the fairy muttered, then dropped a huge pile of weapons in the middle of the clearing and vanished.

<Tutorial Stage>
-Clear Condition 1: If you swallow a Golden Marble hidden somewhere in the forest, you may proceed to the next stage. Only fifty Golden Marbles exist.
-Clear Condition 2: If you defeat the boss, the Goblin Shaman, a portal to the next stage will appear.

"...Is this for real?"

"...Not terrorism?"

Zetter's warning about being careful with firearms melted away into thin air. Guns weren't the problem anymore.

A strange silence followed soon after. There were several reasons for it, but the biggest one was simply not knowing what to do. People fiddled uselessly with weapons, poked through the brush, or traded pointless talk about escaping, but none of it had any direction.

About twenty minutes passed like that.

"Ah! Everyone! I forgot something!"

The fairy from before reappeared.

"Everyone say 'status window.' That's it for me!"

It handed down that strange piece of knowledge and vanished again, as though it had never existed in the first place.

"...Should we trust what that thing said?"

"You're former special forces, so... I'll trust your judgment."

"What in the world is happening here?"

Every eye turned back to Zetter. Nobody had ever heard of, let alone been taught, a situation like this. It was completely unknown territory.

"Well, it's not like we'd die trying, right? Let's just go for it. Status window."

Zetter decided to take the risky step. Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary methods.

And then.

"...Huh?"

Everything changed.

"Kuhahahahaha!"

There was a man standing on one finger, upside down, lifting his whole body.

"Ho."

There was a woman spinning a spear so fast it whistled through the air.

"Wait, what is this..."

There was a boy, stunned into blankness, holding a book bigger than his own body. The concept of supernatural power wasn't exactly unfamiliar to Americans. Considering the "superhero" originated in America, none of this was too strange.

Everyone's abilities turned out to be something special. Something remarkable. But even among all of them, Zetter's ability stood out clearly.

The trait Zetter had gained was called Adaptation. Grade SSS.

The effect of the Adaptation trait was simple. He could adapt his own body to fit any situation.

Strengthening his own body was the basic part. He could harden his skin, optimize his skeleton and organs for running, or drastically slow his life functions so he could survive without food.

"Good God."

"Whyyyyyy areeeee youuuuu likeeeee thaaaaat, Zetterrrrrr?"

"The world feels slow to me."

He could make his brain run at hyper speed so that time felt slower to him.

This power called Adaptation made possible the kind of extreme bodily modification people could only ever imagine. He could reshape his own body into whatever kind of superhuman the situation called for. There were side effects that came with it, but they were within tolerable limits.

"Kieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegeuuuuuuuuu."

Watching the yellowed teeth of a small goblin slowly closing in.

"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!"

Blocking a bigger goblin's attack with skin hardened tough as steel.

With legs and arms he'd adapted, using knowledge learned during his special forces years, he crushed his enemies one by one.

Hmm.

In that slowed-down time, Michael Zetter thought.

...This. Might actually be more efficient if I just clear the Tower myself, fast.

That maybe, just maybe, he himself was the strongest there was.

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