WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 284

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The regressor fights (3)

"What! That can't be right!"

Choi Ji-won burst out.

"If it works like this, then once the ranking fills up with a hundred players, nobody else can ever climb again! Is that seriously how it works?"

"No, I don't think it's quite that bad, Ji-won."

"...Really?"

"Yeah."

It's called camping the spot, in name, but I doubted the actual structure meant "permanently impossible to climb." That would be unreasonable both for the players and for this Colosseum.

"Rankings like this are usually run on some kind of point system."

I pulled up my wrist device and looked through the rules, or whatever details related to rankings I could find.

"Here it is."

My guess had landed. Sure enough, this Colosseum ran on a point system.

Points system. Score system. Or maybe matchmaking rating. MMR.

Win, and points go up. Lose, and points go down. The size of the gain or loss depends on the difference between the two players' scores. That's the basic method most PVP games use to determine ranking.

Without a system like that, you'd get people farming points off weaker opponents over and over, or barely getting any points even after beating a much stronger opponent. So this was probably the most reasonable way to do it.

"...What does that have to do with camping the spot? What you said earlier."

"Because a system like this usually comes with something built in."

Climbing to rank one through an absurd win streak? Fine. But it's a problem if that person never shows up again.

So if you don't take a match for a certain amount of time, your score drops. You get demoted. No exceptions. As far as I know, even fighting organizations like the UFC strip a champion's title if they go too long without defending it, and most games start docking points after about two weeks of inactivity.

"Look here, this Colosseum has a similar rule."

Except unlike a "game" that demotes you outright once a certain period passes, this Colosseum seemed to shave points off gradually. The amount shaved increasing the longer the inactivity dragged on.

"Either way, the people who cleared this floor already can never come back, so we don't have to worry about it becoming permanently impossible to clear. Their scores will drop eventually, and they'll fall out of the rankings."

"Ahh..."

Choi Ji-won nodded along with her mouth hanging slightly open, then suddenly tilted her head.

"But... if there's a system like that, why are there still so many players in the rankings right now?"

"Hmm... that's..."

There could be several reasons.

"First, not that much time has passed yet."

Not even half a year since the Tower was created. Not nearly enough time for scores to naturally decay. And it would've felt like a waste for the Colosseum to strip someone's rank just because they vanished for a few months.

"...Why are you even thinking about it from the Colosseum's side?"

"If I were running it, that's what I'd do."

"And second."

This "ranking" system doesn't show exact scores. We can only guess based on how the rankings shift, we can't see the actual numbers.

"If my guess is right... there."

Just as I expected, the wall screen had a built-in function to show past rankings too. The interface was different enough from human tech that it took a bit of fumbling, but technology always evolves toward whatever's convenient for the user. I switched the screen back to the exact moment the Empress first appeared in the rankings.

"She started here."

A name sitting at the very bottom of the last page of the rankings. Emperor. Probably the real-world rank one, the Empress.

Every time I flipped the date back one day at a time, the name "Emperor" climbed rank after rank with brutal speed. Then, at some point, it stopped at first place.

"After this, other players' names start showing up little by little too... but here's the thing to notice."

About half the names that used to hold spots in the rankings had disappeared.

"...Didn't you say earlier it takes a long time for a name to vanish?"

"Yeah. So this is probably a different rule."

I quickly worked the wrist device, and the result was exactly what I expected.

"Looks like a name gets wiped entirely on death."

"..."

"So the Empress basically killed off more than half the existing rankers."

Second reason. The Empress slaughtered nearly all the existing rankers, leaving behind a kind of vacuum, which let people who didn't quite deserve it climb into the higher ranks, creating a relatively easier environment for other players to climb through. If your skill's good enough, robbing an empty house is the easiest job there is. Even in normal games, pro gamers know it's smart to farm points whenever they go compete in a tournament.

"And last."

I worked the wall screen again, resetting it back to the current time.

"Look at Michael Zetter here, he's already fallen all the way to rank 300. Looks like he hit exactly rank 100 and bailed, which is probably the normal way to do this."

"...So you're saying those other people aren't normal?"

"In a sense."

Compared to Michael Zetter, who got pushed out of the rankings within just a few months, other players' names had stayed rock solid despite the time that passed. Part of that's probably because Zetter climbed the Tower unusually early, but still.

"Players hit rank 100 and just... didn't leave."

Which meant they'd pushed their score up way more than they needed to.

"Why would they do that? Just hungry for a fight? That doesn't explain why there'd be so many of them."

Staying to fight, to sharpen themselves, to face more hardship? I don't know. Whether there'd really be someone that dead serious about combat. But there were too many players who'd pushed their rank up for it to be simple bloodlust.

"If they were around here during that period, they're top-tier. Top of the top-tier. I think it's entirely possible."

"I guess..."

The Tower had existed for about half a year now. And someone was already at Floor 28... maybe it really was about honing themselves. Digging up more info would probably reveal the truth.

"But Jun-ho, doesn't that mean we're in trouble, going by what you just said?"

Ji-won said, watching me think it over.

"However you slice it, the high-ranked players already left this floor, right? So we can't fight them."

"Right."

"Then raising our score is going to be hard, isn't it? I don't know much, but from what you just explained, beating someone ranked higher than you sounds like the fastest way to climb. And we need to clear this floor as fast as possible."

"...You're smart, Ji-won."

"Don't act so surprised."

Ji-won had nailed the core of it. Normally, to climb rank fast, you need to beat someone stronger than you. But if all the strong ones are gone? That's going to make raising our score a real headache.

"But I don't think we need to see this so negatively either."

Still, I didn't think it was necessarily a disaster.

"Like I said earlier, the Empress cleared out the existing rankers, and players really have been pushing into that gap."

And from what I could tell, that gap still hadn't fully closed.

"There'll be a lot of people trying to ride this opening and boost their rank... and probably no shortage of people with grand ambitions."

"...So what?"

"That means there are a lot of people willing to fight us."

What scared me wasn't losing itself. It was the possibility of not being able to fight at all.

Judging by the Empress and the other rankers before her, this floor's difficulty probably wasn't insanely hard. Given enough time, it could be cleared eventually.

The problem is, I don't want to invest "enough time." I want to hit exactly rank 100 fast and efficiently, and clear this floor. Michael Zetter apparently climbed to Floor 29 within a week, and I wanted to blow through this floor just as fast, in the blink of an eye.

"For that, controlling my strength is essential... and I'll probably need to change my appearance a bit too... there's a lot of little things to handle, but that alone won't be enough."

No matter how close a fight looks, people hesitate against an undefeated warrior. Intelligent beings are smart enough not to charge blindly at an opponent who's never lost once.

"But what if there's bait?"

If there's hope that raising the ranking now could turn you into a ranker? The odds someone would actually fight go way up. That's the angle I was aiming for.

"So, starting now, here's what we're going to do..."

"Hey, you there."

That was when it happened. A swaggering set of footsteps approaching.

"Got a minute?"

Jet black, shaggy hair. Gold-capped front teeth glinting. Chains. Baggy clothes in a style I couldn't place.

I couldn't presume to judge another culture's attire, but the man walking slowly toward us wore clothes that would probably get called "thug-ish" in just about any culture on Earth.

"This one's them this time, huh."

"Hmm."

Not caring whether the creatures around him gawked or not, the man stopped his boots with a sharp double tap on the ground right in front of us and stuck out his hand for a handshake without any preamble.

"Name's Jake. Nice to meet you."

Something I'd only find out later. This guy was a total lunatic, and a slippery one at that.

"Bit sudden, I know, but I've got a proposal for you."

What others called him.

His nickname.

Newbie Lover.

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