WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 286

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The regressor fights (5)

Korean is a strange language. Even a single word like "silence" can carry wildly different feelings depending on the context.

"...?"

Ji-won's silence, if I had to refine it into words, was closer to a "Huh?" silence. The kind you hear when someone says something you've never heard before, when someone drops a bombshell, the kind that asks, "What's that supposed to mean? Explain more."

"..."

Jake's silence, meanwhile—presumably an angel's silence—was an anxious one. His pupils widened, his eyes wavered, his body froze, and the coffee he'd been sipping the whole time went untouched from that moment on.

That's when I was sure. Yeah, this thing is an angel. If Jake had been a genuine thug, he would've gotten angry here, or cocked his head asking what I was talking about. In novels, the other party usually gets flustered but manages to compose their expression again within 0.1 seconds, and the sharp protagonist catches that split second. This angel was too much of an amateur for any of that composure to kick in at all.

This is why being a regressor is nice. Even if I pulled some bizarre stunt, I could clean it up after. If I hadn't been a regressor and blurted out something like this? Well... I don't know. I'd have had to lean into the crazy-person routine. Beyond that point, it's uncharted territory.

"That's. A strange. Thing to say."

Jake finally answered. Yes, Jake said it. Not some drone floating in midair.

"I came. To make. A proposal. If you don't need it, get lost."

Except the words came out so choppy it wouldn't have seemed out of place if a drone had said it instead, his expression was completely twisted, and his eyes held the look of a pleading cat. In other words, he was flustered out of his mind.

"I don't. Really understand. What you're. Saying."

Even the most oblivious person alive would've caught on by this point. This guy was begging me right now. Please, just play dumb. Give me a break, just this once. I was wrong.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Ji-won, hold on a sec."

Here another question came to me. Why was he hiding his identity? And why couldn't he just admit it? Why did he have to resort to this kind of nonverbal expression?

To just chalk it up as some weirdo angel staying in character felt... too desperate for that. Every angel I'd met so far had been polite, but there'd always been an underlying distance beneath it, some baseline sense of intimacy toward humanity, sure, but with a wall built in. The only exception was Anael. Was this guy the second exception?

If I didn't think so, there had to be a "reason." A reason he couldn't reveal himself as an angel. A reason he couldn't say it with his own mouth.

On every floor so far, angels had always revealed themselves confidently. White robes, gleaming halos, wings spread wide, volunteering as guides right off the bat. This was the first angel who didn't want to admit being an angel.

So why? What was it? Why couldn't he reveal that he was an angel?

"..."

Back on Floor 23, or was it 24, the one with the ghosts. The angel had drawn the word "sorry" out of me, and felt relief as a result. Because it would reduce their own share of the blame in whatever disciplinary procedure came later.

What I could tell from that was, angels were under some degree of surveillance. They had autonomy, but they were also controlled at the same time.

"Hmm."

If that's the case, it made sense to assume this angel had slipped free of that control. It made sense to think he'd temporarily escaped surveillance. For that, he'd have put on clothes no angel would ever wear, dyed his hair a shaggy black mess, and made his eyes look nasty and mean.

Again, for what? Why go through all this trouble?

"Elixir."

The one true thing among everything he'd said. His identity, his name, his appearance, all of it was probably a lie, but that single piece of information wasn't.

The Colosseum had management, and you could get an Elixir from them. It made sense to see this as the real bait.

"Anyway, go on ahead. Make sure you add me first."

"Are you. Accepting. The proposal?"

"I said, go on."

"Understood."

He left in a hurry. I didn't check his back, but the rear of that baggy outfit looked awfully suspicious. Like something was stuffed inside it.

"Wait, that guy was actually an angel? He was pretty unpleasant to be around, but..."

Once the angel had left, Ji-won asked quietly.

"I threw it out as a guess too, and it landed."

"Whoa..."

"And from what I can tell, that angel... seems to want something out of the process of us getting the Elixir."

The Elixir. That thing was close to impossible to obtain.

I talk a big game about aiming for a "perfect" clear, but I can't test every single possible variation. Most hidden pieces demand behavior close to eccentric, and often can't be obtained by moving through the floor normally. I can't just sit down and stand up a thousand times on the off chance there's a hidden piece somewhere, or start digging up the ground. Trying every single possibility like that would just take... too long.

So out of everything, we'd only ever gotten three Elixirs total. One on Floor 2, and one each for me and Ji-won on Floor 4. Since then, I hadn't even seen the letter E of Elixir. It might've been hidden somewhere, but if so, I'd never found it.

And now, here, an Elixir? That meant the hidden piece tied to "management" had to be brutally difficult, something an ordinary mind couldn't reach.

And that angel had... spoiled this critical piece of information. He'd leaked, in advance, the single most important reward on this entire floor. Common sense said that shouldn't be allowed at all. It was basically a game developer spoiling their own ending.

"And he did it anyway."

The risk to that angel, Jake, had to be huge. Just like Anael had feared, if he got caught, some kind of "punishment" would follow. And he did it anyway.

"The reason for that..."

"What is it, what is it?"

Ji-won asked, eyes sparkling.

"That's what I've got to find out now."

"...What?"

That, I'd have to figure out from here. I didn't have nearly enough information, and my guesses might be wrong. Either way, all I needed to remember was this.

"There's an Elixir on this floor."

And.

"In the process of us getting the Elixir... the angel wants something."

The Elixir was tempting as hell, but I decided to clear Floor 28 first. Only after that would I make contact with management, or go after the Elixir, whichever came first. Apparently you needed to be in the upper ranks to even meet management anyway. Unless I regressed.

"Match me up as fast as possible, please. Anyone's fine."

"Yes! Registration complete!"

My current ranking sat somewhere around 950,000th. Ending a match in one second must've left an impression, because my rank had climbed quite a bit since. Still, from here on, I'd need to hold back for the sake of my reputation.

Of course, the fighting was easy. Too easy, honestly.

"Human, you..." gwuck!

"Ha, with soft meat like that..." kwahk!

"The secret arts I trained back home..." kyaak!

The mid to low tier couldn't handle me. I had the edge in physical ability, and the edge in combat technique too.

"How's my staff technique!"

Of course, a few along the way were technically excellent. Ones a bit short on physical stats, but whose weapon handling itself was fluid and disciplined. Ones who'd clearly honed their skill over a long time.

"Ugh... take my treasured aura!"

"No, wait, this is way too easy to just call 'treasured'..." kwaaaahk!!!

Even those types couldn't withstand my chill. I'll say it again: the chill stops anything below a certain threshold cold. To put it bluntly, it was a technique specialized for farming the weak, and the people I was up against were exactly that, the weak.

"...You're that Choi Ji-won's companion, aren't you."

"Yeah. That's me."

As I racked up win after win, other players started approaching me. Not to fight, just out of what seemed like pure curiosity.

"You're pretty strong."

"More than pretty, I'd say."

According to the player I'd met, there were only about ten or so players currently on Floor 28. All strong, all confident in their skill. Top-tier even among the top-tier. The people leading humanity forward.

Staying on Floor 28, I ended up running into these types often enough.

"Ah, you're Choi Ji-won-nim."

Some of them had a decent amount of sociability and looked perfectly normal.

"...You definitely got work done."

"Excuse me?"

"You fake, disgusting bitch."

"...Hey. What did you just say?"

Then there were the ones who seemed to have something genuinely wrong upstairs. Did unusual people tend to have good traits, or did the crazy ones among people with good traits just climb the Tower faster? I couldn't say.

Either way, my ranking climbed fast. Obviously, since I never lost. My win rate stayed locked at 100 percent. I said I was holding back, but plenty of opponents sensed the gap between us and forfeited preemptively. My acting must've been pretty terrible.

Maybe thanks to that insane record. Or maybe thanks to my sheer strength. I got famous fast, and despite my rank being relatively low, a fair amount of fight money started rolling in. Meaning more gamblers were paying attention to my matches. People were watching me.

By the time three days had passed and my rank hit somewhere around 10,000th.

"Wait, why isn't my match getting scheduled?"

"Your opponent, Kortu-nim, says he's sick."

"...Checked the device, and it looked like he was out drinking and partying last night."

"He says he's caught a hangover..."

"...That's the fourth time now."

Slowly, cases of people avoiding matches with me started popping up. If my rank climbed any higher, the ones hungry for first place would probably come at me directly. But sitting in this awkward spot, upper tier but not quite top tier, people just dodged matches with me outright.

Anyone scheduled to fight me would suddenly fall ill, get into an accident, or have to rush back to their home planet because a family member was sick. I asked whether they could just match me against a top-100 ranker instead, but apparently that wasn't allowed by the rules either. A higher rank could name a lower rank as opponent, but a lower rank naming a higher rank wasn't permitted.

"Ugh..."

Feeling like this couldn't go on, I was mulling it over in the small sleeping quarters assigned to me, essentially a private room, when.

"Jun-ho."

"Yeah, what's up?"

Ji-won, her expression hardened, spoke up carefully.

"A player... apparently died in a fight."

"What?"

Another player's death.

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