WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 290

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The regressor fights (9)

"Yo!"

"Look who's out!"

The moment I stepped into the corridor to go buy information, all sorts of different species welcomed me. Not just beastmen, either. Alien races I'd never seen before showed interest too, tossing out a word or two as I walked past.

Of course, what kind of interest it was, and what exactly they were saying... let's set that aside for now. All that mattered was that I'd caught everyone's attention.

Some of the beastmen didn't stop at just talking. A few of them acted on it too. Beastmen as a species tended to run short-tempered, so watching from a distance clearly wasn't enough for some of them.

"Ah, Jun-ho-nim!"

A bird beastman had been watching from a distance, and the moment the gap closed, she sidled up and rubbed against me. I watched the angle of Choi Ji-won's eyebrows shift in real time and gently pushed the woman off.

"Jun-ho-nim, is it because of that female?"

"No, that's not it."

"Strong males naturally belong to attractive females. Wouldn't someone with feathers as full as mine suit you better than some skinny bitch like her?"

"Hey, hey."

"Hehe. If you have this feather, you can enter my nest. The two of us could have strong children together."

The bird beastman tucked a feather into my hair and left. Other beastmen cheered around us while I checked Choi Ji-won's condition out of the corner of my eye.

"..."

"..."

Choi Ji-won held onto her "beastman enthusiast" persona with superhuman patience, but she couldn't stop the vein bulging on her forehead. She glared at the feather with burning eyes, like she wanted to rip it out and hurl it away right then.

To prevent further disaster, I walked briskly down the corridor. Whoever talked to me, whoever touched me, I ignored all of it and just bought the information I needed. The second we made it back to our room alone, Choi Ji-won yanked the feather out and snapped it in half.

"Jun-ho. I'm asking just in case."

"No, seriously, no. You know that."

"Right?"

"Of course. Feathers are a hard no for me."

Honestly, bird beastmen were a hard no. Feathers just weren't physically possible.

"Not feathers, but regular fur?"

"Let's just check the information we bought."

I pulled up the device and opened the screen so Ji-won could see too. Every time I had a match at the Colosseum these days, the stands filled up completely, and my name always sat near the top of the betting boards. My fight money wasn't small change either. Still, information on the "slaughterer" cost more than half of everything I'd saved up, even before he'd earned his full reputation.

"I can't believe the price of information only goes up the further along we get here."

"...Jun-ho?"

"Good thing we could still afford it at this point. If we move further into the future, the information itself will be richer, sure, but the price might climb to something we can't even handle."

"Jun-ho?"

The information the Colosseum sold came as a file, but formatted like a paper book. No texture to it, but you could flip through the hologram pages by hand. Since it was inconvenient for two people to read a paper-book format together, we converted it into a normal file. PDF-style, I guess you'd call it.

"Whoa, look at this. There's a photo right on the first page."

"...Let me see."

Choi Ji-won finally focused on the device screen. Just like I said, a large photo was attached to the first page of the report.

A bespectacled, scholarly-looking wolf beastman. He was grinning wide in the photo. My eye for judging beastmen had improved a lot lately, and by that standard, this one counted as good-looking. Bright eyes, clean teeth. Ears perked up in a way that probably drew plenty of female attention.

I found myself quietly impressed, and flipped straight to the next page.

"..."

"..."

Labeled "Most Recent Appearance," the photo showed a beastman so gaunt he barely looked like the same creature from the previous page. Eyes sunken deep, all the sheen gone from his fur, eyes burning with a strange, feverish light. What had done this to him?

"...Let's read it."

I swallowed and turned the page. Know the enemy, know yourself, and victory is never in doubt. Time to understand the enemy.

-The name this individual registered under at the Colosseum: Guntar.

-Analysis indicates the registered name 'Guntar' means 'trickster' in the beastman language. Presumed to be an alias.

"Hmm."

The report said his registered name was Guntar.

Guntar. Guntar, huh. Since it wasn't his real name anyway, no point worrying about it. I flipped the file forward naturally.

-The individual Guntar registered at the Colosseum 1,411 days ago.

-Prior record: 71 wins, 0 losses. Used a different style of martial art in every one of those 71 wins.

-Possesses extremely broad martial arts knowledge and skill, and gained major popularity as a result. Peak ranking: 51st.

"Ho."

The file included a photo of Guntar offering a hand to a fallen human opponent. Looked like a shot of him helping the loser up after a win. Cool smile, glasses catching the light. Up to this point, at least, he didn't seem to hold any ill will toward humans.

"So that's why he was carrying around that whole bag of weapons."

Ji-won had a point. If you could use a wide range of weapons, it made sense to carry all of those things around with you.

"But is this even possible?"

A question surfaced at the same time. Could one person actually master 71 different martial arts? Racking up 71 wins at the Colosseum meant his skill level had to sit well above baseline for each one. Beastmen supposedly lived longer than humans naturally, but from what I understood, only about twice as long. And Guntar was clearly young.

"Is this some kind of ability?"

"Let's read more first."

-The individual Guntar returned to his home planet 1,344 days ago. Colosseum Management made some form of proposal, which the individual declined.

-A subsequent agreement was reached: the individual Guntar would fight one match at the Colosseum per year.

-The individual Guntar has repeated this pattern annually, coming to fight one match and then returning to his home planet.

"Hmm."

The file included a photo of Guntar smiling after defeating some tentacled alien. Nothing unusual so far. I turned the page again.

-■■ days ago. The individual Guntar attacked the individual 'Empress.' Declared he would fight to the death.

"What?"

-Presumed cause: dozens of beastmen killed by 'Empress,' the majority from Guntar's home planet.

-Management recommended the individual 'Empress' ignore the challenge, but Empress immediately requested a match.

-Management ruled the match confidential. (Footage unavailable for viewing.)

-The individual 'Guntar' lost.

"..."

"..."

That was where the file ended. We'd paid a fortune for this information, but so much of it had been left out.

Why was the match kept confidential? How did Guntar lose? The Empress killed every loser without exception, so how had Guntar survived? And why had the survivor ended up looking like... that? Way too little information.

"This leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

Still, I'd learned one thing for certain. The Empress bore a huge share of the responsibility for what the slaughterer had become.

The one they called the "Empress," ranked first overall, had a reputation as a certified lunatic. But also, apparently, one who didn't pick fights unless provoked first. The fact that reality kept unfolding smoothly proved as much.

Did her mercy only extend to fellow players? Or did beastmen fall outside her boundaries simply because they weren't humanoid? No idea. If I ever met the Empress, I'd ask her then.

I'd gotten an important clue.

"The deaths of beastmen from his home planet."

'Trickster' turning into 'the slaughterer' was connected to the deaths of his own people.

If you're wondering, "Wait, didn't he think to just ask the other beastmen?" Yes. I did. Long before this. I'd already tried it in a previous cycle.

"You're a wolf beastman, right?"

"So what?"

"By any chance, do you know how you're connected to the 'slaughterer' who's famous these days..."

In the previous cycle, I went around hunting down "wolf beastmen" active at the Colosseum. I grabbed them one by one and kept asking if they knew anything.

The answers were all pretty much the same.

"Hey, human. Your skin's yellow, right?"

"...Please just say 'yellow.'"

"Whatever, roughly yellow. White. Black. Categories like that exist, right? Since your skin's yellow, do you know every single other yellow-skinned person out there? Are you all from the same hometown? You speak the beastman language and you don't even get something this basic?"

"..."

Fair point. This was the largest Colosseum in the entire universe. Assuming two people knew each other just because they were both wolf beastmen was about as ignorant as saying, "Aren't Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people all friends with each other?"

So the me from the previous cycle had failed spectacularly. Got nothing useful out of it.

"Oh, Jun-ho. What's up?"

"So, I have a favor to ask."

This cycle was different. I'd become popular among the beastmen for being an oddball. I had their support.

On top of that, I had an additional clue this time. "Wolf beastman" wasn't the key detail. Being from the same home planet was what mattered. (This was something I could have reasoned out logically, but the me from the previous cycle just hadn't understood beastmen well enough yet. Didn't even know how much weight they put on shared origin.)

Riding the wave of widespread support, I went around asking beastmen for information.

About two days passed.

"I'm... actually from that planet."

I found a beastman who shared Guntar's home planet. Not a wolf beastman. A cat beastman. As it happened, one I'd fought before. Think I'd given him some jelly.

"Could you tell me the details?"

"...As far as I know."

And with that, the truth behind the "slaughterer" was about to come to light.

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