WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 293

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The regressor fights (12)

The "Newbie Lover," almost certainly an angel. Jake. In my estimation, the odds were 99% or higher, even by a conservative count.

"Guntar."

"What?"

"You guys did something to Guntar."

"...I'm not sure what you mean."

"The wolf beastman. Why are you playing dumb?"

And like I said before, early-cycle me was invincible. No accumulated story weight, no risk tied to regression. There was a lot I could get away with, and basically nothing I was accountable for.

"You're an angel."

"N-no, I'm not."

"Just say it straight. Why'd you do it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Take your clothes off."

"I don't remember anything."

I pressed hard, demanding he admit he was an angel. And matching my effort, Jake denied it just as fiercely. His fingers twitched like he wanted to use some kind of angelic power, but it seemed he couldn't, not while he was pretending to be "part of the Tower."

This could go on forever. Without hearing the full story from the angel's own mouth, I wasn't getting anywhere.

What could I use here...

"Ah."

I remembered I had something useful and pulled a small ring out of my pocket.

"Hey. You know what this is?"

"T-that's...!"

"I did stuff with, huh? You know, Raphael. Me and him. We go way back, man."

The ring the archangel Raphael had given me back on Floor 2. I shoved it right up in front of his face like it was some token of goodwill between us.

"I'm not here to hurt anyone. I just want to help. Look at this, see?"

"..."

"I'm on your side. I can help. Is there something I can do for you? Huh?"

It was true an archangel had given me the ring, but it was a reward, nothing close to a token of friendship. Under normal circumstances he probably would have ignored me.

"A-are you serious...?"

This angel, judging by how hard he was committing to the thug cosplay, was clearly cornered. Something had him in a real bind. His tone suddenly turned polite.

"Ngh... all right, fine. Follow me."

He led me deep into the massive building, then stopped in front of an old door. A wooden door had no business existing in a sci-fi, modern building like this.

"Come in."

I opened the door and stepped inside. Total darkness. Wasn't this like what I saw on Floor 25? A blank void of nothing. He'd probably brought me here to dodge surveillance.

"So. Why's Floor 28 like this?"

I was inwardly rattled, but I crossed my arms and spoke with confidence, like I already knew everything, like I was the relief pitcher who'd come to save the day. My attitude seemed to convince Jake the angel. He shed his baggy clothes and revealed his wings. With the halo restored too, he just looked like a handsome guy who'd been cosplaying as a thug. Or maybe just a guy into hip fashion.

"How much do you already know, exactly?"

"Only that I was supposed to come help. I don't know the details."

"Whew... I do desperately need help, but it's not like there's no evidence against me either..."

Jake stared at the ring the archangel had given me back on Floor 2 for a moment, then—

"The reason Floor 28 broke down is all because of the Empress..."

He slowly started telling the story.

Every archangel has their own philosophy. Each of them tests for a particular virtue. There's always a goal: "To clear this floor, you need this quality."

For Floor 28, that quality is violence.

Victory. Survival. A struggle to prove that a living being, not just humans, deserves to be alive. Life is conflict, competition, contention. That was the ideology behind Floor 28 as well.

To rise higher. To claim your reward. Win. Fight. Conquer. Seize it.

Seen that way, the "Colosseum" is a space built purely for combat. A space that perfectly matches an archangel's intent. A place of endless fighting, endless reward, and fighting again. It was practically inevitable that the archangel chose the universe's largest colosseum as the backdrop for Floor 28.

The colosseum absorbed into the Tower was, in its own way, beautiful. (From the archangel's perspective, anyway.) Fight, and fight, and fight again, and eventually savor the joy of victory... awakening humanity's innate fighting spirit... a beautiful space like that. A masterwork. You could even call it a masterpiece.

"Emperor... I mean, the Empress was the problem..."

Currently ranked number one among Earthlings. When the irregular known as the Empress appeared... things went sideways.

"The Empress was... how do I put this... ugh, can I even say this. The Empress showed no mercy."

Put kindly, her methods were decisive. Put unkindly, brutal. She would show the gap in strength between herself and her opponent, then give them a chance to surrender. If they refused to surrender... she killed them.

And this was the greatest colosseum in the universe. Lower and mid-tier fighters might yield, but the upper tier, especially the very top, was packed with fighters overflowing with pride in their own strength. Some of them recognized the gap between themselves and the Empress and surrendered, but far more couldn't accept reality and charged at her again.

"A lot of them died."

All of them died, really. Beastmen, known for their pride, made up an especially large share. The Colosseum's rankings turned over almost instantly.

That's where the real problem began.

"The archangel-nim was worried that too many rankers dying would lower the Colosseum's overall difficulty..."

Because of the Empress, the Colosseum itself had gotten easier. To escape Floor 28, you had to reach rank 100. Originally, thousands of strong fighters had been waiting in line, and ranks 1 through roughly 50 were meant to serve as a kind of challenge, a wall that was hard to climb but gave a real sense of accomplishment when you did...

"The Empress... killed them..."

That "wall" got smashed to pieces. In a way that couldn't be repaired.

"Floor 28 doesn't work like most floors, where each player gets their own instance. It's one shared world. So when damage like this happens... we have to go through a manual restoration process."

It couldn't just be left alone. The archangel in charge of Floor 28 was meticulous, always wanting to maintain "the difficulty level they desired." But after the Empress showed up, Floor 28 had clearly gotten easier. Something had to be done.

"There were two big problems here."

First. The Empress didn't seem to have any intention of leaving. She was ruthlessly crushing what few strong fighters remained.

And second.

"By any chance, is the archangel unreachable?"

"You already knew?"

The archangel was absent.

There'd been hints of this before too, on Floor 17 I think it was. When I awakened my mana too fast, and it was ruled I'd "never actually entered the Tower" at all, there'd been a suggestion of an "archangel's absence" even then. The elder on Floor 15 had said something similar, I think. Ah, and on Floor 23, or was it 24? The angel running the dream psychiatric hospital said the same thing. Something about how, once the archangel comes back, blah blah blah.

Looks like the same problem was happening on Floor 28. The archangel currently in charge of Floor 28 had vanished somewhere.

"The archangel-nim told us to always maintain a similar difficulty level. A gap opened up, and it should rightfully be filled, but..."

"You can't fill it?"

"...No."

These were mere angels, not archangels. They couldn't wield real power to conjure up a fresh new face.

"In other worlds too... oh, wait."

Jake chose his words carefully for a moment.

"This kind of thing has happened before. One exceptional fighter sweeping everyone else alone—that's happened plenty of times. When it does, the archangel-nim would pick out a suitable life and breathe talent into them."

The fact that Floor 28 was a "world" helped in situations like this. Pick out someone living in that vast universe, grant them strength, give them a backstory that would lead them to the Colosseum. A new strong fighter appears to fill the empty rank.

"But you said there's no archangel right now?"

"That's exactly the problem..."

But right now there was no archangel. No administrator to fill the rankings. The one with the responsibility and authority had vanished, leaving behind only underlings with nothing to their name. I understood now why Jake's expression had looked so troubled.

"The archangel-nim did prepare some contingency measures, at least... a few 'backup plans.' Fighters somewhat connected to the Colosseum, somewhat strong, but somewhat distanced from the Colosseum itself."

Put more specifically, guys like Guntar.

"But the problem is, with our power alone... we couldn't guide them into the Colosseum. In their backstory, most of them are already sick of the Colosseum, or off traveling in search of something else precious to them... and even if we tried to use our power, the archangel-nim's power is already in effect over them, so the effect is negligible..."

Still, the angels simply lacked the power. Partly because the archangel had overestimated them, and partly because their power was diminished with their master, the archangel, gone.

"Wait, hold on."

A small question bloomed here.

"Why not just leave it easier?"

"Absolutely not... if the archangel-nim comes back and sees this..."

Jake's whole body trembled. He was openly terrified.

According to him, even among archangels, attitudes differed. Some, when a climber created a variable, would just let it be, saying "This too must be god's will." Others would say "This is not what I intended" and actively move to correct it. The archangel in charge of Floor 28 clearly belonged to the latter group. That was the same reason Dok Su-hee had been expelled from Floor 26.

"So, to sum up."

The angels' goal was to keep the Colosseum at a consistent difficulty, but the Empress had thrown that off, and the archangel responsible for maintaining that difficulty had vanished, leaving the angels to act on their own judgment.

"What does any of this have to do with Guntar?"

"That's..."

Jake let out a deep sigh.

"Guntar is... our mistake..."

"Mistake?"

"Yes... Guntar had actually already died. An unlucky accident during his travels."

Floor 28 is a world. Countless small variables exist, and things often diverge from the original intent because of them. Guntar's case was the same. He'd originally been prepared as a backup for the Colosseum, but he died in an accident while traveling.

"...The angels brought him back to life?"

"Yes... reviving the dead is far easier than tampering with a living being inside the Tower..."

Jake said it calmly, that resurrecting the dead was actually the easier option.

"No, wait..."

"Since his soul had already left his body, the restoration itself was much simpler. As you probably know, the soul is usually the obstacle in this kind of intervention..."

"..."

"The problem arose during the process of implanting a new self..."

Whether I looked horrified or not, Jake kept talking, chewing on his lower lip.

"What we wanted was an enemy who'd keep the players somewhat in check... hostility toward humans, decent enough skill, a personality suited to the Colosseum, someone who enjoyed fighting..."

"..."

"Maybe it's because of our archangel-nim's tendencies... the angel in charge... didn't think it through nearly enough..."

The angel in charge, aggressive by nature, apparently took a reckless gamble to try to bring down the Empress.

"We put in a soul that should never have been put in."

Jake said.

"What's inside him is..."

The angel said.

"An old man once known as the 'Heavenly Demon'..."

You're screwed.

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