WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 295

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The regressor fights (14)

"I was going to bring this up eventually, but this floor has a hidden reward, and it's actually an Elixir. Obviously, that's the highest possible grade of reward, one that's incredibly hard to obtain."

"And?"

"When someone obtains a reward of this top tier, the Archangel-nim can sense it immediately. And knowing the Archangel-nim's personality, the moment someone gets a top-grade reward, they'll come to check on it in person. How it happened, what the circumstances were, all of it."

"Ah."

So the Elixir itself wasn't what mattered. What mattered was the fact that someone had obtained an Elixir as a reward on Floor 28.

"From what I understand, whenever someone gets their hands on a top-tier reward like this, the Archangel is always able to sense it. So if the Archangel-nim sees this signal, they should return from wherever they've gone...!"

"Ohh..."

Not bad. Actually a decent idea. And probably the best option available given the situation.

If the Archangel's return could fix everything, then all we had to do was bring the Archangel back. Simple, intuitive, and the most efficient path available.

"For that reason... I intervened in the Tower like this."

Jake lifted the golden accessory hanging from his neck to show me.

"Actually, the reason I approached Jun-ho-nim in the first place... was to leak information about the Elixir. I was hoping someone would obtain it before the Heavenly Demon woke."

"...Is that allowed?"

"No. Of course it's not allowed. I'm prepared for disciplinary action. Maybe worse."

He folded his wings and put his baggy robe back on.

"Still, I can't just sit here doing nothing. If I just stand by with my hands folded, every player who comes up to Floor 28 will die. That's not a matter of simple discipline, that's a catastrophe for the entire Tower. It would mean ignoring the will of the Archangel-nim and god-nim who designed this Tower. Someone has to act."

His eyes burned with resolve. Overflowing with a sense of duty. Seeing an angel act like this stirred up something petty in me.

"By the way."

"Yes?"

"What's god doing right now?"

We didn't climb the Tower because we wanted to. The Tower appeared, so we climbed it to keep our species alive. All of it traced back to what that oh-so-great god had done. God was the one who decided to judge humanity in the first place.

If god was going to hold a moral standard over humanity's heads with their lives as collateral, shouldn't the angels at least be free of mistakes? If god was going to be our judge, shouldn't the judge be flawless? Some irritation, some resentment, made my face flush without meaning to.

But I figured this angel hadn't intended any of it, so I just sighed. Blaming the underlings for the mistakes of the higher-ups was its own kind of wrong.

"I don't know. But surely there's a reason behind it."

Whether I sighed or not, Jake answered with eyes that shone bright.

"Whatever happens with this situation, the great one surely knows everything already. Everything is probably going exactly as intended. It's only that I'm too lowly and too weak to fully grasp that will. Surely there's some grand purpose we can't even imagine."

"..."

"Even this mistake of mine is probably part of that will. That's why I don't give up, and why I keep doing my best."

"What if the Archangel doesn't come back?"

"Excuse me?"

"The Heavenly Demon wakes up. The Archangel never shows. Every player who comes here ends up facing certain death. What then?"

"...I'll do my best until the very end. In accordance with that will."

"..."

Just before this, on Floor 27, I'd brought up the phrase best effort myself.

Doing your best means putting your whole will into it and trying as hard as your abilities allow. It means doing everything a single person is capable of within their own limits.

And it also carries the implication that if the situation exceeds those limits, there's nothing more to be done. That's what best effort means.

"Hah."

If the Archangel didn't come back, this had to be handled at the player level. No, it had to end at the level of me and Ji-won.

This was a being that had matched the Empress in power the moment he woke up.

I hoped there'd be no need to fight him.

I hoped this ominous feeling wouldn't turn out to be right.

The angel Jake, hiding his identity, said "direct intervention" wasn't possible. I didn't know if that was just how angels always phrased things, but it implied that "indirect intervention" was fair game.

"I'll help raise your ranking."

"Didn't you say you couldn't intervene?"

"This isn't intervention."

Jake went on to explain a bunch of complicated angelic regulations after that, but most of it went over my head. As far as I could piece together from context, he couldn't make big, visible changes outright, but he could nudge the situation slightly in my favor.

"For starters... I made a small adjustment to the Colosseum's overall system."

"How?"

"To put it in human terms, I readjusted the weight vectors of the multivariate regression analysis model used in point calculation..."

"Stop, stop."

I didn't know much about angel lifespans, but they were definitely far longer than a human's. And I now realized that a long-lived species that actually studied things could casually spout out headache-inducing explanations like it was nothing.

"So basically, you created reasons for the top-tier fighters to face me?"

"Correct."

The reason my rank hadn't climbed fast before was simple. I'd been fighting money-hungry idiots and beastmen to raise my ranking, but the true top-tier fighters had never agreed to face me. But the angel adjusted the Colosseum's system to manufacture reasons for them to fight me.

And that wasn't the end of it.

"Here, take this."

"What's this?"

"An analysis file on your upcoming opponent."

Jake handed me a file that laid out everything about my opponent, from their martial arts style to their physical stats, down to the smallest habits.

"I placed a bet under Jun-ho-nim's name. This should spread your reputation further."

"...Is that allowed?"

"It's not direct intervention, so it's fine."

Playing games with money and everything else, he'd committed every possible form of intervention short of what could be called truly "direct." You could say he'd fully mastered every legal loophole short of outright illegality.

Under the full backing of an angel who might as well have been the Tower's Administrator, my ranking climbed exponentially. 50,000th, 3,000th, 100th.

As my rank rose fast, I started getting messages from the slaughterer, meaning the Heavenly Demon, asking for a match, but I ignored every one of them and focused on fighting others instead.

And I didn't just fight recklessly either. I'd study the angel's files, run through the matchup in my head like a mental simulation, and if the matchup looked bad or the opponent seemed too strong to beat outright, I'd just pass. Since one hit meant regression for me, I had to pick my opponents carefully.

That's how I climbed to 80th. 50th. 10th. 5th.

By then, messages from the Heavenly Demon came in daily, no, hourly, no, practically every minute, but I kept ghosting them just as cheerfully.

"To receive the Elixir, you first need to reach rank 1."

4th. 3rd. 2nd. Now there was nobody above me except the name "the Empress." And even that name was just an empty shell left behind by someone who'd already gone. It was all thanks to my own strength, and the angel's borderline-cheating assistance. Plus I'd only picked fights with opponents I actually wanted to fight.

"This is it, then."

One win. Just one more win and I'd be rank 1. Only a single step remained between me and the Elixir.

"You're going down this time!!! Immortal sage!"

"Kill that furball!"

-Ladies and gentlemen!!!

Since I hadn't gone with the "beastman enthusiast" act this cycle, my nickname had become "immortal sage" instead. All thanks to the Eastern-style robe I'd worn. (Somehow there was still a faction insisting on slandering me as a furball.)

Winning this match would crown me the new rank 1, so every eye in the arena was on me. My opponent wasn't easy either.

"Kill her!!!"

"Burn her down!!!"

My opponent was a human swordswoman, famous not just for her terrifying swordsmanship and overwhelming physical stats, but above all for a secret technique wielding blue lightning. She'd never lost a single match, they said, and was talked about as one of the rising super rookies alongside me, currently rank 2 as "the immortal sage," and "the slaughterer."

Her name was Choi Ji-won.

"Ah. Why does my back suddenly hurt."

-W-what's happening?! Choi Ji-won is getting completely overwhelmed!!!

Of course. It was a rigged performance from the start.

-T-the winner is the Immortal Sage! The Immortal Sage!!!

That's how I managed to push the Empress's name aside and claim rank 1. My achievement level rose too, and all sorts of rewards came my way.

After that, the Colosseum Management called me over and moved me to some very suspicious-looking space.

"Ah, here you just need to press this button. Then, over here..."

Angel Jake showed up there and handled everything by himself. They'd said it was supposed to be a space that tested courage and strategy, but he just stood beside me and fed me every answer. Apparently anything short of literally acting "directly" was fine.

"Oh, ohh..."

"Done!"

-An unbelievable achievement!

-You have obtained an 'Intermediate Elixir' as a reward!

There'd been some loophole-abuse involved, sure, but in the end, I'd finally gotten my hands on an Intermediate Elixir. Not a single regression used, all of it earned purely through my own effort.

"It's done now! It's finally done!!!"

"Did you do it?"

"I did it!"

I think in that moment, overwhelmed with joy, I ended up hugging Jake and jumping around the place without realizing it. Ji-won cheered me on afterward too, and we ate all sorts of good food. And then... and then...

Three months passed.

The Archangel never came back.

Ominous feelings always turn out to be right.

In the quiet room, I checked the device on my wrist. Every player except me and Choi Ji-won had gone silent. No, more than half of all registered lifeforms were offline. Angel Jake had vanished without a trace too.

"..."

"..."

We were in the same space, but neither of us spoke. Because we could sense something approaching, drawing closer to this place.

At first I thought a bomb had gone off. It wasn't that. It was just... one being's mana, one being's killing intent, spreading outward with the force of something like a bomb.

The Heavenly Demon. The aura of the Heavenly Demon, having reclaimed his body, made me question whether the angel who thought to seal that thing away was sane at all. Just how strong were angels, really? Strong enough that they looked at that and thought, we can control this?

"That's... really a catastrophe."

That wasn't something you fought. That was something you fled from. He wasn't called the "Heavenly Demon" for nothing. An overwhelming presence, certain death given shape, ruin itself walking here in the form of a beastman.

One thing I understood for certain. Three months had passed, and now that the Heavenly Demon had fully awakened... there was no way to win. None, none whatsoever. Facing him head on offered no chance of victory.

So then.

"Let's try again."

I'll deal with you the regressor's way.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 28.]

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