WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Regression is Too Much
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Chapter 307
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The regressor fights (26)
The Heavenly Demon really was different from the Guntar I knew. Not just different. Wildly different.
"It's Guntar."
"When did he get back?"
"What happened to him? Look at that state."
The old Guntar avoided people once a match ended. He'd slip back to his quarters quietly, under the Colosseum's protection.
The Heavenly Demon was nothing like that. He walked on, not caring whether people watched him, not caring what they muttered. To put it kindly, he didn't pay attention to others. To put it bluntly, he saw them as insects. (This early in the regression, I hadn't yet heard anyone call him "furball" the way they used to.)
We walked for a while. Then, once we turned into a quiet corridor—
"Point your sword at me."
"...What?"
"I told you to point your sword at me."
The Heavenly Demon said it plainly, walking along like it was nothing. His expression stayed perfectly calm, but his ears twitched unnaturally, again and again.
"There's a personality the angels planted in this body. He and I reached an agreement, that I would hold the initiative during 'combat.' But right now he's thrashing to surface again. A proper threat should help."
"Ah."
Right. He'd said there was a personality the angels implanted into that body. That was why everyone else thought Guntar had lost his mind.
But hadn't he said it was the near-death sensation during the fight against the Empress that let the Heavenly Demon seize control? Since this wasn't a combat situation anymore, the original personality was trying to claw its way back out.
Well, it wasn't like I could kill the Heavenly Demon even if I refused to cooperate right now. I drew my sword without protest and leveled it at his throat. Even if I stabbed him this instant, instant death was unlikely, and if he held on with the beastman's vitality and unleashed his mana, I'd just regress. Gathering information came before taking risks.
Shhhk.
The moment I pointed my blade at him, the Heavenly Demon's hand, which had been strangling his own throat, went still. Just a second earlier his body had slipped out of his control entirely, and yet he didn't seem to care at all. He simply kept walking.
"You don't seem very surprised."
He said it offhand, almost carelessly. Wait, had I reacted too flatly? Should I have put on more of a show? No. Given the lie I was about to tell, it would actually look more natural if I already knew. Better to hold my tongue for now.
"..."
"We're here."
I didn't answer, and the Heavenly Demon didn't push. We kept walking, and eventually the scenery matched what I remembered. The quarters the Colosseum had arranged for its rankers. That dark, empty space with nothing in it. Even the leftover food scraps on the floor were the same.
"The beastman race is a blessed one, but they lack the will to truly grow strong. Burning their lives away for momentary pleasure. How pitiful."
The Heavenly Demon nudged the food scraps aside with his foot as he spoke. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked him.
"I heard you wiped out the humans of an entire planet."
"That's true."
"Why?"
"They disgusted me."
He said it in the same tone someone might use to mention what they'd had for lunch.
"Why did they disgust you?"
"They were weak."
"Is being weak a crime?"
"I'm not blaming physical weakness. Being born weak isn't a sin. But failing to strive for strength is. The weak have no right to choose. Even after the age of interstellar expansion arrived and every kind of law sprang up, that truth never changed. Any living thing ought to strive to become strong."
"Some of the people who died must have trained hard."
"If that's the kind of strength they earned through effort, then they deserved to die."
"..."
I'd sensed it before, but the reason the Heavenly Demon was willing to hold a normal conversation with me was, apparently, because I'd grown fairly strong. That bastard seemed to treat weakness itself as a sin.
"Well then."
The Heavenly Demon sat down. He got straight to the point.
"Are you a climber?"
"...So you know what the Tower is."
"I lived thousands of years ago, but my consciousness remained. I watched it all from inside the sword my soul had returned to. I know everything—that the Tower appeared in my world, that the fools there failed."
He spoke while staring at the edge of my blade.
"After the conquest of the Tower failed, and the world fell under a god's rule, only my soul was extracted. They said something like me didn't fit the 'balance,' so I had to be removed. I never expected to survive like this, though."
"...Why did all of you fail?"
"We were weak."
"..."
"We failed because we were weak. That's all there is to it. If I'd had the chance to climb the Tower myself, I would have succeeded."
The Heavenly Demon's expression as he said this... I couldn't quite read it. Maybe because he was a beastman and looked nothing like a human, or maybe because his emotions had thinned out after thousands of years.
"This body's owner, Guntar, was originally the one who obtained the sword my soul resided in. I taught him various martial arts, and though he was mediocre, he made his own effort, in his own way."
"The angels told me Guntar died from poison gas exposure."
"Do you think that makes any sense? In an era when technology allows travel between planets, would they really have no countermeasure for gas? Guntar died climbing the Tower. This world's current timeline is simply set 'before the Tower appeared.'"
So from the Heavenly Demon's perspective, someone like his own disciple had died climbing the Tower, and the Heavenly Demon himself had his soul extracted and placed into that disciple's body. Treated exactly like a toy, it seemed. Maybe that explained his hatred toward angels.
"Now it's your turn."
"My turn for what."
"Speak. What is your relationship with the angels. How do you know about me."
"Ah."
Obviously, I couldn't claim to be on the angels' side. The Heavenly Demon hated angels. But too much distance wouldn't explain the current situation either, since angels were the only possible source for information about him.
A relationship distant enough to feel awkward, but close enough to still hear things from angels. Thinking it through logically, for it to make sense...
"I'm being blackmailed by the angels."
"Blackmail?"
"Right. They threatened that if I don't cooperate, they'll wreck Floor 28 completely."
"Hm."
I'd noticed it before, but the Heavenly Demon's senses were sharp. I couldn't just invent a lie from nothing. Mixing truth into the lie in the right proportion would sell it better.
It was true the angels had threatened me. They'd said that if the Heavenly Demon wasn't stopped, every player who came to Floor 28 might die. They'd asked, practically begged, for my help. Well, I left out the part about an Archangel showing up to solve it, but I wasn't lying, exactly.
"So the balance on Floor 28 collapsed, and they threw you in. But your personality survived, more than they expected. They said they had no choice but to kill you. That if you stayed, Floor 28 would become hell, and that's why they came asking me for help."
"I see... so that's how it was."
The Heavenly Demon nodded, then abruptly looked up at the sky.
"The Archangel who cast me out seems to be absent right now."
"...All of a sudden?"
"You wouldn't know, being a mere climber, but an Archangel could intervene against me easily enough. That's how strong they are. And yet, even after we spoke of the Tower and of angels, no such being showed itself. I've bought myself a little breathing room. If you were their puppet, they'd be listening to this conversation right now."
So bringing up the Tower out of nowhere earlier had been a kind of bait. Probably also meant to check whether I was trying to lead him somewhere.
"My mind was anxious, but I can relax a little now. I've bought myself time."
So that was why the Heavenly Demon had seemed on edge, because of the Archangel. He licked his lips, his eyes still fixed on the tip of my blade.
"What you fear is a scenario where I slaughter every climber, is that right."
"...Yes."
"I intend to escape the Tower. So the situation you're worried about will never come to pass. Cooperate with me."
"...?"
I'd never heard anything like this before. Never even heard the concept before. Escape... the Tower? Escape? Did that even make sense?
"Someone like me could manage it. If I can fully reclaim my strength, I can certainly do it."
"...How do you plan to reclaim your strength?"
"Most of my soul remains sealed right now. I'm only able to hold this conversation because you're pointing a blade at me. The moment I feel safe, the false personality will burst out again eventually."
The Heavenly Demon tapped the blade lightly.
"So to maintain control and reclaim the power of my soul, I must fight. Fighting the strong, again and again, raises my soul's share of control while also breaking down the restraints binding me."
Restraints. There was the word I'd been paying close attention to, though I didn't let it show and simply nodded.
"If you cooperate, I won't touch the climbers. In exchange, you won't interfere when I go around killing angels."
"How would I cooperate, exactly."
"I already told you. I grow stronger the more I fight. But openly slaughtering people in the Colosseum would draw far too much unwanted attention. There's also a chance that Archangel returns. So, I'd originally planned to be selective, killing only the disgusting humans—no, only the weak. But since the angels already know about me, that plan would have been pointless anyway."
His long claw pointed straight at me.
"Instead. You'll fight me. Just enough, without either of us showing our true hand, staying within the line. We keep fighting. Somewhere no one can see."
That was the moment I understood.
"Until I've reclaimed all of my strength."
This bastard really was cunning after all.
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