WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 308

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The regressor fights (27)

The negotiation was settled.

"I won't touch you or any player, including your companions."

"You cooperate with me, and in exchange, I'll turn a blind eye to you touching the angels."

"Good."

I would raise the Heavenly Demon. I would help him regain his original power. In exchange, the Heavenly Demon would stop the "human slaughter" and fix his target to angels instead.

Looking at it one way, you could call it a win-win. The Heavenly Demon got to escape the Tower, climbers didn't get hurt, and only the angels would die a little. Well, that was their own karma to deal with.

The method was simple.

"Come."

I just had to fight the Heavenly Demon. Wooden fake weapons, no mana, just clashing head-on.

Of course, I could handle it easily. I'd regressed countless times to get used to these techniques. A person got more skilled the more time they spent on something.

"...Strange."

The Heavenly Demon seemed to feel it too, his expression turning odd, but he didn't say much. He really was growing stronger, bit by bit.

He used a wooden sword, a soft floppy whip, threw blunt projectile weapons... he cycled through all kinds of weapons, and each time he used one, he visibly grew stronger. It was like watching a time-lapse video of a plant growing.

Of course, we weren't just fighting. My real goal from the start was gathering information. I kept slipping in questions, but the Heavenly Demon wasn't quick to answer. Honestly, there was no reason for him to talk.

"It's strange, I'm telling you."

"..."

"Way too strange."

At first, he only told me small, unimportant bits of his past. Or maybe an interesting anecdote or two. But when I kept insisting I was curious even in the middle of our brutal exchanges, the Heavenly Demon finally gave in.

"Isn't it strange to begin with, that you get stronger the more we fight?"

"It is a process of reclaiming power."

"So why does fighting reclaim your power?"

"Because I am reclaiming dominion over my own body."

"That's not much of an explanation."

"..."

The Heavenly Demon knocked my blade aside and glared at me for a moment.

"I will tell you a story from long ago."

Out of nowhere, he started talking about himself.

"In my childhood. I obtained a Fortuitous Encounter."

"...A Fortuitous Encounter?"

"An artifact that could turn memory into power. Said to be a remnant of an ancient civilization."

He'd had a rough childhood and was on the verge of starving to death when he found the Fortuitous Encounter in some cave, or so he said.

"By consuming the memory of a single martial art, I could gain a temporary mastery of that technique. As a bonus, I would never be able to use that technique again."

"Huh..."

"The reason Guntar could grow strong so quickly was the same. He knew a great deal."

So, by consuming the memory of a martial art he simply "knew" as information, he could gain a deeper mastery of that technique.

It was undeniably a solid artifact, but the weakness was just as clear. Every time he fought, he lost the memory of one martial art. There might have been as many martial arts as there were stars in the sky, but acquiring knowledge of martial arts wasn't easy either.

"But it was no problem for me."

Right, not for a monster like the Heavenly Demon, who could understand another person's martial art just by watching.

Knowing and doing were different things. That held true even for geniuses. They could make an unfamiliar martial art their own "quickly," but the Heavenly Demon could make it his own "instantly." In a life of constant combat, that was an enormous advantage.

"At first, I fought to live. Later, I lived to fight. When I copied an opponent's technique and returned it to them in a superior form, I even felt a kind of thrill. Yes. It was enjoyable."

The Heavenly Demon's eyes were hollow as he said it was enjoyable.

"At some point, I was called the strongest among humans. But then I realized something. Humans... were a weak race to begin with. Even I, the strongest of humans, would die if struck by a military weapon."

"..."

"I wanted to become the most exalted being in this universe. The greatest. To do that, I had to tear apart my 'weak self.' It wasn't difficult."

The Heavenly Demon grew strong. More precisely, he discarded himself. He changed the nature of his mana. He conditioned his body for combat. He created new techniques for his new self.

"To reach the extreme, knowing too much became an obstacle. So I discarded it all. To find my true self."

The Heavenly Demon who had once known everything forgot everything, and only then could he become the absolute ruler of the universe.

"Once I grew that strong, everything looked trivial."

Probably... that was around the time he wiped out an entire planet.

"You got that strong, and you could still die?"

"The entire universe rushed to kill me. In the end, they failed. My death was mine alone to choose."

It sounded a little like bragging, but at least it seemed true that the Heavenly Demon had survived a war against the universe. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to seal himself inside a sword.

"But does that have anything to do with getting stronger the more you fight?"

"...This body has the knowledge of countless martial arts crammed into it. Things I discarded in the past, things that get in the way of unleashing my full power."

"Don't tell me... the more you use techniques, the closer you get to your peak?"

"I would correct that to, the more I 'forget' techniques."

"..."

"Of course, I could unleash my full power right now if I wished. But that would mean using it while my soul's occupancy is compromised and full of impurities, so the power would be weaker, and there would be a backlash of sorts. Considering that angels or an Archangel might intervene later, is it not wiser to conserve strength as much as possible?"

So basically, the more martial arts he used, the closer he got to his original power, and getting stronger through fighting was really about forgetting martial arts. He could use his real power right now, but he'd have to deal with the consequences afterward, and with a future fight against the angels in mind, he wanted to hold back as much as he could.

Damn it. That basically meant he could kill me anytime he wanted, if he was willing to eat a bit of a loss. He'd only been holding back because he was wary of some imaginary Archangel. My hatred toward angels climbed another notch, and I found myself grateful that the Heavenly Demon was being cautious.

Looking at it this way, I realized there was no way to kill the Heavenly Demon through brute force. If he was truly pushed to the brink of death, he would unleash his real power. Even weaker than his peak, that was still more than enough to kill someone like me, or Choi Ji-won. I'd been fighting an unwinnable fight from the very start.

I supposed I should be grateful I'd grown stronger, at least. Or maybe I should just be relieved the Heavenly Demon seemed like someone I could reason with.

"Enough chatter. Come at me again."

The Heavenly Demon tossed aside his wooden scythe and strapped on the greaves lying on the ground.

"Well, thanks for being honest with me."

"Indeed."

"..."

There was no way this was simple goodwill. I could feel it, deep down. The Heavenly Demon had recovered a significant portion of his power. He could already beat me.

With his own safety guaranteed, he'd probably calculated that revealing weaknesses he'd already overcome wouldn't matter. The Heavenly Demon acted like he wasn't calculating anything, but underneath it all, he moved with total precision. In his own way, I supposed we'd built up some rapport.

The fighting continued after that. I calibrated my strength carefully, just enough to keep the Heavenly Demon feeling threatened, just enough to let him fully use his techniques. He drew on techniques from memory, and I drew on countermeasures from memory in turn. He'd already seen through my style completely, and I knew it too. It felt like we were performing some kind of play.

"Something about this... feels bad."

My souring mood aside, in just two weeks, the Heavenly Demon recovered all of his power. Even holding back, that signature crushing aura could be felt from far away, enough that every living thing in the Colosseum avoided coming anywhere near this corridor. The only outsider who showed up occasionally was a drone.

"Is this enough now?"

"Nearly finished."

"You said you'd escape the Tower... how exactly?"

"I intend to tear open a dimension."

"...That's possible?"

"It is possible. For This Venerable One."

As the Heavenly Demon meditated, I thought I saw the shape of a man's face overlap with his mouth. Not the face of a wolf beastman, but a middle-aged man with long black hair hanging down. Probably the original Heavenly Demon's true form.

"It is done now."

The Heavenly Demon finished meditating and rose to his feet. Bloodlust boiled in his eyes.

"I will kill the angels... kill the Archangels. I will kill god. I will slaughter every last one of them."

"Go easy on the humans of our world, though."

"So be it."

He stretched a hand into empty air and turned it in a slow circle. A tiny point appeared where there had been nothing. The point grew larger and larger until it became a hole big enough for a person to pass through. Probably the passage leading out of the Tower.

"Your companion, and your world... I will not touch them. Even if I destroy everything else, I will leave those things be."

"Thank you."

"But."

Thunk.

A sudden, violent pain in my chest. A strike too fast for me to react to.

"You, have come to know far too much about This Venerable One."

His fist had punched clean through my chest, straight through the front. My heart had been pierced cleanly, so I couldn't even use mana. A blow that allowed no resistance whatsoever.

"It would be quite a problem if you went around telling the angels about This Venerable One's story, wouldn't it."

"...Ha."

"The world must be destroyed before the climber's soul can even be checked, so there should be plenty of time. You saved your world for a while with a single life, your own. A proud death, I'd say."

In the end, he never trusted me. He'd used me.

He'd been a person from another world from the start, and I'd known the Heavenly Demon's true nature was arrogant. I'd even considered that he might stab me in the back. But thinking about it and actually having it happen to me felt entirely different.

But did he know? That I was doing everything I could to hold back the emotion right before it exploded out of me. That I was steadying my breath so I wouldn't feel that "intense emotion." That I... really had learned far too much.

"...You're dead."

He'd just committed the number one thing you should never do in a work of fiction.

The Heavenly Demon had just betrayed a regressor.

[You have taken damage.]

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

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