Regression is Too Much - Chapter 315

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 315

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The regressor fights (34)

The party unfolded exactly the way parties unfolded. Which was to say, it unfolded exactly like a typical "beastman party."

"Drink!"

"Drink till you drop!"

Crates of liquor came out, and everyone poured it down their throats.

"So there I am, right, and the second I see that bastard get hit, right..."

"Ha, and you call that bragging? Let me tell you, I had thirty cyborgs pointing guns at me, glaring, and I just..."

They traded stories that were maybe ten percent true, each trying to out-brag the other about who'd been braver.

"Your fur's looking kind of shiny today."

"Hmm... you in heat?"

"Yeah. I am. Wanna go fast?"

"Sure."

Pairs peeled off and vanished from the party without another word.

"Try this, try this."

"Ha-ha, hahahahaha!!!"

In the corner, some were indulging in whatever synthetic drug was trending these days. (Advertised as side-effect free, though nobody actually knew if that was true.)

"Hahaha!!!"

"Buhahaha!!!"

"Kuhahaha!!!"

The party had gone past loud into full chaos. But even in the middle of all that, there was exactly one quiet spot.

"..."

Right where Kim Jun-ho and Guntar sat.

Guntar, the guest of honor, sitting in a corner nursing a drink instead of celebrating properly, obviously came down to the Heavenly Demon. The fake Guntar, caught up in the sensation of feeling like the real deal, had wanted to seize the moment and show off his valor properly (and plenty of beastmen had been egging him on), but the Heavenly Demon, unwilling to court any more variables, held him back. Even if this cycle still ended in regression, the Heavenly Demon intended to do it only after he'd reclaimed his strength.

Getting hurt while drinking and doing drugs was nothing unusual. Beastmen didn't get drunk easily, but once they did, they drank until their eyes rolled back completely. The Heavenly Demon figured it'd be a waste to regress after coming this far.

Meanwhile, Kim Jun-ho quietly drinking beside Guntar was its own kind of surprise. Known as the "beastman enthusiast," he had no shortage of females trying to seduce him, and every time one tried, the Heavenly Demon noticed the woman called JW flinch. Lovers, maybe. Or one-sided feelings. Either way, some kind of relationship clearly existed between them.

'And that woman — this is the first time I've seen her.'

The Heavenly Demon's wariness deepened a notch. If there was a variable in play, it was probably her.

"...Kim Jun-ho. You good?"

"Yeah, uh. Feeling a little dizzy. What about you, Guntar?"

"Me? I'm fine."

The fake Guntar and Kim Jun-ho had built up something of a rapport. The Heavenly Demon kept warning him to stay wary, but the fake seemed to genuinely like Kim Jun-ho. Said it was interesting, a human being this friendly toward beastmen. The Heavenly Demon couldn't understand what was so interesting about humans.

"Hah, no. Honestly, I think I'm pretty drunk. This booze isn't made for humans to drink."

"Beastmen can hold their liquor."

"Ugh..."

The sigh that escaped him reeked of alcohol. Kim Jun-ho was clearly drunk. But the Heavenly Demon was far more focused on JW, who hadn't touched a drop, than on the flushed Kim Jun-ho.

'Should I have him ask about that woman?'

Just as the Heavenly Demon was about to have the fake Guntar ask about her.

"Hey. Woman."

A beastman staggered over and slammed a hand down on the table. If Kim Jun-ho had reeked of alcohol, this one smelled like he'd bathed in a tub full of it.

"What's with the sword?"

"...Family heirloom."

"Heirloom, my ass. Even if it's an heirloom, huh, you think it's okay to bring a blade in here?"

"Whoa, whoa. Easy, friend."

"Her family, way back, her great-great-grandfather or something, got basically wiped out by the Heavenly Demon. That's the last heirloom left from her whole bloodline."

"...The Heavenly Demon?"

"Yeah. The Heavenly Demon."

The beastman flinched, glancing at Guntar. He seemed to remember that Guntar had once been mistaken for the Heavenly Demon.

"Ah, Guntar's got nothing to do with it. It's fine, it's fine. Right?"

Kim Jun-ho winked at Guntar and kept the story rolling.

"Anyway, JW's family got wiped out by that piece-of-shit Heavenly Demon... and ever since, her descendants have lived their whole lives hating him. That's how she and I got close, actually."

"Ahh..."

"She says she'll cut him down with that sword the second he shows his face, and no matter how many times I tell her he's dead, she won't listen. Just cut her some slack."

"Guh..."

"It's that garbage excuse for a Heavenly Demon who's in the wrong. What's JW got to do with any of it? Am I right?"

"Yeah, hearing it like that, makes sense. It's that Heavenly Demon bastard's fault."

"Right, right. So let's just talk shit about the Heavenly Demon instead."

"Ugh, that piece of shit..."

While the beastman, thoroughly charmed by Kim Jun-ho's silver tongue, ranted about the Heavenly Demon.

"Yo, why aren't you coming over? This guy's drunk and bailing on us?"

"Nah, idiot. I was listening to JW's story here."

"What story?"

More beastmen, curious about the sword-carrying woman, joined in, and the crowd talking trash about the Heavenly Demon grew.

"That Heavenly Demon piece of shit!"

"Eunuch bastard! Bet his dick doesn't even work!"

"If I ever see that son of a bitch, I'll just, huh, he's from way back so he's probably weak as hell, I'd break his legs with what I know and what's he gonna do about it?"

'...'

A calm mind. A calm mind. Keep your heart still as a clear pond.

The Heavenly Demon endured it with superhuman patience. His occupation of the body had climbed high enough now that if he got angry, it could bleed over onto the fake Guntar. He couldn't afford to trigger erratic behavior, not after coming this far.

"Guntar! Say something too!"

"Uh, huh?"

'...Say it.'

"That Heavenly Demon's got, got... anger management issues!"

"Wahaha!!! How'd you know! That he's got a short fuse!"

"Name alone screams demon, of course he's got a short fuse. Heard guys with tiny dicks always have short fuses."

"For real?"

"Explains why you're always losing your temper."

"The fuck did you say?"

The beastmen roared with laughter, rowdy and loud. The Heavenly Demon, thinking he couldn't let his grand plan fall apart now, swallowed his feelings down, over and over. Having come this far, he felt like he wouldn't be satisfied until he saw it through to the end. Victory was right there, within reach. Just hold on a little longer.

"...What's this?"

Not even the regressor had accounted for this level of patience, because his plan had been to bait the Heavenly Demon into acting out here and finish him off in one stroke. Up until now, the Heavenly Demon had shown a temper that fully lived up to the "short fuse" jokes, unable to hold his anger in check.

He'd put real effort into getting the man used to regressing. If it were the Heavenly Demon, the one he knew, he'd have flown into a rage right here even at the cost of forcing a regression. Kim Jun-ho had planned to bait him into blowing up and finish things then and there. But the man was just... enduring it?

Kim Jun-ho caught his own miscalculation immediately. The Heavenly Demon had clearly grown used to it through repeated regressions. He'd sacrificed the small for the sake of the greater good, over and over, learned the lesson again and again. So now he could withstand even provocation this intense. The Heavenly Demon from before he'd ever regressed wouldn't have been able to hold back. But the Heavenly Demon had regressed too, and grown from it.

What now. Think. This was a variable, wasn't it? The conditions for regression had probably already been met, and if he regressed right now, the Heavenly Demon would never come back to this party again. This really was the last, absolute last chance. Miss it now, and there wouldn't be a second one.

"..."

Kim Jun-ho's eyes landed on Guntar, who wore an awkward, half-formed smile. The Heavenly Demon had said his consciousness only surfaced during combat. Sure, plenty could have changed after so many repeated regressions, but the Heavenly Demon didn't seem like the type to wear a foolish grin like that.

Fake Guntar. A fake. The Heavenly Demon couldn't fully control him. Claiming to be the real one himself. An unstable mind.

Inferiority complex.

"A fake."

"...What?"

"I've seen it before too. A fake mental case pretending to be the Heavenly Demon."

Guntar's eyes trembled, just slightly. Certain now, Kim Jun-ho's mouth started moving with sharp precision.

"Turned out later, this guy actually thought he'd become the real thing. Got so caught up playing the part he ended up fooling himself. Isn't that disgusting? A fake playing the real thing and losing track of which one he actually is?"

"There's crazy bastards like that out there?"

"Yeah, there are. Scum like that should just die. Am I right?"

"Right, right. A guy like that's got no honor, no valor, nothing."

Kim Jun-ho let his irritation and anger show plainly. For what it's worth, the subject had just been swapped out for the Heavenly Demon, but he'd genuinely been burned by impersonation before, back on Earth. Some account he'd friended in a game, thinking it was a smurf farming easy kills, played with them for a while, built up a rapport, only to find out later the guy had actually been a local, not who he claimed at all.

Dredging up that old anger and forcing it back out now, clumsy as it was, still read to everyone else as genuine, like fresh fury toward some con artist he'd run into recently, which only made it land harder.

The Heavenly Demon had privately guessed that Kim Jun-ho was probably a climber, so he realized this story was about some other world entirely. And he also noticed the fake Guntar's body had started trembling.

'This is a crisis.'

The Heavenly Demon grasped the situation in an instant. The odds of this spiraling into the worst outcome were far too high. Left alone, the fake Guntar was going to explode. That mind was unstable to begin with.

'...'

But regressing right away wasn't something he could stomach easily either, given how much he'd swallowed his pride just to get to this point. How much of himself had he bent to escape the Tower? In modern terms, the sunk cost had grown too large.

If he could just get through this one moment...

'Guntar. Hold it in.'

"..."

'It's just nonsense from people who don't know any better. You are the real Guntar. I, the Heavenly Demon, guarantee it.'

"Don't even have balls, those impersonator bastards."

"I've seen a guy like that too. Went around bragging he was the Iron Fist of Planet Yuneu, turned out he wasn't even from Planet Yuneu."

"Pathetic bastards."

The fake Guntar's trembling grew worse. The Heavenly Demon sensed it. This one wasn't going to hold.

'...No choice, then.'

The Heavenly Demon had no choice but to try seizing control of the body. He'd been steadily stealing occupation share up to now, but conscious of the transcendent being's watchful eye, he'd held off on acting. If he committed to it, taking control of the body was well within reach. Playing Guntar himself directly wouldn't be easy, but he could just pretend to get drunk and fall asleep.

The Heavenly Demon's mind, seasoned over a long stretch of time, against the fake Guntar's mind, hastily cobbled together by the angels. Pit them against each other, and the winner was obvious.

'?!'

But even the Heavenly Demon had misjudged something. The fake Guntar's mind, once his trauma button got pressed, turned into a wild horse bucking out of control. Under normal circumstances, the Heavenly Demon's will would have shoved the fake Guntar's mind aside within ten seconds, but...

Depression. Inferiority. Fury. Irritation. Self-loathing. Resentment, every emotion imaginable churning together, the fake Guntar's heart turned into something like a typhoon.

"Shut your mouths, you sons of bitches."

"...What?"

The Heavenly Demon had... been a step too late.

Guntar was a good-natured man. He never cursed except when joking around, never raised his voice at his companions. His friends could take his pranks as pranks because he had a particular kind of good humor about him. Pulling off a funny joke well took an extreme degree of social grace.

"Bunch of pathetic bastards, running your mouths just because you've got holes to talk out of."

"H-hey, hey, what's wrong with you?"

"Who the hell's the fake? Who? You goddamn worthless sons of bitches."

Right now, there wasn't a trace of that good humor left in Guntar anywhere.

'Coming here in the first place might've been the mistake.'

The Heavenly Demon's soul let out a deep sigh.

"What's gotten into you? You didn't even drink!"

"Everyone move! I'll calm him down!"

The fake Guntar couldn't hold it in.

Not even close to how "Guntar" should have been.

And five minutes later.

"..."