WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 318: The regressor... (2)
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-You have entered Floor 29.
"...Is this some kind of fortress?"
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a tall beauty with an older-sister vibe. As befitted a top-tier player, her face and body were striking, but the large scar across her face added a wild edge.
"Tents, wooden walls, soldiers... Feels like a field camp. What do you think?"
The older-sister woman asked me. She was not wrong.
The tents were worn, but not old. The wooden walls were still being repaired. Soldiers hurried back and forth. Above all, we were standing on top of a tall hill. No matter how I looked at it, this was a medieval military base.
"Hey?"
But... I could not answer. Because of what happened on Floor 17, whenever I entered a floor, the first thing I did was become aware of my soul. That was the problem.
"..."
Could no one else feel it? The overwhelming presence from the center of the base. The power of a soul that filled this entire fortress and spilled out beyond it.
The tent in the center. From there... I could feel a terrifying presence.
Pressure on the level of the Heavenly Demon, or maybe even greater. The difference was this. The Heavenly Demon's aura felt violently murderous, like it wanted to kill every living thing. That aura felt more like a huge boulder planted in place. Even if it had no intention of harming me, its presence alone was enough to leave me breathless.
I could not feel anything in terms of Mana. The problem was purely the weight of that soul. It was so heavy I could barely endure it.
"Jun-ho?"
"Huh, Choi Ji-won?"
Choi Ji-won came walking over from a distance. Judging by how calm her expression was, she did not seem to feel it either. (The older-sister woman saw Choi Ji-won and just stood there with her jaw dropped.)
"...Jun-ho? Did you... maybe...?"
"No, not that. Let's watch a little longer first."
Choi Ji-won frowned when she saw how serious my expression was. She had asked if I had regressed, but I shook my head.
"Are you the newly arrived warriors?"
"Ah, yes."
"This way, please."
A soldier appeared soon after. The direction the soldier led us was the tent in the center of the base.
Whatever it was.
"..."
I was about to come face-to-face with that presence.
* * *
"You may enter."
"...Okay."
The inside of the tent was simple, but put together neatly enough. Even some total outsider would be able to tell at a glance, Ah, this is an office.
A desk, a map, a giant monster head hanging on the wall, chairs for guests. If some polished handsome man had stood up from his seat to greet us, the whole scene would have fit the image of a first meeting with a genius strategist.
"Oh. You're here."
But the one greeting us was some scruffy man sprawled sideways across the desk chair. He had his back propped against one armrest, his legs slung over the other, and with all the tension gone from his body, he was just lying there crunching away on chips.
His body hair had been left completely untended, growing thick and wild, and chip crumbs were stuck here and there in his beard. His armor was rotting in a corner of the tent, and his clothes... pajamas, maybe? Anyway, it was some absurdly comfortable-looking cloth outfit.
Looking closer, underneath all that, he was handsome. Muscular too. Appearance-wise, "older brother" suited him better than "mister." He just looked so catastrophically unkempt that "mister" was the first word that came to mind.
The wave from the soul that had been weighing me down was pouring out from that man. That man was a monster. A monster on the level of the Heavenly Demon, or beyond. How the hell do monsters like this keep showing up two floors in a row? Isn't that a bit much?
"Oh, wait. Just wait a sec."
Whether I was tense or not, the man waved the hand that was not holding chips through the air, then clenched it into a fist.
<Floor 29>
-Every day around sundown, you can have that day's results evaluated by the 'Hero'.
-If you earn the Hero's recognition three times, you can clear the floor.
A familiar message window appeared in front of my eyes.
"Uh, what was it. I used to be the Hero, you know? So I'm basically something like the administrator of this floor."
"..."
"There's a fuckton of monsters out there. Kill them, come back to me, and I'll grade your results. If you clear a certain standard, I'll acknowledge that you did well."
The Hero absentmindedly tapped at empty air again.
"But only one evaluation a day, max. And no matter what, only three evaluations total. Not more, not less. Got it? Now get out. Fighting~."
"..."
"You're still here? Hurry up and go."
Choi Ji-won and I exchanged looks, then slowly headed out of the tent. The wild-looking older-sister woman watched us for a moment, then followed us out.
We walked around without any real destination, and by the time we had roughly reached the outskirts of the base.
"...How is that guy the Hero?"
The older-sister woman muttered. I agreed with that wholeheartedly.
Hero. A brave person.
But the image carried by the title Hero is too strong to judge it based on "bravery" alone. Everybody knows that, so there is no point explaining further.
"That man really is insanely strong. The reason I got tense was because I felt that presence."
"You felt a presence?"
"Yeah. But... no matter how I look at it."
A hero is not a hero just because they are strong. I mean, come on. If you are a hero, shouldn't you at least look like one?
"No matter how I look at it, Ji-won seems more like a hero..."
Compared to that jobless slob scratching at his belly while shoveling chips into his mouth, Choi Ji-won in a ponytail and casual clothes looked way more like a hero. Choi Ji-won did not exactly have a particularly heroic appearance either, which was just how pathetic he had looked.
"Anyway, well... putting that aside."
Honestly, I did not care whether the Hero was an old man, a bum, or a pretty woman. All I cared about was clearing this floor quickly.
"Let's gather some information."
"Sounds good."
"Hey, what are you two to each..."
Whether the older-sister woman said anything or not, Ji-won and I split up and wandered around the outpost. We asked the soldiers a bunch of questions, and we also went outside ourselves.
First of all, according to the soldiers, this place was the front line in a war against the demon race. It seemed we were supposed to be reinforcements summoned there.
Thanks to that, the soldiers were cooperative, and their guidance was friendly too.
After looking around the base enough, I went outside and tried killing a few monsters. The ones I ran into looked like they had been made by mixing a wild dog and a mole half and half. How strong were they? Hmm... hard to say. If I had to compare them to something, about a wild bear, maybe? I have never fought a wild bear before, but that was about how strong they felt.
Not weak, but definitely not something I could call scary or powerful either. To ordinary humans, a bear is something to fear, but to players, it is not that threatening an enemy.
"The deeper you go into the front lines, the stronger the enemies become!"
According to a soldier, the reason was that the monster I killed was one from the outer edge. The structure was supposed to be that the farther inward you went, the stronger the enemies got, and those mole monsters only appeared on the very outside.
"Hmm..."
A few questions came to mind, so I went back to the tent to ask the Hero, who was basically the one in charge here.
"Excuse me..."
"Pass."
"Huh?"
"You pass. I acknowledge you. Come back tomorrow."
"...Huh?"
"Now go."
"..."
But the Hero did not listen to a word I said and just blurted out, "I acknowledge you," before kicking me out.
So just killing even the weakest mole monster gets me a pass? Is this really how it works...?
"No way."
No. Obviously, the Hero was just too damn lazy and giving people a pass by default. It was blatant dereliction of duty, but from my perspective it worked in my favor, so I left it alone.
After that, I met back up with Ji-won. We exchanged the information we had gathered and roughly figured out this floor.
First of all, it looked like we would get a pass no matter what. Even if you came back after killing some shitty monster, that Hero looked ready to yell "okay."
The problem was the hidden piece, in other words, the extra reward. On a floor like this, there had to be an extra reward.
"Getting the extra reward looks like it'll be hard..."
Still, getting the extra reward on this floor looked even harder than I had expected.
The deeper you went, the stronger the monsters got. The monsters themselves being strong was one problem, but the distance was another.
"The really strong ones are going to be way deep in there."
Say it takes three days to move deep enough to find a strong monster. Leave aside killing it. Leave aside surviving for three days in a place swarming with demons.
"And it'd take three days to come back too."
Three more days to go there and back. Just the round trip takes six days, and after all that trouble, you only get the Hero's recognition once. Do that three times, and that is eighteen days.
Clearing the floor itself is easy. Anybody can clear it in three days.
But if you get greedy and try to get a better reward, the time it takes increases exponentially. A floor where working harder gets you a better reward. In that sense, it felt kind of like a game.
Well, aside from that... it was manageable. Really, "manageable" was the only word for it. All we had to do was kill monsters and receive the reward that came with it.
"Guess we just do what we've been doing."
"Let's clear it in the shortest time possible first, then come back and think about it."
I thought this was just going to be a normal floor.
Evening of the second day.
"...Huh?"
"What's wrong, Jun-ho?"
"No, suddenly... my head..."
That was before my head suddenly started spinning and pain hit me.
Footnotes:
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