WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 325: The past (4)
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Information about the Elixir had surfaced relatively late. Even Michael Zetter, who could reasonably be considered to hold the best intelligence network on the planet, had been slow to catch on. There were several reasons for that.
First, the Elixir itself was simply too precious an item. Its value was obvious even to an idiot, and letting it be known that you possessed one was far more likely to bring threats than praise. (The people who had received it as a reward for keeping everyone alive knew exactly how lucky they had been. They knew they'd gotten a free ride.)
So for two weeks, the people holding Elixirs did nothing but agonize in silence, unable to tell anyone, swallowing it all down.
"I'm going to sell this."
"H-honey, it could be dangerous to sell it..."
"You think that's the problem right now? Our daughter's about to get kicked out of the hospital. This is our chance to pay off the overdue surgery bills and buy a house. We're never climbing the Tower again anyway, it's too terrifying. Let's use this chance to turn our fortunes around."
"...If that's what you want..."
It also took time for a man cornered like that to make a rash decision. Consumed by greed, he would have loved to sell the Elixir to the chairman of some conglomerate, but an ordinary person had no such connections.
An auction, then? But a proper auction took a long time, and the process for receiving payment was apparently quite complicated. He needed cash fast.
In the end, the man chose the dark path. After asking around through back channels, he found a notorious underworld auction house.
"Shoot."
"W-wait!"
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
He became a beehive. So did his family. A similar operation repeated three times across the world, and a week later, a "miracle cure from the Tower" surfaced at the auction. Naturally, it sold for an astronomical price.
So did Michael Zetter know about all this? He did. He knew the Elixir's effects, the price it sold for, even who bought it. But what he genuinely did not know was its source.
As rumors about the Elixir spread far enough, a few loose lips leaked information about Choi Ji-won. (Most of it got buried without drawing much attention.)
"Do you know about a player named Choi Ji-won?"
"I know of her."
"She apparently succeeded in keeping every human alive on Floor 4. The Elixir is the reward for that."
"..."
"And more importantly, there's a man who cleared Floor 4 one step ahead of Choi Ji-won. Using the exact same method."
"Do we have his identity?"
"We don't have a name or background, but he's described as an East Asian man."
Other people never reached this far in the sea of information. Rumors about the Tower were endless to begin with, and most people had no ability to separate the gold from the noise. But because this was Zetter's private organization, they could filter for quality intelligence.
"Choi Ji-won. Choi Ji-won."
Choi Ji-won. The name rang a bell. She'd shown remarkable results on Floor 2, results that changed the floor itself, or so he'd heard. That was why she was called a hero.
And that woman had succeeded in keeping every human alive on Floor 4? Right at the start of the floor, by fleeing from a monster wave?
"...Is that even possible?"
Zetter traced back through his own memory of clearing Floor 4. He remembered using his Adaptation trait to slaughter more monsters than he could count, choosing the single best option in every passing moment.
But running away the instant the floor began? Was there any basis for that? None. Was there a hint? Absolutely not. There was no way Zetter's instincts and sharp mind would have missed something like that.
Fine. Say she was simply that lucky, and made the call to flee on Floor 4. Say she had some strange conviction in herself, and used it to persuade every other human to cross the freezing snowfield with her.
Up to this point, it could still be coincidence.
But the other man? The one who cleared Floor 4 even faster than Choi Ji-won, using the exact same method? That could not, absolutely could not, be coincidence. It wasn't even in the realm of probability anymore.
"What's the time difference between their clears?"
"Roughly half a day to a full day, we estimate."
The clear condition for Floor 4 was surviving five days. With only a day's gap between them, there was no way to pass information along. And to begin with, the Tower didn't let a player perceive information from a floor they hadn't entered yet. Every circumstance screamed this is not a coincidence, but realistically, it had no choice but to be one.
"...A trait."
Zetter became convinced there had to be a trait involved here. Convinced in the truest sense, he considered it a 100 percent certainty. Other players would later guess it was some kind of telepathy trait, but a different image surfaced in Michael Zetter's mind.
The scene of the President declaring, with absolute certainty, that a time traveler could be found. That strange heat burning in his eyes.
"..."
But for now, this was still only a possibility.
A possibility he could never let slip past him.
* * *
Time passed again. After Mahesh and Zetter put their heads together and worked through it, they concluded that the statue on Floor 15 marked "the hour the statues invade." Zetter immediately relayed this to the President, and naturally, the President failed to grasp how serious the situation was.
"The monsters are going to invade."
"I don't understand what you're telling me."
"...One year from now, a great disaster is coming."
"What great something is coming? Explain it to me properly."
"..."
Something was clearly happening, but neither side could pin down the exact situation, and that frustrated them both. Judging by Zetter's demeanor, the President could at least tell that something was happening. But that was all it amounted to: information.
No matter how powerful the President was, he couldn't very well order other nations to "mobilize your military because something might happen." Politics didn't work that way. There was no justification.
A full year from now, no less. Knowing full well that every nation was still struggling to clean up its own mess, bringing up preparations for something a year away was... a considerable stretch. There was a world of difference between "let's prepare against an enemy" and "we're not sure what it is, but something seems to be coming, so let's prepare anyway."
Having given up on the President's help, Zetter began gathering players instead. He had red text related to Floor 15 inserted into advertisements around the world, and asked anyone who could read the text to get in touch.
During this time, Zetter met all kinds of players. Everyone from shameless criminals reaching out just to test the waters, to considerable powerhouses whose names weren't yet known.
"...the Empress."
"What? Didn't you ask people to contact you?"
Even an old grudge from the Tutorial showed up.
But out of all of them, the ones he remembered most clearly were
"Hello. I'm Michael Zetter. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Choi Ji-won."
"..."
"And... Mr. Kim Jun-ho."
Choi Ji-won and Kim Jun-ho. The two of them.
Zetter already knew the name Kim Jun-ho. Someone had spotted Choi Ji-won traveling with a man on Floors 13 and 14, and background digging had turned up at least his name and basic identity.
His ability was probably some kind of swordsmanship, and he was said to be quite strong physically. There was also talk of him carrying some unexplainable coldness about him.
"About ten months from today, a crisis may strike Earth."
But meeting Kim Jun-ho in person, Zetter found there was something more to him than that. With his sharp instincts, Zetter could feel it. Some kind of... indescribable sense of pressure, or maybe it was composure.
Zetter was certain in this moment. The man who had obtained the Elixir on Floor 4 had to be Kim Jun-ho. Choi Ji-won and Kim Jun-ho, the two of them, were surely the ones who had won that Elixir.
And if a regressor truly existed, it had to be one of these two.
If, if it really was a regressor.
Am I meeting them for the first time right now? Is this my first encounter with these two? Did I say the exact same things before time reversed? What are the conditions for time travel? At what point does the time travel occur? Is there a limit on the number of uses? Does it consume Mana? Is it the type where time travel becomes impossible if Mana runs low? Or is it a trigger unrelated to willpower, some other cause setting it off? Can time travel reach into the future too? Have I already exposed too much information?
Countless thoughts raced through Zetter's mind, but he managed to finish what he'd been saying without a hitch. His brain could handle this kind of speculation without much trouble. Although, after thinking that hard, he did need to drink a fair amount of water afterward.
In any case, the meeting concluded successfully, and once Zetter returned to Association headquarters, he sank back into thought. The experiment the President had mentioned earlier kept nagging at him.
Running the experiment required the President's full cooperation. It also required an enormous quantity of sacrifice, enough to sell off America's future.
Could he convince the President? He could. For Zetter, whose trait was Adaptation, playing with the human heart was no trouble at all.
But what if the two of them weren't regressors? Then what happened to America's future? To the Player Association? To Earth? To humanity? The weight on the other side of the scale was far too heavy. The President's experiment was a gamble that should never be carried out without certainty.
"..."
But certainty wasn't something you waited for. It was something you made.
Zetter immediately thought of one efficient plan.
The odds of success looked high.
* * *
Again. Inside a bar in the White House.
"Mr. President."
"What is it?"
"About that 'experiment' you mentioned a while back."
"That's off the table now..."
"Thinking it over again, it seems like a decent idea."
The President, swept up in Zetter's dazzling rhetoric, was gradually losing his grip on judgment. The setting was the same, but their positions had completely reversed.
"But... you said it was too dangerous..."
"I've reconsidered. I believe this experiment has value worth pursuing."
"...Still, no. The risk is too great."
"You said yourself that if a time traveler exists, they'd be something like a god. This is a chance to confirm the existence of god. Are you really willing to let this opportunity slip away?"
"..."
The President's eyes wavered. He was, at this moment, the man closest to being the ruler of Earth, the one holding more power than anyone else alive. But he hadn't escaped the limits of being human. He had a crack in his resolve, human as he was.
"It's an opportunity."
And Zetter's inhuman insight never missed a crack like that. The President swallowed hard without meaning to. To observe the existence of god, with a human body. What a magnificent feat that would be.
"...No."
Still, the President couldn't simply agree. The gamble was too great. If it failed, it would mean handing America's future straight to the Book.
"What about this."
Of course, Zetter had already calculated for that too. He held the master key to persuading the President.
"I have a way to protect your authority, Mr. President. A plan that guarantees the future while also determining whether a regressor truly exists."
"Oh, oh..."
If no regressor existed, it would simply pass as a strange incident. But if a regressor truly did exist, it would be caught without fail.
"You're... just what are you..."
"I'm merely thinking efficiently."
It was, in truth, a diabolical idea.
Footnotes:
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