WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 328: The past (7)

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"I offer the lives of every American, myself excluded."

□It has been done.□

What Zetter had done was a transgression, the kind of line no human should ever cross. But Zetter had his own reasoning behind it. A carefully planned, thoroughly grounded "experiment" had already taken place before this.

First, the obvious part: Zetter had offered up his own people because time was about to turn back anyway. But beyond that, he had plenty of other grounds too.

For one, Ronald, the Book's owner, was currently registered as Portuguese on paper. His parents were American, and he'd grown up in America, but he'd technically been born in Portugal, and thanks to various tax circumstances and the like, he currently held Portuguese citizenship. He was supposed to switch to dual citizenship, or full American status, once he came of age, but for now, he was Ronald of Portugal.

So offering up every American life wouldn't touch the Book's owner at all. No variable would arise from it. (And there was a rule Zetter didn't know about: the lives of anyone who had entered the Tower and gained a status window couldn't be offered as sacrifice.)

That wasn't all.

"China can provide test subjects. If we offer people as sacrifice..."

"Don't cross that line, Chairman. Let's think of another way."

About a month after the Chinese Chairman proposed human experimentation and the President turned it down, right around when Michael Zetter lost his emotions—

"Those test subjects. Are they all confirmed death row inmates?"

"A-Association President. Yes, they're death row inmates."

"If they're going to die anyway, it's only right to put them to more valuable use."

Zetter had chosen the more "efficient" option. If they were going to die regardless, wasn't offering them to the Book the same as frying them in the electric chair?

Either way, Zetter secretly took custody of a death row inmate through teleportation, offered a human to the Book without the President's knowledge, and confirmed that a human carried enormous ritual value.

"..."

And a while later, when the plan to catch the regressor began in earnest, Zetter's brain, running ten times faster than normal, arrived at a possibility.

If time turned back, wouldn't it be fine to offer people? Wouldn't they just come back to life anyway? Wasn't that the most efficient possible use of a human life? If time rewound to the past, wouldn't the death simply be undone?

No. Not certain. There could be side effects. Zetter was ignorant of the Book's laws.

What if he caught the regressor, offered a human sacrifice right before the regression happened, and then after the regressor regressed, those people vanished forever? Or what if, when the moment Zetter had made the offering finally came back around... they all just dropped dead? Wasn't that a perfectly plausible scenario?

That wouldn't be efficient. If it truly came down to no other option, he'd use it, but under normal circumstances it was the height of inefficiency, something he could never justify. No matter how great the value of identifying the regressor, it wasn't worth permanently sacrificing the precious lives of Americans. To repeat himself, Zetter's goal was world peace, and protecting American lives. (If someone asked why a man like that offered up every single American, Zetter would answer, "Because they were going to regress anyway.")

Weighing every possibility in time running ten times slower than normal, Zetter realized at some point that he'd overlooked the simplest method of all.

"Let's move to the lab. Have someone notify the guards."

Simply put, ask the Book directly. The Book was endlessly generous about answering questions regarding its own rules, and Zetter had a teleporter at his disposal. Sneaking into the lab wasn't even a challenge. (For reference, most of the guards were players. Which meant they answered to Zetter.)

In the middle of the night, Zetter slipped into the lab. The rental period hadn't ended yet, so the Book still sat in its usual place. Zetter held out treasure he'd brought along in advance and asked his question.

"Book. If a person is offered to you, and time then turns back—do they remain forever bound to you, erased from the timeline? Or, when the moment they died arrives again, do they die 'by coincidence'?"

□No.□

"But you said you stand outside the flow of time. Doesn't that mean you take a pure loss?"

Zetter's question was reasonable. Throwing a human at a transcendent being that stood outside time, and then having that person just pop right back the moment time rewound? From a human's perspective it might not matter, but from the Book's perspective, wasn't it taking a one-sided loss?

To this question, the Book answered simply: any human offered had to pay a fitting price.

"Ah. It's nothing much, then."

Fortunately, the "price" the Book mentioned turned out to be nothing much, well within an acceptable range. Zetter felt relieved at that, and thought that if circumstances allowed, he might even consider offering people more proactively going forward.

At least by Zetter's own standard, it was nothing much.

* * *

About three seconds after every American dropped dead, time turned back. Which meant that the apocalypse in which nearly every human being in an entire country lost consciousness and died at the same instant lasted all of three seconds. The mental health of the American players (the Empress included) who'd had to witness that scene also snapped right back to normal, which really was a small mercy.

During this period, Choi Ji-won and Kim Jun-ho stayed in reality for about two months trying to find the cause of the butterfly effect. Choi Ji-won in America, Kim Jun-ho in Korea, with the Grim Reaper's support thrown in as well. Between the three of them, they'd built a decent enough information network.

The results of their investigation were shocking.

"The warehouse disappeared...?"

First, all mention of America's secret warehouse had vanished. Only traces of it remained. Even Choi Ji-won's information network couldn't dig up anything about a secret warehouse.

The atmosphere within the United States Government had also grown noticeably chaotic. The news kept hammering the government day after day, and fights were breaking out everywhere, on YouTube, in the papers, no exceptions.

Just in case, they'd tried reaching Zetter, but he didn't answer. And there was no way to reach Dok Su-hee at all.

They'd just regressed like always. So why this change? In only two months?

Concluding there was no more information to be gathered, Kim Jun-ho started climbing the Tower again. Toward Floor 19, and beyond. He began moving forward once more.

And during the two months Kim Jun-ho spent gathering information—

Quite a lot had happened.

* * *

"So then, here's my plan."

This was right after Kim Jun-ho's regression. Around the time the President was explaining his plan again in front of several researchers and Michael Zetter.

"This Book's cover. It's enormous, and there's a divine air to it, but... if a sufficient price is paid, it should be possible to leave a small mark on it. And that mark should be able to resist time itself. That's the idea."

"When you say a mark, what kind of mark did you have in mind?"

One researcher raised a hand to ask, and the President, after a moment's thought, tapped the lower right corner of the Book's cover.

"So... the bottom right corner of the cover. Taking this as the reference point. Fifty centimeters down, fifty centimeters across, at that exact spot, we carve in a single star. Except it has to be tiny. Small enough to need a microscope to see. If it's too big, the required sacrifice will just grow along with it."

"Is there a particular reason it has to be fifty centimeters?"

"We have fifty states, don't we? Does the President really need to spell that out for you?"

"S-sorry, sir."

"Anyway, at this spot..."

"One moment."

Zetter cut off the President mid-sentence.

"What is it, Association President? Did I damage something..."

Zetter bent slightly at the waist and stared intently at the exact spot the President had been tapping. A moment later, his eyes widened, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Mr. President."

"...?"

"It looks like we succeeded. Doctor, bring a measuring tool and a microscope."

An ordinary person could never have seen it. But it was visible to Zetter's eyes, which had completed Adaptation.

"It appears... the regressor really does exist."

Carved into the exact spot the President had indicated, a small but unmistakable star-shaped mark.

* * *

Could a star shape have already been there naturally? By pure coincidence, could there just happen to be a star-shaped mark at the exact spot the President had described?

Not a chance. Every other part of the Book's cover had nothing like it. Only at the exact spot the President had specified did a star exist, so small it was barely visible to the naked eye.

Which meant the regressor was real. The plan had succeeded.

They had proven the regressor existed. The exact situation the President had dreamed of for so long.

But his mood... could not have been called "happy," not even generously.

"To think... to think they really exist."

Right. They had proven the existence of someone with power like a god's. They had confirmed it. But so what? What now?

Originally... he'd meant to use it. To use the regressor in a way that would benefit America. But right on the heels of that thought came fear.

What if, somewhere in that process, the President's own conduct got exposed? What if the regressor found out about everything he'd done up to now?

Right now, the President had no image of the Asian man he'd seen on camera. Only a vague impression of a transcendent being who could toy with time however they pleased drifted through his mind. It was only natural that the President was gripped by fear.

"Damn it... the mark was the problem..."

Right. Simply carving a mark had been the mistake. He should have carved letters instead. This way, there was no telling who the regressor actually was. All they'd done was confirm existence itself, nothing more. It was a clear mistake. A visible enemy was something you could analyze. An invisible enemy was something you could only fear.

"...Zetter. What do we do now... Zetter?"

But whether or not the President was gripped by fear, Zetter stayed quiet, listening to what the researcher was saying.

"So... the position wasn't exactly at fifty, fifty. It was shifted slightly downward."

"Exactly how far?"

"Two centimeters below."

"..."

He hadn't told the President, but a moment ago Zetter had already started thinking about building himself a kind of code system.

If it appeared at exactly the fifty, fifty point, that meant the President had carved the mark.

If it appeared one centimeter below, that meant Zetter himself had carved the mark, and he hadn't managed to identify the regressor's true identity.

If it appeared two centimeters below, that meant Choi Ji-won or Kim Jun-ho was the regressor. They'd been the most suspicious targets all along.

And three centimeters below would mean he'd laid eyes on the regressor, but it had turned out to be someone else entirely.

The mark currently carved into the Book sat two centimeters below. If a future version of Zetter used this same system, then the regressor was, without question, Choi Ji-won or Kim Jun-ho. What Zetter was weighing right now was whether to tell the President this, or whether to keep it hidden.

"Mr. President, if you were to meet the regressor, what would you want to do?"

"Me... you mean."

The President mulled it over.

"Honestly, I don't want to meet them. I'd need to get a read on their character before any meeting happens. If they're a benevolent regressor, I'd help them with everything I have. If they're a malicious one... I'd need to find a way to remove them."

A reasonable position. The power of regression was that formidable. Ally with them, and it would create an overwhelming synergy. Cross them, and life would never be comfortable again, for as long as it lasted.

"But right now we don't even know their identity. Meeting them blindly could... I don't know. There are too many variables."

What the President feared was earning the regressor's wrath and never living a proper life again, for all eternity. Win their goodwill and build a positive relationship, and he could seize wealth and honor beyond anything he currently held. Cross them, and he'd suffer for an eternity.

To say it again, the regressor was a god. No one knew the conditions for regression, the timing, or whether there was a limit to how many times it could happen. But the mere fact that someone could touch time itself was, to an ordinary human, an object of pure terror.

"What if the regressor hopes to never surface publicly at all?"

"That's... fine by me, isn't it. It's not as if we have no way to help discreetly. As long as I can learn their name and their character. I want to help them."

His eyes held genuine sincerity. As far as Zetter could tell, the President seemed to want to go down in history as "the regressor's steadfast ally, and patron." Whatever anyone said, the regressor was, by far, the most likely candidate to clear this Tower first.

"..."

Here, Zetter chose to stay silent for now. Chose to quietly leave the lab. He hadn't yet decided which would prove more efficient, telling the President or keeping it from him.

But one thing was certain.

"Team Alpha. Call everyone in. We need a meeting. This is an important matter."

Zetter would choose the more efficient option.

Footnotes:

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