WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 343: Ruin (4)

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The White House. The weight carried by that name was never light.

"President, step down!!!"

"Drag him out! You lunatic!!!"

"Somebody just kill him already!!!"

Right now, the scene in front of the White House looked less like a rally and more like a total riot. Those who'd lost everything, those who wanted more, those who'd never had anything to begin with, all of them stood with their necks bulging, screaming for the President.

"Take responsibility!!!"

Rising crime. A crumbling economy. Skyrocketing unemployment. Honestly, up to this point, it was a perfectly normal state of affairs. If anything, America was doing better than most. Of course things weren't going to stay the same once players showed up. Sure, more businesses were failing, but plenty of new ones were rising to take their place. There would always be people who couldn't adapt and got left behind. And when that happened, the government was who people turned to.

If the President took the right measures here, the outrage could be put down easily enough.

"...Mr. President."

"Wait."

"...Yes, sir."

But the President did nothing. Truly, nothing at all. His entire daily routine consisted of waiting for the regressor, and beyond that, he did not act.

"..."

Even to a secretary or bodyguard with no real grasp of politics, it was obvious the President needed to do something right now. At the very least, contacting that "regressor" for some kind of help seemed like the sane move. But the President just kept waiting, endlessly, while holding onto some unshakable conviction.

"All I need is the regressor."

Once the regressor came, everything would work out.

"Then everything gets solved."

The regressor would solve it.

This had crossed well past mere faith into outright fanaticism, clear proof that the President had gone half-mad. In the past, someone might have pointed that out to him. But by now, the authority he'd built up using the Book and other tools had grown so towering that no one dared say a word.

"If only the regressor would come..."

"He's here."

And nobody had expected it.

"He's here, I said."

That the regressor himself would show up like this, right now.

"I've been waiting for you."

Nobody except the President, grinning from ear to ear.

* * *

"Cola, tea, coffee, alcohol... we have it all. What would you like?"

"Don't need anything."

"Ha, then shall we get straight to it?"

Even though I made a deliberate show of my bad mood, the President didn't react. He just sat down at his leisure. Anyone watching would've thought he held the upper hand and I was the one who had to grovel.

"So, how is it? The gift I prepared for you."

He said it with a wide grin.

"I've never entered the Tower myself, so I have no way to sense it directly... but according to the players I'm friendly with, the air on Earth has changed. My guess is... you took some kind of action, Regressor-nim. Am I right?"

His tone implied that I'd surely be thrilled about this whole situation. That smug grin. That leisurely voice.

All of it.

I hated every bit of it.

"This is such bullshit."

"Don't smile. I don't want to see it."

Since I was speaking English, I couldn't use the exact phrasing I wanted (the President wasn't a player), but right now my mood was, to put it bluntly, garbage.

Had Zetter or the President, either one, ever asked my opinion? Consulted me about anything? Given me even the barest choice?

No. None of it. They'd just exposed my identity on their own terms, handed me power on their own terms, and now they were asking, well? Aren't you pleased?

Sure, some people would've loved this. Their identity gets leaked, but in exchange they get their hands on tremendous power, and all that's left now is conquering the Tower.

But this wasn't the way I wanted it done. I could clear the Tower without this kind of help. At least, that's what I believed, for now.

"..."

No. Thinking it over now, that was just an excuse. If I'd earned some massive reward from the fight with the Heavenly Demon and grown this strong through that, I probably wouldn't have been angry. I'd have just chalked it up to good luck and been glad I could clear the Tower faster.

The real reason my mood was this foul was that other people had gone ahead and moved things forward without asking my opinion at all. Because those bastards had dumped this on me however they pleased, and now sat there expecting things from me, and I hated it.

Who did they think they were? Who were they to decide my fate? Who were they to spread my identity around? Who the hell were they? The President? I was the regressor, damn it.

It wasn't like I didn't want to smash everything too. I wanted to make the US President, the man I'd only ever seen on the news, kneel down and grovel in apology. Guns? Bombs? Players? Bring them all. I didn't think I'd lose. And even in the absolute worst case, if I did lose, I could just regress.

A regressor's counter? A seal? None of that was going to work on me right now. In the truest sense, I had become invincible. A being with no enemies left.

"Do you understand why I'm angry?"

But I didn't act on it. I could have solved this with force, but I held it in and explained everything with words instead. I walked the President through, slowly, exactly why I was angry. Careful not to let my emotions flare. Word by word.

I didn't want to be some king of the apocalypse. The world I wanted to live in was the modern society I already knew, not some new order I intended to build myself.

I just wanted... a moderate kind of fame. A moderate kind of respect. A moderate kind of happiness. A moderate amount of responsibility. That was the position I wanted. When I said I'd become the Hero, that was exactly the level of standing I'd hoped for.

And now here I was, standing in front of the President of the United States, explaining to him what he'd done wrong. Slowly. So he could understand.

How had it come to this. How had I ended up here. How had I become someone lecturing the President of the United States.

"..."

The President couldn't manage a smile anymore either. He drank the tea sitting on the table, squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his clasped hands to his forehead, and muttered something under his breath.

"I'm... sorry."

He shot up from his seat, bent at the waist a full ninety degrees, and in a cracked, small voice, said he was sorry.

"I should have asked you first... yes... of course I should have... I'm sorry... I... I think I went mad. I finally feel like my head is clearing now..."

"..."

"I never asked for your consent... I just went ahead with it because I thought I was in a position above you... I truly am sorry."

Watching the President apologize, my mood plunged straight to rock bottom. It was suffocating. Suffocating enough to make me want to scream.

If only he hadn't apologized at all. If only he'd been shameless and brazen about it instead. If he'd called his bodyguards over, saying, "Who do you think you are?" If he'd suddenly pulled a pistol from his desk and fired. If he'd thrown me out, saying my words weren't even worth hearing.

If he had, I'd have taken my revenge and felt satisfied doing it. I'd have done a joint regression with this man, kept my identity hidden, and quietly installed someone else as President instead. The old me would have thought, who are you to go replacing a president? But being transcendently strong changes the height from which you see things. The me right now could do it. I was allowed to.

But when he came at me with a posture this low, I couldn't even bring myself to blame him. The President of a country, and not just any country, the President of the United States, bowing his head so respectfully, and somehow I lost even the will to hold it against him. Maybe hollow was the word for it.

"My life is ruined."

"I'm sorry."

"Do you have any idea how many people are cursing my name right now?"

"I will do everything within my power to clean this up."

With him coming at me this low, would cursing him out even feel good? Would beating him senseless make me feel better? If anything, it would just feel pathetic. Knowing that only made my mood worse.

"...I won't accept your apology."

The only revenge available to me was refusing to accept it. I was clearly the victim here, and yet there was nothing I could actually do about it right now, and that just made the irritation spike harder.

Don't hold back. Right, within reason, don't hold back at all.

"...Are you sorry?"

"...Yes."

"You know what? I'm angry. I'm genuinely, incredibly angry."

That much was true. Up until now I'd been holding my emotions in check, mindful of the effect they'd have on the President, but I let that restraint go.

"I'm going to regress. Even after I regress, I'll still remember this cycle. Don't make the same mistake again. I'll come find you again."

But separate from not holding back.

"If my identity gets revealed, I'll be the one to reveal it."

For now, I had to deal with the situation first. I had to end all this madness right away.

I could worry about the rest after. About what to do next.

I'd long since blown past the limits I'd set on my emotions. Once I regressed, the President's memories would come along with mine.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 29.]

* * *

This wasn't the ending. Just a process.

Stopping my identity from getting exposed through the President was only the beginning. Right now, the top brass of every major nation already knew my name and had their eyes on me. Just resolving that alone wouldn't be easy.

Just imagining it made my head throb, but I had some idea of how to handle it. If things went according to plan, I could get my ordinary life back.

Stay positive. I'd buttoned the first button properly, hadn't I? For now, settling my mind mattered more than worrying. I quickly got the Hero's recognition and went straight to sleep.

"...Why?"

The next day.

The pain crept in again. By now, familiar with it, I knew exactly what it was.

"...Status window."

The Hero trait had activated.

Footnotes:

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