WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 355

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Regression (3)

Wandering was something that happened when you didn't know the method. When you didn't know what to do, where to go, or what to move toward, that was when a person wandered.

Hah.

Put another way, if you knew what to do and how to do it, you didn't wander. So I wasn't wandering. I was just moving straight ahead.

What I had to do was simple.

"I really am a regressor."

First, get famous. Go on YouTube channels, TV broadcasts, talk shows, wherever, and show off my presence.

The purpose? Getting stronger. Getting as strong as the me I remembered, and stronger still.

"Kim Jun-ho? Yeah, I know him."

"Isn't he that regressor guy who's famous lately?"

"Did you see that video of him slicing through the island? Is that even possible?"

"He's basically a walking nuke."

Gaining recognition. Buying trust. Making fans. Making people believe I'd protect everyone.

-The Hero trait has been activated!

Triggering the Hero trait. Pushing myself to the limit, and past it.

"J-Jun-ho-ya! Your nose! You're bleeding!"

"Ah, damn."

My head throbbed, the world spun, and I forced down the bile that came up tasting of blood. I gritted my teeth. Then, unable to hold on any longer, I regressed. Started over from the beginning again.

"...I'll focus this cycle."

Even so, I closed my eyes and focused on whatever sensations I could feel. That was the entirety of what I had to do. Simple enough, something you just had to endure a little of. Easy enough that an elementary schooler could do it. If I told people they'd get to become a regressor just by enduring this, they'd form a line around the block. Endure it. Other people don't even get this chance.

I'd gotten used to the Hero trait by now, but this really did mean pushing past every limit. If I let my consciousness slip even once, it felt like my body would burst, so I couldn't sleep at all, and I had to spend the nights meditating instead.

And meditation, it helped a great deal on its own. Observing my current state, analyzing the source of the pain and dizziness, working out ways to overcome it. Every moment was a crisis, an opportunity, and growth all at once.

I grew stronger. Not just stronger in this one moment. My ability to handle power kept getting more refined the longer this went on, and things I couldn't see back when I was weak started coming into faint focus. Things I'd once thought mattered turned out to be largely irrelevant in combat, while things I'd dismissed as trivial turned out to be close to the core of it all.

Once your weight class grows, your eyes naturally open, and once your eyes open, the path naturally comes into view. My footsteps, which had been blindly following that world's Kim Jun-ho, gradually gained confidence and speed. Keep going like this. Keep going like this and I'll get even stronger.

Growth. Genuinely explosive growth. Leaps and bounds. Constant improvement. A complete transformation. Whatever word you wanted to slap on it, I was getting stronger fast. Ji-won watched that growth happen right beside me, and even she could barely believe it.

"..."

But unlike my body growing stronger, unlike the depth of my swordsmanship maturing.

My heart only grew more anxious the longer this went on.

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't get a grip on it at all. It didn't feel like this method could turn back time.

I still hadn't reached the level where a mere gesture could send crowds into cheers. I'd gotten famous enough, bought enough trust, but there was plenty of room left to grow. The Hero trait still had untapped potential.

But separate from my body growing stronger, I couldn't say my understanding of the soul had deepened at all. I felt nothing resembling a clue for judging regression, or any thread connecting to the World's Center. If I'd had even some small realization, I would have kept pushing harder, I could have gone further. But feeling truly nothing at all, I could feel my will to keep going starting to crack.

I regretted running my mouth earlier about knowing so much about wandering. I was the one wandering now. Doubting whether the path I was on was even the right one.

"Trust your gut."

The one who steadied me again, at a moment like this, was Choi Ji-won once more.

"Think about it from my position. There's nothing I can do. I just have to watch. It's unsettling. It makes me anxious. But I can bear it. You know why? Because I believe you can figure it out."

Aware she was saying something embarrassingly sappy, Choi Ji-won looked away slightly.

"I think your judgment will turn out to be right. If it turns out this isn't the way, you can try that other plan you mentioned. And if that's not it either, you just find another path. We've got plenty of time, don't we?"

Choi Ji-won, who'd once talked about the expiration date on my sanity, saying we had plenty of time, that was clearly meant to comfort me. But even if the warmth was a little manufactured, there was real sincerity in it.

"...Thanks. You know that, right?"

Right now, that warmth was exactly what I needed most.

Taking Ji-won's advice to heart, I moved straight into Plan B. The moment I regressed, immediately try to regress again.

[You have taken damage.]

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

First, I bit my tongue to regress back to Floor 29.

"...Hff!"

The instant I came to, I destructively detonated my mana, inflicting internal injury on myself. My movements were swift, without a hint of hesitation.

[You have taken damage.]

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

But what greeted me was still Floor 29. It wasn't until I actually carried out this plan myself that I found the flaw in it.

"...The delay."

My regression didn't trigger instantly. There was a grace period of roughly 0.5 to 1 second, my consciousness gradually fading before the regression actually executed. If it had triggered the instant I took damage, there might have been a chance, but as long as that grace period existed, there was no possibility of making "the moment I take damage" and "the moment I enter Floor 29" line up exactly.

No, it was too early to give up. Let's try a bit more. Find the thread. Explore the possibility.

Steeling myself, I tried regression after regression, headfirst, no plan, and sometimes the excessive regressing made me throw up on the floor. I'd thought I was used to the dizziness of regression, but it seemed like I still had a long way to go.

Still, from doing it enough, I managed to work out the rule. The more I steadied my consciousness, the more clearly I held onto awareness, the longer it took for the regression to trigger. Wanting to "see more" seemed to slow the speed of regression down.

So I did exactly the opposite. I emptied my mind, let go of any attachment to reality, and closed my eyes with nothing but the wish to regress. Then I detonated the mana.

Doing it that way, the time it took to regress kept shrinking. 0.5 seconds, 0.3 seconds, 0.1 seconds, and then fractions even smaller than that.

I could see a possibility. So I kept trying. Tried, and tried, and tried again. As far as my subjective sense of time went, it really did feel like I was taking damage the instant I regressed, but objectively speaking, there was still, however briefly, a gap. Room to get better still existed.

I researched. Ways to detonate mana even faster. Ways to injure myself even more simply. Using mana was clearly the way to go. Biting my tongue, cutting my hand, anything like that took time to physically "act out." What I needed was mana that responded directly to my will.

Why didn't the mana just detonate instantly? I was hesitating. Some instinct in me was reluctant to hurt myself. After enough effort, I pushed past that instinct. The time it took to self-injure kept shrinking further, until I could regress more than fifty times in under a single second. The frequency of throwing up went up accordingly.

I was improving. Definitely making progress.

"..."

At the same time, I was getting irritated. Wasn't this enough already? Why not? I'd been so sure I'd found the answer, so sure I'd put in enough effort.

More than this? I needed to try even harder? Or was there some other path?

What was the difference between this "me" and that other me? What made it possible for that self and not for this one?

"..."

Well, the difference was obvious. Desperation. Deprivation. Madness. I was lacking that kind of negative motivation.

That self had no way back. He had a desperation born of knowing he couldn't go on living if he failed. I was desperate too, in my own way, but the degree was different. The concentration was different.

"...So what."

So what if the concentration was different. I'd make up for it in volume. Try more, try longer. Just detonate the mana faster, come back to my senses more skillfully. That was all there was to it.

Hurt myself, regress. Hurt myself, regress.

[You have taken damage.]
[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 29.]
[You have taken damage.]
[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 29.]
[You have taken damage.]
[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 29.]
[You have taken damage.]
[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 29.]

The message window always appeared in the same spot, then vanished after about two seconds. To my eyes, repeating the regression over and over, it looked like the same message window was always hanging there. Floor 29, Floor 29, Floor 29, Floor 29.

It was hard. It was miserable. I missed Ji-won. I wanted to eat something delicious. I wanted to play a game. I held it all in.

Regress, and regress again, and regress again. I'd lost count of how many times I'd doubted whether this was even the right path. But the difference from before was that now, it felt like something was almost within reach. If I could just time it a little better, be a little sharper, a little more...

"Huh?"

And then, at some point. You know how there are moments like that.

The moment you throw a basketball and it scrapes off your fingertips just right. The moment you kick a soccer ball and the sound rings out especially crisp. The moment you toss a half-full plastic bottle and somehow know it's going to land flat on the floor.

For me, this was that moment. It felt like gears clicking into place one after another. I'd come back to my senses faster than ever, detonated the mana faster than ever, and let go of consciousness faster than ever. The three processes meshed together perfectly, striking a strange, golden harmony.

This was it. It had to be this. Right around when that thought crossed my mind, I noticed a faint sense of wrongness. The one piece of evidence I could catch, only because my eyes had been closed the entire time.

[You have taken damage.]

[Returning to the moment of first entry on Floor 28.]

By the time I came to.

"What, a newbie?"

"Hey, don't just lie there sprawled out like some cocky newbie, get up and say hello at least."

It was Floor 28.

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