WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

________________

Chapter 357

──────

Regression (5)

"...Yes, I really am Guntar."

"Truly...?"

I wrung my memory dry, desperately playing the part of "the Kim Jun-ho from before." It hadn't been so long that I'd forgotten how I used to act, but the density of everything I'd lived through since made it hard. I wasn't stupid. I was just exhausted. Please understand.

Objectively speaking, there might have been small gaps in my performance, differences fine enough for the old Heavenly Demon to have caught. I'd done my best from where I stood, but from his side, maybe the seams still showed.

"...Yes. I'm not feeling well, so would it be alright if I rested for a moment?"

"Ah, of course. If you're really Guntar-ssi..."

But that would only hold true for the "Heavenly Demon in a normal state." The Heavenly Demon right now had to have his head in the most tangled knot of his life. An Archangel, or something equivalent to one, had just possessed my body, revealed itself, and turned back time right in front of him. In his mind, Archangel probably now meant "a being who can toy with time itself." And that would have retroactively explained why he'd left the Heavenly Demon alone until now too, some story about watching and waiting because time itself could be adjusted at will.

Well. None of that was true. I didn't even know if the Heavenly Demon was actually thinking that. But one thing was certain: he was performing too, right now, and that was exactly why he hadn't seen through my clumsy act. That was enough.

This should keep the Heavenly Demon from acting rashly. I didn't know what would happen to his memory once I regressed further into the past, but this would work as some kind of restraint, at least. Worried he might eventually catch on? Who knows, but he'd probably chalk that up as some kind of test too. Once a person's thinking gets pulled in one direction, it's not easy to break free of it. This wouldn't rehabilitate the Heavenly Demon forever, but I believed it would serve as a stopgap. At the very least, I believed it would be enough to avoid a scenario where every human who entered Floor 28 got wiped out.

To sum it up concretely.

First, the Heavenly Demon now believed the Archangel's intervention was still ongoing.

Second, the Heavenly Demon had come to overestimate the Archangel's power. That would, in the end, restrain his behavior. That's about where it would land.

That took care of the Heavenly Demon. Now, what was left.

"...Regression."

Regress again.

It felt a little strange to say this after already succeeding once, but honestly, this "regression into the past" wasn't a result I could control. Mana, spirit, and body all had to align, the timing had to line up perfectly, or it just wouldn't work.

It wasn't a matter of "focus hard enough and you'll succeed." Literally, it only worked when I got obscenely lucky, once in a blue moon. So did that mean I could just empty my head and wing it? No, not that either. It wasn't about leaving everything to chance and going through the motions. It only happened "once in a while" when I poured every ounce of concentration into the attempt, which meant the fatigue was substantial too.

If I'd been a professional regressor, I could've waved it off with "difficult task, sure, but I've done this before, so it's easy for me." But I wasn't. Ranked against real regressors I'd be bottom-tier at best, no talent to speak of, never having actually regressed before all this. Just a brat. There was no helping how clumsy it all felt.

"Ah... this is such shit."

What made this "regression" process even harder was a certain kind of self-loathing.

This wasn't a fight against anyone else. There was no outside attack threatening me, no obstacle waiting out there for me to overcome. It just came down to whether I did well enough to succeed, or failed because I wasn't good enough.

I knew it was hard. Of course walking a path nobody had ever attempted, completely unbroken ground, wouldn't be easy. But I couldn't stop the inferiority creeping up inside me either, the thought that maybe if it had been Choi Ji-won who was the regressor instead of me... if it had been someone else...

"Jun-ho-ya. Come here."

Every time that happened, I went to Choi Ji-won, steadied my mind, calmed myself down, and tried again.

Tried, and tried, and tried again, rested, tried again.

By the time my head wasn't just spinning but going hazy, by the time the urge to give up filled my skull completely, overflowed, and turned into something I couldn't even name anymore.

-You have entered Floor 27.

"...Ha."

I'd succeeded. I'd pushed myself to the absolute edge, wrung myself out like a dry rag, and only then managed it. Thinking back, it had always been like this. Not so untalented that giving up made sense, but not so gifted that success ever came easy either.

Someone who could only succeed by giving everything, by squeezing out every last drop. If you thought about it, most people were probably like that. Anyone who pulled out everything they had could probably manage what I managed. The only reason I stood a little further ahead than most was this.

Regression meant infinite chances. It meant I had all the time I needed. It meant I didn't have to worry about opportunity cost.

"Here we go again."

And it meant I had a life partner who always stood behind me, supporting me.

Put it all together, and I was luckier than most. Lucky enough to draw the broken trait called Regression, lucky enough to have wonderful people at my side. A treasure other people could want with every fiber of their being and never get their hands on, and I'd gotten it just because I got lucky. A nobody who'd hit the jackpot.

"A little more... just a little more focus."

It was only right to use part of what I'd received for everyone else. That was the morality school had taught me, and it was the way of life I'd chosen.

Focus again. Repeat the regression. By the time I forgot everything, the scenery around me had shifted. Into the past. Further into the past. Slowly, but the time it took to regress to an earlier floor kept shrinking, little by little. Progress crawled like a slug, but at least it was progress. It was moving forward.

Did that mean I did nothing but regress the whole time? No. I didn't have the kind of iron will it would've taken to just push through nonstop, so I made sure to take proper rest.

Revisiting floors I'd only seen in memory stirred up a strange nostalgia. Ah, this happened here. That happened there. Ah, right, Floor 23 had been a little bit of a heart-stopper. If I didn't regress fast enough, the old memories would fade, meaning I'd have burned through that whole stretch of time for nothing. It put real strain on my mind too.

Anyway, in the middle of resting and regressing, resting and regressing, over and over, I never lost track of the small details. Maybe that thoroughness was my one real strength.

"How's your memory?"

"...I remember everything that happened in the future. But the stuff that happened inside the Tower feels kind of hazy, like I can't quite see it clearly?"

First off, Choi Ji-won's memories were being carried over intact. She didn't remember everything that had happened in the future, mostly her memories of the Tower were the ones damaged, but she could at least recognize that certain things had happened.

I'd also worried Michael Zetter might have logged something like "the regressor is currently turning back time," but that didn't seem to be the case. The state of the world was unfolding exactly the way Zetter had described. The mark on the Book would remain forever, of course, but that was something I could handle later.

Of course, where there's light, there's shadow. The fact that Choi Ji-won's memory held meant.

"Dok Su-hee's not picking up."

That Dok Su-hee's memory had held too. Thankfully, the "Dok Su-hee who'd gone half-mad and never left the Tower" had been erased entirely. That version never happened at all, but Dok Su-hee's actual memories would carry forward. I needed to make contact somehow.

"Hmm..."

The real problem was that she still wasn't answering my calls. Obviously, I'd come back to a point before "the fight between Michael Zetter and Dok Su-hee." In theory there shouldn't be any reason for her to be ignoring me, but for some reason, no reply, no answer. And reaching out to Zetter to say "please arrange a meeting" felt distasteful too.

I decided to sort that out later as well. Taking action on it now would just get undone the moment I regressed further into the past anyway. The whole point of making contact was to gather information, and I already had a plan laid out. There was no reason not to push forward with it.

Anyway, the march into the past itself went smoothly. Further back, and further, further still into the past. There were little episodes with Ji-won scattered along the way, small secrets I hadn't known about that I picked up on, minor mishaps where I regressed by accident in the real world. None of it mattered much in the grand scheme.

Further back, further, deeper into the past. A lot of time passed, but I didn't give up. And when there's a possibility something could happen, combined with the fact that the regressor never gives up, that's the same as saying it will definitely happen.

Right now, the place I was breathing was Floor 6. That's where I decided to make my stand. My final stage, the one where I'd pour in everything I had.

"Here I go."

Almost there. I scraped together whatever scraps of focus I had left and let my mana burst. Emptied my mind. Unified mind, energy, and body into one. Regression. Regression into the past. This time. This time, without fail.

I didn't open my eyes partway through to check my surroundings. I didn't go find Choi Ji-won to heal my mind. I focused harder than I ever had before, and gave myself all the time it took to sink deep into my own core. I could feel every organ, every thread of muscle, every drop of blood in my body. I could feel my mana, my soul, my heart.

I recognized myself. I faced the human being that I was, fully, without flinching. That alone was enough.

And when I opened my eyes again.

"Ah."

Wind brushing past my nose. Grass rippling side to side with the current. That familiar smell of dirt. Trees rising tall overhead.

"Fuck! Where the hell is this!"

I was back.

"...The Tutorial."

Back to the Tutorial.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried