WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 365

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Regression (13)

In the end, there was no last-minute reversal on Floor 3. Nobody stupid enough to choose betrayal after seeing my strength existed on Floor 3, and we received our rewards and cleared Floor 3...

"..."

Wait.

The thing I needed to think through here was the "scabbard" reward. In case anyone's forgotten, only one person could receive the additional reward at the end of Floor 3. In my case, that had been the scabbard, the one that produced different effects depending on emotion.

What I was mulling over here was one thing. Did I really need to take the scabbard for myself this time?

It wasn't like some sudden altruism had sprouted in me, or that I'd started pitying the others. What I was actually weighing was how effective the scabbard reward really was.

Honestly, back in the early days of climbing the Tower, I'd made pretty good use of this scabbard, but it had basically turned into background noise later on. The real problem was that the scabbard responded to my emotions.

Pull out the right weapon based on emotion? Useful. Genuinely useful, but... as my level rose, my ability to control my emotions had also improved, and the fact that I couldn't deliberately induce a specific emotion on command was a real weakness. I couldn't just conjure up sadness to fight one enemy and rage to fight another, could I?

Even if I somehow could induce it, another downside was that I couldn't use the scabbard on people. The condition for drawing a sword from it was holding an "intense emotion." Yeah, that phrase sounded pretty familiar by now, didn't it?

"Using it on a person is a great way to trigger a companion regression."

A power I couldn't call up at will whenever I needed it, one that was basically an invitation to trigger companion regression if I messed up, and one that made it easy to pinpoint who I was? Hard pass.

My real strengths right now were overwhelming mana, swordsmanship, and the experience that came from regression. A variable I couldn't control, like the scabbard, was genuinely low on merit.

Of course, nobody here would've objected if I'd just said, "I'll take it myself." I'd cleared Floor 3 practically solo, and the mood had already shifted into an implicit agreement that the rewards should go to me.

But I knew for a fact that this particular reward didn't mean much to me, so...

"Hm, hm."

Having sorted my thoughts, I looked around at the others. They stared silently at my mouth, waiting.

"Let's have Kang Chan take the reward."

"...What?"

"Huh?"

They'd probably assumed I'd be the one taking it. But I decided to hand the reward over to Kang Chan.

There were several reasons, but the biggest one was that the reward itself didn't mean much to me, and the second was that Kang Chan's pace of climbing the Tower was slow.

Kang Chan possessed an ability capable of unleashing an extremely powerful attack under certain conditions. He kept climbing the Tower only when he could use that ability with full caution, which meant his climbing speed was way too slow compared to his actual strength.

So what if this floor's reward turned out to be something that could patch up that weakness? Couldn't it become a useful variable somewhere down the road? That was the thinking behind handing the reward to Kang Chan. Well, and if the scabbard ever became something I desperately needed later, I could always regress and go get it back.

Since my status window carried over regardless, I'd decided to hand things over to others unless an item was genuinely essential to me. I figured my own strength was more than enough, so I'd rather use other people to build in variables.

Thinking about it, even in web novels, there are regressors who hog absolutely everything for themselves, and regressors who scatter things around to other people, and if I had to pick a side, I guess I'm the latter kind. Though to be fair, I'm only scattering things because I've already eaten my fill and it doesn't mean much to me anymore.

"...Are you sure about this."

Kang Chan asked back, sounding uneasy, with no idea of my selfish little calculations underneath. I just pushed forward instead, saying something like, "Nobody else has a problem with it, right?", acting like there was nothing strange going on at all.

"Are you really sure."

"Let's hurry along. We don't have time."

"..."

If there's one advantage to running with a new concept, it's that I don't have to explain every single one of my choices in detail anymore.

Before, I would've had to go through the whole song and dance of, "We need to move like this, and the reason is..." Now I just say, "Hm. Let's do it this way," then look around with a stiff expression, and people just fall in line. This is why power is great, and why strength is great.

Anyway, exactly as I intended, Kang Chan alone received Floor 3's special reward (I planned to check what it actually was later), and the other three cleared Floor 3 with only the basic reward.

Ahn Gyeong-jun just seemed completely dumbfounded, muttering "Is this really real..." right up until he left. Dok Su-hee waited with an expression full of things she wanted to say, hoping I'd speak to her first, but I stubbornly ignored her and stepped through the portal.

Dok Su-hee's obsession wouldn't vanish entirely. But it wouldn't reach the excessive level it had before, either. This cycle, I'd barely made any contact with her at all, hadn't even exchanged a single word.

I'd already braced myself for the possibility that she might secretly stalk me, or wander around trying to dig up information on me. As long as I didn't give her more distance than that, it'd be fine.

"That takes care of Floor 3, I think..."

Anyway, with that, Floor 3 was cleared exactly as I'd intended. I spent the remaining time investigating reality and waiting for Choi Ji-won, and soon enough she cleared Floor 3 too, reporting that everything had gone "just as I said it would."

No variables. Floor 3 cleared exactly as intended. If any problems came up, I could always just go further back into the past.

What was left now was... maybe the floor that needed the most careful handling. The floor that demanded the most caution.

"This one's the most important."

The place that would end up playing the most pivotal role in everything from here on out. Floor 4.

Looking back on it, Floor 4 was where every single fate got flipped upside down. In other words, Floor 4 was set to play the most pivotal role in my future going forward, too.

Getting my hands on the Elixir I'd end up relying on for a long, long time, that happened on Floor 4.

Becoming the reason Choi Ji-won and I ended up sharing memories, that happened on Floor 4.

Drawing more attention than necessary because of the Elixir, catching the eye of people in power, that happened on Floor 4.

Building a connection with government official Yoon Joong-hyun, the man with narrow eyes, that happened on Floor 4.

And... becoming a little numb to the deaths of other people, that happened on Floor 4, too.

Floor 4 had been the single most important turning point in my story, and if I wanted to change the course of everything, Floor 4 was also the place that would carry the most weight.

Here's what I needed to keep in mind.

First. My identity must not get exposed. The reason I got found out traced straight back to Floor 4. The rumors spread out from Floor 4, and along with Choi Ji-won's name, the name Kim Jun-ho spread too. All sorts of suspicions branched out from there, Michael Zetter pulled his shady stunts, and it was how I got found out as a regressor.

So the name Choi Ji-won might be fine, but the name Kim Jun-ho absolutely could not spread this time. Even my physical description... even the whole "immortal sage" concept I was running couldn't get exposed. This time, of all times, I wanted to be as careful as humanly possible.

Second. I needed to obtain an Elixir. Stockpiling one or two Elixirs mattered enormously for the road ahead, so it made sense to secure one on Floor 4, where getting one was practically guaranteed.

But thinking it through carefully, these two goals clashed with each other. To get the Elixir, I'd need to save every single human on Floor 4, both the players and the summoned otherworld residents. But do that without getting my identity exposed? It's not like people wouldn't notice me just because I wore a mask, and it's not like they'd meekly listen just because I barked orders at them.

There was also a limit to how aggressively I could move, since even if I accepted that saving every single human and getting the Elixir was fine, the problem was that Choi Ji-won was also set to save everyone this time around.

If Choi Ji-won and I used the same method to save everyone, but I moved people around in ways that went against ordinary morality, that could become a real problem. It might tarnish Choi Ji-won's reputation down the line, and since I'd already gone through the trouble of turning back time, I wanted everything to go off perfectly. In other words, I didn't want to leave a single blemish behind.

Of course, if I went into Floor 4 together with Choi Ji-won, clearing it would be easy enough. This is just a guess, but Choi Ji-won's memory would probably come back the instant she entered Floor 4, and if I teamed up with her, now that she had all her memories restored, clearing Floor 4 wouldn't be any trouble at all.

But if that happened, the actual content of Floor 4 could change entirely... and the people Choi Ji-won saved in the original history would very likely end up dead. In other words, the butterfly effect could come knocking.

So I wanted to act separately from Choi Ji-won, obtain the Elixir, and keep my identity hidden, all at the same time. Laying it all out like this, it does look completely impossible, but...

Precisely because the goal is this impossible, there's an equally impossible method that might just work. A method that might, just barely, be possible for the me I am now. Easy enough to imagine, but not at all easy to actually attempt.

Floor 4's castle. The oncoming monster waves. The three-day grace period.

I.

"I'm going to go wipe out the monsters first."

The monster wave.

I'll annihilate it before it even arrives.

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