WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Regression is Too Much
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Chapter 368
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Regression (16)
The angel's response, especially the senior-looking one, was fast and precise.
By the time the junior angel said "Um... senior?" the senior angel had already noticed my presence. I was sure of it, I'd seen the flicker of panic cross those eyes for just an instant.
But the thing gave no outward sign it had noticed me at all. It kept babbling on with its mouth, saying things like "I told you I hate it most when people interrupt me," while quietly spreading power behind its back. Under normal circumstances, no one would have caught it.
'What now.'
Unfortunately for it, I'd already been focused on seeing souls. I spread my mana out immediately and interfered with it.
Honestly, I threw it out without knowing whether it would even work. The power angels wielded was a third kind of force, different from both mana and soul. If I had to categorize it, it felt something like "divine power," so whether my chill could affect it at all was a complete unknown.
Pashhh.
"?!"
Thankfully, my mana turned out capable of interfering with divine power. I couldn't freeze its mana outright, but I did manage to disrupt it.
"Run! Scatter!"
"Uh, uh..."
The senior angel didn't stop just because its divine power had stalled. It kept steadily working to break through my mana, thrashing to buy time. Maybe twenty seconds, no, ten seconds, and it would manage to escape. The safest option would've been to run without looking back.
"Hurry up and go!!!"
"I, I can't feel my legs..."
But it didn't. So it actually had some sense of camaraderie, huh. I cracked my wrists and stepped toward the two of them. Too late to run now.
"Wh, wh, wh, what do we do..."
"...Haah."
The senior angel pushed the junior one behind it and stepped forward.
"Who are you. What do you want. If there's something I can do, I'll cooperate as much as I can."
It approached me without resistance, raising both hands to show it meant no harm. It had already noticed my mana filled this entire space, and that further resistance meant nothing.
"..."
"..."
I didn't answer. I just watched it quietly. The angel met my gaze without flinching. It looked like a young man on the surface, but a certain wisdom leaked unmistakably from its eyes. Not acting first, trying to observe me as much as possible, it looked like a careful, cautious personality.
'This is an unexpected situation.'
Honestly, I hadn't expected an angel to be here. I'd just grabbed the thing because I saw it. Which meant I had no plan laid out. The simplest approach would be to threaten it and squeeze information out.
But I had no information. I knew nothing about what angels could or couldn't do.
Not knowing what the other side was capable of meant I couldn't gauge the scope of any demand, and asking directly would just expose my own ignorance. The moment someone doing the threatening got caught not knowing anything, it became far too easy to get used against instead.
Then again, digging for information through repeated regression carried its own risk. The elder on Floor 15 had said to be careful about regressing while an archangel was nearby, but who knew if that applied to ordinary angels too. And judging by its behavior, this one looked like it had put in some years.
More than anything, I was inside Archangel Raphael's territory. Unlike the other archangels, Raphael hadn't left the Tower, and there was every chance it was already watching me. It could intervene at any moment.
Just my guess, but Raphael already knew about my regression to some extent. The fact that it still hadn't intervened, despite knowing, meant it was at minimum staying neutral, but whether it would remain neutral if I did something excessive to an angel here, that I had no way of knowing.
Ugh, my head hurt. I'd come here fully intending to clear out the monsters in one clean sweep, so why the hell were there angels here messing everything up. I was just thinking someone would please give me a clean, clear answer, when.
"Me! Me me me!"
"?"
"?"
"I wanna touch that! The machine!"
"N, no you can't!"
Eom Hong-jun suddenly bolted toward the machine wrapped in sacred aura, with the junior angel scrambling to stop him.
"What's that button?"
"Don't touch it... that's, that's, um, what was it... I don't quite remember either..."
"You're an idiot!"
"I am not!!!"
"What's this one?"
"D, don't!!!"
Eom Hong-jun broke through the Iron Wall defense and pressed a pure white button, and out of thin air, a wolf appeared with a pop.
"Whoa!"
"Stop that! Get away from it!"
It was unmistakably the same wolf I remembered seeing on Floor 4. But it just lay there flat on the ground, still, like a robot switched off. Looked like it needed some additional input to move.
"I think if I press this it'll start moving..."
"How did you know that?! Get away! Get away from it!!!"
While Eom Hong-jun and the angel bickered back and forth, I glanced sideways at the senior angel and spoke.
"That device generates monsters?"
"...That's correct."
"Hmm."
So that was how monsters kept breaching the fortress on Floor 4, made by that machine. Hmm...
I wasn't keen on outright violence against an angel. Threatening it required knowing something first, and I wanted to avoid too much regression. Digging out information under those constraints came with a lot of conditions attached.
Watching Eom Hong-jun bounce around excitedly, though, I could roughly settle on an approach.
"Give me a reward."
"...Excuse me?"
"Finding this place counts as a great achievement, doesn't it? I've been watching, and my achievement level hasn't gone up at all."
Of course it hadn't. There was no achievement for finding a place like this. This was like breaking through a wall mid-game and stumbling into a bugged-out zone. It'd be strange if the system had an achievement prepped for that.
"So give me a separate reward, like you did on Floor 2."
I let it slip that I was the one who'd negotiated with Raphael on Floor 2. I wanted to sell the idea that I was "that" player who ran around doing strange things to farm achievements.
I hadn't come here to stop the monsters because I knew the future. I'd just come to hunt achievements. Fame? Fine if it spread among the angels a little. Might as well play it bold.
"...When you say 'reward'..."
How would that angel respond? Would it give me a "reward"? Or would it admit the situation had gone sideways and call for an archangel?
"Let me operate the machine."
"...Understood."
The angel chose the former. Right, no matter how composed it seemed, it must have feared an archangel's punishment more. Perfect.
"Hong-jun-ssi, they said you can touch that as much as you want."
"Huh? Really! Thanks!"
"Uh, ahh..."
Shoving past the junior angel, who stood there mouth agape in despair, Eom Hong-jun happily started fiddling with the machine. The wolf lying on the floor grew bigger, then smaller, its fur changed color, and now it was glowing, all while he had the time of his life.
So then... that machine was responsible for summoning and controlling the monsters. That explained why Floor 4's difficulty had been so absurdly variable, that machine had a lot to do with it.
Wait. Wait a second. If we could actually operate that machine right now... hmm... was there some way to squeeze the most use out of it?
While I was mulling it over, an idea suddenly struck me, and I called out loudly to Eom Hong-jun.
"Hong-jun-ssi!"
"Huh? What's up?"
"Can you summon monsters that don't get along with each other?"
"I'm just mashing buttons randomly, but I'll give it a shot!"
Eom Hong-jun kept fiddling with the machine however he pleased after hearing me out.
A few moments later, a cat-shaped monster appeared out of thin air, and the wolf that had been lying limp on the ground slowly rose to its feet.
The two beasts came to their senses, looked around for a moment, and then.
"Meeeoooow!!!"
"Screeeeeee!!!"
Charged straight at each other!!! Hide tearing, eyeballs bursting, blood everywhere, and neither monster showed any sign of stopping.
"...Nice."
I dug through my memories from before this regression.
Monsters were creatures closer to beasts by nature. And yet it had always bothered me how they closed in on the fortress in such neat, orderly formation.
But given the existence of that machine, there was apparently some kind of control in place keeping them from fighting each other. So what if I sent monsters in to disrupt that control? No, why stop at just disrupting it, why not go further and send monsters that already hated each other straight at the fortress together?
Remember what I'd been agonizing over earlier? That I was capable of saving everyone, but that came with its own drawback.
If I went ahead alone and killed off every monster myself, everyone else's growth would stall out. Floor 4 was one of the more dangerous early floors, but it was also one of the floors that handed out the most experience. And since I couldn't gain experience myself, if I killed every monster single-handedly, people would survive, sure, but their growth would end up stunted for certain. (Sure, there was the Elixir, but that wouldn't bring back experience points already lost.)
"...How..."
The senior angel's face had gone the color of a corpse's by now, but there was no helping it. What needed doing had to be done.
"Hong-jun-ssi. I've got an idea."
"Huh? What is it?"
Saving everyone, keeping my identity hidden, and solving the experience problem too...
"Starting now..."
I could finally catch all three rabbits I'd never managed to catch at once before.
Like a proper regressor should.
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