Regression is Too Much - Chapter 6

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 006

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The pony-tailed girl is way too strong (2)

-Clear Condition 1: If you swallow a Golden Marble hidden somewhere in the forest, you may proceed to the next stage. Only fifty Golden Marbles exist.

-Clear Condition 2: If you defeat the boss, the Goblin Shaman, a portal to the next stage will appear.

“Everyone! I have no idea whose twisted prank this is, but the deeper the crisis, the tighter we have to stand together!”

“…Who is that guy?”

“…No idea.”

Soft whispers drifted through the crowd. Sure, they had every right to be sceptical but I already had the momentum. Like it or not, people were at least willing to hear me out.

“Just eyeballing it, there are well over fifty of us in this clearing. That means it is impossible for all of us to swallow a Golden Marble and move on. The Tower is trying to split us apart.”

I clenched my fist and kept going.

“Yet the notice says if we defeat the boss, a portal will open. In other words, there is a path for every last one of us to survive. It will not be easy, the thing is a boss monster after all, but if we pool our strength, we can bring it down!”

I wrapped up my passionate speech, half-afraid I might regress from bursting a vocal cord. The crowd’s reaction was stunningly uniform.

“…What an idiot.”

Complete, thorough indifference.

The motive behind that indifference, though, fell into two camps. First, those who simply did not believe me.

“Let’s think realistically. A boss? A portal? Do you think this place is some game? Just because those things rant about status windows and call themselves fairies, does that make it true? We should stay put, avoid unnecessary risk, and wait for rescue.”

“…But something really did pop up in front of my eyes…”

“Probably a hidden lens or hologram. Are you going to believe every random light that floats by?”

That was the firefighter ahjussi[2], Choi Cheol-sun, if I remember right. He was calming everyone around him. They had not yet laid eyes on a single goblin, so they were still denying the Tower entirely. For them, words like monsters and tutorials sounded like pure nonsense.

Second came the ones with zero interest in cooperation.

“…Work together? And who exactly does that help?”

“If we fight the boss, who is taking charge? Is he going to be the meat shield?”

“Has that clown never read a webtoon? You bunch up in a place like this, you all get wiped. The only way to live is to act selfish.”

They were not wrong. The Tower is survival of the fittest, a place where altruists get devoured by opportunists.

Everyone was busy figuring out how to keep themselves alive, so my lofty speech probably made me look like a clueless fool.

In the end, nobody came to stand by my side.

“…Ha.”

I let myself slump to the ground.

I gazed up at the sky for a moment, then buried my face in my knees, mainly because I could not stop the grin tugging at my lips.

Why was I suddenly doing something so unlike me?

Because I was playing the role of a man whose heart is righteous but whose strength is insufficient—the kind of guy who cannot turn his ideals into reality.

Step one of the act was proposing that we team up and fight the boss.

Of course, I never expected anyone to agree. No one but a total fool would charge after a boss on the first day.

We have no idea how strong a monster really is, and most people here have never even held a weapon.

“Goblin Shaman” sounds brutally dangerous, while “Golden Marble” sounds hopeful. Add the fact that only fifty marbles exist, and the risk becomes obvious. While you squander time hunting the boss, everyone else finds marbles and escapes.

Lots of pain, and you likely die for nothing.

Any rational person would head off in search of marbles. My offer was doomed from the start, and that was exactly the point.

Even failure was part of the show I wanted the pony-tailed girl to see. I figured a kind-hearted, slightly bone-headed guy would behave in this exact reckless way—like pre-serum Captain America.

What if the pony-tailed girl hated it? Then I would just regress and try something else.

With infinite retries on deck, there was no reason to play safe.

Back to the present.

So, what does a brave but rebuffed ordinary citizen do next? I spent about thirty minutes pretending to agonize over it, just to let enough time roll by.

“…”

That should do.

I staggered to my feet and shuffled toward the weapon pile in the middle of the clearing. People had already picked through it, so I grabbed any sword that was left.

I adopted the worst stance imaginable—feet placed wrong, balance a mess, the sword held at an awkward angle—then swung with all my might.

Whoom.

Compared to the pony-tailed girl’s sharp “whoong,” my effort sounded utterly pathetic.

But acting satisfied, I gave a tiny nod and walked toward the brush where earlier groups had disappeared.

One step.

Two steps.

Grab me already. Hurry up and grab me. If I make it into those bushes, I might regress by mistake.

I kept a calm façade, but the closer I got to the undergrowth, the more my nerves burned. At last, the moment my foot was about to enter the green,

“Hold it.”

The pony-tailed girl stepped in front of me.

“You… where do you think you’re going?”

The fish had taken the bait.

“You. Where do you think you’re going?”

The woman Kim Jun-ho had nicknamed the pony-tailed girl—Choi Ji-won—was in an extremely foul mood.

For a simple reason.

“…Yes?”

Because of the clueless man in front of her.

The second the announcement finished, he had shouted that everyone should band together and beat the boss. When no one supported him, he moped in a corner. Fine.

But when he suddenly grabbed a sword and started wandering off, she could not just stand by.

“The sword. What were you planning to do with that?”

She jerked her chin at the blade. The man gave a sheepish grin.

“…I was going to try and beat the boss.”

“By yourself?”

“Well, it is called a Goblin Shaman, right? Maybe it is weaker than we think. I mean, it is still a goblin.”

His answer was exactly what Choi Ji-won envisioned. The idiot meant to throw himself at the boss alone, a pointless death if there ever was one.

Irritation flared.

“…I do not like this.”

An unwelcome annoyance rose in her chest.

‘…Ji-won, just let him go. You cannot save everyone. Guarding this clearing is already more than enough.’

That was the voice of her beloved sword, Bung-bung. The name was childish because she inherited the blade back when she was seven.

Why is a sword talking? Simple. it was the power of one of Choi Ji-won’s traits.

-Sword and Soul as One [SSS]

-A realm where the person becomes the sword and the sword becomes the person. The person gains the blade’s sharpness and toughness, while the sword gains human wisdom.

In martial arts novels, “Sword and Soul as One” usually means wielding a blade like an extension of your body, but Ji-won’s case was different.

Her sword had literally become a part of her, complete with its own self-awareness. Ji-won could feel everything the sword felt, and the sword could feel everything she felt.

True unity of a woman and a blade, the two of them closer than essence, now a single whole.

Her heightened senses and boosted strength all came from that trait. In the previous cycle, the sword had been the one to sniff out Kim Jun-ho’s act.

‘That guy is a good person’, Bung-bung admitted, but good people are everywhere.

‘You cannot rescue all of them. Right now, mastering your changed body comes first. You are not fully acclimated yet, remember?’

Bung-bung tried to persuade her, perfectly aware of her thoughts.

Logically, Ji-won agreed. Her physical abilities had skyrocketed thanks to the status window, but she had not yet mastered her new performance envelope.

That meant she could not control her body with full precision, which in turn meant a steep drop in effective combat power.

There was more. With her sharpened senses she could now feel it: far off in the forest, an impossibly strong monster presence.

If that was the boss, even Ji-won would have to give up on killing it and hunt Golden Marbles instead.

But…

“You will die doing that.”

“Haha… I will be fine. Probably.”

If she bailed for safety, what would happen to the fool smiling blankly before her? Was he thoughtless, or simply too brave?

Someone kept overlapping him in her mind, and that unsettled her.

‘…Sigh. So you made up your mind.’

Bung-bung let out a long sigh, having read her decision.

“…You.”

“Yes?”