The Regressor Deceives (1)
The Regressor Deceives (1)
"Create a common enemy?"
Choi Ji-won's elegant face went blank in an instant, radiating a cold aura. I'd developed a touch of Tutorial-induced PTSD; I couldn't help flinching whenever Ji-won looked at me like that.
"Jun-ho... you're the one doing this, aren't you."
Choi Ji-won pressed me, her voice icy.
"Yeah."
"Are you insane?"
"No, it's just..."
We'd already had a fight over something similar before.
She couldn't understand why I was so stubborn about refusing to step into the spotlight. She thought I was overreacting, that there was no way my regression would be exposed just by getting famous.
'I don't like how the things you do get mentioned as my achievements.'
'Can't you just get famous with me?'
'Hoo. Fine. If that's really how you feel...'
In the end, she came to respect my wishes, and we barely reached an understanding where Choi Ji-won took the front stage while I supported from behind... but apparently, me taking on the role of the villain was a different matter entirely.
"What are you, some tragic hero? You're usually so obsessed with your mental health, so why are you volunteering to be the bad guy? You like being cursed at? Want me to curse at you?"
She almost reflexively slapped my back, but Choi Ji-won barely restrained herself. Getting smacked on the back right now probably would've sent me straight into a regression.
"Calm down, Ji-won. What you're worrying about isn't going to happen. I get it. I know what you're worried about."
Of course, I know what's bothering Choi Ji-won. She doesn't want my name to be dragged through the mud.
"The name Kim Jun-ho in Korea won't be the one getting cursed. And later on, let's definitely screw over that Zhang Lei bastard. For now, how about you just hear me out?"
"...Fine."
"Alright, here's the simple plan."
Once I regress, a mysterious, overpowered psychopathic killer will appear. One so terrifying that both dwarves and players will tremble in fear.
"...Are you going to kill people?"
"Obviously not."
Naturally, I have no intention of killing anyone. But I want the players to have the terror that they 'could die' lodged in their heads.
Once I'd laid out the whole plan, Choi Ji-won reluctantly nodded.
"So, Ji-won, your role is crucial."
"...It does seem like it would work..."
Ultimately, the core of this plan is Choi Ji-won. It all depends on how convincingly she can act.
"...Fine. Let's do it."
"Okay."
With her agreement, all the preparations were complete. All that remained was execution and trial and error.
"Now, then, let's regress..."
"Wait. Before you regress, we have something to do."
"...What?"
"Are you going to explain all this again after you regress? Convince me all over again? Come here."
Choi Ji-won's memories are only retained for cycles in which both of us feel intense emotions. In cycles where we spent our time smoothly without incident, her memories didn't carry over.
And now, as always, one of the most intense emotions is...
"Do you love me?"
"Of course I do."
Love.
**
After repeating dozens of regressions and running just as many experiments.
I managed to figure out the most efficient way to make the dwarves and players terrified.
"Ji-won. How's this skull? Doesn't it give off a bit of a Goblin Shaman vibe?"
"Looks good?"
With this...
It'll definitely be effective.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 11.]
***
"Haa..."
"What now."
"I'm hungry for women..."
"Ah, fuck's sake. We're trapped here and the first thing on your mind is women?"
No matter what his comrade called him, the French player Julien was starving for female company.
"Why did I even come to Floor 11? Am I stupid?"
His reason for climbing the Tower wasn't noble or grandiose. It was simply that the title of 'hotshot player' was incredibly advantageous for picking up women.
You could ask why he'd risk his life for such a reason, but up to now, the Tower hadn't been that hard for Julien. Except for Floor 4, he'd never really felt his life threatened.
In his opinion, there was only one difference between the top-rank players and the rest. Courage.
The courage to overcome the fear of death and challenge the next floor. If you had that courage, this Tower was a gold mine with returns far outweighing the risks.
"Should've just been satisfied with Floor 10..."
Yeah, that's what he'd thought. Right up until he got stuck on Floor 11.
Who would've guessed he'd be trapped on a floor for no reason at all? He wanted to try talking to the dwarves, but they'd just glare at him, offering no way forward. All he could do was endlessly save up money and wait.
"Man, if only some pretty female player would show up..."
"Forget that, let's go look for those herbs you mentioned earlier."
"It's a woman."
"What?"
Julien shot up from where he'd been lying down. Ignoring his flustered comrade, his gaze fixed on a figure far off in the distance.
"...A new face. Asian. Really pretty."
"...You can see that from here?"
"But she's covered in blood. Looks badly hurt."
There shouldn't be any strong monsters at the forest's edge. It seemed a female player with nothing but courage had wandered into Floor 11.
"Well, from my perspective, it's a blessing."
Rubbing the soot off his face with the back of his arm, Julien approached the blood-soaked woman.
"Miss, what happened to you? Need some help?"
With a sleazy grin, Julien reached out to casually drape his arm over the bloodied woman's shoulder.
"..."
Flash!
"Whoa..."
Overwhelmed by the intense aura emanating from her, he stumbled backward before he even knew it. This wasn't so much because Julien was utterly useless, but rather because he'd let his guard down, assuming she'd be weak.
"Ah, a lady with some skill I see. So why's someone like you in such a mess? Do you, maybe, need a potion?"
Still, they say a man only needs the strength to lift a spoon.
The accumulated fatigue from rough living, the hunger pangs from not eating properly, and even the intense aura radiating from the woman—none of it could stop Julien.
"Hm... I could give you a potion. But you know these sell for a lot, right? Normally, if there's input, there needs to be output..."
Julien kept pressing his case with a greasy persistence.
"Hey, hey! You moron!"
"What?"
"Look at her face!"
When his fellow climber stopped him in a panic, Julien finally took a closer look at the woman's face.
She was pretty. But it was definitely a face he remembered... where had he seen it?
"It's Choi Ji-won! You idiot!"
"...Ah?"
The moment he heard the name Choi Ji-won, countless stories flashed through his mind.
She faced the City Master on Floor 2 in direct combat and won.
She even summoned an Archangel and changed the entirety of Floor 2.
On Floor 4, she put on an unbelievable performance and saved everyone.
"Uh, uhh..."
Even if only half the rumors about Choi Ji-won were true, she was one of humanity's heroes.
"Ah, a potion! You need one, right? Here you go!"
Julien immediately pulled a potion from his pocket and sprayed it on Choi Ji-won.
It wasn't that he'd yielded to superior strength. Choi Ji-won was indeed far stronger than Julien, but Julien had his own confidence in his abilities.
The emotion Julien was feeling right now... was respect.
It was the expression of respect from a petty climber looking out for himself towards a hero climbing the Tower for all of humanity.
"Hoo, thank you..."
"...What happened?"
Julien cautiously asked Choi Ji-won as she tended to her wounds. He'd felt it earlier—this woman had the strength to match her reputation. Getting hurt at the forest's edge was unthinkable for someone of her caliber.
"It couldn't have been another player..."
The players on Floor 11 mostly knew each other's faces. They were all fairly well-known players, and he knew their personalities to be decent. Could a new Monstrous Beast have appeared?
"...No. It was a person. Though I'm not sure you could even call it a 'person.'"
"Can you tell us more?"
"...It seems a mad slasher has entered Floor 11."
The body of humanity's hero, Choi Ji-won, was trembling slightly.
"...Be careful."
As if just recalling the scene sent chills down her spine.
**
Choi Ji-won had entered Floor 11.
And she'd barely survived after being severely wounded by a crazed player.
These two astonishing rumors spread among the players like wildfire. Being trapped on Floor 11 with nothing better to do certainly helped.
Reactions to the rumors fell largely into two camps.
"...Shouldn't we be preparing too?"
"Even Choi Ji-won got taken down?"
First. Those who felt a sense of danger and wanted to prepare in their own way. France's Julien or Germany's Felix and his group fell into this category.
But just the fact that someone is successful invites envy and jealousy.
"Maybe Choi Ji-won's just weak as hell?"
"Looks like she got her ass kicked by some bear and got embarrassed, so she's making shit up."
The second group seized this opportunity to dunk on Choi Ji-won as much as possible.
Jealousy is an ugly thing, but their claims weren't entirely baseless.
"If there was a player like that, we would've known by now. So a mad slasher just happened to walk in right when Choi Ji-won did?"
"They need to make it sound at least somewhat plausible."
The timing was just too coincidental. 'A killer and Choi Ji-won just happened to walk in together' was a little less convincing than 'Choi Ji-won is lying.'
"Hey. Why can't you trust people?"
"Do you trust the internet?"
And so the players fiercely argued over whether Choi Ji-won's words were the truth.
"Where'd it happen? I'll go check."
The whole dispute seemed to come to an end when a giant of a man declared he'd personally go to the place where Choi Ji-won was hurt.
Known as a wrestler from Russia, the giant was a bit lacking in technique, but since he'd dumped all his stats into Strength in his Status Window, his sheer destructive power was acknowledged.
"How long until he's back?"
"It's taking a bit..."
"Oh, here he comes."
People had been imagining the giant returning with a big grin on his face.
But what they saw was the giant covered head to toe in blood.
"Hey, you moron. Thought you said you were confident?"
"Tsk. I knew he'd screw it up."
At first, the players laughed at the giant. But his condition was anything but normal.
"...A skull, he was wearing a skull."
Because the giant who had gone out so confidently was now deathly pale.
"He, he... he totally toyed with me..."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Every attack missed by a hair's breadth. It was like, like... he already knew exactly how I'd fight..."
Though the potion had already healed his wounds, the giant kept clawing at the spots where he'd been hurt.
"And... that bastard... he had no intention of killing me... I was nothing more than a plaything to him..."
"..."
"He never struck a fatal blow... so shallow... just cutting... slicing the skin... it was chilling..."
There's no such thing in the world as 'swordsmanship that only deals shallow cuts.' Martial arts exist to subdue an opponent.
Ultimately, only receiving shallow cuts meant... the gap in skill was monstrous, and his opponent was just toying with him.
"I'm... I'm scared... so scared..."
"..."
The sight of the huge giant trembling, teeth chattering, was enough to silence the players who had been mocking him earlier.
And after the confident giant, when similar incidents repeated a few more times... that was when a sense of danger slowly started to spread among the players.
"Are we all going to die like this?"
A creeping dread that, at this rate, they might all get slaughtered.