The Regressor Wanders (2)
The Regressor Wanders (2)
The Regressor Wanders (2)
Honestly, part of me already knew. I might have perfectly cleared Floor 13. What I'm doing now could be completely pointless.
But I can't stand leaving this unease unresolved. I didn't want to ignore the feeling that something was still missing. In novels, they talk about a "Regressor's Intuition," right? Right now, my intuition was telling me that something remained on Floor 13.
"The horses have stopped."
"Why are they doing this when they haven't even eaten?"
To confirm that, I waited a full five days. After confirming the horses' demonic transformation and regressing, I endured the boredom of walking this wilderness for five whole days. All for this moment.
-Skreeee.
With a sound like tearing paper, the air warped as if crumpling a sheet of drawing paper, revealing a gap.
"Ah, adventurers, welcome. You've worked hard."
A gentle-faced nun emerged from that gap.
"The carriage is unscathed. It's clear that God has guided you. I'm glad no one is injured. Thank you for escorting such a dangerous object safely."
Just as before, she began leading the carriage inside the village. The other players were all frozen, overwhelmed by the bizarre situation.
"Wha—what are you doing!"
"Get out of the way!"
I threw myself into the gap in space and managed to squeeze inside the barrier.
"You can't do this!"
The nun was greatly startled and tried to grab me, but when I released Cold Energy from my body, she froze up and couldn't move.
"What are you hiding!"
I dashed to a nearby tree house and flung the door open.
"P-please, save me..."
"I'll give you anything..."
But inside were only a terrified couple trembling in fear. Nothing suspicious was visible.
I heightened my senses just in case and checked for hidden secret passages, but felt nothing. No, it's too soon to jump to conclusions.
I quickly exited the house and headed for the largest wooden building this time. When I first opened the door, I saw dried meat, fruit, and other food supplies. At a glance, it looked like a storage building, but...
"I knew it."
With my sharply honed senses, I caught a human shape sprawled in a corner of the building. No sound and an unnatural posture, so it wasn't alive.
Thinking I'd finally found something, I smirked and approached the shape.
"The mustache man?"
The thing sprawled in the corner was... the mustache man who had appeared at the very beginning of Floor 13. But it was difficult to call him a "man." Because this was... a well-made wooden puppet.
"..."
I ransacked every other building as well, but aside from frightened people and a few wooden puppets, there was nothing. It was as if... this were just a normal inhabited village.
"Did I guess wrong?"
Still... if it's a normal village, then why did they have us bring a dangerous box that leaks an ominous aura? Isn't that strange?
As I stood there dazed in the center of the village, I saw the nun rushing over breathlessly after regaining control of her body.
"Everyone, run away! I'll hold him off! Go to the place I mentioned before!"
The nun pointed a mace at me with trembling hands, radiating hostility. In the commotion, the residents who had been hiding in the tree houses began running off somewhere.
"Why, why are you doing this! At a time like this! Weren't we allies!"
"...Do you know what that box is?"
"You must know it's a box filled with Death Energy."
"Then why bring it here?"
"You came here on a commission from $%, so quit pretending you don't know. You must have seen that person's puppet; aren't you afraid of the consequences?"
The front part was inaudible because of the Tower's filtering, but that puppet seemed to be someone's symbol. The nun assumed I would have recognized that symbol.
"So was this really just a simple escort mission? No hidden backstory or anything?"
"...What are you talking about?"
By now, the nun must have sensed something was off, as she slowly lowered the hand holding the mace. It seemed she realized I had no hostile intent.
Once we entered a temporary ceasefire, we were able to talk about various things. But the longer the conversation went on, the more my expression twisted into something pitiful.
"Seriously, seriously, is there nothing? Like a demon or something..."
"...I cannot say for certain, but there shouldn't be anything like that."
I didn't understand everything because of the filtering, but according to the nun, this was truly just a simple "escort mission." She said they hired adventurers because magical beasts drawn by the death energy would obviously attack the carriage.
"More importantly, why did you storm into this village? This shouldn't be your first time seeing a village like this."
"...I'm sorry."
The nun glared at me with narrowed eyes. I bowed my head deeply to her, then quickly bit down on the inside of my cheek. Because it was just too... too humiliating.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 13.]
***
"Jun-ho. Honestly, if every single floor had what you call 'unfair nonsense'... I'd think that's even more illogical. The Tower wasn't custom-made just to mess with you."
"..."
"Frankly, we really are far stronger than the average player, right? If the difficulty is so high that we can't clear it even by combining our strength, then what about everyone else? And it's only Floor 13, isn't it?"
Looking at my noticeably dejected state, Choi Ji-won tried to comfort me. I silently stared at the ground while accepting her comfort.
"I asked a ranker I know through the Association, and the reason the other players hid the story about the box... is mostly because they abandoned the players weakened by the box's debuff. Their consciences kept them from reporting it openly."
"...Hearing that explanation, it does make sense."
"And on Floor 11 or Floor 12, there were no 'hidden' elements like you mentioned, right? Maybe the Angel who designed Floors 11 through 15 just has this kind of style. You don't need to agonize over it."
"That's true, but... honestly, I still feel like I missed something."
I suspect this might be some kind of mental illness. I've regressed over and over, climbed the Tower through all sorts of hardship, and now that things are going so smoothly, my heart feels uneasy for no reason. It still feels like something is lingering—like there's something left to uncover.
"It's because you've been climbing the Tower too harshly. From my perspective, Floors 2, 4, and 11 were the special cases, while the other floors were cleared as easily as they are now."
"...That much is true."
"If you're really uneasy, I think it's fine to regress a few more times. But... we still have so many floors to climb, and I think it's not good to waste too much mental energy here."
Choi Ji-won's words were right. There was no clear crisis, and no enemy I couldn't defeat. It was just my unpleasant feeling. Honestly speaking, it really was just my own twisted mental state; there didn't seem to be any hidden element.
"Let's just clear it. I think that's the right choice."
"Shall we?"
Having sorted out my thoughts, I rested briefly for a week, then regressed and cleared Floor 13. After that, without any lingering regret, I entered Floor 14.
Floor 14 was a floor where ten people had to cooperate to complete some kind of machine. However, assembling the machine required ten different materials, and the difficulty of obtaining each material varied. The route to get the easiest material, a 'cogwheel,' had wolves, while the route to get the hardest material, a 'core,' was swarmed by a horde of weapon-wielding trolls.
The most orthodox method would be for ten people to stick together and move ten times... but we decided to just split up and each fetch a material. How did we get the hardest material?
"...Ji-won, you're already back?"
"It wasn't that hard."
With Choi Ji-won here, what was there to worry about? We were able to clear a floor that would probably have taken two weeks if they'd grouped ten at a time in just a single night.
The rewards were an Experience Elixir, potions, and a C-rank Trait called 'Excellent Cardiopulmonary Endurance.' As the name suggested, its effect was improving stamina.
"The rewards since Floor 11 are really great."
"I can really feel myself getting stronger. And it's not even that terribly hard."
The other players were all overjoyed, saying the rewards were extremely generous, to the point where they even said they hoped Floor 15 would be just as sweet.
"Jun-ho, what do you want to do? Should we regress a few more times and look for something hidden?"
"...Let me regress just twice and then decide."
After repeating two more regressions, this floor also didn't seem to have any hidden elements, just like Floor 13. I still hadn't completely lost that uneasy feeling... but I can't regress dozens of times just because I feel uneasy.
"A regressor's mental health is important..."
If it were unavoidable, that'd be one thing, but that's not the situation right now. Once I'd neatly settled my thoughts, I checked the surroundings as usual, roughly sorted out the situation, and then—
"Shall we go?"
"Yeah. Let's go right away."
With a light heart, I climbed to Floor 15.
[Entering Floor 15.]
And looking back, this was the beginning of many changes.