The Regressor Endures (9)
The Regressor Endures (9)
"Regression... what?"
"More importantly, what's your name?"
"...Call me Professor Kim."
"That's all I need."
Without hesitation, I bit into my cheek.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 21.]
***
I think the word "choice" carries a lot of weight. A choice means picking one thing. Picking one thing means giving up another. And giving up another means someday regretting the value you sacrificed.
There's a scene in one of the Batman movies where the woman he loves and a righteous prosecutor are each tied up in different buildings. Not enough time to save both. Batman can only rescue one. It's a moment that demands a choice.
"Ugh, this is so frustrating."
I've hated situations like that since I was a kid. Can't I just have both? If you twist the circumstances just right, isn't there some happy ending where everyone is satisfied? Why does someone always end up in despair?
But then I grew up, faced reality, and understood it once more. The truth that you cannot have both.
"Hey! Let's go play soccer!"
"Our field's just dirt. If you fall, you'll scrape your knees. Jun-ho, let's just play basketball."
PE class. Soccer, or basketball.
"You going into liberal arts? Or sciences?"
"Umm..."
Liberal arts. Or sciences.
"My senior told me I should definitely go for driver if I'm going army. So I got my class 1 license too."
"Don't you know the air force is the sweet gig?"
"The air force is three months longer, dumbass. Just come to the marines with me."
Army. Air force. Navy. Marines.
Beyond these major crossroads in life, moments of forced choice come at you regardless. Which snack to buy. What chicken to order. Whether to live diligently or just collapse and sleep.
Choosing both is nothing but an illusion. Maybe that's why I was especially happy when I gained regression. Because the possibility of choosing both opened up.
In the Tutorial, I saved every human. Same on Floor 4. On Floor 11, I mediated the conflict without a single death. On Floor 12, I honed my strength, embraced the traitor, and cleared the floor.
And now, the Tower once again forces a choice upon me. Expose the girl's truth to the world. Or sacrifice one girl for humanity's future.
"I'm not doing either."
I inspected the weapons at my disposal. Regression, granting me infinite time and attempts. A scabbard that draws a weapon in response to emotion. Sturdy armor and transparent gloves. All the skills filling my Status Window, and stats balanced thanks to my Achievement Level.
And above all, the mana control I had gained through long repetition. More precisely, the ability to manipulate mana through the soul.
"This is it."
I could sense which direction to go. The answer was mana. To be precise, I wanted to move toward erasing the Seed of Conflict entirely.
"I just need to... completely remove Areum's mana."
Someone might criticize it as a brute-force solution. But as far as I could tell, this was the best option. No matter what other method I used, storms would inevitably crash into the life of the girl named Areum. Only by erasing the root cause could I give her a chance at a life worth calling human.
But is it possible?
No, the question "Is it possible?" means nothing to me. The reason ordinary people agonize over choices is the opportunity cost attached to them.
And the only opportunity cost I bear is my own mental energy. I should avoid overusing it, but holding back in a situation like this would be wrong too.
"I'll do it."
I sat down on the bench, closed my eyes, and focused my mind.
If it doesn't work, I'll keep going until it does.
**
My first plan was to affect the soul and erase the mana. You might ask, can't I just roughly erase the mana? The problem is, it's not that simple.
The body is the vessel that holds mana, but what gathers it is the soul. That's my own enlightenment from Floor 17. Or is it? Some impressive people probably already knew, so calling it "my own" might be a stretch. Let's just say I'm the first human from Earth. No, I'm not certain of that either. Anyway.
"..."
When I closed my eyes and focused, I could feel a soul precisely matching the shape of my body. Mana was spread throughout my entire body, following the contours of this soul. Concentrated more heavily in certain areas like the heart and brain.
In other words, the body holds mana, but only because of the soul. Which also means that without affecting the soul, mana would simply gather again.
So, to remove the power called mana from Areum, I needed to be able to touch her soul.
Is that possible? It is. Wasn't the very structure of Floor 17's entry designed to shake a player's mana? At an exalted realm, you can toy with another person's soul at will.
But I hit a wall right from the start. Simply sensing another person's soul was a considerable ordeal, because I had to recklessly pour time into it without knowing how.
"Would you let me hold your hand for a moment?"
"...I like women, you know."
"That's not what this is, so hurry up."
I repeated experiment after experiment. I've lost track of how many regressions I went through. At least fifty? Since I always regressed to right before meeting Areum, I suppose you could say I spent about fifty days there.
"..."
But even after a hundred days of effort, I couldn't sense another person's soul. I needed to feel the soul before I could affect it, but since even sensing it was impossible, I felt like my heart might break. Maybe I'd underestimated what it meant to sense another's soul. Or perhaps people inside the Tower don't have souls at all.
"There's no answer at this rate."
Recognizing the dead end, I decided to change strategies. "Mana" and "soul" can't be viewed separately. If a person carries mana in their body, they must have a soul as well. When mana wavers, the soul suffers; when the soul is in agony, mana distorts.
I had been trying to affect the soul in order to remove mana. Now I would try to affect mana in order to influence the soul. A simple shift in perspective, you could say.
"Help... please help me, mister..."
"I'll help you. Will you come here for a moment?"
When I concentrated my mind to an extreme degree, I could sense a faint flow of mana within Areum's body. It was like a candle flame that might go out at a touch, closer to drops of water trickling one by one. If it was this weak... maybe even a novice like me could do something about it, if I could somehow guide it with my own mana.
"Hah, hah, h-huff..."
"A-are you alright?"
No. It was extremely difficult. The biggest problem was that my mana was cold. To avoid harming that fragile girl, I had to suppress the coldness with all my might, but focusing on that made it impossible to actually move my mana.
"Help... please help me, mister..."
"...I might be the one who needs your help."
If there is something to learn from failure, it's that it becomes fertilizer for success. More delicately. More precisely. More perfectly.
Mana used in combat can be handled roughly. You rip off large chunks and slam them into the enemy, and that's it. But this work was different. I had to use the absolute minimum of mana, keep it suppressed, and move it carefully. It was no different from performing surgery.
How many regressions did I repeat like that?
"...Contact."
I succeeded in touching her mana without directly harming Areum. Areum's mana was warm and light as cotton candy. A faint mana that seemed like it might blow away with a single breath.
"Now, if I just remove this..."
"...What are you doing?"
"This is... not going well..."
But making it so that her soul could never gather mana again was a different story entirely. The clock's hands turned back once more, and I progressed little by little, very little by little.
Using mana to strike mana and forcefully drive it out. Failure.
Weaving mana like a hook and pulling it out. Initially successful, but mana gathered in her body again. Failure.
Exerting a hint of Cold Energy to freeze only the mana. Failure.
Failure. Failure. Failure.
At this point, my mind began to waver. A sense of doubt about what I was even doing crept in. The urge to give up and just move on overflowed. The plain fact that this girl really had nothing to do with me circled in my head.
I could just... turn away. I could give up. Even if I saved her now, she would suffer on someone else's Floor 21 anyway. To put it harshly, you could even say Areum was a kind of off-the-shelf product.
"..."
But according to my theory, a being that possesses mana must also possess a soul. In other words... this girl was a single person with a soul.
That fact made it impossible for me to give up.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm mustering courage."
Even if I gave up now, no one would blame me. Except myself.
And afraid of disappointing myself, I decided to muster courage.
The courage to walk a faint path with no end in sight. The courage to do what I believed was right. The courage to endure hardship without giving up.
Sharper.
Keener.
More incisive.
My mana, now nearly as precise as a scalpel, sliced away Areum's mana that lingered around her heart. The momentarily faltering mana returned to the vicinity of her heart, but I simply sliced it away again.
As the same operation repeated over and over, the speed at which the severed mana returned to the area around her heart grew slower and slower. Again. Again. Again.
The mana I had cut away countless times scattered at some point. I waited a moment, wondering if it was a temporary phenomenon, but there was no sign of mana gathering again. It was a success.
"Mister... the people..."
Only then did I return to reality. I was gripping Areum's hand tightly, and familiar men had surrounded me. Had that much time really passed? A bead of sweat running down my forehead stung my eye.
No, I can't show that I'm struggling. Focus. The image I need to project is already decided.
"You there."
I kept my voice at its usual register, but added just a hint of natural condescension.
I would look down on them as though it were only natural, as though it were the proper order of things, as though it were common sense. Filling myself with that attitude, I approached the man at the front.
"Guide me to Professor Kim."
"...Professor Kim? Who's that?"
"..."
The other agents didn't seem to understand, but the face of the man playing the leader stiffened immediately.
"...Who are you?"
At the same moment a faint smile touched my lips, I spread my mana in all directions. The cold energy meeting the air naturally became mist, settling faintly across the floor, and the pressure I had recreated from Kang Chan's terrifying killing intent spread outward.
What I imagined was the Immortal Sage who had bestowed his teachings upon me.
"Just... guide me."
The time had come to tie up every loose end.