The Regressor Is Mentally Weak (5)
The Regressor Is Mentally Weak (5)
By demonstrating my strength, I was acknowledged as a confirmed townsperson.
"What about this?"
"Hmm..."
"How about we try this?"
"That also seems pointless."
"Now that I think about it, you're right."
Of course, being acknowledged didn't drastically change anything. It just meant I could take part when people traded opinions and argued.
The discussion wasn't exactly lively, either.
"Ah, this is giving me a headache."
"Hoo..."
We knew two monsters existed, and we were operating on the assumption they'd try to stir up conflict. So we had to remember who said what. To pick out the person who later proposed something that contradicted the facts or led to ruin, we needed to keep everyone's statements straight—no small mental task.
The relay of people suggesting ideas and others shooting them down went on—until someone finally broke the pattern.
"I have an idea."
A woman raised her hand politely and spoke.
"This is still the Tower, but I've played a ton of similar games. In my experience... in a one-on-one, the monster has the upper hand against an ordinary human... but if all the humans fight all the monsters, the townspeople win. No exceptions."
"Isn't that just game balance? You're talking about a game."
"True. But in these kinds of games, the moment one—or maybe two—humans die, things turn against us fast."
"...What's your point?"
"This is limited to games, but... I wanted to point out that the human side has a major advantage while everyone is alive. So here's my proposal: what if we all stick together?"
"All stick together?"
"Yes. The monster's basic strategy in games is usually divide and conquer. Since they'd lose to all the humans at once, they split us up... create one-on-one situations, and pick us off one by one."
"So to avoid getting picked off, we just stay together the whole time?"
"Yes."
"Is that from that Among Us game?"
"...Yes."
When the game's name was brought up directly, the woman's face flushed slightly. She seemed embarrassed to have brought games into such a serious atmosphere.
Still, what she said made perfect sense. Even in games, it's the most intuitive strategy—practically a guaranteed win.
"Who doesn't know that?"
Which is exactly why game developers usually design ways to counter it.
"If we stick together, no one gets murdered. But did you actually read the rules properly earlier?"
<Floor 23>
- Find and kill the two false existences. They will target the climbers' lives.
- With each passing day, the climbers will be given one disadvantage.
- Before the sun sets each day, there is a task you must complete. If any task remains incomplete, a severe disadvantage will be imposed.
"...The tasks."
"Yeah, the tasks."
From the earlier discussion, everyone's tasks were scattered all over the village. In other words, if we stuck together, there simply wasn't enough time to complete them all.
"It says 'severe disadvantage' right there, and I have zero intention of risking that. I've never seen the Tower use a phrase like 'severe' before. We have to do the tasks. I'd bet the others feel the same."
"...If we can't all stick together, then at least moving in pairs..."
"That looks even worse than staying in one big group."
I objected to that one myself.
"Moving in pairs is still too risky. There's far too much room for psychological warfare."
Suppose two people go out together, and only one comes back. Naturally, everyone suspects the one who returned.
If I were a monster, I'd exploit that suspicion and simply disappear without a word. The player whose partner vanished would be suspected of being the monster with absolute certainty.
Or conversely, what if the monster brazenly kills someone and then comes back to play the victim? What if they anticipate the counter-suspicion and use it to slip free? That's equally catastrophic.
"...Hmm."
"Hm."
And so the discussion circled back again. While we were all waiting for a usable idea and gauging each other's reactions—
"Hold on."
"Huh?"
"Look at the sky. It's gotten darker than before."
"...We're out of time."
Now we had to decide. We couldn't stay here forever.
"...We have to split up."
"Yeah, let the weak ones die."
No, there had never really been a choice. No one here was irrational enough to risk a severe disadvantage. And since we'd failed to identify the monsters through conversation... we were left with the worst possible option—and we had to take it.
"...Let's see who survives."
"Worry about yourselves."
After exchanging one last round of glances, the players dispersed in their own directions.
"..."
I'd shown my strength earlier, so the odds of someone attacking me were low, but... I still hoped the others would make it back safely.
**
"Hoo."
The task wasn't particularly hard. Actually, calling it tedious would be more accurate.
The materials were scattered everywhere, and the work itself was unfamiliar, so it took a while. Even so, I gave it my best—I even used mana. I finished faster than the others.
Back at the campfire, I waited for the rest. With each person who returned, a little tension eased. When everyone made it back in one piece, I let out a sigh of relief. It seemed the first day had passed without incident.
"Is anyone hurt?"
"Everyone looks fine."
"What if one of us was switched out for a monster? That person is already dead and..."
"If they can pull off a trick like that, the situation's hopeless anyway, so let's just stay calm."
The sky had grown far darker than before, but since no message window appeared, the sun probably hadn't set yet. That meant we'd successfully avoided the severe disadvantage.
"What now?"
"First we confirm what disadvantage they give us... then we wait for the next set of tasks."
"I think we should sleep when we can. What do we do about a night watch?"
The village was fully intact, so we could've easily used separate rooms.
"Let's just bring our beds out and sleep together. No point taking unnecessary risks."
"That sounds good."
Rather than waking up to a corpse, it seemed more sensible to give up a little privacy and sleep as a group.
So we dragged beds out from a nearby building and arranged them in a circle around the campfire. (As superhumans, we could sleep even in the cold.) We assigned a watch rotation, and once that was settled—
"Well then... let's get what rest we can."
"Okay."
I sank into the soft bed. The sky, which had been an ominous color, had turned completely black—deep, clean, and almost refreshing compared to the daylight. It didn't feel that different from an ordinary night sky.
"..."
"..."
Lying there, I realized something. I was pretty exhausted. Physically I was fine, but mentally the stress was intense. Probably because it felt like everyone except me was an enemy.
"Still, I'm relieved."
A voice came from the next bed. One of the female players was murmuring to herself as she gazed up at the sky.
"What are you relieved about?"
"While climbing the Tower... I've seen a lot of real bastards. Stab-you-in-the-back types are the baseline. There was one who tried to attack me in the middle of the night... and another guy who'd done something clearly wrong but then turned around and acted all brazen, asking what the problem was. You know the type—people you just can't reason with."
"...Well, you can find people like that anywhere, can't you?"
"Still, the people here seem like you can reason with them, and that's a relief. There don't seem to be any complete idiots, no extreme sociopaths... The proof is that the monsters haven't managed to make a move, right? We haven't given them an opening, so they can't do anything either."
"...Yeah. You've got a point."
As the old saying goes, in any five people, one is trash. But here we are, eight people, and there's no troll.
"Maybe the balance works because there are two monsters? The monsters are already enough—if there were a genuine nutcase on top of that, it'd be unmanageable."
"We really did get lucky."
"Haha."
A ripple of laughter passed through the players.
Yeah, these were people you could reason with. If they kept their composure and we kept talking like this... we could clear Floor 23 in one go without any casualties.
"Let's make sure we clear it."
"Absolutely."
A floor that rational people, making only rational decisions, could definitely clear.
Maybe I should have realized it back then.
[Night has fallen.]
What the Tower wanted was a different outcome.
[A disadvantage is applied.]
**
"?"
When I came to, everything below my neck was immobilized. No, that's not quite right. It wasn't that I couldn't move—it was as if everything below my neck had simply ceased to exist. I had no body to move at all.
"..."
When I reflexively tried to summon mana, I realized this wasn't reality. There was no mana to summon either. The absurdity almost made me laugh, but I didn't even have a tongue. Only my eyes and brain, floating in an empty void.
- Crackle.
In front of me sat a small television. I tried to blink, but had no eyelids. Tried to avert my gaze, but had no muscles. I was forced to watch that screen.
'Ha. I know how this goes.'
I understood the nature of the disadvantage right there. That TV was about to play some kind of shocking footage, something meant to rattle my mind. Maybe it would show a future where I'm destroyed, or a player getting torn apart and devoured by a monster in human skin. Did they think courage meant the ability to confront fear?
But having already faced a similar gimmick on Floor 3, this only made me scoff. They must think a regressor's mentality is worth shit.
'Bring it on.'
Tear me apart. Boil me alive. Whatever you do... I'll endure it. I've been through a crucible far too brutal to be shaken by these cheap tricks.
I set my resolve and steeled my mind. Even as the footage on the TV began, I wasn't the least bit nervous.
But there was one thing I'd overlooked.
'...Huh?'
The situation I feared most. The one I least wanted to see.
'...Ah.'
It wasn't me suffering.
It was watching Ji-won suffer—powerless to do anything about it.