The Regressor Is Brave? (9)
Floor 24 had changed. Definitely changed.
The first anomaly I noticed was when I reached the spot where the 'Dancing Ghost' should have been.
"If you show it a mirror..."
I put the large human body model down for a moment, picked up the full-length mirror, and tucked it under my arm. Sure, my physical abilities had improved enough to lift heavy things easily, but I still only had two hands and two feet. There was a limit to what I could carry at once.
"They say there's a hint on the bookshelf in the consultation room... but that's none of my business."
I positioned the full-length mirror in front of me and cautiously leaned out into the hallway.
Come on. Stop dancing and flee, screaming...! Tremble before the infinite knowledge of a Regressor...?
"Huh."
But the Dancing Ghost wasn't there. It was supposed to be halfway down the hallway, writhing violently in the distance... but it was gone.
Just in case, I looked behind me, yanked the dangling rope, and even stepped back into the hallway without the mirror, but the Dancing Ghost didn't appear. The floor, which should have been covered in blood, was spotless too.
"...What the hell."
I moved forward, a deep sense of dissonance gnawing at me. I held onto the full-length mirror, just in case the Dancing Ghost ambushed me. What was going on.
Up to this point, it was just a 'sense of dissonance' and 'suspicion,' but when the Notebook That Burns When You Lie and the Living Door also failed to appear, suspicion turned to certainty.
The entities that blocked the hallway were gone. Completely.
"...What is this."
At first, I wondered if all the monsters had vanished. So I returned to the starting point, the patient room, and got caught by the handcuffs.
Click.
"Huh?"
"The surgery will now begin. This is a frontal lobotomy."
"Uh, uh, Aaaahhh!!!"
Surprisingly, the mentally ill patient who thought he was a doctor still existed. Thanks to that, I once again had to endure the horrible sensation of something probing my brain through my nose.
But even that confirmed it. Not all of the entities were gone. Only the ones I had met—the ones I had cut down—had disappeared.
"...Since I've collected two key fragments... there's only one left now."
Because of that, the difficulty of Floor 24 had plummeted. It was now ridiculously easy. All the gatekeepers who should have been blocking the path were gone, and I already knew the exact location of the key fragment. There was no need to wander around.
"Hmm."
Of course, the difficulty of Floor 24 wasn't the important part. The important thing was something else.
Was I okay?
This was the first time the outcome after a regression had been altered by something I did in the previous loop. Logically speaking, it made no sense for the past to change because of future actions.
"Actually, maybe not the first time."
There was a similar case with the U.S. warehouse. But that could be chalked up to the butterfly effect of my actions or Dok Su-hee's interference, so I'll set that aside. This was the first time inside the Tower that it had manifested as a direct result like this.
Could it be... that the memory retention affected it again? Did the Dancing Ghost really regress too... and retain its memories? No, that makes no sense.
The Archangel? Was it the Archangel's doing? The old man from Floor 15 said, 'Do not abuse regression near the Archangel.' What if the Archangel had been stealthily observing me from nearby, and that caused the memories to be retained? Then, to prevent the destruction of Floor 24 in this cycle, they had removed the entities beforehand?
In that case, not only has my regression been exposed, but all the Angels must be watching me. In short, I'm fucked.
"That... doesn't seem likely."
But this possibility seemed slim. First, I had only regressed once. The fact that it looked like multiple regressions was due to the unique nature of Floor 24. In reality, I had only gone through one cycle.
Recalling the old man's words, he'd told me that 'with repeated regressions, a feeling arises.' I hadn't harbored any intense emotions toward the Archangel, so they had no reason to notice the regression.
Also, even assuming they truly noticed the regression, if I were in their position, I would have simply let Floor 24 collapse—not removed the ghosts like this.
Securing the opponent's critical intel is only half the battle. Hiding the fact that you've obtained it is just as important. If they realize a weakness has been exposed, they can counter it. A weakness is most lethal when stabbed while it's still fully exposed.
No, wait. What if they're aiming for exactly that—a reverse-reverse trick, psychological warfare... I don't know. Anyway, the hypothesis that 'the Archangel noticed the regression' had a low probability.
"Perhaps... it's more likely that the 'destruction' was carried over."
In my opinion, it was more plausible that the entities I killed in the previous cycle had been permanently destroyed. The proof was that only the monsters I fought had disappeared.
The Angel said it—that all the original copies of the entities stored in the 'Center of the World' were lost. If that state persisted even after a regression, it made convincing sense.
"I'm screwed either way, though."
But that explanation had its own share of problems. First, the Archangel definitely would have noticed the 'destruction.' All those precious souls stored in the 'Center of the World'—all vanished in a single moment? And the culprit is nowhere to be found?
Even if they didn't notice the regression right away, they would eventually connect the dots to me. No, they might have already.
If they decided to let me be, maybe it's fine... but what if they decide to eliminate me? If the Archangel sets a trap to screw me over, could I even escape that?
The moment you notice a 'well-made trap' is already too late. At that point, there's nothing I can do. Maybe it was already too late. An unknown terror washed over me, and my breath caught in my throat.
-Whiff.
Maybe because my thoughts were unsettled, a gloomy wind blew through the hospital corridor. Get a grip. Nothing is confirmed yet. It's all just hypotheses.
"...Where was the last key again."
Let's meet the Angel. And extract some information.
What the Archangel's intentions were... and how I should respond.
**
-Floor 24 cleared.
-The Clear Reward will be provided after moving to Floor 1.
As I passed through the door that appeared after collecting the key fragments, I came to my senses in 'Room 404,' the same place I had seen in the previous cycle. There was no Angel, only a blue portal.
Was the reward always given out after heading to Floor 1? I decided to check later.
"Um... Angel? I have something I'd like to ask."
I sat on the worn-out bed and called out to the Angel. There was no reply.
"Angel? Hello?"
I waved my arm around.
"Aaaangeeel?"
I jumped up and down in place.
"Hey!"
Even when I practically shouted, the Angel didn't show itself.
Thinking about it, that made sense. In a game, how often does an actual admin appear just because a user calls them out in chat? Admins only show up when there's a problem.
"Sigh... Angel. I'm going to sleep now. I'm going back inside."
I decided that if I could face the Angel, I would gladly create a problem for it.
"I heard about this too... um, if you break a hole in the wall inside the starting patient room, a duplicated patient room appears, right? But if you completely rip off the joint connecting it to the hallway, the duplicated room connects with the hallway..."
"Climber, what is the matter?"
Only then did the Angel slowly emerge. The same short-haired Angel with glasses I had seen before appeared. Her expression was blank.
"Um, can I ask just one question?"
"...Please make it brief."
"Is Floor 24 originally this easy? There wasn't much here."
I threw out the question and immediately focused on the Angel's expression. Whether it gave a face-saving lie or showed embarrassment—either reaction was intel.
But the Angel's answer was truly... unexpected.
"Floor 24 has always been this floor. From long before you humans could even imagine."
"...Excuse me?"
"It is an easy floor, filled with the Archangel's mercy. Is there a problem?"
It didn't seem like it was lying. This Angel truly believed that Floor 24 had 'always' been like this.
"Th-then... what about the reward? What is this reward? A notebook? An eyeball? They're strange. Where did they come from?"
"...Where did they come from?"
"I mean, they must have some origin. Suddenly we're handed these weird items out of nowhere."
"..."
The Angel's perpetually blank face scrunched up a little. It was the kind of face an adult makes when a child asks, 'What kind of person are you, Mister?'—caught off guard by a question so basic they'd never once stopped to think about it.
The Angel composed herself a moment later.
"These are all the Archangel's arrangements. They are items containing profound foresight beyond what beings like us could ever imagine. Please use them well."
"S-so, that means the Archangel didn't give any specific instructions about them, right?"
"Yes. None. As your business seems to be finished, please clear Floor 24 quickly."
"...Yup."
A major incident where the Tower itself had been altered. Yet the Angel seemed completely unaware. Perhaps... even the Archangel was unaware.
**
After returning to reality.
"You really don't remember?"
"...No. There wasn't anything like that in the last cycle either. Could it be... the regression didn't work properly..."
"No, no, that wasn't it. I even watched a horror movie with you on purpose, and you were incredibly cute. You screamed like 'Eeek!', and..."
"Th-that's embarrassing, so let's stop there."
It was really surprising, but not only Choi Ji-won, even Boongboong-yi had no memory of Floor 24—including the 'Dancing Ghost.' The important thing was that they were still aware of the 'regression' itself. They just remembered the cycle differently from me.
"What is this..."
I could accept the ghosts vanishing. But the memories had changed too? This meant the world itself had changed.
I secretly turned on the internet and checked the <Ghost Wiki>, but the situation was exactly the same. People didn't remember the 'Dancing Ghost' or the 'Notebook That Burns When You Lie' at all. As if they never existed.
They created the wiki before I regressed. Yet they didn't know about them.
"..."
What was the cause?
The soul? Was it because I attacked while focusing on my soul? But if that were the case, every being I fought after Floor 17 should have disappeared permanently. But that wasn't it. The fact that only these particular beings had disappeared had to be attributed to the unique nature of those fragile beings called 'entities.'
Again, what was the cause?
Even the Angels didn't perceive it. Even Choi Ji-won didn't perceive it. Even the Archangels... seemed not to have perceived it yet. Only I could perceive this change.
Let's ask a more fundamental question. Unless I regress multiple times at close range, the Archangels don't notice the regression.
If that's the case, it made sense that regression itself was a power above the Archangels. Until now, nothing but regression itself had ever influenced a regression.
But now, my small act had transcended regression and altered the past. What caused that? Simply damaging the soul? That didn't seem to be it.
The intuition of a regressor, the intuition of a human named Kim Jun-ho, was telling me.
That only the 'Center of the World' could unravel this mystery.