The Regressor Is Convinced (5)
Choi Ji-won had broken her promise. She'd boasted it would only take three regressions, yet she did four.
"...Just one more try. I've got something to test."
No, now it was five. In between, she'd been busy contacting people here and going out there.
In any case, Choi Ji-won regressed five times. The last one brought her back to reality in barely ten minutes.
"Why are you back so fast?"
"Nothing, really. I'm going to head out for a bit."
The moment she finished, Choi Ji-won vanished somewhere again. I figured she'd be right back and waited, but she left at lunchtime and returned around evening.
"Where did you go?"
"Met a player, and went to see Mr. Cheol-jin too. I had things to test."
Having declared her preparations complete, Choi Ji-won told me to regress immediately.
"Regress? Why? If you're going to teach me that... technique, wouldn't it be better to teach me now?"
"There's a reason. Let's regress quickly."
"...Fine."
I accepted it, figuring she must have a reason, and regressed.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 24.]
***
"Alright, ready?"
Again, we were in Choi Ji-won's house. We sat facing each other in the living room.
"You're curious why I said I'd tell you the technique after you regressed, right?"
"Yeah, I'm curious. That technique... looked pretty much complete anyway."
"Okay. I'll explain it step by step."
Choi Ji-won tapped her head with her left hand.
"First of all... right now, I have absolutely no memory of Floor 25. Only fragments of the emotions I felt and experienced there remain."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that even if I try to talk about Floor 25 right now, I can't because I don't know anything."
I'd never returned to the past after clearing a floor, so I hadn't known, but according to Choi Ji-won... even if you clear a floor, once you return to the past, the memory of it is gone.
"So what I tried before was this... I went to someone who had cleared Floor 25 and asked them to write down a memo and show it to me."
At the time, since Choi Ji-won hadn't entered Floor 25, the memo's contents were naturally invisible to her. Still, she memorized the shape of the memo intently.
"And then, I entered Floor 25. From that point on, the 'Perception Restriction' on Floor 25 should have been lifted. What do you think happened?"
"...You could see the memo's contents?"
"Wrong. I still couldn't remember the memo's contents. I think it was blocked."
Choi Ji-won's initial plan was to show me a memo detailing the 'countermeasure for Floor 25,' allowing me to perceive its contents once I entered Floor 25.
"Since memos aren't items you can bring into the Tower... I also tried engraving text on an item I got from the Tower, but it didn't work. Well, nothing I could do about that."
Her first attempt was a failure. She said she had no choice but to move on to the next plan.
"Wait, what. You said you didn't have a plan. You said you'd just bulldoze through."
"That was about the poison. Do you know how much thinking goes into kendo as a sport? The body matters, sure, but the mental game is incredibly important."
People often assume athletes aren't smart, but Choi Ji-won claimed that to reach the top, you need to be intelligent to truly succeed.
But as we talked, I felt a powerful sense of dissonance.
"Hold on, poison?"
"Yeah. Poison. Why?"
"How can you mention poison to me?"
That was it. Until now, Choi Ji-won hadn't been able to directly mention 'poison.' I'd only been guessing; poison was directly linked to the concept of Floor 25, so any mention of it was automatically blocked.
"Jun-ho. That's the point."
Pleased that I'd hit on the core of the matter, Choi Ji-won smiled in satisfaction. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it tight like a doll.
"Right now, I have absolutely no memory of Floor 25. What's in there, what happened, how I cleared it... I can't remember a thing."
"...And?"
"But... the 'technique' I created is vivid in my memory. Because the technique itself exists as a singular thing.
"No way..."
"Exactly. I looked at the technique I made and made a 'deduction.'"
The order was different.
At the point when Choi Ji-won cleared Floor 25... she couldn't speak of it. Since she had gained knowledge of Floor 25, anything that could give me a hint would be filtered out and couldn't be heard.
But what if she was still in a state where she hadn't cleared Floor 25?
"I don't know either. I don't know, but... I'm looking at the technique I made and reasoning backwards from it. Like, 'I bet Floor 25 is like this and that~.' It's just the rambling of someone who knows nothing, so wouldn't it be strange if that got filtered?"
Her 'deduction' wasn't being filtered. Because Choi Ji-won still knew nothing about Floor 25.
"I don't know what principle this works on. But if it works, I should use it, right?"
"Oh, ohhh..."
"It's because I know nothing right now that I can say it. Floor 25 is a floor infested with 'poison gas.' The core of my technique is the lungs. It's a technique that attaches a kind of purification filter to the lungs to slow the absorption of poison as much as possible. So the key factor must be gas, not liquid, don't you think?"
The core of Choi Ji-won's technique was to strengthen the 'lungs,' and from that, she reverse-calculated the answer of 'poison gas.' A simple method, but effective.
"Don't tell me... you even intended this?"
"Well, about half. It'd be good if it worked, and if not, oh well. That sort of feeling. The worst-case scenario was not being able to teach you the technique at all, and I actually regressed precisely for that reason. Anyway, focus. I'll explain it now."
Sitting there, Choi Ji-won began to explain the technique she had created. Its name was the 'Mana Filter.'
The Mana Filter was similar to creating a kind of net inside the lungs, the key point being to allow air to pass through while blocking the poison.
"You're learning fast?
"Well, I have experience."
As 'the Earthling who has used mana the longest,' I learned the technique quickly and was able to fully master it in three days.
"This... isn't complete, though. It has its own time limit. I'm not sure about in practice, but theoretically, that's the case. You'll probably have to judge the situation and use it accordingly."
"Okay."
With this, I had secured the bare minimum measure to survive Floor 25. All thanks to Choi Ji-won's sacrifice.
"Thanks. I'll be back soon."
"Yeah."
I regressed quickly, cleared Floor 24 in an instant, and.
"I'll be right back."
Headed for Floor 25.
-You have entered Floor 25.
**
When I opened my eyes, I saw walls overgrown with vines. At a glance, the impression of 'dilapidated' was strong. How long had this place been neglected? It didn't look like it was just a day or two since human hands last touched it.
"Huuuh. Hah."
The entire field of view was tinted green. It wasn't that my eyes had become strange; the very air occupying the space was tinged with a green hue.
It's something I heard somewhere, but originally, 'poison gas' is supposed to be colorless and odorless. So you could say giving it this green color is a form of mercy. Unnecessarily thoughtful in this one aspect.
"Hoo."
Every time I inhaled and exhaled, something kept catching sharply against the Mana Filter. Perhaps because it was an incredibly delicate technique, it required considerable concentration, and trying to maintain the Mana Filter while simultaneously cloaking my body in mana gave me a severe headache. Roughly... my limit was about 20 minutes.
Still, thanks to the mana, I was free from the poison's influence for now. I could avoid the disaster of regressing again right after arriving. The single fact that the notification saying I'd taken damage didn't appear was something to be grateful for.
<Floor 25>
-Defeat the 'Maze King' and escape.
-Poison is spread throughout Floor 25. You may not feel anything unusual at first, but movement will become increasingly difficult. An ordinary person will perish within about one hour. A climber will lose their life within 2 to 3 hours. Please exercise extreme caution.
"Oh-ho."
The message window floated before my eyes. So, the objectives for Floor 25 came down to two things.
First. Kill the Maze King.
Second. Escape the maze.
The 'poison' blanketing Floor 25 seemed to serve as a general time limit. An ordinary player entering here would have to do their absolute best to escape Floor 25 before the poison paralyzed them.
"That's pretty nasty."
But if you became impatient, your breathing rate would increase, which would speed up the rate of poisoning... So maybe the key to this floor was maintaining composure without getting eaten by the time limit. Of course, I was the exception. For me, it was game over the moment my mana ran out. I had to clear this floor within 20 minutes.
Generally, it was a hopeless situation. Cracking a floor others needed two hours to beat, in just 20 minutes—was that even remotely plausible?
"Okay. Analysis complete."
But I already knew. The fact that Floor 25 could be cleared within 10 minutes.
Choi Ji-won didn't tell me. She 'showed' me. Showed me by emerging in just 10 minutes herself.
If she could do it,
I could do it too.
"Let's go."
As I released my mana and took a deep breath, the raw scent of blood rose from deep within my throat.
Now it began.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 25.]
