The Regressor Strays (1)
<Floor 25>
- Defeat the 'Maze King' and escape.
- Poison spreads throughout Floor 25. At first you will not notice anything unusual, but movement will gradually become difficult. An ordinary person will die in about one hour. Climbers will die within 2-3 hours. Please exercise caution.
Right after regressing, I warmed up my body and carefully examined my surroundings.
The path I stood on was a space unmistakably enclosed by artificial stone walls. A narrow passage about three meters wide, flanked by towering walls. The sky was invisible because of a translucent ceiling.
Behind me... blocked. Ahead, the right, and left paths remained. And these paths weren't just haphazardly carved—they turned at precise 90-degree angles.
"A maze."
As the name 'Maze King' implied, this place was unmistakably a maze. Floor 3 had a mirror maze too—well, a maze back there. But this space was so much larger and taller that it felt unfair to compare. The unsettling details: a light source existed even though the ceiling was sealed, and the air carried an overall greenish tint.
The air was probably that color because of the poison. Not sure about the light, though. I didn't see any torches or lamps anywhere.
Anyway, if this place was a maze, the word 'escape' made sense. Escaping a maze is never easy.
Back in middle school—or was it high school?—I once built a maze for fun while playing Minecraft multiplayer with friends. It wasn't very big, and the design was just copied straight off the internet.
And you know what? Escaping it was surprisingly difficult. No—incredibly difficult.
Solving a maze from a top-down view is easy. You know where the start and exit are, so you just ignore the dead ends and trace the path that connects them.
But exploring a maze from a first-person perspective is a completely different story. Not only do you have no idea where you are or which way leads to the exit, but after a while your memory of where you are and how far you've come becomes a tangled mess.
That's exactly why a technique like the 'Left-Hand Method' exists, isn't it? Unless your spatial perception has reached a godlike level, escaping a large maze through orthodox methods is practically impossible. Memorize the route with your brain? Think that'll work?
If there was a silver lining here... I only had to clear this floor once.
The moment I clear it and step out into reality, there'll be an answer that Choi Ji-won found, and I'll just follow it exactly. What mattered was a single success. Clear it once and this floor was over. The first clear was the beginning, the end, everything.
"Hmm."
Conventional methods were off the table. The time I'd been given was a mere twenty minutes. The approach of 'wander around and clear the maze' wasn't even worth considering. Sure, maybe I'd clear it through absurd luck someday, but that would take far too long.
The Left-Hand Method was also out. That method basically traces the entire left outer wall of the maze, and with this maze's vastness, doing that would smash right past the twenty-minute mark.
So what kind of trick could I use to clear this floor?
"When it comes to popular maze tricks."
The first thing that comes to mind is ignoring the walls. Smash them, phase through them, or otherwise cook up some way to negate the physical object called a 'wall.'
If that was allowed, I could just break the wall blocking my back and be done with it. Assuming, I figured out where the 'Maze King' was.
-Tap. Tap.
The sound when I tapped the wall with the back of my hand was unusually heavy. It felt like knocking on a 'wall.' The thickness seemed immense.
"...Still, I'd better give it a try."
I gathered mana and hammered wildly at the wall behind me. The wall was made of stone, and thanks to the sword wrapped in Cold Energy, it crumbled quickly enough.
"...Isn't this way too thick?"
Even after digging in for roughly five meters or more, the end was nowhere in sight. Curious, I also broke the left and right walls—those were about three meters thick. Breakable, but a daunting thickness nonetheless.
"Huff, huff..."
On top of that, exerting force sped up my breathing, I burned through plenty of mana, and the chill around my heart was starting to send danger signals... so breaking through walls probably wasn't the right way out.
Not that I planned to stop here. Why obsess over the walls? Paths aren't limited to front, back, left, and right.
"The ceiling, or the floor."
Stabbing the floor a few times only revealed more stone, but the direction I was pinning my hopes on was the ceiling.
That ceiling over there. No matter how I looked at it, the translucent quality made it feel like something was beyond it.
"Let's give it a shot."
Breaching the ceiling carried serious weight. If simply reaching the space beyond counted as 'escaping,' that would be a massive gain. Even if it didn't, I'd be able to see the overall layout of the maze from above—as good as obtaining a full map.
-Thwack!
I coiled sharply rotating mana around my hand and drove it into the wall. The wall gave way—not like soft tofu, more like clay.
"And now."
Once my hand was fully embedded, I stopped the mana rotation, and my hand locked firmly into the wall. It was a trick using the 'Fine Mana Control' I'd realized on Floor 21. Applying the same technique to my feet, I swiftly scaled the wall.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
The mana consumption was no joke. On Floor 25, 'mana = survival time,' so honestly it was a considerable burden.
But I was planning to regress anyway, and the climbing speed was quite fast, so I didn't worry too much.
Grab!
"Got it."
Maybe because I climbed the wall in a State of No Thought—I'd already reached the ceiling. I glanced down. About ten meters? Fifteen? Pretty high.
"Hooo..."
Carefully, I drew the sword from my waist. The ceiling up close didn't look very sturdy. You could even call it a sort of translucent glass material. The space beyond it was faintly visible. If I smashed through and climbed up, I'd have a clear view below.
Both legs and my left arm were anchored to the wall. I scraped together about half of my remaining mana and poured it into the sword. If the ceiling broke this time, next time I could shatter it in advance instead of climbing.
"Here I go."
My stance wasn't ideal, but mana could deliver a powerful strike from even this posture. I gripped the hilt tightly with my right hand, focusing on the shoulder joint.
-Shiing!
The sword I thrust with all my might...!!!
"...Huh?"
It stopped right before touching the ceiling. Not blocked. Not deflected. It just stopped.
"..."
I applied more force, but the sword showed no intention of moving. It just... it just... wouldn't go.
Was this an Archangel's power? It wasn't a question of hardness or anything like that. It was impossible. Sealed so that it couldn't be done. Like hitting an invisible wall in a game—something that simply can't be broken.
Right, so tricks were blocked, huh.
"...Clever."
I let out a sigh and took a deep breath of the green-tinted air.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 25.]
***
"This isn't it."
No matter how I thought about it, my direction was wrong. I'd never clear it this way.
This was a precious opportunity that Choi Ji-won had sacrificed to create. I had to regress as little as possible, clear it, and conserve both mental and physical stamina. Right now, I was too impatient.
Let's summon the average Player A again. No, if you've made it to Floor 25, I can't really call you average. Let's summon the fairly bright prodigy A instead.
When A regains his senses on Floor 25, how would this person move?
Probably, like me, he'd try knocking on the walls or ceiling first. And then give up right away. The return is far too poor compared to the effort required.
On top of that, poison permeates the entire maze, so there's a time limit. Suppose you're moving while drinking potions, and generously estimate your available time at three hours... no, four hours.
That means not just me, but an average player too, can't clear this by endlessly wandering the maze. Because a 'maze' is, by design, a space made to get you lost.
The Left-Hand Method? With the Left-Hand Method, escape is possible. If only there wasn't the condition of finding the 'Maze King.'
Simply escaping might work, but the Maze King's existence demanded a solution beyond the Left-Hand Method.
So how was A supposed to escape this maze? Was the only future wandering the maze until he succumbed to the poison?
No way.
There has to be something. Something that serves as a guide for the path is definitely here. Without it, this time limit is impossible to beat. Hidden within those four hours was the message: don't rely on luck; find the answer. That's how I interpreted it.
"Let's start moving. To the left."
To find that clue, I started walking. Just staying at the starting point wouldn't let me collect any information. As I walked, I carefully examined the vines growing on the walls and closely observed the patterns in the stone.
Come to think of it, how were the vines alive if poison was spreading everywhere? Were they immune to poison? Or are plants naturally unaffected by poison gas? I'm not sure.
How long had I been walking?
"Hmm."
After moving for roughly three minutes, I realized one fact.
"...I hit a dead end."
Namely, the fact that I knew nothing. Maybe because I'm not a maze expert, nor a massive genius—just a Regressor with an absurd amount of time. I couldn't find a single clue in this maze.
I succeeded in retracing my steps back to the starting point, but there was zero progress. What was I supposed to do? At this rate, I might really have to bash my head against it until I clear it through sheer luck.
"This time... straight ahead."
Still, I couldn't just stay still. I walked straight ahead this time, observing my surroundings in detail. Same as before, nothing changed. Stone walls, vines, a translucent ceiling, and—
"Huh?"
No. There was a change.
It was different. The sensation in my 'Mana Filter.'
If it had felt like fine white sand catching deep in my throat just moments ago, now it felt like coarse playground sand snagging.
Normally it would be a subtle difference hard to notice, but to a mana specialist like me, it was a clear distinction. Now that I noticed it, my mana consumption had also slightly increased.
The mana consumption of my Mana Filter had gone up. What did this mean? Why was it normal when I went left, but my mana consumption increased when I went straight ahead?
I don't know. Honestly, I have no idea. I still can't draw any conclusions.
Still, I realized it instinctively.
"This is it."
This was the path that led to the right answer.