The Regressor Is Too Weak (4)
The Regressor Is Too Weak (4)
"...Fuck."
I thought this run might actually last a little longer.
Just when I was about to get some real information on the ponytail girl, I regressed.
My mistake was being too hasty. She looked sensitive, and I could see that plain as day. I should've taken it slow and gotten on her good side first.
"Hello! You lowly humans doing such a splendid job of wasting your lives! Nice to meet you!"
But it's fine. I've got plenty of chances.
All I have to do is escape this place before the endless regressions drive me insane.
Last cycle, I did absolutely nothing except swing a sword.
So if I just grit my teeth and endure a little hunger, recreating the exact same situation isn't all that hard.
"The System will handle the detailed explanation... Tutorial, start!"
The fairy dropped the weapons and vanished with a pop!
I picked up any random sword, and I could hold it much more comfortably than before.
My stance felt reasonably balanced, too.
Guess people really do need to learn.
Whoosh!
I gave the sword a test swing. Not exactly clean, but the arc didn't look sloppy.
It was satisfying. My effort wasn't wasted.
"Um, excuse me...?"
A man tapped me carefully on the shoulder.
"You look like you've handled a sword before. Could you teach us a thing or two?"
Apparently my stance looked stable even to other people. A deep sense of satisfaction welled up inside me.
But contrary to how I felt inside, I kept my expression stiff and slowly shook my head.
"Sorry. I'm not skilled enough to teach anyone."
Strictly speaking, I wasn't lying. I'd swung a sword for maybe ten hours total.
But to these people, it probably looked different.
"Come on, don't be like that. We all got dropped into this tower together. We should help each other out."
A man appealing to the bonds of humanity, probably because the tutorial rules hadn't been announced yet.
"Hm..."
I pretended to mull it over, then gave a small nod.
"Fine. I can help with the real basics."
"Ohh..."
"But I have a condition."
"...A condition?"
Tap.
I pointed a fingertip at the thin jacket the man was wearing.
"Your outer layer. Hand it over."
"...My jacket? I mean, it is warm in here, so I was thinking of taking it off anyway..."
Looking puzzled, the man slipped off his jacket and handed it to me.
"The rest of you, too."
I collected clothes from five people in total.
This should be enough.
"Alright. This is the basic stance. Your dominant hand goes forward when gripping the sword, and..."
I did my best to teach them properly, as promised, but the men just tilted their heads like they didn't get it.
In a way, that made sense.
I didn't know jack shit about swordsmanship either.
One man approached, scratching his head.
"Uh... could you explain that in a bit more det—"
"Status Wiiiindow!"
"Huh?"
Right on cue, the Status Window guy yelled at the top of his lungs and drew everyone's attention. I used the opening to wrap the jackets around both legs, both arms, and my neck.
Good thing I'd slept in my clothes. The long sleeves and long pants covered a huge portion of my skin.
"...Ugh."
I looked pretty grotesque with clothes wrapped around my limbs and neck. I caught Park Cheol-jin the firefighter clicking his tongue at me from over there.
He was probably thinking something like, are kids these days all this messed up?
Of course, in this state I couldn't even hold a weapon. Walking was hard, too. The jacket stuffed inside my shoe made it uncomfortable.
But it's fine. I'm a Regressor.
I carefully pushed through the tall grass and headed out of the clearing.
"Oh..."
The cloth wrapping seemed to be working, because I saw no sign of regression triggering.
The problem was... it was hot as absolute hell.
The grass resistance was no joke, so just walking took a lot of effort, and with my limbs all bundled up, my body heat had nowhere to escape.
On top of that, this place was warm to begin with.
In short, the perfect environment for your body temperature to spike.
I felt beads of sweat trickling down my forehead, but I couldn't stop here.
I'd been walking for about thirty minutes.
"Krrrk... kiiiek..."
A faint cry from somewhere in the tall grass.
It sounded like a kid who smokes three packs a day scraping their throat—this bizarre noise...
"Goblins."
That was unmistakably a goblin cry.
A message window appeared right on cue.
<Tutorial Stage>
-Clear Condition 1: Swallow a 'Golden Orb' hidden somewhere in the forest to advance to the next stage. Only 50 Golden Orbs exist.
-Clear Condition 2: Defeat the boss, the Goblin Shaman, to generate a portal to the next stage.
As you can tell from Condition 2, the boss is the Goblin Shaman.
If there's a Goblin Shaman, that means regular goblins are around, too.
So this is my first real fight. Goblins are the opponents.
Time to prove that all the sweat I've shed wasn't for nothing.
Without thinking, I drew my sword...
Drew my...
"Ah."
I didn't bring the sword.
More precisely, I'd tossed it on the ground while wrapping myself up in the clothes.
All I had was a Doraemon fist bundled in cloth.
"..."
Fighting right now didn't seem wise.
I tried to cautiously circle around the sound and keep moving forward, but...
"Kiyaaak!"
"Whoa-aaah!"
Something lunged out of the grass! Fuck!
A thing charging at me with bared fangs.
"Get off! Fuck!"
I swung my fist on instinct and smacked whatever had jumped out.
Couldn't feel the impact through the clothes, but I managed to shove it back.
"Kiek! Kueeek!"
I'd noticed it too late because the grass was green and so was its body.
A goblin.
The first goblin I'd seen in real life was way more grotesque and creepy than I'd imagined.
Wrinkled skin all over, blood and unidentifiable flesh stuck between its teeth, eyes filled with malice...
"Die!"
I stomped down hard on the fallen goblin's chest.
Crunch!
"Kieeeek!"
The goblin's ribs shattered with a sound like snapping dry stalks.
It twitched once or twice, then stopped moving.
"...Dead?"
I gave it a cautious poke with the tip of my foot. Not a twitch.
Then.
Fwoosh.
A cluster of light gathered in the air and began coalescing above the goblin's head.
"..."
It formed a small hexagon, then flashed and vanished.
Where the light had been, a tiny wooden box remained.
I awkwardly picked up the box with my cloth-wrapped hands. Man, this is really inconvenient.
"Bleh. Blehhh."
I fumbled the box open with my tongue, and what appeared was...
"...Lip balm?"
Cheap lip balm.
Was it because the goblin was so pitifully weak? Or were monster drops just like this?
I was staring at the lip balm with thoroughly unimpressed eyes when...
"Kieeeek!"
Another goblin burst out of the grass. Had it heard me kill the first one and followed the sound?
"Too slow!"
This time I dodged its teeth a bit more cleanly, but...
"Kiek!"
"Kihihihihek!"
To my surprise, there was another one behind me. They'd surrounded me.
I twisted my body as hard as I could to avoid the second attack too, but...
Slice!
I couldn't stop the claws from raking my side.
"Ah."
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 0.]
***
I tried again, this time with a sword.
Honestly, barehanded had been better.
A Doraemon fist couldn't hold a sword steady at all.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 0.]
***
This time I decided to gather some allies.
I made up an excuse about having a grass allergy and needing to bundle up in clothes. They barely seemed to buy it.
The result, of course, was the same.
It was impossible to fend off six goblins ambushing me all at once without taking a scratch.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 0.]
***
"Fuck! Fuuuuck!"
Goblins are weak.
Weaker than a five-year-old kid.
Their bones are brittle, they have no weapons, all they've got are teeth and claws. And even those aren't all that sharp.
They're the perfect tutorial monster. Any adult with the will to fight could stomp them flat.
To me, though, they felt like an insurmountable wall.
Goblins are persistent.
They struggle until the moment they die, and they come up with their own little plans to ambush people.
Goblins are numerous.
They swarm from all sides, and winning without taking a single hit is impossible.
Goblins are small.
The tall grass makes them nearly impossible to spot until the instant they strike.
But all of this is just excuses.
There's really only one decisive reason.
I'm not strong enough to win without taking a wound.
Honestly, if it weren't for the regression, I could've breezed through this grass patch no problem.
I could just laugh it off: 'This much of a scratch? No big deal.'
Every single problem comes down to this absurdly excessive regression.
It's because of the regression that I can't even get out of this clearing—the tutorial of the tutorial.
"..."
I've got two options here.
Option one: keep throwing myself at the goblin grass.
Challenge it, challenge it again, keep challenging it over and over. Eventually, I might succeed.
But there's a critical problem with that.
Against goblins, using a sword is tough.
The clothes wrapping is part of it, and the tall grass restricts your movement.
It's the worst possible environment for getting used to a sword.
That brings me to option two.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
My gaze landed on the ponytail girl, still steadily swinging her sword.
Somehow, I had to get on friendly terms with her.