The Regressor Likes Cider (3)
The Regressor Likes Cider (3)
Tutorial Fairy.
A merciless villain who preys on the heads of innocent citizens freshly summoned into the Tower—the being that drives home the truth: this is not the reality humanity once knew, but a space called the Tower where you must fight tooth and nail just to survive.
The first Strange Entity one encounters, who physically teaches modern people—long sheltered within the fence of the law—the brutal natural law of the strong devouring the weak. That is the Tutorial Fairy.
—Tutorial Fairy << Anyone actually seen someone's head explode to this thing?
—As if?
—I saw some middle-aged guy about to start shit with the fairy, and people around him talked him down. Honestly, who the hell doesn't know about the Tutorial Fairy these days?
But these days, awareness of the fairy is so widespread through fiction that practically no one gets their skull popped by it anymore.
Angry middle-aged men, or punks with bleach-blonde hair, mouthing off to the Tutorial Fairy and dying on the spot while everyone else recoils in horror—that's practically a cliché in webtoons and web novels now.
Of course, a lack of victims doesn't lower its status.
The Tutorial Fairy is still an object of fear, a starved beast prowling for an excuse to blow someone's head open.
—You guys know there's a bastard who beat the crap out of a fairy in the tutorial, right?
Kang Chan. At least, until stories about that man spread.
<You guys know there's a bastard who beat the crap out of a fairy in the tutorial, right?>
Unbelievable, right? I didn't believe it either. I got summoned to the first tutorial, totally spaced out, and suddenly this scary-as-hell guy gets up.
At first I just stared because—well, what the hell. But the guy's just standing there without saying a word, and whether you call it killing intent or sheer presence, I got to where I could barely even look at him. I was terrified, just staring at the dirt, and then a little while later—WHAM!
Maybe I wasn't the only one staring at the ground, because when the sound hit, everyone slowly raised their heads. The Tutorial Fairy (I didn't even know it was the Tutorial Fairy at first) was face-down on the ground, and a streak of blood was running from the guy's head.
Later I heard the fairy shot some kind of magic at his head, but he slipped it like it was nothing, hit it with a counter punch, and knocked it out cold. Eventually, another fairy showed up, dragged away the unconscious one, gave us the background info, handed out weapons, and left.
I think that was the most terrifying person I've ever seen in my life. That murderous glare and expressionless face still flash through my mind...
===
—bullshit
—I was in the same tutorial as this guy, and it's all facts. There were a few people having a stare-down in the clearing, but after they saw him take out the fairy they were bowing their heads, calling him Big Brother. The atmosphere was seriously chilling.
—So he got the fairy with no levels, right at the moment of first summoning to the clearing? Wow...
—How good does your trait have to be to pull that off? Mine's C-rank and I'm feeling deprived...
—Don't just call him 'that guy.' Big Brother's honorable name uses the character 'Chan.'
The man's revealed name was Kang Chan. Details like his appearance, ability, and age differed with every person who claimed to have seen him, so no clear facts ever got pinned down...
—Now I hear the fairies don't threaten to pop your head open anymore.
—They got disciplined once, so now they watch themselves lololol
—God Chan, that’s insane...
What was certain: he was an overwhelming powerhouse who subdued the Tutorial Fairy with a single punch.
Choi Ji-won, who single-handedly defeated the City Master on Floor 2.
Kang Chan, who suppressed the Tutorial Fairy with his bare fists.
And finally, the mysterious man said to have beheaded the hidden boss Minotaur in a single stroke.
If you asked anyone to name the three hottest people in the Korean community right now, everyone would name these three...
Definitely.
Even if only half of the stories I saw online were true, he was more than qualified—in fact, he had qualifications to spare—to step onto Floors 3-5.
He was wearing stiff leather armor, but that menacing presence couldn't be hidden.
"...Hm."
Kang Chan, who had been enduring our stares with his eyes closed, slowly opened them and walked wordlessly toward the stone door.
"..."
Maybe he meant we've chatted enough—let's get on with Floor 3.
After a brief meeting of eyes, Ahn Gyeong-jun and I nodded slightly and likewise took our places in front of the stone door.
Four people stood before the massive stone door.
The moment each of us placed a hand onto the palm-shaped grooves—
Grrrrrrrumble!
With a thunderous sound that shook the ground, the stone door slowly began to move.
The assault on Floor 3 had begun in earnest.
Clomp. Clomp.
How long had we been walking, relying on the torchlight fixed to the walls?
The narrow cave path amplified our footsteps.
"Kieeeek!"
Occasionally, a goblin hidden in the cracks would shriek and leap out.
Sscht!
Honestly, I was already way too strong to regress to something on the level of a goblin. I regressed to goblins only in the very earliest days of the tutorial—now they were nothing more than trash mobs.
The space was so confined that I dispatched them with thrusts, then flicked the blood from my blade onto the floor.
"...Maybe living in a cave makes their eyes degenerate. Their eyeballs are all white, it's disgusting..."
Ahn Gyeong-jun, whose mouth never stopped, as if trying to shake off the tension.
"It's a cave, but there aren't any bugs, huh? That's a relief~"
Dok Su-hee, whose nervousness had eased—or maybe loosened her tongue—offered strange observations completely at odds with her sharp looks.
"Hm."
And Kang Chan, who kept his tension taut, still radiating pressure.
With me at the lead, we slowly walked the cave.
So far, Floors 3-5 had been... too easy. Unbelievably, impossibly easy.
Once the first stone door opened, we grabbed weapons we were comfortable with from a room piled with all sorts of armaments, and after that—all we did was walk a long, slick, damp cave tunnel.
The only enemies that sprang out were goblins or bats.
Are we just too strong? But logically, does anyone strong enough to enter Floors 3-5 seem like they'd get taken out by a goblin?
There's no way this is all Floor 3 has to offer. Something... something else has to be up its sleeve...
While I mulled this over and kept moving—
"..."
What had seemed like an endless, claustrophobic cave tunnel suddenly opened into a wide chamber.
The size of the circular hollowed-out space looked almost as vast as the concert hall at the Seoul Arts Center, and the torches placed at regular intervals along the wall flickered gloomily.
"Hm..."
The four of us stepped carefully into the chamber. We stayed on maximum alert, scanning our surroundings, but nothing jumped out.
"There is a door up ahead, but..."
As Ahn Gyeong-jun said, a stone door of a familiar design stood on the far side of the chamber, but unlike before, there were no palm-shaped grooves. Just pressing our palms to it wouldn't open it.
"...Don't you think we need to find a hidden mechanism? If there aren't enemies, there might be a puzzle or something!"
That came from Dok Su-hee. Her point made sense.
We needed to move forward, the door was shut, and there were no enemies. Plus, this space was quite large... The hypothesis that we needed to press a hidden switch to proceed to the next room was plenty convincing.
Floor 2 had been more puzzle than combat as well, so there's no rule saying Floor 3 couldn't be the same.
"Sh-should we split up and look...?"
So when Ahn Gyeong-jun suggested we fan out and search for anything suspicious, no one objected.
===
Maybe about fifteen minutes had passed.
"Hm..."
I'd spent a good while feeling and tapping the chamber walls, but there was nothing like a hidden mechanism.
"Hmmmm..."
To be honest, I'd been thinking there probably wasn't a hidden mechanism.
This chamber's atmosphere was far too grim for that.
When you're playing a game like Dark Souls, you sometimes get this feeling: no matter how you look at it, this has to be a boss room.
But there was no terrifying boss anywhere in sight—only the torches burning ominously.
A situation where you enter a boss room, but the boss itself is missing.
In web novels, when this happens, it's usually from the ceiling...
"Huh?"
I slowly lifted my head.
And met eyes with a pair of blazing yellow pupils in the ceiling's darkness where the torchlight couldn't reach.
"Kh!"
The instant I saw those slitted pupils, my body was already moving.
Craaaash!
The monstrous beast that had smashed down onto the spot I'd occupied—no, a giant wolf with white fur billowing.
"Mr. Jun-ho!!!"
"You motherf—"
The floor where the thing had struck was fissured and split, and the monster wolf, the size of an SUV, turned its head and fixed its gaze on the nape of my neck.
Fwoosh!
The monster wolf immediately launched itself with tremendous elasticity. Its leap was so fast that even a superhuman would struggle to react.
Claaang!
When I reflexively raised my sword sideways to block its swinging forepaw, a sound rang out that you'd never believe came from animal hide meeting metal.
"Ugh...!"
This wolf's strength was staggering. My body, unable to fully redirect the absurd physical force, was sent flying backward through the air.
Just as my airborne body was about to touch the floor again, I stretched my leg way back to decelerate...
Slip.
"Huh?"
Both feet I'd stretched back to kill my momentum skidded across the slick cave floor.
Crack!
My body spun half a turn, and simultaneously, my face kissed the cave floor hard.
[You have taken damage.]
[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 3-5.]
***
"...Get up, sprout."
I heard Kang Chan's growling voice and rubbed my face with both palms.
"Fuck..."