The Regressor Is a Cloud (6)
The Regressor Is a Cloud (6)
A dark space where nothing could be seen.
Endless blackness. Nothing else. It felt as if I were standing alone in the darkness of a bottomless abyss.
"..."
How'd I end up here? Where is this? What was I doing just now?
Unanswerable questions surfaced in my mind and vanished just as fast. Just like this black space, my own mind was sinking into blackness.
"Kim Jun-ho."
A dry voice called my name from behind, and I turned my head.
"...Choi Ji-won?"
Choi Ji-won. She was looking at me. Black ponytail, jeans, a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. She wasn't the leather-armored Choi Ji-won I'd seen on Floor 2 or Floor 3, but the one from the tutorial.
"..."
But her lips were chapped, her skin was dry and flaking, and her clothes were torn all over.
"Kim Jun-ho."
Her voice cracked like a dried-up reservoir. Her eyes were as hollow as this black space.
"I curse you."
She said it as she took one step, then another, toward me.
"After you left, everyone in the tutorial starved to death. The goblins all killed themselves, so there was no food. Which is only natural, I guess."
Her cheeks grew sunken, and her eyes became hollow. Her limbs became skeletal, and her hair fell to the floor in clumps.
"I curse you for abandoning this world and regressing all by yourself."
Now a zombie-like shell, Choi Ji-won stared at me with eyes full of despair, grief, and hatred.
"I curse you, too."
This time it was a deep male voice, not Choi Ji-won's.
"I despise you. I hate that you survived alone. I hate that you abandoned us to die, and now you go around laughing."
Kang Chan. He was glaring at me.
"Once you regress, it's over for you. But not for us. In the world you left behind, we suffered endlessly as we died."
The Baek Da-hye I saw in the tutorial was crying tears of blood. Ahn Gyeong-jun tore at his scalp, and Dok Su-hee giggled as she stabbed herself with a dagger.
"Curse you."
"I curse you."
"I wish for your miserable death."
Now, countless people whose names I couldn't even remember were cursing me.
In this black space, they hated only one thing. Me.
"..."
And as for me, receiving all this malice...
"Get lost."
I felt nothing.
Crash!
The moment I realized it, the black space shattered, revealing a familiar stone chamber. This was the room that had spouted that bullshit about testing mental strength through fear.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Beside me, Dok Su-hee was writhing in agony, tears streaming down her face. In the past, she would have snapped out of it first, or we would have recovered at the same time. I'd gotten ahold of myself much earlier than usual this cycle.
"It's my fault, it's all my fault..."
"..."
Fear was this agonizing. It was something everyone wanted to avoid, the most difficult emotion to overcome.
So why was I so perfectly fine? Just because I'd experienced it many times? That didn't explain why I was this unnaturally numb.
Come to think of it, even when we cleared that trap corridor a moment ago, I wasn't particularly happy. Dok Su-hee and Ahn Gyeong-jun had sincerely praised me, but their praise stirred no sense of accomplishment in me at all.
"Fuck..."
The reason was simple.
I'd regressed too many times.
The route to the arrow trap was never short. There were so, so many variables.
Every time I regressed, I took only the predetermined actions needed to get the result I wanted, and everyone else reacted to me in predetermined ways.
Something that produces the same output when you put in the same input isn't a person. That's a robot. An NPC.
At some point, the people I was climbing Floor 3 with no longer looked like people. They looked like something mechanical.
This wasn't good. This was very, very bad.
Not seeing people as people, not viewing lives as lives—this is the main symptom of 'Regressor Disease.'
After regressing dozens, maybe hundreds of times, it might be a natural phenomenon. But it wasn't the ending I wanted for myself.
"...Wake up."
"Ah, ngh... Thank you."
I had to consciously keep my guard up. People are people. Just because I'd been given regression didn't mean I'd been given the right to look down on others.
Smack!
I gave my cheeks a couple of smacks and pulled myself together.
But even if I consciously tried to steel myself, I couldn't deny that, in some small corner of my heart, a Regressor's way of thinking had already taken root...
**
"Oh, you're here? We just arrived too..."
Following the path, I found Ahn Gyeong-jun and Kang Chan brushing the dust from their clothes. Probably because I broke through the fear room earlier, we all arrived at the golem room at the same time.
"..."
I caught myself staring at Kang Chan's fist. My fate rested on that fist. If Kang Chan were to suddenly panic and say 'Hmm... why isn't this breaking?', I'd be totally screwed.
"...Wait. Let me use my trait to check ahead."
I couldn't let that show. In a deadpan tone, I stared ahead and furrowed my brow as if concentrating.
"That is... I think there's a monster up ahead... its traits are..."
The lies flowed out of my mouth so smoothly now, and the others' expressions slowly hardened.
Come to think of it, that golem was also a ridiculous monster. It didn't make sense for something this terrifying to appear on just Floor 3.
"But it's fine. Because we've got Mr. Kang Chan here."
As illogical as that thing was, we also had an illogical monster on our side. His name was Kang Chan.
"Mr. Chan can deal with that monster...! He's our only hope...!"
Now everyone's eyes were on Kang Chan. He looked slightly flustered, but he just stood there silently, not letting it show.
"..."
He closed his eyes gently, mulled it over again and again, and then gave a small nod.
"Fine. I'll do it."
**
Inside a dark passage that felt like a mine shaft.
Kang Chan walked at the front, and the other three followed behind him.
Will this work? No, it has to work.
"...There it is."
Walking in silence, we quickly reached the golem. Since it was just scattered metal chunks for now, the plan was for Ahn Gyeong-jun to throw a spear and wake it up.
"...Mm."
Ahn Gyeong-jun pulled out an ornately designed wooden spear. Just as he was about to hurl it, Dok Su-hee blocked his path.
"W-wait!"
She hurriedly pulled a wolf heart fragment from her clothes.
Just like before, the fragment ignited into a transparent flame in her hand, and she placed the flame on the spear.
"Not yet!"
She pulled out another heart. This time she placed the flame on Kang Chan's leather armor.
"...What did you do?"
"I enchanted your armor! You should feel stronger, right?"
"...Incredible."
The range of 'enchant' must be wider than I thought. She just placed it right on there.
"...I'm throwing it for real this time."
Ahn Gyeong-jun glared at Dok Su-hee once with a displeased expression, then rolled his shoulders.
Fwoosh! Crash!
The spear tore through the air and struck the golem's body.
Rrrrumble!
As soon as the impact registered, the scattered metal chunks began gathering into a form.
"..."
Kang Chan walked forward with heavy steps.
The golem, fully assembled in an instant, was swift. As soon as its body was formed, it charged at Kang Chan.
Whhooosh!
The arm-like mass gathered and slammed down at him. A strike that was both swift and heavy. If it hit, he'd end up as a puddle of blood like before. Even from a distance, the blow was terrifying enough to make my legs go numb.
"..."
But Kang Chan's expression remained calm. He didn't let off that violent burst of killing intent, nor did he clumsily twist his body to dodge. He simply took his stance and focused on the golem's body.
Whrrrrrr.
His fist glowed. The metal mass rushed at him. His fist moved. The metal mass was about to hit him.
"Hup!"
At the very last moment, Kang Chan's fist vanished.
Kwa-baaang!
An earth-shattering impact I'd never heard before.
Krrrrrr!
A blinding light, a vibrating floor, a deafening roar. Most of my human senses went numb for a moment.
"..."
After a moment, when my senses returned to normal.
"...The door ahead opened. Let's go."
Kang Chan turned to look at the three of us.
"...Wow."
Behind him, a backdrop of shattered metal fragments.
**
"Huh, huhh..."
He did it. Finally, he did it. We'd finally beaten the golem. I was overwhelmed.
A feeling of satisfaction welled up deep in my chest. I wasn't entirely broken. Knowing that made me feel even better. Maybe the reason I hadn't felt joy earlier was because there was a part of me worrying, 'What if we can't beat the golem?'
But this wasn't the end. The passage continued, and there were still challenges left to solve.
"...It's a door."
While I was lost in thought, a stone door soon blocked our way.
A familiar stone door. Four palm-shaped indentations were carved into it.
We exchanged glances and placed our hands on the door, and with a loud rumble, it opened.
"..."
What would appear? A monster? A trap? A puzzle?
But what revealed itself wasn't something threatening like that.
"This is..."
Torches lined the walls. Four large boxes sat in the center of the room.
Four people. Four boxes. Obvious. Each person could take one. I didn't know what was inside, but since this was the hardest difficulty, it had to be something incredible.
"..."
"..."
But for some reason, no one's eyes stayed on the boxes.
"...What's that?"
On the other side of the room, there were two doors.
One was the usual stone door we'd seen so far. It had four handprint indentations carved into it.
The problem was... the other stone door.
Because the stone door, red as blood, had only a single handprint on it.