The Regressor Is Panicked (5)
The Regressor Is Panicked (5)
"...What do you mean by that?"
The middle-aged white man looked at me like he genuinely couldn't understand.
"Isn't it a good thing to have plenty of food? Feeding all the people behind me was a huge worry."
"...It isn't that simple."
Baron Jorge had said earlier that they also only needed to endure here for five days. Five days for us, five days for them. As people, they would need to eat, sleep, and do their business, so needing food was obvious, and now that the food problem was so easily solved, there should be nothing but relief... At a glance, that logic made sense.
"What did the message say earlier?"
"...That we had to survive for five days."
It wasn't like the Tutorial or Floor 2, where you had to retrieve a specific object. It wasn't like Floor 3, where you had to break through an obvious trial right in front of you. You just had to stay alive.
If I turned that around, it meant the environment of Floor 4 would actively try to stop us from surviving.
A cold winter. An isolated castle. Water could be made by melting snow, but it was a difficult place to find food. That was why I'd secretly hoped that 'finding sustenance' itself was the challenge.
Even if each player's level varied, everyone here had physical abilities beyond ordinary humans.
Plus, since a castle was built here, there had to be some kind of path, some vegetation, something to eat. If superhumans went out to hunt, they wouldn't fail.
In a worst-case scenario, we could just melt snow for water, tear up and eat our cold-weather gear, and stubbornly endure for five days through sheer grit.
But no. Food was plentiful, and we were even given extra coats. It meant that, at the very least, we wouldn't starve to death.
"...A food shortage would have been better, actually."
In that case... it also meant the threat to our survival would come from something other than starvation.
"We need to gather the players. We can't just sit still."
Monsters could swarm us from outside the castle. Or something could be living in the basement.
...Or maybe, the people weren't all people. Maybe the 100 players we thought we had were only 50, and half of them were monsters. Or maybe all of the otherworlders were secretly monsters. The message notified us of nothing except 'survival,' so the possibilities were endless.
"Let's split up for now. We'll gather everyone we see and meet back here in front of the castle in one hour. Do you agree?"
"...Yes."
"Sounds good."
"Right. There's no time to be looking for hidden pieces and such."
Whatever was going on, we had to act. That was my conclusion.
**
After the other players scattered to every corner of the castle at my suggestion, Baron Jorge, who had been watching quietly, carefully opened his mouth.
"..."
"You people..."
"Yes?"
"Are you perhaps... from Lifton? Or Alarak? Your accent is strange. From the atmosphere, I'd have guessed you were mercenaries..."
"...I'm late to explain, but we're likely from a different world. The only thing we share is that we have to endure here for five days."
I gave a very brief explanation of how the players were from Earth, and how some being calling itself God had suddenly shoved a tower here and dragged us in.
"...Good heavens."
Baron Jorge stroked his thick beard and groaned.
"So, in your world..."
Baron Jorge's expression, mid-explanation, went completely blank. After about ten seconds, it returned to normal.
"...Why aren't you answering?"
A man mid-sentence loses his expression and asks a question as if he'd just spoken. I'd seen this phenomenon countless times on the internet—the Tower's Information Restriction.
"...Never mind. First, what should we do about the people behind you?"
"Understood. I will repay this kindness, without fail."
After a brief discussion, Baron Jorge and his territory residents decided to use the rooms on the second floor. I told him that if he ran into any players, to pass on the message to gather in front of the castle in an hour.
"Well then, after your... 'meeting' is over... we shall have our own discussion. Thomas! Lead the people and follow me!"
"Yes! My Lord!"
Leading his disciplined territory residents, Baron Jorge went up to the second floor in a bustling group.
After I watched them go up, I turned and headed outside the castle.
**
"Where did you get the weapons?"
"There was a room in the basement stuffed full of nothing but weapons. There's also a room with raw materials like wood... it's quite varied. More importantly, I'm a bit late, but shall we introduce ourselves? I'm William Smith."
"...Kim Jun-ho."
"So... Jun-ho. What are you doing like that?"
William Smith, the middle-aged white man who had brought the other players with him, asked me.
"..."
It was because I had my lips pursed comically inward into my mouth.
Well, I hadn't known it would be this dry. My lips were completely chapped from the cold wind, and I had the thought that if the skin on my lips split, I might end up regressing. So the conclusion I'd reached was the brilliant idea of keeping my lips inside my mouth.
"..."
"..."
I took my now-moistened lips back out and looked over the faces of the players. Somehow I'd ended up in a leadership role, but as a regressor, I supposed this was a burden I had to bear.
"Is everyone here?"
"Everyone except one guy who's holed up alone in a room near the entrance."
"..."
So that was the one who threatened to resist if we came into his room.
Wait, more importantly, he was alone? He'd said 'we.' It must have been a bluff.
"So, why did you want to meet outside?"
A man with a surly face raised his hand and spoke. He seemed irritated from standing out in the cold wind.
"The castle interior is too cramped for a hundred people to gather. The sound echoes as well, so it's not a suitable environment for a meeting."
It wasn't me who answered, but another man wearing glasses.
"Let's bear the cold a little bit. Even my glasses are fogging up constantly, which is extremely annoying."
But his face looked somehow familiar.
"...Ahn Gyeong-nam?"
It was Ahn Gyeong-nam, the man I'd seen in the Tutorial. Right, the older brother of Ahn Gyeong-jun, whom I'd shared the hardships of Floor 3 with.
Now that I looked, there was another familiar face beside him. It was Baek Da-hye, the buffer I'd also seen in the Tutorial.
"..."
To think I'd run into them again here. I considered offering a greeting, but those two didn't know me. The cycle where I'd gotten somewhat involved with them had already been regressed past.
"Ahem, hmm. Could I have your attention for a moment, please?"
I was momentarily flustered by the unexpected faces, but that didn't change what I had to do. Using my Curiosity trait, I drew everyone's gaze, then repeated what I'd just told William Smith verbatim.
"...Therefore, it stands to reason that some kind of threat will come at us from outside the castle, or perhaps from within."
"Hmm..."
"Mm..."
"That sounds plausible."
It hadn't even been two months since the first Tutorial started, and this was Floor 4. Anyone without a certain level of drive and sense wouldn't have made it this far.
Besides, the message window we all saw clearly stated that survival was the goal. The weight of having to risk their lives made people more rational, and the players naturally fell in line with my opinion.
But knowing that something was coming didn't really change the situation drastically.
"So, mister, what do you think we should do?"
The question came from that same surly man who'd asked why we were meeting outside.
"You've laid out a bunch of possibilities, but you don't seem sure of anything."
"..."
He wasn't wrong.
I was still only on my first cycle, and I had no idea what was going to happen.
I couldn't be certain if something would emerge from outside the castle, inside it, or if the entire castle itself was a trap.
If I had regressed, I could at least blurt out some nonsense like 'Here is the proof!', but that was impossible.
"...First, we have no choice but to trial every possible scenario. We can't afford to rule anything out with 'survival' on the line."
We'd repair the castle walls to some extent, set up barricades, and post sentries. At the same time, we'd search every nook and cranny of the castle for any hidden variable. We just had to do both.
"The otherworld residents have been moved to the second floor. Let's search the basement as thoroughly as we can. We'll inspect the walls, the floor, everything. And if nothing pops up, we move on to the first floor."
There was a reason I'd steered Baron Jorge toward the second floor. I'd judged it more likely that any monsters or hidden pieces would appear underground.
"Speaking of which, what's the deal with these so-called otherworld residents? Who are they?"
This time the question came from a woman with a pronouncedly jutting chin.
"...Well, that is..."
I explained that there were people inside the black semi-sphere we'd seen. They seemed to have been dragged here from another world, just like on Floor 2. If they endured for five days, they'd go back to their own world. So, we'd formed a sort of temporary alliance...
"..."
The woman's chin jutted out even more, as if she was dissatisfied.
"...Are we really forced to stick with these otherworlders? No, am I wrong?"
She raised her voice, looking around as if to gather support.
"It's a survival mission that just popped up out of nowhere. Didn't the man speaking right now say himself that he wasn't sure what was going to happen? What if those people suddenly transform into demons or something? No, let's say that's a stretch. We're players—superhumans. And this is Floor 4 of a tower that tries to kill superhumans like us. It doesn't look like a floor with enough leeway to carry around hundreds of useless people. Is it even worth worrying about them? It seems like we'll be struggling just to keep ourselves alive."
"..."
A few people cautiously nodded their heads after hearing her out.
Her tone was a bit rude, but she wasn't wrong. The difficulty of Floor 4 was a complete unknown, and it didn't feel like we had the margin for error to endure while harboring hundreds of ordinary people with no combat ability.
From my perspective, sticking together for now was the right call. Not simply because 'we should help people since we're human,' but because of the possibility that saving them would yield a bonus reward.
But I couldn't persuade this woman with that logic. It would also be weird to say, 'I'm going to regress, so please make a sacrifice this cycle.'
"..."
What to do. Should I perform a sword dance? The ki I sensed from the woman was nothing special, so if I made a light threat, my 'Awe' trait would probably kick in right away.
As I stood lost in thought, weighing all my options.
"Such a thing will never happen."
Despite the loud wind, a sonorous male voice rang out clearly. The tone had an antique yet foreign air to it, even after auto-translation, and it instantly grabbed everyone's attention.
"I have heard everything. I also understand your difficulties. But it's all right."
Step. Step.
The man walked toward me naturally, easily withstanding the aura being emitted by the players as if it were nothing.
The faint smile on his lips was truly aristocratic. There was no other way to describe it.
"My territory residents and I will certainly be of help to you."
There was only one man like this on Floor 4.
"I, Baron Jorge, guarantee it."