Regressor (1)

“First, let’s get you out of the ranks of the unemployed.”

Finding a job. That was the first step.

“And how exactly are we supposed to get one?”

“Beats me.”

Park Deokgu stared at me, dumbfounded.

“I’m not some miracle worker. I’m not even that smart, really.”

“For someone like you, you’re pretty smart, though, ain’t ya? At the very least, you seem a bit more reliable than some bookworm who’s done nothing but study. You look like a bookworm yourself, though.”

Well, that was half right.

The only real problem was that I wasn’t exactly great at studying either.

“Then how do you plan to change jobs?”

“For now, there’s no answer except to go hunt those things. That woman said our class would be decided by how much effort we put in.”

“Y-yeah, I think I heard that too….”

“The point is that we have to do something if we want things to change. Just standing around swinging a sword, or keeping on fighting and killing those things—either way, if we’d stayed cooped up in there, we’d have died without accomplishing a damn thing.”

As I spoke, I emptied every last item from the leather bag onto the floor.

For a moment, Deokgu looked at me as if asking what the hell I was doing, but once I started crudely lacing the leather together with the shoelaces from the sneakers I was wearing and fastening it onto his body, he seemed to catch on.

A faintly moved look crossed his face.

“It does look kind of like armor, but… don’t you need one too, hyung?”

He was the one fighting up front, after all, so there was no need to make one for me too.

A single guard to protect the neck was enough. This wasn’t me pointlessly charging forward and making a scene for nothing.

But there didn’t seem to be any need to explain that.

“You’re bigger than I am, relatively speaking.”

“I’m scared I might not live up to your expectations, but… I’ll take it slow and try one thing at a time.”

At those words, I nodded.

* * *

He definitely lived up to my expectations.

In truth, once I’d seen Park Deokgu’s base stats, I had expected him to be reasonably strong.

I couldn’t have explained exactly how those stats translated into a physical body, but his numbers were nearly twice mine.

His endurance stat, especially—30—was almost absurd.

With the sheer strength he radiated from his massive frame, plus the shield and sword, and that makeshift leather armor on top of it all, he looked like something out of a movie: a gladiator stepping out of the screen.

It was only natural to have high expectations, and naturally, I’d assumed he would at least put on a decent show.

But once he found a bit of confidence, he went far beyond what I had imagined.

“Hyung!”

“I know.”

His back came into view as he shoved two monsters back with his shield.

His face was still pale with fear, but the monster pressed against his shield wasn’t faring any better.

He was only driving it back with brute force, but the thing, trapped between wall and shield, could do nothing except stretch out its claws.

While Deokgu held one down, I thrust my spear forward, and with a grotesque sensation, it sank straight into the creature’s face.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Clean.

“Hrrrgh!”

With a strange scream, Deokgu swung the sword in his other hand as well.

He grimaced, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the hilt. He knew, from experience now, that the moment he let his guard down, he’d get hurt.

“Gaaahhh….”

Once the monster finally sagged limp, I drove the spear into its face one more time.

“Huff… huff….”

Damn, this is exhausting.

It looked simple, but nothing about it was simple.

Compared to what Park Deokgu was doing, maybe it was better, but our base stamina was on different levels to begin with.

Just spending a few minutes with these things left my whole body slick with sweat.

“Here, have some water.”

“Thanks.”

As I let out a small sigh, Deokgu spoke up in a worried voice.

“Ain’t your stamina way too weak?”

“I’ve never really exercised before.”

At least my stamina points were going up.

Only by 1, though.

Compared to that, Deokgu was different.

His endurance stat, which had originally been 30, was now 33. Compared to me, that was an incredible achievement.

I didn’t know whether stat growth was also affected by talent, but I figured it probably was.

His endurance talent rank was Heroic or higher; he had the potential to reach Legendary rank if he put his mind to it, so it wasn’t strange that his stats would rise this quickly.

Dammit.

It wasn’t jealousy, not really.

What I was worried about was what would happen if Park Deokgu no longer needed me.

His simple, honest face didn’t look like it was thinking along those lines.

I judged that it would be more beneficial for me if he remained dependent on me.

“Still, what do you think about going a little farther today, hyung?”

“Let’s scout around a bit more first… and lower your voice when you talk.”

“So we really do have to be careful, then?”

“Why do you think there were so many monsters around the first Start Point?”

“That guide woman….”

“That may be part of it, but I think differently. Monsters are stupid, but they’re sensitive to sound. If someone kept screaming in one place for that long, it makes sense that monsters would swarm in from every direction. If we’d started the tutorial quietly, I bet half the people there would’ve survived.”

“R-really?”

“Yeah. Even when we fight, you need to tone down those ‘hrrng!’ battle cries. Right now, taking on one or two stragglers isn’t a problem, but once four or five start gathering, we’re the ones who die. The reason we keep moving is because staying in one place means getting surrounded.”

He looked at me with something like admiration. If you thought about it even a little calmly, anyone could figure that much out.

Still, if this honest idiot was looking at me favorably, that was definitely a win from my side.

I nodded and continued.

“The reason we’re getting a little breathing room here is probably because most of the monsters in this area were drawn to the Start Point. The other guys who ran off back then are probably in similar situations.”

The only thing to do was peel the information in my head apart one piece at a time.

“Let’s stop and eat for a bit.”

“Well, that sounds like the right call.”

We sat quietly on the floor and pulled out some food so dry not even a dog would eat it.

“…….”

Then I heard a faint voice from somewhere.

Part of me wanted to ignore it, but Deokgu had already perked up and turned to me.

“Was that a person’s voice?”

“No way.”

“Aaahhh! Please help me!”

The voice was even getting closer.

Ah…

So they knew there were people here.

That was a mistake.

It was a mistake.

Carving notches into the wall so we wouldn’t get lost—that had been the mistake.

I had wanted someone to find us, sure, but I never imagined they’d come screaming at the top of their lungs like they were trying to wake the entire neighborhood.

“H-Hyung.”

“Get your sword ready first.”

It was too late to avoid them.

“Gehk!”

The only silver lining was that the number of monsters following her didn’t seem all that large.

A new person joining us was welcome in one sense, but unwelcome in another.

That would be different if she had water and food on her….

Resources were limited.

I wasn’t a charity worker.

What I needed was someone who would fight with us, not dead weight.

The conditions were simple: they had to be willing to fight, they had to have water and food, and they had to be few in number.

By those standards, the voice we were hearing now was a failure.

Not the kind of companion we could move with.

“This is annoying….”

“I don’t think we need to worry too much, hyung. There don’t seem to be many.”

What an easygoing bastard.

Deokgu took off running first, shield and sword in hand. I followed immediately behind with my spear.

Once we emerged into a somewhat wider space, I could see a woman dragging three monsters along behind her.

Her clothes were half torn to shreds. She was clearly attractive, but her appearance no longer registered.

Shit.

The sight of her, running toward us in a panic after spotting us, was almost comical.

She had no weapon and no food.

After checking the stats of the monsters behind her, I activated Mind’s Eye and turned my gaze to the woman.

What the hell.

The woman gasping for breath as she ran toward us had stats that were hard to feel real.

Putting everything else aside, this was the first time I’d ever seen a human with potential beyond Legendary rank.

Unlike me, who had absolutely no mana stat to speak of, she already possessed a value of 10.

“I’ve never fought three at once before.”

I had definitely been entertaining the option of abandoning the woman, but the instant I checked her stats, all the choices in my head changed.

“We fight.”

“You think we can win?”

“We’ll move into a narrow space.”

“I understand what you mean.”

Fighting with a wall at our backs was better than getting surrounded.

The downside was that our retreat would be cut off, but I didn’t think we’d go down quickly.

My grip tightened around the spear.

The woman had spotted us too and was running as fast as she could.

When I gestured for her to come this way, she nodded, which told me she wasn’t completely useless.

“Wait at the corner.”

“O-okay.”

By the time the woman finally reached us and the monsters rounded the corner, Park Deokgu swung his shield hard.

“Now!”

“Hup!”

One of them seemed to reel back for a moment, and as another one charged at Deokgu again, I drove my spear forward.

“Hyung!”

The instant the other one grabbed hold of the spear, my mind went blank, but one monster crumpled completely beneath the sword Deokgu swung.

The problem was that this threw Deokgu’s stance off balance.

Three of them were clearly no joke.

For Deokgu, crouched behind his shield, the only thing I could do was keep swinging my spear.

The moment I bit down hard on my lip again, I saw a sword suddenly burst out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from behind the monster.

“T-thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

Someone had helped us.

After the monster fell, the person who appeared from behind it was a face I had seen once before.

The man who had helped me at the Start Point.

I still remembered the look of desperation on his face.

“What the….”

What is this…?

I could only stare, eyes wide, at that incomprehensible status window.

A regressor? Time reversal?

This bastard wasn’t living through this for the first time.