Chapter 365

Regression (12)

"I'm against it."

Back before I really regressed. The moment I brought up how to handle Dok Su-hee, that's what Choi Ji-won said.

"Dok Su-hee's way too young in her thinking. Her whole disposition's too skewed, too."

She wasn't wrong. Dok Su-hee's thinking was young. At first she'd betrayed me, insisting she should hoard everything for herself, and even after that she'd acted on her own terms, declaring she'd "become the regressor's companion." She probably had her own excuses, but still.

"Disqualified as a companion."

A failed candidate for companion regression. There was no real need to drag her along.

Was it because she lacked ability? Not at all. The absurdity of the Inventory trait had already been proven, and if she joined me in regression, the ways to put it to use were genuinely endless. Just stuff every item I might need into that Inventory ahead of time, then pull out whatever fit each floor's conditions. Simple as that.

If this really had been before I regressed, if I'd been short on the strength to handle whatever problem was right in front of me, maybe I would've seriously considered Dok Su-hee.

"But I've got plenty of strength now."

For the me who came back with a status window intact, there was nothing that made Dok Su-hee "essential." Most of what she could do, I could do too, and what she couldn't do, I could manage on my own.

So cutting Dok Su-hee loose in some reasonable way was settled. Honestly, I wanted to just tell her, let's each go our own way, let's live as strangers from here on out. But.

"...The joint regression's the problem."

The problem was that joint regression had already been triggered for Dok Su-hee. Still just a guess at this point, but it seemed like the memories from a joint regression only return once I enter that particular floor. The memory retained on Floor 3 comes back once I enter Floor 3, the memory retained on Floor 4 comes back once I enter Floor 4, something like that.

Which meant Choi Ji-won's memories would return once I entered Floor 4, and Dok Su-hee's memories would return once I entered Floor 3. Probably the memory of the time she betrayed me and tried to hoard every reward for herself.

How would Dok Su-hee react to an unfamiliar memory surfacing? If a memory flowed in showing that she'd already cleared Floor 3, that she'd stabbed some man in the back right at the end, what attitude would she take?

Normally she might just write it off as a weird dream. But if the contents of Floor 3 turned out to be exactly identical, that would change how much weight she gave it. She wouldn't blindly believe the whole memory without thinking, but she wouldn't be able to fully ignore it either.

So how should I act here, wanting distance from Dok Su-hee? What could I do to drift apart naturally, without it looking deliberate?

I'd run through several methods... but the one that seemed most effective, I thought, was.

"Guess honesty works best."

Just show her the truth, plain and simple.

-You have entered Floor 3.

<Floor 3>

-Clear Condition: Choose one of the five stone gates and make it all the way through to clear. The more tally marks carved above a gate, the harder the difficulty.

-Clear Reward: Varies depending on difficulty.

A damp cave. Five massive stone gates stood in a row, each carved roughly with a number of tally marks, one through five.

"So, I go in through here, then? The one with four marks."

"Yeah."

"Hmph."

Guess seeing my face more often had done something, because Choi Ji-won had gotten to the point of talking casually with me now. Seeing her act like this, I was already looking forward to her reaction once we hit Floor 4... but I'd save that joy for when it came.

"Got it. I'll go with the mister."

Choi Ji-won and firefighter Park Cheol-jin headed off into difficulty four. I watched until the two of them vanished from sight, then took a breath and rested my hand on the stone gate marked five.

[Entering Floor 3-5.]

Flash!

I opened my eyes without meaning to and sat up. Since taking damage the moment I regressed had become a condition for "real regression," snapping back to full awareness fast had turned into a kind of routine for me. In the old days I would've spent at least a few seconds dazed, unable to think straight. It was in little moments like this that I noticed how much I'd changed.

"...Awake... You're awake."

Kang Chan, who'd sensed my presence and come closer, flinched slightly at the sight of me standing there. What had he said before, again? Something like, get up, brat... The current me was a bit far removed from "brat" by now.

"..."

Kang Chan must have felt my strength too, because he stood there watching me with a face stiffer than usual. From his position, someone trying to maintain the image of "the strong one," my existence was an enormous variable. His head was probably a mess of thoughts right about now.

"Would you mind stepping aside?"

"..."

Well, that was fine. I planned to keep a reasonable relationship with Kang Chan going forward too. He was someone I could trust. I gave his shoulder a casual pat, then made my way down the narrow cave passage toward the central chamber.

"Huh?"

"Ah?"

When I got there, waiting for me were Ahn Gyeong-jun and Dok Su-hee. Ahn Gyeong-jun looked simply surprised that someone new had shown up, but Dok Su-hee's eyes held something more than that.

Confusion, shock, suspicion, worry, all sorts of emotions swirling in her eyes.

Seeing that confirmed it. She had the memory. Look at her, mouth working soundlessly even now. The look of someone with something she wanted to say, but no idea how to bring it up.

If I reached out my hand here, she'd gladly become my companion. Knowing that, I walked calmly toward the stone gate blocking the path instead.

"Looks like this one needs four people to place their palms on it."

The way I'd cut Dok Su-hee loose. The way to show her we had no bond, was to show her directly that her memory was wrong. How would I show her that?

"Follow me."

Just. Show her the plain truth.

Floor 3. The floor where players who'd cleared the Tutorial and made it through Floor 2 tended to start letting their guard down. The floor where a slightly arrogant thought like "with a trait like mine..." tended to creep in. That naturally applied to the strong players who'd end up entering Floor 3-5.

Crack!

...that should have been the case.

"Hm."

But anyone who saw the man standing with his foot planted on a massive wolf. Anyone who saw the man who'd subdued a wolf that dropped from the ceiling without breaking a sweat.

"..."

"..."

Would have swallowed hard, no question.

Overwhelmed. Overwhelming strength.

Not a gift of talent. Not a difference in temperament. Not a difference in effort. Nobody there had done anything wrong, and no matter what they did, there was no way to surpass that man.

Just a difference in time. A difference in the scale of time invested in a life of struggle. The gap between a man who'd lived under time heavy enough to crush him, and brats who'd only just taken their first step, that was what this was. A gap in raw power too violent to even call the same species.

Crash!

Then the massive mirror maze that appeared next.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!

The rain of arrows pouring down.

"Get up."

The maze that required splitting into pairs to get through.

Crack!

Even the golem that deflected every attack.

None of it posed a threat in front of that man. If anything, he looked far too at ease. As if he'd just resolved something he'd wished for over a long, long time, the man wore a light smile.

"Whoa..."

Ahn Gyeong-jun felt pure admiration at that strength.

"..."

Kang Chan was busy worrying, not just about the fact that his plans had hit a snag, but about how he needed to revise his whole approach going forward.

"...A past life? Was what I saw a past life? So we're... this time..."

And Dok Su-hee, muttering strange nonsense.

Actually, Dok Su-hee's reaction made perfect sense. The Kim Jun-ho from the memory she'd seen and the Kim Jun-ho standing in front of her now were worlds apart. Treating the two as the same person felt like a stretch, and the gap was far too huge to just chalk up to a prophetic dream.

So the conclusion she landed on was the somewhat absurd idea of a "past life." Naturally she hadn't realized Jun-ho was a regressor, and while she wouldn't cut off her interest entirely, she also wouldn't cling to it blindly the way she had before... probably.

"Hm."

Anyway, having made the other three players feel a wall they couldn't climb, the man standing there now.

"...Isn't this a bit much?"

Muttering something incomprehensible while staring intently down at the corpse of the fallen golem.

Staring at the golem's fully frozen body, I noticed a small sense of wrongness. In the flow of mana running through its whole frame, there was a slight twist.

A small groove carved near the nape of its neck. I dragged my blade across the spot, and the edge sank in smoothly, exposing the golem's core.

So... the back of the neck had been its weakness? To beat it the proper way, you'd have needed to get behind it and go straight for the nape? Against a massive golem that deflected every single attack?

"Ha."

Finding it was one thing, but attacking it was an even bigger problem. Did that even make sense?