Chapter 373

Regression (20)

The monster that shows up on Floor 9 is a giant boar. Nowhere near as terrifying as the Erymanthian Boar that fought Hercules, sure, but it's got the bulk of that boar's grandkid's grandkid, at least.

At the cabin where the player first comes to their senses, you can find a book about the boar, and near the cabin there are red berries scattered around, the kind the boar mostly eats. For reference, these berries taste kind of like meat, which means if you don't run as fast as you can, you become pig food. The berries are tasty enough to eat, but there aren't many of them.

So how's the player supposed to survive? The book you find at the start has the hint.

The red berries the boar eats are green and highly toxic before they ripen fully, but once they fully ripen, the color changes and the toxin gradually fades. Naturally, the boar knows this too, so it won't even glance at the small unripe ones.

"Well, that's easy enough."

The player secretly picks and gathers the unripe berries, then mixes them with the big ripe ones to make a mash. Boars have sharp noses but relatively bad eyesight, so once you mix them together, it can't tell the difference. That's how I cleared Floor 9 the first time around.

"Not the only way to do it, though."

Looking it up online afterward, I found out there were about four other ways to kill the thing. Really shows you how creative humans can be.

Me? Am I about to show off some fresh, novel, delightfully clever regressor-only method this time?

"As if."

I just kill it. Simple as that. I'm a regressor.

A terrifying charge speed? Not so terrifying against chill. Thick hide? Not thick enough to withstand my chill. Sharp tusks? Not going to get hit in the first place, so who cares.

So instead of wasting time gathering berries or whatever, I sat quietly and waited for the pig to come to me. Once it got lured close by the smell of the fruit, I'd send it off before it even had a chance to notice.

What I was truly looking forward to was Floor 10's Yeti. More precisely, the mountain itself. I planned to find out in detail exactly what that mountain was, why it held such a terrifying chill, why of all things that chill had melted into my own mana, and what kind of background lay behind all of it.

So I sat in the chair, waiting for the pig, reading a book quietly. From experience, the pig usually showed up somewhere between ten and twenty minutes.

Pages turned, one after another. One page, two pages, and before long I'd finished the whole book.

"..."

Something was clearly wrong. Twenty minutes had come and gone, and it was almost hitting thirty... why wasn't the pig coming?

Had it run away? Sensed my mana? For a beast with sharp senses, that was plenty plausible. I'd spread my chill wide to catch the boar's approach, but I hadn't expected that same chill would keep the boar from coming at all. Every other monster had just charged in without a second thought.

"This is a problem..."

Did that mean I had to go find it myself? What if it had run far away? I could spray mana and fly through the sky, so tracking it down wasn't impossible, but...

Knock, knock.

Right then, a knocking sound rang out from the cabin entrance. I closed the book I'd been reading and slowly got to my feet. My movements stayed relaxed on the surface, but inside, my mana had already braced for combat.

From my experience, I'd never once run into a human while going through Floors 6 to 10. And the otherworlders I had met usually had cultures nothing like Earth's. But a knock? Here, in this forest?

"Hm."

I expanded my senses and opened the cabin door at the same time. The one who'd knocked was a muscular angel in a tunic. Angels were naturally good-looking by default, but this one had a distinctly masculine, muscular build, with thick eyebrows that gave off a strong impression of rigid, by-the-book seriousness.

"Um, that, uh... Rahuel-nim..."

"Didn't the Archangel also tell you to exercise restraint as much as possible...?"

"Step back."

Behind that angel stood more ordinary-looking angels, fretting and trying to hold the muscular one back, but there seemed to be some rank difference at play, because they backed off obediently the moment he spoke.

"You there, human. The aura drifting off your soul is far from ordinary. That's not a wavelength you'd see from some run-of-the-mill, worthless human."

The muscular angel spoke in a stiff, rigid tone.

"There have been reports that your combat strength is 'deviant' among the climbers. In accordance with the order of things, I, Rahuel, the overseeing angel, bear the duty of confirming the source of any threat and taking appropriate action."

"Th-that, Rahuel-nim... but even so, this..."

"Are you telling me to abandon my duty right now?"

The muscular angel, no, Rahuel, glared back at the subordinate angel trying to hold him back, radiating strong divine power as he did. Having reprimanded his subordinate with a look, he turned his head back to me. Of course, the divine power kept pouring out the whole time.

"So, human, I'll give you a choice. Take my hand."

"...Why would I?"

"If our skin touches, I can examine your soul with divine power. I know of the planet called Earth. It was opened recently, and I hear its level of civilization is extremely low. Not an environment where a variant like you should be able to emerge. I suspect you might be an intruder."

"..."

"So I will examine your soul and verify whether you truly hail from Earth. And whether you entered this Tower through legitimate means. If you're innocent, take my hand. As a human properly should, abide by principle and morality."

I looked down quietly at that hand.

I'd already grasped the situation. It seemed like word had gotten around among the ordinary angels because I'd been smashing my way through everything from Floor 6 onward with brute force, and this angel called Rahuel had come to check things out in person.

An unexpected situation I hadn't dealt with before, but instead of confusion, what I felt more strongly was, well, of course this was coming. Running around wrecking everything like some munchkin, it was only natural that some kind of sanction, or at the very least an audit, would eventually come knocking. My current strength was clearly at a level that shouldn't exist right now, and when an anomaly like that shows up, checking into it is just the natural next step.

Judging from what the subordinate angels had said earlier, it seemed like the Archangel here was currently absent too, and maybe that was exactly why this angel was running wild. Felt like a few interesting bits of information had slipped out just now, worth looking into later.

What mattered right now was dealing with the muscular angel standing in front of me.

"Why the hesitation? Take my hand already. Or is there something you're hiding?"

Rahuel pressed me with a cold gaze, urging me to hurry up and take his hand. If I just went along quietly and took it, everything would be resolved. I really was from Earth, after all, and I really had entered this Tower through legitimate means.

"..."

But for some reason, my body wouldn't move. There were probably several reasons for that, but...

"That attitude's a bit much."

"...What did you say?"

"Start with an apology. What's with that tone?"

That Rahuel guy wasn't looking at me as a person. If anything, the way he talked down to me felt closer to how you'd treat an animal, or something even lower than that.

I'm not climbing this Tower because I want to. I got dragged into it against my will at some point, and I'm climbing it half by force just to resist a god's tyranny. And then some angel comes along and treats me like a criminal like that, and I could feel the heat rising straight to my head.

This was different from the angels on Floor 4. Those were clearly low-ranking grunts, and what they felt toward me was less hostility and more sheer terror of death. Like scared kids you'd run into on a battlefield. Sure, they were enemies, but treating them as pure enemies left a bitter taste in my mouth. That floor had also been under Archangel Raphael's jurisdiction. (He wasn't absent.)

But this angel, Rahuel, was different. For one, this guy had zero manners. Sure, I might look suspicious, but that didn't mean he got to come at me like this out of nowhere. The word "angel" literally means messenger of heaven, doesn't it?

"I see. So that's how it is."

Rahuel smiled ferociously. I stared straight into his eyes, and he didn't look away either. A faint tension rose between us.

I'd always figured a day like this would come eventually. Every time I grew stronger, and stronger still, every time I broke past some new threshold, I imagined it. What kind of ending awaited me. What my final destination would look like.

And in imagining that process, I always pictured myself fighting an "angel." A situation with no Hero trait, nothing to lean on. Could I actually beat this muscular angel, Rahuel?

No. Winning was a given. What mattered was how I'd win. A tension I hadn't felt in a while. I ran my tongue lightly over my lips and expanded my senses even further.

The moment he moved, I'd strike back instantly. Let's see what he's got.

Not yet. Not yet. He looked like he was pretending to think it over.

"Understood."

Now! His hand shot forward in an instant! I quickly spread my mana, drawing on the principle behind Flash Step, ready to...

"I offer you my sincere apology."

"..."

"I withdraw my rude attitude from a moment ago. Acknowledging one's own wrongdoing is also a duty. I thank you for pointing out my mistake. So let me ask again. Would you be willing to cooperate?"

...?