Chapter 393

Calamity (6)

For this plan, I had to go back to the Tutorial timeline, something I hadn't done in a long, long while. Take down the Minotaur before people even had time to gather their wits, then time everything perfectly so I'd clear Floor 4 right when I needed to, restoring Choi Ji-won's memories.

So, roughly a month after the Tutorial cleared. Right around when the Association was just starting to take shape, I revealed my identity as a "regressor" earlier than planned.

As always, some people believed me. Some didn't. But one thing was certain: I held overwhelming power. If I wanted to, taking this entire Earth for myself wouldn't have been hard. And here I was, a person like that, bowing my head and asking people for help.

"Last cycle, I asked all of humanity for help. Humanity's collective wisdom gave me countless possibilities. One of them was this: I would personally raise a talented individual, someone out there, myself."

Dressed in a black suit, standing before a crowd of reporters, I made my declaration.

"If any of you believe you have talent, that you show potential to grow stronger, or that your trait is exceptionally good... please contact me. After a simple test, I, the regressor, will personally train you."

A hand shot up. A reporter asked.

"Couldn't you just clear the Tower yourself, Regressor-nim? I hear you cleared up to Floor 29 in under half a year."

"I could attempt that. But as I've said, if I try and fail, there's no way to undo it. If I fail, that's the end of humanity. As a regressor, I intend to save the path with no way back for last."

"But this explanation feels lacking..."

"There's no way to explain it further. Physically speaking."

I couldn't exactly explain the mechanics of Floor 15 to them, so I just had to gloss over it vaguely.

"I'll be calling this project 'Prometheus.' I'm looking for someone who can bring fire to a humanity that has nothing left but despair. I hope for wide support."

The plan was as simple as I'd described. Run tests on every player who applied, select the talented ones, and pour every resource humanity had into raising them, cultivating a transcendent power that could surpass me within a year.

Every player with the will to grow stronger got a chance. Among them were people who, in the future, died climbing the Tower, and people who'd given up climbing out of sheer fear.

"I, uh, I don't really want to take some kind of test..."

"You have the exact aptitude for this test and you still haven't taken it?! Get over here!!!"

Even players with no will to grow stronger got a chance. They ended up taking the test through somewhat forceful means, but strictly speaking, "voluntarily."

This "test" wasn't measuring immediate combat power. Aptitude for mana, understanding of swordsmanship, split-second judgment, and above all, an unbreakable will. The test focused on how much stronger someone could become, how much potential they held.

That was how hundreds of candidates got selected. I became their teacher, their guide, their sponsor.

"Here, take this experience potion... ah, take this gear too... this is an Elixir I bought at auction yesterday, but just in case, take it too..."

One cycle was invested per candidate. With the full force of a regressor's ability behind it, the entire world funneled every item it had toward each candidate, quite literally. (There was some rather cute pushback along the way, but it got sorted out fine.) This was practically an unprecedented project, funneling everything an entire species had earned from the Tower into a single human being.

Hundreds of cycles passed. The results split sharply.

"I can't do it... I really can't..."

Some players gave up. Whatever resolve they'd shown at first melted away under the harshness of the training and the Tower's cruelty, and I had no choice but to sigh and regress. The pressure of "you have to become the strong one who saves all of humanity" broke most people down from the inside.

"At this rate, aren't you going to fall behind me soon, Regressor? Well, even when that happens, I won't forget this favor!"

Some players, despite genuine talent, couldn't rein in their own arrogance and died pointlessly inside the Tower. Unlike a regressor like me, they only had one life. Getting drunk on how fast they were climbing floors and letting their guard down got them killed fast. I couldn't entrust humanity's future to people like that.

"I walk my own path."

Some players took the test and then flat-out refused to cooperate. The Empress, to be precise. That madwoman tested my strength while taking the test herself, then vanished back into the Tower.

Still, plenty of players achieved explosive growth. One German player who, in the future, had been stuck floundering around Floor 20, shot straight up to Floor 40 and became humanity's strongest. A Brazilian girl once dismissed for having a non-combat trait built herself into a powerhouse known as a "Tamer," using my advice to make the most of what she had. Several players broke through their past limits and reached new heights.

"Kuh... ugh..."

"Hah... hah..."

But none of them were enough to face the golem. Some lacked destructive power, some lacked the stamina to sustain a prolonged assault, and some just had bad matchups against it...

There was exactly one exception: Choi Ji-won. She'd always understood swordsmanship on a deeper level than I did, even before, and once I funneled every elixir and item I had toward her, she went wild, a fish thrown back into water.

Right before the golem showed up, Choi Ji-won had climbed all the way to Floor 51. Across countless regressions, no one had ever reached that floor. It was an incredibly encouraging result.

"At this rate... even if the status window resets, I think this'll leave something behind. Still, I'm glad it worked out, don't you think?"

Choi Ji-won said that, her face showing exhaustion but also a quiet satisfaction. I didn't know what she'd gone through inside the Tower, but I knew she'd suffered a great deal. Guilt, for putting her through that because of me, and satisfaction, at seeing how strong she'd become. Both feelings swirled through me at once.

"Are you okay, Jun-ho?"

"Me? Well..."

I'd gone through hundreds of regressions in the process too, but my mind stayed clearer than I expected. Repeating the same actions mechanically over and over, I think I learned how to empty my mind. Or maybe I learned how to stop thinking altogether. I felt like I'd tasted a sliver of the state called "no-mind." Put crudely, I could say I'd learned how to "turn my brain off."

The thought crossed my mind that keeping this state up permanently might be a little dangerous, but that was something to worry about later. Right now, I had to solve the crisis staring me in the face.

Each cycle could only raise one player, and in the end, the spot as my partner in bringing down the golem went to Choi Ji-won. She was the strongest result to come out of "Prometheus," and at the same time, the one I trusted most. A fairly obvious outcome, when you think about it.

Time passed, and at last, we faced the golem again. Together with humanity's hope, far stronger now than before, Choi Ji-won.

Her attacks were dazzling. The blue lightning bursting from Bung-bung's blade looked ready to tear the sky open, and every heavy strike she landed carried more power than my full strength. The golem staggered for the first time, and a crack far deeper and larger than before carved itself into its surface.

"..."

"..."

But that was as far as it went. The golem's core let out a burst of mana, and the crack vanished without a trace. Even with the two of us, myself and a far stronger Choi Ji-won, combining our strength, we still couldn't destroy the golem. We didn't have enough power.

In other words... the plan had failed.

It failed... but.

"I already knew, to some degree, that it might fail."

A plan built on the help of all humanity wasn't the kind of thing that failed cleanly and simply. To be precise, it was designed so that failure itself could be part of the process.

Raising a player stronger than me had, itself, failed. Yeah, it failed completely. But.

-Didn't the regressor mention something about an Awe trait?

-Why's that coming up all of a sudden? You think the golem's gonna feel awe toward the regressor or something?

-No, I'm talking about the effect attached to it. Look, the Awe trait effect goes like this, right?

-Awe [A]

-Praise for your greatness. Fear of what cannot be understood.

-You can use a degraded version of a trait from a target affected by Awe one time.

-So what about it?

-Look, there's another effect listed below. You can copy a trait from a target affected by the Awe trait.

-...huh?

Through this "Prometheus" project, I'd interacted with every strong player I'd known before, plus all sorts of untapped talent that had never gotten the chance to shine. Their traits, their combat styles, even their personal characters. I'd come to know, in remarkable detail, most of the talented players who existed on Earth.

-Sure, the regressor's strong, but there are a ton of seriously strong people on Earth too, right? Even if bringing their traits over means they get degraded, that doesn't mean they'd be useless, does it? Not if the regressor triggers Awe on a massive scale.

If I could activate Awe on every single candidate I'd encountered through the "Prometheus" project. If I could copy their traits.

Even if each individual trait, on its own, was too degraded to carry much power.

If I could activate dozens, hundreds, thousands of degraded traits all at once...

-Wouldn't there be synergy?

Then maybe I, too, could break past my limit.