Chapter 16 - The Status Window Is Too Unfriendly (3)

Have you ever played a game called Maple Leaf Story?

Its daily quests and events force you to kill a certain number of monsters, but not just any monsters will do. They have to fall within a certain range of your level. Players call them “level-range mobs.”

It’s a measure designed to stop you from effortlessly collecting rewards by slaughtering monsters that are far too weak for you...

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

[The disparity in standing between you and the monster is too great. You cannot gain experience.]

Was it just me, or did this message bring that game to mind?

“... Haah.”

If I had to hazard a guess... that word “standing” in the message window really bothered me.

As far as the tower was concerned, a bastard like me with an EX-rank skill must look like some absurdly overpowered character.

Honestly, that assessment might not be wrong.

After enough time had passed, I might become a monster no one would dare challenge.

The mere fact that I could regress infinitely had probably raised my standing as a being by dozens of tiers.

But right now, this was nothing short of tyranny.

How many goblins had I killed?

How hard had I worked to hack through that undergrowth?

I’d put in all that effort, and just because I had one broken skill, I couldn’t even use the stat window everyone else had or gain levels?

From where I stood, all I could say was that this was fucking bullshit.

I’d confirmed that achievement levels persisted through regression. If only I could gain regular levels, getting stronger would have been so much easier.

Apparently, whoever gave me the ability to regress didn’t want me having an easy time.

I sighed and turned my gaze toward the scrawny guy.

Hearing that killing the powerful goblin had yielded food had given me a slightly ominous idea.

“Hey, Scrawny.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Tell me everything you got from killing that big goblin.”

“Uh... golden orbs... experience...”

“And?”

“Oh, a pack of five-hundred-milliliter water bottles, another bottle, and two big boxes of chocolate bars. There isn’t much left, since I fed them to the goblins I control... Would you like what’s left?”

“... It dropped chocolate bars?”

“Yes!”

Chocolate bars. Chocolate bars, huh. And a pack of water bottles, too.

That was a familiar assortment.

Specifically, an assortment I’d seen often while holed up in the clearing doing nothing like some unemployed bum.

“... Hmm.”

Choi Jiwon’s senses were so sharp that she seemed aware of everything around her even while doing nothing but swinging her sword in a corner of the clearing.

Would someone like her really fail to sense an especially powerful monster?

Having killed quite a few goblins, I knew they sometimes dropped food, but more often they dropped something useless.

Yet Choi Jiwon had always brought back quality food, still in its packaging.

What if...

What if she’d been selectively hunting powerful monsters all along, and all the food she’d brought to the clearing had come from killing them...?

Then Choi Jiwon would have obtained countless golden orbs in every run.

The problem was that I was only learning this now.

“...”

Because that meant she’d kept the golden orbs a secret even after finding them.

* * *

“You had absolutely nothing to do with this murder, right?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“Good. Keep up the good work.”

I figured I’d squeezed just about all the information I could out of the scrawny guy, so I let him go.

I’d uncovered one secret of the Status window.

I’d acquired a new trait that seemed good and crappy at the same time.

And I’d learned how to obtain golden orbs.

I’d gained a lot this run. Of course, I had no intention of regressing just yet.

There were three crucial pieces of information I needed to discover through repeated regressions.

First: how to obtain golden orbs, and where they were.

Second: the boss’s location.

Third: the location of the Minotaur that had killed me.

I’d figured out the first one. As for the exact locations, I’d accumulate more data as I kept regressing.

With enough time and enough runs under my belt, I might be able to locate all fifty golden orbs.

As for why I wanted to know where the Minotaur was... the reason was simple.

The Minotaur was really, really strong.

It was so fucking strong that even Choi Jiwon, with her ridiculously broken trait and overwhelming combat prowess, couldn’t guarantee a victory.

Anyone who’d read a few web novels would have caught on by now.

This bastard absolutely reeked of hidden boss.

A monster that appeared in the tutorial, so powerful you’d think you weren’t meant to beat it.

The protagonist who’d regressed from the future would use some miraculous technique to just barely bring down the hidden boss, then collect a precious reward no one had ever discovered before.

My goal was the same.

Once I was strong enough, wouldn’t I be able to defeat the Minotaur someday?

If the day ever came when I moved beyond the Tutorial Stage, it would be after killing the Minotaur.

To do that, I first needed to learn where it was.

Since a single hit would send me regressing, sitting around the clearing for a week waiting for it to arrive was inefficient.

It made more sense for me to keep seeking it out and throwing myself at it.

And the last thing I needed to learn was the boss’s location.

That was what I was currently searching for.

“Hmm... This place really is huge.”

Other people’s problems might not be my business, but I wasn’t some cold-blooded bastard who could watch people die without feeling a thing.

As a regressor, once I located the boss, defeating it would only be a matter of time.

If there was a way to save everyone, wouldn’t it be awfully heartless to move on to the next stage alone?

Of course, I might weed out the rotten bastards like the punk I’d killed earlier... but anyway, I was willing to kill the boss and open the portal to save everyone.

“Tsk...”

Had I been walking in a straight line for about two hours?

Grass, trees, rocks, grass, trees, over and over.

There wasn’t a single suspicious cave or primitive hut where a boss might be lurking.

The only thing that changed was the smell.

A faint stench like rotting fish drifted over from somewhere.

As I’ve mentioned, the terrain here was practically jungle.

The sudden smell of rotting fish in a jungle? That seemed a little out of place.

“... Guess I should check it out?”

Naturally, if you found something strange, you had to investigate it yourself.

I followed the stench of rotting fish, and after walking a little farther, I finally reached its source.

“Hmm...”

The backdrop of grass and trees that had seemed destined to repeat forever was gone.

Spread out before me was a swamp so vast that I literally couldn’t see its end.

Turning my head left and right only confirmed how enormous it was.

I’d never seen a swamp this big in my life. It almost felt like looking at the sea.

Common sense told me a swamp couldn’t possibly stretch this far... but this was the tower.

Judging by what I could see, the tutorial area seemed to be an island surrounded by an enormous swamp.

Well, it was a tower, after all. It wouldn’t make sense for the accessible area to stretch on forever.

The swamp seemed like the tower’s considerate way of saying, “Don’t cross this, okay? Just play inside, dumbass.”

Of course, I couldn’t deny wondering whether, if I ignored the swamp and kept going, I might suddenly reach the tower’s wall, fiddle with its bricks, and discover some hidden reward.

“... Nope. Not happening.”

But I had absolutely no desire to set foot in that purple swamp, with its ominous bubbles rising now and then. Just looking at it made me uncomfortable.

Come on, it looked poisonous at a glance. There wasn’t even a trace of life.

It looked like if you threw a little squirrel in there, nothing but its bones would come bobbing up a moment later.

Even if I could regress, I wanted no part of sticking my body in there.

It went without saying that it would be practically suicide.

“... Now, how about checking somewhere else?”

Since I’d come all this way, I figured I might as well walk along the perimeter.

This was the outermost edge, so wasn’t it possible the boss was nearby?

Like pushing a mob off a cliff in a game, maybe I could knock the boss into the swamp and win easily without a fight.

“All right, then...”

Just as I muttered to myself and started to move, I felt a slightly metallic, bitter taste in my lungs.

It was a familiar taste, and a familiar smell.

This was... the taste of blood.

[You have taken damage.]

[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 0.]

* * *

“... Fuck.”

I hadn’t known just smelling poison would make me regress.

Seriously... this was just unfair.

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