Chapter 30 - Too Good at Grinding (1)

“...”

When I closed my eyes, the clearing had been beautiful in the light of the setting sun. When I opened them, warm sunlight greeted me.

It was the same place... yet somehow, it felt unfamiliar.

“Whew...”

I let out a sigh and turned my head to look for Choi Jiwon.

“...”

She gave me a cold glare, then sharply turned away. There was that familiar blank expression, so unlike the warm smile I had seen only moments ago.

My chest ached. My stomach churned, and my head spun.

Was this... what loss felt like?

Did I have feelings for Choi Jiwon? I wasn't sure.

But I knew we had become friends.

In exchange for saving people's lives, I had lost a friend.

“...”

If I had regressed and left everyone to starve, I would definitely have regretted it.

But why did I regret this choice, too?

Why did Choi Jiwon's smile keep coming back to me?

Choosing one thing meant giving up another. I couldn't have everything.

“So this is how I have to live from now on...”

Until now, I had never formed a deep bond with anyone in this tower.

At most, I had chatted about this and that with Baek Dahye, the bob-haired woman. I didn't think I had grown close enough to anyone to call them a real friend.

That was why I hadn't known it would hurt this much.

I hadn't known it would be so agonizing to have someone I felt close to look at me as though they didn't know me at all.

I remembered. It hurt that I was the only one who did.

“Let's just... not get attached to anyone from now on.”

As long as I was a regressor, this was how my relationships would always be.

Getting close to someone meant having to fear regression.

Someday, I would have to weigh the benefits of regressing against the bond I had built with the person beside me.

What if that bond won out?

What if it cost me potential rewards and kept me from becoming strong enough?

What if those little mistakes piled up until, in the end, I lacked the strength to overcome the final floor, Floor 66?

By then, it would be too late for regrets. I only returned to the moment I first entered each floor, not always to Floor 0.

But abandoning those bonds and simply regressing? That would deal a devastating blow to my mental state.

The gulf between my memories and reality carved away at my heart.

Even now, my chest hurt every time I looked at Choi Jiwon.

For my own sake, and to conquer the tower, I ought to avoid getting attached to other people. I ought to travel alone whenever possible.

“Ha, haha...”

Then, suddenly, I thought of the infinite regressors I had seen in webtoons and web novels.

They never traveled with other people, felt nothing about killing, and held life in contempt.

At their core, they were lunatics who no longer saw people as people.

But had they really been lunatics from the start?

They must have been ordinary people at first, too.

Their hearts had simply been worn away by the sandstorm called time.

And perhaps that erosion had begun when, like me, they decided to go it alone.

Would I end up like them someday, then?

After setbacks. Despair. After my heart had been trampled over and over until I could no longer get back up.

Would I become a cold-blooded, heartless lunatic, too?

“... I don't want that.”

Defiance.

That was probably the most accurate word for it.

I could see the doom awaiting me so clearly that I refused to surrender to it.

Everyone else went insane? Well, I wouldn't. I was going to stay sane. I was going to be a hero.

It might sound like a childish tantrum, but I meant it.

I wouldn't become like them.

Traveling separately from everyone else was fine.

What mattered was not losing my humanity. Preserving who I was as a person named Kim Junho.

Not making choices my future self would regret for years to come.

And always remembering this resolve.

“Whew.”

Having sorted through my thoughts, I felt much clearer-headed.

[“Don't give up. I'm sure you can find an answer you're satisfied with.”]

That was what Choi Jiwon had said just before I regressed.

What would an answer I was satisfied with look like here?

How much would I have to accomplish in this cruel tutorial for my future self to have no regrets?

“... It's simple.”

Everything.

I would get every trait I could.

I would clean out every last thing they had put up as a reward.

I would try to save everyone summoned to this clearing.

With a ridiculously broken trait like Regression, I would have to do at least that much to have no regrets.

“... This should work, shouldn't it?”

Ignoring everyone else as they picked up weapons or did whatever they were doing, I immersed myself in devising a plan to save them all.

After reviewing it about three times, I concluded that its chances of success were quite high.

So I knew what I had to do.

All that remained was to put it into action.

I clenched my fist tight and slammed it into the left side of my chest, over my heart.

[You have taken damage.]

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

* * *

Honestly, saving most of the people wasn't all that difficult.

I just had to repeat a previous run without interfering too much.

We had already defeated the Minotaur without anyone getting hurt.

Simply repeating that process would be enough to kill it.

Then I just had to subdue the Goblin Shaman before it got the chance to stab us in the back... and presto.

The hidden boss would be dead, and the portal would open.

After that, simply passing through the portal in an orderly fashion would save most of the people.

But when the condition changed to saving everyone, things got a little tricky.

It made the plan to push the Minotaur into the swamp nearly impossible.

Getting everyone together would be a problem to begin with.

Well, suppose I somehow managed to bring them under control by force.

Then I would have to feed all those people, get the promising ones to level up and invest in Strength, and have them push the Minotaur?

Even at a glance, it sounded very, very difficult.

Besides, their level of desperation would be different.

The people in the previous run had experienced the tower.

They had killed goblins, witnessed their companions' deaths, and been battered by one hardship after another on empty stomachs.

And with golden orbs growing scarcer by the day...

They had probably only gone along with my plan to push the Minotaur into the swamp because things were that bad.

But what if I controlled everything?

They would level up as instructed and allocate their stats as instructed.

If I even delivered their meals so they could focus on leveling...

Would they really be able to surpass their limits and display the monstrous strength they had shown in the previous run?

I didn't think so. They seemed more likely to complain, “Why aren't you pushing?”

That was why saving everyone required a different approach.

A head-on fight.

Defeating it head-on was the only way to save them all.

Was that even possible? I wasn't an idiot. I had a plan in mind for defeating it.

Besides, one of the messages I had seen in the previous run said this:

-[Amazing Achievement Alert!]

-You have successfully defeated the hidden boss, ‘Minotaur, Demon of the Labyrinth’!

-There are no casualties! Bonus achievement EXP will be awarded!

-A special reward will be awarded to [Choi Jiwon] for making the greatest contribution!

The important part was that Choi Jiwon had received a special reward for making the greatest contribution.

I had been too shaken earlier to ask what the reward was, but surely they wouldn't hand out some rag for defeating a hidden boss.

It must have been something incredible.

Yes, I intended to defeat the Minotaur and claim that “greatest contribution” bonus for myself.

Of course, right now I couldn't beat it no matter what I did.

Before fighting it, I had to build up my own strength.

There were three things I needed to try immediately.

First: find out whether I could obtain traits from the same person repeatedly.

I had already confirmed that obtaining overlapping traits with similar effects raised their rank instead of giving me two similar traits.

Then, after regressing, could I get another trait from the same person?

For example, the scrawny guy I had first gotten Awe from would be somewhere in this clearing right now.

If I could make him feel awe toward me again this run... could I raise the rank of Awe?

Or what if I made him feel something else? If the scrawny guy strongly felt that I was cool, would I get a trait? That was the question.

And second: find out whether I could earn achievement EXP by defeating the Minotaur again after regressing.

My achievement level had risen enormously after defeating the Minotaur.

Likewise, I needed to check whether I could earn achievement EXP more than once for the same thing.

If I could, I would be able to grow incredibly fast.

Come to think of it, though, I still hadn't gotten a regular level even after defeating the Minotaur.

Just what you'd expect from an EX-rank trait. Amazing. Truly amazing.

And finally, sword practice.

I had already memorized all of Choi Jiwon's swordsmanship.

I could use that to practice hard on my own, or I could reveal my regression and have her teach me.

All right, then. What order should I do this in?

First, I would start with...

“Hello there, Mr. Scrawny!”

“Oh, hel... What did you call me?”

You're first, Scrawny.

A Word from the Author (Afterword)

Thank you for reading.

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