Chapter 375

Regression (22)

After about six regressions.

"...Honest bastard."

I had no choice but to admit that Rahuel's words had been true. Learning skills from him had turned out to be more valuable than digging information out of him.

First, let me think back on the technique I'd learned from the angel. His spearmanship was, well, close to something like "military-style spearmanship." Not a high-level technique. Not one with much room to develop further, either. But it was, without question, close to being systematic.

Keep a stable distance from the enemy, use the spear's long reach to block approach, wait for the opening, then strike the vital point. Basic to its bones, and precisely because of that, simple and clear enough for anyone to learn. And despite being so basic, the kind of spearmanship that stayed useful no matter how much your physical stats grew once you got a status window.

I wasn't a genius like Choi Ji-won, but even I could tell this spear technique was the result of a long history, refined and revised by countless people over countless years. Not something I needed for the people around me, but a fine enough piece of work to use as trade material.

The information side, though, was a different story. Deeply disappointing.

"So he really wasn't lying."

Through four additional regressions, I tried every angle I could think of to squeeze information out of him. Whether he was twisting his words somehow, whether he was deliberately distorting the truth, whether he was holding something back.

Here's what I got out of it.

First.

"The Archangels really don't seem to know either."

Rahuel genuinely had no idea what the Archangels were trying to do by disappearing, or where they'd gone. In one cycle, I provoked him and asked if he could swear to it, and he actually swore. So it wasn't a lie.

Second.

"Many angels accompanied the journey to search for Michael-nim. Most of them were... the passionate type."

He called them "passionate," but it sounded like the angels with worse temperaments had all left the Tower for now. In other words, the kind of angels who might despise humans, look down on them, screw them over for fun, most of them had gone off searching for some Archangel named Michael.

"Is it really fine to tell me that?"

"Of course it doesn't matter. The fact that you're worried about that tells me you know nothing about us."

Well, this guy clearly had some kind of absolute confidence in himself. Let's set that aside.

If most of the radical angels really had left the Tower, that explained why I hadn't run into a single "nasty-tempered angel" since the Tutorial. Aside from that one, Zeziel, was it? The one who kept babbling about judging humanity, every other angel I'd met had been kind and reasonable.

That was exactly why it had felt so off, an angel with that kind of attitude going on about judging humans, destroying Earth, all that. But if there was a backstory like this behind it, it made sense now.

Beyond that, I picked up a bit of trivia, a rough sketch of the angel hierarchy, the fact that angels normally stayed at their own temples and only got dispatched to the Tower on assignment. Not particularly useful, though.

What I really regretted was that the "strong angel versus me" scenario I'd been hoping for seemed close to impossible now.

Might sound arrogant given the situation, but ever since I started regressing, I hadn't met a single opponent that matched my level. Probably would stay that way until I ran into the Heavenly Demon again.

That's exactly why I'd been curious about the gap in strength between me and the angels. Angels served as Administrators, sure, but they also wielded a separate power called divine power. I used to imagine it a lot, if I went head to head with someone like that, who would win?

"Guess they're all gone from the Tower..."

But the bastards I was looking for, the rude ones, the ones hostile to humans, the hot-tempered types always ready for a fight, apparently weren't around right now. Kind of deflating. Then again, picking a fight with an angel on purpose wasn't exactly a good look either.

Well. That's about it for my exchange with Rahuel.

Regressing any further here risked him catching on to the regression itself, and I might eventually need to go back before the Tutorial anyway, so this felt like the right stopping point. Useful or not, I'd gathered a decent amount of information, and that much was true.

If the chance came up later, I'd probably find out where this Michael had gone and what he was after.

Having sorted through what I'd learned this time, I nodded and spread my mana wide.

Information was one thing, but.

"Gotta hunt that boar."

This floor needed clearing, after all.

-You have cleared Floor 9.

Back in reality, Ji-won and I talked for a while about angels and everything else.

"Jun-ho-ya, there's something I've always wondered about..."

"Hm? What is it?"

"You know how they say when a world ends, it becomes part of the Tower?"

"...Right?"

"So then..."

Somewhere in that conversation came a thought I hadn't considered before, and Ji-won grumbled about it in a way that was honestly kind of cute.

"Isn't it unfair? The god who made this Tower just tosses trials at us, and if we fail, threatens to destroy the world. But the angels we actually deal with, the god's own subordinates, are all nice, reasonable, and treat us climbers with respect. It's like we can't even get properly angry about it."

"...Yeah, it's ridiculous."

"Ugh, my head hurts."

"Want to go eat something good?"

"...Sure."

After a pleasant dinner with Ji-won, who sighed and rubbed her temples.

"Well... I'm off."

I took my first step toward Floor 10.

-Entering Floor 10.

The sound of wind howling. The distant presence of a Yeti. Light so dim it seemed to blot out even the sun. Snowflakes stinging at my ears. A towering mountain.

Floor 10 looked exactly the way I remembered it, not a single thing different. I'd stayed here a fairly long time, so my memory of it was more precise than most.

"..."

But something felt wrong. Like an unbearable itch scratching at my throat.

Floor 10, identical down to the last detail to the one in my memory. And here, of all places, I felt something off.

"This is strange."

A wrongness I couldn't just brush past. Wrapped in an inexplicable, unignorable strangeness, I walked steadily toward the mountain's peak.

"Woo... woooo."

"Stay right there, you."

I froze the Yeti in place as it tried to slink away from me, then reached the summit. What I found was the mouth of a small cave. The cold, no, the chill, that blanketed the entire mountain, all of it was pouring out from inside this cave.

"...So this is it."

The wrongness I'd felt was simple, really. The aura the Yeti gave off, the cold wrapped around this mountain, felt familiar. Familiar to the point of being almost comforting.

To begin with, it was true that this mountain was what had altered my own mana in the first place. So it wasn't strange that the two shared the same nature.

But this feeling of wrongness went beyond that kind of logical reasoning, and it was what had my body moving on its own. Some instinct telling me I absolutely had to check this out had taken over completely.

"..."

The inside of the cave was surprisingly bright. No, brighter than bright, it was radiant. Not a dark, damp cave made of stone, but a corridor made of ice, one that reflected light in dazzling, crystalline splendor, like walking through a work of art. I finally reached the end of it.

A pedestal carved from marble. On top of it sat a pure white gem. A diamond? Or some magical treasure I didn't recognize? I couldn't tell. But one thing was certain: the chill wrapped around this entire mountain was pouring out of this gem.

"Well, then."

I reached out without hesitation and picked it up. The chill the gem gave off was intense enough to have killed any ordinary player on the spot, but to me, it felt like nothing more than a cool, pleasant breeze. So this gem was the source of the chill I'd gained.

I quietly opened my nail's Inventory and slipped the gem inside. The chill didn't leak out. It made me a little uneasy, storing it alongside the Elixir, but the Elixir wouldn't freeze. And even if it did, I could just drink the whole bottle frozen solid. No problem there.

I didn't know what this gem was good for, but it would definitely prove useful. Helpful for the road ahead, and probably a real asset during training too.

"..."

But I couldn't bring myself to smile. I didn't feel good about this at all.

Why.

Why was this gem here, of all places?

Why would a floor like Floor 10, still within the beginner range of the Tower, have a gem giving off a presence this intense? The angels must have known this gem was here. So why?

If it had been set up openly, like Raphael's "hidden pieces," I could understand it. But from Floor 6 through Floor 10, there hadn't been the slightest hint of that kind of design.

Why? Why would something like this exist in the Tower? Why?

Thinking it through, the power called chill itself was strange too. Sure, I was using it now, effectively and powerfully, but wasn't it too strong a power, objectively speaking? One nobody else could even use.

Or maybe... no, surely...

I couldn't bring myself to leave the cave for a long while after that.

My head was far too tangled to think straight.