Not A Regressor - Chapter 122
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I Am Not a Regressor Chapter 122
Where the Dragon Sleeps (5)
“Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped Kang Chan-hyuk’s lips.
His eyes narrowed with irritation.
He twisted the dagger in his hand with a bloodstained smile.
“Still spouting nonsense that won’t amount to anything.”
“That’s rich coming from an idiot whose entire guild got wiped out by that ‘nonsense.’ Honestly, it’s terrifying.”
There’s a trembling sensation in my throat.
“You bastard…!”
Whoosh.
Kang Chan-hyuk’s expression twisted.
He reversed his grip on the dagger and kicked off savagely.
Shwoop!
Despite the ferocity of his kick, the ground didn’t rumble, and the floor didn’t crack.
As if he’d jumped on a soft mattress.
Kang Chan-hyuk soared silently and sprinted along the cave wall.
“Let’s see if you can keep that arrogance with a hole through your neck!”
“Why does every one of these bastards have the same repertoire?”
Does serving the Black Star cause language degradation or something?
Every single one I encounter says the exact same things.
-Shwoop!
I arched my back as if falling backward, dodging the dagger that flew toward my neck.
Using my right foot as a pivot, I spun my body and grabbed Kang Chan-hyuk’s back of the head, hurling him toward the cave wall.
“Ugh!”
Kang Chan-hyuk barely managed to tumble away, narrowly avoiding a collision with the cave wall.
-Crackle crackle crackle!!!
A torrent of blue lightning poured down upon Kang Chan-hyuk as he evaded the attack.
“This kind of thing…!”
Kang Chan-hyuk charged directly into the cascading blue lightning.
According to the Association’s official records, Noe-rang’s rank was 5-star.
As an 8-star Awakened User, there was a gap of three entire ranks between us.
With a three-rank difference, even crude attacks could be blocked adequately with brute force━
-Crackle crackle crackle crackle!!!
“Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!”
Blue lightning pierced from the crown of his head through his groin, spreading excruciating pain.
His entire body convulsed in paralysis, and strength drained from both legs.
Crack!
I kicked Kang Chan-hyuk’s head as it pitched forward, like striking a soccer ball.
His body spun like a top and slammed into the cave wall.
“Cough! Hack! Gag!”
Kang Chan-hyuk spat blood, his eyes wide with disbelief as he stared at Kwon O-jin.
“Insane… is this really the power of a 5-Star?”
The force contained in the lightning that had just struck his body belonged to an Awakened User with a ‘Star’ rank equal to his own at minimum, if not higher.
‘Dealing with 8-Stars won’t be difficult now.’
Kwon O-jin watched Kang Chan-hyuk trembling from the impact and smiled coldly.
Unless it was Lee Woo-hyuk, who possessed the highest caliber of skill among 8-Star Awakened Users.
Someone like Kang Chan-hyuk, whose abilities were mediocre at best, was not difficult to handle.
‘The real problem is those guys.’
I glanced sideways at the five Owls silently watching me.
The elite operatives of the Black Star Society, known as the Night Hunters.
If they joined the fray, the outcome wouldn’t be so easy to predict.
“Actually, I prefer it this way.”
Thump, thump.
My heart pounded fiercely.
A thrilling sensation coursed down my spine, spreading through my entire body.
“Are you just going to watch from there?”
I casually waved my hand toward the Owls.
“….”
“….”
The Owls, who had been silently observing the battle with their hoods pulled low, slowly began to move.
Movements as precise as those of highly trained assassins.
-Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh!!
Countless feathers became black rain, pouring into the cave.
An intense heat wave erupted as the feathers exploded, engulfing me.
Crackle!
I concentrated lightning into my legs and planted my feet firmly.
“Ugh!”
A long trail of lightning in my wake.
Dodging the incoming feathers, I fired wire shooters at the Owls.
-Twang! Twang! Twang!
Six wires shot out, targeting the Owls.
“…Tsk!”
One Owl who failed to dodge in time was caught by the wire.
“Explosive discharge.”
“Krrrraaaagh!!”
Crackle crackle crackle!!
A torrent of blue lightning flowed through the wire into the Owl.
“Cough… hack! Gag.”
The Owl collapsed, white foam pouring from its mouth.
“Huh? Knocked out in a single blow?”
All these Night Hunters posturing and preening, yet they collapse from just one hit.
Kwon O-jin stared at the Owl thrashing like a freshly caught fish, his expression one of bewilderment.
‘Were these bastards always this weak?’
No.
Considering the aura they radiated, their nimble movements, and the impact when their feathers exploded, every Night Hunter was at least as strong as Ashad Khan.
‘The Night Hunters aren’t weak.’
It’s me.
I’ve become far too strong.
“Well, all this wandering around paid off.”
A grin spread across my face.
Kwon O-jin raised his spear, his lips curling upward.
The remaining Owls scattered in four directions, converging on Kwon O-jin from all sides.
‘Two from behind, one from above, one from the front.’
Using the stigma of Canis Major to track their movements, I gripped the spear shaft wide and spun my body in a full rotation.
‘First, the two behind me!’
Whoosh!!
I swept the spear in a wide semicircle.
Lightning rippled along the blade’s edge, spreading outward in a fan formation.
“Ugh!”
“Gack!”
The Owls hastily raised their weapons to block the attack, but lightning was not fire—it was pure electricity.
The electrical current flowed through their weapons, causing the Owls to grimace and stumble backward.
“Haaah!”
An Owl rushed from the front, launching a spike formed from compressed feathers.
I raised my left arm to block the feathered spike.
Clang!
The spike collided with the gauntlet on my left arm.
“Burst!!!”
The Owl’s stigma flared brilliantly as a violent explosion erupted from the spike’s tip.
“Your mother’s the one who’s done for, you bastard.”
“What—!”
The gauntlet glowed red-hot, beginning to absorb the explosion.
I extended my left arm forward, the gauntlet fully charged.
Boom!!
The absorbed explosion erupted outward, engulfing the Owl completely.
“Cough!!”
The Owl was hurled backward, blood spraying from its body.
‘The last one.’
I tilted my head slightly upward.
The Owl, which had spread its wings made of black feathers and soared into the air, descended savagely like a predator snatching its prey.
This would be difficult to evade.
It didn’t matter.
If I couldn’t dodge, I would simply block.
-Whoosh!
“Ugh! What the—!”
The orange bracelet blazed with light, and a translucent barrier materialized before Kwon O-jin.
-Crash! Snap!
Of course, the barrier shattered in a single second.
But one second was enough.
Kwon O-jin spun his spear and thrust it upward, piercing the Owl’s belly mid-flight.
-Squelch!
“Gahhh!!”
Blood cascaded down the spear blade.
“Grrr! N-now!”
“Hm?”
The Owl, dangling like a chicken skewered on a spit with its belly pierced through, seized the spear blade with both hands.
“Hehe! Well done!”
In the brief opening created by the Owl’s sacrifice.
Kang Chan-hyuk rushed toward Kwon O-jin, dagger in hand.
He pressed his palm against the pommel of the dagger and curled his fingers inward.
Raising his arm high in that posture, he assumed a stance like a scorpion lifting its tail.
“《Thousand Poison Halberd》!”
The stigma blazed brilliantly, and a green luminescence gathered at the dagger’s tip.
A dagger imbued with a thousand varieties of lethal toxin.
The scorpion’s tail—a strike that brought death with merely a graze—shot toward Kwon O-jin.
-Whoosh!
Kwon O-jin abandoned his spear and evaded the attack.
Thanks to his swift reflexes, he managed to avoid the strike with only a shallow cut on his right arm.
“Hahahaha!! Endgame, you bastard!!”
Laughter erupted from Kang Chan-hyuk’s lips.
Though it was merely a shallow graze across the skin.
The extreme toxin coating the dagger was more than sufficient to drag his opponent toward death.
But.
“You don’t understand what endgame means, punk.”
“What?”
Kwon O-jin picked up the spear he’d thrown to the ground and, without hesitation,
severed his right arm.
-Slash!
Blood poured from his right arm, severed from the shoulder down.
“What the hell… what kind of insane bastard is this?”
Kang Chan-hyuk’s face had gone deathly pale.
Kwon O-jin lifted his left arm with a bright smile.
Twang!
Wire coiled around Kang Chan-hyuk’s neck.
“In a situation like this, you don’t call it endgame—you call it checkmate, you dumbass.”
Shhhhiiiiing!!
The wire wrapped around Kang Chan-hyuk’s neck contracted rapidly, dragging his entire body forward.
“Gaaaahhhhh!!!”
Concentrating the lightning in his head, I drove my forehead down like a hammer toward Kang Chan-hyuk’s philtrum.
Crack!!!
With a sickening sound of fracturing bone, Kang Chan-hyuk’s face caved inward.
“Hah.”
Kwon O-jin exhaled sharply and turned his head.
Two Owls remained.
The same two who had ambushed him from behind at the start.
His blood-soaked gaze fixed on the Owls.
“What are you doing? Not coming?”
Even as blood poured from his severed right arm.
Kwon O-jin advanced toward the remaining two Owls with unhurried steps.
“Krrgh!”
“R-Retreat! We’re retreating!”
The two Owls spun around and fled.
“Where do you think you’re running?”
I seized the spear and aimed it at the fleeing pair.
‘Three stacks charged.’
Crackle crackle crackle!!
I hurled the spear, condensed with lightning, at the fleeing Owls.
-Kaboom!!
“Ahhhhh!!”
“Gyaaaaaahhhhh!!!”
The Owls caught in the explosive burst of lightning from the spear collapsed, charred black.
“Tsk.”
I reached toward the six corpses scattered across the ground.
Rumble.
Dark clouds extracted from the Black Heaven, absorbing the stigma’s mana embedded within the corpses.
It hadn’t taken as long as I’d expected to dispose of all six.
“Though I didn’t expect my arm to get severed like that.”
Even with one arm severed, I could regenerate it quickly with hydro-affinity skills if I had enough water.
But in this dreary cavern filled with rock, there was no way there’d be enough water to regenerate my arm.
‘Let me try removing the poison first.’
I placed my hand on my right arm, which had turned purple from Kang Chan-hyuk’s poison.
‘The Scorpio Stigma.’
Possessing the Scorpio Stigma didn’t make me immune to poison, but with enough time, detoxifying any poison was far from difficult.
My right arm, which had turned purple, returned to its original state.
“Hm.”
After taking a short breath.
I lifted my severed right arm and brought it to the cross-section.
I pulled out an emergency potion from my sling bag and poured it onto the wound.
It was a potion I had personally crafted using the Aquarius Stigma, boasting performance comparable to most high-grade potions.
“Ugh!”
Sizzzzle!
My right arm reattached awkwardly amid a sharp, stinging pain.
‘It won’t move properly, though.’
No matter how high-grade the potion was, without an elixir, I couldn’t perfectly heal a severed arm in such a short time.
‘The Night Hunters being here means there’s a high chance Cheon Do-yoon came with them.’
Since the dungeon clear message hadn’t appeared yet, it seemed Cheon Do-yoon hadn’t found the dragon’s heart either.
If I continued forward, there was a risk of encountering Cheon Do-yoon.
‘But I can’t turn back either.’
I turned my head and looked behind me.
The passage was completely blocked by rocks pouring down from the collapsed ceiling.
Even if I went to find another entrance, there was still the same risk of encountering Cheon Do-yoon along the way.
‘If there’s a risk of encountering Cheon Do-yoon no matter what I choose anyway.’
Before Cheon Do-yoon found the dragon’s heart.
I would find it first and take it.
“Good.”
Of course.
Even in the worst case where I encountered Cheon Do-yoon along the way, I had already thought of a method to save my own life.
‘Still, the best option is to find the dragon’s heart before him.’
I walked into the cave with gleaming eyes.
Activating the Canis Major Stigma, I sensed the flow of the ‘dragon vein.’
Between the torrents of surging mana.
A place where mana gathered like a river pooling to form a vast lake.
‘There.’
I rushed toward the place where I felt the mana most densely.
I advanced through the maze-like passages.
Whoooosh!
A massive cavern filled with dazzling light appeared, as if the sun had risen in the darkness-shrouded cave.
A space spanning hundreds of meters from wall to ceiling, entirely composed of blue crystals.
And there was━
“Hehehehe. Well, well, an uninvited guest has slipped in, hasn’t it?”
An elderly man in black martial robes wore an unpleasant smile.
‘I’m too late.’
Cheon Do-yoon, King of the Owls.
As if he had merely stepped out for a stroll in a nearby park, the old man stood leisurely in the center of the cavern chamber with his arms folded behind his back, his narrow eyes fixed upon Kwon O-jin.
“Wasn’t his name Noe-rang? I distinctly stationed hunters in the surrounding areas… how did you manage to reach this place?”
“Slaughtered them all on the way.”
I answered with a shrug of my shoulders.
“Hehehehe!! So you did!”
Cheon Do-yoon laughed heartily while stroking his beard with one hand.
At first glance, he appeared like a cultivated sage.
Yet the twisted desire and madness glinting in his eyes could not be concealed.
“But alas, your luck has run out at last.”
He extended his tongue to lick his lips, then slowly reached his hand toward me.
Terrifying.
A dizzying surge of mana coalesced in Cheon Do-yoon’s palm.
“Die, wolf of Vega Star.”
Leisurely and calmly.
As if reading a passage from a Korean textbook during class with utter indifference.
He declared my death with such absolute certainty.
“The moment you kill me, you won’t be able to escape this place alive either.”
“Hmm?”
Cheon Do-yoon’s eyebrows rose slightly.
He burst into laughter as if amused.
“Hehehehe! You speak as though you’re hiding some secret card?”
“I am.”
“I understand your desire to live, but if you thought such bluffing would work….”
“The moment you kill me,
my wife
will receive the information immediately. Your location and who laid hands on me—everything.”
“…Your wife?”
Cheon Do-yoon stared at me with an expression of bewilderment.
I burst into a fit of giggles as I met his gaze.
“Don’t you have any idea? You must have heard of her?”
“…Surely not.”
“The Leech Queen.”
“…!!!”
“I am the husband of Isabella Colgrande.”
The leisurely expression on Cheon Do-yoon’s face drained away, replaced by sheer horror.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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