Not A Regressor - Chapter 131

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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 131
Night Falls at Daybreak (7)
“Ah….”
I watch Ha-eun’s figure receding into the distance.
‘This can’t happen.’
I press both palms against the ground.
Biting my lips, I gather every ounce of strength I have left and pour it into my arms.
But.
-Crack!
“Cough!”
My arms buckle uselessly beneath me.
Blood streams from my nose as my face slams into the earth.
“Don’t… go….”
Watching Ha-eun’s retreating back, I reach out with pitiful desperation.
This time I try to push myself up with my legs, but as if my Achilles tendons have been severed, my legs refuse to obey.
“You can’t… leave.”
The memory from six years ago floods back.
Her trembling in unfamiliar darkness on a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face.
I cannot abandon her to that terrible darkness again.
“…Kwon O-jin.”
Ha-eun glances down at Kwon O-jin, her lips pressed firmly together.
She continues speaking while holding the Dragon Pearl close to her left eye.
“I’ll call the Association people and ask them to take Kwon O-jin away. The eye comes after that.”
“Hmm. How can you trust that the Association will only take Noe-rang?”
“You and I can call them after we leave here. If you really can’t trust me, then just abandon the Dragon Pearl and everything else.”
Ha-eun waves the Dragon Pearl threateningly right in front of her left eye.
So close that even a one-centimeter slip would cause the Dragon Pearl to ignite and vanish.
Cheon Do-yoon easily recognizes that she is not bluffing.
“Hehehehe. Such a spirited child. I quite like you.”
He nods, his wrinkled mouth curling upward.
“Very well. Let us leave this place together, then summon the Association to take Noe-rang away.”
“Understood….”
Crash!
Cutting off Ha-eun’s words.
A dull sound reverberates across the empty field.
“Don’t… make that sound….”
“Kwon O-jin…?”
Staggering.
I push myself up on trembling legs.
But it is short-lived—my wavering body collapses pathetically to the ground.
Blood seeps from the mangled wounds across my body, soaking the parched earth in crimson.
“O-O-jin!”
Ha-eun rushed toward Kwon O-jin, who had collapsed in desperation.
His entire body was so grotesquely lacerated that the color of his clothing was indiscernible beneath the blood that drenched him.
“You… bastard…!”
Ha-eun’s gaze pierced Cheon Do-yoon with razor-sharp intensity, her lips trembling with fury, yet rage alone could not propel her toward him.
“I… I…”
Kwon O-jin’s voice crawled forth, barely audible.
Ha-eun clenched her eyes shut and forced herself to rise.
“Hehehehe! What a touching sight! Tell me—what could this boy possibly mean to you that you struggle so desperately?”
Cheon Do-yoon gazed down at Kwon O-jin, his eyes brimming with mockery.
Kwon O-jin clung desperately to his flickering consciousness, absorbing every word of Cheon Do-yoon’s derision.
“…”
What does she mean to me?
“Ah… ugh.”
Crawl. Crawl.
I drag my pathetic limbs forward toward Cheon Do-yoon.
Pitiful. Utterly wretched.
“Hah! Hah! Hah!”
It doesn’t matter.
No matter how shameful. No matter how pathetic.
Even when pointed at as a parentless child.
Even when beaten senseless without reason.
━As long as she exists.
I could endure. I could persevere.
I could move forward.
Because she was.
The first thing I ever had.
“Ah… ugh… ah.”
I drag my unresponsive legs across the ground, crawling toward Ha-eun.
Perhaps from losing so much blood.
A faded, ancient memory—one I could no longer place in time—suddenly flashed across my mind.
-You’re the new kid, right?
A girl with reddish-brown hair.
She had been the natural leader among the children at the Orphanage, extending her hand with a radiant smile.
-Your name is… Kwon O-jin? What does it mean?
She examined my name on the nameplate with her clumsy knowledge of Chinese characters.
That name I had despised with every fiber of my being.
-Kwon O-jin… Does this mean “filthy dust”?
Yes.
The name left behind by parents whose faces I never knew was “Kwon O-jin”—a name meaning filthy dust.
It revealed exactly what those so-called parents thought of me.
A miserable, utterly wretched name.
-So what?
Thinking about it now, such a trivial name shouldn’t have mattered at all.
Yet I reacted with unnecessary sensitivity, questioning it defensively.
-No, it’s nothing really. I don’t mean anything by it… it’s just that you’re always so quiet, so I got curious.
-You don’t need to force yourself to care.
I turned my head away coldly.
The girl scratched her head with an awkward expression and continued speaking.
-Um… well. Kwon O-jin… no, it seems like you don’t really like that name.
After a moment of contemplation, she suddenly clapped her hands and her eyes sparkled.
-Ozini! Yes, I’ll call you Ozini!
-….
At this crude nickname that didn’t even deserve a hollow laugh.
My heart inexplicably began to race.
-Why are you up here anyway? Did you come to hide from that Orphanage Director bastard too?
-…That’s…
The rooftop of the four-story Orphanage.
This rooftop, which should have been locked securely, had been left open for months due to the Orphanage Director’s negligence.
-….
Unlike her, I hadn’t come here to escape from the Orphanage Director.
I was the quiet type, unlike the girl who always talked back to him.
The worst I’d experienced was the occasional blow to the back of my head when luck wasn’t on my side.
Yet the reason I’d snuck up to the rooftop despite risking punishment.
-This is… my… my secret base.
After I accidentally discovered that the rooftop door wasn’t locked.
I began transforming this place into my own private sanctuary.
It was nothing but a shabby secret base made from discarded boxes and scraps of wood.
But for someone who had nothing.
For someone with no parents, no relatives, not even a friend.
This place was the first thing that was truly ‘mine’.
-Hahahaha! This is supposed to be a secret base?
-….
The girl burst into laughter, clutching her stomach.
I could only lower my head to hide my flushed cheeks.
Yes.
Even as I called it a secret base, I already knew the truth.
That this rooftop was nothing ‘mine’.
That nothing in this world truly belonged to me.
I was too young to even recite the multiplication table properly, yet I knew that much with absolute certainty.
-Hehe. Just kidding. So this was your secret base?
-No, that’s not it.
-But you just said it was your secret base.
The girl approached with a playful smile.
Her reddish-brown hair swayed like flickering flames.
At the sight of her beauty—so breathtaking I nearly lost myself—I swallowed hard without thinking.
-Let me see… if it’s a secret base, you wouldn’t just let anyone in, right?
-Y-yeah.
I averted my gaze from the girl and clenched my fists.
-Even if Mom and Dad came, I wouldn’t let them in. Never.
Perhaps it was the petty vengeance of a child.
Even if parents whose faces I’d never known were to return and search for me one day, I had sworn that this secret base would never be opened to them.
-…Really?
The girl smiled bitterly as she watched me speak with my fists clenched.
Yes.
Both she and I already knew it.
We had realized it faster than reciting the multiplication table.
The fact that those people called parents would never return to search for us.
-What about me?
-…Huh?
-Would you let me in?
The girl asked with a smile as precious as a jewel.
-Me… what?
-I’m two years older, so I’m your older sister!
-…
-So parents aren’t allowed, but I am, right?
-Huh? Oh, y-yeah.
Upon hearing my bewildered response, she stepped into my shabby secret base.
Into my unremarkable life that had contained nothing.
She had entered.
-Hehe. Now that I’m here, you have to keep calling me older sister from now on, okay?
The girl smiled brightly.
Looking back now, those words probably held no special meaning.
They were merely playful.
Nothing but words carelessly spoken in passing.
━She probably doesn’t even remember saying such a thing.
But.
That single phrase—that absurdly childish, fleeting jest.
It became such an immense salvation for me.
Does she even know?
“S-stop it, O-jin!!”
“Haa… haa… haa…”
Gasping out breath mingled with blood.
With trembling hands, I press them against the ground.
“Ah… ugh.”
My body, pushed beyond its limits, screams in agony.
Creaking, wavering.
It wails that I must not move any further.
-Ding!
[Warning. The Awakened User’s body has sustained damage beyond its capacity to maintain magical power.]
[The Stigma’s magical power is running rampant.]
[Entering ‘Overload’ state!]
[Entering ‘Demonic Possession’ state!]
“Shut… up…”
It doesn’t matter if I’m destroyed.
It doesn’t matter if I’m shattered.
If I can just stand up this once, it matters not if I never rise again.
“My… legs.”
I pound my trembling legs with my fists.
“Please… move… now.”
For the first time, I have something I want to possess.
For the last time, I have something I want to protect.
In my life, dark as a starless night, only she shone brilliantly.
“O-jin… me?”
Turning to look at her, whose eyes tremble as she watches me.
-Boom!!!
“Graaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!”
I roar and force my body upright.
Planting my feet firmly on the earth, I straighten my spine.
“Haa! Haa!”
Breathing heavily, I take a step toward her.
Staggering, swaying though I may.
I do not fall.
“O-jin… why…? Why would you go this far?”
“Why… would you do this much?”
Is that something a woman would say—one willing to pluck out her own eyes to save another’s life?
“You barged into someone else’s secret base without permission… so you can’t leave now.”
“What? That… what are you talking about?”
She still doesn’t remember, does she?
It doesn’t matter if you forget.
Even if you do.
I will remember for you.
“Hehehehe!! Did you really manage to stand up in that state?”
Cheon Do-yoon’s mocking voice echoed across the field.
“But━ what changes just because you’ve risen?”
Things won’t change easily.
The world doesn’t resolve itself simply through patience and endurance.
No matter how fiercely I grit my teeth and stand.
The gap between Cheon Do-yoon and me remains vast and insurmountable.
‘But.’
I have a method I’ve been considering.
‘That bastard definitely said the Dragon’s Eye is used to control the magical power contained within the dragon’s heart.’
Then.
Perhaps the Dragon’s Eye doesn’t merely contain the power to control the magical energy within the dragon’s heart, but also possesses the ability to manipulate the dragon veins’ power itself.
“Sister, no matter what happens from now on, don’t move at all.”
“What, what are you trying to do?”
“No time to explain.”
Kwon O-jin carefully extended his hand toward the corner of her left eye.
A low rumbling sound.
Black clouds of mist flowed from his fingertips, gently covering the area around her left eye.
“Kyaaaah! What, what is this?!”
“Stay still.”
I carefully controlled the black mist so she wouldn’t be harmed, gently absorbing a portion of the Dragon’s Eye’s power.
And then.
-Uuuuuuuung!!!
The magical power of the dragon vein, coiled majestically within the black sky.
Slowly began to lift its head.
-Ting!
[You have achieved some of the conditions necessary for the liberation of ‘Opening Heaven’.]
Along with a clear chiming sound, a line of text materialized before my eyes.
[Those who pass me in the garden of sighs]
An incomprehensible, mysterious inscription.
It was the inscription written in the description of ‘Opening Heaven’.
Kwon O-jin lifted his gaze to regard the text that had appeared before him.
For reasons I couldn’t understand.
The meaning of the inscription, which had been incomprehensible, flowed into my mind.
I opened my mouth softly and recited the incantation that had flowed into my consciousness.
“Those who pass me, to the garden of sighs.”
Beginning with the ominously resonating incantation.
“━Ah.”
The sky.
Opened.
-Crackle!! Crackle crackle crackle!!
The azure lightning that had been blazing around Kwon O-jin’s body gradually darkened to black.
The blood pooled on the ground transformed into dark clouds and was sucked back into Kwon O-jin’s body.
As if he had consumed an elixir, the wounds that had ravaged his entire form healed with startling speed.
“What… what is this?”
Cheon Do-yoon trembled as he beheld the ferociously burning black lightning.
An ominous aura of unknown origin pressed down upon him.
Clack clack clack!
Teeth chattering loudly.
Even when facing the Constellation of Polaris, he had never felt such an abyssal terror.
‘What is this…’
He stared at Kwon O-jin with a pallid, drained expression.
-Crackle! Crackle crackle!!
Enveloped in black lightning from head to toe, Kwon O-jin gazed upward at the sky with a hazy, distant gaze.
Why was it?
Despite the bright sunlight beating down so intensely that his skin prickled.
The sky above appeared utterly dark.
“The sky is so dark.”
Looking up at the cloudless blue expanse.
He spoke in a strangely elated voice.
“Isn’t it?”

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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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