Not A Regressor - Chapter 194

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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 194
A House in Disarray (1)
“….”
The atmosphere had turned glacial.
At Isabella’s caustic words, Kwon O-jin and Ha-eun froze with their mouths agape.
The moment he heard his daughter was in danger, he flew here by helicopter—only to be told his sweat reeked and he should leave.
The scorching verbal barrage left him momentarily stunned, his mind reeling.
“Haha. Our princess seems quite embarrassed.”
Paulo smiled with practiced ease and reached out to pat Isabella’s head.
Smack!
Isabella coldly swatted his hand away.
She fixed him with a sharp glare.
“What brings you here?”
“What brings me? I came because I was curious about our princess’s condition!”
“Is that so?”
A thin smile.
Isabella’s lips curved into something faintly bitter.
Listening to their exchange, Kwon O-jin sensed something off.
A discordant feeling, like gears grinding against each other.
It didn’t take long to identify the source of that dissonance.
‘Not out of concern, but curiosity?’
For a father who flew here by helicopter for his daughter’s sake, that phrasing seemed peculiar.
“Then now that your curiosity is satisfied, you should head back.”
Isabella’s voice had turned icy.
Paulo shook his head as if confused.
“How could I leave after our princess faced such danger? I need to see more than just her face! By the way… who are those people over there?”
Paulo’s gaze shifted toward Kwon O-jin.
Isabella stepped forward, positioning herself between them, her eyes narrowing sharply.
“My guests.”
“Ah! Of course! Delighted to meet you!”
Paulo moved past Isabella and approached.
He extended his hand with a cheerful smile.
Kwon O-jin regarded Paulo’s outstretched hand for a moment before clasping it.
‘An Unawakened.’
As they shook hands, he subtly channeled his mana, but detected no stellar power emanating from Paulo.
“I’m Kwon O-jin.”
“Noe-rang! An apostle of Lyra Constellation, if I recall correctly? I’ve heard the name.”
Paulo shook Kwon O-jin’s hand vigorously, his smile radiant.
“What’s your relationship with our princess? Could it be….”
“Father.”
Isabella cut off Paulo’s words.
“Kwon O-jin must be quite exhausted. Isn’t it inconsiderate to keep holding him like this?”
“Ah, I see. Haha! This is the first time our princess has brought a guest, so I got a bit too excited!”
Too excited, indeed.
Dragon veins had gone haywire, and tens of thousands of monsters had attacked the resort where his daughter was resting.
Was this really a situation worth getting excited about?
“I’ll handle the cleanup! You two go inside and get some proper rest!”
Paulo patted my shoulder as he passed by.
“….”
I watched his receding figure intently.
“Let’s go inside, Kwon O-jin.”
Isabella grabbed my arm and led me in.
Ha-eun followed her and asked.
“Doesn’t seem like you two get along?”
“….”
“He seemed like a pretty good person though. Did something happen?”
Ha-eun tilted her head curiously, then let out a small gasp.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
It wasn’t as if she and Isabella were that close—prying into family matters crossed a line.
“…isn’t.”
“Huh?”
“He’s not a good person.”
The words spilled out bitterly.
Her fist clenched around the hem of her blood-stained dress, trembling slightly.
“….”
Ha-eun asked nothing further and quietly followed behind her.
After showing us to our room, Isabella bowed lightly and turned to leave.
“Please rest well, both of you. If you need anything, just let me know.”
Click.
Isabella closed the door and left.
“Wow… that family’s a complete mess. The tension between those two was suffocating.”
Once Isabella was gone, Ha-eun clicked her tongue and shook her head disapprovingly.
I stared at the closed door, recalling the conversation I’d had with Isabella while tracking the Living Armor.
‘She said her elder sister was expelled from the family after Isabella was named as the successor.’
Had that incident destroyed her relationship with her parents?
If so, several questions remained unanswered.
‘I should bring it up with her.’
I stroked my chin, lost in thought.
Perhaps.
Following this thread of doubt might lead me to the key to this entire incident.
“Ugh, whatever. I’ve got no reason to poke my nose into other people’s family drama.”
Ha-eun bounced onto the bed with a playful jump, stretching luxuriously.
She fluttered her slender legs as if treading water.
“Phew~ I’m absolutely exhausted, seriously.”
“At least shower before bed.”
“Mmm.”
Ha-eun spread her arms wide and flashed a mischievous grin.
“Your sister’s too worn out to get up.”
“Come on now.”
“Up we go.”
I let out a soft chuckle and approached Ha-eun, who lay sprawled across the bed with her arms outstretched like an infant searching for her mother.
After hours of intense combat—though it was closer to one-sided slaughter, really—soot and ash clung to various parts of her body.
I carefully wrapped my arm around her back and lifted her up.
The sensation of her soft skin transmitted directly through my palm, since she was wearing only a swimsuit.
Ha-eun giggled and wrapped her arm around my neck.
“O-jin.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we really trust Isabella? She’s an executive of the Black Star Society, right?”
“…I’m not sure.”
It was difficult to give a definitive answer about Isabella yet.
“But I think she’s… worth trusting.”
That glimpse of her ‘true’ self in the alley.
At least, she seemed different from the Black Star Society I’d come to know.
“Really?”
Ha-eun nodded while nestled in my embrace.
If those words came from my lips, there was no need for further doubt.
“Then we need to make her our ally by any means necessary.”
Her unexpected words made my eyes widen in surprise.
“…Are you sure about that?”
“Huh? About what?”
“You two weren’t exactly on good terms.”
“Oh, that.”
Ha-eun clicked her tongue and scratched her head.
“Well, I don’t love the fact that she’s wagging her tail at my man. But I can’t afford to miss such a golden opportunity because of that.”
How often does one get the chance to recruit an executive of the Black Star Society—and the third-ranked one at that—as an ally?
If Isabella’s current goodwill toward me was genuine.
The benefits we could gain by bringing her to our side would be immeasurable.
“Getting intelligence from within the Black Star Society, leveraging the Colgrand Family’s power, things like that.”
But more than anything else.
“If that woman is that strong, she can protect you when you’re in danger, right?”
Many dangers surely awaited Kwon O-jin on the path ahead as he played the role of the Regressor’s Star.
Among them were perils he could never overcome through his strength alone.
I wanted nothing more than to protect him with my own power.
‘But that would be… difficult.’
How many times had I not experienced this already?
That my strength alone was insufficient to protect Kwon O-jin.
If I could keep him safe, what did it matter if a few more women entered his life?
“And besides… you’re already completely smitten with your older sister, aren’t you?”
Ha-eun lifted her chin with a smug expression.
Kwon O-jin let out a hollow laugh and nodded.
“That’s right.”
Just as she said.
I had fallen so deeply for her that there was no escaping it.
From a distant past I could no longer remember, all the way to now.
“Then try to seduce him a bit. Now’s your chance.”
“A chance?”
“Yeah. Something about him… felt unstable.”
Ha-eun narrowed her eyes while tracing her lips.
She recalled Isabella’s appearance from when she spoke with her father.
“Unstable?”
“There were kids like that at the Orphanage before.”
Children who hadn’t been abandoned by their parents, but whose families had broken apart and ended up at the Orphanage.
Children who tried desperately with their fragile hands to somehow fix what was already irreparably shattered.
That distant despair—I felt it emanating from Isabella in exactly the same way.
“Though I don’t really have concrete proof.”
“Woman’s intuition?”
“Hehe. Your older sister’s instincts are pretty sharp, aren’t they?”
“You’ve done plenty of foolish things to say that.”
“S-shut your mouth, you brat!”
Well, anyway.
‘Unstable, huh.’
Kwon O-jin carried Ha-eun toward the bath, turning those words over in his mind.
* * *
Moonlight filtered through the window.
The bloody massacre that had occurred today felt like a dream.
The moonlight hanging in the night sky was breathtakingly beautiful.
Isabella sat on the Terrace, gazing up at the moonlit night sky.
“…Sigh.”
How had things come to this?
As I turned that unanswerable question over in my mind again and again.
—Knock, knock.
A tapping sound echoed against the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
It was Kwon O-jin.
“Kwon O-jin? Is there something you need?”
“No. I just thought we could talk for a bit.”
Kwon O-jin held up a bottle of wine he’d retrieved from the kitchen.
“My, I never expected you to tempt me into a secret rendezvous first.”
Isabella retrieved two wine glasses with a radiant smile playing at her eyes.
Glug, glug.
The premium wine—easily worth hundreds per bottle—filled the glasses with a rich pour.
Two glasses clinked together with a crystalline ring as the fragrant aroma bloomed throughout the room.
“In South Korea, you say ‘cheers’ at times like this, don’t you?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Hmm? You don’t do it yourself?”
“I’ve almost never drunk with another person before.”
Surviving on two calorie bars a day left little room for leisurely drinking opportunities.
“Hehe. Then I’m taking your first time?”
Isabella’s eyes gleamed with an alluring smile.
Well, technically I’d shared drinks with Ha-eun a few times at home, but there was no need to mention that.
I took a sip of the wine without elaborating.
Perhaps it was because the wine was expensive.
Just one sip sent an impressive aroma surging all the way to my nose.
“Did you fall out with your father because of your Elder Sister?”
“…So that’s why you came.”
Isabella smiled faintly, as if she’d expected this.
“Yes. After I was confirmed as the next family head… I fought with Father over my Elder Sister. Eventually, she was expelled from the family.”
A girl desperate to protect her family, and a father determined to uphold the family’s discipline—their clash was inevitable.
She probably hadn’t awakened yet back then, so there would have been no way to defy her father, who held the family’s power in an iron grip.
“Well, back then I was nothing but Father’s puppet anyway.”
“Looking at you now, that doesn’t seem true at all.”
“Hehe. I didn’t just sit idle either. Looks can be deceiving—I’m a woman who gets things done when it matters.”
I knew that well enough.
The position of Black Star Society enforcer wouldn’t have been secured by simply obeying orders from above.
“Then why are you letting him be?”
“Pardon?”
“You could overthrow your father and take the family head position whenever you wanted, couldn’t you?”
I asked with eyes that had grown distant and deep.
She wouldn’t understand.
This question wasn’t directed at Isabella as the “Saint of Rome,” but at Isabella as the Leech Queen.
‘If she possessed such power, removing Paulo—who hadn’t even awakened—from his position as family head would be trivial.’
Even as she regarded her father with eyes brimming with hatred.
Why had she never laid a hand on Paulo?
“…I’m not sure.”
Isabella tilted her wine glass, gazing up at the night sky with a bitter expression.
“Perhaps… because he’s my father, no matter how much I despise him?”
As if she herself couldn’t quite comprehend it.
Isabella posed the question back to herself with that same melancholic look.
‘Because he’s my father.’
It was an emotion I couldn’t fathom—I who had never even known my parents’ faces.
“Perhaps somewhere deep in my heart, I still haven’t let go of a thread of hope.”
“Hope?”
“The hope that someday, like a miracle, all the resentment and misunderstandings might dissolve, and we could return to how things were.”
Before the serious succession competition began at age ten.
She had lived happily, like any ordinary family.
Between a father who loved his two daughters, a gentle mother, and an elder sister who, though frail, looked after her.
She had experienced a time as sweet as a dream.
“Even though I know it’s too late to go back now… I just can’t seem to let go easily. Heh, foolish of me, isn’t it?”
Isabella smiled with self-deprecating humor and shrugged her shoulders.
“….”
I stared at her with bewildered eyes.
A woman harboring such tender affection for her family had become a witch who slaughtered tens of millions in the first regression?
‘Could all of this be an act?’
When I met her gaze while thinking such thoughts.
“Ah.”
Perhaps it was because I myself was a born deceiver.
Or perhaps it was because her pupils, reflected in the moonlight, trembled so precariously.
Somehow, I could discern it.
What stood before me now was neither the Saint of Rome nor the Leech Queen.
‘It was Isabella Colgrande herself.’
“Hmm? What’s wrong, Kwon O-jin?”
“…It’s nothing.”
I let out a hollow laugh and shook my head.
‘I’m hardly in a position to speak of anyone else’s first regression.’
If she had been a witch who slaughtered tens of millions in the first regression.
Then I had been the Heavenly Demon who drove billions of humanity to their deaths.
‘Depending on my choices, I could become the Heavenly Demon who destroys the world, or the Star Against Heaven who saves humanity.’
At least, I had to believe that.
The moment I stopped believing it, I would be denying my very self.
“I hope your wishes come true.”
“Hehe. Thank you.”
Clink.
The glasses clinked together with a clear ring.
Though I spoke of hoping wishes would come true, I knew the truth.
Perhaps Isabella knew it too.
That hope itself.
Is called hope precisely because it cannot be realized.
* * *
Vroom, vroom, vroom.
On the beach bathed in bright moonlight.
Paulo was making a phone call on the beach still filled with sticky blood that hadn’t been cleaned up.
“Ah, it’s good to hear from you, Demian.”
Paulo continued speaking in an extremely respectful tone toward the person on the other end of the line.
“The reason I’m contacting you is….”
A video was playing on the small tablet held in his hand.
“I have something to tell you about my daughter… no, about the blood-crazed ‘Witch’ who has gone mad.”
In that video.
Isabella, wrapped in a crimson aura, was brutally slaughtering thousands of monsters.

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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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