Not A Regressor - Chapter 253

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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 253
Cheon Joo-ryong (5)
“Ready, sister?”
“Yeah, okay….”
Ha-eun nodded with an expression of profound unease.
Kwon O-jin stepped back several paces and nodded.
He raised a handkerchief to his nose and shouted.
“Detonate it!”
“Ugh….”
Ha-eun squeezed her eyes shut and hurled the dragon orb clutched in her hand deep into the manhole.
Ssssshhhhiiiing!
The crimson dragon orb melted through the floor and burrowed deep into the sewers.
The inferno contained within it erupted like a beast unleashed, spreading in all directions.
BOOOOOM!
The entire surrounding area trembled as though an earthquake had struck.
“What, what is this?”
The explosion’s force far exceeded all expectations.
Ha-eun hurriedly glanced down at the black leather gloves on her hands.
Had the gloves amplified the power?
No, even accounting for that, the force was excessively potent.
“It’s the gas.”
“Gas?”
Kwon O-jin nodded and offered her a handkerchief.
For six long years, sewage had accumulated in the sealed sewers.
The methane gas that emanated from it would have filled the entire sewer system.
Six years of fermentation—a natural bomb buried underground.
When Ha-eun threw the dragon orb, the most powerful technique at her disposal, into that environment, an apocalyptic explosion was inevitable.
Of course.
“Ugh!”
“Cover your nose with this, quickly.”
The gas that erupted from the explosion and billowed into the air carried a stench so horrific it seemed to shake the heavens and earth.
[Ugh. My, my head is spinning.]
Vega staggered through the air and perched on Kwon O-jin’s shoulder.
She clutched her nose, groaning in agony from the terrible reek spreading across the entire street.
“Grrrrgh, cough!”
Still, Vega had it better than most.
“Kid, kid! Do something about this horrible stench, please!”
Riak, whose sense of smell was dozens of times more acute than any human’s, cried out with a pallid expression as though he might collapse at any moment.
“Just bear with it a little longer. It’ll fade.”
“Ugh! How am I supposed to endure this abominable stench?”
“A warrior thrives on grit, doesn’t he?”
“This goes beyond grit!”
Riak contorted his body with a groan, his face twisted in agony.
Isabella and Vega weren’t quite as bad off as Riak.
But Ha-eun, along with Isabella and Vega, had their noses pinched shut, their eyes squeezed tight in barely suppressed revulsion.
Kwon O-jin felt compelled to offer them some words of encouragement.
“When the pain becomes unbearable, remember this.”
All eyes turned toward me.
“No matter how much I’m suffering right now… there’s one bastard having a far worse time than me!”
Kwon O-jin grinned wickedly and peered downward.
What erupted from the fissured ground was nothing but aged, fermented gas.
As for where the remaining “solids” had scattered…
There was no need to dwell on it.
“No matter how hard it gets! No matter how much it hurts! Just imagine that bastard suffering, and you’ll find the strength to endure!”
“That’s some twisted wisdom, you lunatic.”
Ha-eun let out an incredulous laugh.
Sure, it was deranged logic.
“…But thinking about it that way, it actually does make it more bearable.”
Watching someone else suffer in the same predicament doesn’t make your own pain disappear, but it certainly provides psychological satisfaction. And if that someone is an enemy you’d gladly tear apart with your teeth?
Then the scorching heat becomes almost refreshing.
Almost pleasant, even.
Rumble!
And right on cue.
A deafening boom echoed through the air, and the ground trembled violently once more.
The Dragon Jade’s explosion had long since ended.
The reason the earth was shaking now was because something below was desperately clawing its way upward.
“Krraaaaaaagh!”
Crack!
The ground split open, and a man covered in filth burst forth like a mole.
“What—what the hell is this?! Blegh!”
A man with deep violet hair thrashed about frantically, desperately scraping the putrid sludge from his entire body.
“Hmm?”
Kwon O-jin’s brow furrowed at the appearance of this unfamiliar man—not Cheon Joo-ryong.
A nagging doubt crept in: could Lee Shin-hyuk’s memory have been wrong?
[Fear not. That creature merely wears the guise of a human. It is nothing but a demon beast.]
Vega’s sharp gaze pierced through the man.
[See the black horns sprouting from his forehead? The same ones we saw in the photograph before.]
“Ah, you’re right.”
Just as she said.
Protruding from the forehead of the violet-haired man were the black horns I’d seen in that photograph.
Of course, its size was far smaller than when it had taken the form of a dragon.
‘But what are those horns?’
Even in Lee Shin-hyuk’s memories, I had never seen black horns sprouting from Cheon Joo-ryong’s forehead.
“Grrgh! Did you wretches do this?”
There was no time for my thoughts to continue.
Cheon Joo-ryong, having hastily brushed the filth from his body, glared at Kwon O-jin and his companions.
“How did the dumplings taste?”
“…Dumplings?”
“No, never mind.”
Kwon O-jin burst into a chuckling laugh as he looked Cheon Joo-ryong up and down.
Covered in filth though he was, he possessed the appearance of a rather handsome man.
“So you normally walk around in human form? Yet you made such a fuss about how insignificant humans are.”
Six years ago, Kwon O-jin had never spoken directly with Cheon Joo-ryong.
But through broadcasts, he remembered vividly what he had said while slaughtering humans.
“Who… are you?”
Cheon Joo-ryong glared at Kwon O-jin with sharply narrowed eyes.
He didn’t know who Kwon O-jin was, but from the circumstances, it was crystal clear that he was the culprit who had dumped the filth into his lair.
A thick murderous intent gleamed in his vertically-slit amber eyes.
“How dare you defile the Lair of Lord Barbatos with filth…!”
“Oh, so you refer to yourself in the third person?”
That’s quite the cute way of speaking.
“Silence!”
Boom!
Barbatos stomped his foot roughly as he spoke.
As his troubled mind seemed to settle somewhat, his gaze shifted to the people around Kwon O-jin.
“Hmm?”
His gaze, which had been examining Vega, Riak, and Isabella with hostile eyes, stopped at Ha-eun.
“You woman….”
Barbatos’ eyes narrowed.
Soon, a sinister smile spread across his lips.
“Ah, the woman who came at me so fiercely back then.”
A gaze as sinister as a serpent’s lick.
Ha-eun’s expression hardened rigidly.
“Hmm. How did you break the curse of blindness?”
Barbatos slowly looked Ha-eun up and down, tilting his head in puzzlement.
The dragon’s curse he had placed upon her back then was not some shallow curse that would naturally fade with time.
“I had hoped you would writhe in agony in darkness, robbed of light, until I came for you again.”
“….”
Barbatos muttered regretfully, his mouth twisting into a grimace.
Six years ago.
I recalled the memory of when I led my armies and invaded the human city.
Back then, I was forced to taste a humiliating defeat at the hands of humans blessed with stigmas by the Constellation.
I fought against dozens, hundreds of human forces.
But among them, the memory of that red-haired woman remained vivid in my mind even now, six years later.
—Rot, you damned lizard!
A woman who charged forward without flinching no matter how many curses I hurled at her.
I remember the fierce determination that blazed in her eyes like wildfire.
I recall the scorching flames that burned so intensely.
“Krhehe. Are you afraid of me?”
Barbatos stared at the rigid Ha-eun and slowly extended his long tongue.
Her eyes no longer held the fierce determination from before.
Clear evidence that she was experiencing ‘fear’ before me.
And there was no need to even consider where that fear originated from.
“It seems you suffered quite a bit during the time you lost your light.”
“…Shut up.”
Ha-eun glared fiercely at Barbatos.
Though he wore the guise of a human, she could vividly feel it.
The memory from that time.
The nightmare of that day.
The despair of being trapped in pitch-black darkness without a single ray of light.
“Hahaha! Did you come all this way to take revenge for what happened then?”
Barbatos laughed as if he had already grasped the situation.
A sinister gleam flickered across his grotesquely split amber eyes.
“I’ll acknowledge your boldness… but you’ve chosen the wrong opponent.”
Uuuuuung!
Purple light shimmered around his body as thick demonic energy poured forth.
“I, Barbatos, shall lock you away once more in endless darkness.”
A sinister laugh echoed wickedly through the air.
His purple-gleaming hair whipped about as if caught in a violent wind.
Kwon O-jin watched Barbatos radiating his demonic power and opened his mouth quietly.
“Hey, your breath smells like shit.”
….
Twitch.
A thick vein bulged across Barbatos’s forehead.
He glared at Kwon O-jin, who showed not the slightest trace of fear even when facing a dragon, and bared his teeth savagely.
“Insolent human bastard…!”
Cheon Joo-ryong.
His towering pride, who freely wielded a thousand curses and held a high position of trust as a ‘king’ even within the Demon Realm, cracked audibly.
No matter what, the fact that he had hastily fled the Lair covered in filth was undeniable.
“Still, thanks for remembering our sister.”
Kwon O-jin pulled Ha-eun’s trembling shoulders back, positioning himself protectively in front of her.
“If you’ve forgotten, then it won’t even count as revenge.”
His eyes had sunk into a profound darkness.
Within the narrow slits of his gaze, blue lightning ignited and blazed.
“Hmph. You bring three measly humans and one beast, a mere gnat, and think you can exact revenge?”
[Did you just call me a gnat?]
Vega’s expression twisted savagely as she spoke.
Blue arcs of electricity began to crackle around her body.
[How dare a lowly lizard speak to me in such a manner!]
“Wait a moment, Vega.”
Kwon O-jin restrained Vega, who looked ready to pounce at any second, and assessed Barbatos carefully.
First, he needed to gauge the extent of Barbatos’s power.
‘They said he was weak in close combat.’
If that were true, then drawing the battle toward close quarters—his weakness—would be the most efficient approach.
Among them, the two most skilled in close combat were Kwon O-jin and one other.
Kwon O-jin’s lips curled into a grin as he shifted his gaze toward Riak.
“Beast, are you ready?”
“Yeah. I can tear that arrogant lizard’s snout apart whenever I want.”
Riak transformed into his werewolf form, his eyes gleaming with savage intensity.
“Alright then, we count to three and charge in simultaneously.”
Kwon O-jin lowered his stance.
Riak’s leg muscles bulged with power, and blue lightning flickered between his silver mane.
“Krhehe! Come on then, bring it!”
Barbatos spread both arms wide with an arrogant smile.
Violet light erupted around his body, forming a sphere of luminescence infused with potent curses.
Kwon O-jin clenched his fists and shouted.
“Let’s go, Riak!”
“Ready when you are, kid!”
They exchanged a glance and nodded in unison.
“One!!!”
Boom!
Kwon O-jin’s body, channeling Exceed, became a streak of blue lightning and surged forward.
Crack!
A fist wreathed in lightning crashed brutally into Barbatos’s philtrum, interrupting the curse he was conjuring.

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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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