Not A Regressor - Chapter 254

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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 254
Cheon Joo-ryong (6)
Crack!
A dull, heavy sound—like swinging a club at a sack of meat.
Riak’s fist, accelerated by Excide, lashed across Barbatos’s philtrum, sending his body ricocheting backward like a stone skipping across water.
A guttural snarl tore from his throat.
Crackle!
Riak surged forward toward the recoiling Barbatos.
The muscles of his right arm, fist clenched, swelled as though they might burst.
Like a hammer driving a nail, his clenched fist came down hard on Barbatos’s abdomen as he flew backward.
A violent cough wracked his frame.
Barbatos, driven into the earth, spat blood.
A pained grunt escaped him.
Clutching his abdomen, Barbatos desperately raised his arm.
A violet aura surged toward Riak.
Slow.
With fluid grace, Riak executed a backward tumble, evading the violet radiance.
A furious roar tore free.
Barbatos staggered to his feet, his gaze fixed on Kwon O-jin with murderous intensity.
Of course, he didn’t voice the pathetic question of why he’d charged after counting only one when he’d said to count three.
Rather, the mere fact that he’d fallen for such a trivial deception had wounded his lofty pride.
How did you time that so perfectly?
Kwon O-jin glanced back at Riak, letting slip a brief exclamation of admiration.
To deceive the enemy, one must first deceive one’s allies—or so the saying went.
He’d charged without coordinating beforehand, so Barbatos wouldn’t catch on.
Yet watching Riak’s entry timing as he delivered the follow-up strike, it was flawless—as though they’d planned it from the start.
Hmph. Who do you think I am, boy?
Riak snorted derisively, baring his fangs in a savage grin.
In terms of combat experience, you’d need to regress ten more times before you could match me.
Fair point.
True enough.
One couldn’t presume to lecture Riak on experience—that would be like teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs.
Stop spouting nonsense and focus on the fight, boy.
Roger.
Kwon O-jin answered curtly, turning his attention back to Barbatos.
A violet aura unfurled like a curtain.
No more petty tricks will work on me!
Barbatos spread both arms wide, scattering the violet radiance in all directions.
A violet veil unfurled around him as though he’d inscribed a magic circle.
To approach him, there was no choice but to break through that cursed luminescence.
“Not a chance.”
I gripped Dantalian and surged toward the luminous veil.
“Let’s see just how powerful this vaunted curse truly is.”
The moment I hurled myself into the violet curtain.
“Ugh!”
A sensation as though a massive weight of iron pressed down upon my body.
My breath caught in my throat, accompanied by a dizzying wave of exhaustion.
It felt as though I’d just completed an endless march while carrying dozens of kilograms of military gear.
An overwhelming urge to collapse onto the ground and surrender to sleep surged through me.
‘The curse of fatigue.’
A curse I’d heard Ha-eun describe countless times before.
—Whoooosh!
Then.
A blue radiance burst from my pocket, enveloping my body.
The sensation of drinking a cup of coffee in the depths of extreme exhaustion.
‘The effect of the lucky pouch Isabella gave me.’
It didn’t completely dispel the curse, but it proved effective at weakening it considerably.
“Hah!”
I drew in a deep breath and moved forward with rough, deliberate strides.
A horrific stench assaulted my nostrils.
My ears rang, and sound became muffled.
My vision suddenly inverted.
The deeper I penetrated into the veil, the more countless curses descended upon me.
But.
“Not living up to the rumors.”
I twisted my lips into a grin and pushed through the veil.
“There!”
I saw Cheon Joo-ryong staring at me with wide, startled eyes.
“Spear thunder.”
Crackle!
Blue lightning erupted from the spear’s tip, engulfing Barbatos.
Barbatos yelped in alarm and quickly rolled across the ground.
“For a lizard, you certainly seem to enjoy crawling on the floor.”
Riak appeared from the opposite side and kicked Barbatos’s head like a ball as he rolled.
“Gaaaah!”
Despite being covered in filth, Barbatos’s beautiful face swelled grotesquely.
‘Close combat is definitely not his strength.’
The curses were troublesome, but setting them aside, Barbatos’s movements were far slower and clumsier than any of the formidable opponents I’d faced before.
“You… you wretched creatures…!”
Barbatos wiped the blood trickling from his nose and glared at me and Riak with amber eyes.
Soon, a violet aura enveloped his body.
-Uuuuuuuuuung!
As the aura expanded, Barbatos transformed from his human form into the shape of a dragon.
Violet scales covered his entire body.
Eerie amber eyes gleamed, and two black horns protruded from his forehead.
In an instant, Barbatos transformed into a colossal form reaching 50 meters and unleashed a savage roar toward the sky.
[KaaaaaaaaaaaaRAAAAAAAAAAA!!]
A dragon’s roar that shook the eardrums—or rather, seemed to seize and shake the very soul.
Could the roar itself be infused with a curse?
A terrible headache surged, and nausea welled up.
“This brat’s mouth reeks of shit, yet he bellows so loudly. What a nuisance.”
I suppressed the rising nausea and curled my lips into a smirk.
Now that Cheon Joo-ryong had returned to his true form.
The real battle was about to begin.
[The crime of wounding this Barbatos’s noble body! I shall make you pay with your lives!]
A voice resonated directly within my mind.
“Oh my, I’m so scared I might wet myself. What should I do?”
Barbatos’s dialogue sounded like it was plucked from some list of “100 Most Clichéd Villain Lines in History,” and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
Hearing such hackneyed dialogue actually eased my tension.
[Krrrrrrr!]
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Barbatos flapped his massive wings and soared into the air.
As the 50-meter giant took flight, his shadow darkened the surroundings.
“Wait, what? I thought he couldn’t fly?”
According to Ha-eun, Barbatos couldn’t take to the sky, but something must have changed in the past six years—he was flapping his wings and flying perfectly well.
[Now that I have received his grace, even these rotted wings are no constraint upon this Barbatos!]
Barbatos cried out from high above, his voice dripping with arrogance.
‘His grace,’ he says.
I narrowed my eyes and gazed up at the black horns protruding from Barbatos’s forehead.
Horns that did not exist in Lee Shin-hyuk’s memories.
Could those be proof of the ‘grace’ Barbatos spoke of?
[Crawl like worms upon the ground and writhe in miserable agony!]
High above, Barbatos’s scales blazed with light.
Violet auras infused with curse energy poured down like rain, as if carpet-bombing from the sky.
“Hmm. So he can fly.”
In combat, the ability to take flight was an enormous advantage.
There was a reason the saying existed that air superiority wins wars—launching one-sided bombardment from an unreachable distance meant that even the most formidable power would have no choice but to yield.
But.
“Riak, I’ll go left.”
“Then I’ll take the right.”
The massive advantage of ‘being able to fly’ was a weapon that didn’t work against Kwon O-jin and Riak.
—Boom!
Kwon O-jin and Riak pushed off the ground and jumped simultaneously.
No matter how superhuman their bodies were, they couldn’t jump hundreds of meters into the sky where Cheon Joo-ryong was flying.
‘Lightning step.’
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Kwon O-jin and Riak sprinted through empty air as if it were a running track.
The two of them split perfectly to either side, moving in perfect synchronization as if they’d trained together for years, and charged toward Cheon Joo-ryong.
[What…!]
Barbatos let out a gasp of shock at the sight of the two of them sprinting through empty space as if it were a field.
[Tch!]
Barbatos hastily changed the direction of the curse.
With Kwon O-jin and Riak splitting apart and charging from both sides, there was only one target to aim for.
Barbatos chose Kwon O-jin.
[I shall grant you the ultimate agony a human can endure!]
Barbatos’s scales were entirely engulfed in an ominous violet light.
In an instant.
A dizzying pain washed over Kwon O-jin—as if his skin were being sliced by razor-sharp blades and boiling oil poured into the wounds.
A curse of agony.
It was among the most powerful of the thousand curses Barbatos could wield.
Those afflicted by this curse would writhe in terrible pain until they went mad or suffered convulsions that led to death—a horrifying curse indeed.
Now that he was cursed, terrible screams would soon ring out like a song—
“You picked the wrong opponent.”
Thump.
Kwon O-jin, who had sprinted through the air, landed on Barbatos’s wing.
He gripped the spear upside down, its tip pointing downward.
His eyes burned with blue lightning as he smiled brightly.
[What…?]
Barbatos stared at Kwon O-jin in disbelief.
Had the curse not taken effect?
No, that wasn’t it.
Capillaries burst in both eyes, turning them bloodshot, and his bitten lips.
Arms and legs trembling violently.
The curse of agony was definitely inflicting dizzying pain upon him.
There were two things Barbatos had overlooked.
One was that the charm pouch Kwon O-jin carried was weakening the curse’s effects.
“You should have used it on Riak instead.”
For a human named Kwon O-jin, ‘pain’ was hardly a significant problem.
Crackle-crackle-crackle-crackle!
Blue lightning gathered at the spear’s tip, blazing like a savage beast.
I thrust the spear downward with brutal force, piercing through the left wing that fluttered with vigorous strength.
Azure lightning spread wide, consuming the wing in flames.
[KRAAAAAAAGH!]
Barbatos twisted his body, letting out a horrific scream.
With one wing severed and his trajectory lost, his massive form plummeted from the sky.
“Hmph! The result would have been the same even if I’d used my side, you whelp.”
Beneath the falling Barbatos.
Riak, who had been waiting as if in ambush, bared his fangs savagely.
Crackle!
Blue claws forged from lightning materialized in Riak’s hands.
“Flash Lightning.”
A wolf transformed into a single streak of azure electricity tore through the air.
A long wound carved itself across Barbatos’s chest, and blood poured forth.
[KRAAAAAAAGH!]
Boom!
Barbatos’s colossal body crashed to the ground.
[Gasp… gasp!]
Labored, agonized breaths escaped from his mouth.
‘W-what in the world are these monsters?!’
Six years ago, creatures like this didn’t exist!
Barbatos screamed silently within himself, frantically turning his head to survey his surroundings.
His eyes fell upon a delicate-looking woman with platinum blonde hair.
[Grrrrr!]
Before Kwon O-jin and Riak could close in, Barbatos swiftly lunged toward Isabella.
He seized her body with his massive arm and hoisted her high into the air.
[S-stop! Come any closer and this woman’s life is forfeit!]
Casting aside even his pride as a dragon, Barbatos took the frail-looking woman hostage.
Or rather.
The woman who merely ‘appeared’ frail.
“My?”
Isabella, held captive by Barbatos, widened her eyes in surprise.
“I’ve been captured, haven’t I?”
A deep smile bloomed across Isabella’s lips.

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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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