Not A Regressor - Chapter 256

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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 256
Cheon Joo-ryong (8)
“….”
I watched Ha-eun’s legs trembling pitifully.
Tightly clenched lips, fists squeezed shut, her face drained of color, her eyes hollow with terror.
‘Did I push my sister too hard?’
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps it would have been better not to bring her here at all.
I hadn’t realized she harbored such profound fear of Barbatos.
‘I thought my sister would be fine with it.’
Had the memories from when she was blind become such a horrific trauma for her?
Or perhaps I was simply making careless assumptions about her.
That Ha-eun would be okay.
That Ha-eun could brush it off with a smile.
Maybe I’d been pushing unfounded faith on her.
“…I’m sorry.”
Looking back, it was selfish thinking at its finest.
No one can ever fully feel another person’s pain.
We empathize, we try to understand.
But ultimately, pain belongs only to that person alone.
To judge it as ‘this should be manageable’ was profoundly disrespectful.
“Huh? What do you have to apologize for?”
“No, I just… I didn’t realize you felt that way about it.”
Despite spending over twenty years together.
The fact that I hadn’t understood her heart frustrated me.
“So what if you didn’t know? Just because I showed you my vulnerable side doesn’t mean you need to know everything about me.”
Ha-eun smiled playfully and poked my ribs.
It was the version of her I knew well, yet for some reason, her smile felt strained now.
“This isn’t your problem—it’s mine. You don’t need to apologize.”
Ha-eun patted my shoulder.
This was her problem to face.
Only she could resolve it, only she could overcome it.
The moment someone else’s empathy and comfort entered the picture, the meaning of overcoming it would vanish.
Especially if that someone was me.
“Alright, alright. Handle it yourself then.”
I exhaled deeply and stepped back.
For now, I would respect her resolve.
“But if things look even remotely dangerous, I’m stepping in immediately.”
Whether she overcomes her trauma or not.
I wouldn’t let her life be put at risk.
“Okay.”
Ha-eun nodded and drew a sharp breath.
Desperately steadying her trembling legs, she turned her body toward Barbatos.
[What in the world are you doing?]
His voice had turned glacially cold.
They say that when fury exceeds its threshold, the mind grows eerily composed instead.
Barbatos glared at Ha-eun as she approached him alone, grinding his teeth savagely.
Born as a dragon, had he ever tasted such humiliation before?
A rage far more violent than anything he had ever felt ignited within him.
Indeed.
He had been eager to exact a satisfying revenge upon those enemies who had received the “blessing” and cornered him, yet if this woman—who had been cowering in the shadows without even fighting until now—suddenly stepped forward to face him alone, anyone, not just Barbatos, would have been consumed by fury.
“What am I doing? Didn’t you hear? I’m more than enough to handle someone like you on my own.”
Ha-eun drew out a cigarette from her pocket, wearing a smile that feigned composure.
The trembling tip of the cigarette wavered chaotically.
With difficulty, she lit it and drew a deep drag of smoke into her lungs.
“Exhale.”
Now that she possessed a superhuman body where nicotine and tar no longer had any effect.
Perhaps it was the habit ingrained in her body.
She felt her anxious, trembling heart settle somewhat.
“So then, shall we have at it?”
Click.
Twisting her lips into a sneer, she unwound the eye patch covering her left eye.
A grotesque eye socket riddled with sinews.
A reptilian eye gleaming amber turned toward Barbatos.
[That eye is…?]
Barbatos stared at Ha-eun’s eye in disbelief.
How could a human possibly possess a dragon’s eye?
Before an answer to that question could arrive.
“Ignite.”
Ha-eun flicked the cigarette she had been smoking with her middle finger.
Whoooosh!
Savage flames erupted from the cigarette’s tip, coiling around her body like a living creature.
A torrent of scorching heat.
Fire transformed into the shape of a dragon was unleashed toward Barbatos.
[Hmph! You think you can face a true dragon just because you’ve obtained an eye?!]
Barbatos scoffed and flapped his wings violently.
A black veil imbued with curses wrapped around his body protectively.
—Crackle, whoosh.
A curse that even inanimate matter cannot escape.
The raging flames lost their force and scattered.
“Now the real fight begins, you bastard!”
Ha-eun poured flames without pause, her fists clenched tight.
Piercing the veil from a distance with flames was impossible.
Then.
‘I’ll have to break through it myself.’
I took a step toward the cursed veil.
My legs, which had barely stopped trembling, began to shake again.
My breath caught in my throat.
I was terrified.
Unbearably so.
-Sister, are you okay?!
A memory from six years ago surfaced.
After losing consciousness in the fight with Cheon Joo-ryong.
When I opened my eyes in a hospital bed.
-…Huh?
The world was filled with suffocating darkness.
I flailed my arms in panic, thrashing about.
-What’s wrong, sister?
Kwon O-jin took my hand.
But I couldn’t see him anywhere in my vision.
-O-jin… this, this is strange. Ah, I can’t see anything ahead.
A world as dark as a moonless night.
Curled up on the hospital bed, I wept like a small child abandoned alone at home.
‘I wouldn’t have endured it without O-jin.’
Not just when the curse took hold.
My entire life had only been able to bloom in the shadow of Kwon O-jin.
‘It was always that way.’
He was always there before me.
Even as he absorbed the world’s bitter malice with his own body, he never retreated a single step, protecting me.
Wasn’t he terrified?
Wasn’t he afraid?
Even knowing the answer.
I hid behind Kwon O-jin’s shadow, curling up like a snail.
Because it was comfortable.
Because he gave everything to protect me without asking anything in return.
“…Damn it.”
Grit.
I ground my teeth and bit my lip harshly.
Hadn’t Isabella said it once?
That Kwon O-jin was her only ‘hope’.
If Kwon O-jin was hope for Isabella, then for me, he was salvation itself.
On the surface, I put on a tough front and bluffed with bravado.
But in truth, he was the man who protected me—someone far more fragile than anyone else.
‘And yet I call myself his older sister.’
Ha-eun let out a self-deprecating laugh.
By rights, as the older sister, I should have been the one protecting him.
Instead, I hid beneath the shelter he created and received nothing but his protection.
And yet I wished to be someone he could rely on—someone who was his older sister in truth.
“I have to… break free now.”
I couldn’t hide behind him forever, cowering in his shadow.
I needed to stand beside him as an equal.
To face life’s tempests together with him, sharing the burden.
I had to move forward.
[Grrrrr! You insolent wench! Do you truly believe you can pierce through this curse’s veil!]
Toward the entity that had become my greatest fear.
“Haa, haa.”
One step.
My entire body grew heavy, and a vicious exhaustion washed over me.
Two steps.
Nausea surged up alongside a splitting headache.
Three steps.
A bone-chilling cold engulfed me.
Four steps.
A needle-like pain spread like poison through my limbs.
Five steps.
My breath came in gasps as if I’d climbed a towering mountain.
Six steps.
My skin felt as though it were melting, as if I’d submerged myself in an acidic swamp.
Seven steps.
A horrifying sensation of insects crawling through my ears accompanied a bone-chilling scream that pounded against my eardrums.
Eight steps.
Phantoms of my mother and father—whom I’d only seen in photographs—appeared before my eyes, their faces twisted in hatred as they hurled vicious curses.
And the ninth step.
“…Ah.”
My vision fades to black.
A darkness as absolute as a moonless night stole the light from my eyes.
[Khehehehe! A sensation I haven’t savored in so long, is it not?]
Barbatos laughed as he gazed down at Ha-eun, whose footsteps had ceased.
Six years ago, in the past.
The exquisite thrill he’d felt when he stole the light from her eyes—eyes that had sparkled like stars—surged through him once more.
“Aaah.”
Ha-eun curled into herself within the suffocating darkness.
The terrible helplessness and despair I had felt after losing my sight flooded my mind.
“O-jin… O-jin.”
I called his name by instinct.
If I stayed here quietly, huddled in place, he would come to help me.
He would easily crush Cheon Joo-ryong and save me.
As he always did.
Without fail.
‘I hate this.’
Ha-eun lifted her head.
Hadn’t I made a decision?
That I would no longer hide behind his back.
“Hhhh.”
I drew in a deep breath.
A sharp pain pierced through my left eye socket.
A single ray of light began to appear within the endless darkness.
-Whoooooosh!
I felt a dragon made entirely of flame envelop me.
One, two, three… nine dragons in total surrounded my body, standing guard.
The flames illuminated the darkness.
Before my eyes appeared a dragon bearing black scales.
Cheon Joo-ryong Barbatos.
The being that had inflicted such terrible nightmares upon me now stared down at me with eyes wide open.
[Y-you burned the curse?]
Barbatos stumbled backward, his voice trembling with fear.
“Ha.”
A laugh escaped me.
The Cheon Joo-ryong I had seen in nightmares was always terrifying beyond measure.
But now, looking at him, he appeared pathetic and utterly contemptible.
‘It was the same back then.’
I recalled a memory from the past.
A memory from far longer than six years ago.
It was a memory of the Orphanage Director who had inflicted one-sided violence upon me.
To my younger self, the Director’s fists seemed like the demons and monsters from fairy tales.
A divine being I could never overcome.
But then.
-Fire, you say?!
When I saw Kwon O-jin trick that demon with a lie.
When I saw him fleeing pathetically without even shoes on his feet.
I couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
“It wasn’t anything special, was it?”
That’s right.
Just like now.
“Huff.”
I took my tenth step.
A burning pain seared through my left chest.
It wasn’t the pain caused by Barbatos’s curse.
The kind of pain that would make an Awakener cry out in exultant joy.
A tenth mark was etched beside the dragon’s stigma on my body.
And then.
-Whoooosh!
A tenth flame dragon appeared, linking with the nine tails, and coiled around her body.
Ha-eun clenched her fist fiercely, as if grasping at empty air.
Ten flame dragons converged along her arm into her clenched fist.
“Burn.”
Ha-eun pulled her fist wreathed in flames with all her might and drove her foot forward with savage force.

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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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