Not A Regressor - Chapter 257

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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 257
Cheon Joo-ryong (9)
Dawn was breaking, Barbatos felt it.
Black storm clouds blanketed the Night Sky.
Beyond the suffocating darkness where even starlight could not pierce, a crimson sun was rising.
Illuminating the dense gloom.
Brilliant and austere.
“Get buried, you lizard bastard.”
Ha-eun leaped high, grasping flames that burned like the sun itself.
Her fist, drawn back to its limit, swung forward with brutal force like a cannon shell being fired.
[Ugh!]
Barbatos swallowed his saliva and glared at Ha-eun as she closed in.
He had not anticipated that she would breach the curse barrier so easily.
‘With just his grace, this much should be…!’
He concentrated his will on the horns protruding from his forehead.
Vast power began to flow from within them….
[…What?]
It did not flow.
As though he had entered an area outside service coverage, the connection to his ‘master’ was severed entirely and abruptly.
[What… why?]
Barbatos lifted his head in disbelief, gazing up at the sky.
When had evening fallen?
Staring at the darkened sky, he trembled faintly.
And then.
“Haaaaaaagh!!”
Whoooosh!
With a powerful shout, Ha-eun’s fist, condensed with flame, struck Barbatos’s jaw brutally upward.
[Cough—hack—ack!]
“Your breath seriously reeks like shit.”
Ha-eun furrowed her brow, glaring at Barbatos as he shrieked in agony.
The stench assaulted her nostrils and made her stomach churn, but she could not afford to miss this golden opportunity.
She aimed her fist at Cheon Joo-ryong’s gaping mouth.
“Let me think about the technique name… yes, that would be perfect.”
To materialize the image comfortably, the technique needed a name that suited it best.
After brief deliberation, the name of the new technique was born.
“Ten Dragons Radiant (十龍發光: ten dragons emit light).”
Ten flame dragons condensed within her fist were simultaneously fired into Barbatos’s mouth.
No matter how hard the scales of a dragon might be, the flesh within could never be equally fortified.
The ten flame dragons that flowed down Cheon Joo-ryong’s throat and into his body erupted in violent explosions from within.
[Screeeeeeeeeech!]
Boom!
Barbatos let out a terrible shriek as he crashed to the ground.
Acrid black smoke seeped from his gaping mouth in wisps.
“Haa, haa!”
Ha-eun landed on the ground and collapsed in place, breathing heavily.
“Ugh, I’m seriously dying!”
Ha-eun sprawled out flat on the ground.
Her head spun dizzily from channeling so much mana at once.
As she lay there, Kwon O-jin approached her.
“You did well, noona.”
Kwon O-jin grasped Ha-eun’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Hehe. Did you see?! I told you I could handle him alone!”
“Yeah, I saw.”
But let’s change the name of that technique.
What kind of name is “Damn Dragon Radiance” anyway?
“Oh, and noona, I just became 10-Star! Look at this!”
Ha-eun smiled brightly and pulled down the turtleneck she was wearing.
Pristine white skin wrapped in a black bra came into view.
While not quite comparable to Isabella, Ha-eun’s generous curves were full enough to require both hands to hold.
Kwon O-jin pulled her clothes back up with a startled expression.
“What the hell are you doing out here, you crazy woman?!”
Why was it?
That tiny mole in her cleavage caught his eye far more than the tenth mark etched beside her stigma.
He desperately suppressed the urge to press it with the tip of his index finger.
They were already lovers who had seen everything there was to see, so perhaps there was no real need to hold back—but he certainly couldn’t do something so insane right in front of Vega and Isabella’s watchful eyes.
“Come on, you were kneading it like dough with such enthusiasm before—why are you getting shy now?”
Did this woman truly possess no sense of shame whatsoever?
“…Just put your clothes on properly for now.”
“Hehe. Sure, I can confirm it with my hands instead of eyes later. Not just the stigma either.”
Had she caught him staring intently at the mole in her cleavage?
Ha-eun winked with a suggestive smile playing at her lips.
Having overcome her trauma and defeated Cheon Joo-ryong, Ha-eun was far more excited than usual.
“….”
Kwon O-jin narrowed his eyes as he looked at the fallen Barbatos.
It was true that Ha-eun had grown considerably stronger upon reaching 10-Star.
‘But even accounting for that, it was far too anticlimactic.’
The moment Ha-eun broke through the curse’s veil and jumped toward Barbatos.
He recalled how Barbatos’s movements had suddenly frozen, and he’d looked around in confusion.
[Kugh… cough!]
Barbatos, still spewing black smoke from his mouth, coughed painfully.
“Huh? That bastard’s still alive?”
Ha-eun narrowed her eyes and conjured flames anew.
“Wait a moment, sister.”
I grabbed Ha-eun’s shoulder and approached the fallen Barbatos.
There was something I needed to confirm before finishing him off.
[Why… why did you… abandon me?]
The fallen Barbatos muttered in a voice consumed by despair.
‘Abandon him?’
In this situation, there was only one entity capable of abandoning him—the one he called his ‘master.’
I turned my head to examine Barbatos’s forehead, and the black horns that had protruded there were completely gone.
‘Is this why his movements suddenly stopped?’
I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth.
“Barbatos, who is this ‘master’ you speak of?”
[Ah, ugh, ahhh….]
Instead of answering, Barbatos merely trembled with a sickly pallid face.
I gently placed my hand atop Barbatos’s head as he reeled in shock.
To converse with someone in such a panicked state required considerable rhetorical skill.
“Thunderbolt.”
[Kraaaaaahhhhh!]
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
A fan-shaped expanse of azure lightning burrowed into Barbatos’s body.
He convulsed violently, his frame thrashing and writhing.
“There’s no need to be afraid, Barbatos. It’s alright. Everything will be… alright now.”
I spoke in the gentlest voice I could muster.
The key to interrogation was easing the mind of someone pushed to the brink of extreme tension and panic.
Empathy and understanding were the fundamentals of persuasion.
[Gaaahhhhh! Stop! Stooooop!]
Perhaps my sincerity had reached him.
Barbatos’s gaze, which had been vacant and fixed on empty space, finally turned toward me.
As expected.
Nothing in conversation mattered more than a single word spoken with genuine intent.
“Finally… you’re looking at me.”
I carefully stroked Barbatos’s head as his eyes rolled back white and foam bubbled from his mouth.
My hand glided across scales that had returned to a violet hue.
Perhaps the sensation tickled him.
Each time my hand brushed across him, Barbatos convulsed violently, his body writhing.
[I’ll talk! I’ll tell you, please…!]
“You don’t have to force yourself. If you don’t want to speak, that’s fine too.”
I shook my head with a concerned expression.
Look at Barbatos’s face right now.
I couldn’t force an answer out of him, not when he was trembling with such terror, regardless of who his master was.
[The Heavenly Demon! It was the Heavenly Demon who bestowed grace upon me!]
“…What?”
My hand, which had been stroking Barbatos’s head, froze mid-motion.
‘The Heavenly Demon?’
I turned my head urgently.
“When did you receive this grace?”
[It… wasn’t that long ago.]
“Exactly when?”
[About a month ago… When I was hiding in the Lair and entering hibernation, that person came to me.]
The timing roughly coincided with when the Named Monsters had begun resuming their activities.
“….”
For a moment, I wondered if this was something Cassia had done on her own initiative, but she was currently following my orders and heading to South America to deal with the Fly Constellation Faction.
She wouldn’t have suddenly granted power to Cheon Joo-ryong.
‘Then.’
If the ‘grace of the Heavenly Demon’ had descended upon Cheon Joo-ryong, despite it not being something I had done.
There was only one possibility to consider.
‘The real Heavenly Demon… has begun to move?’
My expression hardened into stone.
* * *
The humid tropical rainforest of South America.
A man wearing thin glasses was rushing through the forest path, clutching his bleeding chest.
“Ugh!”
Perhaps because his wound was severe.
He didn’t make it far before tumbling to the ground.
“Haa, haa!”
With his back against a tree, he gasped for breath.
Ssshhh, ssshhh.
Along the path he had fled, came an eerie sound like a serpent slithering past.
“Have you given up now?”
A woman in a pitch-black dress revealed herself alongside that crystalline voice.
Though she possessed a frail, girl-like frame, her beauty as she wore that faint smile was far too bewitching to be described as merely ‘girlish’.
“…Yes, it seems this is as far as I can go.”
The bespectacled man nodded with a self-deprecating smile.
He gazed up at Cassia with calm, resigned eyes.
“May I ask one thing?”
“By all means.”
“Why… did you attack us?”
“Mmm.”
Cassia extended her long, serpentine tongue and licked her lips.
“The Heavenly Demon said the sound of flies buzzing was irritating.”
“…Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped the man’s lips.
All for such a trivial reason.
Had everything I’d built up crumble to dust in a single moment?
The man let out a hollow laugh and leaned his back against a tree.
“Truly… I’m as insignificant as a fly, just like my stigma. To you all, my existence is nothing but that.”
“Do you wish to live, Adel?”
Cassia looked down at the bespectacled man, Adel, and asked.
Kwon O-jin had ordered his elimination, but if he pledged his loyalty to the Heavenly Demon, she was prepared to spare him for now.
“Ha ha. Do I wish to live, you say….”
Adel let out a bitter laugh and touched the pendant hanging around his neck.
Gazing intently at the photograph of a woman contained within the pendant, he slowly raised his head.
“It’s not a matter of wishing to live.”
The Fly Constellation stigma engraved on his left chest blazed with black light.
“I must live. I have to.”
Rustle, rustle rustle!
The undergrowth trembled as cacophonous shrieks erupted from all directions.
Gwooooooooo!
Through the dense foliage, corpses reeking of putrefaction surged forward in a mass.
“Hmm… for someone claiming to want to live so badly, you don’t seem very eager about it.”
Cassia watched the approaching corpses and clicked her tongue briefly, as though her interest had waned.
“I’ll crush you like the fly you are….”
Just as she raised her hand lightly toward the swarm of creatures approaching with the eerie glow of the Snake Zodiac stigma.
Kurrrrrk.
A black rift tore open in the air, and dark storm clouds poured through the gap.
The bright sun that had been beating down on the sky instantly turned as dark as night.
“What is this…?”
Both Cassia and Adel stared at the suddenly appearing black storm clouds with expressions of shock.
Dark storm clouds that ceaselessly shifted and transformed.
A low voice flowed from within the clouds that bloomed and faded, burning like flames.
[It has been a while.]
Paying no mind to Adel whatsoever.
The black storm clouds advanced toward Cassia.
“…The Heavenly Demon?”
Adel looked up at the black storm clouds and whispered that name softly.
[Indeed.]
The black storm clouds moved up and down as if nodding.
“You are… the Heavenly Demon, sir?”
Cassia examined the black storm clouds with narrowed eyes.
She had been scrutinizing the dark clouds with meticulous care, as though appraising a meticulously forged masterpiece, when a faint laugh escaped her lips.
“A lie.”
It appeared to be a clumsy imitation of his form.
But she could see through it.
“You are not the Heavenly Demon.”
Cassia’s serpentine eyes, slit vertically, gleamed as she unleashed a chilling murderous intent.
With a light flick of her fingers toward the mysterious entity daring to impersonate the Heavenly Demon, a serpent erupted from her shadow and shot toward the black clouds.
[Hm…?]
A bewildered voice emanated from the dark clouds.

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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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