Not A Regressor - Chapter 262

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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 262
Snowy Field (2)
“Ugh, argh!”
Blood cascaded down like water from a fountain.
The heat seared through my shoulder as if branded by a red-hot iron.
The poison-like agony gnawed away at reason itself.
“Hnngh!”
Suppressing the dizzying pain, I drove my folding knife down onto Cassia’s arm as she clutched my waist.
Crack!
The recoil that transmitted through my hand was far stronger than I would have expected from striking such a delicate forearm.
Still, the attack had connected to some degree.
The strength in the arm wrapped around my waist weakened momentarily.
-Whoosh!
I rolled roughly across the ground, creating distance between myself and Cassia.
I pulled an emergency potion from the sling bag I always carried and poured it onto the severed surface of my right arm, torn away below the shoulder.
“Hmm. How quick and cunning of you, fitting for a liar.”
Cassia licked the blood flowing from her knife-pierced forearm with her tongue, then discarded my severed right arm like garbage onto the ground.
“Y-you…?”
Isabella, who had been breaking through the shadow wall, stared down at my severed arm lying on the ground, her eyes wide open.
“What are you doing right now?”
Isabella glared at Cassia with a rigid, frozen expression.
A thick killing intent blazed from her eyes.
“Hm? I’m simply punishing the liar.”
“….”
Isabella’s gaze turned glacial.
Looking down at my severed arm on the ground, she stopped breaking through the wall and turned her body toward Cassia.
“How dare you….”
Click, click-click.
The sound of her nervously gnawing her nails echoed with a chilling resonance.
“How dare you harm Kwon O-jin’s arm…!”
Crunch.
Red droplets of blood trickled from between her shattered nails.
The crimson drops flowing down her fingers transformed into the shape of a red scythe.
Her pupils, devoid of light, fixed upon Cassia.
“Stop, Isabella!”
I heard my own urgent voice, but I could not stop her.
There was no way I could let this woman who dared wound my body go unpunished.
No matter that she was my Elder Sister, whom I had desperately sought for ten years.
Isabella gripped the red scythe and stomped forward with fierce intensity.
Whoooosh!
A trail of blood etched into the ground.
Isabella glided along that crimson path and swung her scythe with tremendous force.
“Still such terrible manners, talking back to your Elder Sister like that.”
Cassia let out a cold sneer and clenched her fist as if grasping at empty air.
Shadows climbed up her body and coalesced in her hand.
What the shadows formed was an elongated staff.
At the staff’s end, two serpents coiled around it, their mouths adorned with emerald-hued orbs.
Ting.
The bells rang out with crystalline clarity.
Shadows exploded outward from the staff’s center, striking away Isabella’s scythe.
Clang clang clang clang!
The crimson scythe ricocheted violently, and Isabella’s body was driven backward.
“The one with bad manners is you, Elder Sister.”
Isabella glared fiercely at Cassia and dragged her palm across the blade of the red scythe.
Blood surged forth, and crimson blades poured toward Cassia.
“…How dare you speak such words, knowing nothing?”
Cassia’s pupils, devoid of light, turned toward Isabella.
The jewel embedded in her forehead emitted an ominous black radiance.
She swung the staff lightly through the air.
Whoooosh!
Black serpents erupted along the staff’s trajectory, forming a colossal barrier.
Crimson blades and the serpent wall collided.
The earth tore apart like paper, and a towering amusement ride dozens of meters high toppled, kicking up clouds of dust.
“Flow forth.”
Isabella turned her bleeding palm downward.
Drops of blood fell in succession, creating circular ripples that stained the earth crimson.
Flowers bloomed from the blood-drenched earth.
Hundreds of blood flowers—their stems and leaves all a vivid scarlet—unfurled around Isabella as their center.
As if standing in the midst of a garden wrought from blood itself.
Isabella slowly raised her scythe within the garden of blood.
“Heh, such pretty flowers.”
Cassia stepped forward without hesitation into the profusely blooming garden of blood flowers.
She plucked one blood flower and held it up, bursting into laughter.
“Now that I think about it, do you remember? When you were little, you made me a flower crown.”
The vast Colgrand Family Garden.
Isabella holding a crown of wildflowers with a radiant smile, and Cassia sitting in a wheelchair, gazing at Isabella with warm eyes.
Precious memories I can no longer recall when they were made.
“…I don’t remember.”
In truth, I do remember.
So vividly that I cannot forget it even in dreams.
“What? You don’t remember? I do. Hehe, how utterly revolting you looked placing that flower crown on my head back then… just thinking about it makes my stomach churn.”
“….”
Isabella bit her lip harshly.
Even knowing that Cassia wasn’t in her right mind.
“Revolting… you say?”
“Hehe. What, did you think I’d enjoy it?”
Each word that spilled from Cassia’s mouth became a dagger, piercing deep into her chest.
The precious album of memories she’d carefully treasured was torn to shreds by those sharp blades.
“Shut up.”
Isabella’s eyes snapped open fiercely as she swung her scythe.
Hundreds of blood flowers blooming around her erupted simultaneously, creating a terrifying explosion.
Rummmmmble!
The earth trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
With merely a human body, she unleashed destruction approaching that of a natural disaster.
But.
“Hmm. I thought they were pretty flowers, but inside they’re just like you?”
Even within that distant explosion, Cassia stood perfectly unscathed.
“Now it’s my turn?”
Tinkle.
With a clear chiming sound, black snakes surged toward Isabella like a tidal wave.
“Hah!”
Tens, hundreds, thousands.
An incomprehensible number of snakes, too vast to count.
Isabella swung her scythe violently, slashing through the snakes that rushed toward her like a tsunami.
How much time had passed like this?
“Haa, haa!”
Isabella exhaled roughly, leaning her body against the crimson scythe as if it were a staff.
“Already exhausted?”
Compared to Isabella, whose breathing was so ragged she looked ready to collapse at any moment, Cassia’s condition had barely changed from their initial clash.
Her breathing was only slightly more hurried.
As Cassia twisted her lips into a smile and took a light step forward, her body vanished into the shadows, reappearing instantly before Isabella’s eyes.
“I suppose I need to punish our Bella too.”
“…Elder Sister.”
Cassia’s eyes gleamed with an eerie emerald light.
She raised her hand gripping the staff high and brought it down toward Isabella.
Or rather, precisely speaking.
‘Attempted’ to bring it down.
“Ugh….”
Cassia’s body froze like a machine with its switch turned off.
She let out a low groan, biting her lip.
“Ah, ugh.”
The cane slipped from my fingers, falling to the floor with a clear, crystalline chime.
I curled my body inward, gripping my head with both hands.
“Stop, please… No, I can’t… stop…”
My body trembled violently as I muttered incoherently.
Each time I convulsed, the jewel embedded in my forehead radiated an obsidian light.
“Ah, ugh. Ah.”
Like a fish thrashing back into the water, I straightened my body and lifted my gaze toward the sky.
The sky obscured by my shadow was shrouded in absolute darkness, devoid of even a single glimmer of light.
Memories surfaced.
Old ones. Faded ones.
Memories I never wished to recall again.
-I apologize. Cassia’s condition cannot be treated with modern medicine.
The doctor’s words fell like a death sentence.
I couldn’t remember the precise diagnosis.
It was a disease where the muscles in my legs, then my torso, then my arms, and eventually my entire body would cease functioning and harden like stone.
An incurable illness that even the Colgrand Family’s vast wealth could not cure.
All I could do was sit in my wheelchair as my body progressively hardened, waiting for death to arrive.
-Hehe, Elder Sister Cassia! Look at this!
Isabella presented me with a crown woven from wildflowers, her smile radiant.
Watching her bound about in perfect health, as if mocking me in my wheelchair, I felt such profound despair.
Yet I smiled.
As if nothing were wrong.
As if it meant nothing.
Because I believed that only then would those I loved not grieve.
Then came that fateful night.
I awoke late and passed through the corridor, where I heard a voice.
It was my mother, speaking with my father.
-At least it’s a relief.
A relief? What could possibly be a relief?
-If Bella had been afflicted too, I truly… sigh.
My mother’s sigh, tinged with unmistakable relief.
In that moment, my world shattered into fragments.
Yes.
My life—Cassia Colgrande’s life—
was nothing more than ‘at least a relief.’
Like a lottery ticket marked with a losing number.
Unwanted.
Undesired.
A crumpled scrap of paper destined only for the trash.
On that day, she lost everything.
Her affectionate father, her gentle mother, her beloved younger sister.
Even herself.
Time passed.
According to family protocol, she was abandoned in a distant hospital in Iceland.
She felt no resentment, no sorrow.
After all, she had nothing left.
All she possessed was a deteriorating, wretched body.
Discarded by the family, she was abandoned once more when a colossal Dimensional Rift opened to the Demon Realm.
As monsters surged like a tidal wave, no one came to her aid.
Dragging her wheelchair with trembling effort, she collapsed upon a pristine Snowy Field.
Alone in the relentless blizzard and endless expanse of white, she was left behind.
So bitterly cold.
Piercing and searing.
A memory frozen in numbing chill.
“Aah.”
The Sky, dark as a moonless night.
Cassia lowered her head, her body swaying unsteadily as she raised her cane.
“I must… follow their words.”
She remembers.
She recalls.
She relives.
Her body trembling violently, tears streaming pitifully down her face.
The memory of that day when she awaited approaching death.
A nightmare that never breaks.
“…I must.”
Never again.
Will I be abandoned—
“Heavenly Thunder!”
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
A bolt of azure lightning fell from the Sky, piercing through Cassia’s body.
Cassia let out a low cry and staggered backward.
Whoosh!
Kwon O-jin bound Isabella’s body with wire and swiftly pulled her toward him.
“Phew.”
He embraced Isabella, still gasping for breath, with his remaining arm.
“Haa, haa. I’m alright now, Kwon O-jin.”
Isabella, catching her breath, pushed herself upright.
She manifested her crimson scythe again and continued, “I’ll buy us time. In the meantime, you escape. Earlier, I managed to create a small gap in the shadow wall.”
“I’ll buy us some time, so you escape in the meantime, Kwon O-jin. I managed to create a small gap in the shadow wall earlier.”
“No.”
I flatly refused her words and shook my head.
“Fighting together is better than nothing.”
“….”
In the first place, even if I wanted to flee, shadows engulfed all directions—escape was impossible.
Even if I created an opening, I couldn’t abandon Isabella.
As I raised my remaining arm and took a fighting stance, Isabella sighed deeply and placed her hand on my shoulder.
“Run.”
A soft command flowed from her lips.
“Ugh!”
Against my will, my body moved of its own accord.
“Isabella!”
“I’m sorry, Kwon O-jin.”
Isabella offered a faint smile.
“But I felt the same way back then.”
With a playful wink, she gripped her scythe tightly.
She pushed off the ground once more and charged toward Cassia Colgrande.

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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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