Not A Regressor - Chapter 328

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

I Am Not a Regressor Chapter 328
Treasure Hunt (7)
“That… what do you mean? Grandfather killed her?”
Ha-eun’s voice grew rigid and strained as she continued.
“You said a bad person killed her earlier…”
“Yes. A bad person. Me.”
Baek Moo-gang gazed down at the dumpling he’d bitten into, his smile tinged with sorrow.
“I’m stupid. There’s nothing I can do on my own.”
That’s why.
“My wife suffered so much because of me.”
Suffered from it. Tormented by it.
Anguished beyond endurance.
“My wife contracted a terrible illness. So… she died.”
Not by anyone else’s hand.
“I killed her.”
Speaking thus, Baek Moo-gang smiled weakly.
Why was it?
Ha-eun felt she could dimly perceive the vast, hollow emotion contained within that smile.
“…Grandfather.”
Because she had experienced the same.
Blind, with one leg severed and unable to walk.
She had become a heavy burden crushing down upon Kwon O-jin’s life.
She still remembered it vividly.
The sight of Kwon O-jin desperately scraping together money for her sake.
The musty smell emanating from the worn, hand-me-down clothes he wore, and the sound of him tearing open the plastic wrapper of a five-hundred-won calorie bar.
Watching that wretched existence unfold beside him, powerless to do anything, was a despair akin to tumbling endlessly into an abyss.
‘What if.’
What if Kwon O-jin had died in an accident while earning money for her sake.
What would have become of her then.
Baek Moo-gang’s image reflected in Ha-eun’s eyes.
The shoulders of the elder who bore the title Cheon Gwon-seong and should have been an object of reverence seemed infinitely pitiful.
“…”
Silence descended like a curtain.
Ha-eun’s lips trembled as though she didn’t know what to say, and then she bit down on them firmly.
“That’s… not grandfather’s fault.”
“It’s my fault.”
He cut off her words decisively, shaking his head.
“If I hadn’t existed, my wife could have lived happily.”
His words flowed matter-of-factly, like reading an explanation from a solution manual, and Ha-eun’s fists clenched involuntarily.
“That’s not true…!”
“That’s not true.”
Kwon O-jin spoke before Ha-eun could respond.
“Whether we’re caring for someone or being cared for, happiness blooms simply from having someone precious by our side.”
Happiness wasn’t as distant as one might think.
Even beyond the darkest clouds where not a glimmer of light pierced through, stars would always shine.
No matter how painful, no matter how agonizing.
A life without Ha-eun would be far worse.
“Hehe. I’m dumb, so I don’t understand such complicated things.”
Baek Moo-gang laughed brightly and resumed stuffing dumplings into his mouth with gusto.
Kwon O-jin regarded him with a bitter gaze.
It wasn’t that he failed to understand.
He simply chose not to understand.
The guilt over his dead wife, atonement for her alone—
Perhaps that was the only way to soothe his sorrow.
“…Is the treasure you’re searching for connected to your wife?”
“Huh?”
Baek Moo-gang tilted his head, his mouth stuffed full of dumplings.
After chewing and swallowing them, he smiled with childlike innocence.
“Treasure is treasure.”
Why was it?
His bright smile, so innocent like a child’s, seemed fragile—as if it might shatter and scatter at any moment.
“Well then. Let’s start by finding Deimos first.”
Whatever the treasure’s true nature was.
To gain Baek Moo-gang’s cooperation, I had no choice but to find this so-called treasure.
“Yeah! I want to find the bad person!”
Baek Moo-gang sprang to his feet with enthusiasm and nodded vigorously.

* * *
The next day.
The full-scale exploration of the Black Rock Mine began in earnest.
Beyond the thick sulfurous gas that blanketed the area, they meticulously searched the mountain range covered in black granite.
“Ugh. There’s nothing visible around here.”
“Tell me about it.”
During a brief rest period.
Ha-eun sat perched on a rock, exhaling a weary sigh.
The ambient heat posed no problem, but the nauseating stench wafting from the sulfurous gas was nearly unbearable even for her.
“…I’m going to head back to the Star Palace for a bit, kid.”
“Yeah, thanks for your hard work.”
Riak let out a deep sigh, looking even more exhausted than Ha-eun.
Among the group, his sense of smell was the most acute, and he was particularly suffering from the thick sulfurous odor blanketing the area.
‘It must be unbearable for him.’
Even I experience splitting headaches whenever I activate the Canis Major Constellation stigma.
The pain Riak must be enduring, with his sense of smell far more sensitive than mine despite my use of the Canis Major Constellation stigma, was almost unimaginable in its intensity.
[This truly is the worst possible place for Riak.]
Vega, perched atop my head as a silvery glow, let out a short sigh as she watched Riak disappear in a shimmer of light.
“Vega, aren’t you going back with him?”
[This one can still endure it.]
Vega grasped my hair and tilted her head slightly.
“Whoa! A centipede! A centipede!”
In the direction of her gaze, Baek Moo-gang was bouncing up and down like a child, having plucked an insect from a crevice in the rocks and holding it aloft.
[…But is he really okay?]
Baek Moo-gang was brimming with energy to a degree that made me suspect the sulfurous gas had gotten to his head.
“He should be fine… probably.”
I rose to my feet with a wry smile.
“Let’s get moving again.”
“Ugh. Already?”
“Resting here won’t make the sulfurous gas disappear.”
Ha-eun sighed and pushed herself up.
Isabella, rising to her feet after Ha-eun, adjusted the vest she was wearing and clicked her tongue lightly.
“I didn’t expect the sulfurous gas to be more of a problem than the heat.”
“Right?”
Had I known, it would have been better to bring an oxygen respirator instead of a vest enchanted with flame resistance.
Of course, the Draconian Kingdom wouldn’t have anything like an oxygen respirator.
“But isn’t this supposed to be Deimos’s territory?”
Ha-eun looked around, turning her head in all directions.
All that was visible was the billowing sulfurous gas and black granite.
Nowhere could be seen any signs of civilization—no maintained roads or buildings worthy of being called a “territory.”
‘So that’s why the elder couldn’t locate Deimos and kept wandering this area aimlessly.’
It would be one thing if there were Demon Race patrols like last time.
But this time, even those Demon Race creatures were nowhere to be seen.
“If he were truly obsessed with precious treasures, he wouldn’t have left his territory as barren and desolate as this.”
A creature so greedy that treasures would cloud his judgment, yet he abandoned his own territory like this?
‘It doesn’t add up.’
Fundamentally, treasures are often used for ostentation, meant to be shown off to others.
As Kwon O-jin furrowed his brow, continuing his train of thought.
“Perhaps his territory might be located beneath this mountain.”
Isabella, who had been calmly surveying the surroundings, spoke up.
“Beneath the mountain?”
“More precisely, within the mountain itself.”
“You mean he carved out the interior of the mountain?”
Isabella nodded and continued.
“While treasures do serve a purpose of display, you wouldn’t leave them openly exposed outside, would you?”
“Ah.”
Now that she mentioned it, her logic was sound.
“You’re right—gold bars and such are typically kept in vaults.”
“Of course, there’s probably still some desire for ostentation, as you said. After all, treasures are inherently contradictory by nature.”
Just as she said.
The very concept of ‘treasure’ contained a fundamental duality.
The desire to flaunt it before others, and the desire to keep it from being stolen.
To satisfy the urge to display, one must reveal the treasure openly, yet this increases the risk of theft.
A tightrope walk between the desire to show and the desire to protect.
Treasure could only be contradictory by its very existence.
‘Well, you’d only know if you’d owned something expensive.’
Since I had never possessed anything worthy of being called a treasure, the thought hadn’t occurred to me.
“So we just need to dig up the ground?!”
Baek Moo-gang’s eyes gleamed as he hefted his rusted iron sword high.
He drove the blade into the solid granite and began carving through it as easily as if he were digging through soft soil.
“I’m good at digging!”
“No, no! You can’t just dig like that.”
Isabella stopped Baek Moo-gang with a flustered expression.
Baek Moo-gang sucked on his finger and tilted his head in confusion.
“Why? You said it’s down there?”
“We’re not even certain it’s beneath the mountain, and if we just tunnel straight down, we won’t know what’s waiting for us below.”
In the worst case, we could fall directly into the midst of Deimos and his knights.
‘I need to find the entrance to the mine.’
If he carved out the interior of the mountain to create an Underground City.
Then the entrance must surely exist on the outside.
“So where should we go?”
“If a territory truly exists beneath the mountain, we should be able to access it through the mine entrance.”
“Is that so?”
The problem was that even locating the mine entrance proved difficult.
‘Should I use Weaver Star’s Hunting Dog?’
A technique that indiscriminately absorbs surrounding information directly into the mind.
It could scan even invisible internal structures as if performing a CT scan.
‘But the issue is that it absorbs information indiscriminately.’
Even using it in an empty wasteland brought crushing headaches that threatened to split my skull.
In this place saturated with such vicious sulfurous gas that even Riak couldn’t endure it and collapsed, I honestly had no confidence in managing the aftermath if I activated Weaver Star’s Hunting Dog.
‘If it just ended with vomiting, I’d consider myself lucky.’
An ominous premonition suggested the aftereffects would be far more severe.
“Sigh.”
As I continued wrestling with this unsolvable dilemma.
“I know where the mine entrance is.”
A bombshell statement dropped from Baek Moo-gang’s mouth.
“…Pardon?”
He knows?
“Yeah! I’ve been inside before! But there was nothing there, so I came back out!”
“Why are you only telling me this now?”
So we’d been wasting time all this while?
“Huh?”
Baek Moo-gang tilted his head in confusion.
“You didn’t ask.”
“…Ah, right.”
I suppose I didn’t ask.
‘I really want to smack the back of his head.’
Anger surged within me, but the moment I saw Baek Moo-gang’s innocent, wide-eyed expression—as if he genuinely didn’t understand what he’d done wrong—my rising fury evaporated instantly.
“Let’s head to the mine entrance.”
“Yeah! I remember where it is! Wasn’t that great?”
Baek Moo-gang grinned broadly, his smile radiating as if seeking praise for his accomplishment.
“…Sigh.”
Had securing his cooperation truly been a wise decision?
Dwelling on this recurring doubt, I followed Baek Moo-gang toward the mine entrance.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————