Not A Regressor - Chapter 382

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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 382
Interlude – Sisters (6)
Darkness settled over the Abandoned Building.
Between wisps of acrid smoke rising like heat shimmer, two eyes blazed with an azure glow as I fixed my gaze on Cassia.
I spoke in a low, measured voice, my grip firm around Cassia’s throat.
“No matter how much you struggle, you’ll never become Isabella. There’s no reason you ever could.”
“….”
Cassia offered a faint smile even as my hand closed around her neck.
A smile so fragile it seemed it might shatter at any moment.
“…I know.”
“Then—”
“It’s already too late.”
Too late.
Too late for what, exactly?
“I’m sorry, Kwon O-jin. I… I can’t give up.”
“Cassia…!”
Crack!
A black serpent sank its fangs into my hand that gripped Cassia’s throat.
My grip weakened in that instant, and I released her.
“Ugh!”
I incinerated the snake that had bitten my hand with a lightning strike, then quickly created distance between us.
I had intended to evade her incoming attack, but—
“Hah, hah, hah!”
Cassia merely clutched her chest, breathing in ragged, labored gasps.
“….”
In a sense, it was an inevitable outcome.
She was already in such critical condition that it would have been no surprise if she collapsed before we even began fighting.
‘The fact that she’s held on this long is remarkable in itself.’
Honestly, I had expected to subdue her far more easily.
‘To put it bluntly, it’s like fighting a patient who should be lying in an ICU on life support.’
Cassia’s condition was utterly dire.
‘It has to be Isabella.’
There weren’t many beings capable of inflicting such catastrophic internal injuries on an Awakened One as formidable as Cassia.
I exhaled deeply and lowered the spear I had aimed at Cassia.
“Ha, ha. Why are you lowering your spear?”
“You know better than anyone that you can’t continue fighting in that condition.”
“Hehe. Whether we continue or not is my decision to make.”
Cassia’s gaze shifted toward Isabella, bound by shadow serpents, her expression cold and contemptuous.
“If you don’t raise your spear, Bella will be hurt.”
“…Cassia.”
“Fight me already!”
Watching Cassia scream hysterically, I clenched my lips tight.
I turned back to Isabella, bound and unconscious by the shadow serpent, and tightened my grip on the spear.
“That’s right. If you want to save Bella, there’s no way but to kill me, is there?”
Cassia’s breathing came in ragged gasps, yet a satisfied smile played across her lips.
I ground my teeth as I examined Isabella, still bound and unconscious.
For now, she appeared only to be asleep with no visible injuries, but if I failed to comply with Cassia’s demands, I couldn’t predict what would happen to Isabella’s life.
‘There’s no choice….’
Then.
That strange sense of discord I’d felt from the moment I first saw Cassia rippled down my spine once more.
‘What?’
Click, click.
Like misaligned gears.
Like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit.
A sickly unease burned hot in my mind.
‘…What is it?’
What went wrong, and when and where did it start?
What was I missing?
“….”
I turned my head to look at Isabella again.
Her face unmarred, pristine.
Even in this situation, her unconscious form with eyes closed struck me as breathtakingly beautiful.
And.
“Ah.”
A soft exclamation escaped my lips.
Laughter leaked unbidden between my teeth.
I barely suppressed the urge to laugh outright, covering my face with my hand as my shoulders trembled.
‘How did I not notice something so simple?’
The identity of that discord I’d felt from the beginning was absurdly straightforward.
The fact that I hadn’t realized it until now was enough to make me feel a touch of self-reproach.
‘Yes, that’s what happened.’
I regarded Cassia with bitter eyes.
A woman breathing as though she might collapse at any moment, yet watching me with sharp intensity.
How much had that frail, girl-like frame carried all this time?
‘Now it’s time to end this.’
This pathetic, crude farce.
I would bring down the curtain with my own hands.
I slowly raised the spear and aimed it at Cassia.
Crackle, crackle!
The stigma engraved on my left chest blazed brilliantly, illuminating the darkness.
“Understood. If that’s what you want, then so be it.”
“Hehe. So you’ve finally decided to listen to me?”
Cassia’s lips curved into a leisurely smile as she gave a light shrug of her shoulders.
Her expression was composed, but I could see through it.
Beneath that mask of composure lay a face twisted with agony.
“Haah.”
I exhaled softly and focused my consciousness on my left chest.
Beneath the stigma etched upon my chest, I awakened the slumbering Black Sky.
Kurrrrrgh.
Dark clouds churned and intertwined with the azure lightning that engulfed my entire body.
Black Thunder.
The lightning of Heukcheon—capable of tearing even the Sacred Domain of the Constellation—gathered at the tip of my spear.
“There will be no pain.”
“Hmph. You speak as though you’ve already won.”
Cassia’s eyes narrowed in displeasure.
A black serpent writhed forth from the shadows, coiling protectively around her body.
“I’m not such an easy woman, you know?”
“….”
True.
That would be the case.
Despite having become entangled with quite a number of women thus far, I had never encountered one whose heart was twisted as intricately as hers.
I drew the spear I gripped tightly backward and lowered my stance.
“Here I come.”
Like releasing a taut bowstring, I surged forward with explosive acceleration.
Shaaaaa!
The black serpent reared up, blocking my path.
I drove through the charging serpents, shouldering them aside as I continued my charge.
The serpents, shredded by the black lightning that enveloped my entire body, scattered across the ground in fragments.
“….”
Cassia gazed at the serpent barrier crumbling uselessly before her, a faint smile gracing her lips.
After a brief sigh, she spread both arms wide toward the approaching black lightning.
As if asking to be killed.
“…Hehe.”
Why was this happening?
Tears threatened to spill forth.
It was something I had resolved to do, something I had anticipated.
And yet, regret came only now.
A self-deprecating smile rose to my lips.
‘I’m sorry.’
As a final act, Cassia turned to look at Isabella, who remained bound, and slowly closed her eyes.
Crack, crackle!
The sound of black lightning burning fiercely drew closer.
If I had to find a silver lining in this misfortune.
Considering the tremendous power contained in that black lightning from before, the promise of painlessness would indeed be true.
It was finally ending.
All the suffering that had tormented her for so long.
Crackle!
I hurled the spear I’d been holding back with all my strength.
The moment the spear wreathed in black lightning was about to pierce through Cassia’s body.
“Ugh!”
Boom!
I pivoted my body half a rotation, using my foot planted firmly against the ground as my axis.
And the follow-up throw.
The spear released from my hand was aimed at.
The direction where Isabella hung suspended in the air.
Crackle!
The black lightning gathered on the spear spread outward in all directions, piercing through the black serpents binding Isabella.
The serpents pierced by the black lightning transformed to ‘white’ and tumbled to the ground with dull thuds.
‘Now!’
Whoosh!
I fired a wire to swiftly catch Isabella’s falling body.
“Phew.”
Having safely caught Isabella, I exhaled a breath of relief.
Cassia, who had been waiting for approaching death with her eyes closed, cried out in bewilderment.
“W-what are you doing right now?!”
“What do you think?”
I handed the unconscious Isabella to Cassia and glanced back at where the white serpents had fallen.
“I’m bringing down the curtain on this damned play.”
“….”
At the word ‘play,’ Cassia’s expression hardened rigidly.
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
In the abandoned building where silence had settled.
Soft applause echoed through the air.
The white serpents scattered across the floor began to writhe and gather, transforming into a human shape.
“Impressive.”
A white-haired man—the first impression being ‘pristinely white.’
The man with skin and hair as white as a snowy field smiled kindly at me.
“I was quite confident in my ability to conceal my presence… but how did you realize I was here?”
“The wound.”
“The wound… you say? Hmm. What wound are you referring to?”
The white-haired man tilted his head in confusion, as if unable to comprehend.
Kwon O-jin turned to look at Isabella, who lay unconscious cradled in Cassia’s arms, and continued speaking.
“She doesn’t have a scratch on her.”
Not a single blemish marred Isabella’s skin, her eyes closed in slumber.
“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Cassia was in such a severe state of internal injury that she could barely walk.
Yet the Isabella she had kidnapped bore not a single wound?
If there had been no physical struggle between them, Cassia’s injuries made no sense. If there had been one, Isabella’s pristine condition was far too convenient.
Of course, it was possible she had sustained unnecessary internal injuries to subdue Isabella without leaving a mark.
‘But there’s no reason for that.’
If Cassia’s purpose was to kill me and plunge Isabella into despair—
then there was no reason to subdue her without a single wound.
“Hmm. No wounds, you say. Now that you mention it, that’s true.”
The white-haired man nodded, as if recognizing his own oversight.
Kwon O-jin turned to face the white-haired man and spoke in a low voice.
“Cassia’s internal injuries weren’t sustained subduing Isabella.”
It was the opposite.
They were wounds she had taken fighting this white-haired man to prevent Isabella’s abduction.
‘And she failed.’
What came after was painfully obvious without needing to witness it.
Once the white-haired man had seized Isabella, he must have made Cassia an offer.
If she wanted her sister to live, lure me here.
Lure me here, and kill me.
“Isn’t that right, Mobius?”
It wasn’t I who had been held hostage and coerced with Isabella as leverage.
It was Cassia.
“Haha. How honored I am that the master of Heukcheon would acknowledge such a lowly constellation.”
Mobius, the man as pristine white as the Snowy Field itself, offered a final chuckle and bowed with deliberate courtesy.
“Since that person said I am ‘different from them,’ I suppose this is our first meeting?”
Beyond the serene and gentle smile that brought peace merely by gazing upon it—
“I am Mobius, a constellation of the Serpens Constellation.”
gleamed emerald eyes as sinister as a viper’s, glinting with malevolent intent.

* * *
-Cassia, Elder Sister!
And yet, why was it so?
The more that ugly jealousy and hatred festering in the depths of my heart grew and swelled.
-Hehe. I love you the most, Elder Sister!
Your smile, radiant as wildflowers in bloom, became all the more vivid in my mind.
Why.
I cannot…
bring myself to hate you.

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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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