Not A Regressor - Chapter 87

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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 87
The Saint of Rome (8)
‘━What?’
The Leech Queen?
Damn it, did those bastards just say Leech Queen?
‘Isabella is the Black Star Society’s third-ranked executive?’
What kind of absurd nonsense was that?
‘Wait, then who are those guys… Ah.’
A sensation like lightning striking.
The misaligned puzzle pieces clicked into place, the twisted gears meshing together.
-Ever since the Black Star Society appeared, things have changed drastically. Marco Giorni, who once feared nothing and ran rampant, hasn’t uttered a peep and gone into hiding.
Paolo’s voice echoed in my mind.
‘Damn… I’m such an idiot.’
How had I failed to notice this?
Why, why, why.
‘The one targeting Isabella… wasn’t the Black Star Society.’
Their appearance was far too clumsy to be that of trained assassins.
The ruthlessness with which they wielded weapons against ordinary citizens.
‘The Marco Family.’
They were the ones who had attempted to assassinate Isabella.
‘Wait. But I definitely sensed Black Star’s power from those guys?’
Why would the Marco Family, who had been pushed back by the Black Star Society, possess Black Star’s power?
‘Could it be.’
My eyes widened.
Suddenly, the memory of inheriting Ashad Khan’s knowledge surfaced.
-Heheheh. One must suppress poison with poison, after all.
The true power behind the Black Star Society, called the King’s proxy and leading the Owl Faction.
Cheon Woo-sung.
Words he had let slip in passing.
‘Suppressing poison with poison… was he talking about this?’
Now the entire situation became clear in my mind.
‘The Owl Faction and the Marco Family had joined hands.’
That was why.
I had sensed the Black Star’s power from them.
‘Damn it.’
My head spun as curses were the only thing that could escape my lips.
‘I can overlook not sensing Black Star’s power from Isabella.’
If her true identity really was the Leech Queen, then the gap between us now would be literally heaven and earth, so failing to detect her power was entirely plausible.
But.
‘…I was completely deceived.’
Letting my guard down is merely an excuse.
Claiming the situation left me no choice but to misunderstand is nothing but self-deception.
I simply fell for it like a fool.
Isabella’s masterful performance.
Damn it.
A con artist unable to see through a single act—how pathetic.
A sharp sting of self-reproach weighed heavily upon me.
I’d reflect on this later.
There was no time to dwell on regrets over what had already transpired.
Kwon O-jin narrowed his eyes to slits, focusing intently on the exchange between Isabella and the Marco Family.
“Ha! Now that the prince has fallen, you resort to bluffing?”
“Hm? The prince? Ah… you mean Kwon O-jin.”
Isabella’s lips curved into a radiant smile.
“He certainly is as charming as a prince, isn’t he?”
Hehehehe.
She gazed down at the fallen Kwon O-jin, her eyes gleaming with delight.
“Tch! This… this woman!”
The assassins trembled at her utterly composed demeanor.
“━What are you all doing?”
“B-Boss?!”
Then.
A young man emerged, parting through the assassins.
A shaved head covered entirely in intricate, grotesque tattoos.
“Long time no see~ Marco!”
Isabella waved cheerfully toward the young man.
Marco’s expression twisted savagely.
“Damn woman… let’s see if that mouth of yours keeps flapping even after I tear it to shreds.”
“My. As always, your language is utterly vulgar. Is it because you have no hair?”
“You bitch!!”
Crunch!
Marco gnashed his teeth and raised a spiked club.
-Whoooosh!!
The stigma on his left chest blazed ferociously as intense magical power swept across the surroundings.
“She can’t use magic because of the curse! Seize her quickly!”
“Yes!”
His subordinates bowed deeply.
“Hehehehe. Unable to use magic, you say.”
Isabella’s lips curved into a profound smile.
“It is indeed a vicious curse.”
Due to the Owl Faction’s unexpected intervention, a curse far more potent than she had anticipated had taken hold of her.
That’s right.
Third-ranked executive of the Black Star Society.
Even she, a high-tier awakener who had reached the ’10-Star’ rank, had her magical power sealed.
“━But did you know?”
Isabella spread both arms wide and gazed up at the sky.
The crimson-tinged sunset had given way to darkness,
and now it glittered with brilliant starlight.
“The Leech Queen’s stigma becomes several times stronger when night falls, you know?”
Whoooosh!!
Isabella’s stigma blazed with a deep blood-red light.
“…What?”
Marco’s pupils trembled.
“N-No. That can’t be possible.”
As if he couldn’t believe the reality before his eyes.
He shook his head, his body quivering.
“It’s the Curse of Zamiwon!!! Did you think you could escape its influence just because night has fallen?!”
The Curse of Zamiwon.
Among curses, the highest tier.
Or rather, a curse so powerful it could be called ‘beyond specifications’.
He had poured years’ worth of the organization’s budget and manpower into perfecting the framework of that curse alone.
And even that wasn’t enough—he had barely completed it with support from the Owl Faction.
And yet.
“There’s no way it could be broken in less than half a day!!!! The Curse of Zamiwon is a curse that even the Seven Stars cannot escape from!!!”
“Hmm. Well, that’s true.”
Isabella nodded with a bright smile.
“But that was when I was with the Seven Stars, wasn’t it?”
“…What?”
“Hehe. I’m not one of the Seven Stars anymore, you see?”
Her tone suggested she considered herself above the Seven Stars.
“Y-You crazy woman!”
Marco screamed in disbelief and glared at his subordinates.
“What are you doing?! Kill her now!!”
“B-But.”
“She’s just bluffing, you idiots!! Why are you hesitating?!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
At Marco’s roar, his subordinates trembled but gripped their weapons tighter.
“Chaaarge!!”
“Kyaaah!”
Hundreds of awakeners rushed toward her.
“━My goodness.”
Isabella watched the charging Awakeners with a dark smile spreading across her face.
“Children who don’t know the value of their own lives?”
Her fingernails gleamed crimson.
Her index finger extended in a long, deliberate line.
From left to right.
She traced a scarlet arc through empty air.
━━━━━━━━━━━━!!!!!!
No sound. No noise.
Along the blood-red line that cut through the void,
-Splurt!! Splurrraaagh!!!
Throats split open.
Thud-thud-thud.
Severed heads rolling across the ground.
Crimson fountains of blood adorned the Riverbank shrouded in darkness.
“Ugh, ahhh.”
“Aah, ah.”
In an instant.
In less than a single second.
“Screeeeeeeeeech!!!”
“Monster!! It’s a monster!!”
More than half of the hundreds of Marco Family members lost their heads and died instantly.
“Shhhhh. Haaa~”
Isabella inhaled deeply, watching the cascading torrents of blood.
Then, her delicate brows furrowed slightly.
“Hmm. All I smell is the disgusting stench of iron. What do these creatures eat on a daily basis?”
She glared at the surviving members with evident displeasure.
“Hiii, hiiieeek!!”
“Witch!! She’s a witch!!”
The members were consumed by terror.
They turned from Isabella and began fleeing in desperate panic.
“Oh? Where are you going?”
A blood-soaked voice echoed in their ears.
“Screeeee!! P-please!! Save me!! Saaaaave meeeee!!!”
“You insane bastards!! Don’t run!! Anyone who flees dies by my hand!!”
Marco shouted desperately at his fleeing subordinates, but he could no longer stop their feet.
And in the place where those terrified subordinates fled,
-Whoosh!! Splaaaaaash!!
“Cough!! Gack!!!”
“Gurggggle!”
Hundreds—no, thousands of grotesque figures wearing crimson masks were slaughtering Marco’s fleeing subordinates.
“The Black Star Society!”
Marco’s face twisted into a snarl as he glared at the grotesque figures wearing blood-red masks.
“Damn it!”
He hoisted the spiked club and fixed his gaze upon Isabella.
“Die, you filthy Leech Queen!!!”
He bellowed like a man seized by convulsion, driving his foot forward with savage force.
Boom!!
His stigma blazed brilliantly as a violent gust of wind erupted around his club.
“Hmm.”
Isabella exhaled a languid breath through her nose, her eyes narrowing slightly.
“I distinctly told you not to call me that—the Leech Queen?”
Her voice resonated with an eerie, bone-chilling quality.
-Boom!!!
A deafening roar accompanied a crimson torrent that swept across the surroundings like a tempest.
“Gack!!”
Slice slice slice!!
Marco’s entire body was covered in countless shallow lacerations, as though he had been shredded by razor blades.
When the number of such wounds exceeded a thousand, they ceased to be mere lacerations and became something far worse.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh.”
Marco staggered backward, blood pouring from every inch of his body.
Isabella slowly extended her hand toward him.
The droplets of blood Marco had shed rose into the air, drifting slowly toward her.
“Mm.”
Isabella licked and drank Marco’s blood with her tongue.
Scrunch.
Her expression contorted.
“Ptui!”
She spat the blood from her mouth onto the floor as though she had swallowed something filthy.
“I deliberately accepted a curse and lured him out because he was hiding like a cockroach… but all I got was wasted effort.”
At least it was more palatable than those maggots from before.
That was all.
The taste was utterly worthless—like bait that had volunteered itself.
“P-please… spare me….”
“Hmph.”
Isabella seized both of Marco’s arms and twisted them off with brutal force.
“Gyaaaaaahhhhh!!!”
“Your screams lack refinement.”
Tsk.
Isabella, dissatisfied, now seized Marco’s jaw.
“━Didn’t you say something earlier about tearing open my mouth?”
A radiant smile bloomed across her lips.
“Ah, ah. N-no… AAAAHHHHH!!”
Crack!
I seized the jaw I’d grasped and wrenched it free with brutal force.
Blood cascaded down in torrents, drenching the floor beneath.
“Sigh. What unnecessary trouble that was.”
Overwhelming.
Marco was, after all, one of the “High Awakeners”—those who dwelled in the transcendent realm beyond humanity.
Yet before Isabella, he was no different from a common 3rd or 4th-tier Awakener passing through the streets.
“I apologize for my tardiness, Your Majesty.”
After the Marco Family was annihilated.
An elderly man with neatly groomed gray hair and a dignified bearing approached her.
“…Roberto.”
Isabella gazed down at the bowing elder, her voice glacial as she commanded.
“Kneel.”
“Yes!!!”
Thud!!
The elder called Roberto dropped to both knees without hesitation.
“A chair.”
“Yes, yes!”
After kneeling, he pressed his arms to the floor and prostrated himself.
-Thump.
Isabella settled herself naturally atop Roberto’s back, crossing her smooth legs.
“Even if communications had been cut off, wasn’t that rather excessive delay?”
“I-I’m terribly sorry!”
“And you didn’t notice the Owl Faction infiltrating at all….”
“Please kill me, Your Majesty!!”
“Really? Is that so?”
Isabella’s blue eyes gleamed as she drove her nails into Roberto’s nape without hesitation.
-Squelch!
“Gack! Grrgh!”
Roberto’s eyes rolled back as he began spewing blood from his mouth.
“Shall I truly kill you?”
-Twist, twist.
Isabella wriggled her fingers, buried deep in Roberto’s nape, back and forth.
“Grrgh! Hack! Cough-hack-hack!! P-please, k-kill, m-me!”
Even as blood poured from his mouth, Roberto maintained his position without wavering.
“Hehe. I was only joking.”
Isabella withdrew her fingers with an alluring smile.
She licked the blood-soaked finger with her tongue as she continued speaking.
“In any case, we’ve now dealt with all the troublesome Marco Family members.”
“Y-yes, Your Majesty’s brilliant strategy made this possible.”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
Isabella frowned, clearly dissatisfied.
“Truth be told, this was quite dangerous.”
I hadn’t anticipated the Owl Faction cooperating with the Marco Family, so I fell perfectly into the trap of Zamiwon’s Curse.
If they had captured me just moments ago.
‘I would have suffered something truly horrific.’
Given Marco’s nature, he wouldn’t have killed me outright.
I would have endured every conceivable humiliation until nightfall arrived, and then as the curse lifted, I would have slaughtered every last one of those who mocked me.
‘The end result would have been the same—the Marco Family’s death.’
But perhaps I would have acquired a ‘trauma’ too severe for even me to bear.
━A trauma so horrific it would have snapped the tenuous thread of reason I barely clung to.
“Hehe. In that sense, Kwon O-jin could be called my benefactor.”
“Kwon O-jin, you say….”
Crack!!
Isabella brought her heel down hard on the back of Roberto’s hand.
“Ugh!!”
“It’s not Kwon O-jin—it’s Kwon O-jin with the honorific, isn’t it?”
“I-I’m sorry!! You mean Kwon O-jin… the famous Awakener from South Korea?”
“That’s right.”
Isabella nodded and rose from Roberto’s back.
“I was intrigued, but I never expected it to be this impressive.”
She approached the fallen Kwon O-jin with burning eyes.
Bending at the waist, she inhaled deeply.
“Ahhhh! This sweet scent…! It’s the best!”
Compared to any other scent I had ever smelled.
The ‘scent’ emanating from Kwon O-jin was intoxicatingly sweet.
“No, even comparing is an insult.”
Beside this fragrance, everything I’d smelled before was nothing but rotting garbage in a sewer.
“Let me see then.”
Isabella carefully extended her hand and collected a droplet of blood flowing from Kwon O-jin’s wound on her fingertip.
She touched the droplet to the tip of her tongue.
“━Ah.”
Literally.
My soul trembled.
“Haang! Haah… Uhhh!!!”
Isabella let out an obscene moan, her body writhing as though desperate to urinate.
‘W-what is this?!’
The scent was extraordinary, but.
The taste was incomparably superior to that of any other blood.
‘I… I’ve never even imagined something like this.’
Everything she had consumed until now could have been mistaken for sewage rather than blood.
“…Ahh.”
Isabella, her expression rapturous, dipped her finger into Kwon O-jin’s blood and licked it with her tongue.
She yearned to gulp down the pooled blood in one greedy swallow.
‘If I did that━ I might die from the ecstasy.’
Kwon O-jin’s blood was of that caliber.
“Hah, hehehehe. Hehehehehet.”
A viscous, sticky laughter erupted from her lips.
“Roberto.”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
“Bring me the Elixir.”
“W-what? The Elixir, you say?”
“Quickly.”
A legendary potion that only the highest-tier awakeners of Aquarius could create.
The Elixir was the supreme-grade potion whose value could not possibly be measured in mere currency.
“H-here it is.”
“Give it to me.”
Isabella poured the Elixir into Kwon O-jin’s mouth.
His wounds regenerated instantaneously.
“Hehehet.”
She gazed down at the fallen Kwon O-jin and caressed his cheek with affection.
Her tongue extended languidly as she savored the taste,
“I will never━ let you go.”
Her blue eyes gleamed with profound avarice.

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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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