The 100th Regression of the Max-Level Player - Chapter 96

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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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The Maxed-Out Player’s 100th Return – Episode 96
96. Ju Sung-tak’s Wrath
“Ugh…”
Ju Sung-tak’s eyes fluttered open as consciousness returned.
His vision blurred, then gradually sharpened into focus.
‘What… was that a dream?’
The absence of pain made it feel like waking from sleep.
‘What kind of ridiculous nightmare was that…’
He’d attempted to murder the buyer, only to find himself on the receiving end of a devastating counterattack.
A humiliating defeat at that.
This was the first time his curse of terror had proven ineffective.
‘It was just a dream anyway.’
I shook my head to dispel the delusion and surveyed my surroundings.
The place seemed oddly familiar.
‘Where am I…?’
I was inside the Two-Story Building I’d marked as my escape route.
‘Wait… then it wasn’t a dream?’
I tried to push myself up by placing my hand on the floor.
“Huh…? Where’s my arm? Oh.”
Memory flooded back.
‘That buyer bastard severed my arm.’
But what I’d lost wasn’t limited to just my arm.
“What the hell, my leg.”
My leg was gone too.
I’d become a one-armed, one-legged cripple in an instant.
“Ah… ah…”
Shock, emptiness, rage, hollowness.
Perhaps too many emotions surged up at once?
I wanted to scream, but the sound caught in my throat.
‘Where… where is he… where is that bastard…!’
I confirmed it wasn’t a dream.
I wished it had been, but this was undeniably real.
My rage transformed into anguished despair that clawed up my throat.
“Where are you?! You pathetic insect of a bastard!!!”
I looked around frantically, searching for the one who’d reduced me to this state.
His identity was unmistakable.
“You damn buyer! I’ll tear you apart and it still won’t be enough!”
Ju Sung-tak’s eyes blazed with fury as I attempted to rise.
But without one leg, even that proved impossible.
“How dare you do this to me?! I’ll kill you for this, I swear it…!”
That was when Ju Sung-tak noticed a neatly folded scrap of paper in his field of vision.
When he unfolded it, he found a lengthy letter written in dense handwriting.
[Your name is Ju Sung-tak, right? I figured it out from your ID. Your address was written on the back too.
Don’t go thinking your legs ended up like that because of me. That’s on you, you bastard.
Why the hell did you hide a bomb in the clothing donation bin anyway, you cripple? Were you trying to kill me with that?
Honestly, I was pissed enough to kill you, but since you don’t have any limbs and I felt sorry for you, I’m just letting you live.
Who in this world treats a would-be robber and even provides medical care? Count yourself lucky.
From now on, stop robbing people and live a decent life. I know your name and home address, so don’t cause any trouble. If you do and get caught, you’re really dead.]
“W-what is this?”
Judging by the handwriting, it was definitely from that buyer.
But.
‘My legs ended up like this because of a corpse explosion?’
A sudden sense of emptiness washed over me.
Caught in my own trap—what a pathetic turn of events.
I couldn’t even blame anyone else. This was truly a miserable situation.
“But does this bastard normally carry around paper and a pen? Why would he leave a letter?”
Muttering in confusion, I rummaged through my pockets.
‘Wait, it’s gone. My wallet is missing.’
The wallet containing my ID had vanished.
‘Damn it, my entire fortune was in there!’
He’d taken even the 300,000 won in cash.
I couldn’t fathom who was telling whom not to rob anyone.
‘That son of a bitch. He’s looking down on me, isn’t he?’
I could accept that my legs were my own fault, but my arms—that was definitely this bastard’s doing.
I had more than enough reason to harbor resentment.
Not only did he take the material items and my wallet, but he’d beaten me senseless on top of it all.
How could I not hold a grudge after all that?
“Damn it, damn it, damn it, DAAAAAAAMN IIIIIT!!!”
I screamed loud enough to shake the building, but it couldn’t fill the void left by my missing limbs.
‘I’ll kill him. Without fail! I’ll stake my very life on it—that son of a bitch is dead.’
His face, build, voice—everything.
I remembered every detail about him.
He was strong, but I was confident I could beat him if we fought again.
‘If that corpse explosion had landed, it would be him with crippled legs, not me!’
I convinced myself it was simply bad luck.
Who could have predicted I’d lose just because he took one step too few?
Ju Sung-tak, who had sworn to repay today’s humiliation, walked unsteadily before losing his balance and collapsing.
Thud—
“Damn it.”
Casting aside his shame, he limped out of the building.
Unaware that the very person I’d been searching for was watching through invisibility.
* * *
From behind, I chuckled as I read Ju Sung-tak’s thoughts.
‘Just as expected—he’s plotting revenge against me.’
Well, if you sever someone’s limbs, they’re bound to harbor resentment.
‘But there’s nothing he can actually do to me in reality.’
How could someone who can barely walk seek revenge?
Against an opponent he’s already overwhelmingly lost to?
‘If we fought again, he seems to think he’d have a chance. Fat lot of good that’ll do him.’
If only he’d used corpse explosion properly, he might’ve won?
‘I’m not falling for such crude techniques.’
Of course, the Curse of Fear—which inflicts status abnormalities just by being seen—is a dangerous factor.
But even that can’t be considered overwhelmingly threatening.
‘I have 82% resistance to it.’
The reason the Curse of Fear blocked earlier was thanks to this resistance.
‘If I’d been unlucky and it wasn’t 100%, I might’ve been afflicted.’
But I wasn’t particularly worried.
‘The resistance reduces the duration of the Curse of Fear by its percentage.’
The Curse of Fear lasts 5 seconds.
With 82% resistance, it reduces to just 0.9 seconds.
In other words, even if I was hit by it with an 18% chance, it would’ve lasted barely a second.
‘One second is enough to lose your life, but he was so careless.’
There was a reason I confidently took the Curse of Fear head-on.
Even if afflicted, it would’ve worn off in the time it took to say “huh?”
‘And yet, despite ending up like that, he’s resolved to take revenge on me. I’ll give him credit for the audacity.’
Though since I fought him wearing Hwang Yong-min’s face, there’s no way he could identify me.
‘Go ahead and make a name for yourself in the Other World with that vengeful spirit. If you get any items, list them on the Market immediately. That benefits me too. Your body’s in bad shape—you need to earn a living, don’t you?’
Watching Ju Sung-tak struggle forward on his crippled legs, I grinned wickedly.
* * *
Before the 7th round.
I had a meal with Min Ju-ri.
“The Korean Fine Dining Restaurant here is good, right?”
“Yeah. It’s the best place I’ve eaten at!”
“Glad it suits your taste. Let’s come here often.”
“O-often?”
I hadn’t meant anything by it.
But Min Ju-ri seemed to read deeper meaning into it, her thoughts drifting in a strange direction.
I had to hastily correct myself.
“Not often—just occasionally.”
“Oh. Y-yeah.”
Min Ju-ri harbored an unspoken regret.
“By the way, you seem pretty busy these days, don’t you? Every time I call, you say we’ll catch up later.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s true.”
I brushed it off casually.
Busy didn’t begin to cover it.
I had to attend Player Cafe meetings every weekend, and as the top executive, I also had to sit in on PulPul meetings.
‘And then there’s the surveillance to worry about.’
I was aware that even now, in this very moment, there were eyes watching me.
I’d already identified who it was.
‘A level 28 assassin named Jeffrey Bishop. And behind him is Christine’s father, Nathan Craig.’
He’d attached a tail to gather information on me.
At first, I hadn’t noticed the surveillance.
But using my Presence Detection skill, I realized someone had been following me for days.
‘The problem was, I couldn’t see their form. Which meant…’
They were an assassin with an invisibility skill.
There was no other way to interpret it.
‘The real question was who and why they were tailing me…’
Finding out wasn’t particularly difficult.
I simply had to tail the tailer in return.
‘They probably haven’t learned Presence Detection. If they had, they wouldn’t be tailing me so obviously.’
If they’d known that invisibility could be detected by Presence Detection, they would have kept their distance from the start.
Not followed me so brazenly from up close.
It was information you could deduce with just a little thought.
So I counter-tailed them, waiting for their invisibility to drop.
‘And I found out. The person tailing me was a foreigner. It was Nathan’s doing, Christine’s father.’
By reading their thoughts, I could discern their purpose too.
Not assassination or some grand scheme—just simple information gathering.
‘Christine must have told her father about me. That’s why Nathan seemed displeased.’
I understood.
Say some fortune teller told you your daughter would die in round 11.
Even I would want to track down that fortune teller and verify the claim.
‘Well, as long as they don’t reveal their purpose first, there’s no need to confront them. Keep tailing me. All you’ll see is an ordinary executive shuttling between the company and home.’
Though I had to attend Player Cafe meetings every weekend, knowing about the surveillance meant I was confident I wouldn’t be caught.
“By the way, Min. You told me that information about round 7 last time.”
“I did.”
“Is that really all? Just don’t be tempted by seduction?”
“Yes. Just remember that one thing.”
Ma Gyeong-rok, An Sang-chul, Seo A-rin, Russell, Christine, and Min Ju-ri.
I’d given all of them the same information.
Round 7 only required knowing that one thing.
‘Any information beyond that would be unnecessary.’
They’d naturally wonder why I wasn’t revealing the Quest, but there was nothing I could do about it.
‘If they learned about the Quest, they’d be eliminated from the round itself.’
Elimination meant annihilation.
I couldn’t very well annihilate the people I needed to protect until round twenty, could I?
‘It would be better to save as many people as possible. I need at least five people to reach the final round.’
Of course, I should only save those worth saving.
“Min Ju-ri.”
“Hmm?”
“Let’s survive until the final round together.”
It was an abrupt thing to say, but Min Ju-ri soon answered with a shy smile.
“Yeah….”
* * *
July 1st, 2022. Midnight.
Round 7 had begun.
The players summoned to the Grassland looked around uncertainly.
Fewer people had been summoned than expected.
[Hello, humans! Have you been doing well for the past month?]
Priscilla spoke with a fresh smile, but the players remained silent.
With people dying in droves every round, there was no way anyone could feel any goodwill toward an Angel.
[So we have 434 survivors this time? As you can see, there simply aren’t enough humans to make the game work, so we’ll be merging zones again. Right now, in fact.]
The moment Priscilla finished speaking, the ground trembled.
Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble—
Watching ten zones merge together was fascinating no matter how many times I saw it.
Like fragmented puzzle pieces fitting together without the slightest misalignment.
Perhaps because of this, the players watched with curiosity rather than shock.
Even having seen it once, they’d already adapted.
[I’ve merged ten zones. The total population is 4,922, and the new zone name is C2-ESKA003. Since you’re all Korean, there’s no need to be particularly wary of each other.]
People nodded at the helpful explanation, but only for a moment.
[So before we begin the round, we need to select a zone representative, don’t we?]
The zone representatives, realizing they’d have to kill each other again, frowned.
Everyone except Ryu Min.
‘So we’re holding another representative selection tournament.’
It felt like an annual tradition, held every time zones merged.
‘This time, I absolutely must become the zone representative.’
Not that I’d ever been unwilling to become one, but this time I couldn’t afford to miss it.
The reward was simply too enormous.
‘The zone representative’s authority would be usable in reality as well.’

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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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