The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 24

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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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Episode 24. Ollie Barkley (2)
‘Thought Projection won’t work.’
No matter how hard he shouted through the megaphone, in this chaos the sound couldn’t reach beyond the soundproof barrier.
Song Ji-hu wiped the blood trickling from his lips and opened his eyes to narrow slits.
‘If it won’t work from outside, I’ll connect from within.’
Thought Projection was, by analogy, a one-way transmission. But Mental Connection was a two-way exchange.
‘If I establish a Mental Connection inside Ollie Barkley’s Mental Realm… it would be like opening a direct line.’
Of course, there were risks. Mental Connection only fully manifests when both parties consent. But the boy Ollie Barkley was effectively unconscious.
‘Still, I have to try something.’
Even as the cascading shockwaves drove Song Ji-hu backward, he pressed his hand to Ollie Barkley’s head and drew up his concentration.
“Mental Connection.”
Woooom—!
From the edge of Song Ji-hu’s consciousness, a gossamer silver thread stretched down toward the boy huddled at the bottom of the Crater.
“Got it…!”
Somehow, the connection held.
Forced into a Mental Dive and then forcibly establishing a Mental Connection, the link was predictably unstable.
“Even fragmented emotions passing between us is better than nothing.”
Song Ji-hu focused every nerve on the connected Ollie Barkley’s mind.
“Whatever it is, show me….”
He kept transmitting to Ollie Barkley, but from the other side came only silence—not even a breath.
Just as he was about to consider another approach—
Very faintly, something rippled into being from the other end.
Not an emotion or language, but a single image born from the deepest unconscious.
Someone’s back.
A broad, solid back. The silhouette of a towering man, standing with his back to the blazing crimson sunset.
Tattered leather jacket tails fluttering in the wind, rough hands caked with dust.
With no words, no explanation—just that one back shielded young Ollie from every threat in the world, keeping him safer than anything else could.
Song Ji-hu couldn’t tell who he was.
A father, perhaps. Or some hero the boy had once admired. Some scene from early childhood.
But one thing was certain.
‘To stand and protect someone.’
That was the essence of who Ollie Barkley was.
No matter how the Abyss Lord had twisted his memories, amplified his guilt, or gnawed away at his self—this one thing remained untouched.
‘Good. This is enough.’
That value: the strong protecting the weak.
Song Ji-hu’s eyes changed.
From more than a century of years, he pulled forth the one scene that remained most vivid.
Lim Jae-hyuk.
The comrade who had stood with his own back as a shield, telling him to flee even as blood poured from his wounds.
A man who had risen using a shattered Shield as a walking stick, determined to protect someone until the very end.
Song Ji-hu poured into Ollie Barkley the memory of such a back—the memory of one who stands for another—in its purest form.
The shadows surged forward, throwing their fists. Remains Golems thundered across the ground, advancing.
The shadows surged forward, throwing their fists. A Remains Golem approached from behind. Shockwaves poured in from all directions.
Song Ji-hu endured it all while injecting the memory and maintaining the connection.
Nosebleed would not stop, streaming down to his chin. The edges of his vision began to darken.
‘Hold on.’
Song Ji-hu bit his tongue and clung to his crumbling consciousness.
And—
The boy Ollie responded.
“I… I broke it. I… I…?”
The mumbling that had repeated like a broken radio cut off.
The boy’s head tilted very slightly upward.
Through the golden-brown hair hanging limply across his face, light flickered across eyes that had been hollow and vacant.
A back.
The silhouette of someone standing to protect him, just as it had been in the past, imprinted itself on the boy’s retina.
The destruction around the Crater stopped.
The Loop froze—no reconstruction, no destruction, only stillness.
The sparks scattered in the void suspended in mid-air; screams died away; the world held its breath.
‘Got him…!’
It was the moment Song Ji-hu clenched his fist against the awakened Ollie’s mind.
In that single, crystalline moment.
Black mist rippled at the Crater’s edge, and a figure rose into being.
Broad shoulders, upright posture, a middle-aged man’s silhouette with a Cowboy Hat clasped in one hand.
And on that face, a smile of perfect kindness, warm beyond measure.
“Ollie.”
He parted his lips. The softest voice in the world resonated through the air.
“…Dad…?”
The boy’s eyes widened. Light kindled in those vacant eyes—the glow of longing.
But the moment Song Ji-hu laid eyes on that presence, his spine crawled with dread. Simultaneously, fury surged from his fingertips to the crown of his head.
The Shepherd.
The Abyss Lord’s lackey, the administrator who delivered harvested S-rank Hunters’ souls to that creature.
An enemy he’d faced countless times across six lifetimes. Because of this wretch, innumerable comrades’ souls had been reaped before they could even fight properly.
Scenes from past lives flickered past him. The hunched back of a kneeling ally. Above it, a black hand descending slowly.
Crack—
The Shepherd spoke in a father’s voice.
“Ollie. Don’t come any closer.”
Warm yet sorrowful—it mimicked perfectly the tone of a father’s concern for his son.
“You’re a monster. You’ll hurt Dad.”
The boy’s body stiffened. The hope that had lifted his head moments before bowed once more.
“I’m… I’m…”
He was crumbling.
“Shep—herd!”
Song Ji-hu detonated his residual Thought Projection explosively.
There was no love there, no concern.
Only the cold, alien corruption—the poison of the Abyss that rotted the soul.
“Snap out of it! That’s not your father.”
Song Ji-hu’s voice cut across the Crater. The kind smile on the Shepherd’s face twisted grotesquely in an instant.
“An interferer, then. I wondered why the Harvest was running late.”
The Shepherd cast aside the burdensome mask.
The kind father’s face cracked like paper, and black smoke seeped through the fractures.
The remains of what had been a father dissolved completely, and what emerged from within was formless darkness.
Pure shadow without outline or boundary.
And from the heart of that darkness, a single blood-red eye slowly came into focus, gleaming.
“My management has grown slack.”
The Shepherd’s voice echoed.
The warmth had vanished, leaving only the metallic screech of grinding iron.
“So there are humans who can enter the Mental Realm.”
The blood-red eye hurled killing intent toward Song Ji-hu.
“But you chose the wrong place. To catch my attention now, of all moments.”
“Raaaagh!”
Song Ji-hu charged at the Shepherd, fury as his fuel. His Short Sword carved through shadow. He raised a Mental Barrier and drove the blade toward that blood-red eye.
Boom—!
As the Shepherd’s arm swept, the ground beneath Song Ji-hu’s feet inverted, and his body was hurled away.
“A mere insect that doesn’t know its place.”
The Shepherd extended his hand, and a collapsed building lifted bodily into the air.
Tens of tons of concrete became a projectile, hurtling toward Song Ji-hu.
Crash—!
Song Ji-hu dove forward as the building embedded itself in the ground, the Crater deepening further.
“You dodge even this.”
As the Shepherd raised both hands, the entire city shrieked and trembled.
Debris from every direction erupted skyward, blotting out the heavens.
Dozens, hundreds of concrete and rebar fragments rained down like precipitation.
Song Ji-hu unfurled a Mental Barrier in dome formation.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The moment the silver shield enveloped his head, the rain of debris hammered against the barrier.
The barrier shrieked.
Cracks spread; he ground his willpower to seal them. It shattered again; he raised it anew.
The Shepherd laughed mockingly and forcibly accelerated the Loop.
The cycle of destruction quickened. The city repeated its frenzied dance of reconstruction and ruin.
One cycle in ten seconds. One cycle in five.
Each time the golem was rebuilt, it regenerated; each time it shattered, rain fell from the debris.
“Die, insect.”
The world tore open at terrifying speed as the Shepherd flipped the ground beneath him. Crimson mana erupted from beneath Song Ji-hu’s feet like molten lava.
Song Ji-hu ran. He dodged the fractured earth, weaving between the wreckage.
Combat instincts that had slumbered in his soul awakened every cell of his body.
He repositioned his Mental Barrier to meet each of the Shepherd’s attacks, knocked aside incoming debris with his Short Sword, and seized every opening to counterattack.
Crack!
The mana-infused blade grazed the Shepherd’s shoulder. Black smoke sizzled and erupted in a hiss.
“Urgh…!”
The Shepherd cried out in pain for the first time.
Though it recovered immediately, Song Ji-hu’s attacks were landing.
‘But I’m not dealing critical damage.’
Yet Song Ji-hu did not yield.
Everything was insufficient, but he possessed the experience of crossing the line of death thousands of times.
‘When there are no teeth, you bite with the gums.’
Mental Barrier, Thought Projection, Mental Detection.
All of them were support or defensive skills, but Song Ji-hu wielded them with astonishing effectiveness—blocking and disrupting the Shepherd’s assaults.
“Grraaah! Pesky little fly!”
Bit by bit. Exchange after exchange. He chipped away at the Shepherd’s vitality.
And even as he fought, he never let go of the thread connecting him to the boy Ollie. After all, this Mental Realm belonged to Ollie Barkley.
No matter how much the Shepherd manipulated the environment, he could never seize complete control.
The sensation of combat, the Shepherd’s deception, his own rage—he channeled it all into the boy.
“Dad… wasn’t he?”
The question spilled from the boy’s lips.
That single phrase. Its effect was immediate.
The Shepherd’s Authority, which had been expanding his Domain, wavered.
The building the Shepherd had been about to hurl froze mid-air.
The Loop’s forcibly accelerated pace slowed dramatically, and the debris hurtling toward them halted in the void.
The boy Ollie lifted his head. His eyes were open.
‘Now!’
Song Ji-hu seized the opening and poured his Thought Projection into Ollie.
The back of one who stands to protect another. The certainty that his power exists not for destruction, but for protection.
“You insolent…!”
But the Shepherd, knowing he could not execute his Harvest if he faltered here, unleashed a final, desperate struggle.
His blood-red eyes swelled explosively, and he forced the Loop to its absolute limit, attempting to crush the entire world.
Yet Ollie Barkley’s self responded.
The fingers of the crouched boy clawed at the ground. His knees straightened; his spine rose tall.
The boy became a young man, and then transformed into the Ollie Barkley that Song Ji-hu had seen outside.
Rage.
Fury at the monster that had toyed with his Mental Realm, that had deceived him wearing his father’s face—it shook the entire Mental Realm.
Roooaar!
A pillar of light erupted from Ollie Barkley’s center.
Nothing. Everything.
The shockwave rippled outward in all directions.
The Shepherd’s form was torn apart, and Song Ji-hu’s body was swept up in the tempest.
Through the scattering black smoke, blood-red eyes fixed on Song Ji-hu with murderous intent.
“I’ll remember your face.”
At those words, Song Ji-hu clenched his teeth and laughed. The feeling was mutual.
“Get out of my world!”
Ollie Barkley thrust both the Shepherd and Song Ji-hu out of the Mental Realm.
The world faded to white and fell away.
The 7th Loop Returner Collects Catastrophes
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: Asys Media Co., Ltd.
Editor
: Asys Media Editorial Team
Address
: Aces Media Co., Ltd., Urban Bench Building 10F, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
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and no part of its contents may be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and the author.
This e-book is protected under copyright law, and unauthorized reproduction or copying may result in legal liability.
UCI
: G720:N+A129-20260709064

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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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