The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 45

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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 45. Yakumo Guild (3)
Matsumoto Leo finally lowered the tone of the conversation.
“…You’re quite sharp, Song Jihoo.”
It was a de facto surrender dressed up as a compliment.
“Just say I’m smart. ‘Sharp’ isn’t really a word people use much these days.”
Meanwhile, Matsumoto Leo’s insides were twisted into an ugly knot.
They had woven an information network so densely across the entire world that even the prideful United States bore the subtle reach of their lobbying and intelligence apparatus.
Yet here they were, unable to read a single Hunter from Korea.
How Song Jihoo had learned his true identity. What skill he possessed. What he was after. Not a single answer to any of it.
And Song Jihoo simply watched the Yakumo Guild’s unease unfold. The core of it, however, remained stubbornly hidden.
Matsumoto Leo’s frustration mounted, layer upon layer—unable to ask directly what he so desperately wanted to know.
It was then that Song Jihoo suddenly spoke.
“There’s someone who wants to cure spiritual contamination…”
His mouth curled up at one corner.
“Ayase Haruka, from the Kage Guild?”
Before Song Jihoo’s words had even finished, the shoulders of the attendants who had come with Matsumoto Leo jolted.
Bang!
Matsumoto shoved his chair back and stood.
His hand shot toward his hip in the same motion, and a blue-bright blade sang through the air, driving straight for Song Jihoo’s chin.
Diplomacy, pretense, all that carefully refined rhetoric—every mask was ripped away in a single instant.
But the blade never reached Song Jihoo.
Clang!
A cry of metal rent the air, and Matsumoto Leo’s sword was knocked violently aside.
Eun Seojin’s blade—drawn at a moment no one had seen—had twisted the trajectory of his attack perfectly before it could reach Song Jihoo.
“How dare you. Guild Master, shall I kill him?”
A cold chill ran down the edge of the blade, and the temperature in the space plummeted several degrees. Goosebumps rose on the back of Matsumoto Leo’s hand.
Two blades crossed in an X suspended in the air, and the attendants reflexively reached for their swords only to find themselves frozen as Eun Seojin’s second blade appeared in her other hand.
In the deadly, hair-trigger silence that hung between them, only Song Jihoo remained unmoved—his expression as if this were merely amusing.
“Interesting. Was this more of a shock than your identity being revealed?”
He still lounged leisurely against the chair’s backrest, as though the blade that had just aimed for his chin had never existed in the first place.
That composure shook Matsumoto Leo far more violently than before.
‘How…!’
Matsumoto’s pupils trembled as if an earthquake had seized them.
The Kage Guild. And Ayase Haruka. Those two names were not supposed to breathe even the slightest whisper into the outside world.
Even within Japan, only a handful of people knew the true meaning of that name.
‘I walked straight into the tiger’s den without even knowing my cards were laid bare. Damn it.’
How could such a name spill from the lips of a Korean Hunter—and a boy barely out of his youth, at that?
“…You bastard.”
Matsumoto’s voice cracked. The formal speech he’d been maintaining vanished.
“How do you know that? Only an extremely small number of people in Japan even know that name.”
Song Jihoo let out a soft laugh.
“You even named yourselves Shadow outright.”
Ting.
Song Jihoo flicked his fingertip lightly against Eun Seojin’s blade, knocking Matsumoto Leo’s sword aside with a gentle tap.
“Why so surprised?”
Now that a weapon had been drawn against him, Song Jihoo had no intention of maintaining courtesy any longer.
“Sit down. I don’t enjoy looking up. Same terms as USAA.”
Song Jihoo spoke casually, dropping all formality.
“Five billion dollars. And three favors.”
“…Is that all?”
Matsumoto managed to open his mouth.
“One more. Whenever I want information, you provide it.”
Matsumoto Leo’s eyes twitched.
“Ha.”
Song Jihoo didn’t simply know the name Kage.
He knew exactly what the Kage Guild did—knew it well enough to lay down these terms.
An organization that gathered intelligence from the underworld across the globe, like the information brokers of old legends.
“Damn it…”
At last, Matsumoto Leo sank heavily into the empty chair beside him.
The sword he’d been holding fell limply onto the table.
“Quite the investment spent, then.”
Matsumoto Leo swept his disheveled hair back roughly, glancing up at Song Jihoo.
“I’ll accept it. So long as the treatment is certain.”
“Give and Take should be reliable, so don’t worry.”
As Matsumoto Leo sheathed his sword and righted the toppled chair to sit, Song Jihoo leisurely sipped his now-lukewarm coffee.
‘That settles it. Whatever variables this move creates, I can manage at that level.’
Following USAA, now Japan as well. By aligning with the Abyss Lord’s faction, he’d brought over the two most troublesome adversaries to his own side.
‘With USAA and Kage’s Information Network combined, practically any nation falls within reach.’
Once the broad framework of the negotiation was set, the fine details flowed far more smoothly than anticipated.
“By the way, those three favors you mentioned—are they the same terms as with the United States? You won’t intervene in international disputes, only deploy when humanity faces a common enemy, that sort of thing?”
“Exactly.”
Matsumoto Leo suddenly opened his mouth again.
Perhaps because he’d already dropped his mask once with this opponent, his tone had grown noticeably more at ease than before.
“Seems you’re harboring quite the lofty purpose.”
“It may be difficult for you to imagine.”
The Kage Guild itself had been founded solely for Japan’s restoration in this new Hunter era.
Humanity’s common enemies were scarcely a concern from their perspective.
‘But now they’ll have no choice but to understand. In the end, through those three favors, an adversarial relationship will naturally emerge.’
Besides, he fully intended to wring every last drop of use from Matsumoto Leo and the Kage Guild.
‘Using treatment as a pretext, I’ll simply lock the Give and Take cycle firmly in place.’
In his previous life, the underground intelligence that Kage gathered was so formidable that it regularly surpassed even America’s intelligence capabilities.
With such an organization as his information source wholesale, there was no need to establish a separate intelligence guild at all.
“With USAA at your back, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re trying to accomplish.”
“You’ll come to understand naturally. When the time comes to provide that help.”
Matsumoto seemed to turn the words over in his mind for a moment, then—rather than press further—changed the subject.
“So then, when were you planning to treat her? Will she come to Japan?”
“Bring her to Korea.”
Song Jihoo cut the matter short with finality.
“A shame, that.”
“Did you think I’d travel all the way to Japan? USAA came here on their own two feet as it is.”
Matsumoto held Song Jihoo’s gaze for a moment, then chuckled and nodded.
“…You’re right. That makes sense. We’ll arrange the terms through him.”
Matsumoto’s gaze shifted toward Yoon Youngsoo. The arrangement was finalized as Song Jihoo gave a light nod of acknowledgment.
***
The day after the negotiation between Matsumoto Leo and Song Jihoo.
Association Headquarters, grand conference hall.
On the surface, this negotiation concluded as an entirely ordinary, congenial affair.
“That was an excellent negotiation.”
“Likewise, I assure you.”
Mibe Toshihiro and Song Jihoo shook hands with smiles, but beneath the surface, this gathering was mere theater—a formalization of the real negotiation that had concluded in the Abandoned Building the night before.
“I’ll be in touch shortly.”
Even as Song Jihoo shook hands with Mibe Toshihiro, he caught Matsumoto Leo’s eye lightly—the man who, like yesterday, had been effacing his presence in the back of the room.
“Ha ha, of course! For the sake of friendship between our nations! There’s no harm in good relations, wouldn’t you say!”
Park Jungho, the Association chairman, grasped the hands of the Yakumo Guild representatives, his face split by an enormous grin.
“Ha ha ha!”
Gone was the image of him tearing at his hair in anguish the day before. The mere thought of how the negotiation had nearly collapsed two days prior still made him dizzy.
Only relief flooded his expression—the relief of survival without catastrophe.
“We really must hurry back. We’ve been away longer than anticipated, I’m afraid. Not that we’re blaming Zero Point, of course.”
With the negotiation concluded, the Yakumo Guild party rose from their seats.
“I understand. Safe travels.”
In the ensuing bustle, Song Jihoo suddenly remembered something and drew quietly close to Matsumoto Leo.
“Watch out for the Abyss Guild.”
He whispered in a voice too low for the others to hear.
“The Abyss…? What do you mean—”
“Are you certain there’s no mole among you?”
“…I’ll keep that in mind.”
Matsumoto’s step faltered and his eyes narrowed, but Song Jihoo offered no further explanation and turned to leave.
The Abyss Guild—the Abyss Lord’s appendages extending across the globe—was fragmented into so many cell-like structures that tracking them all was nearly impossible.
‘And every time Japan had sided with that creature, the Abyss moved as one body with him.’
Song Jihoo didn’t know the exact process by which that had come to pass, but letting a warning slip beforehand was a trade with nothing to lose.
“Damn it… this is embarrassing as hell.”
Of course, Song Jihoo’s warning had been interpreted by Matsumoto Leo in an entirely different way.
***
Matsumoto Leo’s misunderstanding continued on, unraveling endlessly.
‘In a way, coming to Korea was the right call.’
Matsumoto Leo’s eyes followed Song Jihoo as he left the conference room.
Ever since arriving in Korea, it had been nothing but a bewildering sequence of incomprehensible situations from start to finish.
Especially Song Jihoo.
How could he possibly know about everything—his true identity, the existence of Kage, even Ayase Haruka—things even the United States didn’t know?
‘If that’s the case, it must be personal intelligence capability.’
Over these past few days, no matter how many information channels he’d worked, he’d found absolutely nothing special related to Song Jihoo.
Which meant.
‘Song Jihoo’s information network is, in some sense, even more secretive and… superior to Kage.’
A single conclusion formed in Matsumoto’s mind.
And that conclusion led to yet another question.
‘The fact that he’d request information from us… does that mean his resources are lacking?’
Because it was Song Jihoo’s intelligence, he couldn’t simply dismiss the warning.
‘Abyss Guild, huh… I’ll need to reorganize the entire structure once I’m back.’
So that he wouldn’t suffer such humiliation the next time they met.
“Nomura.”
“Yes, sir?”
The moment Matsumoto Leo boarded the plane, he called for the man who was like his own limbs.
“There’s a mole in the guild.”
“What? How did you…?”
“Find out who it is. Convene a meeting the moment we land in Japan.”
“I’ll prepare at once.”
Adjusting the timing of Ayase Haruka’s treatment, along with reorganizing the organization.
It seemed that even after returning to Japan, he’d have quite a bit—no, a considerable amount—of work waiting for him.
The Seventh Reincarnator Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: ACESMEDIA Co., Ltd.
Editor
: ACESMEDIA Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work has been published by ACESMEDIA Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder,
and no part of its contents may be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
This ebook is protected by 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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