The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 49

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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 49. The Collector (1)
Song Ji-hu’s eyes grew dark and distant.
Above this dead Kingdom, he saw overlapped the future of Earth. If he failed to stop the Lord, the end that awaited Earth would be no different.
‘Not someone else’s problem… And the Collector….’
An entity that would plunder everything even after the Lord departed. The unknown enemy called the Collector suddenly took sharp form in Song Ji-hu’s mind.
The last will guarding this place gathered what strength remained.
Crack-crack-crack!
Song Ji-hu’s gaze turned inward, toward the unsealed Sanctuary.
As though passing the Legacy it had preserved to the end to one who had earned the right—the innermost wall fractured, and three streams of light spilled forth.
The first was metal, tempered and solid.
The second was Warm-Light Metal, radiating a gentle brilliance. Simply looking upon it seemed enough to heal mental corruption.
The last was a single point of light. Dimming as though about to extinguish, yet somehow refusing to go dark.
“The Undying Light of Will….”
‘A lingering thought.’
The moment Song Ji-hu activated his skill, he felt in that light a will that had endured the weight of countless eons alone. It was unmistakably different in texture from the previous two items.
‘It’s wrathful.’
Though sealed away for ages, a deep and undiminished resentment radiated from it.
‘This isn’t some dungeon clear reward.’
This was clearly something left for a specific purpose—the final gambit that an entire world had clung to until the moment of its annihilation.
As though someone had intended it that way.
Song Ji-hu slowly reached out and gathered them into his hands.
In that moment.
Crack-crack!
A loud splintering sound erupted from beneath his feet. Space, unable to resist the erosion of ages, began to crumble.
‘Time is flowing again.’
The world that had stood frozen without its soul began to collapse.
Thud-crash-crack!
“We need to leave. Now.”
In the distance, a preserved spire tilted wholesale and came crashing down.
Flames that had hung motionless flickered back to life, and arrows suspended in air fell belatedly to the earth with dull thuds.
The prolonged end that had been frozen finally began rolling toward its conclusion once more.
“This….”
Im Jae-hyeok stared blankly at the items Song Ji-hu had brought out.
The weight of what had been preserved at the cost of life pressed heavily upon all their shoulders.
“This… to think they kept all this safe… This whole Kingdom fell to protect it.”
Im Jae-hyeok too, stripped of his usual levity, gripped his shield so hard his knuckles went white.
Eun Seo-jin said nothing, only slowly lowered her blade toward the crumbling Sanctuary and offered a brief bow of respect.
“Truth be told… I never thought I would feel something like this inside a dungeon.”
Song Ji-hu too bowed his head deeply toward the disintegrating Sanctuary. He understood far too well what they had meant to leave behind.
‘Hope.’
The hope that even if they fell, someday someone would fulfill their goal.
‘I won’t let it be in vain. I swear it.’
And then, the will of this place poured one last fragment of memory into Song Ji-hu’s mind.
[Beware not the one who harvests worlds… but the one who gathers all things.]
Song Ji-hu recalled the traces of plunder he had seen on the way here. The moment that vision surfaced, dread climbed his spine to its absolute limit.
A lingering thought doesn’t speak of things that merely passed by. It speaks only of things close to an overwhelming obsession.
“Something… is coming! Battle stations!”
A plunderer perhaps even more vicious than the Lord who had harvested an entire world.
Boom!
The footsteps that had been rumbling distantly suddenly thundered right before them. The entire fortress convulsed, and debris from the collapsing ceiling cascaded down.
“Outside! Move!”
And the Undying Light of Will among the three Legacies Song Ji-hu had claimed began to pulse wildly, as though sensing something.
Whirrrrr!
As though it had detected the presence of its mortal enemy.
“The Audience Chamber is blocked!”
Crash!
With a deafening roar, the upper structure of the fortress was wrenched away entirely.
The ceiling tore free like paper, its debris cascading down, and ashen sky lay exposed.
And silhouetted against it, a colossal form loomed over the unsealed Sanctuary.
“God… it’s massive….”
A single shadow blanketed the ash-grey sky entirely. The height of it made your neck ache just looking up.
“It looks like it’s over ten meters tall, doesn’t it?”
“Good grief, what a pain in the neck. Why does the thing have to drag around so much junk? Ptui, ptui—”
Im Jae-hyeok batted away falling debris with his shield, spitting out the dirt that had lodged in his mouth as he fixed his gaze on the creature.
His first impression was of a walking heap of treasure.
Plundered armor and weapons, fragments of shattered valuables—all fused to its skin like scales. An abomination stitched together entirely from stolen things, nothing of its own.
And in every gap between them, thousands of eyes, large and small, glittered in every direction.
With each step the massive creature took, the metal fragments embedded in its body clanged against one another.
Grind, grrrrind—
“Revolting,” Song Ji-hu muttered quietly.
Stealing and stealing again. The very trace of plunder endlessly grafted onto its form revealed what manner of being it was. The marks of endless theft spoke louder than any word.
Just looking at it stirred a primal nausea.
“So you’re the Gatherer. The Collector.”
Song Ji-hu’s ash-grey eyes blazed with intensity.
Boom—!
In that instant, spirits began pouring in through the breached Audience Chamber beyond.
Above: the Collector staring down at them. All around: a tidal wave of spirits pressing in. Below: the very Sanctuary crumbling underfoot. A perfect encirclement from all sides.
An ordinary Hunter would have already collapsed, legs giving way beneath the weight of despair. But Song Ji-hu’s lips twisted upward into a slant smile instead.
“We’ll handle this side,” Eun Seo-jin said to Song Ji-hu, who couldn’t tear his eyes from the Collector.
“Go on and finish up. I might just eat all the good parts for myself before you join us.”
“Heh… well then, the good ones are mine to savor.”
Im Jae-hyeok hoisted both his shield and hammer at once.
The Collector’s countless eyes, too, were fixed on a single point: the three Legacies cradled in Song Ji-hu’s grasp.
The final treasure of this world that it had coveted across countless ages.
The fact that even one item—the one treasure it could never obtain through any means—rested in another’s hands drove the creature to madness.
“Mine….”
The Collector’s mouth opened, staring directly at Song Ji-hu. Multiple voices layered atop one another, a grotesque wail that reverberated through the air.
“At last… it is mine.”
Im Jae-hyeok swung his hammer, driving back the spirits, and as Eun Seo-jin wielded both her blades, the very air crystallized in an instant with a sharp crack.
Space opened up for Song Ji-hu to move in that same breath.
The Collector’s massive hand stretched toward the Sanctuary where the relics had rested, determined to gather whatever remained even if the main prize had been stolen.
“All of it… all of it is mine—!”
An Apostle of the Sovereign—one Song Ji-hu had never encountered once across all six of his previous, hellish lives.
“So that’s the true form…,” he breathed.
The Apostles of the Sovereign were invariably skilled at hiding their nature. Like players in a game of hide-and-seek, they kept their secrets close.
Just as the shepherd and the gardener had done not long ago—their true forms always laughed at him from beyond his reach.
“Haa….”
Song Ji-hu’s suppressed laugh escaped through his lips.
“Hot and cold.”
He steadied his ragged breathing.
An enemy he’d never glimpsed before. And with it, an opportunity that had never existed. A single chance that might never come again.
Crack—!
The Collector’s massive arm thrust down through the rubble toward Song Ji-hu.
Instead of meeting it head-on, Song Ji-hu rushed toward its blind spot.
Boom—!
The impact of that colossal mass shook the entire castle, and in the same moment, the spirits that had been converging from all sides were torn away from the creature’s arm like water siphoned into a sponge.
Even the golden aura that Im Jae-hyeok had instinctively raised his shield to protect.
“Mine… I claim….”
“The Collector’s nature is plunder.”
Everything it touched—power, essence, ability—it stripped away and made its own.
“What the—! This bastard is ripping away our strength…!”
Im Jae-hyeok jerked back in alarm, instantly drawing his aura back in. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.
“A troublesome opponent. It’s absorbing our aura entirely.”
The moment Eun Seo-jin’s blade strike connected, it was swallowed whole, and she narrowed her brow.
The Collector wrapped the stolen aura around itself and released it back out. The more they fought, the stronger the enemy became.
“You… possess many rare collectibles, it seems.”
The Soul Revolver, the Compass, the Old Compass, and the Legacies he’d gathered.
The Collector ran its eyes over Song Ji-hu with all thousands of them at once, practically vibrating with excitement, barely able to form words.
“Focus on clearing out the spirits for now. Like I said, I’ll handle this one myself.”

“Understood.”
He considered why, among so many rare artifacts, the Collector had chosen precisely these three Legacies.
‘…This kingdom fought against them before its fall. These were forged to tear them apart.’
Nothing else made sense. As the kingdom faced extinction and lost everything else to plunder, why would the dying cling to life itself to seal away only these three?
“First…”
Song Ji-hu channeled his Aura into the Compass to its absolute limit.
“Let’s level the playing field. I don’t much care for being looked down upon.”
Whoosh—!
The Compass blazed with silver light as he hurled it toward the Collector. True, it held no attack skill, but his Aura itself contradicted the Collector’s—didn’t it?
He was curious whether this creature could devour even that.
Song Ji-hu’s body darted in sharp angles. He leaped onto the Collector’s hand and drove the Compass deep into the grotesque flesh that Plunder had stitched together.
Thud—!
And the Collector moved as it always had. It naturally fell back into the only method it had ever known—tearing the power from whatever touched it, making it its own.
It drew in the endless Aura that poured toward its skin where the Compass was embedded.
At first, the sensation was exquisite. Such pure yet foreign energy—this was indeed worth collecting.
But that was the mistake. Thousands of layered voices fell silent all at once. The moment that Aura burrowed deep within its core, it transformed into pure poison.
Screech—!
Silver Aura began spreading outward from where the Compass was lodged.
Through the gaps in stolen armor, across seized blades, between fragments of treasure fused into skin—Song Ji-hu’s Aura flowed like blood through veins, spreading across the Collector’s entire form.
And everywhere that Aura touched, the embedded eyes tore open in unison.
“Guh—GUAAAAAAAAAHHH—!”
A scream burst from the Collector as though the entire world were tearing away from it.
Thrash—!
The massive frame flailed its hand—the one with the Compass embedded in it—wildly. Its whole body convulsed.
“As I thought.”
Song Ji-hu smiled, gripping the Compass tighter.
“For you, this isn’t medicine. It’s poison.”
A Seventh-Loop Returner Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Publication Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: ACES Media Inc.
Editor
: ACES Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F, Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by ACES Media Inc. in accordance with the copyright holder’s agreement,
and the contents may not be used in any form or by any means without the permission of the publisher and author.
This e-book 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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