The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 51
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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 51. The Collector (3)
Even with the ring formed, the fundamental disadvantage remained unchanged.
Of course, it was true that the Collector’s assault, which had been concentrated on one target before, now felt considerably lighter with the three of them fighting together.
The Collector’s greed didn’t stop even in the midst of battle, continuously coveting the three divided items.
Whenever the monster’s attack turned toward Lim Jae-hyuk or Eun Seo-jin, Song Ji-hu intercepted its trajectory a moment before.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Whiiiine—!
The more the Najip clashed with the Collector’s blade, the more it resonated wildly and began to tremble.
And among the legacy he held, the Unfading Will Light began to shift its direction toward the Najip.
As if the north and south poles of a magnet were meeting face to face.
“Huh?”
The moment he relaxed his grip slightly, the light began to pour into the Najip.
The blade forged from the resonance of Song Ji-hu’s soul and the will that had resisted even unto ruin finally recognized each other.
As the Unfading Will Light poured into the Najip’s blade, the sword burned hotter and brighter.
“Buy me some time.”
Song Ji-hu called out as he stepped back, and Lim Jae-hyuk and Eun Seo-jin moved to fill the gap.
“…All right. I’ll settle your grudge for you.”
Song Ji-hu murmured softly to the Najip thrashing in his hand.
Shrieeek—!
The blade of the Najip, having absorbed the Unfading Will Light, glowed pure white.
As if an invisible blacksmith were striking the sword anew, honing it. Light began to flow along the silver blade where silver liquid once ran.
Along the grain of that light, the will of an entire kingdom seeped into the blade. The blade that had bubbled with brilliant light began to cool once more.
In that moment, Song Ji-hu realized the true nature of the Najip.
‘It wasn’t just a blade imbued with my soul.’
A blade honed by the resonance of Ryu Jin’s Soul Forging with Song Ji-hu’s soul. And Song Ji-hu’s deepest, most powerful yearning was but one.
The most primal and intense desire to tear the Abyss Lord apart with his own hands.
The Najip, resonating with that yearning, had clearly been honed from the beginning as an anti-weapon to destroy the Lord’s forces.
‘With an ability like this, it makes sense that the Abyss would target Ryu Jin through the Black Heaven.’
Song Ji-hu, who regarded meeting Ryu Jin in this life as divine fortune, drew a faint smile and gripped the awakened Najip again.
Then he surged toward the Collector like lightning.
Boom—!
The Collector instinctively reached out with tentacle-like limbs to seize even this blade.
Shrieeek—!
But the moment the limbs touched, the monster’s appendages began to burn white hot.
Krraaaagh—!
Even as it writhed in agony, the monster kept reaching, but the wound carved by the awakened Najip could no longer be filled with plundered flesh.
The Collector’s countless eyes all fixed upon that wound.
“Krrnggg—!”
Taking, filling, recovering—that was the entirety of its being, yet everything began to crumble before a single blade.
“What is this! What is this! A power that cannot be seized…!”
The overlapping, grotesque voice tore through the air as it fractured.
The monster that had once plundered the worlds harvested by the Lord flinched its massive frame and stumbled backward before a single sword.
“Oh, Guild Master, nice!”
Lim Jae-hyuk chuckled, slamming his hammer at the eyes sprouting near the monster’s Achilles tendon.
As the scales of the long exchange finally tipped, Song Ji-hu did not relent.
‘Left of Jae-hyuk, right of Seo-jin.’
He issued instructions through Mental Connection and bound the creature’s legs, then bounded off debris toward its face.
“That guy is seriously….”
Even as Lim Jae-hyuk swung his blade on the front lines, he watched in amazement as Song Ji-hu perfectly commanded the party’s movements through Mental Connection.
In a battle like this, most people are too busy keeping themselves alive just by wielding their weapon.
‘Right hand.’
Yet Song Ji-hu was even monitoring the Collector as it drained the vitality from Eun Seo-jin and Lim Jae-hyuk.
Between one strike and the next, without even a moment to catch his breath, precise orders flowed without interruption.
Like a single pair of eyes gazing down upon the entire battlefield from above.
Each time flesh was carved from the Najip, the Collector’s massive frame shrank by an inch. With stolen flesh unable to regenerate, it simply grew smaller with each wound.
“Mine… mine… I can’t… I can’t, aaaagh—!”
The Collector, who had spent a lifetime tearing away what belonged to others, began to rage madly.
It flailed its massive arms wildly, kicked its legs and scattered shockwaves in all directions.
But that thrashing was no longer a threat. Attacks born of lost reason only opened wider gaps for Song Ji-hu to exploit.
‘Time to finish this.’
Song Ji-hu pressed down the thundering of his heart, watching the madness in the Collector’s eyes.
The creature’s body, which had towered at ten meters, had shriveled to roughly four. The ground beneath it lay scattered with severed flesh and plundered treasures.
‘Everyone, get ready. We’re finishing this.’
He couldn’t end this beast alone in a single stroke, but with three of them, it would be enough.
Lim Jae-hyuk stepped forward first.
Thud—!
To carve a path for Song Ji-hu to drive through, Lim Jae-hyuk summoned no power, cast no skill—he simply absorbed the Collector’s weight and aggression with his bare body.
Crash—!
As the massive blow struck his Shield, Lim Jae-hyuk’s feet skidded backward. His knees buckled, nearly giving way.
“Rrgh—! Not one step—!”
Lim Jae-hyuk gritted his teeth, blood staining them, and drove his sliding feet back into the earth with a sharp plant.
“I’ve got this!”
Every muscle in his body screamed in protest, and the arm gripping the Shield had transcended pain into a numb, tingling haze.
Yet Lim Jae-hyuk did not yield. If he held, the opening would come.
For that single moment, he became a wall willingly.
“Frost Walk.”
Through the gap, Eun Seo-jin slid in, and in that same instant, the Frozen Soul Strike locked the Collector’s limbs in ice.
Crack—crack crack—
Then she crossed her two blades in an X.
“Eternal Snow Prison.”
Massive ice spikes erupted, impaling the Collector’s entire body clean through.
In ordinary times, the beast would have seized such power and hurled it back, but the wound dealt by Song Ji-hu’s Najip had cut too deep.
The more the creature thrashed, the thicker the ice wrapped around it.
And then Eun Seo-jin’s ultimate skill: Soul Freezing.
Her two blades channeled a chill more intense than ever before.
The cold that radiated from the steel froze the Collector solid, and Eun Seo-jin dropped to one knee, her strength spent.
“I—I have to run… I can’t… I can’t move—!”
For a creature that had plundered like a king in a world where everything always bent to its will, experiencing such crisis was without precedent.
The Collector began to writhe like a beast in a trap, thrashing with ugly desperation.
Slash—!
Song Ji-hu rushed toward the frozen Collector and severed both its arms, then
struck with clean, economical blows, driving toward the center of its core.
Slash—slash slash—slash—!
Before the awakened Najip, the Collector’s predatory gifts were useless.
The writhing tentacles fleeing for escape, the treasures that adorned its bulk—all burned away to ash-white, and every wound opened in black, leaving only hideousness in its wake.
“Now!”
Lim Jae-hyuk kicked his Shield up like a launching pad and called to Song Ji-hu.
Song Ji-hu bounded off that Shield and landed atop the Collector’s head.
In one hand, the Najip blazed with the Unfading Will Light of a kingdom.
“It ends here. You cursed thing.”
Every ounce of will converged at the blade’s point.
Thrust—!
The Najip drove straight into the Collector’s frozen core.
Shriek—!
Light exploded from the blade that pierced the core, azure radiance spreading like spiderweb through the creature’s interior, shattering the Collector’s body from within.
The beast that had spent its life stealing was finally torn to pieces by the very will of the world it had collected.
“…No… I… can’t…”
The Collector’s countless eyes dimmed one by one. Song Ji-hu slowly drew the Najip free from the core.
“A collector, you say.”
He gazed down at the failing, crumbling form and murmured softly.
“Yet it couldn’t even keep hold of its own life.”
Rumble—
The Collector’s massive body finally gave way and collapsed. The treasures it had scraped together over its lifetime scattered downward with fragments of flesh.
Crash—
Song Ji-hu held the Najip steady in his palm, watching it. Azure light flickered softly across the blade.
The first weapon to fell an Apostle of the Abyss Lord.
‘With this… I’ve taken one step.’
Song Ji-hu sheathed the Najip and turned sharply.
The dead world beneath their feet began to crumble faster now that the Collector had fallen.
“Let’s go back.”
Lim Jae-hyuk exhaled sharply, letting out a dry laugh, while Eun Seo-jin sheathed her sword without a word.
“What sort of place was this? And what was that creature doing?”
As they made their way back toward the entrance, Eun Seo-jin’s question drew a faint smile from Song Ji-hu.
“This place… it was where they resisted ruin until the very end. And…”
Song Ji-hu gripped the Najip hanging at his waist tightly once more.
“That creature… no, those creatures are among the enemies we’ll have to dispose of from here on out.”
Now that the Guild was finally beginning to take proper shape, it seemed time had come to tell them what they needed to know.
“Whew…”
The three of them, having reached the Gate’s entrance, gazed upon the Collapsed World—so devastated that its very form was no longer recognizable.
The ground eroded endlessly, and the sky was filled with nothing but dark, heavy clouds.
“You’ve worked hard.”
Song Ji-hu bowed his head respectfully toward that world, then crossed back through the Gate.
***
“Shouldn’t they be going back in?”
More than a day had already passed since the three entered the Gate—hours upon hours of waiting.
Ryu Jin, standing watch outside the Gate, grew anxious and bounced on his heels as he looked toward Yoon Young-su.
“They should be fine. We’re still well within the expected timeframe.”
Yoon Young-su checked his watch and adjusted his posture.
He too felt the unease creeping in, but after all the time he’d spent watching over Song Ji-hu, he had no doubt that this time, too, he would Clear the Gate and return.
Whirrrrr—!
Then the Gate began to shimmer.
“They’re coming out!”
“Looks like it. They’re coming.”
Three shadows walked slowly out. Song Ji-hu, Eun Seo-jin, and Lim Jae-hyuk.
“You’re all all right, aren’t you?”
Ryu Jin, who had been bouncing anxiously at the Gate’s edge, hurried forward to greet them.
……!
And Yoon Young-su, who followed, found his mouth slowly falling open.
“Are you hurt?”
The condition of the three who walked out was far from normal.
It was clear this had been far more than a simple exploration—Lim Jae-hyuk’s shield and armor were dented and hanging in tatters.
Song Ji-hu’s and Eun Seo-jin’s armor too was badly torn, and blood from their wounds dripped steadily to the ground.
“Good grief, that was exhausting!”
The three of them then collapsed onto the ground as though they’d been waiting for permission, their breathing ragged.
The Seventh Returner Collects Disasters
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: ACESMEDIA Corp.
Editor
: ACESMEDIA Editorial Team
Address
: 10F, Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by ACESMEDIA Corp. in accordance with the copyright holder’s contract, and
the contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
This e-book is protected by copyright law, and unauthorized reproduction or duplication 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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