The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 56

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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 56. Ayase Haruka (2)
‘Then everything fits into place.’
The symptoms despite the low Contamination count, Kage’s varying choices each time—it all made sense now.
“There’s definitely something there. I’ve never seen her look this peaceful.”
Matsumoto Leo watched Ayase Haruka sleeping with a look of ease unlike any he’d witnessed recently, his eyes bright with fascination.
‘The Mental Barrier must be helping. Since it’s not terminal yet, it’s still effective.’
At the same time, a glimmer of hope flickered across Matsumoto’s gaze. Song Ji-hu withdrew his hand from Haruka and slowly rose to his feet.
“I can’t heal it in one go.”
“But you can heal it at all. That’s enough. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t even have conceived of treatment as a possibility.”
Song Ji-hu didn’t voice the caveat that the treatment itself could be extraordinarily dangerous. The option of not healing her simply didn’t exist.
‘If the Contamination is woven too deeply into her abilities… I’ll have to protect the Vessel while simultaneously rooting out the Contamination….’
If the Vessel shatters, Haruka won’t return. Not truly. She might become a living husk.
Of all the patients he’d encountered, this was undoubtedly the most intricate and malicious trap.
“Let’s try. Step by step.”
Song Ji-hu sat in the chair beside Ayase Haruka. Yoon Young-su positioned himself by the window, while Eun Seo-jin took her place back-to-back with him, facing the door.
‘The conditions for a Mental Dive are three: physical contact, a Compass, and the subject’s consent.’
There were cases like Ollie Barkley’s forced entry, but the risk was too great, and in a situation like this, consent was essential.
‘Whether consent can be obtained, though….’
But it was needless worry. Before Song Ji-hu could even extend his hand, Ayase Haruka’s fingertips trembled, and then her hand desperately gripped his sleeve.
There were no words, but it was unmistakably a form of consent. Even through her clouded consciousness, she seemed to know.
“Good. If her will still remains….”
Song Ji-hu murmured quietly and clasped her cold hand in return, the one gripping his sleeve.
As he closed his eyes, the Compass in his breast pocket began vibrating violently.
And Song Ji-hu intoned silently within himself.
‘Mental Dive.’
***
When his eyes opened, Song Ji-hu stood in the midst of an endless colonnade of vermillion torii gates.
Thousands upon thousands of crimson gates stretched away into the mist.
An old, abandoned shrine. Moss-covered stone steps and faded thick ropes. And from all directions, thousands of eerie voices reverberated and echoed.
Will-o’-the-wisps drifted about, casting light across the space, and crumbled talismans lay scattered at his feet.
Each time he passed through one of those decaying, neglected torii, the same scene repeated with subtle variations.
A scene flashed past—Matsumoto Leo cradling a bloodied Ayase Haruka, screaming in anguish.
And through the very next torii, Matsumoto coldly trampled her underfoot and walked away, that image overlaying the first.
Salvation and betrayal, falsehood and truth intertwined at random, repeating endlessly.
Which had truly happened, and which was a lie planted by someone else? Even Song Ji-hu couldn’t distinguish at a glance.
Throughout the colonnade stood worshippers with faces worn smooth, all pouring out different questions simultaneously.
“Did he abandon you?”
“Who speaks the truth?”
“Isn’t it all a lie?”
“Is that even the real truth?”
Show a gap, and it’s over. The moment a question mark seeps into your heart, the boundary between truth and falsehood blurs, and everything becomes suspicion.
“Mental Barrier.”
Song Ji-hu raised his Mental Barrier and walked through the torii, again and again.
The questions grew faster, overlapping, sharper. Hundreds of voices bored into his mind at once, demanding he judge something immediately.
“Most people would struggle to endure this.”
Song Ji-hu walked through indifferently and arrived at the end of the colonnade.
“You came.”
The moment he crossed the colonnade, dozens of shrine maidens bearing Ayase Haruka’s exact face waited for him before the ruined shrine.
“But it’s pointless. I’m the real one. Everything you hear is a lie.”
“No, I’m the real one. Everything you hear is the truth.”
“Real? Fake? Who’s real? Who’s false?”
The shrine maidens laughed in unison, their sound chill.
“So… find the real one among us, is that it?”
Song Ji-hu observed them quietly, then activated Residual Thoughts and Mental Sensing simultaneously.
“How amusing.”
Song Ji-hu’s lips twisted upward. Dozens of shrine maidens in identical garb, identical faces, stared at him—yet only one emotion reached him.
Bang—!
That single emotion’s source wasn’t the shrine maidens before him. It was below them, beneath the shrine’s floor.
“How did you know?”
“How did you know?”
“How did you know?”
Between the miko figures dissolving like mist, Song Ji-hu drove a Compass into the shrine’s entrance. The needle sank deep.
Crack-crack-crack!
Wood twisted and tore away with a terrible screech, and when a hole large enough for a person to slip through had been carved out—
“How did you know?”
“It was perfect, I swear it was.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing changes.”
Beneath the shrine’s floor, curled in deep shadow, the real Ayase Haruka lay trembling.
Both hands pressed over her ears. She had become unable to trust anything she heard—a pitiful sight.
And the false miko who had resumed their true forms looked down at the real Ayase Haruka with mockery in their eyes.
“See? She believes nothing now. Not her ears, not her own heart. So I’m the real one. The one who doesn’t doubt—I’m the true Haruka.”
As Song Ji-hu moved toward the real one, the false miko stepped into his path.
“What were you going to tell her? Pointless. She’ll take every word you say as a lie.”
Logic and persuasion would not reach this opponent. That was the law of this place.
So instead of speaking, Song Ji-hu chose another method.
‘Thought Projection.’
A battle that words alone cannot win. Then surely the answer is to meet it with an answer that fits.
Song Ji-hu pushed past the false miko blocking his way and knelt beside the huddled Haruka, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. Then he began to stimulate her memories.
The effect of a C-rank Thought Projection was simple enough: the ability to send brief images or emotions to another person.
So Song Ji-hu forced a single image into her mind. Drove it in, really.
‘Matsumoto Leo.’
Long before the spider’s web had touched her. He hoped she would remember that pure time, untainted.
‘The memories she’d seen most while passing through the torii corridor were those of Matsumoto Leo. That had to mean something.’
When everything surrounding you feels like a lie, there must still be something that cannot change.
‘If those things touched her most precious memory, then…’
Then reversing that—implanting the truth of that memory—should work, shouldn’t it?
Slowly, focus returned to Ayase Haruka’s vacant eyes.
“…This is…”
And Ayase Haruka’s fractured voice rang through the shrine.
He could only send one fleeting image at a time. So Song Ji-hu pushed the same image into her mind again and again.
“Is this… real?”
After the relentless barrage of Thought Projection, finally—she discerned one truth for herself.
“How is this possible?!”
Crack!
Cracks spider-webbed across the faces of the fakes. Fine, hairline fractures.
“…No. That’s a lie too. That’s—”
“You,”
Song Ji-hu cut off the fake’s words and extended his hand to the huddled girl.
“You are not Ayase Haruka. You’re only something mimicking her.”
Ayase Haruka grasped Song Ji-hu’s hand and slowly pulled herself to her feet.
“Liar! Liar! The fake is you! Don’t turn away from the truth!”
“The fake is masquerading as the real!”
“Drive out the fake!”
What the Apostles had planted began shrieking from all sides, convulsing.
Song Ji-hu ignored them, looking directly into Ayase Haruka’s eyes.
Her eyes still trembled endlessly, her expression cycling through frowns and relaxation with each conflicting voice she heard.
“R…real?”
“Yes. I’m real.”
Ayase Haruka gripped the hem of Song Ji-hu’s shirt as though she would never let go.
“Fake…”
She stared directly at the miko with her identical face. Her expression was still full of confusion, but clarity was finally returning to her eyes—the light of reason.
And then, at last—
“You’re not me.”
With those words, the forms of the fakes shattered and scattered into nothing.
“Ah…”
In that instant, the thousands of voices that had rung deafeningly in Ayase Haruka’s ears fell silent all at once.
“Ah, ah… the voices…”
Tears spilled down Ayase Haruka’s cheeks.
But Song Ji-hu’s expression remained hard and fixed.
At the very bottom of the now-silent Abandoned Shrine, a black spider’s web still clung obscenely to its roots, coiled and waiting.
‘I’ve only held them back for now. There’s still a long way to go before full recovery.’
What she’d stripped away today was merely the surface.
“Let’s head back. Matsumoto Leo should be waiting for us.”
“Y-yes…!”
***
Song Ji-hu’s eyes opened.
The familiar ceiling of the Treatment Chamber came back into focus.
In the same moment, a thin stream of blood trickled from his nose.
His head throbbed as though it might split, and every ounce of strength had drained from his body.
Yet Song Ji-hu didn’t overreact. He simply wiped away the nosebleed with the handkerchief Eun Seo-jin offered.
“Are you alright?”
Yoon Young-su hastily handed over a Healing Potion.
“I’m fine.”
Song Ji-hu answered curtly and swallowed the potion. Venturing through another person’s Mental Dungeon was inherently taxing on the body, after all.
Just then, Ayase Haruka’s eyes—still lying down—began to open slowly.
“The… voices.”
For the first time in ages, there was silence. The voices that had echoed endlessly through her mind finally fell still.
Tears began to well up at the corners of Haruka’s eyes. Life returned to those hollow pupils.
How long had it been since such peace? Leaning on that truth Song Ji-hu had ceaselessly planted within her, Ayase Haruka could finally breathe.
For her, it was nothing short of salvation.
“I can hear them….”
She murmured with a trembling voice.
“I can really hear… my voice.”
“Haruka…!”
Matsumoto Leo rushed to her side.
“Leo…?”
Hearing her whole voice for the first time in so long, Matsumoto Leo’s eyes too were visibly red.
“Haruka…!”
His shoulders began to tremble uncontrollably, and ragged breaths escaped from his lips as he fought to hold back tears.
“Thank you, Song Ji-hu. I mean it sincerely.”
Matsumoto Leo’s voice quivered.
His warning about the Abyss had been right. And now, having also saved Ayase Haruka—that was where his heartfelt gratitude came from.
Yet Song Ji-hu’s expression remained dry.
“This isn’t over yet. What we did today was a temporary measure. We may need to treat her several more times to remove it completely. If we can’t, it could relapse at any moment.”
Without clearing away that web lying beneath the Abandoned Shrine, Ayase Haruka’s peace was merely borrowed time.
“Even so… the fact that we’ve seen this much improvement is surely something to be hopeful about.”
At the word hope, Song Ji-hu smiled faintly. So did Eun Seo-jin and Lim Jae-hyuk. And Ollie Barkley and Ayase Haruka as well.
To a certain extent, they were all Song Ji-hu’s hope.
Matsumoto Leo gripped Ayase Haruka’s delicate hand firmly.
The Seventh Regression Bearer Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: July 21, 2026
Publisher
: (주)AcesMedia
Editor
: AcesMedia Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by (주)AcesMedia under contract with the copyright holder.
No part of this work may 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 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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