The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 6

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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 6. Eun Seo-jin (2)
The world inverted.
Gravity vanished, colors warped, sound shattered.
Song Ji-hu’s consciousness sank as though plummeting endlessly through ice-cold darkness.
And then—
Thud.
When his feet touched solid ground, the first thing he felt was a blade of cold that pierced his lungs.
“Gasp….”
His breath escaped in white vapor, and Song Ji-hu slowly surveyed his surroundings.
A courthouse.
This was no space for human law. The walls, ceiling, floor, and even the judge’s bench high above, the defendant’s box, the jury seats—all of it was carved from ice that gleamed such a brilliant blue it hurt the eyes.
Whisper… whisper…
Hexagonal ice crystals drifted through the air like snow, appearing and vanishing in endless succession.
Song Ji-hu felt despair more keenly than cold emanating from the ice crystals suspended before him.
“The Frozen Courthouse, is it? They really do think of everything.”
Song Ji-hu murmured low, taking stock of his position.
The advocate’s bench.
When Song Ji-hu dragged his finger across the ice desk, biting cold dug into his skin.
The advocate’s bench held only a frozen chair, as if to say defense arguments would never be permitted—no evidence, no documents existed anywhere.
Turning his gaze to the side, Eun Seo-jin sat in the defendant’s box. Or rather, he was ‘restrained’ there.
Ice chains, honed by guilt itself, bound his limbs and fixed him deep beneath the defendant’s box floor.
His silver hair hung limp, obscuring his face, and no vitality whatsoever emanated from him.
“……Eun Seo-jin.”
Song Ji-hu called out softly, but Eun Seo-jin didn’t stir.
Suddenly, a colossal boom shook the entire courthouse hard enough to make bodies sway.
The judge, composed of black shadow, had brought down a massive ice gavel from the highest frozen throne.
Though his body was made of black shadow, his face was clear—a man who appeared to be in his eighties, with stern and sharp features.
‘Baek Mu-jin….’
Hair almost white, wrinkles cut deep, eyes cold and settled. Eun Seo-jin’s master, the Sword Saint Baek Mu-jin, who had reached the pinnacle of the blade.
Though he had passed from this world in shock after Eun Seo-jin locked himself away.
‘To break someone this way… there’s no holding out against it.’
“The trial begins.”
With those emotionless words, the gavel came down, and five shadows rose from the jury box as if in answer.
Bang!
The judge brought the gavel down once more.
“Defendant Eun Seo-jin. You betrayed your comrade and drove him to death. Do you wish to make a statement?”
Eun Seo-jin did not answer. Could not answer.
His lips trembled, but no sound came. As though his vocal cords themselves had frozen over.
“The defendant invokes the right to remain silent. Very well. Witnesses, testify.”
Eun Seo-jin’s former party members. They all pointed at him in unison.
“Traitor!”
“You abandoned us!”
“We died because of your contamination!”
“You’re a murderer!”
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
With each testimony, the judge’s gavel struck the bench. The sound seemed to crush Eun Seo-jin’s heart itself.
“…No… Ugh…….”
With his vocal cords frozen solid, only a thin wheeze escaped.
Song Ji-hu rose slowly and raised his hand.
“I object.”
Short and clear. In that instant, all noise in the courthouse ceased.
The judge turned his head slowly. His gaze was cold and sharp.
“……An advocate? An advocate, you say. This court needs no advocate. Guilt is already confirmed.”
A sneer and contempt flickered at the corner of the judge’s mouth.
“Eun Seo-jin did not betray his party members. What is confirmed is not guilt, but your distortion.”
Song Ji-hu fixed the judge with his ashen eyes. This trial was nothing but comedy.
‘In the first place, having those calling themselves victims sit in the jury box deciding guilt and innocence is absurd in itself.’
The judge shouted down at Song Ji-hu.
“Provide evidence!”
“Three years ago. April 17th, 2030. The raid on the A-Rank Dungeon ‘Frozen Ruins’ in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do.”
Information gathered across six lifetimes poured from Song Ji-hu’s lips without hesitation.
“During the boss fight, it’s true that Eun Seo-jin showed Stage Two Mental Contamination symptoms. But he didn’t flee. Instead, he pushed aside Choi Yu-jin, the sub-dealer who was exposed to the boss’s area attack, and took the blow himself.”
“That’s a lie!”
Choi Yu-jin shot up from the jury box, shouting.
“It wasn’t Eun Seo-jin who ran—it was the sub-dealer Choi Yu-jin. The collapse started there.”
“I didn’t run! Eun Seo-jin pushed me!”
Choi Yu-jin’s voice cracked with desperation from the jury box.
“He pushed you to save you. The boss’s attack was directed at you, and Eun Seo-jin threw his own body in front to shove you to safety. In doing so, he sustained grave injuries.”
Song Ji-hu’s rebuttal was glacial.
“And healer Han So-mi. You claimed Eun Seo-jin didn’t heal you in time—but the truth is you were out of Mana. It wasn’t Eun Seo-jin who failed to heal the party members; it was you. Eun Seo-jin wasn’t even a Dealer, was he?”
“That’s… that’s not—!”
“All of it is distorted testimony.”
Song Ji-hu systematically dismantled each one. Kim Do-hun’s testimony. Park Jun-seo’s testimony. Lee Hyun-woo’s testimony.
All of it warped. The truth was simple: Eun Seo-jin had tried to save everyone and collapsed alone, while those who survived blamed him for everything.
“……Therefore, Eun Seo-jin is innocent.”
Song Ji-hu fell silent, and the courtroom fell with him.
And then—
Bang!
The judge’s gavel came down again.
“Dismissed.”
“…What?”
“All testimony is dismissed. This court does not seek truth. It exists to confirm guilt. Your arguments mean nothing.”
Song Ji-hu’s eyes turned to ice.
‘So… logic won’t win here.’
This place was nothing but a stage constructed by Eun Seo-jin’s guilt to destroy itself. The judge raised his massive ice gavel.
“Defendant Eun Seo-jin. Your crime is the murder of your comrades. Your sentence is… eternal suffering.”
As the gavel descended for the final blow, Song Ji-hu moved. He drew the Black Dagger from his belt and struck downward at the judge.
Screech—!
But the blade stopped in empty air. An invisible wall. The judge sneered.
“Barbaric conduct is not permitted in this courtroom.”
Song Ji-hu clenched his teeth and sheathed his blade. His wrist throbbed from the backlash.
“Neither counsel nor defendant nor juror. None may attack one another. Such is the law of this court.”
“This is absurd. As if physical assault were the only kind of attack.”
Song Ji-hu opened and closed his fists repeatedly, assessing the situation.
‘Physical force is useless. Then….’
Song Ji-hu closed his eyes and began reading the emotions embedded throughout the entire courtroom through Residual Thought.
Guilt. Self-recrimination. Despair. Helplessness. Isolation.
All of it belonged to Eun Seo-jin. For three years, he had tortured himself endlessly in this courtroom.
But that wasn’t all. Scattered across the ice walls, faint but unmistakable, lay other emotions.
Duty. Responsibility. Camaraderie. Sacrifice.
Eun Seo-jin’s true heart. The feelings from that moment when he truly tried to protect his comrades. His essence itself.
‘The space is distorted, but not entirely false. Then… the target I need to overcome is this space itself.’
Song Ji-hu opened his eyes. And he activated Thought Projection. This time, his target wasn’t the judge or Eun Seo-jin—it was the entire courtroom.
Hummmmmm—!
A faint silver aura bloomed from Song Ji-hu’s body. The light grew denser, then began spreading outward like mist in all directions.
“You dare…!”
The judge realized something was wrong and screamed, but it was already too late.
The hell condensed across seven lifetimes shattered the vessel of a C-rank and erupted.
The pure hope of the first life.
The bitter despair of the second life.
The blazing fury of the third life.
The humiliating submission of the fourth life.
The bone-deep hatred of the fifth life.
The revenge born from staking everything in the sixth life.
And… the obsession of the seventh life.
Song Ji-hu began scattering all of those emotions, unfiltered, across the entirety of the courtroom.
“Heh… you picked the wrong person to provoke.”
Crack—crack—crackle—!
A century’s worth of emotion that this space could not contain began flooding in, filling every corner.
The ice walls turned red, and flames poured down from the ceiling instead of ice crystals.
The shadows in the jury box shrieked as they dissolved.
“Krraaaagh! Wh-what is this…! How dare a C-rank…!”
The judge staggered toward Song Ji-hu, roaring at the top of his lungs.
“You? Saving an S-rank? Know your place, you worthless wretch!”
A howl that clawed at the mind. But Song Ji-hu—
laughed.
“Heh… hahahaha…!”
“What, what’s so funny!”
“C-rank? Helpless?”
Song Ji-hu lifted his head. Eyes the color of ash, holding six hells within them, pierced straight through the judge.
“Your shallow tricks mean nothing.
A smile cold and cruel curled at the corner of his mouth.
“You think they’ll work on me?”
In that instant, the judge’s form twisted, warped by terror.
Six lives lived. A hundred years had long since passed in the reckoning of days—a span in which his very soul had been toyed with by the Abyss Lord itself. Against such a being, this paltry mental assault fell short even of a child’s play.
“Hit harder.”
Song Ji-hu took a step toward the judge’s bench. Beneath his feet, ice blackened and burned.
Rumble—crack!
Song Ji-hu’s consciousness pervaded the entire space, and the courtroom trembled with redoubled violence.
Walls began to crumble. The ceiling split. The courtroom itself started to collapse.
“No! Forced execution! Immediate sentencing!”
The judge brought down his gavel with all his might, and the courtroom blazed with blinding white light.
***
When the light faded, Song Ji-hu stood in the middle of a Wasteland filled with ice. The sky was dark crimson, and grotesque cries echoed from all directions.
The same situation he had faced before.
“So this is eternal torment?”
Song Ji-hu drew the Black Dagger. The rules of the courtroom had vanished.
“Good. This is easier to stomach.”
Gurgle—
Fragments of consciousness gathered into form and lunged at Song Ji-hu.
Shing—!
The first mass split in two, letting out an eerie shriek before it vanished.
“Just as I thought… it flows well with my abilities.”
It was a flawed creation, as Ryu Jin had said, but in the end everything depended on the hand that wielded it. As the silver-gleaming blade cleaved through the second mass, it screamed and crumbled to ash.
“There’s no end to this.”
Then Song Ji-hu spotted it—a defendant’s bench sitting alone in the middle of the Wasteland. Eun Seo-jin remained chained there, his head hung low.
‘…He’s completely lost consciousness.’
Three years of repeated hell had worn his soul to nothing.
‘The key to solving this Dungeon lies with Eun Seo-jin, after all.’
Song Ji-hu charged toward him. He burned away the consciousness fragments with his barrier and reached the defendant’s bench.
“Eun Seo-jin! Wake up!”
He grabbed his shoulders and shook, but Eun Seo-jin only stared into empty space with hollow eyes.
“…Damn it.”
At the sight of those vacant eyes, memories from his previous life surfaced unbidden. Song Ji-hu shook his head and raised his Mental Barrier to its maximum.
He placed a hand on Eun Seo-jin’s forehead and activated Thought Projection at its limit.
Six lives of his own. All the pain and despair within them, along with his hunger for vengeance—he poured it forth unfiltered into Eun Seo-jin.
The 7th Returnee Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Publication Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: ACES Media
Editor
: ACES Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F, Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work has been published by ACES Media in accordance with the copyright holder’s agreement,
No part of this content may be used in any form or by any means without authorization from the publisher and author.
This e-book is a copyrighted work protected under 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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