The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 64

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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 64. The Spy (3)
As the interview progressed, everyone found themselves studying Ayase Haruka’s face each time a candidate departed.
‘They called her a shrine maiden, but… she’s basically a walking lie detector.’
Song Ji-hu had spent days verifying candidates using the Hunter Association’s resources, yet her single word reduced all that work to scraps of paper.
‘At least no spies are slipping into the guild.’
Of course, he hadn’t rejected every candidate.
Those who showed genuine sincerity, regardless of their specs or abilities, passed more often than not.
“Hmm… Candidate 45 didn’t show, and neither did 46. I know they submitted their applications, but…”
Thanks to Ayase’s effectiveness, several questionable applicants simply walked out on their own.
“Yes, well, there’s no need to hunt them down. Let’s move on to the next number.”
Yoon Young-su checked the list of no-shows and marked the missing numbers with X’s in succession.
‘Why did the guild master insist on interviewing people with red flags anyway?’
Half of those who’d left were individuals flagged as questionable in the background investigation.
“Since we’re taking a break anyway, why don’t we rest for a moment?”
“We’ll resume in ten minutes!”
At Song Ji-hu’s words, everyone stretched with visible relief, and Yoon Young-su sighed as he reviewed the profiles of those rejected so far.
“Guild master, but… why did you insist on interviewing people with issues?”
When Yoon Young-su asked carefully, Song Ji-hu glanced at Matsumoto Leo before turning away.
“I’m building a list. Every time someone on it is identified, Kage deploys another operative.”
“Ah…!”
Yoon Young-su finally understood, watching Matsumoto Leo busily contact someone.
Song Ji-hu always had a plan.
“Is it draining?”
“No. Actually, I’m finding it fun.”
Song Ji-hu asked Ayase Haruka quietly, and a smile bloomed at the corners of her mouth.
“I only hear what I want to hear, so it’s more rewarding than I can say.”
“Then I’m glad.”
After a brief ten-minute rest, the interviews resumed.
“Next candidate, please come in. Security department… His name is Han Do-yoon.”
On paper, he was the perfect security personnel—a D-rank Hunter with a solid track record in security roles at major guilds.
“Hello. I’m Han Do-yoon.”
Not a wrinkle in his tailored suit, a soft smile at the corners of his mouth, and a steady, reassuring tone of voice.
His self-introduction, career summary, and motivation for applying were all flawless.
“Hmm…”
Yoon Young-su smiled at the man’s interview demeanor.
His speech flowed without hesitation, his gaze was steady, and his smile was perfectly calibrated—neither excessive nor insufficient.
Here was a candidate so polished you couldn’t find a single fault.
Still, Yoon Young-su unconsciously found his eyes drifting to Song Ji-hu and Ayase Haruka’s faces as they posed questions—wondering if perhaps he’d overlooked another problematic applicant.
But seeing no change in either of their expressions, Yoon Young-su nodded with satisfaction.
‘At last… finally, someone genuine.’
The moment Yoon Young-su felt that certainty.
“I’d like to ask one final question.”
“Yes.”
“How was the Mental Corruption Rehabilitation Program for you?”
At Song Ji-hu’s question, something shifted in Han Do-yoon’s expression for the first time. His pupils dilated slightly, and his mouth opened just a fraction.
“Without those people, I wouldn’t be standing here now.”
The sincerity was so pure his eyes reddened at the corners.
“I see. We’ll notify you of the results within three days.”
“Thank you for the opportunity. I’m Han Do-yoon.”
The interview ended. The candidate bowed respectfully and left.
Click.
“That one was acceptable, wasn’t he?”
Yoon Young-su circled the application with satisfaction, looking toward Song Ji-hu.
“Finally, someone without flaw—”
“The Abyss.”
“There’s nothing inside him.”
Song Ji-hu and Ayase Haruka spoke simultaneously.
“Pardon?”
“Normally, people’s voices carry an undeniable emotional resonance—what I’d call clarity or murkiness. But that person just now… there was no sound at all.”
He was speaking, his sentences were clear, yet all that remained was the feeling of a robot reading from a script.
Moreover, her instincts kept sounding alarms, and the goosebumps rising on her arms showed no sign of fading.
“Excellent.”
Song Ji-hu picked up the application and smiled. He knew far too well who had just walked out of that interview.
‘Creatures who surrendered their selves to the abyss, puppets grinning away without even knowing they’d been brainwashed.’
He’d seen them far too many times in his previous life.
‘Fanatics of the priests.’
The pseudo-religious cult known as the Abyss. That was exactly the face worn by those who’d been swallowed by it.
Ayase Haruka had been right—the word “empty” fit perfectly. They were robots following orders, and the symptoms were evident just moments ago.
‘After Spider, it’s your turn, isn’t it?’
He suspected the Apostles had taken this measure because they couldn’t appear directly for now.
“So this person fails the interview too… we process them and add them straight to the surveillance list?”
Yoon Young-su’s voice grew urgent. Letting creatures like this into the guild was like embracing a bomb.
“No.”
But Song Ji-hu raised his hand, stopping him.
“Pardon? Why not…?”
Song Ji-hu tapped the applicant’s file in his hand.
“We hire them instead.”
At his words, Yoon Young-su’s head tilted in confusion.
Until now, any Abyss operative applying to the guild—let alone one with regular affiliation—had been an automatic first-round rejection.
“Do you have a reason, sir?”
Song Ji-hu nodded at the question.
“We’ve already filtered out every Abyss operative who applied for key positions. But if this one gets rejected too…?”
“Ah… they’ll either try a different approach or become more subtle.”
Perfect defense sometimes breeds unnecessary suspicion.
“Exactly. Or they might assume internal information leaked and go to ground.”
There was no need to advertise to the Apostles that Zero Point’s defenses were abnormally strong.
“Most importantly, look at his résumé. He openly lists completion of the Abyss Mental Corruption Rehabilitation Program.”
Song Ji-hu pointed to a line on the document with his fingertip.
“Hiring someone like this sends the signal that Zero Point doesn’t suspect the Abyss one bit. All the other rejections become mere coincidence.”
It was a perfect picture.
“And crucially, he applied for security personnel, not some sensitive position. So we hire him, keep him in our sights, and actually use him as a tracker.”
“Understood. I should make the employee ID cards more sophisticated—restrict access by designated zones.”
At Yoon Young-su’s answer, Song Ji-hu nodded with a smile, as if to say he’d gotten it exactly right.
“They’ve opened a door for us, after all.”
Song Ji-hu handed the file to Matsumoto Leo as he spoke.
“Closing it in their face would be poor manners.”
***
The following night, in the Conference Room of Zero Point Guild.
Four people sat around the meeting table.
Song Ji-hu and Yoon Young-su, Ayase Haruka and Matsumoto Leo.
“That area in the back is the Training Grounds, right?”
“Yeah, construction’s almost done. Why?”
“Thought I’d run our people through some drills there once it’s finished.”
“Sure, whatever works.”
The space was plenty large enough, after all.
“Anyway… this Han Do-yoon. Something about him feels off.”
The moment Han Do-yoon became the main topic, everyone’s expression hardened.
The moment Han Do-yoon passed, Matsumoto Leo had begun backtracking every detail of his history using Kage’s Korean intelligence network.
“Nothing to fault.”
That was precisely what was strange. His career, his relationships, his finances—all of it was suspiciously clean.
“But… isn’t it normal for someone to have nothing to fault? Usually?”
“For a normal person, yes. But this guy’s a Hunter, isn’t he? Even if he’s only D-rank, you’re telling me a Hunter leaves not a single trace?”
The traces of a life lived were disturbingly absent. It was as if someone had deliberately scrubbed it all down with bleach.
“It’s too clean. Feels like someone did a hasty whitewash job.”
Matsumoto Leo was the one startled by Song Ji-hu’s answer—his expression one of wonder at how someone could notice such a thing.
“But here’s the key part.”
Song Ji-hu pointed to a specific detail in the supplementary materials he’d added. The particular cohort Han Do-yoon had completed the Abyss Mental Corruption Rehabilitation Program with.
“Oddly enough, only this cohort has a high reemployment success rate.”
“Right. We barely caught the tail because there’s an affiliate of the LB Group involved.”
Even after Hunters diagnosed with Mental Corruption completed rehabilitation and were cast out by society, finding another job was like plucking a star from the sky. The stigma of Mental Corruption carried that much weight.
“And they’re all so tidy about it.”
The Hunter Association, the media, major guilds, even politics. It wasn’t so different from the situation with Kage, was it.
“I’ve left a trail on the others too. It won’t be long before we can confirm who they’re connected to.”
Matsumoto Leo tapped the table lightly with one finger.
“Do you think the Abyss has planted people in key positions within the Hunter Association as well?”
Yoon Young-su spoke carefully.
“Without question.”
Song Ji-hu answered without hesitation.
“Anywhere there’s power or authority, it’d be harder to find a place they haven’t infiltrated.”
Song Ji-hu looked at the others and cautioned them once more.
“That’s why we need to be careful with every movement we make. Outside this room, we shouldn’t even speak carelessly.”
“So what’s your plan for this Han Do-yoon character? Depending on where you place him, guild information could leak out like a sieve.”
Matsumoto Leo asked, crossing his arms.
“I decide what information gets out.”
Song Ji-hu covered the face in the resume with his finger.
But if you kept the spy alive and controlled what they saw, everything changed. The enemy believed they were seeing the truth, but in reality, they only saw what you wanted them to see.
Catching spies was amateur work. Catch one, and the enemy planted two or three more in its place, even more carefully hidden. It became an endless game of whack-a-mole.
“It won’t go exactly as you want. Unwanted information will definitely slip through.”
“That would be true for most people.”
He had confidence. He’d already done this countless times before.
“So where should we assign him? If we put him somewhere a bit remote….”
“Main Gate security.”
“The, the Main Gate?”
Yoon Young-su’s voice pitched higher.
“That’s the most sensitive position! Everyone who comes and goes is visible…!”
Yoon Young-su’s voice grew urgent.
“Hmm… an appropriate choice of position.”
But Matsumoto Leo nodded in understanding and countered Yoon Young-su’s objection.
“Precisely because it’s visible, we can control it.”
“What the Main Gate security sees is only what we allow them to see. The truly important things don’t go through the Main Gate in the first place.”
Song Ji-hu continued.
“At the same time, it’s the most conspicuous position within the guild. It’s the perfect place for us to monitor him.”
Of course, if there was too little information, he might grow suspicious, so the idea was to feed him a careful blend of truth and falsehood.
“That way, Han Do-yoon’s every move—what he’s trying to dig up, which secrets he’s particularly interested in—will tell us their intentions.”
Song Ji-hu smiled wickedly. He understood what Matsumoto Leo and Yoon Young-su were worried about, but there was one thing they didn’t know.
‘I’ve done this sort of thing until I was sick of it in my fourth life.’
He’d already played enough games of hide-and-seek with the Apostles.
The Seventh Regression Catastrophe Collector
Author
: Song Tan
Publication Date
: July 31, 2026
Publisher
: Acesis Media Co., Ltd.
Editor
: Acesis Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Email
: [email protected]
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No part of this content may be used in any form or by any means without the permission of the publisher and the author.
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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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