The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 75

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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 75. Two Airplanes (2)
His current life differed significantly from his previous one. Setting aside the very existence of Mental Dive, his Skills had all risen to B-Rank—that fact alone marked a watershed.
And his position now was altogether different from then. He possessed far better circumstances to save others—far more certain ones.
‘If I could use Mental Dive to save even a single S-Rank Hunter…?’
It would severely disrupt the Apostles’ plan.
‘I can’t be certain I can save a Hunter who’s already gone into Rampage, but….’
Perhaps he could accomplish something he had never managed once in six lifetimes.
To do that, however, he needed to put on this show—needed to keep the Apostles from responding properly.
By all appearances, the show was working remarkably well.
“Can you… save them? From within that chaos?”
“That’s the idea. Why I’ve arranged everything as I have—the spy at the front gate, the whole production, even the trip to Europe. All of it.”
“Mm… that’s true.”
At those words, Matsumoto Leo swallowed and considered.
‘Song Ji-hu’s been putting all his intelligence resources toward tracking down the Apostles… That’s why he needs our power.’
Now he was beginning to understand. Why, despite possessing such intelligence networks, he still wanted certain information from them.
Then Song Ji-hu’s phone rang. The caller was Rick Wesley.
Brrr-brrring.
“Yes?”
— Are you… are you watching the news?
On the other end was chaos itself. Explosions and sirens tangled with Rick Wesley’s voice into a cacophony.
“Yes, I’m in front of the TV right now.”
— The situation is worse than we thought. Would it be possible for you to come to the United States?
Rick Wesley drew a rough, ragged breath.
— I know you’re heading to Europe. But… if you could refuel there and then come here, I’m asking you.
At those words, Song Ji-hu allowed himself a faint smile. With this, his trip to the United States would be officially recorded as Rick Wesley’s request.
— I know it’s shameless, and it’ll take another half day or more from there to here, but… I’m still asking. The United States—no, USAA will never forget this favor.
Rick Wesley’s voice was heavy with desperation.
— Every Hunter in the country is mobilizing to seal off all of America, but it’s not enough.
A fight where the only option is to cut down comrades. And in the process, the Hunters who slay their comrades will themselves succumb to trauma and be Harvested by those things.
A situation so dire that only the Apostles stand to gain anything.
— So… please. Help the United States.
Song Ji-hu answered not with words but by slowly turning his head toward the window. Beyond where the sea of clouds ended.
The devastated coastline of the western shore, smothered in crimson smoke, came into view.
“Rick. Do you trust me?”
— Who else would I trust if not you?
“I can see that sky out there very clearly right now.”
— What?
“We’re beginning our descent. Get me landing clearance at a remote airfield in Nevada. Los Angeles looks too difficult to land in right now.”
Rick Wesley’s voice stopped.
“In return, I’d appreciate it if my arrival remained absolutely secret. Just mark it down as Matsumoto Leo from the Yakumo Guild arriving. I’ll explain the details when we meet.”
Then, from the other end of the line, came what sounded like a man on the verge of hysteria laughing.
— I’ll head out myself. Your location… we’ve got the aircraft. I’ll relay to the captain.
He had called asking for a rope to be lowered from a cliff’s edge, and that rope had already descended to his side.
“Then. I’ll see you after landing.”
Outside the window, the crimson sky drew steadily closer.
Soon the aircraft began descending toward the very heart of the Harvest Festival.
***
Cologne-Bonn Airport, Germany, Europe.
Zero Point’s chartered jet touched down on the runway.
And there were countless eyes watching that sight.
Journalists waiting to cover Zero Point, officials, and even people inside the terminal and in parked cars.
Every gaze was fixed on the moment the door of the Zero Point charter would open.
The stairs were connected, and as the door opened, Lim Jae-hyeok and Eun Seo-jin appeared first.
‘Target confirmed. Germany arrival.’
Reports came through on every channel. They were prepared to shadow Song Ji-hu’s every moment in Europe—hotels, meetings with associates, everything.
And all that information would flow into the Apostles’ hands.
And then, at the moment Song Ji-hu was about to make his appearance—just as his profile came into view—the group descending the stairs suddenly halted, as though receiving urgent orders.
Moments later, with a gesture from someone hurrying after them, Lim Jae-hyeok and Eun Seo-jin, who had been leading the way out, turned around and re-boarded the aircraft.
‘Target re-embarking. Refueling in progress. Suspected destination: United States.’
The image of sudden course correction upon receiving news of the disaster unfolding in America.
To the Abyss’s minions watching from the shadows, it was a perfectly natural development.
Song Ji-hu, who had forged such close ties with USAA, could hardly ignore a catastrophe unfolding on American soil.
Yet that very naturalness was another trap Song Ji-hu had laid.
Cologne-Bonn to Los Angeles was roughly sixteen hours. By the time Song Ji-hu was already crossing American airspace, Abyss’s clock would tick forward another sixteen hours before catching up.
***
At the same moment. The Nevada Desert, USA, in the pre-dawn dark.
A Yakumo Guild aircraft descended onto the runway of a military airfield, not a civilian airport.
No air traffic control logs, no customs clearance, no official digital record of any kind.
Only Rick Wesley could have arranged such a thing.
“That’s Rick Wesley for you. Clearing an entire military runway at a time like this.”
Every major American airport was now paralyzed—civilian flights grounded completely in the wake of the catastrophe. Yet that very chaos became the perfect cover for Song Ji-hu’s purposes.
In such pandemonium, no one had the administrative capacity to notice a single aircraft landing or taking off.
Beneath the ramp stood a black SUV and a single figure.
Rick Wesley.
The Guild Master of USAA stood alone in the dawn wind and sand, without a single attendant.
“Rick.”
“I can’t believe it’s really you…”
It had been only months since they last met, yet Rick Wesley’s face had aged a decade. The transformation was haggard and cruel.
His eyes were bloodshot and raw, his combat uniform caked with blood he hadn’t bothered to wash away or change.
“It’s been a long time.”
“Damn, I’m more relieved than I can say. Let’s get in the car and talk—details can wait until we’re moving.”
Rick Wesley grasped Song Ji-hu’s hand roughly as he descended the ramp. In that grip and in his gaze lay a relief too deep for words.
“I apologize for receiving such an honored guest in this state.”
“Isn’t that precisely why I came?”
At Song Ji-hu’s matter-of-fact reply, Rick Wesley’s lips twitched—a hollow laugh escaping for the first time in days.
But the weight returned to his face just as quickly.
“You’ve probably caught the gist from the news on the flight, but the situation is far worse than it appears.”
From inside the moving vehicle, Rick Wesley’s briefing began.
“Hidden time bombs that the government never even detected went off all at once. Most of the Hunters rampaging through the city centers are already listed as missing or dead on paper.”
Rick Wesley exhaled a long breath. Hunters everyone thought were dead had returned as catastrophes.
“Which means…”
“That Hunters reported dead or missing worldwide aren’t actually dead or missing at all.”
Death declarations and missing-person reports—procedures to erase potential Harvest targets from the world’s view.
In an age where hundreds, thousands of Hunters died every day worldwide, no one questioned a few more names added to the casualty lists.
Those Hunters, quietly struck from the records, were being cultivated as catastrophes somewhere within the Abyss.
Shards were planted, despair fed to them, their Contamination Levels pushed ever higher, until a day like today arrived—and they were all released at once.
“And there’s something even stranger. Multiple undetected border crossings—dozens of them—from Mexico and points further south in South America.”
Such a thing was possible only because the Abyss was scattered across the entire globe.
“For now, we’re heading to the command center. I’ve left a Mask and a blade in the back seat—use them.”
Just then, Song Ji-hu’s phone rang in his pocket.
[Yoon Young-su: I hear the situation in America is more severe than initially thought. Park Jung-ho, the Hunter Association Chairman, and even the government are deeply concerned.]
[Yoon Young-su: Please return safely. Ryu Jin and I will be waiting.]
It seemed word of America’s crisis was beginning to reach Korea as well.
The drive itself was eerily quiet. No escort convoy, no sirens, not even decoy vehicles to cover contingencies.
“This is serious…”
Then, through the car window, beyond the opposite lane, an endless column of evacuees came into view.
Truck beds packed with possessions, faces etched in terror, a river of hazard lights stretching into the distance with no end in sight.
“If we don’t stop this in time… it will become far worse than this.”
At the sight of the evacuation column, the air inside the vehicle shifted entirely.
The speed of the car carrying them toward the inferno from which everyone was fleeing only accelerated.
***
East of Los Angeles, in the outer suburbs. USAA’s secret command center was located in an underground bunker.
“We’ve introduced you as Black Ops Hunters operating under USAA.”
Song Ji-hu and Matsumoto Leo donned the Masks and hung the ID Badges around their necks that he provided.
“Clear!”
With the security guard’s call, the barrier lifted. Inside, the scene was absolute chaos.
“Dammit…! It’s pandemonium in Nevada too! Where the hell are we supposed to evacuate to from here!”
“We’re short on Hunters! This isn’t just a New York problem anymore! California’s about to be wiped off the map!”
A vast tactical display covered one wall—a map of the entire United States dotted with dozens of red blinking points that never stopped flickering.
“Those are the locations of Hunters whose Contamination Levels have entered the 90-percent range.”
“So many of them….”
The densest concentration lay across the entire west. And those points spread gradually eastward through the central regions and all the way to the coast, dotted in a chain like massive dominoes stretching across the continent.
“They haven’t gone berserk yet, but….”
If these points triggered their rampages sequentially, even a superpower like the United States would be wiped from the map without a trace within weeks.
“Right now, the biggest crisis is the S-Rank Hunter who went berserk in Los Angeles.”
Rick Wesley zoomed in on the CCTV footage still playing on screen.
“Originally, he was an S-Rank Hunter with USAA. A veteran who symbolized the defense of the west.”
“Jonathan Walker.”
Rick Wesley clenched his jaw.
“Exactly. Jonathan Walker. America’s shield. He vanished suddenly as his Contamination Level approached 100, and we thought he was dead, but….”
The figure on the CCTV bore almost no resemblance to the Jonathan Walker of the past.
Having lost his reason, he was already undergoing physical mutation, and the indiscriminate barrage of his abilities had apparently breached the first defensive line long ago.
“The entire west is under evacuation orders, and the death toll… we haven’t even been able to calculate it yet.”
To make matters worse, a Gate Break coincided with it all, and monsters now prowled the streets freely.
Hunters turned into calamities, a Gate Break, monsters flooding the cities, and the crumbling of public morale alongside it.
It was, in every sense, total catastrophe.
“That’s precisely why we needed your abilities….”
If they simply waited with folded hands, the Hunter system of the entire United States could collapse.
The Seventh-Time Returnee Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: August 14, 2026
Publisher
: Aesis Media Co., Ltd.
Editor
: Aesis Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by Aesis Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with the copyright holder’s agreement,
and the contents may not be used in any form or manner without permission from the company 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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