The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 8

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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 8. Eun Seojin (4)
A cold entirely different from before. The cold of one who stood alone at last, who had found what he must protect.
The Twin Swords had transformed. Longer, sharper, clearer. Not a transparent blue light, but a pure white radiance so brilliant it made the eyes sting.
“The Frost Swordmaster epithet suits you after all.”
Black Eun Seojin sneered and pointed his blade at Eun Seojin with the tip.
“The Frost Swordmaster….”
Eun Seojin murmured the words as he lifted his swords.
“Yes… that was my epithet once.”
There had indeed been such a time.
Black Eun Seojin screamed and lunged forward. Blade met blade.
Clang!
A single exchange.
In just one clash, black Eun Seojin’s blade split in two.
“This… this can’t be possible…!”
“It is possible.”
Eun Seojin spoke with absolute coldness.
“You’re part of me. I just have to surpass you.”
The second blade swung.
The black form split in half, shrieking.
“Hah….”
The moment Eun Seojin transcended his limits, something became visible to Song Jihoo alone.
Black mist. Formless darkness, sweeping past through the remnants of shadow.
And in that instant, blood-red eyes gleaming within it.
A familiar voice echoing in his mind.
>
Goosebumps erupted across Song Jihoo’s entire body.
>
At the voice of one he had never forgotten for a single moment, Song Jihoo stared at the dissipating black mist.
‘This time will be different.’
He clenched his teeth.
‘Wait for it.’
Song Jihoo’s ashen eyes stained themselves crimson.
‘This time, I will surely… tear out your heart.’
While Song Jihoo renewed his vow of vengeance, Eun Seojin, unaware of this strange phenomenon, was breathing hard from having cut down his own shadow.
“Now we need to return.”
Song Jihoo stared for a long while at the place where the Abyss Lord had vanished, then rose from the crumbling wasteland and dusted himself off.
The blood-red sky cleared, the ice melted away, and light poured down. As if three years of nightmare were ending at last.
“How do we get back?”
Eun Seojin, who had regained his senses while shaking his head frantically, approached Song Jihoo urgently.
“Don’t worry. Once you clear the Stage, the Mental Realm will… expel you on its own.”
With those words, light enveloped the two of them.
And as Song Jihoo slipped out of the Mental Realm, a blue aura clung to him and followed.
***
Crack!
The ice that had frozen the entire building shattered from within.
Crackle.
Fractures spread across the whole structure, and ice crystals scattered in a glittering spray. Song Jihoo staggered, and Eun Seojin steadied him.
Eun Seojin’s eyes opened. His gaze was still cold, but no longer hollow.
“…Why did you come to save me?”
Eun Seojin asked. His voice was parched and cracked—for the first time in ages, he was speaking real words.
A stranger, with no connection to him whatsoever, had thrown his life into the line and plunged into his consciousness—somehow, by some means.
Song Jihoo wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and answered flatly.
“I needed your blade.”
It was a cold, calculating answer, but Eun Seojin sensed something beneath it.
This man was not lying.
‘And even if it were otherwise….’
Eun Seojin slowly knelt on one knee, bowed his head, and spoke.
“…Then my blade is yours.”
Song Jihoo looked down at Eun Seojin. His ashen eyes betrayed no emotion.
But moments later, the corners of his mouth lifted faintly.
“…Wake up.”
Song Jihoo extended his hand.
“There’s much to be done.”
Eun Seojin grasped it and rose to his feet. The first ally of his seventh life.
“My name is Song Jihoo.”
“Understood.”
And the first blade for his vengeance.
***
Song Jihoo’s knees buckled as he stepped out of the Isolation Chamber.
His vision blurred, and a sharp ringing pierced his ears without ceasing. The feeling in his fingertips had vanished long ago.
‘…I pushed too hard after all.’
The price of waging battle through an S-rank Hunter’s Mental Realm with a C-rank vessel—and an unprepared body at that—was severe.
Without a mind honed over a hundred years, he would have lost consciousness long since.
Song Jihoo leaned against the wall, barely supporting a body gone heavy as wet cotton. He stumbled out of the Isolation Chamber, breathing in ragged gasps that tore at his lungs.
“Don’t move! Hands up!”
Commands echoed down the corridor. A heavily armed containment team had formed a semicircle around the chamber entrance. Dozens of weapons locked onto Song Jihoo in unison. The medical staff watched from a distance, terror etched across their faces.
“Hands up! Now!”
“Get away from the patient!”
Song Jihoo had no strength to answer. He could only stare at them through his dimming vision.
That was when it happened.
A sickening crunch—
The air in the corridor plummeted to freezing in an instant, and two severed rifles clattered to the floor.
The man who had been kneeling under the weight of guilt all this time now stood between Song Jihoo and the guns.
“Lower your weapons. How dare you—”
Eun Seojin’s voice was low and edged with the faintest killing intent.
“This man is my benefactor.”
The containment team leader’s face twisted—a mixture of bewilderment and caution.
“E… Eun Seojin? Hunter?”
“I will not repeat myself. Stand down.”
Eun Seojin’s eyes narrowed. His face was drained of color, his silver hair hanging limp.
Three years of isolation had left their mark plain to see, yet his eyes still burned with a sharp, vital light.
Or rather, they had come alive again.
“Lower those barrels, or I will lower them for you.”
The oppressive aura of an S-rank Hunter filled the corridor. The air grew heavy, and the team members’ shoulders instinctively tensed.
“…Lower your weapons!”
The containment team carefully brought their guns down.
Through his blurred vision, Song Jihoo gazed at Eun Seojin’s solid back. A faint smile spread across his lips.
‘My instincts didn’t betray me.’
“Please, just cooperate a moment. We do have procedures to follow.”
Song Jihoo nodded toward Eun Seojin, who lowered his sword. The containment team leader’s trembling hand reached for the radio.
“H-headquarters. This is Isolation Chamber Thirteen. We have a situation.”
– Report.
“The patient… Eun Seojin is stable. Consciousness is clear, and Mental Contamination symptoms are… completely absent.”
A cry nearly approaching a shriek erupted from the radio.
– What?! What are you talking about?!
“Consciousness is currently sharp, and no Mental Contamination symptoms have been detected.”
– You’re certain?
“Yes, absolutely certain. He’s right in front of me.”
As the radio crackled with commotion, Song Jihoo closed his eyes.
‘That’s right—you need an impact this size for it to stick.’
Everything had unfolded exactly as planned.
***
Hunter Association Headquarters, Emergency Response Conference Room.
The air around the elliptical table was stretched taut.
Medical, combat, and intelligence divisions under the Association President—the core executives who moved South Korea’s hunter world—all wore expressions of utter disbelief.
“A terminal Mental Contamination patient… has recovered?”
The combat division director slammed the table.
“Are we writing fiction here? Do you honestly expect anyone to believe that?”
Mental Contamination.
The worst curse this age had spawned, an incurable plague.
This phenomenon could be delayed, but it could never be reversed.
Not once in human history, nowhere in the world.
The word “Recovery” had never been used before.
“Let’s start with the CCTV footage. I doubted my own eyes, but….”
The medical director’s trembling hand pressed the button, and the screen began playing CCTV footage of Eun Seojin and Song Jihoo walking out of the Isolation Chamber.
“We confirmed a definite reduction in the external symptoms of Mental Contamination. We’ll need more detailed measurements through further testing, but based on my assessment, he’s definitely descended from the terminal stage to the early-stage threshold at minimum.”
“……This is insane.”
The information director exhaled the words like a groan.
“You’re telling me that Eun Seojin, the one we were scheduled to dispose of by month’s end, is now in a normal mental state?”
“Yes, and….”
The medical director switched the screen. In the grainy footage, an enlarged image showed Song Jihoo walking out of the Isolation Chamber.
“Who is that person?”
“After identity verification….”
The medical director pulled up a Hunter registration photo.
[Name: Song Jihoo]
[Rank: C-rank]
[Attribute: Mental]
“C-rank?”
The combat director’s brow furrowed.
“You’re telling me some lowly C-rank went in there?”
“Wait. This name…”
The information director scrolled through the tablet rapidly, narrowing his eyes.
“Found it. That rookie from the rank evaluation a while back—the one who caused a stir. The Mental Barrier skill holder. Major guilds were offering contract fees in the tens of billions, but he turned them all down and disappeared. That’s the Hunter.”
Silence swallowed the conference room.
Scattered dots were connecting into a single line.
A Mental attribute Hunter. A Mental Barrier skill. And the first complete recovery case in history.
“Surely not….”
Someone swallowed hard, muttering.
“A C-rank… treated an S-rank’s Mental Contamination?”
Everyone was thinking the same impossible thing, but no one could speak it easily. The evidence was right in front of their eyes.
“If this is… real….”
It would overturn not just the global Hunter industry, but the entire power structure itself.
“The whole world would be turned upside down.”
You only had to think of the treatment Emilia Jones received in America—she could merely delay Mental Contamination—to know the answer.
“I’ll meet them myself. Both Eun Seojin and this Song Jihoo.”
At the Association Director’s words, the room fell silent.
“I’ll convey it immediately.”
The Director’s secretary nodded and called the on-site manager at once.
“This is the Association. The Director requests that both of you come to Headquarters right away.”
The conference room stirred. It was truly rare for the Director to act personally. Nothing short of a new S-rank awakening would warrant such involvement.
“Um, do you realize who you’re talking to? The Director. The Director!”
The secretary kept whispering urgently into the phone before finally raising his voice.
“Th… the Director, sir.”
The secretary, beads of cold sweat trailing down his face, looked toward the Director.
“What is it?”
“He says he’s too tired to come right now and wants to go to the hospital first, then talk later….”
Faced with a response to his own summons that he should rest first and meet later, the Director burst out laughing.
“Puh-huh-huh… What a bold one….”
While the other directors fidgeted, the Director tapped the table lightly.
“Don’t send him elsewhere—book our hospital instead, and once his treatment is done, you go yourself and set up the appointment. Bring Eun Seojin as well.”
“Yes, I’ll arrange it right away.”
“We need to make a good impression early. If he can truly handle Mental Contamination….”
If this was real, they could not afford to let him slip away. They would give everything if they had to.
7th Regression: The Calamity Collector
Author
: Song Tan
Publication Date
: July 13, 2026
Publisher
: (Co.) AcysisMedia
Publisher
: ACES Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by ACES Media Corporation in accordance with the copyright holder’s contract,
and no part of its contents may be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
This e-book is protected under copyright law, and unauthorized reprinting or reproduction 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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