The 7th-Run Regressor Collects Calamities - Chapter 80

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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 80. Jonathan Walker (1)
Song Ji-hu offered no hollow consolations, no torture of false hope—he didn’t know how, and besides, he understood that Ollie Barkley didn’t want them.
Ollie Barkley’s massive fist clenched the ash-grey sand until it crumbled. His hand trembled, the blue veins on the back stark and convulsing.
After a long silence, he asked.
“…So why are we here? To confirm that Jonathan is dead?”
A real question. If they couldn’t save him, what was the true purpose of coming to this hollow tomb?
Instead of answering, Song Ji-hu pointed toward the sky without emotion—the Black Hose that stretched upward, the one Ollie Barkley had said looked like an umbilical cord.
“Do you know what that is?”
……
“A feeding straw. For the Harvest.”
“Harvest?”
Ollie Barkley’s eyes widened.
“The moment Jonathan dies, whatever’s on the other end of that will devour his soul whole.”
Song Ji-hu continued flatly.
“No rest then. Only suffering. Forever, even after death.”
“That’s…”
Ollie Barkley’s gaze flickered between Song Ji-hu and the enormous hose, as if unable to believe what he was hearing.
In that moment, another image flashed across Song Ji-hu’s vision.
The crimson sunset sky of his first life. The Last Sunset—when the souls of his comrades, his family in all but blood, vanished with a shimmer of light.
‘If I’d had Mental Dive back then… could I have saved them?’
Those faces—the moment when his outstretched hand couldn’t reach, when he called out until blood tore from his throat, only for them to meet their end.
Song Ji-hu closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts.
“We can’t save him. But… we can keep them from taking what’s his.”
Song Ji-hu looked at the remains of a shield.
“Whether he’s remembered as a catastrophe or as America’s hero to the end.”
Song Ji-hu spoke quietly.
“Either he’s devoured while corrupted, his very soul torn away—or he closes his eyes as a whole human being.”
Ollie Barkley kept his lips pressed shut, listening intently.
“We came here to send Jonathan Walker off in peace. As a human. As a hero.”
Ollie Barkley stared blankly at the Black Hose. The weight of so much information, contradicting everything he’d believed, seemed to tangle his thoughts.
“Harvest, huh…”
The word itself felt laden with malice.
“Bro… when we get out of here, tell me everything. What all this means, what you’re talking about. And who that thing is.”
“I will.”
Ollie Barkley straightened his knees and rose slowly. He didn’t brush the sand from his knees. He didn’t wipe away the tears that had streaked his face.
“Let’s cut it down. Right now, Bro.”
Instead, he drew his Revolver from its holster.
“I couldn’t save him. I won’t hand over the peace of his soul to them.”
The two men moved toward the heart of the Ruins.
The massive hose sensed the intruders when they’d closed within a hundred meters. Patterns rippled across its glistening black surface. Then they transformed into eyes.
Dozens of grotesque eyeballs, without even lids, flickered in unison toward the two men.
“Hmm…”
Song Ji-hu eased out of his fighting stance and studied the eyes. That was all. He’d half-expected an Apostle to emerge, but nothing rose to defend—no mechanism, nothing at all.
“We’re like fish already caught.”
“Still… it doesn’t seem like it’s just going to sit and watch?”
Throughout the ash, dark-crimson Contamination clumps stirred sluggishly to life. Shapeless things, malice congealed into sludge, fouling everything they touched.
Bang—
Ollie Barkley’s Revolver cracked softly. The nearest clump disintegrated to dust without a sound.
Bang, bang—
Ollie Barkley pulled the trigger again and again, reducing the clumps to powder.
“They came from you, Jonathan… I’ll clean them all away.”
Ollie Barkley muttered low, pulling the trigger once more.
***
At last, the very center of the Ruins.
Before the bloated debris and the roots of the hose, Song Ji-hu drew the Compass from within his robes.
Whoooooong—!
The blade shrieked as if possessed.
A violent resonance unlike anything he’d ever felt. The vibration traveled up his wrist through the grip.
When facing a Sovereign’s power, the blade trembled faintly—but this was on an entirely different scale.
‘Hmm… so that’s it.’
The Harvest Crown, intrinsically bound to the nature of a Sovereign. The Compass’s most despised target in all existence stood before her, immovable and undeniable—she had no choice but to act.
‘Yes, you understand what this is, don’t you.’
Song Ji-hu steadied his trembling blade. As he tightened his grip, the vibration that had pooled in his palm now travelled the length of the steel, spiraling outward in a long arc beyond the tip.
“Bro, wreck it completely.”
“That’s the plan anyway.”
Song Ji-hu raised his sword.
First strike.
Crash!
The Harvest Crown shuddered violently. A white scar appeared on its surface—nothing more. This was a crown that had fed on despair for over a decade. It would not sever in a single blow.
“Hmm… quite a sturdy umbilical cord.”
At Ollie Barkley’s words, Song Ji-hu laughed. The more he heard it called that, the more the thing beyond really did seem like an umbilical cord delivering nourishment to the creature on the other end.
Second strike.
Boom!
A sound like striking an empty hose, and simultaneously—
A hideous resonance tore free.
Audible to the ear, yet a wavelength that would have sent anyone less focused stumbling. The dozens of eyeballs embedded in the surface contorted in unison with pain.
“Repulsive things.”
Bang! Bang!
Ollie Barkley fired with the steady precision of someone hitting a target board. He never glanced back at Song Ji-hu, only fixed his aim on the writhing things before him, each shot clean and true.
Third strike.
The wound deepened. And along the split surface, something began to burn pale white. The cord writhed, struggling to seal the breach with new growth, but where the Compass had cut, nothing would ever heal.
Sensing its life threatened, the umbilical cord lashed out in desperation. Contamination clusters throughout the space swelled and surged toward Song Ji-hu from every direction.
Omnidirectional assault, hundreds strong. Yet Song Ji-hu never once glanced behind.
Bang! Crack! Bang!
The Revolver sang behind him in rapid succession, spitting fire. Six rounds, reload, six more.
Sometimes with Mana Bullets. Not a single cluster of Contamination breached his perimeter.
“Each to our own task, Bro.”
Song Ji-hu’s grip on the sword hilt tightened. The umbilical cord was already deeply split.
But to sever it completely, one final obstacle remained—the thickest, most resilient core at the center.
Clang!
Unlike the hollow plastic tube, the core felt like solid metal—dense and unyielding.
“Ollie, on three, through that gap.”
“Got it.”
“One, two…”
Mana began gathering at the Revolver’s muzzle.
“Three!”
Bang!
Ollie Barkley’s Mana Bullet lodged perfectly in the gap, and immediately after, the Compass drove itself vertically into the widened fissure.
Screeeech!
Song Ji-hu put all his strength into splitting the cord in two.
Shrieeee—
Where the Compass cut, pale white flames ignited and the cord convulsed violently.
Crack.
The cord severed completely.
Pale white fire erupted along the severed edge. The upper crown, suddenly weightless, fluttered and spiraled upward beyond the ash-grey sky.
Like a fishing line being wound in. The lower cord that remained turned to ash where it stood, scattering into the void.
Whoooosh—
In that moment, the dead world exhaled the breath it had been holding.
The dark crimson aura that had pervaded the entire Ruins drained away like a retreating tide. The ashen sky and desert sand remained unchanged, yet now they carried a pulse of vitality.
Crackle—
Beneath their feet, the sound of something shattering echoed endlessly. Fragments.
The dark crimson debris clusters that had appeared so grotesquely massive began to desiccate rapidly the moment they lost the cord’s supply, withering and curling.
‘With this, the Harvest has failed.’
Song Ji-hu gazed wordlessly at the rubble beneath his feet. In a world without even a whisper of wind, ash scattered alone into the emptiness.
“Bro, is it… all over now?”
That was when Ollie Barkley’s voice came, trembling. Where he was looking, from Jonathan Walker, who held the Shield, a faint yet warm light was beginning to return.
Unfortunately, not resurrection. Only the Contamination that had covered his entire body receding, revealing what lay beneath—a handful of pure humanity.
A candle burning brightest just before it gutters out.
“Where… where am I?”

“Jo…nathan.”
The angular jaw, the gentle eyes, the good-natured grin that seemed to belong to someone far gentler than a shield-bearer—Ollie Barkley saw it all again. Jonathan Walker’s true face had returned.
“Ollie…? What on earth is….”
The words came rough and parched, as if waking from a long sleep.
Ollie Barkley ran at him like a madman. Ash-gray sand sprayed in every direction, but he didn’t care. He slid to his knees before Jonathan Walker and stopped.
“Hey, it’s me. I’m here, Jonathan.”
Jonathan Walker’s clouded pupils moved slowly, taking in Ollie Barkley. Recognition crept back into those murky eyes.
“Ah… ah….”
Jonathan Walker covered his face with both hands. He remembered everything—where he was, what horrors he’d committed while wearing that beast’s skin, all of it.
“…The people… they were in my hands….”
“No. You protected them.”
Ollie Barkley cut off Jonathan’s self-recrimination firmly.
“Because you kept running until the very end….”
Jonathan Walker stared in silence at Ollie’s face, tears streaming down it.
“Ah….”
And then, the shield that had been held so rigidly upright began to lower slowly.
“Thank you… Ollie.”
It was the shield he hadn’t released even in death. It clattered against the ground.
“It’s time to go back.”
Song Ji-hu placed a hand on Ollie Barkley’s shoulder.
“We’ll see you outside, Jonathan.”
“…Outside…?”
There, on his knees, Jonathan Walker became warm and gentle light, shattering quietly and peacefully into nothing.
Into the sand, into the silent, windless air, seeping into the world he had protected like a part of itself.
And where he scattered, verdant green began to bloom.
“Paradoxical as it is… it’s beautiful.”
A soul undergoing Harvest is dragged to the sky. And that person’s world is destroyed.
This green was proof that Jonathan Walker would not be harvested.
And then the world began to crumble. Starting from the horizon, it vanished without a sound.
“Let’s get out of here.”
***
Flicker—
Cold white light from the Bunker flooded past her eyelids.
“Nngh… something feels wrong.”
Ollie Barkley kept her eyes shut for a moment, trying to settle her pounding head.
‘Does Song keep going through this…?’
It was the same situation as when she’d been rescued, but the toll on her body was extraordinary.
‘His mental fortitude must be monstrous… and I’m already like this after just one time.’
Ollie Barkley pressed her throbbing temples firmly and steadied her breathing.
“This… this can’t be real.”
But soon the commotion beside her forced her eyes open slowly.
“Rick.”
“Ollie, I… I can’t believe it.”
What she saw when her eyes opened was Rick Wesley, his eyes wet with tears, struggling to steady his breathing.
And beyond Rick’s shoulder, Jonathan Walker’s restraint chair was beginning to come undone.
The 7th Returnee Collects Calamities
Author
: Song Tan
Production Date
: August 20, 2026
Publisher
: Aces Media Co., Ltd.
Editor
: Aces Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by Aces Media Co., Ltd. pursuant to a contract with the copyright holder,
and its contents may not be used in any form or by any means without the permission of the company 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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