The Regressed EX-Class Martial God Decided to Become a Thousand-Star Hunter - Chapter 1

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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 1
1.
Calamity.
Master of demons.
Annihilation.
Or the Calamity King.
The immortal evil of monstrous proportions, called by such terrible names, had fallen.
Crash!
The heavy impact struck the ground, and the earth trembled.
It was only natural—a frame larger than most mountains had toppled over.
Humanity’s victory over it, if one could call it that.
Yet the man who had finally severed the breath of the Calamity that never died could not lift his head.
With the Broken Sword planted in the desolate earth, he knelt and only let loose a terrible, wailing scream.
“Aaaaaahhhhh—!”
It was a voice suffused with bitter regret.
* * *
The man walked.
Though his body was pierced with countless holes, bleeding profusely.
He staggered forward like a balloon doll swaying in the wind.
He crossed over mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
All of them.
Until just moments ago, they had laughed and joked with him, shared meals and drinks, sworn to survive the next battle and enjoy this night together once more—his comrades, his friends.
And the families of those friends.
The man with his head bowed held those bodies—mangled beyond recognition—full in his hollow eyes.
He wanted to ask someone.
‘Can this be…’
Can this be called victory?
Everyone was dead.
Humanity’s last hope.
The Unified Asia Fortress City, called humanity’s final bastion, had been invaded by the Calamity King and his forces.
Only the man himself had survived.
Everyone.
‘They’re all gone.’
All of them vanished.
“Haah…”
A sigh escaped without his knowing.
At the same moment his legs gave out and he collapsed onto the ground with a dull thud.
“Ju Do… gyeom…”
Someone’s voice reached him.
Ju Do-gyeom’s head turned at once.
Between the mangled corpses and pools of blood.
There was still one figure clinging to life.
Ju Do-gyeom, his legs now powerless, crawled across the ground toward the figure.
Up close, her condition was even more dire than Ju Do-gyeom’s own.
Her lower body had vanished entirely, and the remaining half was ravaged by deep burns.
Less alive than hovering on the threshold of death.
Though he could scarcely recognize who she was, Ju Do-gyeom called her name at once.
“Vivienne. Vivienne Ashcroft!”
The moment he heard her voice.
He knew for certain.
Vivienne laughed as she answered.
“Ha ha… what! How cold. Using my full name?”
“Damn it. You’re alive. You’re alive… you…”
Ju Do-gyeom’s head dropped.
Tears soaked the ground.
Vivienne regarded him with an odd gaze.
“I thought you didn’t know how to cry, but I see you can shed tears after all.”
“Thank you… thank you, Vivienne. For being alive. For staying alive… I’m truly… grateful.”
“Hey, Ju Do-gyeom.”
“Vivienne…”
“Sorry for throwing cold water on you, but I’m going to die soon.”
Ju Do-gyeom lifted his head and fixed his gaze on Vivienne once more.
She was humanity’s greatest arch-mage.
Even if half her body had vanished and burns covered her entire frame.
She could recover.
Even wounds that bordered on death—unless her neck was severed or her heart destroyed—she could not be truly killed.
This was the common sense Ju Do-gyeom possessed.
Vivienne continued, smiling.
“My heart’s already melted away, and my Mana Core will stop functioning soon. Even my brain, barely kept active, will shut down once the Core stops.”
A complex story he didn’t want to hear.
Yet even in the grip of despair, Ju Do-gyeom managed to accept her words with reason.
Because of that, he bit his lip hard and asked.
“Then how much time is left?”
“If we’re counting in hours… roughly six?”
……
Ahahaha—!
Vivienne laughed, watching Ju Do-gyeom’s shock at having far more time than expected.
To that, Ju Do-gyeom showed a smile of his own.
Six hours.
When he thought about it.
It might actually be too short to share humanity’s final conversation.
Only that it wasn’t suffocatingly urgent.
It was right then.
That Vivienne’s voice continued once more.
“But I don’t think we’ll have even five minutes to talk.”
“What are you talking about now?”
Ju Do-gyeom’s brow furrowed.
Phehehehe……
At his reaction, Vivienne burst into laughter again and raised both hands high.
“Ta-da—! The truth is, I have one final arch-spell remaining. Surprised? Ju Do-gyeom?”
“Don’t joke around.”
“I’m not joking. I’m serious.”
Vivienne’s eyes had grown infinitely grave.
She moved her blurred gaze left and right.
Then she spoke.
“I can barely see, but… they’re all dead, right?”
“……Yes.”
“Everyone except you and me.”
Grrrrr—
Vivienne ground her teeth unconsciously.
Ju Do-gyeom answered in turn.
“……That’s right.”
“And yet we still brought down the Calamity King. Our God of War indeed.”
“It’s a meaningless victory.”
What did we fight for?
What did we endure to reach this point for?
Honestly, Ju Do-gyeom still didn’t know the answer.
Because he had to survive as a living being.
Because he had to keep living—that was what had sustained him this far.
But.
At least one thing was certain: it had never been his wish to be the sole survivor, bearing witness to humanity’s final hour.
“It’s not a meaningless victory. By bringing down the Calamity King, you provided the final ingredient for my last arch-spell.”
“Vivienne. What kind of nonsense have you been spouting since earlier……”
“Listen carefully. Ju Do-gyeom. There’s really no time left now, so I’ll explain as simply as possible.”
The arch-mage Vivienne whom Ju Do-gyeom knew was rational and quick in her calculations.
But the human Vivienne was simply a cheerful, bright woman.
She had a habit of making sly jokes.
Yet never once.
Not even a single time.
Had she ever joked in this manner and with this expression.
Ju Do-gyeom fell silent.
He turned his full attention to the story she was about to tell.
Some instinct—primal and overwhelming—insisted he must listen.
Vivienne’s lips parted again.
“I’m going to send you back.”
“……!!”
“The grand magic I prepared as my final resort—it’s Spatio-Temporal Regression Magic.”
“Then that means you’re the one who should go, not me…….”
“I can’t. I don’t have the confidence I could do better than you, and my body is in no condition besides. More importantly, I need to become the final sacrifice to complete the grand magic.”
“What do you mean by that, Vivienne? A sacrifice?”
“It’s necessary. Like I said before, there’s no time for a long explanation.”
Ju Do-gyeom could feel it.
Even as they spoke.
Mana began to converge around Vivienne.
Not just the mana of nature itself.
But also dark mana drawn even from the dead.
All of it intermingling, closing in on them.
The spell had already been cast.
Too late to stop it now.
Realizing this, Ju Do-gyeom’s eyes darkened as he spoke.
“Vivienne. To be honest, even if I go back to the past, I have no confidence I can prevent this catastrophe entirely.”
The damage could be lessened, certainly.
With the knowledge gained from regression, there would be much he could accomplish.
But the real problem was that the Calamity King was stronger than anyone had anticipated.
In fact, even defeating it this time had felt less like skill and more like sheer fortune.
And the Calamity King wasn’t even the end of it.
Across the globe, new monsters and calamities were still being born at this very moment.
And in such circumstances.
Who’s to say something even worse than the Calamity King won’t emerge?
He couldn’t project absolute confidence in a situation like this.
He didn’t want to speak such irresponsible words before her sacrifice.
Sensing his feelings, Vivienne smiled as she spoke.
“But you’ll manage it anyway.”
“That’s irresponsible of you…….”
“Ju Do-gyeom. You can do it. Honestly, if it were someone else, I’d have forced my way into going. Truly. But you—you, whom I’ve been watching all this time. A man like you…….”
As the spell took hold and her consciousness began to blur, Vivienne repeated similar words, her voice growing fainter—until suddenly, a light flashed across her eyes.
At the same moment, she cried out.
“Heavenly Slayer Star!”
“What?”
Before Ju Do-gyeom could ask what she meant, a flash of brilliant light erupted in his mind.
“Vivienne. You can’t mean…… you’re telling me to become the Heavenly Slayer Star?”
“…….”
Vivienne no longer answered.
More precisely, she couldn’t.
Her lips were moving as if to speak, but no sound emerged—the regression magic had already stolen her voice.
All he could see was her nodding repeatedly.
Ju Do-gyeom let out a hollow laugh.
‘Suddenly the Heavenly Slayer Star.’
Even he had forgotten, but it was certainly not a bad method.
Ah.
The Heavenly Slayer Star spoken of here was a term and concept that resembled those found in old martial arts novels, yet it was not entirely the same thing.
If anything, it was one of the traits of Hunters.
Something possessed by a man who had once faced death—a man who might have become the strongest.
Its effect was simple.
The bearer of the trait, the Heavenly Slayer Star.
‘Could kill anything at all.’
Throughout the countless battles they had fought to reach this point.
What had tormented humanity most was the Immortality possessed by the Calamity-Class Monsters.
The Earth Dragon, the Witch of Gluttony, the Golden Serpent, the Lord of the Deep Sea.
And continuing on to the Calamity King itself.
How many times had he pierced that thing’s heart?
How many times had he severed its neck?
And still it would not die.
It endured, trampling humanity beneath its feet.
It sneered down at their final, desperate struggles.
When Ju Do-gyeom killed the Calamity King, it was only because his blade reached the final mark—the culmination of hundreds upon hundreds of fatal wounds his comrades had inflicted before him.
But then.
If he obtained the Heavenly Slayer Star?
‘He might be able to slay their immortality.’
No—he was certain of it now.
He could kill them. He would.
The problem was this.
‘Whoever acquires the Heavenly Slayer Star inevitably carries madness alongside it.’
The forms that madness took varied wildly.
No one could predict where it would lead.
In truth, the last man to wield the Heavenly Slayer Star—
He too had succumbed to the madness, became a villain, and earned the title of humanity’s greatest adversary in all of recorded history.
The special forces unit led by Ju Do-gyeom had finally brought him down, but even now, the terror of that man’s Heavenly Slayer Star remained seared into memory.
To seize that power in his own hands.
It was dangerous.
If Ju Do-gyeom, a martial god, obtained the Heavenly Slayer Star only to be consumed by madness—
He would be reborn as a calamity far more terrible than the Calamity King itself.
And yet.
‘There was no other way.’
To prevent humanity from repeating the same catastrophic failure.
‘I will……’
He would.
‘Become the master of the Heavenly Slayer Star.’
Having resolved this, Ju Do-gyeom opened his eyes wide and looked about him.
Black and white mana churned in chaotic spirals all around.
At its center, his consciousness.
His spirit.
His body.
All of it was being pulled in.
Recognizing this clearly, Ju Do-gyeom fixed his gaze forward with wide, unflinching eyes.
Vivienne was waving toward him.
In this final moment.
Ju Do-gyeom waved back in return.
There was no great disturbance in his heart.
This was farewell, and yet he did not think of it as farewell.
‘After the regression, we’ll meet again. Vivienne.’
As Ju Do-gyeom held Vivienne’s face in his eyes, watching it recede further and further away—
Vivienne’s expression shifted suddenly, as if she had just remembered something urgent. She opened her mouth to speak.
Her voice still could not reach him.
Ju Do-gyeom mouthed a question in return.
‘What?’
His own voice too had ceased to carry.
And then.
His consciousness dimmed with a speed as swift as a lie.
* * *
A tremor like the rattle of violent shaking.
Ju Do-gyeom felt it and snapped his eyes open.
He glanced around frantically, taking in a spacious interior moving at high speed, and through the window, a landscape where blue water flowed.
Ju Do-gyeom knew the name of that water—that river.
‘The Han River.’
A sight he, born in Korea, had seen until the nation fell—seen so many times it had grown tedious.
The interior?
‘I’m inside a bus.’
The moment understanding struck, he frantically patted his pockets.
A bar-shaped smartphone—an artifact of the old world from his perspective—tumbled out.
The moment he touched her and confirmed the date.
February 5th, 2026.
Without thinking, Ju Do-gyeom’s fist clenched as he spoke.
“Vivienne, you succeeded.”
He realized her Spatio-Temporal Regression Magic had worked.
‘Still.’
February 5th, 2026 was five years before he became a Hunter.
‘I’ve gone back further than expected.’
It was a favorable situation in one sense, but honestly, regret lingered.
Five years ago, his mother had died in an accident.
And last year, his father—who had been battling cancer—had passed away as well.
If only—
The wish rose unbidden; that was only human.
Ju Do-gyeom shook his head, casting off that longing.
Though people’s hearts change like the weather, shifting between entering and leaving a room.
But wasn’t this fundamentally a good situation, as he’d thought just moments before?
‘In 2026, that incident hasn’t happened yet either.’
Earth’s condition is relatively intact.
Of course, this was measured against the future he’d known.
The present circumstances couldn’t exactly be called excellent either.
In any case.
Setting aside his regret about his parents, Ju Do-gyeom focused on his situation itself.
‘Let me think this through carefully.’
What had he been doing around this time?
Whether fortunate or unfortunate.
The memories of this period remained remarkably vivid in his mind.
As clear as if he’d lived through them yesterday.
He’d been an employee at a delivery company’s logistics center.
He’d finished university, but failed to land a job, and lived hand-to-mouth doing daily wage work while waiting for his next opportunity.
He’d accumulated no savings.
His family had been poor to begin with, and his father’s medical expenses had consumed what little they had.
Looked at from this angle, five years later.
The decision to become a Hunter despite knowing how dangerous it was seemed less coincidence than inevitability.
He’d believed there was no future in living as he had been, so he’d gambled with his life.
‘Back then, Hunter mortality was around twenty percent.’
Five years ago from now, it was probably around thirty percent.
A staggering figure, though it had improved considerably.
In the early chaos, Hunter mortality had reached sixty-eight percent—nearly seventy.
Out of ten who attempted to become Hunters, seven died.
Those who survived were treated as living legends in the current world.
‘And that didn’t change much even in the future I knew.’
There were cases of people like Ju Do-gyeom who started late and climbed the ranks, but they were extremely rare.
In any case.
How did he know such detailed data?
He’d seen it on an online Hunter community.
It required verification, so ordinary people couldn’t access it, but with his memories of the future, there was no way he could be ignorant of it.
‘Still, the clarity of these memories is unusually sharp.’
The question was quickly set aside.
After all, he had regressed.
There was no point wasting time on needless worries; he needed to move.
The first task was already decided.
* * *
Working at the logistics center made no sense anymore.
So immediately after arriving at work, Ju Do-gyeom left early and returned to his goshiwon room, where he pulled up an email address from his memory and sent a message from his Smartphone.
The recipient was.
‘Vivienne Ashcroft.’
The Arch-Mage who had regressed him.
For reasons unknown, she’d frequently changed her phone number in the past.
But she’d kept the same email address all along, so if he reached out, she’d reply.
The message was straightforward enough, yet detailed enough that she would fully understand the situation.
All that remained was to wait.
A Hunter born in the early days of the Great Cataclysm.
If he could receive her aid from this very moment—her, one of the living legends—
‘I could push forward so much faster, so much further.’
Still, it would take considerable time.
‘Her number changes every time, and she doesn’t check her mail quickly anyway.’
He’d wait patiently.
Besides, there was plenty to do in the meantime.
* * *
Ju Do-gyeom’s second course of action after his return was to borrow money.
He had no choice.
‘My current account balance is 2.5 million won.’
By the standards of this era, and given that Ju Do-gyeom wasn’t extravagant, it was more than enough for a month’s living expenses.
But considering what lay ahead, it was hopelessly insufficient.
‘First, I need to acquire the Heavenly Slayer Star.’
Just the preparation costs for that alone would easily exceed ten million won—that much was certain as day.
The problem was that no legitimate financial institution would lend to him: he had no proper assets, and no job either.
Friends?
He hadn’t even kept in touch during all those years caring for his father.
Even if he still were in contact, there weren’t many friends his age who could casually lend such a large sum.
So Ju Do-gyeom sought out a notorious loan shark he’d heard whispered about in the neighborhood.
A long scar running across his left eye.
A compact man whose frame was packed with solid muscle tilted his head and asked, “So you just waltz in here and ask to borrow ten million won?”
“Just waltz in? Isn’t this a place where you lend money?”
This man was Oh Jin-seok, the owner of the loan shark operation.
“Hmm…….”
Even through the grunt, his eyes were already scanning Ju Do-gyeom up and down rapidly.
Questions followed immediately.
“How often do you drink a week? Do you smoke? Exercise much?”
“Alcohol maybe once a year. No smoking. I haven’t done any formal exercise, but I pride myself on being healthy from my warehouse work.”
Oh Jin-seok’s eyes gleamed with interest.
‘Just selling his parts alone, I’d make back my investment and more.’
The “parts” in question were human organs and bodies.
He was also operating as a broker, selling the bodies of those who couldn’t repay their loans to foreign buyers.
Seeing a healthy young man like Ju Do-gyeom, he was quite satisfied, but he couldn’t show it.
Instead, he spoke with a dissatisfied expression, crossing his legs.
“But hey, friend. You talk awfully short, don’t you? Anyone can see I’m older than you, and you’re asking to borrow money acting all stiff like that?”
“If you don’t like it, I’ll look elsewhere.”
Ju Do-gyeom stood up without hesitation.
Instantly, Oh Jin-seok’s expression turned urgent and he opened his mouth.
“Whoa, whoa—you gotta hear a man out. Sit back down.”
“Will you lend it to me?”
“I said I’d lend it, so sit your ass down, kid. Such a short tongue for such a young punk, tsk.”
Once Ju Do-gyeom sat back, Oh Jin-seok continued, tapping his crossed leg.
“But ten million’s a bit much. No family, no close friends. And you’re living in this neighborhood, no less? Could get torn apart by a monster or mugged any day. Ten million’s too risky.”
Through narrowed eyes he tried to read Ju Do-gyeom’s emotions.
But he could discern nothing.
His calm expression and those glass-black eyes held nothing but utter indifference.
‘This the warehouse worker kid, right?’
Instead of just lending it out and watching it disappear, what if he worked him under the table for a while?
If he played it right, the kid might prove useful.
His mind began to scheme.
“So how much is possible then?”
Ju Do-gyeom’s response was rational enough that Oh Jin-seok continued his pitch.
Oh Jin-seok smiled, a sickly smile.
He licked his lips and held up five fingers.
“Five million. How’s that? The interest rate is seventy percent monthly, by the way. Can’t be helped. We don’t know if we’ll even get our money back from you, so we’re taking a real gamble here.”
The legal maximum interest rate was twenty percent per year or less.
But seventy percent?

It was a terrible figure—a debt so grotesque that no such sum had ever existed—yet Ju Do-gyeom nodded without hesitation.
“Very well.”
Why?
Oh Jin-seok.
He and every member of his organization would be dead within a fortnight, murdered by a Hunter whose identity remained unknown.
A case that was buried and forgotten, too murky to solve—after all, a loan shark of his stripe had accumulated enemies in every corner.
It might have been another organization vying for control of the district, but frankly, from Ju Do-gyeom’s perspective, it made no difference.
What mattered was that he was the kind of villain who would feel not the slightest qualm if the man died and the debt went unpaid.
And in this moment, he had just been handed an extra five hundred thousand in cash.
“You made the right choice. Later on, you’ll think yourself fortunate to have borrowed only this much. Remember—it’s all thanks to me. Young friend. Haha—!”
Oh Jin-seok laughed.
Ju Do-gyeom laughed too.
It was that kind of day.

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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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