The Regressed EX-Class Martial God Decided to Become a Thousand-Star Hunter - Chapter 40

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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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Chapter 40
40.
Jin Woo-sung broke into a wide grin.
“Correct! My, you’re sharp. Is it because you learned so much as a chaebol’s daughter?”
“And you, it seems, are quite foolish for having learned nothing at all.”
Jin Woo-sung tilted his head, turning the question back on her.
“Me? Why?”
“Well…….”
“Ah, because of what I said about Ju Do-gyeom just now? I can guarantee you on that one. He’ll definitely come alone. I’d stake more than his life on it. Or rather…….”
“……?”
“Could it be that Ju Do-gyeom, that mongrel thief, is actually trash willing to gamble with his lover’s life? That would really be disappointing.”
The moment those words left his lips, Lee Seo-ah’s voice cut through the air, cold as winter ice.
“Don’t you dare speak carelessly of Ju Do-gyeom.”
Jin Woo-sung had been about to laugh again at hearing her words.
But he couldn’t.
The instant his eyes met her gaze—meant only to mock—his expression hardened without his knowing it.
Jin Woo-sung was genuinely startled.
“Young lady, you’re really the jewel of a chaebol group, aren’t you? Looking at your eyes, it seems you’ve killed quite a few people.”
“Against someone like you, there’s no one I couldn’t kill.”
“……And just like that, you’ve recovered again. Heh heh~ So Ju Do-gyeom really is your Reverse Scale after all.”
“…….”
Lee Seo-ah said nothing, quietly biting her lower lip.
She shouldn’t let herself be drawn in by him.
It was a basic rule, or so she’d thought—yet whenever Ju Do-gyeom’s name came up, her emotions churned unbidden.
‘Foolish…….’
She had to regain control.
It was then, as Lee Seo-ah steeled herself, that Jin Woo-sung burst into laughter.
“Hahahaha-! Don’t worry. I’ll stop talking about the man I’m going to kill anyway.”
“…….”
“But I am curious. What exactly have you fallen for about Ju Do-gyeom? He’s nothing but a thief. Did he slap your cheek or something? I’m the first man to hit my own face, wouldn’t you say?”
“Unfortunately for you, it’s the opposite. Ju Do-gyeom saved my life.”
“Saved…… Ah, that’s right. You said you were lying in bed before. You woke up not long ago. I’d already thought your value would be higher because of that, but…… was it Ju Do-gyeom who awakened you?”
“You’ve finally gotten one answer right.”
“Kh…… How honoring.”
“So don’t expect anything. Ju Do-gyeom won’t come alone. Even if he wanted to, my father wouldn’t allow it.”
“Wrong! I’m still betting that Ju Do-gyeom comes by himself.”
“……Think whatever you like.”
“I have evidence for it.”
“……What is it?”
“Instinct.”
“……You’re insane.”
“Haha-! I hear that often enough. Isn’t that right, prophet?”
“……Your Majesty.”
From one corner of the Basement, an old man sitting in silence answered in a low voice.
Jin Woo-sung gave a shrug and continued.
“In any case, I’m looking forward to it. What could it be? Ju Do-gyeom. That thief who stole away the Heavenly Killing Nature that was my very destiny. And he seemed to know about my Clone Skill too…… wait, could it be that the two of you already shared information?”
Impossible.
If that were the case, he couldn’t forget the shock in Lee Seo-ah’s eyes when he’d first used the Clone Skill in this Basement and sent it outside.
After that, how would Ju Do-gyeom and Lee Seo-ah even contact each other?
There was no way.
Had there been, events wouldn’t have unfolded the way they had until now.
With certainty in his voice, Jin Woo-sung went on.
“You know what? I love chaos. That’s why I’m rather fond of the situation in Seoul right now. Everyone’s lost their minds, haven’t they? You, me, your father, the other Hunters—all of us. I’d be happy if it stayed this way forever. But Ju Do-gyeom. Only that name keeps bothering me. It bothers me. It’s unsettling. It’s filthy.”
What was the reason?
“It’s as if he knows everything about me, the way he spoke. Where did he even pick up that information about my family? Did he get some intel from the Association? I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure it out, but I’m curious. And irritated…….”
It was just before he finished speaking.
Jin Woo-sung’s eyes gleamed as his mouth closed.
Someone was crossing the threshold of the closed front door, coming inside.

Though it was quite a distance away, he’d felt it clearly enough.
Jin Woo-sung looked at Lee Seo-ah and spoke with a broad smile spread across his face.
“I won.”
“……?”
“That prince of yours. He just came in alone. The bet was mine to win.”
“What do you mean…….”
“He’s coming now. He’s on his way. Listen carefully—footsteps in the corridor, one after another. Can’t you hear them?”
She couldn’t.
The Basement was quite deep to begin with, and the walls were thick.
For anyone who wasn’t a Hunter, and even for most who were, it would be impossible to sense anything.
But Jin Woo-sung felt it all.
“He’s almost here, almost here now. Any moment, the Basement door will open.”
Creak—!
“Is he coming down?”
A voice dropped low and soft.
Fury and hatred and killing intent flooded his eyes.
Between them, the sound of footsteps descending the stairs.
Step by step.
Jin Woo-sung had been right.
There was only one.
Lee Seo-ah cried out before she could help herself.
“Run! Get out of here!”
“It’s too late already.”
Jin Woo-sung shook his head with a laugh.
Ignoring every word spoken, Ju Do-gyeom reached the foot of the Basement stairs and revealed himself.
Silently.
With the same composed expression as always.
He looked around the space.
Jin Woo-sung, grinning.
“Hahahaha—! You came. Ju Do-gyeom. So you’re that Ju Do-gyeom!”
Lee Seo-ah, trembling, trapped as though in a prison torn ragged by some mad force.
“Ah…….”
As for Ju Do-gyeom.
‘Nothing there.’
A space with only two people in it.
Ju Do-gyeom regarded Jin Woo-sung quietly.
Jin Woo-sung, his face still smiling, began to clap.
Clap clap clap—!
“Man, I’m really glad you’re here. My friend, Ju Do-gyeom. You actually came alone, just like you said you would. I have to give you credit for that kind of courage.”
“It wasn’t courage. It was confidence.”
“Confidence? Ah, could you be confusing that with the word recklessness?”
Jin Woo-sung let out a slight scoff, his eyes fixed on Ju Do-gyeom’s face.
His expression remained utterly composed.
His dark eyes were no different.
Ju Do-gyeom continued.
“No. It’s absolute confidence. Jin Woo-sung.”
“On what grounds?”
“Because I know you better than you know yourself.”
A provocative statement.
His chin lifted deliberately, almost tauntingly.
A twitch.
Jin Woo-sung’s brow grew heavy as he spoke.
“Come down here and say that, you bastard.”
“You’re getting excited.”
“Me? Ha…….”
Jin Woo-sung clicked his tongue.
His eyes darkened.
Rage burned and churned like it might boil over at any moment.
But it didn’t spill out.
He was exercising a patience that didn’t suit him at all.
Ju Do-gyeom understood the reason clearly.
“Curious how I found out about your family, aren’t you?”
“……Not at all?”
“Good. I had no intention of telling you anyway.”
“Ha, haha…… you goddamn bastard…….”
“Perhaps you’re just incredibly lucky, Jin Woo-sung.”
Ju Do-gyeom raised his index finger.
Then he tapped his left chest lightly, twice.
“If you can reach my heart.”
“If I can?”
At the same moment, he poured Mana into the murky black ring on his right index finger.
『Activating Berserk Ring.』
『For 15 minutes, Mana stat decreases by 2 grades.』
『Mana D => E+』
『For 15 minutes, all stats except Mana increase by 2 grades.』
『Strength C- => C+』
『Agility D => C-』
『Endurance C- => C+』
『Remaining uses: 5.』
He pulled the Axe from his inventory and gripped it short.
“Maybe you’ll figure something out?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m under no obligation to explain.”
…….
“But…… are you a coward? Too obvious?”
Jin Woo-sung spoke matter-of-factly.
Ju Do-gyeom’s face went blank for a moment, then he burst into loud laughter.
“Puh-haha-! Now that’s—wow, you’re genuinely entertaining. If we’d met somewhere else, I might’ve thought our relationship could’ve turned out differently.”
“Absolutely not.”
He could be certain of that.
Before the Regression, the relationship between the two had been no different from now.
Jin Woo-sung nodded.
“Well, aside from that. Are you ready?”
…….
Ju Do-gyeom nodded silently.
And at the same moment.
“Then, die.”
With those quiet words, Jin Woo-sung’s form vanished.
Or rather, the moment Ju Do-gyeom thought it had vanished—
it appeared right before him.
Even at the same Rank, the performance gap was overwhelming depending on how one wielded their ability scores.
Jin Woo-sung was, in that respect, one of the strongest hunters among those of equal Rank.
Likewise, even Ju Do-gyeom, whom one could confidently call the strongest at his Rank, naturally couldn’t react to the current gap in capability.
But his eyes saw it clearly.
『Skill Ming Mu Gong promoted to 4-star.』
And before that.
His body was already moving.
The blade of the short-gripped Axe swung right across his field of vision.
It didn’t matter if he had no target.
He knew that’s what Jin Woo-sung would do.
The problem was, to reiterate, that Jin Woo-sung was far faster.
Because of that.
Splurt!
With the sound of leather and bone tearing—
Ju Do-gyeom’s left chest was pierced through.
Jin Woo-sung, his extended arm and face covered in blood, smiled broadly and spoke to Ju Do-gyeom.
“I’ll take your advice and get the answer from the corpse. I know quite a few necromancers who are…… “closely acquainted with me”.”
The words never finished.
Ju Do-gyeom stood unmoved, even with his heart pierced through.
That man, certain to be dead, swung the Axe without pause—and the blade swept cleanly across Jin Woo-sung’s throat.
Jin Woo-sung’s consciousness drifted skyward, severed from his body in a moment of cruel clarity.
A question surfaced.
‘How?’
His heart had burst. How could he still move?
Even he, called the Immortal, couldn’t manage such a thing.
Confusion flickered. But then—
‘It’s fine.’
He was the Immortal.
A severed neck was nothing; he could regenerate easily from that.
The character “super” wasn’t attached to Super Regeneration for nothing.
‘Once regeneration’s complete, I’ll tear that bastard’s limbs to shreds, leave him unable to move at all……’
But as he fell, he met Ju Do-gyeom’s eyes.
Those eyes that had seemed merely black at first now blazed with an unsettling, deep crimson light.
In that moment, Jin Woo-sung felt a chill creep through the heart still beating in his separated body.
And the word that bloomed in his mind was—
‘……Heavenly Killing Nature?’
The Seer had spoken of it:
A power that could kill anything.
‘Damn……’
That was all.
Jin Woo-sung’s consciousness vanished completely from this world.
The Immortal’s pathetic death.
* * *
『Unique Skill, Death Reprieve (Lv.MAX) activates.』
『The user will not die for ten minutes.』
The system message scattered slowly from Ju Do-gyeom’s mind as he watched Jin Woo-sung’s severed neck fall to the ground.
In the explosion of agony that followed—his heart bursting—
Ju Do-gyeom moved on instinct, severing Jin Woo-sung’s neck cleanly, then wrenched the arm embedded in his own chest and hurled it to the floor.
Thud!
The corpse of Jin Woo-sung crashed against the cold basement floor.
Blood spilled from his mouth.
Ju Do-gyeom, unbothered, spoke quietly.
“I’ll use the Leaf of the Tree of Life.”
『Using Leaf of the Tree of Life. Remaining: 1』
『User fully recovered.』
All wounds.
All curses.
Complete restoration regardless of circumstance or extremity.
His heart proved it, beating rapidly once more.
The hollow cavity of his chest filled again.
Even the temple wound he’d opened the previous night regenerated solid.
Ju Do-gyeom wiped the blood from his lips and nodded.
‘Cheap at twice the price.’
Jin Woo-sung.
Even without the Heavenly Killing Nature, a villain who earned every bit of the word “worst.”
Compared to that, one Leaf of the Tree of Life was a bargain.
Perhaps that’s why—
A smile came naturally.
He approached the trapped Lee Seo-ah, slicing the Shackles binding her hands and feet with a single stroke of the Chinese Sword, and the expression held.
‘I thought he was so cautious that I could only kill him once every stat exceeded Rank A.’
The circumstances had been too favorable.
Just as Ju Do-gyeom was incomplete, Jin Woo-sung remained unripe, unfinished.
And the Reverse Scale he clung to alone—Ju Do-gyeom had struck it precisely, shaking his emotions.
Beyond that, Jin Woo-sung’s weaknesses:
Pride, carelessness, blind faith in his own immortality—all grasped and wielded.
Against another worst villain,
Or catastrophe, it would have been impossible.
‘Because we knew each other so well.’
Or rather—that belonged to the past.
Only Ju Do-gyeom truly knew Jin Woo-sung, and so he had walked into the blade unprepared, meeting his pathetic end.
A smile of satisfaction played across his lips.
‘The most satisfying result since the Regression.’
Lee Seo-ah stared at him with vacant eyes.
She cried out.
“You’re smiling right now!?”
“……?”
“I asked if you’re… smiling.”
Her voice trembled with moisture as her gaze fixed on his left chest—the wound that had pierced clean through him now fully regenerated, though his torn shirt remained unrepairable.
Ju Do-gyeom spoke.
“There’s no need to worry. I’ve fully recovered using a Leaf of the Tree of Life while under Death Reprieve. There should be no aftereffects, and nothing unusual to report.”
“That’s not the problem! Your heart just—!”
“It’s fine. It’s regenerated.”
Ju Do-gyeom remained utterly composed.
It was only natural.
Since the Regression.
Most of his battles had been overwhelming victories.
It made sense.
He carried memories of the future, and in his original life, he had been a War God.
But before that, in his previous life—before the world’s collapse—it had been different.
Back then, losing one or two limbs in combat was simply part of Ju Do-gyeom’s reality.
Having holes torn through his body was far from rare.
Nor was he alone in this.
His comrades fought bearing similar wounds.
They regenerated or were healed, then returned to the battlefield.
Only to sustain the same injuries again and endure.
In the end, they all died.
Watching such a Ju Do-gyeom, Lee Seo-ah fell silent.
More precisely, she lost her words.
“…….”
After a brief silence.
Ju Do-gyeom spoke once more, just as calmly.
“It was necessary. The opponent was Jin Woo-sung, after all.”
“……It’s not that I don’t understand.”
Jin Woo-sung—a villain of Rank A+ danger level.
Not someone who could be killed so easily.
Yet Ju Do-gyeom had managed it.
By offering up his own heart.
He spoke of Death Reprieve and Leaves of the Tree of Life, but Lee Seo-ah didn’t concern herself with such details.
She only understood one thing: that Ju Do-gyeom had resigned himself to death.
But did she have the right to question him about it?
When she asked herself that, her head bowed of its own accord.
That was why.
When Ju Do-gyeom rose afterward without a word, moving as if nothing were amiss, she too found herself unable to speak.
Her eyes simply filled with emotion she couldn’t suppress.
Pity and sorrow.
That weight she had felt the first time she saw Ju Do-gyeom.
She thought she finally understood the truth behind that aura—as though he alone bore the burden of the world.
‘So he really does live with that kind of resolve.’
But then why?
What did Ju Do-gyeom know?
Hadn’t he said just months ago that he was an ordinary person?
There was so much she wanted to ask.
Yet beyond the question of whether an answer would come, the thought that she had no right to ask closed her mouth.
In that pause.
Ju Do-gyeom opened his mouth.
“Lee Seo-ah.”
“Yes?”
“Was there perhaps another person here?”

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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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