The Regressed Martial God Monopolizes Everything - Chapter 104

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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 104. The Negotiation (1)
Jeong Hyun-soo stepped into an Ox Bone Soup restaurant in Mapo District, Seoul.
Though evening had settled, the soup house sat nearly empty—just a single figure at one of the tables.
He appeared to be in his mid-forties, with narrow, gentle eyes and neatly trimmed hair at the sides and back.
A man in formal dress, a deep grey Cashmere Coat draped over the chair beside him.
‘Seon Woo-hyun.’
Jeong Hyun-soo drew up the Illusory Heaven True Energy, pressing down the killing intent that threatened to boil over. He couldn’t afford to be careless here, not in a way that would ruin everything.
Contempt bloomed inside him like poison. The man was no human—he was a snake.
Sitting here in the humble soup house as if he were ordinary, yet wearing clothes worth tens of millions of won—that was the sort of creature he was.
Beyond the glass, the street bustled with crowds and traffic, the busy heart of the city,
yet this isolated glass-enclosed space remained eerily silent, and even as Jeong Hyun-soo entered, Seon Woo-hyun didn’t spare him a glance.
Soon the Ox Bone Soup arrived.
With the bowl placed before him, Seon Woo-hyun immediately added salted shrimp.
He scattered perilla powder generously, then added spicy green chili peppers and seasoning before quickly stirring in rice.
He took a spoonful at once. Only after swallowing the broth and wiping his mouth with a tissue did he finally look up.
“Sit. It’s best eaten before it cools.”
With those words, another bowl of Ox Bone Soup arrived in a stone pot.
Jeong Hyun-soo sat without comment at the adjacent seat.
Moreover, when presenting this soup, Seon Woo-hyun had infused it with tremendous magical power as a test.
Had Jeong Hyun-soo lacked even a fraction of the necessary strength, he would have coughed blood and collapsed the moment he received the bowl—a vicious stratagem.
But Jeong Hyun-soo met it head-on with the Tyrant Heaven Energy.
A vortex swirled violently within the stone pot’s broth.
Had that immense power erupted fully, it could have shattered like a bomb.
Once.
Seon Woo-hyun withdrew his power without a word.
Jeong Hyun-soo, seeing this, added even more seasoning and began to devour the soup with gusto.
As if settling an ancient grudge, finishing the Ox Bone Soup right there before him, Seon Woo-hyun spoke.
“Ha. You eat well.”
He was speaking of the soup, but naturally he wasn’t the sort to mean it so plainly.
He was using the subtle, serpentine indirectness of his kind, hinting at how Jeong Hyun-soo had touched even Ilseong.
Jeong Hyun-soo answered only after draining the last of the broth.
“It’s hardly the time to be fastidious, is it?”
“Though one can choke if one swallows carelessly.”
To Seon Woo-hyun’s warning, Jeong Hyun-soo answered without so much as a blink.
“So far, there seem to be no ill effects.”
He spoke of the emptied pot, but he was also displaying the audacity of having touched Ilseong without consequence.
“Sometimes the effects take a little time to manifest.”
“If it were poison, I suppose that might be so.”
“Not just poison—excess consumption that the body cannot bear can produce side effects often enough.”
Jeong Hyun-soo and Seon Woo-hyun regarded each other for a moment.
“Chairman. Thank you for making time for me.”
“Hmm, your sense of courtesy seems rather disordered, doesn’t it?”
“I’m built this way—my father always scolds me for it.”
“Your guild master must be quite exasperated.”
“He is, even now.”
Though he no doubt harbored the same desire as Jeong Hyun-soo to crush him on the spot, he remained a cunning operator who showed none of it.
Of course, his presence here had started with simple curiosity about why Jeong Hyun-soo requested this meeting, but beneath it lay intent to make him disgorge whatever he’d swallowed.
‘I’ll make my move first, you snake.’
Jeong Hyun-soo opened his mouth directly.
“Chairman. The election is just around the corner, isn’t it?”
“Hmm. That it is. An endless cycle of approaching duties.”
He answered as if it mattered little—to him, re-election to the chairmanship was, in a sense, assured.
Jeong Hyun-soo intended to strip away everything Seon Woo-hyun possessed. In the most brutal way possible.
“I wish to ease your concerns, Chairman.”
“Ease them…?”
“You know that Franklin is now capable of external activity?”
“He and I have old ties. I believe it’s cause for celebration.”
“I will ensure that Franklin does not run in this election.”
Seon Woo-hyun put on a polite enough face, but the relationship between them was naturally strained.
While Seon Woo-hyun held greater external influence, Franklin had always been constrained to Buckingham, yet consistently garnered nearly forty percent of the vote in chairman elections.
The King of Knights’ restraints had been lifted. A year hence, when the election drew near, he would be the greatest variable.
If the King of Knights made a bid for the Association Chairman’s seat and showed aggressive momentum, it would prove troublesome in multiple ways.
“You?”
Seon Woo-hyun stared at Jeong Hyun-soo, piercing and unblinking.
The other man was the Association Chairman. He clearly dismissed this twenty-year-old mouthing nonsense as beneath notice.
Yet Seon Woo-hyun was a heavyweight who had endured for decades at the apex of the global Hunter hierarchy. He would not claim perfect judgment, but.
Even if he wished to deny it, the boy had built achievements too substantial to dismiss merely as youthful excess—and before him now sat not some green recruit, but a raw competitor whose hunger was palpable.
For that reason, at least, he did not dismiss him outright.
“If I were never to become worthy of such a position, then the King of Knights would do well not to run—or he would be forced to finish me himself.”
“…That’s hardly the way of things. My step has grown lighter since meeting you.”
Seon Woo-hyun had already deduced that the King of Knights’ restraints had been lifted through Jeong Hyun-soo’s doing.
‘Is he using that as collateral to conclude this negotiation?’
To placate the cost of severing the Association Chairman’s left arm, he was offering up the King of Knights.
The unstoppable momentum that had driven him thus far—crushing Ilseong, letting Garam consume chaotic Korea while buying time—all of it reeked of calculated design.
Of course, deeper still lay even more vicious ambitions and ulterior motives.
“Words carried on a gentle breeze can sometimes tighten into a noose about the neck.”
“If things cannot proceed otherwise, then there is no turning back regardless, is there?”
“Should it come to that, we might make excellent friends.”
He spoke thus, yet the Association Chairman instinctively knew he could never walk alongside Jeong Hyun-soo.
The scent of a predator rising fearfully from below—he felt it at once.
He wanted to kill him on the spot.
Yet should he do so, his carefully laid table might overturn.
The power of Association Chairman branded him a tyrant, true enough, but that power drew its legitimacy from procedure and mandate.
At minimum, procedural legality and its backing through election—he knew that twisting the system he must build through these means carried greater risk. So Seon Woo-hyun bided his time.
Re-election as Association Chairman came first.
“Then I’ll see you again.”
With that, Seon Woo-hyun vanished.
Soon enough, as though they had been waiting, evening patrons flooded in, and Jeong Hyun-soo slipped away among them.
* * *
Having finished his first meeting with Seon Woo-hyun in this life, Jeong Hyun-soo returned to Garam.
“Well, well—back already?”
There stood Franklin, calling himself the King of Knights.
Dressed in the armor worn when claiming that title, his face set with utmost seriousness.
“…What are you doing?”
“Can’t you see? This is delicious. What did you call it again?”
“Bulgogi Stir-fry.”
“That’s right, Bulgogi! Really fantastic. And what comes next?”
“According to the complete Korean dining course guide, one should eat Spicy Chicken Noodles next.”
His face flushed from the Bulgogi, Edwin was gulping down water.
“Lancelot, are you sure about this? It’s supposed to be quite spicy.”
“A Knight knows no impossibility.”
“Excellent. Then let’s do it. Tell the chef to prepare it.”
The man who had said he was coming to discuss future strategy was now experiencing Korean gastronomy.
“When it’s too spicy, drink Sikhye,” I said.
“Is it not milk?”
“Sir, this is Korea.”
“Ah! Of course. What exactly is Sikhye, then?”
“Something like Earl Grey, you might say.”
“That’s… not quite right.”
“Not quite? I read on some Korean travel site that after eating something spicy here, Sikhye tastes like paradise.”
Watching the King of Knights inject a passionate “Fantastic!” into the conversation, I couldn’t help but sigh.
Was freedom not an inevitability for mankind?
The master of the Holy Sword, having shed his shackles and reclaimed his scabbard, appeared freer than anyone.
“…I met Seon Woo-hyun.”
“Spoiling my appetite before I’ve even tasted the Fire Chicken!”
At the King of Knights’ regretful cry—delivered with surprisingly refined pronunciation—Jeong Hyun-soo remained resolute.
“…Hah. So what happened? Is it war?”
Jeong Hyun-soo shook his head at the King of Knights’ question.
“I got what I wanted.”
“What? That fraud backed down? Even with Ilseong destroyed and Korean influence crumbling?”
“Yes. He said he’d keep Your Highness from running in the next election, then he stepped down.”
“Wait, keep me from running in the next election…what?”
Franklin, still mixing rice into the last of the broth, opened his eyes wide.
“What did you just say?”
“We’ve agreed to a temporary ceasefire on the condition that Your Highness abstains from the next election.”
“Are you out of your mind? You said Seon Woo-hyun was the problem! Then shouldn’t the man who’s seen an Association Chairman be the one to take over?”
Jeong Hyun-soo nodded at Franklin’s words.
“Yes, I’ll assume the position.”
“But if he doesn’t run, what then? You want me to march in with my conquest army, cut Seon Woo-hyun’s throat, and take the throne myself? I mean, it’d look impressive, but that’s not it, is it?”
“I’ll create an ending for Seon Woo-hyun that he’ll find most horrifying.”
“But why become Association Chairman at all?”
“Because once I make the Association nothing but a shell, that will suffice.”
“…What?”
“I’ll render the World Hunter Association hollow and nominal, then establish an organization to replace it.”
Franklin’s brow furrowed at Jeong Hyun-soo’s words.
“Look, even if it sounds simple, it won’t work. I tried to rally European Hunters myself, and it went nowhere.”
The Association’s influence was formidable indeed—it stood above even each nation’s Hunter administrative bodies, a supreme power structure.
Yet Jeong Hyun-soo remained confident.
“Soon the times will shift. If I design the board to match that change, a great wave will come that can be ridden, and Seon Woo-hyun will be swept away and run aground.”
“…What?”
Jeong Hyun-soo spoke simply, weaving truth and falsehood together.
“A great upheaval of the Tower is coming soon, Your Highness. We’ve paid the price for leisurely conquests and modest industrial progress until now, and an age of terror, dread, and ruin approaches.”
“…?”
The Tower had declared its playtime over—announcing itself through powerful alien races invading this earth, with Tower conquest deadlines growing tighter each day, squeezing ever harder.
Powerful species whose invasion frequency increased with each failure.
The Three Tribulations descend, and an unmanageable Tower alongside inevitable Gate Breaks that cascade from it draw inexorably near.
What could the Association possibly do in the face of that?
Jeong Hyun-soo had to prepare for it. It would not be long now.
If he acted in ways befitting that prelude, his world would arrive at its golden hour.
Continued in next chapter ▶
The Regressor Who Monopolizes Everything
Author
Cheon Ya
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Contact email [email protected]
Publication date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260515012
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law; unauthorized reproduction and duplication are prohibited.
Violations may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram awaits your precious manuscript.

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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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