The Regressed Martial God Monopolizes Everything - Chapter 17

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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 17. Palbong Mountain Gate (2)
At that very moment.
On Hunter TV, linked to the Hunter Network, a program was in full swing.
A man in armor, seated at a table positioned at the center of the Top Ten Guilds logo that symbolized South Korea, opened his mouth.
“Yes, we’ve just received word that Jung Hyun-soo, a Hunter from South Korea who has achieved an SSS-rank accomplishment for the first time in history, has just entered the Palbong Mountain Gate.”
The MC of the fairly popular conquest analysis program “Kill Point” continued, reading from the prompter in front of him.
“As a result, over twenty thousand viewers have already connected, and don’t you think this shows just how much interest the people have in this rookie who’s emerged after so long?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Hunter Jung Yong-hwa. In your view, how do you assess this? Do you think Hunter Jung Hyun-soo can actually succeed at solo play?”
Jung Yong-hwa, an elite Hunter of Platinum rank, wore an unenthusiastic expression.
“I believe it’s absolutely impossible.”
“Absolutely? But surely that’s too decisive—you both share the surname Jung, after all. I thought you were going to be more balanced about it.”
The comment section began to ignite.
└ Look at the MC cracking jokes.
└ Impossible? The guy posted SSS-rank achievements and crushed Ling Wei-hao, a gold-level Hunter, so what’s this about?
└ This is just bias. It’s because he’s a Jung Yong-hwa fanboy and mad that Chae Mu-hyun got benched, right?
└└ No, Jung Yong-hwa is just always like this.
└└ He doesn’t speak without reason; people just find him a bit grating.
The MC, glancing at the comment section, raised the topic again.
“Absolutely impossible, you say? But F-rank dungeon solo clears happen fairly regularly, don’t they? Especially—Alexander, who set an SS-rank record, and our Association Chairman, they both cleared F-rank dungeons solo during their rookie days.”
└ That’s right!
└└ Even with era buffs and strategy info, if you’re SSS-rank, solo play should be possible.
At that, Jung Yong-hwa let out a faint laugh.
“Do Alexander and Chairman Seon-woo Hyun strike you as… ordinary Hunters running around the streets? I’m not joking. Those early pioneers. How could you compare later generations to the ones who saved humanity in that untamed age?”
A few viewers erupted in agreement.
└└ Everyone my age agrees… how could we dare compare ourselves to the GOATs who pacified that age of legend?
└ Honestly, comparing people who achieved solo clears on pure ability alone, with no information, does feel a bit unfair.
[Super Chat from 온고지신!]
— W-h-e-r-e d-i-d y-o-u g-e-t t-h-e a-u-d-a-c-i-t-y t-o c-o-m-p-a-r-e a-n-y-o-n-e… to Alexander and our Chairman… they are on a different level… this is unbelievable…
Buoyed by the successive donations, the MC’s mouth quirked upward, and he addressed Jung Yong-hwa once more.
“I understand that point, but surely there’s still a possibility that—”
“Regardless of the gap between first and later generations, the Gate’s very nature makes conquest impossible.”
At Jung Yong-hwa’s firm words, the MC tilted his head in confusion.
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Palbong Mountain Gate is not an ordinary place.”
“Not ordinary? Would you explain a bit more?”
The MC seemed quite curious, even adjusting his glasses.
“For one, the monsters that appear are vicious. Undead, specifically.”
“Undead!”
“Yes. Basically, a rookie who lacks proper skills, has insufficient experience, and—particularly—has never encountered Undead in their entire life, swept up in arrogance and rushed straight into Palbong Mountain.”
Undead cannot be easily killed by ordinary physical force alone.
“Before coming here, I analyzed video footage of Hunter Jung Hyun-soo.”
“Video footage—you mean the recorded fight with Ling Wei-hao, correct?”
“Yes. In particular, I noticed he tries to overwhelm opponents through sheer force. But at Palbong Mountain Gate, if he attempts that, he’ll be in for a rough time. At least for Hunters in the rookie to Bronze bracket.”
With a final cautionary remark, Jung Yong-hwa spoke in a tone of exasperation.
“I honestly cannot understand why Guild Master Jung of Garam gave clearance for an attempt. He must have known from the start it was impossible.”
“Ah, and with today’s cutting commentary from our resident critic Jung Yong-hwa, we’ll take a brief break from Kill Point!”
* * *
Jung Hyun-soo gazed quietly at the world activating inside the Gate.
[You are entering the Netracta Necropolis.]
Netracta Necropolis.
Simply put, it was an abandoned hybrid city of magic and technology—a dungeon city from a world where Magical Engineering had developed to an extreme degree.
This Palbong Mountain Gate was known as a cyberpunk death network city, where digital ghosts and mutated magical monsters lurked about.
In truth, there was nothing particularly difficult about it.
This was an Undead dungeon. The boss could be considered a Lich. What appeared were just regular trash mobs—skeletons, zombies, that sort of thing.
Jung Hyun-soo had to infiltrate the deepest core of this Netracta Necropolis and obtain the ANP.
The vicinity was nothing short of ruins.
The server towers that had once been erected as the pinnacle of Magical Engineering’s former splendor lay in pieces, abandoned, while the magical circuits that had once protected the entire city now spewed corrupted Ether.
The first sector of this Netracta Necropolis—the Belt of Death.
Desolate high-rise buildings and earth split by magic. Rising above the scarlet Ether radiance that erupted from the cracks were floating fragments.
A single figure standing atop the platform walked forward.
The face beneath the corroded Reinforced Suit was at first glance like fragmented code rendered blurry and fractured.
“All the same, just a ghost-type mob.”
In eyes that flickered like red neon shot through with glitches, portions of the skin had torn away as if a data stream ran through them, and broken mechanical parts clattered ceaselessly.
[Digital Pirate]
A cyber phantom common to steampunk worlds—that is, an undead monster.
It was also why the Palbong Mountain Gate was so troublesome. It was the only undead dungeon among F-rank Gates, a consequence of sharing a steampunk worldview that made it all the more difficult.
‘For an F-rank, it’s punching above its weight. With everyone scrambling through the conquest strategy, who’d ever notice the ANP here?’
If a Hunter gets struck by an Ether Pirate’s hook, temporary glitches can afflict their equipment or skills.
It was also why one couldn’t simply rely on skills alone.
Boom!
Upon spotting Jung Hyun-soo, the Digital Pirate immediately kicked aside another pirate standing beside it.
Rolling tumultously, sparking with error, the second Digital Pirate tumbled away while spewing smoke, then hastily snatched up its own severed head and bolted.
Boom!
Then there emerged an enormous drone-like vehicle—an Ether Specter, the sort of vessel favored by the Digital Pirates.
The pirates mounted upon it charged toward Jung Hyun-soo.
No words, no negotiation—only collision.
Facing pirates bent on enslaving him, Jung Hyun-soo drew the Greatsword from his back in one fluid motion.
Whoosh!
With the heavy sound of air splitting, the blade descended upon the frontmost Digital Pirate charging headlong forward.
“…?”
Doubt flickered across the pirate’s expression. Even as an undead, this creature retained enough intelligence to plunder and wage war.
The visible physique, the weapon held—the gap between what its processed data predicted and the reality now unfolding before it was considerable.
Crack!
In real combat, such a gap is inevitably synonymous with death.
The Mountain Cleaving Blood Calamity of the Heavenly Overlord Demon Art, amplified by his reversed qi flow, cleaved the Digital Pirate from crown to chin in a perfect split.
Before such a strike, crashing down like a mountain, there was no resistance.
Undead are generally difficult to slay, but that is ultimately a matter of insufficient power.
Shatter!
Nothing can withstand overwhelming force.
Jung Hyun-soo was the type who, rather than exploiting some cunning Lifeforce Vessel that even a malevolent Lich kept hidden away, simply annihilated existence itself under damage it could not endure.
Whoosh!
Jung Hyun-soo channeled that power into his next attack.
To counter his assault, the Digital Pirates raised the Ether Specter they had ridden in on.
Fashioned rather like a shield, it possessed defensive power that exceeded imagination—enough to shatter the mental fortitude of Rookies.
Screech!
The flat of the Greatsword hurtled toward those phantoms, shrieking. All the while, its velocity only accelerated.
Concentrating the Overlord Heaven Force to its absolute limit, compressing and detonating it—Demon Strength Endless, the second technique of the Heavenly Overlord Demon Art.
A strike of unparalleled destructive force, excellent at shattering defenses, smashes into the Ether Specter.
Crack-shatter!
In an instant, three Digital Pirates are oxidized into nothingness. Jung Hyun-soo, having pierced to the center, knew only thrust, only advance.
Boom!
[Impressive, you primitive!]
Where Jung Hyun-soo had burrowed through stood a different Digital Pirate—one whose head was a full size larger than the others.
A cyberpunk world born of advanced civilization.
At the words of this phantom left behind in a world presumed destroyed by the Tower, Jung Hyun-soo let out a short laugh.
There was no reason to be bothered by talk of primitives.
“That’s right—just offer up that precious neck of yours. Let me take some of the benefits of that great civilization of yours.”
The first sector—the Data Belt of Death.
The captain of the pirates guarding that place, the mid-boss itself, had arrived.
[The Simulacrum Watcher seeks to annihilate you.]
At its feet knelt those who had already lost reason itself.
Not inhabitants of the abandoned world.
“Save… save us…”
“Ughhhh!”
Hunters who had challenged the Palbong Mountain Gate and been captured, enslaved to the Watcher.
[I shall grant you nothing, you lesser creatures!]
Born from the fusion of a magical surveillance system and an AI monitoring data at the moment Netracta Necropolis collapsed, the Watcher—a digital-hybrid surveillance phantom—erupted with power.
The Watcher itself was a massive mass of errors made manifest as force.
Exposure to that power made one unable to distinguish reality from illusion, as it sought to reconstruct a Hunter’s very identity, position, and consciousness.
Most Rookies fell into despair, enslaved and subordinated by the overwhelming power of such a formidable mid-boss, destined to vanish into oblivion.
One.
Boom!
With a gesture from Jung Hyun-soo, black heat-shimmer energy scattered forth, obliterating every last glitch of the Simulacrum Watcher.
[This creature? The primitive inferior actually has some skill after all!]
Yet the Watcher still appeared utterly confident.
[No matter! It must be something crude befitting his level! But this time, he absolutely won’t escape…….]
It unleashed glitches that were far more powerful and intricately controlled—but once again, with a single gesture from Jung Hyun-soo, every one of those glitches simply vanished without a trace.
[This… what is this…?]
The black heat-shimmer was none other than the Hollow Heaven Return Origin Art.
The martial way of deletion that creates emptiness. Its power consumed even the crystallized glitches born of Magical Engineering itself, reducing them back to their source.
“Is that all?”
At Jung Hyun-soo’s words, spoken with such dismissive ease, the Hunters pinned beneath the Watcher felt a single thread of hope kindle within them.
They had come alone and resigned themselves to their fate, yet he was dismantling the very glitch that had tormented them most—and doing it effortlessly. He could be nothing less than a god-like being.
And the one who had manifested that emptiness now extended his hand toward the Watcher.
Continued in the next chapter ▶
The Regression Deity Who Monopolizes All
Author
Cheon Ya
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries: [email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260515012
※ This ebook is protected under copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and distribution are prohibited.
Violations may result in criminal and civil legal 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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