The Regressor Can Make Them All - Chapter 575
Chapter 575
“…?”
Luize suddenly felt something was off as she was scanning the area for the core of the Forest of Repetition with the rest according to Se-Hoon’s instructions.
There was a faint sensation… like she was falling—no, pulled downward—that washed over her entire body. Instantly, all her senses sharpened as though the flow of time had slowed.
She didn’t know what exactly was happening yet, but one thing was certain: something was happening. And that meant Luize was already activating the Incantation Magic she had stored in Hati as a precaution.
“Escape.”
Whoosh!
The group that had been gathered in one spot was violently flung outward. A beat later, the three who sensed the anomaly belatedly twisted their bodies midair and stabilized themselves.
Luize, meanwhile, was already preparing another incantation as she turned her gaze back to where they had been standing just moments ago to search for the source of the disturbance…?
“What?”
Why was Se-Hoon standing there, unmoving, as if the incantation had never affected him? Luize froze.
Crackle-
Then, as if answering her, the area around Se-Hoon was drained of color into a stark black and white as space crumbled. Following that phenomenon, an ominous dark-red light flickered.
It flashed rhythmically—over Se-Hoon’s chest—like the pulse of a heart.
Staring at it and feeling the unsettling aura washing over them, three of them stiffened.
“So that’s the core,” Jason calmly muttered, acting unlike the rest.
To him, it was the same nauseating presence he had felt when fighting the Destroyer of Swords. And now that he confirmed it, Jason clenched his fist without hesitation the same moment and began gauging the distance.
His decisiveness made Luize’s eyes widen, while Sung-Ha and Amir moved to stop him—
Whoosh-
Jason’s fist moved far too fast, slamming straight into Se-Hoon’s solar plexus.
BOOM!
The black-and-white world spreading from Se-Hoon had vanished without a trace, sending a shockwave that erupted in a burst of brilliant light.
Seeing it surging straight toward them, the three hastily unleashed their techniques, which collided with the wave and canceled it out.
Swoosh-
A black-and-white tide swept across everything.
Swish!
The four who had been flung away earlier finally landed, all sliding to a halt across the frozen ground as they all tried to comprehend the sight before their eyes.
“Is that the sea…?” Luize murmured with a strange expression.
A monochrome sea spread out right in front of them, with Se-Hoon at its center. It was shimmering faintly like two overlapping spacetime layers.
“What we just saw was…”
“Yes. I think so too.”
Sung-Ha and Amir kept their eyes on the shimmering. Just moments ago, Se-Hoon’s body had clearly been struck by Jason’s blow and erased without a trace. Yet, during that brilliant burst of pale blue light, black-and-white waves had surged forth and restored Se-Hoon completely in the blink of an eye as though nothing had happened.
They were certain that Se-Hoon hadn’t blocked the attack or regenerated all the damage in that short time-span. Instead… it seemed like a complete reversal—to a state before the hit had ever landed—had occurred. Out of the four there, three knew Se-Hoon’s secret; in other words, they already knew what to call that phenomenon.
He used the power of Regression.
The power that bordered on omnipotence, unreachable even by Perfect Ones or Harbingers of Destruction—a power granted only to him, the Regressor.
Amir’s expression twisted in confusion.
What the hell is going on?
At first, he naturally assumed the enemy had manipulated spacetime and swapped Se-Hoon out with a fake. That seemed far more realistic than the sudden appearance of a Harbinger Shard inside Se-Hoon’s body.
However, that possibility had been completely erased the moment the power of Regression appeared.
Then…
Perhaps they all simply hadn’t known. Perhaps for a very long time—maybe even before the regression—there had already been a Harbinger Shard inside Se-Hoon.
But… that absurd possibility…. Amir stared at Se-Hoon, standing blankly atop the monochrome sea, hesitantly entertaining the idea.
“…”
If Se-Hoon truly had fallen to become something like a Harbinger of Destruction, what… were they even supposed to do? Amir’s hand gripping his ice dagger trembled faintly at the possibility he had never—
“It’s the resonance.”
Sung-Ha, who had been watching Se-Hoon closely, broke Amir out of his spiral.
“That dark-red mass is resonating with something nearby and influencing him.”
“That means…!”
“The real core is somewhere else?”
Hearing Jason’s question, Sung-Ha shot him a brief glare before nodding.
“That’s how it looks to me.”
While he didn’t like how Jason had attacked Se-Hoon without warning… objectively, it hadn’t been an entirely wrong call. Right now, turning Jason into an enemy wouldn’t help save Se-Hoon, so Sung-Ha made the judgment to suppress his personal feelings.
Likewise, Luize felt the same.
“So we need to find the real core… Amir, do you see anything?”
“I’ll check.”
At Luize’s cue, Amir activated his unique skill, Winter Sky Eyes, and an unfamiliar world unfolded before him.
This is…
A murky realm formed from countless overlapping skies filled his vision. The grotesque sight—like tens of thousands of people fused into one—made Amir’s pupils tremble.
Is his synesthetic mindscape being corrupted through resonance with the core? We don’t have much time…!
There was no telling what would happen to Se-Hoon if they didn’t sever the resonance quickly. Having grasped the situation, Amir pushed his eyes further, searching for the external synesthetic mindscape resonating with Se-Hoon—
“As expected of the Hunting Dog of the Warhound.”
Swoosh-
A sharp claw lunged at him, accompanying the alien voice.
Clang!
Thankfully, Jason’s fist collided with the claw right in front of Amir’s eyes, and Sung-Ha’s twin short spears had lashed out.
Whoosh!
But they cut through nothing but air. The enemy that had been right there was nowhere to be found.
Now, due to the sudden ambush, the three dogs were on edge.
Scanning as well, Jason clenched and unclenched his fist, then looked straight ahead.
“There.”
Everyone’s gaze snapped forward. From beneath Se-Hoon’s feet, a massive shadow rose slowly like its owner was climbing invisible steps.
Muscles were compressed as hard as armor; an upper body, covered in gray fur, that bore golden patterns etched like tattoos. Its lower half—draped in monk’s robes—wavered like a mirage of black shadow. Soon, the entire shadow, roughly three meters tall, could be seen.
“…Beast King.”
The trio tightened their stances as they faced Beast King of the Ten Evils anew, unrecognizable from previously. It didn’t take them long to figure out that he was the architect of the entire crisis—and perhaps a new Harbinger of Destruction.
The tension in the air thickened… however, Beast King was leisurely examining them.
“So this is what it feels like…”
“…”
“To think that something I could never understand, no matter what I tried, would turn out to be so… ordinary. Had Tuner never planned on giving me a chance from the start?”
His voice carried a strange murmur of both joy and sorrow, as if two contrasting voices were layered together.
“…Hey,” Luize started after a moment of silence.
“Speak.”
“Do you think talking like that makes you sound smart?”
“…”
“Putting on airs like you’ve uncovered some grand truth just because you realized one thing. If you’re just going to keep spewing bullshit, cut it short and come at us already. Otherwise, we will.”
Surprised by the mocking provocation, Beast King’s eyes widened, but then he let out a quiet chuckle.
“Heh… you’re not wrong. Even when a frog leaves the well, it’s still just a frog. If I keep rambling, I’ll only expose how shallow my knowledge is.”
“…”
“Still, allow me a few more words, won’t you? After all, don’t we all need time to prepare?”
Hearing that utterly relaxed tone, Luize’s expression stiffened slightly. Immediately after, she began communicating with the other two dogs through her Incantation Magic.
“He must’ve also learned about the regression.”
“He seems much calmer than before. At this point, he might as well be a different being.”
“Let’s see what he does first.”
From here on out, it was a contest of who finished preparing first. Meanwhile, as the three maintained their standoff, Jason—who had been silently watching the entire time—spoke. “You’ve changed.”
“…I had no choice.”
Beast King looked at Jason with a complicated expression.
“Killing you was impossible for who I was back then. So I accepted the power offered by Golden Wheel and was reborn as something new.”
“…”
“Alas, only after changing did I realize this: at the moment I discarded myself to fulfill my wish, I had already drifted away from the very wish I desired so desperately.”
His reason for accepting Golden Wheel’s offer of power was solely to kill Jason… yet once he got that power and transformed himself, the hatred and longing that had driven him vanished without a trace. An obsession that made one discard even the self to achieve a wish—and a wish that lost its meaning because the self was discarded.
“That is why I pity you, Jason Diaz.”
Reflecting on that paradoxical conclusion, Beast King looked at Jason.
“You, as well, are a pitiful being who lost himself while being led by his wish.”
Jason’s eyes widened. That wasn’t mere provocation. He could tell. The pity in Beast King’s gaze was genuine. He felt neither humiliation nor rage. Rather, the moment he heard the words “lost himself while being led by his wish,” his heart started pounding violently.
“Lost… myself…? What do you mean by that?”
Jason, always detached, showed open agitation—making the expressions of the others harden.
When a Perfect One behaved differently from usual, it often meant the onset of a rampage.
“Don’t listen to him! He’s trying to deceive you—!”
“Enough,” Jason cut Amir off, his gaze fixed on Beast King. “I’m the one who gets to decide here. Do not interfere.”
Amir stiffened, realizing the frigid killing intent in that warning was very real from how Jason was measuring his distance to strike at any moment. Jason was unlike anyone else. Just that meant he could punch at any instant.
“It’s exactly as I said. In the past, you climbed the Tower of Heroes and reached the end to fulfill your wish… but upon becoming a Perfect One, you lost that wish. That is your essence.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because I saw it. Or rather, I inherited those memories.”
Beast King recalled the knowledge of the world before regression that he had gained upon accepting Golden Wheel’s offer.
“In a world completely different from this one, before the regression, you died fighting two Harbingers of Destruction. And one of them—the Destroyer of Moralities—had tried to absorb your power.”
“…”
“A Perfect One’s soul is assimilated with the world’s law itself, though, making absorption impossible. All they could do was glimpse part of your ascent, which created the law—and within that, your past was hidden.”
With each of Beast King’s words, Jason felt his heart pounding harder and harder. His body, soul, and even authority itself were screaming at him to stop listening.
And yet he kept listening.
“Do you really want to know? What you abandoned to reach ascension—what the wish you pursued so desperately truly was?”
“I—”
“If you recover those memories, you will for sure become someone different from now. You may lose your qualification as a Perfect One… or be erased from the world altogether.”
Despite being well aware that he could have hidden the risks, Beast King had spoken plainly.
It was proof that he was no longer the Beast King of old.
It was proof that he truly pitied Jason, who shared a similar past.
“Even so, if you desire it… then take this.”
He extended his hand, and a golden cog—a fragment of the Golden Wheel that reversed spacetime—appeared in front of Jason.
Staring at it, Jason hesitated… only to end up reaching out for—
“Now!”
The three who had finished preparing moved at once.
Frost Alchemy: Perpetual Winter
Crack!
Centered on Amir, spacetime froze across tens of kilometers. Both Beast King and Jason were locked in place. However, all three knew that such a trick would barely even last a fleeting instant, so Luize layered her Incantation Magic atop it.
“Time Freeze.”
Clang!
The same combo once used by the Blast Dog and Frost Dog during the fight against the Destroyer of Moralities. With the two targets bound in frozen spacetime, Sung-Ha followed up by unleashing the flames spinning within his body through the tips of his spears.
Whoosh!
A massive flame wheel that melted even frozen spacetime lit up. His twin short spears amplified it further, forging it into a blazing red sun. He drew back one of them like a javelin.
Swoosh!
Its tip flew forward, and the moment it pierced the very center of the crimson sun…
Inferno Ring: Solar-Piercing Thrust
The spear, wreathed in a red sun, shot skyward and pierced the black sun created by the other spear above.
Woong!
A terrifying resonance erupted as the two suns collided, sending a formless wave that bored into the root of all things, collapsing everything in its path, spreading across the Forest of Repetition.
Amir’s earlier scattered ice pillars only amplified the wave and made it surge over and over until everything crashed into the center, into the black-and-white sea surrounding Se-Hoon.
Rumble!
The monochrome sea shook violently, on the verge of tearing apart—the resonance between Se-Hoon and the core of the Forest had begun to unravel.
At that moment, though, the motionless Se-Hoon let out a soft murmur. “Dream Manifestation: Reunion.”
Woong!
The wave ravaging the monochrome world was torn apart by twin spears.
Crack!
Massive ice pillars covered the black-and-white sea, protecting the collapsing world.
“Stillness.”
A quiet utterance stopped everything. The world fell so silent it felt as though the chaos before had been a lie.
“That’s…”
“Damn it…”
“No way…”
The three stared at the newly appeared shadowy figures, who had dismantled their combined attack in an instant: one wielding twin spears, another gripping an ice dagger, and the third holding a staff. Each shadow also bore gray, wheel-like halos.
Staring at those particularly familiar figures, the three went rigid.
Additionally, Beast King, now freed from the time stop, was brushing himself off as he watched the confrontation.
“How fascinating… such an intriguing situation.”
He smirked at the collision between the present and the past.
“Shall we see which are the real dogs?”
The shadows of the Three Dogs charged forward.
