The Regressor Can Make Them All - Chapter 582
Chapter 582
Swoosh-
Awakened by the familiar, gentle sound of waves brushing against his ears, Se-Hoon lifted his body to look around.
“…”
A forest left in ruins, which revealed the vast blue sea sparkling in the distance. The mystical sight captured Se-Hoon’s attention for a moment, losing out only because Se-Hoon needed to examine his own chest.
It’s gone…
The Wheel of Severed Bonds and the Harbinger Shard—the things he had inherited from the Destroyer of Moralities back then—had vanished without a trace. All that was left was the feeling that a third of his heart had been torn away.
Looking at it this way, I really was influenced by that bastard quite a lot. Se-Hoon made a bitter smile, pressing a hand over his heart.
Considering that both the power of Regression and the changes to his unique skills had all emerged because of his assimilation with the Destroyer of Moralities, the size of the void left behind was hardly surprising.
All that was left now was to check how his synesthetic mindscape fared after the incident…?
Huh? I’m in better shape than I expected.
To be honest, he had expected the worst: that he would lose everything he had gained after regressing. Yet there were hardly any signs of that. If anything, it felt as though the power of Regression, which had been nearly complete, had become imperfect once again; it was like a machine that had lost a few components.
But even that wasn’t something to worry about. After all, other forces were already filling in the gaps in real time.
Those are… the bonds I’ve formed so far.
The new bonds he had built with his companions after regressing were reshaping both the power of Regression and Se-Hoon’s synesthetic mindscape into something completely new.
I should restrain myself a bit until things stabilize.
Thankfully, it wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but the fact remained that he was weaker than before. With that, Se-Hoon finished his self-assessment and was just about to turn his head to look for the others when…
“Ugh…”
“Where… is this…?”
Turning his head toward the voices coming from the left, Se-Hoon found Sung-Ha and Amir struggling to stand some distance away with faces twisted in discomfort. From how they were staggering, pressing their foreheads and brows as if suffering from severe motion sickness, Se-Hoon could already guess their condition.
The aftereffects of soul fusion.
Regardless of the fact that it had only been for a mere moment, they had still merged with eighty-four thousand souls. The strain on their synesthetic mindscapes was definitely immense.
In fact, an ordinary person wouldn’t have woken up at all—let alone moved. Them being on their feet already was nothing short of miraculous.
Maybe because they helped and then exited immediately? If that’s the case…
Thinking of the last of the trio, Se-Hoon looked down at his right hand.
“Mm…”
Clinging tightly to his hand—even wrapping her entire body around his arm—was Luize, groaning softly with no signs of waking.
To check her condition, Se-Hoon gently placed his left hand on her forehead.
As expected, she’s worse off than the other two.
Was it because she stayed until the very end to help him? Wondering such, Se-Hoon looked down at Luize, whose synesthetic mindscape had weakened far more than expected, with a troubled expression—
“Se-Hoon!”
“Brother!”
A shadow fell over him the moment the two urgent cries rang out.
“…”
Se-Hoon quietly looked up, meeting Jason’s eyes. Jason’s expressionless face revealed nothing of his thoughts. With how close Jason was, Sung-Ha and Amir froze in place, unable to act rashly.
Does he still remember the past? Or has he forgotten again?
Unable to tell, Se-Hoon opened his mouth to ask, but at that moment, his attention was taken by something beneath the surface of the ocean that started glowing softly.
Woong-
Tiny clusters of white firefly-like lights illuminated the ocean. Each individual light was faint, seemingly about to extinguish at any moment… but together, the tens of thousands of them caused the entire sea to shimmer a majestic blue.
In the blink of an eye, the ocean started looking like a starry galaxy.
It was utterly breathtaking.
“What are these lights?”
Hearing the unexpected question from Jason, who had turned his head to look as well, Se-Hoon turned to look at him before returning his gaze to the twinkling lights escaping the water.
“They’re the souls that were bound to the Destroyer of Moralities. It seems they were released at its death.”
The trapped souls of the eighty-four thousand heroes within the Wheel of Severed Bonds, brought to the current world from the destroyed future through his regression… were finally free.
“Then… are they all coming back to life?”
“…No. That would be difficult.”
Having been fused for such a long time, those souls had long since lost their individual consciousness. For now, having only just been freed, their forms were still intact—but given a little more time, they would scatter and meet their end.
Swoosh-
Carried by the blue waves, the souls drifted toward the horizon like a procession.
“…A fleeting ending,” Jason muttered after watching for a while in silence.
Despite finally attaining freedom, their conclusion was to fade away without even knowing who they were…. The sight of the souls vanishing like sea foam made Jason’s expression turn hollow.
“Well… who knows?”
Se-Hoon gazed at the same sight as Jason.
“…”
“Whether their ending is truly fleeting isn’t something we can decide right now. It’ll be determined by the future that comes next.”
Carefully brushing Luize’s hair to remove a soul clinging to it, Se-Hoon released it back onto the water’s surface.
“And I’ll create a future that isn’t ashamed of its ending.”
“…”
“A future that no one would dare to call meaningless. A future everyone will acknowledge.”
Remaining silent, Jason quietly watched the soul that Se-Hoon released drift away atop the waves.
“I see…”
Perhaps the reason their ending felt so hollow to him was simply that he himself had been clinging only to the past, without ever considering the future.
It was a thought that made Jason think deeply—
“How ridiculous.”
A grotesquely distorted voice.
Splurt-
A dark crimson sludge crawled up through the blue sea. The monster, whose body could barely maintain its shape—the Beast King—dragged itself forward, glaring at Se-Hoon.
“You can’t decide it now? It’ll be decided in the future? Hah, ridiculous. Then why didn’t you accept your ending and die back then, instead of regressing?”
“…”
“You only spout such empty nonsense because you’re the only one that can regress…. You’re the only one who can get everything back!”
The sludge regained its form as its time reversed, only to collapse again due to lacking the strength to hold its form.
Chain collapse from resonance.
Se-Hoon only needed a glance before it was clear. The Beast King, who had earlier tried to corrode Se-Hoon by using resonance, was now suffering the backlash since the Destroyer of Moralities’s power had disappeared. The result? His synesthetic mindscape was crumbling.
“I…I’ve lost everything. My name… my wish… my soul… they all exist only in the past.”
The Beast King’s tone suddenly shifted. Now, instead, there was a familiar politeness and atmosphere in his speech that made Se-Hoon’s eyes widen.
“You… don’t tell me!”
“And now, even the way back is gone. Even if you regress again… you won’t be able to return to the time when I was myself.”
The Harbinger of Destruction, the Destroyer of Moralities; the human, Noah Campbell; the demon, Beast King; the experimental subject, L-105—countless memories collided chaotically, accelerating the collapse of both mind and body.
In the end, at the moment the vessel would be filled with a soul that was no longer anyone at all…
“Then this moment, at least, must repeat forever.”
WOONG!
Dark crimson light burst from the collapsing body—
Clang!
Before Se-Hoon could even shout, a blade of ice so thin and sharp that it was nearly transparent, had flashed past him and pierced straight into the dark light.
A massive ice flower bloomed in an instant. Amir’s soul-freezing blade—prepared to restrain Jason—had struck the Beast King instead. Then, in the opening created, Sung-Ha kicked off the water and charged.
There!
He lunged at the small mark on the ice flower’s surface. Beyond it was his target, a shattered red gem: the Harbinger Shard.
Fusing his twin spears of flame and darkness into the Eclipse Spear, Sung-Ha hurled it forward in one decisive strike.
BOOM!
The Harbinger Shard—and the collapsing body along with it—was obliterated without a trace. Amir and Sung-Ha had executed a flawless chain attack, unbelievable for two people supposedly weakened.
Knowing that themselves, the two believed they had suppressed it in time and let out internal sighs of relief—
“Block that thing!”
WOOOOSH!
A precarious-looking form, as though broken fragments had been forcibly stitched together, revealed itself. Depending on the angle one looked at it, its shape subtly shifted. In every which way, it was an uncanny monster.
BOOM!
The instant it fixed its gaze on Sung-Ha, fists and spears collided; each went straight through the other.
“Agh!”
Struck in the solar plexus, Sung-Ha was flung back. He had to swallow the blood that rose to his throat as he stared at the enemy. Hadn’t he clearly pierced and destroyed it along with his own strike? Why were all of its wounds gone, save for the original cracks?
It was almost as if his spear strike had been nothing but an illusion.
No, that can’t be.
If nothing else, that was not something he would ever mistake. Facing the now even more ominous foe, Sung-Ha raised his guard.
“Not bad. You’re better than I expected.”
The being standing beside Sung-Ha turned its gaze toward Se-Hoon.
“Neither a Harbinger of Destruction nor a Perfect One… but an existence beyond the world’s laws. I can see why you chose this path.”
Appearing without warning, the enemy’s presence by his side made Sung-Ha instinctively swing his spear with wide eyes.
Slice!
Its body was cut cleanly in half, yet everything had reverted as if nothing had happened?! Did the monster possess some kind of skill that reversed time? Was its regeneration simply too fast to perceive?
Unable to comprehend what he had just seen, Sung-Ha froze—which the enemy did not miss as its fist swung toward that opening.
Clang!
A massive ice barrier erupted between them. Saved by Amir’s support, Sung-Ha snapped back to his senses and retreated instead of pressing the attack.
“Are you alright?”
“No. Not really.”
Tasting the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth, Sung-Ha’s expression hardened. The attacks themselves were nothing special, but that bizarre regenerative ability prevented any real exchange from happening.
“Do you have any idea what that thing is?”
“…No. None at all.”
Sweat dripped down Amir’s face as he continued observing with the Heaven Sky Eyes. In his vision, the enemy stood a hundred meters ahead. Yet in Zayed’s vision, it stood twenty meters off to the right.
When trying other angles, its numbers kept increasing… only to appear as a single figure once the Heaven Sky Eyes were released.
“…Brother.”
Thoroughly wary, Amir spoke out to Se-Hoon, who was now behind him. “What really… is that thing?”
“…”
Se-Hoon stared at the enemy. It was an unprecedented type of transcendent being, born from the fusion of the Destroyer of Moralities and Beast King—something that had never existed before his regression.
Facing that new foe, Se-Hoon unconsciously muttered, “A Demon King.”
A monster born for the very purpose of killing them: a calamity incarnate.
Se-Hoon opened his mouth to warn the others—
“A bit childish, perhaps. But not bad.”
The Demon King appeared before Se-Hoon without warning, shrouding him in its shadow. Looking up… Se-Hoon saw it raising its fist as cracks along its jaw split like a grin.
“What title could be more fitting for one who stands in the hero’s path?”
Swoosh-
Nobody could react as the Demon King’s fist swung down and Se-Hoon’s world slowed.
Did his power somehow activate? Was he experiencing merely a near-death flash? Unable to tell even himself, Se-Hoon watched the approaching fist in that slowed world.
If he dodged the incoming strike, Luize would be in danger. If he moved to block it, Luize would still be in danger. That left one option: take the hit head on.
I don’t know if I can endure this…
Though his head had been crushed and his heart had been torn apart multiple times in the past, he couldn’t say whether that was possible now with his synesthetic mindscape as unstable as it was.
Still, instead of dodging or blocking, Se-Hoon twisted his body while drawing up his mana to shield Luize in his arms.
Snap-
The Demon King’s fist stopped just before his eyes.
“…”
Se-Hoon slowly looked to the side, where Jason stood, gripping the Demon King’s wrist.
“The only thing I can choose by my own will… is probably this moment right now.” His voice was cold and detached.
Reflecting on how he was a foolish man who had never escaped the tragedy of his past, Jason clenched his fist once more and turned to face the Demon King.
“I’ll see for myself whether what you said is true.”
