I’m not a Regressor

I’m Not a Regressor

Chapter 257: The Thousand Curse Dragon (9)

Barbatos felt that dawn was about to arrive. The night sky was covered in dark clouds, and the red sun rose beyond that abyssal night where not even starlight was visible. The sight was both brilliant and solemn.

“Fuck you, lizard boy.” Ha-eun jumped high, clutching her flames that burned like the sun as she swung her fist at him.

“Keuk!” Barbatos gave her a wide-eyed look. He hadn’t expected her to break through his curses so easily. ‘I need more of their blessing…!’ He focused on the horns on his forehead, feeling the huge amount of power flowing from them. Then… ‘What?’ Every connection to his ‘lord’ was cut off, and the power stopped flowing.

“Why?” Barbatos raised his head and gave the sky a disbelieving look, trembling slightly as he looked at the dark sky and wondered when the sun had set.

"Euaaaaggghhh!" Ha-eun's fist, empowered by her flames, slammed into Barbatos's jaw.

“Keuhuuk!”

“This bastard’s breath fucking stinks.” Ha-eun frowned and glared at Barbatos, who was screaming in pain. The stench assailing her nose was enough to make her sick, but she couldn’t miss her golden opportunity and swung her fist toward his open mouth.

“I need a name for this technique…” she mumbled. “Yeah… that would be nice.” She thought of the perfect name to embody the image of the technique…

“Ten Dragon Radiance.” The ten, fiery dragons that had condensed around her fist shot into Barbatos’s mouth all at once. No matter how tough a dragon’s scales were, their insides were still made of flesh. The technique exploded deep within Barbatos’s body.

“Keuaaaaah!” Barbatos roared as he fell to the floor with black smoke leaking from his mouth.

"Haa, haa!" Ha-eun landed and sat down, breathing heavily. "Ugh, I’m dead tired!" She lay on the ground. She felt as if her head were spinning—maybe she’d used too much mana in one go.

Ohjin approached, took her hand, and helped her stand. "Good job, Ha-eun."

"Heehee. Did you see that? I told you I could deal with it myself!"

"Uh, yeah." ‘Let’s change the name of the technique,’ Ohjin thought. ‘What’s up with that name?’

"Oh, and I became a 10t-Star. Come on! Look at this!" Ha-eun pulled down her shirt with a bright smile on her face. Her white flesh, wrapped in a black bra, caught his eye. Although not comparable to Isabella, she also boasted voluminous mounds that were difficult to hold with one hand.

Ohjin pulled up her clothes again with a frightened look on his face. "What are you doing?" he asked. Why was it that the small mole on her breastbone attracted his eyes more than the ten strokes carved next to her stigma? He desperately resisted the urge to press on the mole with the tip of his index finger.

He might not have had to resist since they were lovers, but at the very least, he couldn’t do such a crazy thing in front of Vega and Isabella.

“You used to knead my body like dough, but now you’re shy?” ‘Shame’ wasn’t a word that existed in Ha-eun’s dictionary.

"Stay properly dressed for now…" Ohjin said.

"Hehe. Yeah, you can thoroughly check it with your hands later. Things other than the stigma, too." She winked at him, seeming several times more excited than usual. Maybe it was because she’d overcome her trauma and beat the Thousand Curse Dragon.

“…” Ohjin looked over at the collapsed Barbatos. It was true that Ha-eun reached 10-Star and became strong in one moment. ‘Even considering that, wasn’t it too easy?’ The moment Ha-eun just stepped through the curse shroud and jumped toward Barbatos, the dragon’s movements had stopped, and he’d looked shocked.

“Ugh… cough!” Barbatos, who was still emitting black smoke from his mouth, coughed with difficulty.

"Oh, what? He's still alive?" Ha-eun frowned and created her flame again.

"Wait a minute, Ha-eun." Ohjin grabbed her by the shoulder and approached Barbatos. He had something to check before they finished the monster off.

“Why… why did you throw me away?” Barbatos murmured in a despair-filled voice.

‘He was thrown away?’ No one could abandon him except the one he called ‘lord.’ Ohjin’s eyes moved toward Barbatos’s forehead, and he saw the black horns were gone. 'Is that why he suddenly stopped moving?' He narrowed his eyes and said, "Barbatos, what is the name of your ‘lord’?”

“Oh, ugh, aaaahhh…” Barbatos was merely shaking, his face blue, and not answering.

Ohjin gently put his hand on Barbatos's head. It took a high level of skill to make such a panicked being talk. “Blue Lightning.” A fan-shaped blue lightning attack penetrated the dragon’s body.

“Kaaaaahhhh!” Barbatos shook and convulsed.

"You don't have to be afraid, Barbatos. It's alright. It's… alright now." Ohjin spoke in the gentlest voice possible.

* * *

Translator - Rainypup

Proofreader - ilafy

* * *

The most important part of an interrogation was relieving the subject’s feelings of extreme tension and panic—empathy and understanding were essential.

“Argh! S-stop it! Stoooop!”

Was it because he felt Ohjin’s sincerity? Barbatos's eyes, which had been staring blankly into the air, turned to Ohjin. As expected, nothing was more important than sincerity.

"Finally… you're turning this way." Ohjin carefully stroked Barbatos’s scales while the dragon’s eyes rolled backward. Every brush of his hand returned the scales to their purple color. Maybe it was because the feeling was itchy, but Barbatos continued to convulse.

“I'll tell you! I'll tell you! Please…!” the dragon screamed

"You don't have to force yourself. You don't have to say it if you don't want to." Ohjin shook his head, looking worried. You couldn’t force an answer from someone so scared.

“The Heavenly Demon! He's the one who gave me the blessing!” Barbatos shouted.

“What…?" Ohjin's hand, which was stroking Barbatos' head, stopped. "The Heavenly Demon? When did you get the blessing?"

“It hasn't been that long”

"Exactly when?"

“About a month ago… That person came to me while I was hibernating.”

It was roughly the same time as the named monsters started to resume their activities.

“…” For a moment, Ohjin wondered if Kasia had done it, but she had listened to his orders and headed to South America to defeat the Musca faction. She would not have given the Thousand Curse Dragon power out of the blue.

'Then…' Even if the Thousand Curse Dragon got a ‘blessing’ from the Heavenly Demon when it wasn’t him, then there was only one possibility… "The real Heavenly Demon… has started to move?" Ohjin's expression fell.

* * *

A man in thin glasses rushed down a humid rainforest path somewhere in South America, clutching his chest as blood flowed out. "Ugh!" Due to his severe wounds, he ended up falling and rolling along the ground after a short run.

"Haa, haa!" He panted and placed his back against a tree.

Shhhk, shhhk—

An eerie, snake-like slithering sound was heard from the path he’d been fleeing on. "Did you give up?" A woman in a pitch-black dress appeared. Her body was slim like a girl’s, but her smile was much too alluring to belong to someone so young.

"…Yes, I think that's it." The bespectacled man nodded with a self-mocking smile on his face and looked up at Kasia with calm, subdued eyes. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Why… did you attack us?"

"Hmm." Kasia licked her lips with a flick of her long, snake-like tongue. “The Heavenly Demon said that the sound of flies was annoying.”

"Ha…" A scoff left the man's mouth. Everything he’d built up had been torn down in an instant for such a reason? The man smiled and leaned back against the tree. “Truly… like my stigma, my life is like a fly’s. My existence, to people like you…”

"Do you want to live, Adel?" Kasia asked, looking down at the bespectacled man. Ohjin had ordered her to end him, but she was willing to let him live if he offered to pay his allegiance to the Heavenly Demon.

"Haha. Do I want to live, huh…?" Adel smiled and touched the pendant around his neck. Staring down at a photograph of a woman in the pendant, he slowly raised his head. "Do I want to live? That’s not the right question.” The stigma of the Musca constellation on the left side of his chest emitted a black light. "I… must live. I must."

Shhh, shhhkk—!!

The forest shook, and loud cries rang out from all sides.

Buzzzz—!

Bodies smelling of terrible rot flooded in through the thick underbrush.

"Huh… All things considered, you don't seem to want to live." Kasia briefly flicked her tongue and looked at the bodies around her. "I'll step on you like a fly and kill you…" When she tried to lightly wave her hand at the group of oncoming weaklings and emitted the grim light of her stigma of the Serpent…

Krrruuukk—

A black crack formed in the air, and a black cloud flowed through, darkening the sky and blocking the bright sun.

"This…?”

Both Kasia and Adel looked up in surprise at the black cloud that constantly seemed to shift. A low voice came out from among the dark clouds like a burning fire—repeatedly getting louder and softer. “It's been a while.”

As if Adel didn’t even matter, the black clouds approached Kasia.

Adel looked up at the black cloud and called out a name. "…Heavenly Demon?"

“That's right” The black clouds moved up and down as if nodding.

"You're… the Heavenly Demon?" Kasia looked at the black clouds in shock and laughed as if looking at a carefully made piece of fake artwork. "Lies."

Although it looked like a half-hearted copy, she could tell…

"You are not the Heavenly Demon." Kasia emitted an eerie aura toward the cloud and gave it a slit-eyed glare; then, she flicked a finger toward the unidentified being who was impersonating the Heavenly Demon, and a snake shot out of her shadow toward the black cloud.

“What…?” A perplexed voice came out of the black cloud.