The Regressor Can Make Them All

Chapter 592

Terra furrowed her brow. There was an unpleasant sensation burrowing in.

With it came a chilling feeling, like a part of her mind was breaking apart and being replaced by something unknown, and an abrupt recollection of a memory from so long ago that she no longer remembered when it occurred.

“Speak your wish.”

The day she first reached the top of the Tower of Heroes and made her wish before the Golden Ring that had appeared high in the sky.

The knowledge to solve any problem in this world. That is what I want.

She could not find a solution with the knowledge she had. The unprecedented disaster brought by the Towers of Heroes led to far too many problems: humans becoming monsters due to mana and the Earth itself dying because it couldn’t adapt. And, most problematic of all, were the newly emerging godlike “Perfect Ones” that twisted the very laws of the universe.

Thus, left at a loss, her only choice was to wrest knowledge from the very source of those disasters.

Crack-

That was how Terra received the power of Omniscience that granted her all knowledge of the world—and came to realize she could never become capable of solving every problem in this world.

Woong!

An orange halo reminiscent of antlers appeared above Terra’s head; simultaneously, the pure-white sky was gradually stained orange as though dawn were breaking.

Then, the moment the boundary between sky and earth was completely stained in the seemingly light of dawn… infinite knowledge began pouring into Terra’s mind.

“Ah…”

Terra, who thought Tuner was eroding her mind, realized quickly that the knowledge seeping into her mind was from another.

Click-

The missing pieces of the puzzle of memories since birth began slotting into place one by one. Despite never consciously recognizing those missing pieces, they were now descending endlessly from the orange sky—the Akashic—to return the countless memories and secrets the Seeker had left behind when creating her alter ego.

“Ah… Aaah…”

Countless words swirled inside her head, yet not a single proper syllable could leave her lips. She could only stare blankly up at the orange sky.

“TERRA!!”

Se-Hoon tore through space, arriving before her. He knew nothing but one single thing: the target of Tuner’s final trap had not been him but Terra.

I have to stop this, no matter what!

If his suspicions about Tuner’s identity were correct, then he had to stop Tuner from exploiting that fact to stain Terra immediately.

Slash-

Blood flowed from the new cut in Se-Hoon’s palm, seeping into the spine of Stellar Radiance as its tip turned to point straight at Terra’s heart. Ready to connect their synesthetic mindscapes, applying the principles of the Celestial Infinity Blade and Demonic Blood Art, by force he thrust the blade—

“You’re being a bit too hasty.”

After those words, a crimson tongue engraved with countless magic arrays slid out from Terra’s mouth.

“Halt.”

That single word reverberated.

In Se-Hoon’s eyes, however, that “single” word was actually countless magic arrays that covered the entire world in the blink of an eye before vanishing just as fast.

This is…

It was a spell very familiar to Se-Hoon, who had seen it used by Anushka, the Vessel of Dawn: the Seeker’s incantation magic, World Alteration. With it, she had applied a law of her own creation across her world by force.

“…”

There was a stark difference to that time, however..

Crunch-

He, who had easily broken through it simply by releasing Silver River, could not move to do even that.

Unable to move a fingertip, let alone circulate mana, Se-Hoon could only glare past his sword aura that had stopped right in front of Terra.

“Agh…!”

He felt as though the entire world was crushing him with unparalleled weight. Yet, through the pain screaming throughout his entire body from the sensation of being flattened to particles, Se-Hoon forced himself to move.

Responding to the sheer intensity of his will, the tip of the blade trembled faintly and began inching forward. Alas, the closer it got to Terra, the more the force of World Alteration multiplied geometrically.

Against that, even Se-Hoon’s body came to a complete stop just before Terra’s solar plexus.

“It took the entire world clinging to you just to hold you barely down…. Tsk, as one of your believers, I probably shouldn’t say this, but you really are disgusting.”

Looking at the blade nearly touching her solar plexus, “Terra” let out a faint, bitter laugh.

“I’m sure you have a lot you want to say, but wait just a little longer. There’s still something we need to settle between ourselves first. Right?”

The moment those words left Terra’s mouth, light returned to the eyes that had until now been staring blankly into space.

“…Since when?” a voice, sunken and gloomy, asked.

“…”

“Was I… your pawn from the very beginning? Was everything I accomplished until now… a lie you created?”

Despair dripped from Terra’s voice.

Yet in cruel fate, her own mouth moved as though it belonged to someone else to answer that question. “No. It wasn’t like that. If I had to put it simply, it’s more a matter of proportions.”

“…”

“If you made up forty-nine percent of the concepts defining this body, then I’d be about forty-eight percent. That’s why, until now, you were the one holding the initiative and existing as yourself~”

Woong!

The orange antlers endlessly continued to draw in the knowledge recorded in Akashic, storing the contents in Terra’s mind. The amount being transferred into her—all the knowledge in the world—was horrifying, yet the voice of “Terra” was at complete ease.

“But now, thanks to the knowledge downloaded from Akashic, my proportion has increased to fifty percent! And that means the initiative over the concept has shifted—to me.”

The human ego was indeed too multifaceted to be defined by a single concept, which was why the side that seized the initiative always determined the self that appeared outwardly. It was the core reason behind people saying that they thought someone had become a different person. Even if the change may be infinitesimal in reality, the shift of the self was just that impactful.

“The memory of reaching the top of the Tower. The process that led me to choose death. And even my experience as Tuner.”

“…”

“Until now, you could exist as Terra because I didn’t know that knowledge. But now, that’s no longer the case.”

It wasn’t a matter of good and evil. Nor a splitting of the self. Simply, it was a question of which side would be the one to choose and move forward. The path that Terra was on had simply stopped extending, while the other path at the crossroads had started.

“I…”

“It’s alright. Once everything is over, you’ll be given a new life too. Just as you wished, you’ll be able to be happy with everyone…” With a tender voice like a mother lulling her child to sleep, she whispered, “so go to sleep for now~”

Listening to that gentleness, Terra’s eyelids trembled faintly and slowly closed. The last thing she saw as her consciousness sank into the depths was the figure of Se-Hoon gradually fading into darkness.

“I’m sorry…,” she softly murmured, tears in her eyes.

Drip-

A tear ran down her cheek and fell onto the blade of the sword aura as a gloomy silence flowed between the two.

Now, looking into those eyes that opened once more, Se-Hoon knew in his heart: Terra was no more.

“You’ve waited a long time, haven’t you? Well, this is awkward. Splitting things apart was easy enough—you just cut them—but putting them back together is proving to be a lot more troublesome. I must have underestimated that child too much.”

“…”

“More importantly, how should I greet you…? Officially, this is our first time meeting, but in another sense, we’ve known each other all this time. It’s a bit of a dilemma.”

The being before Se-Hoon rambled on in slight excitement, and after a moment of thought, let out a grin upon coming up with a good idea.

“Ah, right! Actually~ rather than introducing myself this late in the game, it’d be more fun if you guessed. So~~ who am I?”

To allow Se-Hoon to answer that playful question, the force sealing ‌Se-Hoon’s mouth vanished—

“SEEEEEKERRRRRR!!!!”

Se-Hoon’s shout of rage and disgust erupted.

The great mage who had ascended a second time. The Perfect One, who had met a mysterious death in the Abyss of Demons. The madwoman who became a demon by hacking her own body to pieces.

The truth of Tuner—the Seeker—made Se-Hoon so explosively volatile that the force of World Alteration that was still binding his body shook on the verge of collapse.

“Oh, dear…”

Seeing that, the startled Seeker quickly flicked her finger to bind the loosened weight of the world tightly around Se-Hoon once again.

WOONG!

The world was once more covered in countless magic arrays and altered, fixing Se-Hoon’s body in place far more firmly than before.

Only then did the Seeker let out a sigh of relief, staring at him with eyes tinged with faint alarm.

“I only loosened the area around your mouth a little, and yet you nearly shattered all of this…. At this point, do I even need to push you along anymore?”

Although his physical abilities hadn’t changed too much recently, his resistance to the world’s interference had become incomparably stronger.

Was it because he had finally come to wield the power of Regression properly? Or because he had erased the traces of the Destroyer of Moralities in the Forest of Repetition, setting his synesthetic mindscape right?

Whichever it was, to the Seeker, he had become threatening enough that any urge to act leisurely vanished at that very instant.

“We’ve spent enough time together that I wanted to talk a little more, but well, it can’t be helped. I’ll begin right away.”

Woong!

The orange-stained world swirled around the two of them; at that moment, the world had also started trembling as though it were moving as a single enormous magic array.

To Se-Hoon, it looked as though the entire world were about to leap toward somewhere…?

“Omniform Sacred Armament. You know the true effect of it, right?”

The Seeker’s Final Revelation, which synchronized the body and the Golden Ring to expand and amplify one’s power, which the Inoues once tried to reproduce, was now being invoked properly by the resurrected Seeker—its creator.

“I’m going to use myself as the medium to synchronize you and the Ring forcibly. Then the Ring will be stained by your synesthetic mindscape, and the two of you will naturally merge. You’ll become a new god!”

Hearing the Seeker’s explanation, Se-Hoon’s expression twisted. Naturally, even if her plan sounded simple enough when spoken aloud, it was anything but that.

Despite the Golden Ring having no ego, it was still the origin of the world. Completely staining that? It’d be difficult for even Se-Hoon, and more than anything, there was no guarantee that he himself would not be altered in the process.

“Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds. But you’ll just have to make it work somehow. Otherwise, the world will simply be destroyed.”

The process of uniting Se-Hoon and the Golden Ring, two different worlds, into one, of course, couldn’t be stopped midway. Furthermore, the moment the slightest mistake occurred, both worlds would collapse and be destroyed together.

It was a hyper-risk choice that would have made anyone hesitate—except the Seeker, who instead found that fact rather reassuring.

“Well, don’t worry too much. If it’s you, you’ll manage.”

After all, if the world were not at stake, Se-Hoon would have rejected the synchronization and resisted by any means necessary. That would all be avoided if the world were destroyed! He, of all people, would give in at the end to save everyone.

That the Seeker was certain of more than anything else. She, the one who had fought by Se-Hoon’s side for a long time… and had also fought against him on the other side.

“…”

The trust radiating from the Seeker made Se-Hoon tremble in fury, disgust, betrayal, and guilt. Countless more emotions swirled in his mind, but every single one finally coalesced into one single thought.

I’ll bring her down…!

He would bring that madwoman who had deceived them all down, no matter what.

His resolve strengthened, Se-Hoon’s eyes sank into an icy stillness.

“Hm… If you’re thinking of regressing, you’d better stop. If you go back to the past, that’s when Terra will disappear completely,” the Seeker warned, noticing the change.

Se-Hoon’s thoughts churned at that revelation. Was the Seeker’s method of perceiving regression an application of the Akashic, an application of her power of Omniscience?

“…”

Se-Hoon glared at her, continuing in that line of speculation in silence.

This bastard… does he still have a hidden card up his sleeve?

Feeling his unwavering gaze, the Seeker searched Terra’s memories in detail, just in case, but there was nothing there.

Was he merely bluffing? Giving it some brief thought, the Seeker decided not to worry about it any further.

It doesn’t matter either way.

Hidden card? She just had to respond accordingly. A bluff? She could just proceed as planned. No one knew better than she did that trying to out-think Se-Hoon was rarely of much use.

That was settled, so the Seeker returned to preparing the activation of the Omniform Sacred Armament. Then, at the moment her orange antlers shone with a mysterious light, she formed a hand seal to complete the spell—

Slash-

A golden blade split through space and shot toward her from Se-Hoon’s solar plexus.

“…?!”

That blade that had cut through her world??? Her eyes wide open, the Seeker responded in a split-second by activating World Alteration.

“Return!”

Creack-

The blade that had been about to pierce her heart slowly came to a halt, then began grinding its way backward into the gap it had cut open. Wasting not a second upon seeing that, the Seeker moved to activate Omniform Sacred Armament before any other interference could come.

However, two scarlet-heated hands were faster, wrenching the gap wide open by force.

Crack!

The slit that the blade barely forced open was torn wide-open in an instant, and from beyond it, Eun-Ha appeared and seized Se-Hoon by the collar.

That sight was all she needed to see to know what Eun-Ha planned to do, making the Seeker urgently reach out—

“We’ll be taking him back.”

Wooosh-

Eun-Ha vanished beyond the gap with Se-Hoon.

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