The Regressor Can Make Them All

Chapter 473

“…”

“…”

Se-Hoon and Meirin locked eyes, a heavy silence settling between them.

Swoosh-

Only the sound of the gentle waves flowed calmly, as if speaking on their behalf.

Swoosh-

Amidst the serene sound of the surf, the two continued to stare at each other. And in the end, it was Meirin who closed her eyes first.

“I see,” she murmured. “Was that why you let me treat you like some pushover?”

“…?”

“I thought I had no talent for teaching… but seeing how polite you were to the past me, I must’ve done a decent job.”

Seeing how pleased Meirin looked, complimenting her future self and still undiscovered talents, Se-Hoon gave her a baffled look. Of all things, her initial response to hearing that he was a disciple from the future was to praise herself?

Well… I guess that is like her…

Se-Hoon made a conflicted expression, feeling both dumbfounded and slightly hurt. Shouldn’t she at least show a bit more interest in him?

“So,”—Meirin opened her eyes—“did the future me succeed?”

“If you’re talking about success…”

“I’m referring to this ridiculous thing I’m doing now. If the master you mentioned is really ‘me,’ I must’ve attempted it, even if by different means.”

Not how she ended up taking on a disciple or what kind of life she’d lived—she didn’t care. All that mattered… was her goal. She cared solely about completing the ultimate equipment.

Seeing how fixated she was, Se-Hoon let out a bitter smile.

“…You really are my master, past or future.”

Although he had experienced countless butterfly effects due to his regression, some aspects hadn’t changed—which was both comforting and heartbreaking. Experiencing that contradiction, Se-Hoon thought he should start by recounting the past to answer her question.

“Master… ah, I’ll just call you Meirin for clarity. We’re not exactly master and disciple at the moment, anyway.”

“Do as you like.”

“Just as you said, Master tried to create the ultimate equipment: something that transcended all constraints, a weapon that even a child could use to slay a Perfect One.”

The words his master had confided in him about her purpose during their blood pact flowed out.

“The difference was, instead of giving it to Doppelganger, she intended it for a Perfect One. Instead of separating the world, she tried to block it out entirely.”

“Block it out?”

“Yes. She tried to make the soul so resilient that the Golden Ring could no longer interfere.”

If the Meirin in front of him was trying to become a lonely island floating in a vast sea, the Meirin from before his regression had tried to seal herself in an unbreakable coffin. She’d aimed to create a closed-off synesthetic mindscape that existed independently, free from any external influence.

“That… does sound like a viable approach.”

“I thought so too. But in the end… it failed completely.”

Whether in the past or now, Meirin was prepared to offer even her life to complete her dream equipment. Furthermore, her “life” wasn’t just her breath—it meant her blood, her body, her soul, and everything else constituting the human known as “Ryu Meirin.”

If the forging had succeeded, she would have disappeared without a trace.

Boom-

But the finished piece had only taken her heart.

“A basically fatal wound and an incomplete weapon. That was Master’s end.”

“What about her treatment…”

“I desperately tried. Nothing worked. I think the very concept of her heart had vanished from her synesthetic mindscape.”

Just like how the corrupted gained monstrous bodies from their synesthetic mindscapes warping, Meirin had lost her heart permanently when it disappeared from her synesthetic mindscape.

She, who had only partially merged with her creation, had then died in front of her disciple with a hole the size of a fist in her chest.

“I was panicking and didn’t know what to do… which was when Master looked up at me and said just one thing.”

“?”

“Cigarette.”

In Meirin fashion, she figured she was already as good as dead, so she might as well have a smoke first.

“That’s… so like me. It’s creepy.”

Meirin blinked in disbelief before letting out a bitter chuckle.

“You really said that.”

“Alright, keep going.”

“Well… after lighting her cigarette, it turned into the kind of conversation you’d often see on a battlefield.”

She explained her condition, calmed her confused disciple, and gave advice about what to do after her death. It was a typical parting message from a dying master.

However, upon hearing Se-Hoon talking about the details, Meirin frowned slightly.

“That’s strange.”

“What is?”

“I can accept the teaching part as just wringing value out of a student… but giving guidance on the brink of death? That’s not like me.”

If his master truly was her future self, she would have dedicated her last remaining strength to resuming the forging. Because that was just who Meirin was.

“…You’re right.”

Se-Hoon nodded in agreement.

“And that difference… might be why Master failed.”

Meirin’s eyes widened as if she were realizing something important.

“When everything was over, Master looked up at the sky and said one last thing: ‘What a damn miserable bond this turned out to be.’”

“…”

“After that, with her remaining strength, she forged the Ember Hammer—her final work—and disappeared.”

There was more to the story—about how the Holy Swordsman arrived, saw the incomplete equipment, and became the Destroyer of Light in disappointment—but there was no need to go that far. The rest of what he had to say would be bitter enough.

“I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now…”

“…”

“Why Master described it as a miserable bond… and why her final creation was meant for a disciple, for someone else.”

“…” Remaining silent, Meirin kept her mouth shut before finally voicing the answer. “She accepted you… all the way down to her heart.”

If Meirin had been just an ordinary person, it would’ve been a touching moment. However, she was a user of the Demonic Blood Art. For such people, accepting someone else into their heart was the furthest from a good thing. It tainted the synesthetic mindscape that should consist solely of oneself, which also tainted the soul and made all the blueprints and power etched within fundamentally flawed.

That was the truth behind Meirin’s failure that Se-Hoon had arrived at.

“Well… I say all this, but I don’t really know what actually happened. There was no Blessing of the Eternal or anything like that back then.”

It was only a guess, made from her final words and the lingering imprints of her synesthetic mindscape left in the Ember Hammer.

…Perhaps that was why. Just like how people acted based on interpretations of things such as dreams, Se-Hoon was now helping Meirin because he was trying to make up for his sin of not properly helping when he lost her.

“…”

Staring at Se-Hoon without a word, Meirin turned her head to scan their surroundings.

Swoosh-

Even without her actively pulling out fragments of the Golden Ring, her red sea was quickly shrinking. Like a tower collapsing on its own after its foundation had been removed, the remnants of the Golden Ring’s influence began dissipating on their own after a certain threshold without her even lifting a finger.

At this rate, the forging will end smoothly without me doing anything.

And since that was the case, there’d be no harm in indulging in some more pointless talk for the remaining time.

Thinking that, Meirin finally spoke. “I don’t know what the truth really was, like you said… but this much I’ll say for certain:”—she met Se-Hoon’s gaze directly—“whatever happened back then, that idiot was at fault.”

Her voice was full of certainty.

“…Huh?”

“If she really did accept you deep into her heart, there’s no way she wouldn’t have noticed. I’m not that stupid of a person, after all.”

Even if her future self had missed it at first, if Se-Hoon’s presence had truly affected her forging to that degree, it was impossible that she would have missed it when doing regular soul checks.

“But since it still ended up that way, it just means she never stood up to make a decision—even at the very end.”

Facing the choice of removing her feelings for Se-Hoon as an impurity or accepting them as they were and creating a new path forward, her future self had just kept putting off her decision. And in the end, she met the ridiculous conclusion that Se-Hoon had just detailed.

“I get it. After all the effort you put into isolating yourself, realizing you’ve changed like that would shake anyone. Anyone would probably start thinking something fundamental had gone wrong.”

“…”

“So she probably did as well. She couldn’t trust either choice, neither following her feelings nor rejecting them completely.”

Processing her words, Se-Hoon’s expression turned ambiguous.

“Then the reason she kept it a secret from me was…”

“She probably didn’t want it to affect you. Emotions… they’re like a contagious disease.”

“…”

What would’ve happened if her future self had confessed everything to Se-Hoon? There was no telling where they might have ended up, but the odds were high that their relationship would’ve spiraled out of control, feeding off each other’s momentum.

“I’ve gone off track a bit, but the point I’m trying to make is simple: your master’s failure was entirely her fault.”

“…”

“And if your master truly accepted you into her heart, if she didn’t just throw away her pride and sink into the gutter, then her final words weren’t meant to blame you.”

If the feeling that was too precious to discard yet too burdensome to keep had genuinely led to her downfall, then Meirin knew there could only be one thing on her mind.

“She must have regretted that her hesitation ended up hurting you.”

That final weapon she left behind, the Ember Hammer, wasn’t just a last testament—it was an expression of her regret.

“…”

Silently processing it all, Se-Hoon looked at her with a strange expression.

“…That was unexpected.”

“What was?”

“I didn’t think you would say something like that.”

He’d honestly expected a “So what?” But instead, she offered him something akin to comfort.

And upon realizing that was what he meant, Meirin narrowed her eyes.

“Do I really seem like that much of a sociopath to you?”

“Hm? You aren’t?”

“…”

Without a word, Meirin bent down, scooped up a handful of sand with her left hand, and then flung it at Se-Hoon.

“Pffft- urgh… What are you, a child?”

“Shut it.”

Brushing the sand off her pants, Meirin continued as if nothing had happened.

“So tell me. Why are you helping me like this in the end? Guilt? Are you going to intervene and save me mid-forging?”

“Hmm…”

Se-Hoon took a moment to think, wondering how to phrase it so she’d understand, before beginning.

“When I got revenge for the first time… I felt relief and emptiness at the same time. And then my entire life started flashing before my eyes.”

“…”

“And looking back on those memories, I realized it was far too late. I had other chances, other positive relationships… but I ignored them all.”

Now he knew. When one became obsessed with something—like revenge—their field of vision would naturally narrow. And if one was mad enough to stake their life on it, that was especially the case.

“I was like that in the past, so I figure you’re probably the same now. We’re actually similar in a lot of ways, you know.”

Meirin’s obsession with overcoming her limits had its roots in childhood trauma: witnessing her parents’ deaths while helpless to act, even though she held a Legendary-tier weapon in her hands. She’d been forced to hide and watch because of usage restrictions she couldn’t bypass.

It was a nightmare for her, fueling her revenge against the world that was now culminating in the weapon she was about to forge.

That was why he stepped in.

“So basically… you’re saying there’s no use talking to me now, so you’ll help me finish this first?”

“More or less. Within reason.”

“You call this within reason?”

“Well, it’s not like you joined the Demon Force or became a demon yourself. You didn’t try to destroy the world with Doppelganger either. The situation is still salvageable.”

“…” Speechless, Meirin just blinked at Se-Hoon’s answer before letting out a mutter of disbelief. “You’re insane.”

Who in the world would look at their current situation and casually call it “salvageable”?

Yet, seeing Meirin’s exasperated expression, Se-Hoon remained nonchalant.

“Like master, like disciple, right?”

“…It’s annoying how I can’t even deny that.”

Letting out a bitter chuckle, Meirin looked down at her feet.

Swoosh-

At long last, the red sea had crept right up to them. The island was nearly gone, and her senses were changing oddly. Her mind felt sharp and clear, yet her body was heavy and waterlogged like wet cotton.

Was that how it felt to be human before the Towers of Heroes and the Abyss of Demons appeared?

So this is really the end…

After everything she had gone through, she was now only a step away from completing her goal.

But why do I feel so calm?

If it were her past self, Meirin knew she wouldn’t have wasted time thinking about meaningless things and rushed to finish. What exactly had changed in her?

The answer to that… didn’t take her long to figure out.

…Because it’s not the end anymore.

For so long, she had thought achieving her goal was equivalent to her final moment. Having met Se-Hoon, though, that had changed. She now genuinely believed another future could be waiting for her after.

What a terrifying guy.

With a silly wonder if her future self had fallen for him in just the same way, Meirin lifted her gaze to meet his.

“What’ll you do after this is over?”

“Hmm. Well, whatever the reason was, siding with Doppelganger was kind of a bad move on your end…”

Thinking of something, Se-Hoon smiled faintly and met her gaze as well.

“That’s why this time, I’ll be the master. I’ll teach you basic manners from square one.”

“…Hmph.”

Clutching the last fragment of her heart, Meirin smirked before pulling her right hand out of her chest.

“That sounds disgustingly exciting.”

Fwoosh! Splat-

Her body dissolved into a splash of blood, swept away into the darkness of the sea. However, a small pool of it remained.

“…”

Standing silently before it, Se-Hoon stared into the center.

Woong-

A faint light was glimmering beneath the surface. It looked like it could vanish at any second, but it shone vividly nonetheless.

Gazing at it, Se-Hoon knelt on his right knee, then plunged his right arm deep into the blood toward the glow.

Tap-

He felt a sensation, like grasping someone’s hand—and then darkness swallowed everything. A deep darkness that threatened to consume all.

“…”

Feeling the pressure, Se-Hoon realized he had returned to the Cave of Trials and instinctively looked down at his hand.

In the pitch-black void where nothing should be visible, a single thing gleamed in defiance of all natural law: a pure white sword.

There were no system messages, no information messages, and no labels. It was an uncanny, otherworldly weapon.

Silently, Se-Hoon stared at it for a long moment, then looked beyond.

“…It worked.”

Meirin had vanished without a trace, leaving only the sword behind. Unlike her failed attempt before his regression, Meirin’s forging had succeeded perfectly.

He gently tossed the sword into the darkness.

Whoosh-

It drifted slowly through the air, then came to a stop, as if caught by someone—by Doppelganger.

Yet, without batting an eye, Se-Hoon pushed aside the darkness with a neutral expression and turned around.

“If you fight like crap with that sword, I won’t let it slide.”

And without another word, he walked out of the Cave of Trials, leaving Doppelganger looking down at the sword in her hands alone.

A long silence passed.

“…This is quite the burden.”

The quiet murmur echoed through the darkness.