The Heroine Stole My Regression

51 – Eve (4)

If you set your mind to it, execution isn’t difficult?

If you have the will, execution isn’t difficult?

That’s bordering on nonsense.

-Crunch.-

The 758th death.

The moment I awoke, I tumbled out of the trunk. Meeting the earth with my face, I was breathless for an instant.

I grasped at the dirt with my fingertips.

Uprooting only the blameless weeds, I rose to my feet.

What I had to do from now on was simple. A routine ingrained during hundreds of deaths.

Before Park Gwang-cheol heard the noise and came to investigate, I had to quickly sprint down the slope toward the battlefield.

And roughly grab any one of the three Apostles, fight decently, and then die.

No, maybe I wouldn’t fight ‘decently’.

The death and resurrection without end, repeated endlessly. The attacks flying toward me, I could now perceive them.

If I only concentrated on dodging, it felt like something might happen.

But the problem was attack. Without a Fragment, I couldn’t pierce their outer shell, no matter what I tried.

In the end, I admitted that repeating this ignorant method had its limits.

It wasn’t that I gained nothing. Only that time was abundant, so I needed to try other methods.

Therefore, I decided to observe their battle.

However, the level of combat was on another plane, difficult even to follow with my eyes.

Analyzing their movements with the intuition I possessed was no easy task.

In an hour, their battle would end.

One of the Apostles rushes in, laughing. But against the Vanguisher’s stronger-than-expected resistance, he is pushed back, one of his wings torn off in the process.

And then, this time, all three Apostles attack simultaneously. After that, only the obvious result awaited.

The battlefield crumbles once again.

Repeating death.

To merely watch my comrades’ deaths, focusing on each moment, and then analyzing those deaths.

It was not something a human could do. At some point, I felt something flowing down my cheek. I wiped my cheek.

Tears. Unbeknownst to myself, I was shedding tears.

[『Mind as Clear as a Still Mirror』 evolves into 『A State Beyond Self』.]

My mental state, forged in the crucible of countless deaths and regressions,

bordered on the loss of self.

The battle ended. I rose and walked onto the field of war.

Clearing my mind completely.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped fearing death.

“Who’s that guy?”

The apostle who just killed an Inspired One asked the apostle beside him.

There was no reply. He simply took his stance, fought, and died.

I tried everything. Even urging them to flee.

But for some reason, the apostles knew immediately. I defined this as the world’s suppression.

There was no path besides the predetermined route.

Also, there was this one time.

“Hey, you fucking b*stards!!!”

Three apostles turned their heads simultaneously.

I shouted.

“Please, just stab me once, it won’t even leave a scratch, right? Just let me stab you once!”

The apostles didn’t even sneer. They simply drew their greatswords. But, the faceless apostle next to them,

the one with the pure white face, chuckled softly.

And after saying a few words to the other apostles, he slowly approached me.

“Would you like to stab me?”

‘Blagh.’

It was a face I knew.

He spread his arms wide.

Without taking any defensive posture, he simply waited for my attack.

I believed he would definitely accept.

I concentrated mana onto the tip of my spear as much as possible. And, with all my strength, I thrust.

-Uh…crrrunch.

“Haha, that’s alright.”

-Squish.

Waking brought a deluge of agonizing thought.

Even the attack I’d poured every ounce of strength into had failed to land. The sheer quantity of mana I was born with was woefully insufficient.

A decision had to be made.

*Yeokcheon*. Reversal of Heaven.

The method saved for the absolute last resort. The moment to use it was upon me. To reverse the flow of mana and blood vessels throughout my body, amplifying my output.

My hesitation stemmed from the fact that choosing *Yeokcheon* would irrevocably lock my ‘direction of growth.’ There was no going back from inverting the flow, then attempting to return it to normal.

I drew in a breath. And—forced my mana into reverse.

The sensation of every blood vessel in my body being consumed in an instant.

Every energy current surging beneath my skin turned violently against its natural course.

My organs felt like they were tearing apart. Bones shattering. Every nerve ending ablaze.

– *Pu-hwak!*

I coughed up blood and died.

The 912th death.

The 1100th life.

Finally, I had succeeded in *Yeokcheon*.

[You have tentatively acquired *Yeokcheon Shin Gong* (Divine Art of Reversal).]

However, tentatively.

What I had realized after countless deaths was that my wretched body was not even capable of fully withstanding *Yeokcheon*.

Simply reversing the flow of mana was not enough.

*Yeokcheon* was a technique that explosively amplified output by flipping the flow of mana completely.

My body was too weak to handle it.

If I had consumed Iano’s Elixir, perhaps. But increasing the quality of my mana in such a short time was impossible.

Therefore, instead of trying to strengthen my pathetic body, I focused on increasing my mastery of *Yeokcheon* itself.

The 1104th death.

I died spitting blood.

The 1492nd death.

My heart exploded.

The 1671st death.

My blood vessels burned away. Even before the Heretic could kill me, my own body shattered.

The 2001st death.

The conclusion was simple.

My body, it had to be controlled perfectly so it could accept the Inversion.

The 3910th death.

Failure. My body still couldn’t adapt to the Inversion.

The 4399th death.

My body, it was adapting to the Inversion, bit by bit.

Immediately after adjusting the output, I created a method for immediate response.

The 4529th death.

Ten seconds.

Maximum duration: ten seconds.

I realized I had to see the end within this timeframe.

I’d forgotten even counting the deaths, I’d lost track long ago.

The battle with the Vanquishers.

Before I knew it, I found myself able to synchronize with them in combat.

But being able to fight was different from being able to win.

Everyone was dead.

As always, I was about to follow them.

-Thunk!

Just as I was thinking that.

A fist pierced through my gut. It missed my heart, but I could feel my organs rupturing.

But, it didn’t hurt. Not that there was no pain.

It had simply grown too familiar, my senses numbed.

I had died countless times.

What meaning was there in dying now? Just like always, I would die, and I would return. That’s all.

So, there was only one thing for me to do now.

Kill.

I gripped the Apostle’s arm, the one that pierced my stomach, with all my might.

With my other hand, I pulled out my spear. And, I pulled mana up with the Inversion.

Kill.

The Apostle’s eyes wavered.

But it was already too late.

Mana of the Adversary, coalescing, gathering with force at the spear’s tip. A presence, vast beyond anything before, bloomed into being.

Ten seconds.

The whirling mana bared its fangs, waiting only to carve out the evil.

The Apostle tried to yank his arm free.

But the muscle pierced through his abdomen held him fast, and my other hand gripped his arm still.

The Apostle’s brow furrowed. He struck my face with his free hand.

– *KWAANG!!*

My head snapped sideways. Yet, I felt nothing.

And then, the spear, thrust forward, at long last pierced through his shoulder.

– *Eudeudeuk!*

“Kkeueueueuk!”

At last, a wound inflicted. He moaned.

Had there been such a time before?

Had I ever, even once, seen them in pain?

I did not know.

My arm trembled violently. Just a little, just a little more.

– *KWAANG!*

But the Apostles were not alone.

Another, who had been waiting at the ready, struck me with force, sending me flying.

“You moron, what are you doing?”

The Apostle with the spear through his shoulder let out a hollow laugh. He flung the spear, still embedded in his shoulder, towards me. Rage smoldered in his eyes.

He contracted his entire body, as if about to explode.

But,

“Leave it.”

The Apostle beside him reached out an arm, stopping him.

“He’s dead anyway. We need to go back now. We’ve taken too long.”

Looking again, I saw that the sun was setting. It was the first time fighting for so long.

They left, leaving behind footprints soaked in blood.

Only then did I feel all strength drain from my body.

Unconsciously, I lowered my head.

What was it?

The Apostles before me had vanished, and I… I had survived.

Even though the Vanquishers were utterly annihilated.

Only then did I glimpse hope.

It was a first. Something I’d altered with my own hands.

A first. A small change born on this battlefield, where only death had repeated.

The deaths I’d even forgotten counting, at last, had yielded a result.

Blood trickled down my body.

I could feel my entrails severing, my muscles tearing.

“Heh, heh heh heh…”

I would soon die, but I laughed, feeling pleased. Now I finally grasped it.

No matter how long it took, no matter how many times, I would kill them all.

And.

I would save them all.

My breath grew increasingly ragged. Though I felt no pain, I could sense the limits of my respiration.

Now, it was time to go and save my comrades. I drew my spear and plunged it straight into my neck.

– *Thwack!*

Returning, once more. To the base point.

Wait for me. I will kill them all, without fail.

However.

When I opened my eyes again.

“Ugh…, ugh?”

The battlefield.

Even the exact spot where I had just died.

My body still bore the hole, and blood still flowed from the wound.

For a moment, I couldn’t comprehend.

‘Am I… not dead yet?’

I raised my spear again and plunged it into my neck.

– *Thunk.*

I opened my eyes again.

Still.

It was that place.

I sensed, with a lurch in my gut, that something was terribly wrong.

I’d certainly died, so why…

Then, a voice echoed from the distance.

“It’s Ji-won!!!!”

The Association’s rescue squad. My breath hitched in my throat.

And I realized.

I urgently stabbed my neck once more.

– *Thwack!* –

I opened my eyes again.

And yet, I opened my eyes again in that place, in that very spot.

A hypothesis screamed within my mind.

Ignoring it with a desperate effort, I frantically crawled along the ground, trying to get away from the direction of the rescue team.

“Quickly! Fast recovery magic!”

Someone shouted.

And—

A holy energy permeated my body.

“N…no…”

A single possibility.

The Apostles, they had fled.

From the moment they left, I, Jung Hae-in, had survived.

And the System… it considered this a ‘situation resolved.’

Whether the Vanquishers were annihilated or not, the System didn’t care in the slightest.

For me, a new save point had been set.

“aaah!”

A scream erupted from me.

My bloodied hands clawed at my head.

I tore at my hair and writhed on the ground.

Hundreds of deaths, thousands of deaths.

I endured, I persevered.

And, I thought I had finally done it.

The moment I was certain I had changed something, with my own hands.

The light of hope I saw was the dying ember of their lives.

“Uwaaagh!”

Even after that, again and again, I raised the spear and pierced my own throat.

-Thunk!

I opened my eyes.

-Thunk!

I opened my eyes.

But, I never returned to that place.

It was all over.

I.

In the end, I.

Saved no one.