20demayo Chapter 382 --382
Chapter 382 --382
The little lion peeked through his paws, his digital form flickering slightly as he pulled up a hidden, glowing blue interface map floating in the air between them.
’[Look here, Host,]’ the System explained, pointing a paw at a flashing crimson node located far outside the capital’s borders, deep within the uncharted northern territories. ’[The world’s consciousness didn’t choose an honorable prince or a hidden saintess as its anchor. The entity carrying eighty percent of the world’s core luck is an absolute anomaly. It’s a rogue regressor.]’
Heena’s eyes sharpened. "A regressor?"
’[Yes! But not a normal one. This individual has already failed the world’s main loop over a dozen times. In every previous lifetime, they tried to save the empire, tried to play the hero, and each time, they were brutally betrayed by the high nobility and the imperial family. By the time the Guide’s consciousness shattered during the twelfth loop, the protagonist’s mind completely broke too. In this current thirteenth loop, they aren’t trying to save anything anymore. Their sole purpose is to completely dismantle the kingdom’s magical leylines, summon the abyssal void, and drag every single living soul into non-existence out of pure, unadulterated spite.]’
Heena stared at the flashing red node on the map, her lips twitching into a cold, cynical line. "Well. Can you really blame them? If I had to repeat a miserable life twelve times just to be stabbed in the back by greedy aristocrats, I’d probably want to blow up the planet too."
’[Host! This is not the time for professional empathy!]’ the System squeaked, his tail puffing up in distress. ’[If they succeed in shattering the northern leylines, the world collapses, our mission parameters fail instantly, and our souls will be permanently wiped from the cosmic network! We have to stop them!]’
"Stop them?" Heena laughed, a sharp, melodic sound entirely devoid of humor. "How am I supposed to stop a thirteenth-loop apocalyptic regressor when I am currently trapped inside the body of a physically broken noble lady whose lower back is about to snap, surrounded by four treacherous grooms, a murderous mother, and an estate I still need to burn to the ground?"
Heena massaged her temples, a deep, visceral throb of a headache pulsing right behind her eyes. She absolutely, utterly hated it when a mission devolved into this specific brand of high-level chaos. If you asked her to rank the worst anomalies in the multiverse, there were three distinct types of people she thoroughly despised dealing with: the reborn ones, the transmigators, and the regressors.
In her professional opinion, these three variations of human existence were infinitely worse than a zombie apocalypse. Zombies were simple. They were mindless, they were driven by a basic hunger, and a clean shot to the head solved the problem. But these people? They were clinically, structurally crazy.
First, you had the ’’reborn ones’’. They were a logistical nightmare. These individuals usually lived half a life, made a string of catastrophic mistakes, died, and then woke up in their past selves trying to "correct" their timeline. The problem was that their frantic corrections always turned the world’s established plot into an even messier disaster. Watching a reborn person try to fix their life was like watching someone try to untangle a single strand of yarn from a mountain of a thousand knotted wool balls. It was a tedious, soul-crushing puzzle that required Heena to expend massive amounts of energy just to put the original variables back where they belonged.
Then, you had the ’’transmigators’’—the modern souls dropped into ancient historical settings. Those idiots caused a constant, grating ruckus. They would unceremoniously drag modern concepts, slang, and modern technology into eras where it absolutely didn’t belong, completely shattering the local economy and social structure. Even worse, they almost always possessed some bizarre, unearned harem-building magnet. They would go around collecting the world’s vital characters like trading cards, wrapping everyone in a blanket of sheer, self-insert nonsense. The actual main characters of the world would get swept up in the pleasurable, trashy drama of it all, completely abandoning their world-saving duties.
But the third type—the ’’regressor’’—was by far the most dangerous.
These people were, in a single, definitive word, absolute psychos.
A regressor was an individual who had already grown entirely numb and exhausted from repeating the exact same life over and over and over again. After the fifth or sixth loop, their humanity inevitably eroded. They stopped viewing the people around them as living, breathing human beings and instead began treating the entire world as a cheap, disposable plaything. They would murder a village just to see if a different line of dialogue triggered, or dismantle an empire out of sheer, unadulterated boredom.
And now, according to her stuttering System, Heena was standing right in the crosshairs of a thirteenth-loop apocalyptic regressor who had completely given up on sanity and decided to pull the plug on the entire universe.
Heena looked directly at the floating little lion and snapped, "First of all, stop whining."
The System immediately clamped his mouth shut, his glowing whiskers twitching as he swallowed his digital tears.
Rubbing her forehead to dull the pulsing ache, Heena ordered with sharp irritation, "First, contact the upper management authorities immediately and lay out the situation. Tell them about this hidden plot line and the corrupted regressor. We need to log this anomaly into the official network. Even if they can’t send an immediate extraction team, at least we can secure some background administrative assistance so our reports don’t get rejected as a system glitch or a false alarm later."
She took a slow, steadying breath, grounding herself. "As for our current location, we will proceed exactly as planned. We are going to completely fulfill the contract Seera assigned to us. We will dismantle this rotten Marquis house, deal with the five vipers trying to steal her birthright, and satisfy her soul’s grudge. After that is finished, we will see about handling the rest of this broken universe."
The little lion nodded frantically, his holographic form stabilizing. ’[Understood, Host. I’ll open a secure, high-priority channel to the Bureau right now.]’
"But listen to me closely," Heena added, her eyes narrowing into slits as she leaned forward. "I don’t think this situation is as accidental as it sounds. Run a deep-trace diagnostic on our assignment log. Find out exactly who cleared this world for us. Who handed this specific script to our terminal?"
The System checked his internal logs, blinking. ’[According to the primary ledger, Host, this world was assigned to us through the standard automated random draw. It was just a routine queue assignment.]’
Heena’s lips curled into a cold, completely cynical line. She rubbed her temple, a harsh scowl settling on her face. "No. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Think about the sequence of events. In our very last mission, we literally intercepted and seized a rogue, unauthorized system. We dragged a major anomaly out of the dark sector, and now, right after that, we casually draw a ’routine’ mission that just happens to feature a dead Guide, a fake script, and a thirteenth-loop apocalyptic regressor capable of permanently wiping our souls from existence? That is too much of a coincidence."