Not A Regressor-Chapter 276: Dogs And Wolves (1)

In the dense undergrowth, two silver-maned wolves raced through the brush.

“Huff, huff!”

Their breathing grew ragged and unstable. Drool streamed from between their sharp fangs, but neither had the time to wipe it away.

The two tore through the thick bushes.

“Oppa[1], I...”

“Hang on just a little longer!”

One of the wolves, falling behind, stumbled and collapsed onto the ground. The wolf in the lead quickly turned back and checked on the fallen one.

Dirt and dust now matted their once-beautiful silver fur, which had shone like silk. Dark stains covered their fur. Shallow wounds covered them from brushing against branches.

“Riru! Get a hold of yourself!”

“I’m sorry... Leo oppa. I can’t go on anymore...”

“Damn it!” The wolf named Leo gritted his teeth and growled. “Hold on just a little.”

With bone-crunching sounds, Leo began to transform into a human.

Crack!

A boy with neat features appeared despite being covered in dirt. While he looked mostly human, his animal ears and tail clearly marked him as something else.

In his human form, Leo lifted Riru into his arms.

“If you keep this up, you’ll—”

“Be quiet.” Holding her close, Leo dashed through the forest.

Though he looked barely strong enough to lift a sack of rice, beast blood coursed through his veins and granted him strength beyond human limits.

“Huff, huff!”

However, even beasts had their limits. They hadn’t eaten properly for days. Now, carrying Riru on top of that, his stamina quickly ran out.

Just then, harsh shouts pierced the air.

“There they are!”

“Get those brats !”

In the blink of an eye, hunters had surrounded them.

“Tsk, these little brats are so fast for no reason.” One of the hunters approached with a scowl.

Like Leo, he also looked human but had animal ears and a tail. The only difference was that Leo’s fur was silver while this hunter had dull brown fur.

“Damn it,” Leo muttered and glared at the hunters.

“Give it up already, kid.”

“If you come quietly, we won’t hurt you.”

The hunters closed in and smirked mockingly.

“Shut up.” Leo stood in front of Riru and spread his arms out wide. His hands transformed into sharp beast-like claws.

“I am a wolf of the Silver Mane Tribe.” Leo burned with defiance, unwilling to surrender.

The hunters shook their heads as if sick of it.

“These silver mane punks never change.”

“Do they still not get what happens when they’re stubborn like this?”

“Well, they’ve always been like that.”

Giving up on capturing him as gently as possible, the hunters placed a hand over the left side of their chests.

Crack, crack!

With chilling sounds, brown fur sprouted from them.

“You know we’re not supposed to kill them, right?”

“Still, breaking an arm or leg is fine, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’m sure the higher-ups won’t mind that much.”

They transformed into true werewolves with savage eyes, long muzzles, and sharp fangs before lunging at Leo.

***

Beyond the black rift that spread out like a curtain, a vast forest came into view.

“We’ve arrived.”

From afar, it didn’t look much different from a forest on Earth. On closer inspection, it clearly wasn’t Earth, but the land of demonic beasts. Actually, one didn’t even need to look closely.

A massive green vine shot out like a whip from a giant flower nearly three meters tall.

Swoosh!

It cracked through the air with terrifying force.

“This place is still the same as ever, huh?” Song Ha-Eun frowned and snapped her fingers.

Whoosh!

Flames burst forth and instantly incinerated the lashing green vine.

“Right.” Isabella lightly dragged her fingernail across her palm.

Blood dripped onto the ground, causing it to bubble and boil. From it, crimson thorns shot up in a straight line and impaled the flower.

The massive flower limply drooped.

“Let’s go, Mr. Oh-Jin.”

“Okay.”

“Hold on, kid.” Riarc charged forward and swiped his paw at the withered flower.

A flash of blue lightning cracked through the air and turned over the ground beneath it. A tangled mass of grotesque, writhing roots lay beneath it.

“Lafle will regenerate and attack again if you don’t completely destroy the roots.” Riarc slashed through the roots with his sharp claws.

“You really are from the Demonic District, huh,” Song Ha-Eun said.

“Hmph. Didn’t Lady Vega already tell you that, lizard woman?”

“She did, but it didn’t feel real until now.”

Riarc scoffed and turned his head away with a grunt.

“So, where do we go from here?” Vega asked.

“Hold on.” Kwon Oh-Jin pulled out the compass Allen had given him.

As he infused it with mana, the red needle spun rapidly before coming to an abrupt stop. It pointed steadily in one direction.

“That way,” Kwon Oh-Jin said.

“That’s toward the kingdom,” Riarc commented.

“Is that where the beastkin kingdom is?” Song Ha-Eun asked.

“Yeah.” Riarc nodded.

Grinning mischievously, Song Ha-Eun leaped up and landed lightly on Riarc’s back. “Perfect! Then our little mutt can be our guide.”

“Grrr! G-Get off me, lizard woman!”

“Oh, come on, I’m not even that heavy.”

“Hmph. You’ve got to weigh at least fifty kilo—”

“S-Shut it, you mutt!” Song Ha-Eun shouted in panic and clamped her hand over Riarc’s mouth. “I-It’s just because I’m tall, okay?!”

Blushing, she glanced at Kwon Oh-Jin.

He chuckled and walked over to Riarc. “Anyway, if you know the way, can you lead?”

Riarc nodded and started walking ahead. “Grrr... Just follow me, kid.”

His back, usually upright and proud, now looked strangely slumped as if he were hesitating to further enter the Demonic District. Rather, he looked scared.

“What’s up with him?” Song Ha-Eun asked Vega.

Vega softly sighed as she gazed at Riarc’s back. “It’s not something I should talk about. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Hmm. Alright.” Song Ha-Eun wondered what it was even more from behind Vega’s heavy sigh. “He really does look like a puppy who’s been scolded when he’s like that.”

However, she didn’t press it any further. Even Song Ha-Eun, who was rarely sensitive to such things, could tell that Riarc wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Isabella walked up beside him and asked, “Mr. Oh-Jin, you said you were planning to visit Megrez first, right?”

“Yeah. I’m hoping to gather some information and maybe some help.”

“Do you think that’ll work? We know so little about him.”

Megrez, Baek Mu-Kang, was a member of the Seven Stars, yet barely anything was known about him. He didn’t engage in public activities, and despite being the highest-ranked of Deneb’s twelve apostles, lived alone in the Demonic District.

“I’ve heard he’s a bit bad-tempered,” Kwon Oh-Jin said.

“Which makes it even more dangerous, doesn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not like we have another choice.”

Most Awakeners who settled in the Demonic District had either committed serious crimes or were fugitives marked for elimination. At least Mergrez didn’t fall into that category, so it seemed worth a shot.

“Now that you mention it, Deneb rarely spoke about him either,” Vega said.

“He didn’t?”

Megrez was the top-ranked among the twelve apostles, but Deneb never talked about him?

“Megrez isn’t ranked first because of his sheer power. If it were about combat strength alone, Allen Oskar would be far superior.”

“Then why?”

“Of course, holding the symbolic position of a top-ranked apostle doesn’t mean he’s weak.”

“Well, yeah. He’s part of the Seven Stars.”

If Megrez were weak, he wouldn’t have survived alone in the Demonic District for this long.

“Now that I think about it, it is strange. When Deneb made Allen his apostle, he visited my temple and went on bragging for hours, but he’s never mentioned a single thing about Megrez.”

Vega recalled how Deneb had introduced Allen. Like a doting parent, he couldn’t stop praising him. That wasn’t just the case for Allen. Deneb had endlessly boasted about the twins, Xiao Lin and Xiao Lan, and his other apostles too.

But he stayed quiet about Megrez?

Knowing Deneb’s personality, that silence was hard to explain.

“Hmm. I should’ve asked more questions beforehand,” Vega said.

“It’s fine. It’s not like you two are that close anyway.”

If anything, their relationship leaned more toward being antagonistic than friendly.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out once we meet him in person.” Kwon Oh-Jin followed Riarc as they headed in the direction of the compass.

***

After a week of walking through the thick bushes and camping in short breaks along the way, they finally made it out of the forest.

“We’re fiiiinally out of that damned forest!” Song Ha-Eun joyfully shouted and threw her arms up toward the blazing sun. “That was an unbelievably massive forest.”

“I agree, and there were way too many demonic beasts along the way...” Isabella shook her head with a tired expression.

Despite them all possessing superhuman physiques, it had still taken them an entire week to cross the forest. Even accounting for the frequent demonic beast attacks, it took an absurdly long amount of time.

“This particular forest is infamous even in the Demonic District.” Riarc glanced back with a tired expression. “If the first rift had opened anywhere but here, the damage done to Earth would’ve been far less severe too.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Even near the forest’s outskirts, the number of demonic beasts was noticeably lower compared to where they had first arrived.

It wasn’t this bad when I came here last time on Boppy.

It had taken quite a while back then too, but demonic beasts hadn’t attacked from every direction like this time.

“Ugh... How much farther is it to that Baek Mu-Kang or Megrez or whatever his name is, Oh-Jin?”

“How would I know?”

The compass only pointed the way. It didn’t show the distance.

“Anyway, let’s pick up the pace now that we’re out,” Kwon Oh-Jin said.

“Can’t we rest a bit first?”

“You know we don’t have time, Ha-Eun.”

It had already been a week since they entered the Demonic District, and they still hadn’t even reached Megrez.

“Ugh.”

Riarc, leading the way, suddenly lowered his snout to the ground and sniffed. “Wait. I smell humans.”

He pointed in the same direction as the compass needle.

Without hesitation, Kwon Oh-Jin’s group picked up the pace and ran toward it. After about five minutes, they spotted a small cabin by a gently flowing stream.

The cabin door opened, and an elderly man stepped out. He barely stood tall enough to reach Kwon Oh-Jin’s chest. His back curved over like a hunchback, and liver spots covered his face. Frankly, his hideous appearance was enough to make one grimace.

“Hmm?” Noticing the group, the old man walked over with sparkling eyes.

Maybe it was due to his hunched back, but the way he walked looked comically awkward.

He looked up at Kwon Oh-Jin with a big, toothy grin. “Not Allen, but someone new. First time.”

Still grinning, the old man raised his hand.

Kwon Oh-Jin thought he was going for a handshake. Instead, the old man began picking his nose.

“Me Megrez... huh? Was it Megrez? Hmm. Anyway. Me name Baek Mu-Kang. Nice to meet you.”

Kwon Oh-Jin’s expression stiffened at Baek Mu-Kang, who held out his hand covered in boogers.

1. A term younger females use to address older males, such as older brother. ☜