The Regressor Only Protects Me [EN]: Chapter 165

165. The Return of the King (1)

“There’s no way they can do anything. They’ve never actually faced him. If they had, even once, they wouldn’t be resorting to such petty tactics. The moment they meet him, they’ll realize how pathetic they are.”

Lee Ho-seung, who had been listening to Jin Jae-hee, tilted his head.

She was saying things he couldn’t easily understand.

“What… is he like a goblin? Or a demon?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What you’re saying is even more absurd. You’re trapped here, yet you absolutely trust him. Do you think that makes sense?”

“You’ll understand when you see him yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

He wasn’t a ghost or a god.

He couldn’t understand what it meant to be feared upon meeting someone.

Jin Jae-hee stood up and said,

“You’ll definitely like him too. Get up. Let’s train.”

“What? No.”

Lee Ho-seung remained seated, looking up at her as she stood.

Then, Jin Jae-hee kicked the wooden box Lee Ho-seung was sitting on, sending it flying.

Thud-!

Lee Ho-seung fell backward.

Lee Ho-seung, furious, shouted at her.

“What are you doing!”

“You need to have the strength to protect yourself. How long are you going to keep getting beaten up? Since you were a student.”

“…That’s just how I am.”

“Don’t use that as an excuse.”

“I can’t even do one push-up.”

“Then make it so you can do one. On your knees.”

“…….”

Jin Jae-hee looked at Lee Ho-seung and sighed in exasperation.

‘Why has he become so pathetic?’

At least, Kang Si-on’s skills when she was teaching him weren’t better than Lee Ho-seung’s, if not worse.

Kang Si-on was also naturally weak.

But he trained with even more determination than Jin Jae-hee.

He attacked Jin Jae-hee relentlessly every day, and even when he should have rested, he didn’t.

He was desperate to become stronger and to see his brother again.

Compared to that Kang Si-on, Lee Ho-seung in front of her couldn’t help but seem pathetic.

“If you don’t have the strength to protect yourself, you’ll die meaninglessly someday. Shut up and follow me.”

“…….”

Lee Ho-seung reluctantly got up and followed her.

Jin Jae-hee walked towards a wide-open space.

Every time she moved, the prisoners of Ward 3 cleared a path for her.

The gladiators who had been injured when she first arrived were now much better and walking around.

Even though they had recovered and regained their strength, they didn’t dare to attack Jin Jae-hee.

They were already aware of the difference in power.

However, as the gladiators began to rise again, the situation started to become a little strange.

* * *

Recently, as the gladiators started to go back to the matches, Jin Jae-hee’s match schedule was pushed back.

Jin Jae-hee’s agreement with the warden was that if she won three times, he would let her out.

But since she no longer had any matches, there was no way to quickly complete the remaining two.

The warden said that once a gladiator had participated, they had to wait until the end of the second match, which was a directive decided by the higher-ups, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

In any case, what was important to Jin Jae-hee now was Kang Si-on’s whereabouts.

It had been almost a week since they had parted.

He should be starting to move now.

‘I’ll get to compete somehow.’

Even if she had to resort to slightly aggressive methods, Jin Jae-hee had to compete in three matches.

She called a gladiator who was preparing to go out.

The gladiator rushed over at her call.

“What is it?”

Jin Jae-hee pointed to a sturdy chair and said,

“Put one foot up here.”

“My foot, you mean?”

The gladiator, suspicious, placed one foot on the chair.

He couldn’t disobey the order of the ward leader.

At that moment.

Whirr-! Crack!!!

“Aaaaaaaagh!!!!!!”

Jin Jae-hee broke the gladiator’s foot.

The gladiator’s joint twisted grotesquely.

He collapsed to the ground, groaning in pain.

Jin Jae-hee, unconcerned, called the next gladiator.

“Next, you. Put your leg up.”

The method she chose was simple.

To make all the gladiators in Ward 3, except for herself, unable to fight.

The gladiators hesitated, their faces pale.

“No, even so…!”

“Damn it. This doesn’t seem right!”

“Isn’t this too much!!!”

“Hey! You crazy bitch!”

Among them, the youngest and most hot-blooded gladiator rebelled against her order and charged at her.

“I’ll kill you…!”

Whoosh!

The gladiator swung his fist at Jin Jae-hee.

Jin Jae-hee easily dodged the attack and skillfully moved inside, twisting his left arm in the opposite direction.

Snap-!

“Kaaaaaaagh!!!!”

Jin Jae-hee hugged the groaning gladiator from behind, restrained him, and then grabbed his right arm and twisted it in the opposite direction again.

Snap-!

The gladiator’s arms were dislocated and dangling.

Without stopping, she twisted the fallen gladiator’s left ankle, then his right ankle, as hard as she could in the opposite direction.

Crack! Crackle-!

“Aa… aa…!!! Aaaaa!”

In an instant, the gladiators, all four limbs broken, fainted and fell.

Jin Jae-hee quickly subdued those who resisted her.

Then, she looked at the gladiators and said,

“…Are you all going to break? Or just one leg?”

Overwhelmed by her murderous aura, the gladiators voluntarily lined up and began to put their legs on the chair one by one.

Some even broke them themselves.

* * *

“No, so you’re telling me you did that to all the gladiators in Ward 3? Are you kidding me!!!”

The senior warden pointed to a corner of the cell with his finger and yelled.

There, the gladiators were gathered together, still groaning.

Fortunately, there was a prisoner who was a doctor in Ward 3, so they were treated immediately.

Jin Jae-hee, undaunted by the warden’s yelling, said what she had to say.

“So, let me out. There’s no other way now.”

“Damn it! You crazy psycho!”

Thwack-!

The senior warden slammed his fist hard against the bars.

Things had gone strangely wrong.

The first was that Jin Jae-hee had subdued all the gladiators in Ward 3 and taken the position of ward leader.

The second was that he didn’t expect Jin Jae-hee to use such aggressive methods.

Now, he had no choice but to send that woman back to the arena.

‘Normally, I would keep postponing it and wait for the higher-ups’ decision…!’

It was twisted, twisted.

Nothing was going the way he wanted it to.

‘I can’t take back the money now. Haaa…!!!!’

“…Damn it!”

Bang!

The warden kicked the object on the floor, venting his anger.

At that moment, Jin Jae-hee slowly grabbed the bars and looked at the warden outside the bars with a very seductive look.

“…?”

Jin Jae-hee was a very attractive woman.

With such a woman grabbing the bars in a seductive pose, he couldn’t help but look.

The senior warden was momentarily stunned by her appearance.

Jin Jae-hee scanned the senior warden up and down and said,

“You. You think I can’t get out of here?”

“What?”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? It’s most ideal for me to be taken care of in here, right? Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

“…….”

“Then haven’t you thought about this? Why the higher-ups are so eager to get rid of one person like this.”

“…….”

That was true.

The warden was also curious about who this woman was that they were trying to get rid of, even to the point of throwing her into Ward 3.

This Ward 3 was a human garbage dump created by politicians to completely eliminate their enemies.

Once you entered this place, even those who were mentally sound quickly became mentally ill.

Coincidentally, the senior warden also had many questions about her name.

The name of this woman, Jin Jae-hee, was the same as the name of the one who ruled the era with the hero in the past.

But some said that Jin Jae-hee, the hero’s companion, was a man, and some said she was a woman.

But what they all said in common was that she was overwhelmingly strong.

The senior warden shook his head.

“It can’t be. It can’t be. They disappeared five years ago and haven’t appeared since. No, besides. It doesn’t make sense that such a person is here, does it? Ahahaha!”

He suddenly started laughing.

“You’re trying to deceive me? If the hero had returned to the city, he would have been welcomed, not thrown into this prison.”

Since the hero disappeared, there had been countless acts of deception.

There were many who entered the force claiming to be Kang Si-on or Jin Jae-hee and were thrown into this prison.

They knew.

If they became Kang Si-on or Jin Jae-hee, the benefits they could enjoy within this Man-gyeong were comparable to those of a god.

It was natural.

Imposters always existed, and the senior warden had already seen countless imposters die in this place.

Of course, something was strange this time.

Jin Jae-hee had no intention of trying to persuade him with all her might.

Everything would be done according to her will anyway. This was just a test.

“Choose wisely. Don’t regret it for the rest of your life.”

Leaving those words behind, Jin Jae-hee moved away from the bars and approached Lee Ho-seung.

The senior warden stared at her retreating figure.

‘What’s going on? What the hell is going on?’

The senior warden couldn’t even guess what Jin Jae-hee was telling him to choose.

After some time, he realized that he was caught up in an absurd incident.

The senior warden, with a flushed face, slowly approached Jin Jae-hee.

“Completely exclude me from whatever you’re planning.”

“I’ll think about it after seeing what you do. But. One more thing. I have a question.”

“Wh-what is it?”

“How are you going to get me out of here with just ‘three wins’? You’re just an ordinary warden.”

At Jin Jae-hee’s question, the warden swallowed and answered.

“It’s not difficult to get a woman out of the Nest [a prison slang]. Especially a woman like you, who can be sold for a high price. There are customers who buy women from the Nest every week. Just send you with them, and they’ll take care of the rest. In fact, the stock price for Hahoetal [likely a company or organization involved in the arena] has skyrocketed since you started competing. You’ll be sold for a high price.”

‘You crazy bastards.’

Jin Jae-hee couldn’t hide her unpleasant feelings.

This place was the bottom of the bottom of society.

A space filled with only the most vicious.

“Three more, including me. Three more have to go out.”

“What? Three more? Look, don’t make unreasonable requests. The first deal was just you alone.”

“I’m changing the deal. You’re going to make a killing by selling me anyway, right?”

“…That’s none of your business.”

“No. If you want to sell me for a high price, I have to go out. But if the other three don’t go out with me, I won’t leave this place.”

At Jin Jae-hee’s bombshell declaration, the warden frowned.

Most of the customers who came here were wealthy people from Gangnam [affluent district in Seoul], and the warden was going to sell Jin Jae-hee for a high price.

The matter received from an anonymous person was that Jin Jae-hee just had to be out of Man-gyeong [prison name], so it was not a violation of the order.

In the end, he sighed and opened his mouth.

“Who is it? Whoever it is, no men.”

“There are two men.”

“Absolutely not!”

The warden shouted without realizing it, and when the other gladiators’ attention was drawn, he quickly lowered his voice.

“Absolutely no men. It’s impossible. In the three years since the Nest existed, that’s almost never happened.”

“Almost?”

“Ah, no. That’s…”

“Find a way. Warden. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a condition I’ve set.”

“Damn it.”

It wasn’t that men couldn’t be sold at all.

There were homosexuals among the wealthy in Gangnam.

But there was only one such person.

In particular, he was a wealthy man who ran a large real estate business in Gangnam, officially ranking among the top 10 richest people.

“It’s possible, but it has to be a delicate man. Skinny, with long hair. A man with glasses. That’s all I know. That Gangnam rich man only buys those kinds of people.”

‘That’s exactly Lee Ho-seung.’

Jin Jae-hee swallowed hard.

The warden took out a club and held it close to the bars, saying,

“The people who are going out are already decided, right? The other two who came in with you. And I don’t know about one. I can’t guarantee that the men will be taken out 100%. Keep that in mind. But women are possible. My condition is one. Completely exclude me from this incident. Like I never existed. Then I’ll get you out of there.”

Jin Jae-hee touched the necklace with the red gemstone around her neck and said,

“This. How do I undo it?”

“If you’re sold as a slave, you’ll never be able to undo it.”

“Find a way to undo this too.”

“You have to be reasonable. You’re not a gangster.”

“Get the key. Definitely. The key to this necklace. And all four of us escaping this prison. If either of those two conditions are not met, then let’s pretend today’s conversation never happened.”

Jin Jae-hee left those words behind and turned to walk away.

“Ah, wa, wait a minute!”

The warden called out once, but he could only watch her walk away.

(To be continued in the next episode)