No Regression for the Victor - Chapter 3
Being betrayed by people is something he was rather used to.
Master of the harsh winter, who once wielded power enough to threaten the imperial family. Isaac Thion Transis was someone who had survived by pulling out countless knives stabbed in his back and beheading those who sought his life.
And Lee Hyun, who became him as ‘Duke Transis’, was no different.
Right after the unavoidable and unexpected accident, Hyun opened his eyes in a study he had never seen before. Looking around, he thought, There’s no doubt that this is a plot orchestrated by someone who wants to harm me.
But as his mind gradually cleared, the chaotic images left in his head explained why he had woken up in this unfamiliar room.
‘How dare they… How dare a mere whelp…! Did you think that I would end like this…?!’
A man in a pitch-black robe, muttering like a madman in a strange laboratory, whispered as he let blood drip onto a magic circle. In the man’s hand were the ingredients used for summoning rituals, as he chanted an incantation in an unknown language.
‘If only I can succeed in this… I can get it all back. The things those bastards shamelessly seized, the things that were originally mine.’
What the man wished to summon was an existence that would fulfill his desires. All his former colleagues, who had researched with him at the Mage Tower long ago, looked at such an absurd summoning ritual with skepticism, convinced it could never succeed.
‘Do you think something like this could ever work? Maybe for the likes of you, who lack both ability and nerve. But as long as I succeed here, I can restore the glory of the past.’
This was what the man thought, reciting the incantation with eyes rolled halfway back in his head.
‘Is it… a success?’
At last, the moment the magic circle drawn with his own blood began to glow from its edges, the man was able to confirm what the ritual demanded as its offering.
‘What…?!’
It was the caster’s own soul. As the letters of the magic circle began to float up and wind around the man’s body to exact the price, he thought through the agony wracking his body.
When a human being loses their soul as payment for a ritual, they become an empty vessel, unable to move even a finger on their own, like a puppet. How could he possibly make those bastards pay the proper price in such a state?
This won’t do. He had to cancel the ritual. Gasping as his breath caught in his throat, the man struggled to erase the magic circle. In his blurred and distorted vision, a scale came into view.
It was the legendary object said to be used by Erudite, the Moon Goddess who presides over knowledge, civilization, magic, and alchemy, to weigh sins and souls.
‘Gahh. Cough, cough…’
At the end of his almost unfocused gaze was a black crystal placed on one side of the scale. The man instinctively realized that this was his own soul, demanded as the price for the ritual. And on the other side…
‘Urk, cough, guh…’
There was another soul that seemed to belong to someone else. The ritual had succeeded. If that was the case, then even if he perished as the cost of the summoning, his long-cherished wish would surely be fulfilled. That was enough.
The imperial family of traitors, with nothing to boast of except their golden bloodline. They would pay the price for coveting what was never theirs, brought upon them by the very existence he had summoned.
With a scoff of laughter amid the pain, the man closed his eyes.
.
.
That was as far as the jumble of memories in Hyun’s head went.
“……”
The memories in his mind felt like someone else’s story. If so, then who am I? Enduring the dizziness, Hyun managed to raise his body and slowly went over what had happened to him.
