The Regressor is too Powerful in Martial Arts – Chapter 16

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: JayM
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The reason why Sword Blossom Yeon Mi-rae became my master was rather complicated.

At that time, since I was the world’s first martial arts ability Awakener, the government considered martial arts worth researching, and so they provided me with various forms of support.

Yeon Mi-rae becoming my master was also a part of that various support.

‘There were many others besides Yeon Mi-rae who were simply skilled in swordsmanship, but….’

For the most part, such people held high positions corresponding to their swordsmanship skills, and the government and the Association had to endure considerable losses just to hire them for me.

But Yeon Mi-rae was different.

Despite possessing outstanding swordsmanship skills, she, who could not use aura, had no chance to go into actual combat, and as such, her price was on the cheaper side.

Thanks to that, I was able to learn swordsmanship through her.

‘At first, we were merely a hired teacher and her student, but….’

As time went on, our relationship gradually grew closer.

Ah, that didn’t mean we grew closer in a romantic sense.

In the first place, there was about a 10-year age difference between her and me, so it was difficult for us to see each other as potential romantic partners.

But we weren’t just a simple master and disciple pair either.

‘She continued to teach me about swordsmanship… and I taught her martial arts in return.’

From a certain point on, we became each other’s master and disciple.

Although I said I taught her martial arts, she couldn’t gather internal energy in her Dantian no matter how much she tried to do qi circulation due to her constitution, so she could only memorize the theory in her head.

“…Haaa….”

I recalled the pre-regression her and looked at the high school girl Yeon Mi-rae, who was sighing after checking the payment she had received.

…Seeing her like that, I decided to help her out, if only for the sake of our previous connection.

Having made that decision, I first tried to make sure what kind of problem she was facing.

‘In the end, the reason she was fired after just one day while working as a porter is because she can’t use aura.’

And the reason she couldn’t use aura was due to her constitution.

She had a physique that couldn’t accept or produce not only aura, but also mana, psychic power… and even internal energy.

But I knew of a way to overcome, or change, her constitution.

‘Complete Body Reconstruction.’

A phenomenon where the bones are reconstructed and the overall impurities of the body are discharged.

To be more precise, it was the body changing into one suitable for learning martial arts.

Using this, I could change her constitution.

I wasn’t just saying that it was theoretically possible…

…Because there had already been a successful case before.

‘…In fact, the pre-regression Yeon Mi-rae succeeded with her Complete Body Reconstruction.’

Unlike me, who had barely completed my martial arts with the help of the Awakener System, she was a true genius.

It was just that her genius was hidden due to her constitution that couldn’t accept any form of energy.

The pre-regression Yeon Mi-rae had received an acupoint pressure treatment from me to artificially open her meridians, and then she asked me to infuse her body with internal energy through power transference.

I accepted her request, and she operated the internal energy she received from me and sent it through her artificially opened meridians.

‘And she underwent marrow cleansing after that.’

She removed the waste products in her body with the internal energy I sent through her meridians like that.

Then, her body began to twist and fix itself as she intended.

So… she had artificially changed her own body.

From a body that couldn’t accept or produce any energy to a body that could produce any energy, be it internal energy or aura.

It was, in effect, the crazy act of remodeling her own body, but she had succeeded in that crazy act.

‘Well… it was good that she was able to accept both internal energy and aura into her body, but the two weren’t harmonious, so they clashed inside her body and cut down her lifespan, and she died young due to that in the end….’

Using her failure as a lesson, I merely imitated mana or aura with my internal energy and had no thought of producing those energies in my body.

No, that wasn’t what was important.

‘What’s important is that an artificial Complete Body Reconstruction is possible, and that if she undergoes Complete Body Reconstruction, her constitution can also be changed.’

The current me accurately understood the principle of the Complete Body Reconstruction that the pre-regression Yeon Mi-rae had completed.

This meant that I could artificially give her a Complete Body Reconstruction.

Of course….

‘I don’t know about other things, but to perform either the acupoint pressure treatment or the power transference, I need to be in physical contact with her for a long time.’

…Before that, I had to solve this endlessly difficult problem.

In fact, this was a more difficult problem than artificially changing her body.

There was no way a high school girl in her prime would entrust her body to a strange man.

If I approached her while saying that I would fix her constitution, she’d most likely see me as a suspicious person.

“……”

I quietly thought of a way to get close to her.

And the conclusion came out faster than I had thought.

‘I just have to hire her as a porter.’

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“…I’m home.”

Yeon Mi-rae muttered that upon returning to her empty house.

Since she lived alone without a family, there was no reply.

She entered the quiet house and turned on the room light.

And she took out a notebook from a corner of the room and opened it.

‘…The money earned and spent today is….’

The notebook she had opened was a household account book.

It was an account book densely filled with numbers.

“Hoo….”

No matter how much of a pittance it was compared to the money an assault team earned, the job of a porter was still one where you entered a dungeon while risking your life.

As danger pay was attached, it was only natural that the money she earned in one or two hours in a dungeon was much more than the money she would have earned from working all day at a general part-time job.

But Yeon Mi-rae would rather do a general part-time job instead.

‘It was the only porter position I got in two weeks… and I got fired in just one day again.’

What good was it if the money she earned per hour was high when there was no guarantee that she could do such a job every day?

But she couldn’t do a general part-time job.

Because when hiring general part-time workers, Awakeners tended to be eliminated at the document screening stage.

“…I heard that in the old days, Awakeners also did normal part-time jobs….”

But after an incident where an Awakener, unable to bear a certain boss’ abuse of power, protested to his boss and ended up seriously injuring the latter due to poor control of his strength, the number of places hiring Awakeners as part-time workers was said to have decreased.

No, that incident itself was probably just a trigger.

Because there had been a lot of talk in the past that Awakeners should just focus on clearing dungeons rather than engaging in other occupations.

Thanks to that, Yeon Mi-rae had no choice but to continue working as a porter.

“Haaa….”

She could get by for now with the money she earned today, but she couldn’t continue living like this.

In the first place, there were many other porters besides her.

It was natural for Awakeners who set out to clear dungeons to choose a porter with a good reputation when they had such a large pool to choose from.

That meant that there were almost no Awakeners who would hire a porter with the bad reputation of being fired in just one day every time.

At best, she would be called upon only when Awakeners, who thought that hiring any Awakener from the porter employment site would be more or less the same, hired her roughly without checking her evaluation.

In fact, even that rarely happened.

Because even on the employment site, they tended to expose the porters with high evaluations on the screen first.

“……”

She checked her smartphone for a moment.

It went without saying, but no messages had come.

She was someone who had posted her profile on the porter employment site right after being fired today, but a porter with a low evaluation like her could only be found after flipping through several pages.

How many Awakeners would go to such lengths to find a porter?

“…Haaa….”

She let out a sigh and put down her smartphone.

It was time for her to go to sleep.

She still was a high school girl before she was a porter.

In other words, she was a student.

She had to maintain her condition in preparation for the next day’s classes.

…At a school where everyone treated her as either a half-wit or a defective Awakener.

She had to at least learn the theory properly as an Awakener who couldn’t catch monsters herself.

“…Sob….”

It was sad.

‘Why did I, of all people, have to live like this?

What good was it if my grades were high at school?

What good was it to endure the gazes of others and attend classes?

When I couldn’t even go into actual combat.

In the end, it was all knowledge that was useless to me.’

Vrrrng….

“……”

Yeon Mi-rae, who was crying silently under her blanket with such thoughts, felt her smartphone vibrate.

Spam?

She thought inwardly as she checked her smartphone.

“…Huh?”

There was a familiar message there… To be precise, it was a message asking her which day of the week she was available and up to what kind of dungeon she could handle, as they wanted to hire her as a porter.

She, who never would have thought that she would be hired as a porter again after just one day, was dazed, but she quickly came to her senses, launched the app linked to the porter employment site, and began to write a reply.

Because if her reply was late and they tried to hire another porter instead of her, she would be the only one losing out.

“Weekdays, anytime after 5 PM is possible… Weekends, anytime after 9 AM is possible… As for what kind of dungeon is possible….”

Having written her message up to that point, she pondered.

Up to what kind of dungeon is possible…

‘What on earth did this question mean?’

After pondering for a moment, she was unable to understand the intention of the question, so she decided to write honestly.

“I don’t quite… understand the meaning of the question, but… I can at least survive alone in a dungeon where ogres appear….”

If someone else saw it, they might ask if she wasn’t exaggerating too much, but she had answered honestly.

She was only unable to kill monsters because she couldn’t use aura, but when it came to surviving in a dungeon by avoiding monsters, she was confident.

The reason she had chosen the monster called ogre was just because she remembered the ogres that had appeared during the recent Greenskin Wave event in Yeouido.

After sending the reply message to the party trying to hire her as a porter, she continued to hold her smartphone.

How much time had passed since then?

Vrrrng….

The other party’s reply had arrived.

“The payment is… one-tenth of the amount the backpack holds…?”

The other party had sent a message saying that they should make a contract under those conditions.

Not bad.

Rather, these were generous conditions.

An assault team was usually composed of an average of 5 members.

And according to the contract, this meant that she would receive a little more than half of the payment that a member of that assault team would receive.

Compared to the payment a porter usually received, it was generous.

‘Did their previous porter get another job or something?’

Usually, those who looked for a porter under these conditions were Awakeners who had to urgently find a new one.

They would hire a porter under generous conditions for the sake of a pre-arranged schedule.

She didn’t know the other party’s detailed circumstances, but it wasn’t a bad situation for her, so she naturally accepted, and after a final message saying that they would meet tomorrow, she closed the app.

“…Hoo….”

She didn’t know what kind of people had hired her, but she hoped that she wouldn’t be fired in just one day if possible.

Having such fantasies, Yeon Mi-rae quietly closed her eyes.

Forcibly turning her eyes away from a reality without hope.

Because she still didn’t know what kind of person had chosen her, or what kind of future awaited her.

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T/N – Damn, that’s quite a shit life for both her and the Awakeners in general. I mean, sure, Mi-rae is living the ‘rock and a hard place’ situation, but Awakeners being railroaded to fight monsters is pretty shitty too. I understand why they did it, still, what if an Awakener doesn’t want to fight or is not good at fighting in general? I mean, Ha-eun was said to be clumsy despite being renowned as a magic swordsman, so their awakening doesn’t automatically make them proficient in combat nor does it change their innate traits.

If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out in the comments.