The Regressor Can Make Them All-Chapter 559

The battles up until now, which had always been fought with them solely providing support to their automatons on the front line, were no more.

Woong!

To keep Lunatic from further eroding her, Lea had to remain within the invisible waves scattered by the Hound Knights; to resume Lunatic’s erosion, Puppeteer needed direct contact with the waves of Lea’s Hound Knights so that she could pierce through.

As a result, both of them—who, again, almost always stayed far in the rear—were stepping forward alongside their automatons.

Thud-

And when the distance between Lea and Puppeteer had shrunk to barely two meters, that was the moment the vanguards surged forth.

Maverick, clutching his twin short spears.

A tri-faced, six-armed automaton, wielding pairs of swords, axes, and spears.

With crimson gleams flashing in their eyes, their weapons swung with full force at one another to protect their master and slay the enemy.

CLANG! CRACK-

Eight weapons clashed in midair, splitting the stage in half—

CLANG!

Their weapons swung again, before the shockwaves from that first collision could even fade, unleashing a storm of slashes that tore across the crumbling stage.

It was then that two shadows slipped through, waiting for that exact moment.

Whoosh!

Swindler froze space as he cut through. The mirror doll shrugged off all attacks as it advanced forward. Amidst the storm of indiscriminate slashes that spared neither friend nor foe, the two assassins’ daggers silently sought the other’s throat.

Rumble-

It was a deadly exchange where even the slightest graze meant instant death. However, despite it unfolding right in front of them, Lea and Puppeteer didn’t so much as blink. They just tightened their hold over the stage through the Sphere and Lunatic, respectively.

Fwoosh!

Lights from the ceiling flooded the stage as new automatons appeared, only for the stage to rotate clockwise and send them back into the darkness once more. The sun was blotted out by a fog that rolled in; tidal waves were blocked by the thick trunks of forests. Stage props and backdrops continually clashed and canceled each other out.

She’s gotten better at using the stage props... Puppeteer narrowed her eyes.

Across thousands of reenactments, even when Lea took control of the stage, she would use or destroy the props in only the simplest of ways. After all, all memories and experiences from the previous fight were wiped clean whenever Encore Performance was triggered, preventing Lea from ever truly mastering the stage. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Boom!

That was why, now that she had somehow successfully preserved her memories through Return to Origin, things were different. Both Lunatic’s structure that she had figured out while her body was being eroded, and the instinctive grasp of the theater’s nature—together they allowed her to freely manipulate the “world” that was the stage.

Rumble-

However, Lea had seized only roughly thirty percent of the stage’s control. With only half that of Puppeteer and a third of her mana remaining, Lea was on a time limit.

In every aspect, Lea was in a perilous situation where the fight would normally have already ended in her overwhelming loss.

I can do this.

Yet Lea didn’t think for a second that she’d lose. Compared to before she activated Return to Origin, when all possibilities were erased over and over, she had finally arrived in a place where infinite possibilities existed.

Woong!

Her mind overflowed with inspiration, filling her with an ever-surging omnipotence she couldn’t even describe. Her brush swept without pause, inscribing new enchantment formulas into the Sphere left and right that spread across the stage.

That’s...!

Noticing Lea’s state, Puppeteer felt a sense of danger despite the advantage in her hands. When Lea had been inscribing new enchantments like that during previous cycles... she hadn’t won even once.

I have to end this now.

Their gazes clashed in midair. Without a word, they then moved simultaneously: it was time to command their automatons and the stage itself for the final curtain call.

Whirllll-

Accompanying the sound of wires coiling, a massive shadow fell over the stage. Lea slowly looked up... and there, at the end of her gaze, was the upper torso of a colossal marionette that was hundreds of meters tall.

Now that the final call was approaching, the very first Single Number—No.0 Marionette, the core of Lunatic itself—took to the stage to showcase the embodiment of all that Puppeteer’s techniques were.

Swish-

Beginning the puppet show, Marionette spread its arms with ten strings dangling from its fingers. Those strings then split into thousands of threads, connecting to every corner of the theater. And when everything was attached... the stage fell silent for the first time since the performances had begun.

The constant turmoil of the stage, pulled left and right in the tug for control, settled. Before Lea could even react, the control she had seized was completely stripped away.

However, because Lea had never paused her enchantments, her the final stroke had still been inscribed by the narrowest of margins.

Woong-

Every enchantment transmitted through the Sphere gathered into the hands of Chatterbox, standing guard behind her, to form a swirling sphere of tangled formulas. And around it, Chatterbox’s magic twined like a ring.

“Compression, Resonance, Imitation.”

Woong!

Drawn into the spinning ring, the sphere got smaller and smaller until Chatterbox’s hands held only a single ring of dazzling gold.

Shiiiiing-

Lea instinctively knew.

With this...

With the power that could not be fully reproduced even by her upgraded Sphere—which would be anchored to her only for the briefest of moments thanks to the fragment of Se-Hoon’s power within the Blood Crystals—she could overcome even Lunatic’s godlike omnipotence on the stage.

Absolutely certain, Lea moved the golden ring through Chatterbox—

Puppetcraft

Thousands of strings from the Marionette’s fingers rippled like waves...

Resimulation

...and everything froze.

Soon enough, however, the spotlights poured down through the darkness to illuminate the stage, a new stage.

Lea’s eyes widened; she recognized the stage she was standing on as a replica of the one just before.

Woong-

Once again, Puppeteer had taken full control of the stage as she finished the final enchantment in defiance. Unlike Encore Performance, which rewound everything to the start, it seemed only a few seconds had been turned back.

So, just like before, Lea finished her enchantment.

Woong!

The ring formed again, turning the tide back in Lea’s favor—everything froze, then it all gave way to the third stage in the darkness.

This is...!

Each time her victory was assured, the stage’s time would halt to make way for a new one that would repeat the final exchange once more. In other words, a reenactment that would continue until the script was played out exactly as written.

And stuck in that endless cycle of her victory, Lea’s consciousness expanded nonstop.

What should have been the case was that when the original stage ended, Lea’s mind would transfer cleanly into the duplicate body that appeared with the next. However, Se-Hoon’s power resisted the transfer and let her consciousness persist—every time.

Lea was now aware of every duplicated body simultaneously, causing her mind to be thrust into a new realm.

Swish-

Her vision layered like hundreds of overlapping photographs, causing blood to burst from the vessels in her eyes, then from her nose and mouth. Unlike Puppeteer, who had the long-spanning experience of handling countless automatons as extensions of herself, Lea was thoroughly overwhelmed by the flood of information from so many bodies.

With her brain overheating and consciousness wavering, for the first time in her life, Lea’s enchantment collapsed.

Clang!

The incomplete ring shattered. After thousands of repeats, Lea’s victory crumbled and allowed the countless stage lights to converge on the final stage. Still, Lea tried to gather her enchantment again—

Tap-

Puppeteer’s finger pressed to her forehead.

Swoosh-

It was the end: the last thread of Lunatic’s erosion was connected, allowing it to halt all movement with the white strings linked all over Lea’s body.

“...”

“...”

On the stage that had fallen silent, Puppeteer just stared at the bloodied face of their daughter.

“Why... why do you reject it so much?” The words came out before Puppeteer even realized it.

“...”

“Returning to those happy days... being with family forever... is that really something so hateful to you?”

In Lea’s state of deep erosion, she should have sensed how happy the ending they had prepared would be. So why would she reject it, fighting with everything she had?

Lea’s lips slowly began to move.

“If it were the Dad I remember... he’d tell me not to worry about him and just do what I want. If he thought I was walking on eggshells, he’d always say that.”

“...”

“Mom’s a little harder to say, but... she’d probably tell me to stop being spoiled and make my own decisions now that I’m grown. Maybe she’d even tell me to move out quickly so that she could live alone with Dad.”

Puppeteer froze at those words as Lea continued weakly.

“It wasn’t for a long time... but back then, my parents actually respected me. Because... their child wasn’t some tool that existed just to make them happy.”

“...”

“That’s why... you’re not my parent. You’re just a puppet, twisted from the love they left behind... unable to even distinguish good from evil.”

Having found her resolve after the countless Encore Performances and regressions, Lea looked straight at her unwaveringly.

“And I’m not so childish as to whine to a puppet like that. That’s my answer.”

“...”

Silence returned to the stage. For a long time, Puppeteer stood motionless with countless emotions passing over her face. Eventually, however, her face hardened into something sharp.

“I see... so that’s what you think.”

“...”

“Then it can’t be helped. Us coming to an understanding would be... difficult.”

Tremble-

Her right arm shook, and the strings binding Lea pulled taut.

“But when we become one, you’ll understand.”

Puppeteer was slowly becoming a true automaton, trapped forever in a love stained by madness, unable to turn back even after realizing its mistakes.

Knowing that, Lea closed her eyes as she felt herself being completely assimilated into Lunatic—

Fwoosh!

A sudden burst of light erased the darkness outside the stage.

“?!”

Puppeteer was completely taken aback. Unable to react, she watched as the light spread before condensing back into a single, brilliantly shining point. The point then transformed into an artificial celestial body, actualized by the stage props.

Seeing more stars surrounding the stage coming into view one by one, Puppeteer instantly recognized the culprit.

“Lea...!”

The Lea before her had vanished, leaving only her calm voice echoing throughout the theater.

“Even if I control Lunatic, as long as you’re the one written as the protagonist, the story won’t change.”

From the very start, Puppeteer’s vast power on the stage had never come from being Lunatic’s creator or master. Lunatic has responded solely because she was the protagonist.

Right before the enactment of the current act, Lea had realized such—and thus had been feigning her struggle for control while preparing something else.

Woong-

“So I decided to introduce a new protagonist.”

Someone who could sever the endlessly repeated tragedy on stage; someone who, more than anyone in the world, deserved the title of protagonist. And now, that character had been added to the script by Lea’s hand.

So naturally, Lunatic stirred to align to accommodate it.

“That’s... that’s impossible for you...!”

Such a sudden appearance demanded convincing narrative weight, regardless of whether that character was added to the script. For that, Lunatic required a plausibility that was at a level even Perfect Ones would struggle to breach! Even then, there was no way such a being could appear and defeat her.

In other words, the new script was utterly nonsensical, making Puppeteer scoff—

“I know... but he can!”

Crash-

Se-Hoon smashed through space, Lea in his arms, and drove the Celestial Infinity Blade straight through Puppeteer’s heart.