Regression Guidelines For the Supporting Character

"Ugh..."
Just as Cha Seohu ground his teeth toward Chronos, Cha Sahyeon, who had been leaning against him, let out a groan and staggered.
Is he really in such bad shape he can’t even stand?

Feeling the seriousness of the situation, Cha Seohu supported Cha Sahyeon and helped him sit on the sofa. Even after sitting down, Cha Sahyeon couldn't open his eyes, just whimpered and helplessly burrowed deeper into Seohu’s arms.
How much pain must he be in to act like this? He never showed this kind of weakness even as a child.
Flustered, Cha Seohu held Cha Sahyeon tightly and glared at Chronos.

Chronos, seeing Cha Sahyeon snuggling quietly into his brother’s arms like a spoiled child and Cha Seohu looking at him like garbage, was left speechless.
"I didn’t go that far. It was just to check—"
"If you keep this up, it’s going to be boring. You want to scrap the deal or what?"

"...Hah."
Chronos couldn't even refute Seohu properly as he cursed him in ignorance. Then, suddenly, his eyes met Cha Sahyeon's.
Cha Sahyeon, who had slyly opened his eyes and was staring at Chronos, lifted the corners of his lips in a smirk. It was an obvious sneer. Chronos felt his temper flare for a moment.

"...Hoo."
No, calm down. I can’t let myself get angry at mere humans. Although, the one feigning weakness over there is hardly human anymore...
Barely regaining composure, Chronos sat on the sofa opposite them. Despite the extravagant clothing he wore, he sat like a thug with one leg crossed over the other and spoke.

"The situation isn't dire. If he were closer to awakening than this, he wouldn’t have flinched at my power."
Cha Seohu’s eyes twitched.
A simple truth, yet only now did he realize it.

Right.
Thanks to the system, Seohu could quantify the Seed's progress in Sahyeon's body, but others—Chronos included—had no way of knowing the exact numbers.
The Seed of Catastrophe...
He knew that once the Seed implanted in Cha Sahyeon's body fully matured, it would awaken him as the Catastrophe. That was how the system had explained it.

But that explanation felt... game-like. It didn’t sit right.
It was true that as the progress increased, so did the danger.
Even now, with the progress over 60%, Sahyeon’s rank was L-rank. If it progressed any further, the idea that he could withstand Chronos's power likely wasn’t an exaggeration.

But just being stronger—would that really necessarily lead to the end of the world?
It wasn’t just about destroying a city. The total collapse of the world would require something more.
Based on what Sahyeon had said, even before the regression, he hadn’t acted with the goal of destroying the world. He only seemed endlessly bored and tired of everything. He didn’t seem like someone chasing some grand dream of ending the world.

If it wasn’t something Sahyeon chose himself...
Thinking back to what those cult bastards had done, the answer was obvious.
Like King Seohwa and the monsters who had rampaged uncontrollably—if Sahyeon was like them...

"..."
His heart sank. Cha Seohu’s expression twisted darkly.
"Hyung?"

Seeing his brother’s grim expression, Sahyeon forgot his act and sat up quickly.
"...There’s something I want to ask."
Cha Seohu, hesitating as he moved his lips, finally asked Chronos.

"That flower… the one called the Source of Vitality. What is it, really?"
"..."
"You said you manage the world, so you must know something about it. You sent me to the snowfield to deal with the cold that had taken over, right?"

He now understood how many hidden intentions had been buried in what seemed like a simple request to bring the real Song Jiwon.
The problem had been solved, and the suffering King Seohwa had been freed, so he hadn’t questioned it too much. Still, it left a bad taste.
"You avoided explaining it then too. Was that also because of this so-called cost?"

"...Yes."
Chronos listened with a strange expression before nodding.
"Yes, that was also because of the cost. Back then, all I could do was send you to the snowfield—where the real owner of this position, Song Jiwon, should have gone—to stop a monster’s rampage that would have caused massive damage. That was the best I could do."

"What kind of cost is so serious?"
"A cost is a cost. What else? Does anything in this world move without cost?"
The golden eye nestled under his long lashes glimmered.

"If I intervene too much, the balance of the world breaks—and that leads to unexpected consequences. Even things humans might think are ‘trivial’ can have enormous implications for me, so I have to act with caution."
Chronos snapped his fingers, and a ring of light formed in the air. That golden glow quickly turned into a goblet.
An ornate goblet with gold trim filled instantly with a dark liquid, nearly to the brim.

"This is the current state of the world."
A single black droplet fell into the goblet. As it landed, ripples formed, and the surface of the liquid trembled ominously.
"The more I disturb the balance, the more unstable the world becomes."

Drop by drop, the liquid continued to fall.
"It can hold out once, maybe twice. But two becomes three, three becomes four... and then—"
The surface of the liquid rose sharply. Just a few more drops, and the already full goblet overflowed instantly.

"It’ll be ruined beyond repair."
The last drop tipped the scale. The goblet spilled completely, the dark liquid staining it pitch-black and filthy. The once beautiful, radiant object was now hideous and tainted beyond recognition.
"It would be easy to ignore the cost and tell you everything—just move my mouth and be done with it. Sure, I’d suffer some backlash from breaking the rules as a manager..."

Chronos waved his hand, erasing the tainted goblet, and continued.
"If that would save the world, I wouldn’t hesitate. But if I keep ignoring the cost, eventually the world itself will be destroyed. The result won’t change."
Sending Cha Seohu and Ryu Sunghyun to the snowfield had been enough.

Cha Sahyeon would eventually visit Seohu at just the right time, and the cold covering the mountain wasn’t too dangerous with Seohu’s purification skill in hand.
I can’t waste a ‘chance’—no matter how many remain—on something like that.
There would be far more dangerous events to come—far beyond anything that happened in the snowfield. He needed to intervene at the right moment.

Chronos watched Cha Seohu silently, as he repeated the explanation in his mind.
I must keep this human alive.
The only one who had changed the unending path Cha Sahyeon walked.

Whatever the cost, I must protect Cha Seohu.
It had taken countless loops to discover this divergence. And time couldn’t be rewound forever—this was a turning ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) point he had to hold onto.
Despite the cold rationality in his head, Chronos shrugged with a mischievous grin.

"Well, that’s how it is. So if you want to know about the Source of Vitality, you’d better ask your brother instead. I’m bound by cost."
Cha Seohu blinked slowly, frowning, then let out a long sigh.
"Hah… Useless."

"..."
Chronos, receiving the first-ever “useless” evaluation from a human since his creation, was at a loss for words.
Cha Sahyeon, looking at his stunned expression with smug satisfaction, gently patted Seohu’s back and spoke in the softest voice imaginable.

"Hyung. I’ll explain it to you."
"...You don’t have some cost hanging over your head too, right?"
"Of course not."

Cha Sahyeon smiled, his eyes narrowing.
"The Source of Vitality... is exactly what you think. It was created by the bastards who locked me up."
"Those cult freaks?"

"Yeah. They worship death. To them, death is salvation."
Cha Sahyeon placed a hand over his chest.
"The flower we saw is a living organism saturated with the energy they created. When it’s nearby, it emits that energy—and that causes people to go berserk."

"Then…"
Cha Seohu clasped his hands together, hesitating, and finally asked after a long pause.
"What’s your connection to that flower?"

"What?"
"I mean… are you, like the flower, affected by that energy those bastards created?"
Cha Sahyeon looked at Seohu with surprise, then blinked slowly. After a pause, he answered carefully.

"I’m a little different, hyung."
"Different?"
"All the flowers you’ve seen until now... were replicas."

"...!"
Seohu instantly understood the meaning behind Sahyeon’s brief reply.
The flowers that had driven King Seohwa mad, that had turned A-rank monsters stronger than S-rank—they were replicas?

Then the real one... the real flower...
Facing Seohu, who had gone pale, Cha Sahyeon gave him a bitter smile.