The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

”Haaah!”

The young man lying on the bed gasped sharply and shot upright, panic snapping him awake before his mind had even caught up.

”What happened?” he muttered to himself.

The last thing he remembered was the suffering inside the black hole — the pressure, his soul being torn apart — and something about...

’Sovereign Pride?’

As the thought surfaced, he looked around, and froze halfway through the motion.

This was not his bed.

No. This did not even remotely resemble his home.

His gaze dropped, and he saw it — an unusually thin body dressed in wrinkled linen clothes. He reached up and grabbed his own face. The feeling was different. The skin was slightly smoother, yet the face itself was clearly thinner, almost gaunt, and his arms were paler than they had any right to be.

And even setting his body aside entirely, this house looked nothing like anything that existed on Earth. The walls were poorly built from what appeared to be a mixture of brick, mud, and wood, assembled in a way that suggested the whole structure was one bad storm away from collapse.

”This... isn’t Earth, is it?” he said with a disbelieving smile, unable to fully accept the words coming out of his own mouth.

But the memories that struck him in the next moment confirmed exactly what he had been thinking.

A wave of dizziness washed over him for a few seconds before everything settled — only now there were new memories in his mind. New information. New experiences. None of them his.

”Ravian Veyr?” He held his head, frowning. ”Wait. Why does that name feel familiar?”

After several attempts to piece it together, he finally remembered — and what came back to him was not just the name.

He jumped off the worn-out bed.

”Damn it! Did I actually transmigrate? And what was that window that appeared in my mind out of nowhere?” He paced, trying to reconstruct the memory of the system-like presence that had spoken in the void. He had been barely conscious at the time, and the whole thing had felt almost like a dream. ”One moment I was Ryan, and now I’m Ravian Veyr, with some system of unknown origin sitting inside my soul?”

Ryan... or rather, Ravian now — paced back and forth through the messy room as he processed it.

There was almost nothing inside. Only the poor-quality bed and a small table holding a piece of bread and a cup of water.

He looked around with calm, tired irritation. ”Out of every social class in this entire world, I transmigrated into the poorest one?”

He could hardly believe his legendary luck.

The memories of the previous owner continued surfacing, and with them came a faint but genuine anger. ”And that boy — how did he let those people exploit him for so long? How did he just... let it happen?” The anger was partly on behalf of the boy, and partly because Ravian now understood that he had inherited every single one of his problems along with the body.

He stopped pacing.

”No. Wait.” He stood still for a moment, sinking into a quieter thought. ”How am I accepting all of this so calmly? That I died and moved into someone else’s body? Maybe those people at work were right about me after all.” He almost laughed.

Then he remembered something.

”System?” he called out.

[Ding!]

[Transfer into the new body has been successful.]

[Sovereign Pride has been fully assimilated into the host’s soul.]

[Ding!]

[Displaying host status.]

A white system window appeared before him, laced with red veins and threaded with dark, shifting shadows.

[Book: Sovereign Pride]

[Heir: Ravian Veyr — Ryan]

[Race: Human]

[Age: 18]

[Rank: Unawakened]

[Soul: Dual Soul — Unknown Rank]

[Extra Lives: 0]

[Element: Unawakened]

[Available Sovereign Pride Abilities: Unawakened]

[Host’s Innate Ability: Absolute Focus — Unknown Rank]

[Current Gate of the Book: None]

[Next Gate: Awakening]

”Alright.” Ravian stared at the window floating in front of him. ”What, in the name of everything that exists, is this?”

He reached out and tried to touch it with his hand. Naturally, his hand passed straight through it.

”Damn my life.” He sat back down on the bed, pressed both hands over his face, and let out a long breath. ”They kept calling me crazy until I actually became crazy.”

He sat like that for a moment, quietly hoping that after a little rest, everything would somehow return to normal.

It did not get the chance.

BOOM.

The door exploded inward.

The only thing in the entire room that had still been relatively intact was now in pieces, and a sudden cloud of dust billowed through the space. Ravian coughed, waving his hand in front of his face to clear the air — but the system window was still floating right in front of him, blocking his view.

”Ah, damn it — get out of my face already!” he snapped at it, his irritation finally spilling over.

In the next moment, the window vanished at his command.

Unfortunately, someone else had heard him.

”Hah? Did you just tell me to get out of your face, boy?”

Ravian lowered his hands.

Four figures were standing in the doorway. Three men and one woman, all looking at him with the particular kind of attention that never meant anything good. As the dust drifted out through the ruined door frame and the room slowly came back into focus, he could see them clearly enough — and the memories he had inherited recognized them immediately.

The man who had spoken was the leader. The largest of the group by a fair margin, somewhere in his thirties, while the others looked to be in their twenties.

The leader stepped forward, and Ravian recognized him without needing to search for it.

Max.

The leader of this small group, and one of the lower-ranking enforcers of the Black Crow Gang — the organization that controlled the slums.

Ravian understood the situation in an instant.

He looked up at Max and arranged his face into something small and apologetic. ”Oh — Mr. Max. I was asleep and dreaming when you came in. You startled me, so I accidentally said out loud what I was saying in my dream. That’s all.” His voice was calm, his expression a careful imitation of the frightened, harmless boy whose body he was now wearing.

It was the closest he could manage.

”Is that so?” Max said with a frown. ”For a moment, I thought you’d lost your mind.”

’I already have, apparently.’

”Hehe. Not yet, Mr. Max. Don’t worry.” Ravian scratched the back of his head with an embarrassed smile.

”Enough,” Max said, his tone already sliding toward boredom. ”Did you prepare the money?”

”Hah? Money?” Ravian repeated the word, instinctively reaching into the inherited memories to find the answer — and then he caught the sudden shift in Max’s expression, the flicker of irritation just beginning to sharpen into something worse.

”Oh.”

’...Shit.’