WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 121: You’re Dead Meat Now
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Let’s turn back time a little.
Before Weiling was shocked out of her wits.
Shortly after she sent Rimon information on the subsidiaries.
Following the route she had sent, Rimon crossed the city. The moment he arrived at the building bearing the Black Dragon Insurance sign, he made his move.
“Comrades, let me give you a piece of advice. Devoting your lives to a company...”
Kaboom!
“Where the hell does a dog get off barking?!”
“Gack?!”
He tracked down the voice coming from somewhere.
Smashed through a wall as he charged in.
Then kicked the speaker in the back of the head.
Rimon carried out every motion as smoothly as flowing water, taking Ryu Gang-cheol down in the blink of an eye.
Even if it had been a surprise attack, it was a futile sight for those who had desperately been trying to stall Ryu Gang-cheol until now.
“W-What?”
“That white hair... Rimon Aspelder?!”
“Why is he here?!”
Yet the Black Dragon Insurance martial artists, panting and covered in blood, could not even feel that sense of futility.
They were too busy recoiling as though they had encountered a tiger upon seeing Rimon appear out of nowhere.
This was how they reacted after he saved them.
Most people would have found it unpleasant.
But Rimon had never expected anything from the Black Dragon Clan in the first place, so he did not even acknowledge the martial artists’ existence.
He merely pinned Ryu Gang-cheol to the floor with his sword.
Thunk!
“Urgh! W-What the hell are you doing?”
“I’ll finish this soon, so shut up for a bit.”
“I suddenly got turned into an insect specimen, and you’re telling me to quietly shut up? That doesn’t even... Gack?!”
“Tsk. No wonder you’re a dog. You never stop yapping.”
Rimon mercilessly crushed Ryu Gang-cheol’s groin, silencing him and making him foam at the mouth as a bonus.
Then he considered his next move.
‘So, what now?’
Even a Sword Master only had one body.
No matter how capable Rimon was, he could not run around alone and protect countless subsidiaries.
Even so, he had confidently declared his intentions to Weiling because he had a trick in mind.
‘Looks like I can’t cut them with Cut Water-Moon, Blooming Flower Fragrance after all.’
If Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicates had been illusions, Rimon could have cut down every one of them and taken Ryu Gang-cheol’s life with a single sword stroke.
That was the ultimate technique of the Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword.
Like splitting the moon reflected on water and cutting even the moon in the sky, Cut Water-Moon, Blooming Flower Fragrance cut through an illusion to sever the real thing as well.
But after testing them directly, he found that Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicates were not reflections.
Each was an actual physical entity.
If he had to compare them, they were like the difference between countless false images reflected in parallel mirrors and mass-produced goods churned out of a factory.
‘I had a rough idea already.’
The loss of a way to resolve the situation with one slash did not disappoint Rimon much.
From the moment he had cut one of Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicates, he had sensed that it was not merely an illusion.
He had only needed confirmation.
And even without Cut Water-Moon, Blooming Flower Fragrance, he had plenty of other options.
“Let’s take a look first.”
Rimon narrowed his eyes.
Then, instead of their usual gold, his pupils darkened to black as he looked down at Ryu Gang-cheol.
Thanks to constantly playing the Pitch-Black Violin and spending time with Eugene to melt down starlight, he had perfectly mastered the power of the stars.
The Eye That Sees Constellations activated.
If Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicates were created by a Skill, Rimon expected to see something.
His expectation proved correct.
‘This is...’
The first thing Rimon thought of when he saw it was parasites.
Countless worms tore through Ryu Gang-cheol’s eyes, nose, mouth, pores, and skin, wriggling as they protruded halfway out. It was nothing less than a nest of bugs.
But after observing for a moment, Rimon realized he had been mistaken.
‘A tree?’
What had looked like skin was bark.
What constantly writhed were roots.
What flowed instead of blood was sap.
An eerie vision, like a living tree carved into the shape of a human, overlapped Ryu Gang-cheol’s body.
‘Hm. I suppose this is the Constellation he contracted with. But this looks...’
Rimon narrowed his eyes.
Since obtaining the Eye That Sees Constellations, Rimon had met many Players and examined their Constellations.
But Ryu Gang-cheol was only the second Player whose Constellation overlapped so deeply with him that it was difficult to make out the original human form.
“Oh?”
That was when Rimon, studying the Constellation, spotted something like a red stem trailing behind Ryu Gang-cheol’s tailbone.
Rimon shifted his gaze slightly.
Then, seeing that red stem stretch past the floor and out of the building, his lips twisted.
“Well, look at that.”
Rimon stepped firmly on the red stem.
Thump, thump.
Like a blood vessel connected to a heart, the red stem pulsed at regular intervals.
With a Sword Master’s keen senses, Rimon detected those pulses and let out an incredulous chuckle.
He immediately understood that this stem was the key to maintaining Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicates.
It was both the pipeline supplying their fuel and the strings controlling the puppets.
“In all my life, I’ve never seen a bastard so boldly parade his tail right in front of me.”
It was not impossible to understand.
The Eye That Sees Constellations itself was an ability no one had ever heard of.
Like most Constellations Rimon had seen so far, Ryu Gang-cheol’s Constellation likely had not even felt a need to hide this stem.
Perhaps it had been confident that being discovered would not matter.
Even if some mere human saw it, they would never dare harm a Constellation.
There was just one problem.
The sole exception among those “mere humans” had discovered it at this very moment, his eyes gleaming like a madman.
“You’re dead meat now, bastard.”
After muttering coldly, Rimon pulled out the sword that had pinned Ryu Gang-cheol to the floor and focused his senses within the red stem.
Thump, thump.
An enormous current of power flowed through it whenever the stem pulsed.
He followed that flow.
From Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicate to the stem.
Along the stem, to the flow connected outside.
As the distance increased, his senses gradually dulled, and the pulses grew fainter.
But he did not stop.
Focus, focus, focus.
He sharpened his dulled senses, traced the fading pulses with greater clarity, and continued pursuing the current receding into the distance.
One hundred meters, five hundred meters, one kilometer.
Like an experienced fisherman who could pinpoint a fish hidden underwater from the vibration of a single line.
Like when he had pursued the Demon God that fled to the other side of the world long ago.
With the concentration of a Sword Master capable of cutting even a speck of dust, he expanded his already sharp senses even further and pursued the invisible current.
Five kilometers, ten kilometers, thirty kilometers.
He extended his senses without end.
Detected the stems spread throughout the area.
And the moment he perceived countless roots...
“I’ve got you.”
Slice!
Rimon severed the neck of Ryu Gang-cheol, who had been writhing like a half-corpse.
The current began to scatter.
The Constellation’s power that had moved Ryu Gang-cheol’s duplicate until now abandoned its useless shell and gurgled back beyond the stem.
That was precisely the opportunity Rimon had been waiting for.
Tap, tap, tap.
One step following the flow of power.
One step approaching a root.
One step swinging his sword.
When he had taken exactly three steps like that, Rimon stood squarely before another root, another Ryu Gang-cheol duplicate attacking a different subsidiary.
“...
Huh?”
Perhaps he could not understand how Rimon, who had just been beating up another version of him, had suddenly crossed several kilometers to appear before his eyes.
Ryu Gang-cheol made a dumbfounded sound, his eyes nearly bulging from their sockets.
Slice!
Before he could come to his senses, Rimon’s sword once again sent Ryu Gang-cheol’s head flying.
A death even more futile and effortless than that of the first duplicate, no different from an ant crushed beneath a tank tread.
But that was only the beginning.
Tap, tap, tap.
Slice, slice, slice.
Whenever a duplicate collapsed, Rimon followed the current of power moving through the stems, took a step, approached another duplicate, and cut it down.
The more he repeated it, the more accustomed he became.
The more accustomed he became, the faster he grew.
In the end, it became tedious labor.
It was no longer a battle at all, just the repetition of a simple task, like splitting potatoes one by one as they came trudging down a conveyor belt.
The only difference was that it was people rather than a conveyor belt moving, and Players in the level 80s rather than potatoes being split apart.
“What the...?!”
“Wait...!”
“This kind of petty trick... Guh!”
“Fuck?!”
Of course, Ryu Gang-cheol did not submit quietly.
Since they were connected to one another through the stems, he quickly reacted after sensing the threat Rimon posed.
But all of his struggles were useless.
Whether they timed a counterattack.
Whether they hurriedly fled their positions.
Whether they increased their duplicates and attacked together.
They could not escape Rimon, who appeared like a ghost along the very stems connected to them and severed their necks at a speed they could not even see.
And as Rimon continued cutting them down, Ryu Gang-cheol’s reactions gradually changed.
First, confusion.
Then interest in the unexpected situation.
Then anger at his one-sided deaths.
Finally, the helpless despair of one driven to the edge.
After changing again and again, only one emotion remained in his eyes.
Fear.
It was a deeply unfamiliar emotion for Ryu Gang-cheol, who had always seen himself as a predator and lived mocking not only the deaths of others, but even his own.
“Y-You monster...!”
Still, Ryu Gang-cheol could not shake off his fear.
That chilling sword that seemed capable of cutting even resolve.
That ability, so overwhelming it inspired despair.
And above all, those languid eyes, which seemed to feel no more emotion while cutting him down than while splitting a log, told him one thing.
This white-haired man was the true predator.
A being at the peak of every food chain, the most perfect killing fiend, beyond anything he could even compare himself to.
And Ryu Gang-cheol was not the only one who felt it.
“...
What just happened?”
“That white hair, could it be the Sword Duke?”
“Good heavens... The bastard who slaughtered dozens of our warriors couldn’t even last a single move?”
From the masters fighting Ryu Gang-cheol to the martial artists being slaughtered one-sidedly, even those whose bodies were being ripped open by knives.
The members of the Black Dragon Clan protecting each subsidiary trembled.
Every place they were stationed was a subsidiary that had refused a contract with Guardian.
In other words, these were places dominated by clan members who dismissed Rimon as an obsolete relic from a bygone era and opposed him.
But the moment they saw Rimon casually cut down Ryu Gang-cheol, who had driven them to the brink of death, with a single stroke before vanishing again, they understood.
What a Sword Master truly was.
How insane it had been to mock Rimon.
What kind of catastrophe could occur if they made an enemy of him.
Why so many ancestors had failed to overcome the stronghold that was the Sword Duke for hundreds of years.
And that perhaps Li Qing-yu had not pushed for her betrothal to Rimon while offering everything she had simply because she was foolish.
Amid their steadily rising fear, they had no choice but to understand.
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