Solo Swordmaster - Chapter 124

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Chapter 124: Goodbye!

──────

Although Yoo Na-gyeong was not an old hand like Rimon, who had been through every hardship imaginable, including aerial combat, she was still a former PAB agent.

She was a veteran who had dealt with countless Players, from drunks to murderous fiends.

And since she had overheard Rimon talking about criminals like him before, she could tell after seeing him only briefly what kind of person Velos was.

‘That bastard is a psycho! He’d kill a random Passerby A for absolutely no reason!’

He killed anyone who got in his way.

He killed anyone who saw him.

He killed you if you bumped shoulders with him on the street.

In some ways, he was worse than a thrill killer who enjoyed murder. He was a monster who viewed people as no more than rocks.

That was the lunatic Velos.

And if the children of Hanbit Orphanage, including Seong Sia, caught the eye of that killer?

[No!]

Imagining the worst, Yoo Na-gyeong cried out.

Then she frantically used Telepathy.

She sent Telepathy not only to Rimon, Li Qing-yu, Youin, and Weiling, who knew she was a reincarnator, but even to maids and martial artists whose faces she only recognized.

Anyone at all, just so she could tell them what was happening.

[Ugh, what do I do?]

But it was all in vain.

After trying again and again without reaching anyone, Yoo Na-gyeong covered her head with her wings.

Whether it was Velos's Skill or the power of an item, one thing was clear. She could not call for help through Telepathy.

[Should I find some martial artist guy and ask him for help? But...]

Yoo Na-gyeong thought about it.

What if an unfamiliar bluebird suddenly appeared and asked for help?

Would they really help?

At a time like this?

She would be lucky if they did not suspect her instead.

‘There’s no one who can help right away!’

Even if someone believed Yoo Na-gyeong, that would still be a problem.

The corpses scattered through the corridor made it clear that a martial artist of middling skill would be no help.

[Ah, screw it! I don't know!]

Poof!

After worrying herself sick for a while, Yoo Na-gyeong finally used Spatial Movement.

There was probably nothing she could do in this tiny bird body, but she could not just sit around helplessly either.

Poof, poof, poof.

She could only move about ten meters at a time.

Still, having lived at Leviathan recently, Yoo Na-gyeong knew its internal layout well. Using the shortest route, she reached her destination in no time.

It was a place where countless corridors and stairways intertwined in tiers beneath a distant, brilliant ceiling, shaped like an inverted pyramid.

Leviathan's underground facilities were so beautiful that they were called an underground skyscraper.

The Subterranean Dragon Palace.

‘Fortunately, it looks like nothing has happened yet.’

Yoo Na-gyeong slowly looked around the vast space, which was practically a small underground city.

Perhaps because of the emergency lockdown, the various facilities that normally remained bustling even at night now felt as bleak as a ghost town.

But Yoo Na-gyeong was relieved instead.

If Velos had arrived first, this place would not have been so quiet, no matter how thoroughly it was shut down.

“Who goes there?!”

“This area is currently off-limits... Urgh!”

[...]

Just like this.

Yoo Na-gyeong had rushed over in a panic, even using Spatial Movement.

But before she could arrive, she found two crushed corpses and bloody footprints leading to the lowest level. Her expression stiffened.

‘He’s fast. So fast they couldn't even scream.’

It was just like the corpses in the corridor.

It would take several minutes to crush even a rag doll that badly, yet he had reduced people to this state in the blink of an eye.

Considering that the Seven Dragons Society's martial artists were each as capable as mid- to high-level Players, it was impossible without using a Skill.

‘I don't know what kind of Skill it is, but it has to be ranged. And immediate.’

After reassessing Velos's danger, Yoo Na-gyeong hesitated.

Since she could use Spatial Movement, she had thought she could at least escape, even if her opponent was the Ghost of the Liberation Brigade.

But what if Velos's Skill had the power or utility to kill on sight?

The moment he noticed her, she might die without even being able to chirp.

‘Should I just take the children and run?’

‘No. The kids don't even know who I am yet. I don't have time to persuade them one by one.’

‘And with the facility locked down, there’s no way out...’

‘Ugh, seriously! Why did I have to be reborn?!’

Yoo Na-gyeong realized anew that Rimon had been right when he warned her how difficult it would be to live again with the memories of a past life.

At this moment, the fact that she was not human felt more miserable than ever.

After agonizing for a while, Yoo Na-gyeong seemed to make up her mind.

Pressing her beak shut tightly, she took a step toward the lowest floor where Velos had vanished.

“Hmm. I wondered how impressive the famed Leviathan vault would be, but this is below my expectations.”

Scurry!

Then she immediately fled again.

Just after Yoo Na-gyeong hid, Velos strolled out of a passage connected to the secret facility on the lowest level.

“If that idiot Comrade had infiltrated according to plan, I could have handled this much more quietly. Having such an incompetent Comrade only makes things harder for me.”

Clicking his tongue once, he leisurely walked on as he muttered to himself.

“Still, if it is not here either, it does not seem they knew about it and hid it away on purpose...”

Like a detective deducing the location of treasure, Velos stroked his chin as he looked over the Subterranean Dragon Palace's various facilities.

Then he suddenly turned around.

Approaching a display map mounted on a wall, he scrolled through the list of facilities until his hand stopped at one location.

“Perhaps it is ‘here.’”

After studying the map for a moment, Velos turned around.

As if he had decided on his destination, he immediately strode in one direction.

‘That way is...!’

Peeking her head out to spy on Velos, Yoo Na-gyeong felt her heart drop.

He was heading toward the area with the childcare facility.

‘You crazy bastard! Why are you going there?!’

She cursed inwardly, but Yoo Na-gyeong ran after Velos, dashing along and using Spatial Movement.

She had to stop him from reaching the childcare facility, no matter what.

Fortunately, Yoo Na-gyeong did not need to resort to her final option of tap dancing right in front of Velos to draw his attention.

The place Velos entered was somewhere completely unrelated.

[...

What?]

Yoo Na-gyeong had chased him until her little bird feet nearly blistered.

Yet Velos did not even look toward the childcare facility and entered a shop instead. Watching him, she muttered blankly.

[No, why did he go in there? Don't tell me he came all the way here to shop.]

Perhaps he really was shopping.

Velos leisurely examined the merchandise on display in the shop.

He looked so relaxed that if the shop door had not been smashed to pieces, he could have passed for an ordinary customer who had stopped by on the way.

“Hmm, I suppose it is not here after all.”

Whatever he had expected to find, Velos walked out of the shop while shaking his head.

Then he gave a quiet laugh.

“Well, even if the Seven Dragons Society has no eye for value and is made up of ignorant fools, they would not leave it here.”

‘It?’

Clinging to the sign of a chicken restaurant and pretending to be a chick, Yoo Na-gyeong narrowed her eyes at those words.

‘He's looking for something? What exactly?’

She did not know for certain, but it was clear that the chaos at Leviathan had been staged so Velos could infiltrate it.

Yet after causing all this, he was searching for an item in a place like that.

Yoo Na-gyeong could only gape.

But the next moment, she shut her beak again.

“It cannot be helped.”

Rustle.

With a cold smile, Velos slipped one hand into his pocket and took out a palm-sized book.

The moment he did, chilling killing intent constricted Yoo Na-gyeong's throat.

“I suppose I will have to kill everyone and search through the place.”

‘No!’

Yoo Na-gyeong swallowed her scream.

She instinctively understood.

That when he said he would kill everyone, he literally meant everyone in the Subterranean Dragon Palace.

That if he set out to massacre them in earnest, no one here would survive.

And that she had no power to stop him.

‘What do I do? What do I do?!’

Overwhelmed by frantic anxiety, Yoo Na-gyeong desperately tried to think of some way out.

Then her eyes suddenly lit up.

‘The book! If I take that, maybe...!’

Even a lunatic would not take out a book because he was bored at a time like this.

If Velos was the type of Player who needed a specific item to activate his Skill, taking that book might stop him.

Of course, it was a gamble.

There was no knowing whether she was right.

Even if she was, stealing the book in this baby bird body was practically suicide. There was over a ninety percent chance she would die before she could take it.

But Yoo Na-gyeong had gone mad with the need to protect her younger siblings from the orphanage.

For her, that was enough of a gamble to stake her life on.

‘Damn it! A true woman dies twice, not three times!’

Velos opened the book.

Yoo Na-gyeong clenched her beak and was about to charge him with her tiny body.

Jingle.

“Hmm?”

The killing intent vanished as if it had been washed away.

The murderous aura that had been constricting her body disappeared so suddenly that Yoo Na-gyeong nearly went through with her charge. As she hurriedly steadied herself, Velos reached into his pocket.

Then he took out the source of that sound.

He placed a small bell on his palm and slowly moved it.

Jingle, jingle.

“Ho... There has been so little response that I thought it might be broken, but it seems it was not defective.”

Velos nodded once as he watched the bell ring on its own whenever his palm faced a particular direction.

Then he followed its sound.

Yoo Na-gyeong was bewildered by his unpredictable actions, but when she saw the facility he entered, she was utterly horrified.

‘Why is he going there now?!’

It was not just because it was such an unexpected place.

It was because she knew it all too well.

The moment she saw Velos smash through the entrance, a thought flashed through her mind like lightning.

‘Wait, could the thing they are looking for be...?’

Yoo Na-gyeong cautiously followed Velos inside.

It was a place she had become extremely familiar with, having come here with Rimon nearly once a day.

A practice room furnished only with top-quality instruments worthy of Leviathan's reputation, from pianos to guitars and drums.

At the very back of the practice room, Velos fiddled with the bell in front of a long box.

“Ha, I suspected it, but they really stored this as though it were an ordinary instrument... I had no idea the Seven Dragons Society was such a fucking stupid organization.”

The instant she heard that, Yoo Na-gyeong understood.

Why Velos had checked Leviathan's heavily guarded penthouse and vault, then looked for an instrument shop first.

And why the Liberation Brigade had caused such chaos just to find a single item.

Their target was something truly special.

No matter how much money they paid.

No matter how cleverly they tried to swindle someone.

No matter if they took hostages and made threats.

It was something they could never obtain through normal means.

Especially since its owner was an obstinate swordsman who would only laugh at threats from the Liberation Brigade.

‘That violin! That was the Liberation Brigade's target!’

Yoo Na-gyeong held her breath as she looked at the box containing the Pitch-Black Violin, the one-of-a-kind item Rimon used to dissolve the power of Constellations.

“What a dull ending. Had I known the Seven Dragons Society stored it in such a manner, there would have been no need to go to all this trouble...”

Just as Velos reached for the box containing the Pitch-Black Violin, Yoo Na-gyeong moved without thinking.

Poof!

“...?”

[...

Ah.]

Velos paused at the sight of the baby bird that had suddenly appeared atop the box.

Yoo Na-gyeong had moved before she could think, and now found herself face-to-face with a mad, vicious criminal. Cold sweat ran down her feathers.

[Ah, hahaha. Hello? Nice weather today, isn't it?]

Was he surprised that a bird had spoken?

Or was he simply dumbfounded by a greeting so ill-suited to the middle of the night?

Yoo Na-gyeong raised one wing high at Velos, whose expression had grown even stranger, and shouted cheerfully.