Solo Swordmaster - Chapter 14

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 14: Who’s Next?

──────

“I proclaim.”

“...!”

Kang Jeong-su swallowed involuntarily.

Not because Rimon’s low voice echoed in his ears like the toll of a great bell.

“Those who would challenge me, abandon hope.”

“Those who would fight me, prepare yourselves for death.”

“Those who seek my life, stake your own.”

“Those who lack such resolve, prostrate yourselves at once and beg for your lives.”

Like someone reading from a Korean-language textbook they had read so many times they had memorized it.

Rimon delivered his warning in a voice so calm it was almost flat.

“This is my final mercy.”

His golden eyes were still.

Within them was a light so chillingly pure.

And therefore, so terribly immaculate.

It made Kang Jeong-su instinctively take a step back.

“Remember this. Those still standing after hearing this warning will never survive.”

It was less a warning than a threat.

A death sentence issued by one man with a single sword against two hundred people armed with every kind of firearm and item.

Under other circumstances, they would have laughed it off.

It was too absurd even to qualify as a joke.

Gulp.

But at least in that moment, not one of the more than two hundred people gathered there laughed.

The dry saliva pooling in their mouths.

Their weakening knees.

The goosebumps rising along their necks.

All of it told them.

This was not a bluff.

Get on your knees now.

This was their only chance.

It was the whisper of instinct.

A premonition their bodies sent before their minds could process it.

The pressure of death was enough to make ordinary people collapse on the spot.

Unfortunately, there were two problems.

Everyone there was an elite with enough skill and confidence to overcome the pressure of death.

And their commander greatly overestimated their own judgment.

Enough to immediately give an order to ignore their instincts and restore their wavering morale.

“Why are you just listening to this bullshit?! Attack now!”

Right or wrong, Kang Jeong-su’s judgment was effective.

The people torn between instinct and reason received that order and, without a single exception, steeled themselves to fight Rimon.

They united as one with astonishing ease.

And the people most accustomed to following orders signaled the beginning of the battle.

“All personnel, open fire!”

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Thud-thud-thud-thud!

Unit 909.

In terms of levels alone, they were among the weakest people gathered there.

As soldiers by profession, it was inevitable that their average level would be lower than that of players who made a living clearing dungeons.

But when it came to combat power, they were stronger than any other group there.

Their equipment was the reason.

Exoskeleton KIM-S009.

A masterpiece created by the Agency for Defense Development using advanced science alongside materials from high-level monsters in the level 70s, such as the bones of Bone Knights, the armor of Living Armies, fragments of Metal Golems, and the arrowheads of Shadow Hunters.

Each suit was infamous for costing more than a fighter jet due to its enormous material cost.

But the KIM-S009’s performance was equally remarkable.

It allowed a mid-level player in the level 30s to fight evenly against a player in the level 60s.

Its standard armament, the Shadowgun’s Psionic Bullets, dealt defense-ignoring damage, making them a weapon even high-level players feared.

And if fifty Unit 909 soldiers equipped with KIM-S009 fired at once?

It was practically a death sentence.

No matter how high their level, no player could withstand hundreds of Psionic Bullets pouring down on them without a special skill like [Absolute Defense].

“...What?”

That was why Mira, the guild leader of [Stardust], could only stare blankly.

“What just happened?”

Mira could not understand.

Why was Rimon, who had just taken a concentrated volley from Unit 909, still standing there unharmed?

And why, immediately after opening fire, had all fifty Unit 909 soldiers fallen at once?

The situation was so incomprehensible that, for a moment, she wondered whether Unit 909 had used some kind of deception tactic.

Drip.

The shattered heads.

The eyeballs rolling across the floor.

Most of all, the hot blood splashed across her cheek.

They made the situation too clear for her to mistake.

Unit 909 had been wiped out?

Unit 909 was no ordinary military unit.

Each member was comparable to a high-level player, and five of them could crush most guilds.

They were combat specialists so elite that even Mira, a level 93 Grand Duke-rank player, would struggle against more than ten of them.

Yet they had been wiped out less than a second after firing.

It was something she could not believe even as she watched it happen.

Naturally, she was not the only one horrified by the situation.

“...Good God.”

“Mr. An Dong-gwon?”

“This is insane... How could he do that...?”

“What do you mean, how? What skill did he just use?”

The guild leader of [Cheonjong] looked as pale as a corpse.

Thanks to his unique skill, An Dong-gwon was the only person there who had seen what Rimon had done.

He forced the words out.

“No.”

“What?”

“That wasn’t a skill.”

“...What kind of nonsense is that?”

Mira was dumbfounded.

She had naturally assumed Rimon had used a skill.

Of course, that would only be possible if Rimon were both a Sword Master and a Grand Duke-rank player.

Still, she believed it.

Unless he had used a skill such as [Time Stop] or [Word of Command], it went against everything she knew for him to cause something so impossible.

But An Dong-gwon denied her understanding of the world with a scream that sounded almost torn from him.

“That monster deflected the bullets flying at him with his sword and sent them back at the Unit 909 soldiers!”

For a moment, Mira could not understand his words.

Once she grasped their meaning, her expression became utterly bizarre.

“Deflected them? He sent fifty Psionic Bullets, fired almost simultaneously at supersonic speed, back at the people who fired them without being off by even an inch?”

“Yes.”

“Without using a skill? Just with, that... swordsmanship?”

“...Probably.”

“D-Does that even make sense?!”

An Dong-gwon gave no answer to Mira, whose eyes looked ready to pop out of her head.

Whether she accepted it or not, reality would not change.

“That is... No way. Even a player who had mastered swordsmanship skills could never do that...”

Muttering as she bit down hard on her nail to calm her anxiety, Mira suddenly fell silent.

Only then did she remember who she was facing.

Rimon Aspelder.

A relic of a bygone age who knew nothing but swinging a sword.

A symbol of the outdated past, left behind as times changed.

She had thought it was a profitable deal.

If removing one washed-up relic could put the PAB Director in her debt and earn her the Infinite Monarch’s favor, what was there to lose?

Rimon had only been called a guardian deity because there had been no players in his day.

Warriors had flourished in the past.

But just as warriors had declined with the development of guns, she had believed there was no need for a master of the sword in this day and age.

She had decided it would be easy to dispose of an ordinary person who was merely good at wielding a blade.

...

But had that truly been the right judgment?

Why?

Mira.

The guild leader of Stardust.

A Grand Duke-rank player, one of fewer than a hundred in the world.

She had always taken pride in knowing more than most.

Yet only then did she feel an immense sense of wrongness.

Why had she believed a Sword Master would be weaker than her?

Players could wield powerful skills and bring vast wealth and progress to the world.

Compared to them, Sword Masters were beings who knew nothing but swordsmanship.

That was why they were treated as relics.

But looked at another way?

It meant swordsmanship was the one thing they did exceptionally well.

A successful businessman might be respected in society, but that did not make them stronger than a soldier or martial artist.

Likewise, a player being famous and earning money did not mean they could naturally defeat a Sword Master in battle.

Yet she had never doubted it until now.

Just as the wealthy did not fear soldiers.

She had thought that no matter how skilled he was with a sword, he was no match for her, someone capable of using skills.

But could that swordsmanship truly be called merely skilled?

Had he really been able to reign as an absolute being only because there were no players?

When it came to Rimon Aspelder...

Had she, no, had all of them been trapped by common sense and made some absurd mistake?

Like a foolish nouveau riche who believed they would be fine because they had money, even while beating a gun-wielding soldier with a bag of cash?

Or...

Like a puppet, unaware it was a puppet, running into the flames led by someone else’s strings?

“So.”

Still holding the corpse of a woman, as though he did not even need to put her down.

The man who had wiped out Unit 909 with nothing but the sword in one hand.

“Who wants to die next?”

Mira trembled as she looked into the ice-cold eyes of the last Sword Master, an absolute being who had saved the world countless times and preserved humanity’s peace for centuries.

...

“This is...”

Kang Jeong-su remained frozen in a daze for a long time.

Unable to breathe as though someone had seized their throat, Kang Jeong-su finally moved their lips.

“How can this... This makes no sense...”

When Kang Jeong-su saw Unit 909 wiped out in an instant, they kept their composure.

Their combat power had been raised by expensive equipment, but they were still mid-level players. It was possible for them to be killed easily if someone caught them off guard.

Even when the criminal players and killers who charged in afterward were slaughtered in the blink of an eye.

Kang Jeong-su had been surprised, but they understood.

They had rushed in without coordination, as befitted criminals with no combat training, and brought about their own destruction.

Until then, Kang Jeong-su had believed that if the remaining one hundred and twenty high-level players displayed their true strength.

And if Mira and An Dong-gwon, the Grand Duke-rank players they had barely managed to invite by promising enormous benefits, stepped up.

Things would be different.

That had been true only minutes ago.

“You fucking idiot.”

“Gah!”

Kang Jeong-su recoiled in terror and fell over.

He hurriedly turned to crawl away, only to freeze again in horror.

A severed head with both eyes burst out lay directly before his nose.

And it was not the only one.

A mercenary split in half.

A PAB agent with a hole blown through their chest.

A player with their head smashed in.

All around Kang Jeong-su, horrific corpses beyond bearing had piled up like a mountain.

“You thought you could catch me with only two hundred little punks like these?”

“...W-What have you done?!”

Looking at the white-haired young man who had created that mountain of corpses without getting even a drop of blood on himself, Kang Jeong-su screamed without realizing it.

“Do you know who these people were?! They were this country’s future! They were the pillars that would have supported this country for nearly half a century!”

That was no exaggeration.

Thirty elite PAB agents.

Fifty fully armed Unit 909 soldiers.

Thirty-eight raid-party guild members from [Stardust] and [Cheonjong].

Fifty S-rank mercenaries from [Black Wolf].

And around thirty criminals and killers.

Setting aside the last two groups, one hundred and eighteen state-affiliated players had died there.

Sixty-eight of them had been high-level players.

In this age, every high-level player was both a one-person corporation and an asymmetric military asset.

The simultaneous slaughter of sixty-eight high-level players was unprecedented since the beginning of the Iron Age.

If this became known?

The country would be shaken to its core.