WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 148: I Have to Make a Living Too
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“Who in the world would dare treat the Sword Duke like a sucker, sir?”
Wang Gi-neung answered reflexively.
He meant it with complete sincerity.
The other members of the Black Dragon Clan were the same, but having personally seen Rimon finish off Ryu Gang-cheol, Wang Gi-neung knew especially well just how terrifying Rimon was.
Yet Rimon merely snorted at that.
“Really? Then what is this?”
“What do you mean?”
“This junk you brought, calling it the Shanghai Wang Family’s entire fortune.”
Rimon nudged the thin documents inside the small box he had split in half with the tip of his foot.
Wang Gi-neung tried to answer him.
That there seemed to be a misunderstanding.
That this was unquestionably everything the Shanghai Wang Family possessed, so please do not be angry and clear up this misunderstanding.
But the instant their eyes met, Wang Gi-neung swallowed the excuses rising to his throat.
Then, looking between Rimon’s cold face and the large box he was tapping with a finger, he let out a heavy sigh.
“...
Did you know from the beginning?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I heard the Sword Duke was not particularly interested in increasing his assets, sir.”
“So in the end, you did take me for a sucker.”
Rimon raised an eyebrow.
Then he continued, looking at Wang Gi-neung with icy eyes.
“You thought I would fall for a false oath of loyalty after you hid away your most important assets and personnel, then offered up nothing but this hollow shell.”
“...”
“You idiot.”
Perhaps because Rimon had hit the mark, Wang Gi-neung fell silent.
Rimon clicked his tongue lightly as he looked at him, as though the whole thing was too absurd to even anger him.
“If you wanted to make a deal, you should have just made a deal. If you wanted to beg, you should have just begged. What kind of thinking is it to beg for mercy while trying to pull a scam?”
“It was the result of weighing the gains and losses, sir.”
Giving up everything and pledging loyalty was far too dangerous a gamble.
If the person one pledged loyalty to decided to do so, they could strip them of everything and abandon them at any time.
From that perspective, Wang Gi-neung trying to prepare a backup for himself was, in a way, a natural decision.
“Did those calculations not include the losses if you got caught trying to scam me?”
“I didn’t expect to be found out like this, sir.”
That was all. He had simply left out the fact that getting caught would ruin him like this.
As though he had moved beyond giving up and reached enlightenment, Wang Gi-neung gave a hollow laugh. Looking at the large box on Rimon’s lap, he continued quietly.
“How could I have expected that before I, the Clan Head, even made a decision, the family would hand everything over to the Sword Duke first?”
Tapping the box that truly contained everything the Shanghai Wang Family possessed, unlike the hollow shell Wang Gi-neung had offered, Rimon spoke coldly.
“You should have expected it. This is the result of weighing the gains and losses you like so much.”
“You are right, sir.”
Wang Gi-neung readily admitted it.
He could roughly guess why his family had abandoned him, their Clan Head, and attached themselves to Rimon.
“I alone am enough as the scapegoat to take the blame. There is no reason to drag the whole family down with me, is there?”
“I like how quickly you understand.”
“From my family’s perspective, this would be the most beneficial choice, sir.”
If Wang Gi-neung had still been whole, the entire family would not have turned their backs on him.
A grandmaster-level expert alone could elevate a family’s standing.
But now, despite once being a master of claw techniques, he had lost both arms and become an invalid.
Wang Gi-neung was a stain on the family.
Like an old hunting dog fit for nothing but being thrown into a pot and boiled for food.
“Do you resent your family?”
“How could I have the nerve to resent them when they suffered needless bloodshed because they had a foolish Clan Head like me?”
Even so, Wang Gi-neung did not resent the family.
The Shanghai Wang Family had suffered the most casualties in this attack, and the family had been driven into a corner.
All of it was his responsibility.
“What will become of the Shanghai Wang Family now?”
“You should ask your new Clan Head, not me.”
Rimon turned his head slightly.
Following his gaze, Wang Gi-neung looked to the side. When the masked person who had brought the box removed the mask, he gave a bitter smile.
“Well, this is a surprise. I never expected you, Wang Ryun, to be behind something like this.”
Martial Division Chief Wang Ryun.
Originally from a branch family, he had become the Shanghai Wang Family’s strongest expert after Wang Gi-neung became an invalid. He answered in a stiff voice.
“I merely followed orders.”
“...
The Princess?”
“...”
“Well, I have nothing to say even if I had ten mouths. I didn’t even realize the Martial Division Chief of the main family was a spy.”
Wang Gi-neung let out a hollow laugh.
It was not merely because he was embarrassed that, despite priding himself on being second to none at reading the room, he had failed to understand even his own family’s thoughts.
Just knowing Wang Ryun had become the new Clan Head made the Shanghai Wang Family’s future plainly visible.
As Li Qing-yu’s spy, Wang Ryun would devote himself to loyalty more fervently than anyone else, if only to preserve his position as Clan Head.
“The Shanghai Wang Family will now become the Sword Duke’s loyal hound, sir.”
“Good. Thanks to that, I can finally reinforce Guardian’s personnel.”
“That is reassuring, sir.”
Wang Gi-neung’s bitter smile deepened.
His family would be assigned to inspect the Black Dragon Clan under none other than Rimon.
Considering how the Shanghai Wang Family would be treated from now on, it would become thoroughly subordinate to Rimon even without Wang Ryun’s involvement.
Was it fortunate or unfortunate that this made them less likely to be discarded after outliving their usefulness?
He did not bother seeking an answer.
After all, having the Shanghai Wang Family’s continued existence recognized was what he had wanted.
There was only one thing different from his hopes.
There was no longer any place for him.
That was why Wang Gi-neung calmly spoke up.
“Sword Duke, there is one final thing I wish to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Where do you think I first went wrong?”
When he intercepted Ryu Gang-cheol?
When he obtained the authority to investigate?
Or when he met Rimon?
At what point had he made the wrong choice and arrived at this end?
Rimon answered quietly when Wang Gi-neung asked the question he could not answer himself no matter how much he thought about it.
“How should I know that? But one thing is certain.”
“What is it, sir?”
“If you had put your Princess before your family’s interests, then no matter what corner you had been driven into, you would have received help at least once.”
Li Qing-yu would have looked after them, if not because of their loyalty, then at least because of the benefits the Shanghai Wang Family offered.
Yet Rimon’s words meant the Shanghai Wang Family had become a scapegoat because it failed to prove its value. Wang Gi-neung gave a faint laugh.
“I see. You mean I had my eye on the wrong gains.”
As a member of the Black Dragon Clan, skilled in schemes.
And as the Clan Head of this ruthless age.
He had lived believing that what helped a family was not intangible trust, but tangible money and power.
Yet in the final moment, he had lost everything because he had failed to earn that trust. Wang Gi-neung let out a sigh.
Then he slowly raised his head.
“Wang Ryun.”
Perhaps because he no longer felt any need to wear a mask, Wang Gi-neung spoke in a voice full of weariness rather than his usual slyness. His face looked as though he had aged ten years in an instant.
“Do not become like me.”
They were the last words he left his successor as the Clan Head of the Shanghai Wang Family.
* * *
[So, what will happen to that man now?]
“You are better off not knowing.”
[The fact that you said that, Team Leader, makes me hate that I can imagine it.]
“The Seven Dragons Society is not merciful to failures.”
After the martial artists took Wang Gi-neung away, Rimon answered Yoo Na-gyeong’s quiet mutter in an even voice.
It now wore the mask of a major corporation, but the Seven Dragons Society had once been called the Demon Cult, the world’s largest criminal organization.
After causing enormous damage to the entire clan through repeated failures, then losing all his strength and becoming an invalid, Wang Gi-neung would not be allowed to retire peacefully.
Especially considering how many times he had stabbed Rimon in the back, now that Rimon had risen as a leading figure in the Black Dragon Clan.
[For a place like that, it seems like you kept slacking off without anything happening to you, Team Leader.]
“I had a powerful backer.”
[Doesn’t that mean that if the Princess hadn’t protected you, Team Leader, you could have been cut down long ago too?]
“As if that could happen.”
Rimon snorted lightly.
Then he bluntly explained why it could never have happened.
“I would have had to deal with the annoyance of cutting down a few dozen assassins who came after me instead.”
Yoo Na-gyeong kept her beak tightly shut.
She had realized anew that Rimon’s life, which had always seemed so leisurely, was actually like taking a walk between blades.
[...
I have been thinking this for a while, but do you really have to marry the Princess? No matter how I look at it, this does not seem like a place that suits you, Team Leader.]
“You cannot abandon the bride just because you do not like her family.”
[Is that really the issue here?]
“Besides, even if it was not for the marriage, I have no intention of pulling out now.”
Rimon spoke decisively.
Then his expression turned cold.
“Na-gyeong, you saw the Wraiths of the Liberation Brigade too. You know how alien and dangerous they were.”
[That is...]
Yoo Na-gyeong trailed off.
They had managed to repel them, but Velos, Eugene, and Ryu Gang-cheol had been abnormal in many ways. There was the fact that they had gone beyond borrowing a Constellation’s power through the Skill 『Constellation Descent』 and had actually housed the Constellation itself within their bodies.
There was also the fact that it allowed each of them to surpass the limits of their levels and demonstrate power capable of contending with Monarchs.
And there was their strange armor, along with Velos’s horrific rampage at the end after losing his divinity.
The rest could be set aside.
But what if 『Constellation Descent』 was a Skill every Wraith of the Liberation Brigade could use?
The Liberation Brigade might have been an organization with power comparable to the Ten Great Guilds, or perhaps even greater.
“I do not know why they are after the Seven Arcs or what they intend to do with it, but one thing is certain.”
Remembering what Eugene had told him about the Liberation Brigade’s goal, the seven arks said to conceal the secrets of the stars, Rimon continued quietly.
“Something is happening.”
Like the Demon God War, when the Demon God descended, or the Refinement Cataclysm, which changed the map of the American continent.
Something ominous was happening somewhere. If it could not be stopped, the world would once again be swept up in disaster.
Yoo Na-gyeong wore a complicated expression as she looked at Rimon, who declared this as a hero who had saved the world many times.
[Is that why you are trying to join hands with the Seven Dragons Society? Because you think you will need the Seven Dragons Society’s power to stop it?]
“No. I do not just plan to join hands with the Seven Dragons Society. I plan to swallow the whole thing.”
[...
What?]
Perhaps because this was the first time she had heard his goal, Yoo Na-gyeong gaped like a pigeon struck by a slingshot.
Rimon gave her a cold smile.
“I have saved the world several times by now. Is it not about time I claimed this small reward?”
[... The Seven Dragons Society is small? It is a conglomerate that possesses all the wealth in the world.]
“Even so, it is cheaper than the whole world.”
He was tired of being a sucker who saved the world for free.
So no matter what the Liberation Brigade was plotting, he intended to claim what was his.
Watching Rimon say that so calmly, Yoo Na-gyeong could only make a bizarre expression, as though she were looking at a pushy salesman trying to force world peace onto someone.
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