Solo Swordmaster - Chapter 35

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 35: The Mastermind

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Li Qing-yu wore a strange expression.

As if she doubted she had heard him correctly.

Or perhaps she found his unexpected words intriguing.

She blinked at Rimon, then tilted her head slightly.

“Do you mean that seriously?”

“Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?”

Rimon gave a faint laugh.

In this Iron Age, Monarchs were absolute beings.

They were superhumans who could hold even the leaders of nations in their hands and wield them as they pleased, while facing an army alone.

Yet one of them, the Infinite Monarch, had been a puppet.

It was not something a sane person would say.

If Yoo Na-gyeong had been alive, she would have shouted that her team leader had finally gone senile. Rimon would have smacked her on the head while questioning his own sanity as well.

But Rimon did not take back his words.

He simply continued calmly.

“You might not know this, but this was actually my first time fighting a Monarch.”

“I suppose it was.”

Li Qing-yu accepted that as a matter of course.

Unless there had been a war, Rimon would have had no reason to fight a Monarch.

He was not the sort of man who would deliberately crush the budding talents of a new age, and the Monarchs had nothing to gain from fighting a hero of the past.

If such a thing had happened, the standing of Sword Masters would not have fallen so far.

“To be honest, I’d been curious for a while. Just how impressive are these Monarchs that I’m treated like washed-up trash?”

When he fought Lee Cheon-gi.

The reason Rimon had focused so obsessively on probing him.

It was not simply because he was interested in Lee Cheon-gi, who had stolen and learned his swordsmanship.

He genuinely wanted to know.

The Monarchs who were called the absolute beings of this era.

Just how strong they were.

Rimon had chosen to live in accordance with the flow of the times. That was precisely why he wanted to know the true power of the Monarchs who stood at this era’s peak.

“So I was surprised after fighting the Infinite Monarch.”

At first, he thought Lee Cheon-gi was hiding his strength.

As the fight went on, he gradually began to feel that something was off.

And in the end, he realized.

“I never expected a bastard called a Monarch to be so weak.”

They were superhumans who had conquered the lowest floors of supposedly unconquerable Dungeons, reached level 100, and stood at the summit of all Players in this era.

Monarchs.

And yet, they were unexpectedly frail.

“A Monarch is weak?”

Apparently not expecting such an absurd assessment, Li Qing-yu’s eyes widened.

Rimon merely shrugged.

“To be exact, he fell short of my expectations.”

A Skill that stole swordsmanship?

If he could steal even Sword Principle and Sword Intent, that would have been worth acknowledging.

No, honestly, Rimon had assumed he would be capable of at least that much.

That was what he had expected from a Monarch.

That was also why he had kept checking until the very end to see whether Lee Cheon-gi had anything more to show him.

But Lee Cheon-gi never truly understood the Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword. In the end, he simply threw around Skills until he collapsed.

“Well, objectively speaking, he wasn’t that hopeless...”

Lee Cheon-gi had not been weak.

His ability to freely use thousands of Skills was certainly absurd.

In particular, the thousand Skills he used at the end had been worthy of Rimon using the ultimate secret of the Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword.

But compared to Rimon’s expectations?

“It’s hard not to question whether that’s enough to call him an absolute being.”

The Fairy Queen and the Word Speaker who ruled the Golden Age.

The Great Witch and the Saint who reigned over the Silver Age.

The Seven Dragons who conquered the Bronze Age.

The Sword Masters who had flourished during the Age of Heroes.

Every era had possessed those called absolute beings.

It was only that, as eras changed and new powers emerged, the owner of that position had changed.

And regardless of the era, absolute beings had one thing in common.

They possessed the power to overwhelm every absolute being of the preceding era.

The Seven Dragons had proven their strength by devouring incarnations, while the Sword Emperor, the first Sword Master, had come to be called an absolute being by cutting down those Seven Dragons.

Unfortunately, Lee Cheon-gi did not possess power that surpassed Sword Masters, the absolute beings of the previous era.

At best, he was around the level of a Great Witch.

Or perhaps a little stronger than a Word Speaker.

Rimon’s cold assessment was that he could not handle even the Seven Dragons, let alone a Sword Master.

Of course, even that was remarkable power.

But compared to the absolute beings of previous eras, who had no rivals at all, it was only natural to question the title, just as Rimon had said.

“It’s a mystery how they were recognized as absolute beings in the first place.”

That was why he felt something was off.

The rise of the ten Monarchs as absolute beings had been accepted as a natural result of the changing times.

But had it really been a natural change?

Was it merely chance that the Monarchs had come to be called absolute beings without going through what should have been inevitable, a battle with Rimon, the absolute being of the previous era?

That was where his suspicion began.

“So I suddenly got curious. What did they believe in to strut around as absolute beings and feel confident they were stronger than me?”

Perhaps Lee Cheon-gi had been particularly incompatible with Rimon.

He was an unusual Monarch, wielding thousands of Skills but possessing no Unique Skill of his own besides 『Skill Copying』.

Still, Rimon could state it with certainty.

It made no sense for someone who could not overcome even a mere difference in compatibility to be called an absolute being.

At least, that was not what an absolute being was to him.

In that sense, Rimon’s suspicion was justified.

Justified enough for him to squeeze every last answer from the dying Lee Cheon-gi.

“Though that bastard barely knew anything about the reason himself.”

Rimon chuckled.

Lee Cheon-gi had been born in the Iron Age.

He had grown up learning that Monarchs being absolute beings was simply common sense.

Asking him why Monarchs were so weak could hardly produce a proper answer.

In fact, Lee Cheon-gi had made quite an impressive expression in several ways when asked that question.

That alone told Rimon something.

Even if he caught another Monarch and asked them, he would have trouble getting the answer he wanted.

They too were Players, after all.

They were accustomed to accepting and using what they had been given.

“Still, questioning him about this and that let me learn an unexpected fact.”

“What fact?”

“That bastard never originally intended to kill me.”

“...After blowing up a building and gathering hundreds of high-level Players to capture the Sword Duke?”

“Oh, that was definitely meant to kill me. The process was a little funny, though.”

Rimon snickered.

Then he tossed the used towel behind him and continued lightly.

“The important part is that he originally only intended to make me retire.”

When Rimon had beaten up Seo Yong-chan, Lee Cheon-gi’s brother-in-law, Lee Cheon-gi had ordered action against Rimon.

But that had only meant pressuring the PAB to dismiss Rimon.

At that stage, there had been no plan to frame him for treason or lure him into a trap and kill him.

It was not because Lee Cheon-gi was wary of him.

If anything, it was the opposite.

He had no interest in washed-up trash like a Sword Master, so he had not even felt the need to deal with Rimon.

“But apparently, something happened that made him want to deal with me more thoroughly.”

“What happened?”

“Yeah. That bastard had been looking very hard for something lately, and he found out that the person who had it met with me.”

Perhaps it had passed into Rimon’s hands.

Even if it had not, Rimon might interfere with obtaining it.

With those suspicions, Lee Cheon-gi felt the need to deal with Rimon for certain, rather than merely dismissing him.

“Then his subordinate’s excessive loyalty and that bastard Jeong-su’s overreaction got mixed in, and things seem to have blown up on their own... Anyway, that’s not important.”

Rimon shrugged.

He roughly smoothed his disheveled hair with one hand and spoke.

“The heart of the problem is that, without ‘that meeting,’ I might never have ended up crossing swords with the Infinite Monarch.”

Of course, it was only a hypothesis.

It was not something he could conclude with certainty.

Even if he had only been dismissed, Rimon might have gotten angry and stormed into the Infinity Guild to raise hell.

Or Lee Cheon-gi might have found Rimon bothersome later and tried to finish him off.

Just as two tigers could not share one mountain, if Lee Cheon-gi wished to become an absolute being, his clash with Rimon would eventually have been inevitable.

But... was it truly inevitable?

“What a coincidence.”

If he had been anyone other than Rimon, he might have dismissed it as mere bad luck.

But the instincts of a Sword Master who had lived through countless ages and experienced innumerable events did not overlook the subtle sense of wrongness hidden within it.

“If I hadn’t fallen this far and been treated like washed-up trash, nobody would have charged at me so recklessly.”

The fall of Sword Masters.

Had it truly been the result of the changing times?

Or had someone deliberately been undermining the position of Sword Masters?

“If people hadn’t propped Lee Cheon-gi up as some absolute being, that bastard wouldn’t have pulled something so reckless either.”

The Monarchs called absolute beings.

Had the times made them overconfident?

Or had someone exaggerated their status as absolute beings and filled their heads with hot air?

“And then there was the fact that that meeting happened right after I clashed with the Infinite Monarch.”

It could only be called an extraordinary coincidence.

Separate issues that could have been overlooked on their own had overlapped through sheer misfortune and created this outcome.

“Well, it could all be a coincidence.”

Rimon did not dismiss the possibility of simple bad luck.

When one lived as long as he had, one experienced more disasters caused by overlapping misfortunes than one could count on their fingers.

“Besides, it would be difficult to do deliberately in the first place.”

The fall of Sword Masters and the rise of Monarchs had been social phenomena unfolding over decades.

They were not things that could easily be accomplished through intent alone.

Unless some transcendent being capable of twisting the laws of the world intervened.

At most, a vast organization could perhaps create such a result by investing tremendous funds and manpower over a long period.

“At first, that was why I suspected the intervention of beings beyond humanity...”

It was a suspicion Rimon could hold because he had gained the ability to see Constellations.

The mockery and hostility he had felt from the Constellations when he fell into the trap had been enough to make him suspicious.

Yet when he interrogated Lee Cheon-gi, Rimon had stopped after driving away the Constellations’ gazes.

Because their hostility had been too blatant.

If there truly was someone behind the scenes who had secretly turned Monarchs into absolute beings and manipulated Lee Cheon-gi into fighting him, would they reveal themselves so easily?

Would they not instead try to conceal their hostility until the end?

“But you see, I know people who are much better at this sort of scheming than some half-baked god or Constellation.”

That was why Rimon smiled faintly.

A faction with tremendous influence throughout society.

Those skilled at plotting from the shadows, who also held a deep grudge against him.

Rimon knew that faction all too well. He had fought them for centuries as an absolute being, and they had stubbornly survived.

“So let me ask you.”

Clang!

It happened in an instant.

Rimon drew his sword.

Then, as if confirming something, he casually asked.

“Was it you?”