WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 38: The One and Only Reward

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Rimon cried out as if he were coughing up blood, and Li Qing-yu answered with an oddly bashful air.

“I wouldn't call it fraud. It was merely a somewhat sophisticated creative economy[1].”

“How is that colossal shell game a creative economy?!”

Rimon ground his teeth.

That was how absurd Li Qing-yu's words were.

If everyone believed stones were more precious than gold, then they could buy gold with stones picked up by the roadside.

Likewise, the Seven Dragons Society had resolved its debts by inflating the value of Dungeon byproducts hundreds or even thousands of times over, creating a controlled inflationary bubble.

Simply put?

“By deliberately creating a bubble!”

Just as tulip mania had once driven the price of a single tulip bulb past tens of thousands of dollars.

Or as the stock prices of any internet-related company had soared dozens or hundreds of times over during the IT bubble.

The Seven Dragons Society had artificially driven the value of Dungeon byproducts through the roof.

A so-called Dungeon Bubble.

Damn it, no wonder a single item cost tens of billions...

In this case, Players appeared to be the greatest beneficiaries. After all, they were the ones digging up and selling Dungeon byproducts.

But on sober assessment?

Even high-level Players were ultimately primary producers.

In other words, no more than miners.

Moreover, given Players' constant pursuit of higher levels, no matter how much they earned, they spent most of their profits acquiring even more expensive items.

Even going heavily into debt to do so.

Whether miners dug up gold or diamonds, it was ultimately the mine owners who grew rich.

Likewise, the ones who truly profited from the Dungeon Bubble in this Iron Age were the Association and the Seven Dragon Group.

There were countless ways to make a fortune merely by being able to control the bubble.

In that sense, the common saying that the Seven Dragon Group possessed all the wealth in the world was unexpectedly accurate.

Of course, none of it could be called legal.

Accounting fraud, stock manipulation, hoarding, monopolies.

It would have been harder to find an illegal practice they had not used.

Yet even after confessing to that unprecedented con, Li Qing-yu did not look the least bit cowed.

She merely defended herself calmly.

“Either way, it allowed us to prevent the global economy from collapsing.”

“You said that only happened because of the idiotic things you did while claiming to protect world peace.”

“Yes, but if we had not kept pouring all the profits we earned that way into those idiotic things, the world couldn't have remained as peaceful as it is now.”

“...”

Li Qing-yu spoke with a sweet smile.

Rimon could not bring himself to deny her words.

If the Seven Dragons Society had not been working behind the scenes, several wars would surely have broken out over the past few decades.

Perhaps there was no small chance that clashes between entrenched interests and Players could, at worst, have escalated into a great war that swept across the entire world.

Honestly, it was an incredible feat.

They had prevented all of it with money.

It was only the means they used to earn that money that were ridiculous.

Deliberately creating a bubble was not normally possible in the first place.

And to control it for decades, ensuring it did not greatly affect society as a whole while producing steady profits?

It was an achievement possible only for the Seven Dragons Society, which possessed every advantage.

Financial power accumulated over long years.

The organizational power that had once ruled the world in the distant past.

The expertise accumulated as a criminal organization.

“Even then, it wasn't enough. We had to weather several crises.”

Li Qing-yu confessed honestly.

Maintaining the global economy while preserving peace was possible even for the Seven Dragons Society, but difficult to sustain.

Whenever they contained a major incident, they had to scramble to secure the necessary budget.

There were times they lost enormous sums after failing to manage the bubble.

There were times they nearly failed to prevent wars because they missed vital information.

There were even times they suffered casualties because of unexpected powerful enemies.

They had truly been days of indescribable hardship.

“Most of the clans began to question how long we had to keep doing something so absurd.”

“Of course they did...”

Rimon muttered with a groan.

If they had openly protected world peace, that would have been one thing.

But the Seven Dragons Society had used every illegal means imaginable, including the Dungeon Bubble, bribery, and assassination. They could not even boast of their accomplishments.

They bore all the losses while gaining nothing.

No matter how much the Seven Dragons Society dreamed of an ideal world, it could not have welcomed such a situation.

Especially now that, having gone legitimate and remade itself as a corporation, its leaders had grown more sensitive to profit and loss than religious conviction.

“But our Black Dragon Clan did not give up until the very end.”

There was only one exception.

The Black Dragon Clan, which had first proposed the plan.

“So, to continue the plan despite the other clans' opposition, we had to pay a considerable price.”

“A price?”

“Yes.”

Rimon wore an inscrutable expression, as though afraid of what he might hear next.

Unfortunately, his premonition proved correct.

The price Li Qing-yu revealed with a smile made his head ring once again.

“We agreed that our clan would take responsibility for every loss incurred while protecting world peace.”

“Th...”

This must have been what it meant to be at a loss for words.

For a moment, he simply opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish in need of CPR.

Finally recovering from the shock, as though someone had struck the back of his head with a hammer, Rimon asked in disbelief.

“They accepted such an absurd condition?”

“We made them accept it.”

“How?”

Rimon was practically mystified.

The World Peace Plan had been difficult even with the entire Seven Dragons Society working together.

And they were going to make a single clan bear all its losses?

No sane person would have accepted that proposal.

Just as a bank would not lend money to someone incapable of repaying it, the other clans must have known that the Black Dragon Clan had no way to cover those losses.

And yet, how had she made them accept those terms?

Li Qing-yu revealed the secret.

“We put up our shares in the Leviathan Hotel as collateral.”

* * *

The Seven Dragons Society was represented by seven holding companies.

After the Black Dragon Clan put up shares in the Leviathan Hotel, the very foundation of their clan, as security, the other clans that had actively opposed the plan had, quite miraculously, become its passionate supporters.

Li Qing-yu said it as though it were a joke.

Then she smiled at Rimon, who stood frozen with his jaw hanging open.

“Fortunately, whenever we put up shares, the other clans competed to lend us money, allowing us to continue the plan.”

Naturally, they would have.

Shares in Leviathan meant control of the Seven Dragons Society.

Even though they belonged to the same Seven Dragons Society... no, precisely because they did, it was a treasure they could not help coveting.

“We lost the support of our own clan after losing quite a lot of shares, though.”

From prestigious families that had produced inheritors of the Seventy-Two Martial Arts Schools generation after generation for centuries to low-ranking members who had only just had their names entered into the clan register in the current generation.

Quite a few had already turned their backs on them, and many had even transferred to other clans.

Li Qing-yu said it all with a bright smile.

After listening blankly for a moment, Rimon suddenly remembered something and asked without thinking.

“You said you already lost a lot of shares?”

“Yes.”

“...Didn't you say you were giving me forty-nine percent of the Leviathan Hotel shares as a dowry?”

“I did.”

“Then how much is left?”

If clans that had served faithfully for centuries had turned their backs on them, they could not have lost merely one or two percent.

And if she gave away another forty-nine percent, how much could remain?

Rimon asked with dread.

The answer was clear.

“1.1 percent.”

“...”

“You heard correctly, so please don't make that face.”

Rimon blinked with a dazed expression, as though he could not believe his ears.

Li Qing-yu smiled gently.

“The forty-nine percent I will give Sword Duke, plus the 1.1 percent left to me, makes 50.1 percent. That is all our clan has left.”

About half the shares in the Leviathan Hotel.

To be clear, it was an enormous fortune.

Even the combined market capitalizations of three or four major corporations would not amount to a quarter of it.

But conversely, it also meant that the Black Dragon Clan had already lost a staggering amount of assets.

“Yes, our clan has already fallen.”

Li Qing-yu confessed.

It simply had not been revealed to the outside world.

The Black Dragon Clan was, for all practical purposes, half ruined.

“No one believes we can rise again, and the elders are only making plans to sell me to another clan for a high price.”

As though sharing an amusing joke, Li Qing-yu lightly revealed her clan's downfall.

Then she calmly asked the stunned Rimon.

“You said that if you had never met me, you might not have had to fight the Infinite Monarch, correct?”

“...”

“That is both true and false.”

Before revealing the conspiracy, Rimon had made that assumption.

Li Qing-yu agreed with it.

But she denied it at the same time.

“My visit was only a trigger. With the Black Dragon Clan's fall, it would have happened someday anyway.”

The fact that he had never needed to fight a Monarch until now was itself an achievement the Seven Dragons Society had secured by pouring money and manpower into it without restraint.

There was no point desperately preserving peace if Rimon simply sent a Monarch flying and rendered it all meaningless.

But after already losing nearly half its shares, the Black Dragon Clan no longer had the means to support the World Peace Plan.

That was why the fight with a Monarch happened.

It was not that the Seven Dragons Society had manufactured the conflict.

It was the result of the Seven Dragons Society no longer preventing it.

Li Qing-yu spoke calmly, as though presenting research findings at an academic conference.

“...”

Rimon looked at her in silence.

He was silent, and silent, and silent again.

At last, after gazing steadily into Li Qing-yu's obsidian-like eyes, Rimon finally spoke.

“Why?”

He had thought about it countless times.

Yet he could find no answer to the question.

Carrying a doubt he had rarely experienced even over the course of his long life, Rimon asked again.

“Why did you go that far?”

She had twisted the doctrine as she pleased.

The Seven Dragons Society had nearly gone bankrupt.

She had changed the world's entire economic structure.

Her clan had fallen, and she had lost her standing.

A wise person would have merely claimed credit at the outset and left it at that.

Even an ordinary person would have given up after understanding those hardships.

Even a complete fool would have stepped back once their clan fell.

“Even knowing there was nothing to gain from it?”

Why had she defied everyone's opposition and carried out such an absurd balancing act for thirty-two years, protecting world peace?

Rimon asked in a grave voice.

“I did gain something.”

Looking into his deeply shadowed golden eyes, Li Qing-yu smiled.

Then she cheerfully revealed the one thing she had gained.

The reason she had committed such excesses.

The result of practically selling off half her clan's holdings, losing everyone's support, and becoming an object of mockery to the other clans while steadfastly protecting world peace.

“You accepted my proposal of marriage, didn't you?”

World peace that even the full strength of the Seven Dragons Society could protect for only a few decades.

An absolute being who had protected it for centuries with a single sword.

If she could gain Rimon, it would still be a bargain even if she sold off not just the Black Dragon Clan, but the entire Seven Dragons Society.

Rimon could only stare blankly at Li Qing-yu as she declared that with a beaming smile.

“...Just for that?”

“That's no small thing.”

Li Qing-yu shook her head slightly.

Then she glanced at the sky, where starlight had vanished from the moment Rimon arrived.

For the first time, she confessed the reason she had needed to secure humanity's strongest weapon, even going so far as to propose marriage, a reason she could tell no one else.

“Now that the Sword Tower is gone and the lineage of Sword Masters has been severed, Sword Duke is the one and only being capable of standing against the Constellations.”

Footnotes:

[1] Creative economy: A prominent Korean political and economic slogan, making Li Qing-yu's defense especially ironic.

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