Solo Swordmaster - Chapter 47

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 47: The End of Blood and Greed

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To be clear, Rimon agreed with Li Qing-yu that the Constellations needed to be watched.

But he had withheld judgment on the Constellations themselves.

What their purpose was.

Whether they would someday harm the world.

Whether all Constellations belonged to the same faction.

Whether it was necessary to wipe out even the last of them.

He knew too little about the Constellations to blindly treat them as enemies.

During the Age of Heroes, he had encountered countless monsters and madmen who defined evil solely by their own standards and committed massacres because their enemies had a different nationality, religion, or skin color, all while believing themselves righteous.

That was why he had no choice but to be even more cautious.

But now.

He could not say the same for the Serpent That Joins the Ends.

This snake bastard was a harmful snake bastard.

Not merely because it had laughed at Yoo Na-gyeong's death, or because it might have been the mastermind who led her to that death.

Someone who turns humans into this cannot possibly be harmless.

Park Hyeon-gun looked the same as before.

But that was only from an ordinary person's perspective.

With black radiance lingering in his eyes, Rimon saw something entirely different.

Black scales covering the entire body.

A head transformed into that of a snake.

A tongue hanging all the way to the ground.

Tentacles growing where arms should have been.

Since gaining the ability to see the forms of Constellations, Rimon had observed all manner of Players.

But this snake was fundamentally different.

Unlike the other Constellations, which at most seemed to parasitize or merge with Players, there was scarcely any trace of a human form left.

More importantly, between the snake's gaping jaws was Park Hyeon-gun's real head, half-melted and screaming.

It made one thing clear.

This snake bastard had taken possession of Park Hyeon-gun's body.

And unlike the shadows Rimon had seen until now, this snake was a real Constellation's true body.

“There are plenty of things I wanted to ask when I met you Constellations...”

Rimon drew his sword back slightly, gripping it tight.

Then, charging at the snake wearing Park Hyeon-gun's skin like lightning, he shouted fiercely.

“But first, die, you snake bastard!”

Shhk!

It was a flash of light.

Rather than a charge, it was a leap so swift it resembled a missile launched from a platform.

When its speed reached its peak, Rimon's sword struck out, and the instant it seemed to touch, it had already pierced through its target.

There was only one problem.

The severed snake vanished like an illusion.

Instead, a mocking voice, as though flicking its tongue, came from behind Rimon.

“『Octagonal Barrier』.”

The moment eight barriers layered around Rimon, the snake split its mouth in a long grin.

As if showing off, it raised one hand and snapped one of the tail-like tentacles growing in place of its arms.

“Boom.”

Kwooooom!

Lightning, flame, ice, curses, blades, venom, crushing pressure, and thunderous explosions erupted into a vortex inside the barriers.

Even confined within those barriers, it was a storm of disaster powerful enough to destroy Infinity's headquarters and still have enough force to wipe out several kilometers around it.

The only saving grace was that Rimon had been trapped inside.

He cut through every Skill with a single slash and escaped the barriers, preventing a catastrophe that would have erased the heart of the city.

But that was only the beginning.

Boom! Crash! Kwoooom!

This snake bastard...?

As though that first blow had merely been a greeting, the snake unleashed countless Skills in succession.

Rimon cut through them one by one, his brow furrowing.

It was not merely because the snake was firing large-scale Skills capable of causing enormous damage, as though using the residents as hostages.

The fighting style felt strangely familiar.

The way it read his attacks in advance, dodged by moving through space, and combined hundreds or thousands of Skills to maximize their force.

It was only natural.

It was the same fighting style Rimon had experienced yesterday from Infinite Monarch Lee Cheon-gi, and specifically from Lee Cheon-gi while 【Overlord】 was active.

“...I see. So that was why?”

At that moment, Rimon understood why the snake had appeared before him now, even going so far as to steal Park Hyeon-gun's body.

“You thought now, while you can use the Monarch's power that idiot stole, was the perfect chance to take my life?”

The snake did not answer.

It merely flicked its tongue and smiled hideously.

That alone was enough for Rimon to know that his guess was correct.

At first glance, it seemed like a foolish decision.

Park Hyeon-gun had personally proven that merely stealing a Monarch's power was not enough to defeat Rimon.

But there was one decisive difference between Park Hyeon-gun and the snake.

The snake was a Constellation.

And that difference had produced a significant result.

Unlike Park Hyeon-gun, who had destroyed himself because he could not handle even a few dozen Skills, the snake was unleashing hundreds and thousands without restraint.

Their power was even greater than when Lee Cheon-gi had originally used them.

In the end, the limits of what Park Hyeon-gun, a human, and the snake, a Constellation, could handle were fundamentally different.

Since it was not Lee Cheon-gi himself, it was inferior in the technical finesse of combining Skills. But its overwhelming output made up for that shortcoming.

More importantly, the difference between humans and Constellations was not limited to that capacity.

Flash, flas-flas-flash!

Rimon slashed, thrust, and shattered.

But no matter how many times his sword struck, the snake melted away like an illusion, appeared somewhere else, and rained down more Skills.

Skills used in front of him came flying from behind. Even when he leaped forward, his body somehow seemed to move sideways.

It was as if space itself had twisted.

Or as if he were chasing a snake through its den.

Unable to cope with techniques stranger than anything he had experienced even while fighting Lee Cheon-gi, Rimon was driven entirely onto the defensive.

It was only natural.

This was the snake's own power, not the power of Lee Cheon-gi or Park Hyeon-gun.

It was the authority of a great Constellation, something utterly beyond comparison with the Skills humans used.

That was why the snake had accepted an imperfect incarnation and even renewed its contract to descend into Park Hyeon-gun's body and appear before Rimon.

Guardian Deity of Humanity. Sword Master. Whatever he was, he was still human.

Rimon was the only human capable of opposing them, which was why he had become someone they needed to watch.

But that also meant the reward for defeating him would be immense.

The karma from that deed alone would let the snake rise beyond its current rank and immediately join the ranks of Monarch-class Constellations.

And if it could not defeat him?

It only needed to retreat.

Park Hyeon-gun was a worthless tool whose use had run out. What happened to that body did not matter to the snake.

Low risk, high return.

The danger was minimal, while the reward was enormous. There was no reason for the snake to let this opportunity go.

Reviewing its meticulous and cunning calculations, the snake coldly drove Rimon into a corner.

Or rather, it thought it was.

“Serpent That Joins the Ends, was it?”

Rimon had done nothing but slash at empty air.

Then he spoke quietly, having failed to land even one blow on the snake.

“I have a rough idea of your true nature now.”

The snake did not know that Rimon had not been chasing it and swinging uselessly simply because he had fallen for its tricks.

Nor did it know that Rimon had been observing the snake, carefully reflecting on the sensation transmitted through his sword.

His gaze resembled not a swordsman in a desperate battle, but a snake hunter blocking a snake hole and digging out its lair so it could not escape.

“You appear to control space, but that is only a disguise. Your true ability must be lies and deception, making the false real and replacing the real with the false.”

“...!”

The Serpent That Joins the Ends flinched.

As Rimon said, the ends in the snake's name did not refer to one space and another.

They referred to the real and the false.

Truth and lies.

Illusion and reality.

Its Constellation name came from the authority to join those two opposing extremes.

But the more hidden that power was, the stronger it became. So it had deceived Players by disguising itself as a Constellation that controlled space.

The snake was shaken that its true nature had been seen through so quickly.

Rimon gave a cold, mocking smile.

“You stupid snake bastard.”

Whether it was naturally stupid.

Or whether greed had blinded it.

It had rushed at the prey before its eyes and thrown not only its contractors, but itself as well, into the flames.

Rimon laughed at that foolishness.

“You dared appear before me relying on nothing more than petty swindler's tricks. I will at least praise that foolhardiness.”

Perhaps enraged by those insulting words, the snake raised its eyes and let out a savage roar.

It was about to unleash a blow layered with hundreds, thousands of Skills.

But before it could move, Rimon had already stepped forward.

One step beyond the distortion.

Two steps to close the distance.

Three steps as he swung his sword.

In only three steps, he crossed the maze of twisted space and swung at the snake.

The snake was enraged, but not alarmed.

Its authority was lies and deception.

Moving between reality and illusion, the snake could turn even the fact of being cut into a lie, into an illusion.

That was the power of a Constellation.

A transcendent authority that crushed the laws of the world and made miracles real, something mere humans could never approach.

Slice.

“?!?!?!”

That was why, in the next moment, the snake's eyes widened.

Rimon's sword had cut an illusion created by its authority.

Yet as the illusion's arms split apart, its own arms fell to the ground with the very real pain of bone and flesh being severed.

Why?

He cut an illusion.

Why did that sword reach my real body?

“What are you so surprised about, you moron?”

As though it were having a nightmare with its eyes open, the snake's reptilian face clearly showed its confusion and shock.

Rimon snickered.

Then he used his blade as a mirror to reflect the snake's image and spoke coldly.

“If you can turn truth into lies, you should have expected that by cutting an illusion, I could cut the real thing as well.”

“...!!!”

The snake was horrified.

Not because it could not understand Rimon's words.

On the contrary, it understood them, which left it so shocked that it nearly bit through its own tongue.

To cut the real thing through an illusion.

It meant that by cutting the moon reflected on water, he could also cut the moon hanging in the sky.

That was not a power even the snake, a Constellation of lies and deception, possessed.

Yet a human had done it? With nothing but swordsmanship?

It could not believe it.

No, it did not want to believe it.

It wanted to think it was a lie, words meant to deceive it, some kind of trick.

But it could not.

Its severed arms, which would not regenerate.

The pain surging from the stumps.

More than anything, the cold, composed look in Rimon's eyes told the snake, a Constellation of lies and deception, that this was neither a lie nor a deception.

It was the truth.

At the same time, the snake understood.

Why, among humans no better than insects, only this man had been deemed worthy of caution.

Why even Monarch-class Constellations had merely watched him and refrained from laying hands on him themselves.

Guardian Deity of Humanity.

The being who had protected the world alone.

Put another way, he was a monster with the power to destroy the world alone.

Thud.

The moment it realized that fact, the snake acted immediately.

It vomited out Park Hyeon-gun's body, which it had swallowed.

Leaving the body sprawled like a rotten old tree, the snake hurried toward the sky.

It had lost a considerable amount of karma through its forced incarnation and the hasty abandonment of that body.

Enough that its rank might fall to Marquis-class, perhaps even Count-class.

But the snake did not care.

Its characteristic cunning.

Its beastlike instincts.

More than anything, the terror rising within it.

All of it made the snake cast aside every calculation of gain and loss and flee this place at once.

“You really are a stupid bastard.”

But in the next moment, the snake froze.

“You showed up before me in your true body, not an avatar. Did you think you could run away now?”

Rimon was staring directly at it.

At the snake that had abandoned its body and fled to an unimaginably distant place in the blink of an eye.

How?

Humans should not be able to see me.

The snake saw the black radiance coloring Rimon's eyes and realized the answer to its own question.

Then it was horrified.

Separate from the swordsmanship Rimon had just displayed, this was a power no human should ever possess.

“Remember this as a parting gift for your journey to the underworld.”

Whoooosh!

The snake's horror did not matter to Rimon.

Having pursued it to the distant sky above in only three steps, Rimon merely gripped his sword as he fell down upon the snake trying to flee into the night.

“I am a Sword Master.”

The last owner of the Sword Tower.

Humanity's last Sword Master.

Rimon Aspelder twisted his body in midair and took the stance to swing his sword.

“There is no one in this world who can flee from me. And even beyond this world, there is nothing I cannot cut.”

Was it an unconscious judgment?

Or instinctive action?

Rather than fleeing, the snake opened its jaws and rushed at Rimon.

As if it knew that killing Rimon now was its only chance to survive.

But before the snake's fangs could reach him, Rimon was already bringing down his sword.

Then, as though painting an orchid upon the sky as his canvas, Rimon's sword moved with peerless grace.

『Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword Ultimate Art