WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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Chapter 48: Crime and Punishment
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Tick-tock.
The Infinity Guild headquarters.
It was a splendid building that should have been bustling with hundreds of people, from guild members to low-ranking employees.
But at that moment, the building was gripped by a silence as still as death.
It was not merely because everyone had been ordered out and the building closed off.
There was a watchman keeping that silence.
Tick-tock.
“...”
In that bleak space devoid of people, a man with slicked-back hair sat with his legs crossed on a chair. He had deployed all kinds of barrier Skills to seal off the building.
Lee Cheon-gi waited.
Just as he had for the past four days.
His eyes remained fixed on the pocket watch in his hand.
He had watched its second hand tick more than roughly 340,000 times.
340,000 seconds without eating, sleeping, or resting was enough time for not only an ordinary person, but even most high-level Players, to collapse from exhaustion.
Yet Lee Cheon-gi did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. With his usual composed expression, he merely waited for the second hand to complete its 345,600th turn.
Riiing!
“...The time has come.”
The second hand finally reached its mark.
At the same time, the pocket watch began to ring loudly.
The moment he heard the alarm signaling that the promised four days had passed, Lee Cheon-gi immediately rose from his chair and moved to enter the secretary's office, which had remained firmly shut for four days.
Creeeak.
“Hmm?”
But his action ended as no more than an attempt.
Before he could even touch the handle, the closed door opened, and a man walked out.
“What is it, you? Don't tell me you've been waiting here for four days straight?”
White hair and golden eyes.
A sword hanging at his waist.
Even a small scar etched beneath one eye.
Rimon Aspelder, the white-haired man with a distinctive appearance in every respect, looked at Lee Cheon-gi as if surprised.
But Lee Cheon-gi did not answer.
No, he did not even look at Rimon.
His gaze was fixed on only one place, the gap in the door that Rimon had left slightly open as he emerged.
This is...
Bloodstains splattered across the floor and ceiling.
A desk bearing clear imprints of a skull and teeth, showing just how hard someone had slammed something against it.
Piles of flesh sliced thinner than paper.
Fragments of bone and organs scattered everywhere.
He stared at those miserable, horrific remains for a long while, remnants so terrible that it was hard to believe they had come from only one person.
At last, he barely managed to ask.
“What on earth did you do in there over the past four days?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“...”
Lee Cheon-gi answered with silence.
To be honest, he did not want to know.
No, he was afraid to know.
It was a sight gruesome enough to make even Lee Cheon-gi, who had entered Dungeons thousands of times and witnessed all manner of brutal deaths, feel sick.
Rimon snickered at his honest response.
“Personally, I'd recommend burning the entire room down.”
Unless he wanted to see whoever he assigned the job lose their mind, he should handle it properly.
Rimon was offering that advice with a measure of kindness.
But once again, no answer came.
Only a gaze, calm yet deeply sunken, was directed at him.
“What? Did you suddenly feel sorry for him?”
“Nothing like that.”
Lee Cheon-gi shook his head at Rimon's mocking remark.
No matter how close a subordinate Park Hyeon-gun had been, Lee Cheon-gi was neither kind nor good enough to feel pity for someone who had deceived and used him.
Even so, Rimon bluntly pointed out why Lee Cheon-gi's expression remained rigid.
“Then do you think I went too far?”
“...I cannot deny that.”
Lee Cheon-gi calmly admitted it.
Anyone else would likely have felt the same. In fact, they would have been more likely to vomit, look at Rimon as though he were a monster, and run away.
The sight was that horrific.
Whether it was right to kill even a criminal like this.
Whether the person who had done such a thing could be considered human.
Anyone with even the slightest understanding of decency could not help but feel doubt and revulsion.
Especially when the victim had already been reduced to a ruin.
“Was it necessary to kill Manager Park like this when they had already become a complete invalid?”
After the Serpent That Joins the Ends had seized Park Hyeon-gun's body, abandoned it, and fled, Park Hyeon-gun had become a complete invalid.
Park Hyeon-gun's condition was so severe that they could neither move nor speak. It was doubtful whether any consciousness remained at all.
Even knowing Park Hyeon-gun's condition, Rimon had resumed and finished the four-day killing that the snake's intervention had interrupted.
It was only natural for Lee Cheon-gi's face to harden.
But Rimon, the person responsible for that tragedy, showed neither guilt nor shame.
He merely tilted his head slightly.
“As far as I'm concerned, I went very easy on them.”
“Are you serious?”
“What, do you think I'm playing word games with you?”
“...”
Despite Rimon's casual tone, Lee Cheon-gi saw the coldness sunken in his golden eyes and fell silent.
He simply could not understand how this could be considered going easy on someone.
“If this much bothers you, you'd faint dead away if you ever saw a black mage perform a human sacrifice.”
“The fact that we must compare it to human sacrifice already tells me it is not normal.”
“Only by your standards.”
Rimon snickered.
It was not that he did not understand why Lee Cheon-gi was reacting this way.
No, he understood all too well.
In this age, where murder itself was seen as a sin, torturing someone to death for any reason was an atrocity beyond cruel and wicked.
But that was only according to the standards of this age.
“Kid. In the old days, there were countries that gathered all their people and flaunted human sacrifices.”
To be offered to a god was an honor.
Human sacrifice was a means of reaching heaven.
There had been religions where everyone believed that doctrine without question and volunteered to become sacrifices.
“There were times when people watched comrades fight each other with swords in the Colosseum and enjoyed hangings as if they were festivals.”
An age when everyone craved cruel slaughter.
“There were laws that threw even newborn babies into snake pits to be torn apart alive, simply because they were related to criminals.”
Laws that decreed sins were inherited.
“There were teachings that praised chewing the liver of your enemy for revenge as a noble act.”
Cultures where failing to take revenge was considered shameful.
“There were armies that researched how to kill people more horribly and surely.”
Wars that used people up like firewood.
All of it would be called madness today.
But at least in those times, those countries, those religions, those cultures, those circumstances, it had been accepted as common sense.
“Do you understand? How petty and fragile this thing you believe to be an immutable truth, this so-called normality, really is?”
Of course, not even Rimon had lived through every era and every history.
But he had spent centuries seeing and experiencing countless changes in what people considered common sense, in every corner of the world. He knew all too well how fleeting such standards were.
“Of course, it is a good thing that people came to believe murder was a sin and cruelty should be forbidden.”
Was he going to spout nonsense about how the old days had been better?
He had no intention of doing that.
There was no question that the present world was easier to live in than the days when lives were treated lightly and cruelty was encouraged.
More than anything, Rimon knew how easily becoming accustomed to such acts could destroy a person's humanity. It was a change he welcomed.
The problem was another change that had come with it.
“But I do not consider it normal to protect evil people so they can live proudly in the name of human rights.”
All crimes were forgiven because someone was young.
Someone who acted in self-defense was treated like a criminal.
Even a vicious murderer could not be killed.
Children who had lost their parents were forced to forgive.
This was an age endlessly merciful to perpetrators and cold toward victims.
Perhaps that was proof that society had become more civilized than the past, a virtue meant to prevent needless hatred.
But Rimon could not accept that virtue, created by a warped peace, as something natural.
He was an old-fashioned man.
A swordsman who had lived by cutting out his enemies' hearts and severing villains' heads.
“Maybe that bastard was originally a good person. Maybe he would have reformed someday.”
Had Park Hyeon-gun not contracted with the Serpent That Joins the Ends, perhaps they would not have become such a villain.
Having lived by using False God’s Prestige, a Skill specialized in lies, or perhaps because the Constellation had manipulated them without their knowledge, they might have gradually become a liar. They too might have been a victim.
“But that's none of my concern.”
Rimon stated it without hesitation.
Park Hyeon-gun's human rights.
Any hidden goodness within them.
Rimon had no interest in either, nor did he care.
“What matters to me is that bastard did something worth killing them over, so I killed them.”
“...Even knowing that such an act could make people question your humanity?”
“Better than stripping away my own humanity.”
Do not misunderstand.
Acts like murder and torture, negative emotions such as arrogance and greed, were not the only things that destroyed humanity.
Suppressing justified anger.
Enduring undeserved injustice.
Being forced to be good and merciful.
Those too wore people down and turned them into parts of society.
Just as love might be a great emotion, but following someone around or imprisoning them until they loved you would still destroy that person.
“I told you. I want to be human, not some fucking sucker.”
Of course, if that was the course of the times, Rimon had been willing to accept it to a certain extent.
When he had worked as a PAB agent, he had not arbitrarily killed even the most fucking awful criminals.
If he alone had been harmed, he might have ended things after raising hell without killing a single person.
But the moment Yoo Na-gyeong had been cut down by his sword, there had been no room left for compromise.
No matter how much times changed.
No matter how laws and culture changed.
As her superior, it was his duty to exact the price of blood for a subordinate who had died unjustly.
Giving that up would mean abandoning his humanity in a different sense from becoming a monster.
“And Lee Cheon-gi.”
Shing.
Rimon slowly drew his sword.
Then, looking at Lee Cheon-gi with cold eyes, he spoke.
“You are just as responsible for Na-gyeong's death.”
Whether it had been due to his own greed.
Or the intervention of a Constellation.
It was true that Park Hyeon-gun had taken the children at the orphanage hostage and made Yoo Na-gyeong carry out a suicide bombing.
But that did not make Lee Cheon-gi innocent.
After all, he had ordered Rimon dealt with.
And he had failed to control his subordinate.
Even if he had been used as a puppet, Lee Cheon-gi was undeniably responsible for this situation. Rimon had never forgiven him.
He had merely postponed punishment until he found the true culprit.
And now that Park Hyeon-gun was dead, Rimon no longer had any reason to let Lee Cheon-gi live.
“Will you kill me?”
As though he had expected it already, Lee Cheon-gi asked calmly.
Rimon looked at him for a moment, then shook his head.
“No, I will not kill you now.”
It was a very unexpected answer.
Especially for Lee Cheon-gi, who had prepared himself for death from the moment Rimon defeated him.
“But it is not because you are a Monarch.”
In the same languid voice he had used when cutting down Park Hyeon-gun, Rimon continued quietly.
“It is not because I worry about the social chaos that would follow if I killed you, because I want something from you, or because I fear any revenge that may come later.”
Those were reasons anyone else would consider.
But such things had nothing to do with exacting the price of Yoo Na-gyeong's blood.
With the arrogant certainty of someone who had even cut down a Constellation, Rimon revealed why he would not kill Lee Cheon-gi.
“I am only not killing you because you are too stupid to be worth punishing.”
It was a merciless insult.
An assessment far too cruel for a Monarch.
But Lee Cheon-gi showed neither anger nor any sign of denial.
More than anyone else, he himself acknowledged that he deserved such an assessment.
“Remember this.”
Rimon spoke to the silent Lee Cheon-gi.
“Ignorance can never be an excuse, and you are still standing on the boundary.”
The claim that ignorance was not a sin was nonsense.
Sometimes, even incompetence was a sin.
This time, the weight on the scale had only tipped slightly.
But if anything, even a speck of dust, was placed on the other side of that scale, today's decision could be overturned at any time.
“I will keep watching you.”
It was both a warning and a declaration.
Just as Anubis, the guardian of the underworld, weighed the hearts of the dead to judge whether their sins were heavier than a feather, Rimon would continue judging Lee Cheon-gi's life until the day he died.
“And when you cross that boundary.”
Slice.
The moment Rimon stopped speaking, a pair of rimless glasses fell to the floor.
They were a supreme masterpiece, crafted by a master artisan using every kind of expensive material.
But compared to what Rimon's sword had cut, they were no more than trash.
Drip.
One eye had already shut.
Red blood flowed from the gap.
And the eyelid trembled from pain.
They revealed what Rimon had just cut away, and what Lee Cheon-gi had lost.
Looking at Lee Cheon-gi, who had lost one eye, Rimon finished in a languid voice.
“I will come to collect your remaining eye and the debt of ninety-six days.”
It was an unbearably harsh statement.
A sentence too cruel to say to someone who had just lost an eye.
But Lee Cheon-gi showed no anger, sorrow, fear, or regret. Without suppressing the pain with a Skill such as Pain Numbing, he endured it with a clear mind and merely nodded calmly.
“...I will remember.”
As though judging whether that answer was sincere, Rimon stared for a moment at Lee Cheon-gi's sole remaining eye with quiet, sunken golden eyes.
“If you understand, that is enough.”
Clank.
Rimon sheathed his sword.
Then he turned around.
As if he had no more business here.
Lee Cheon-gi suddenly asked the man who was about to leave without a care.
“What will you do now?”
“Me?”
Perhaps the question was unexpected enough to surprise him.
Rimon stopped for a moment.
Then he turned only his head to look at Lee Cheon-gi. With a snicker, he spoke of the thing he needed to do first now that he had exacted the price of Yoo Na-gyeong's blood.
“Get ready to get married.”
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