WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 49: Share a Drink

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The Sword Emperor, the first Sword Master who cut down the Seven Dragons and opened the Age of Heroes, once said:

When something you worked yourself to the bone on succeeds.

When you barely survive a brush with death.

When foul blood stains your sword.

When red blood spatters your clothes.

When you fail at something.

After times like those, you feel like having a drink...

It was hard to tell whether that was something a Sword Master had said or an Alcohol Master.

Put bluntly, it meant they felt like drinking every day.

But that was only from a modern perspective.

In the Bronze Age, liquor was a precious thing offered only to dragonkind, and humans were forbidden even to drink it.

Rimon had seen criminals beheaded for secretly drinking liquor.

He had seen physicians have their wrists cut off for using liquor as disinfectant.

So he knew what the Sword Emperor had meant.

That the Sword Emperor had not said it merely because they liked alcohol.

It had been a wish that someday, humans might live in a world where they could drink comfortably for no particular reason.

Of course, that did not mean the Sword Emperor disliked drinking.

“Was it around here?”

In that sense, coming here with a bottle of soju immediately after leaving the Infinity Guild was slightly at odds with the Sword Emperor's wish.

This was neither somewhere one visited without reason nor somewhere one could drink in peace.

Yet it was a place Rimon had no choice but to visit.

In the deserted lot, he slowly looked around.

“It has gotten pretty clean.”

It was a truly strange impression.

There was not a building, nor even a small roadside tree, on the abandoned lot. Anyone would call it desolate rather than clean.

Yet Rimon had a reason for saying it.

He knew what this lot had originally looked like.

“I figured they would deal with the bodies, but I didn't think they'd clear away all that building debris in just a few days.”

Buildings that had collapsed completely, leaving only rubble.

Dust that had swept through the area from the explosion.

The two hundred corpses he had brutally slaughtered.

Fresh red blood that had formed little streams.

Remembering the blood that had stained the lot only days ago, Rimon snickered.

That was right.

This was where Haecheong Industries Co., Ltd., the Liberation Brigade's headquarters, had stood.

It was also where Rimon had cut down roughly two hundred attackers, including Kang Jeong-su, who had appeared to kill him.

It had only been a few days.

Yet there was not a single piece of debris left.

Still, Rimon was impressed, not surprised.

Since the opening of the Iron Age, Players changing cities overnight and reshaping the landscape had become commonplace.

“Well, it is better than leaving it filthy.”

With another quiet snicker, Rimon sat heavily on the bare ground. He took out the soju he had brought and poured it into paper cups.

One in front of himself.

And another across from him.

It was a cup with no owner.

There was only someone to fill it.

No one to drink from it.

But Rimon knew that, even if she could not drink it, there was someone who would receive it.

“Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Na-gyeong.”

At the spot where Yoo Na-gyeong's body had been left only days ago, Rimon spoke quietly.

“I wasted some time running around in circles.”

Rimon snickered.

At first, he thought it would be enough to deal with Lee Cheon-gi.

But while pursuing the true culprit, he uncovered an unexpected plot by the Seven Dragons Society and ultimately even took down a Constellation.

Even for Rimon, who had lived a long life, it had been an unusually eventful few days.

“Anyway, I've settled your blood debt.”

One thing was clear.

Rimon no longer had a reason to swing his sword for Yoo Na-gyeong's revenge.

Park Hyeon-gun, who had planned the conspiracy, had paid with death.

The snake behind Park Hyeon-gun had been completely erased.

Li Qing-yu, the hidden culprit, had acknowledged innocence.

Lee Cheon-gi, who had been used, had borne his share of responsibility.

If he wanted to find others to take revenge on?

Aside from the Constellations, whose extent of involvement he did not know, there were only politicians and bureaucrats such as President Han Jeong-guk, who had known of this matter yet turned a blind eye or quietly supported it.

But Rimon had no intention of collecting a blood debt from them as well.

It was not because he worried about chaos.

They were not even worth cutting down.

If they had taken the lead in plotting this from the beginning, that would have been one thing.

But if he went around crushing every bug just because they had crawled about like cockroaches, it would become revenge for revenge's sake, unrelated to any blood debt.

More than anything, Rimon knew they would pay the price they deserved even without his intervention.

Whether they alone would bear that price remained to be seen...

But that was no longer Rimon's concern.

He had already stopped being a hero, and every tie he had to this country had been severed.

“And I'll take responsibility for the children you valued more than your own life, at least until they grow up.”

The orphanage children were the only ties he had left.

But they had been orphans to begin with, and like Rimon, they had been discarded in the attempt to eliminate him. They had nothing else binding them down.

That was why Rimon could say it with certainty.

There was no need to worry about the children.

“But don't linger around in this world for no reason. Go peacefully.”

Rimon knew this was only self-comfort.

No matter what he said here, nothing would change.

Yoo Na-gyeong was already dead. Revenge or memorial rites would not bring her back, nor would they make her journey to the afterlife any easier.

Yet that was precisely why Rimon had to come here.

Just as revenge was ultimately for the living, this too was a ritual for himself.

It was something he needed to wash away the bitterness remaining in his heart.

Just as a sword left uncleaned of blood would rust, needless deep-seated rancor would only become poison.

“Here, have a drink.”

Splash.

“I’m your senior, so I'll have two.”

Gulp, gulp.

“Why am I not giving any to Jeong-su? Who gives a shit about that traitorous bastard? They can wait for offerings at a memorial table.”

What scattered with the liquor was longing.

An emotion some called memories and others called sorrow.

Rimon kept pouring drinks as he revisited those feelings one last time, knowing that time would eventually blur and fade them into mere memories.

Sometimes, he told jokes to himself.

Sometimes, he bragged about how he had taken revenge.

Sometimes, he silently looked at the moon in the sky.

It was while Rimon was drinking alone.

“May I offer a drink to the deceased as well?”

Rimon did not bother turning around to look at Li Qing-yu, the girl in an East Asian-style dress who had somehow appeared behind him.

Holding his paper cup, he merely said bluntly,

“You didn't even know Na-gyeong.”

The implication was clear. If this was merely a gesture to curry favor with him, she should not bother.

But Li Qing-yu did not back down.

She simply answered calmly.

“I never had the chance to meet her, but if she was someone the Sword Duke treasured, I cannot say she has nothing to do with me either.”

Husband and wife were one, so Rimon's acquaintances were naturally her acquaintances as well. Li Qing-yu said it as though it were obvious.

Perhaps he was dumbfounded by such an outdated sentiment.

Or perhaps he recognized her sincerity.

After a moment of silence, Rimon finally snickered and nodded.

“Do as you like. It is not as if she ever turned down a drink someone else offered her.”

“Thank you for allowing it.”

As though she had been waiting for those words alone, Li Qing-yu smiled brightly and sat beside Rimon.

She took a bottle and glass from a box she had prepared, poured the drink, lifted it respectfully in both hands, and poured it onto the ground.

Rimon watched her oddly practiced movements with surprise for only a moment.

Then he saw the bottle she had set beside her.

His expression turned strange.

“Is that Macallan? A 1988 vintage, too?”

“Yes.”

“If my memory is right, that costs...”

“Yes?”

“...Never mind.”

Rimon roughly calculated how much the drink Li Qing-yu had just poured out was worth. After picturing stacks of cash spilling all over the ground, he shook his head.

It is stupid to talk about money with her.

Even a ruined rich family lasted three generations.

No matter how much the Black Dragon Clan had declined from its former glory, it had already lost nearly half of its controlling stake.

With the remaining half alone, only other princesses of the Seven Dragons Society or a few Monarchs could compare to Li Qing-yu in wealth.

The Seven Dragon Group, the corporation that held the wealth of the world, possessed that much money.

“Na-gyeong never got to live in luxury while she was alive, but now she gets to drink like this after dying.”

She had lived in poverty despite being a high-level Player, donating her entire salary.

Now that she was dead, she could drink such expensive liquor to her heart's content.

The ways of the world really were impossible to predict.

Rimon snickered as he raised his cup.

Then Li Qing-yu suddenly said,

“I heard Yoo Na-gyeong's body was unfortunately already cremated.”

“I figured.”

Rimon nodded calmly.

More than two hundred high-level Players had died here.

If it became public knowledge, the country's standing would plummet, and the ruling party would face questions of responsibility.

To conceal that fact, most of the bodies that had disappeared here had likely been cremated. Without a body, one could not prove a death.

Rimon did not particularly blame them for it.

Yoo Na-gyeong had been an orphan from the start. Even if they made her a grave, no one would have come to visit.

But even Rimon could not help pausing at Li Qing-yu's next words.

“So I bought the land around here under the Leviathan Hotel's name.”

“...You bought this place?”

“Yes. So we can make a grave for her here.”

If there was no body to bury, was it not natural to make a grave where she had drawn her last breath?

Rimon watched Li Qing-yu speak calmly for a while before turning forward again.

“Forget it. If you make a grave for her in a place like this, Na-gyeong would not be happy. She would cry about what a waste of money it was.”

“Ah... She was a very frugal person.”

“Frugal, my ass. She just had a poor person's mindset.”

Rimon snickered at Li Qing-yu, who nodded with an impressed expression.

Then, as if he had thought of something good, he added,

“If you really want to do something, build a playground instead.”

“A playground?”

“Yeah. Na-gyeong liked playing with kids. Rather than some grave, she would prefer giving children a place to come and play.”

“A place for children to come and play...?”

Li Qing-yu looked troubled, as though she had just heard an extremely difficult problem.

Watching her, Rimon found himself thinking,

What an inscrutable princess.

She did not so much as twitch an eyebrow with a blade at her throat, and she calmly revealed even global conspiracies.

Yet she tilted her head at simple jokes, sometimes even believing them outright.

When she seemed cunning, she was innocent.

When she seemed clever, she was honest.

Like a viper in a greenhouse, she was soft and deadly. Like an orchid in a snowy field, she was sharp and beautiful.

Was that strange imbalance because she was the Black Dragon Princess?

Or was there another reason?

After studying with interest the bride he would soon marry and his greatest adversary, Rimon suddenly asked,

“Come to think of it, when are we getting married?”

It was something any groom-to-be would naturally be curious about.

But Li Qing-yu smiled at the question, which in another sense was completely unlike something a groom would ask.

“I don't know either.”

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