Solo Swordmaster - Chapter 6

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 6: An Unexpected Visitor

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“Excuse me, Team Leaderrr. There’s something I’m reaaally curious about.”

“What is it?”

“I get why you were suspended, Team Leader, but why was I suspended too?”

Yoo Na-gyeong must have found it terribly unfair.

As she sipped from her soju glass and asked mournfully, Rimon answered without a care.

“Because a superior’s mistakes are a subordinate’s responsibility.”

“Isn’t that usually the other way around?!”

“Which do you think happens more often? Superiors covering for their subordinates’ mistakes, or superiors pinning their own mistakes on their subordinates?”

Yoo Na-gyeong rolled her eyes.

Then she answered confidently.

“If the superior has proper morals, obviously the former?”

“Right. Those kind superiors lose their jobs, while the bad ones get promoted. That makes the latter more common.”

“What kind of hopeless thing is that to say?!”

“You didn’t know? Reality has never had dreams or hope.”

“Wow. Gross.”

Yoo Na-gyeong looked shocked, like a child who had just been told Santa Claus did not exist.

Rimon snickered at the sight.

Of course, it was only a joke.

If Kang Jeong-su, their superior, had truly intended to dump the blame on them, it would not have ended with a suspension.

Knowing that as well as anyone, Yoo Na-gyeong murmured blankly.

“It’s ironic.”

“What is?”

“We’re the ones who got suspended, but we’re drinking without a care, while Director Kang is probably working himself to death after making the decision.”

“What can you do? That’s what directors are for.”

Rimon chuckled.

This was no ordinary player.

The incident involved an assault on a Monarch’s relative.

Kang Jeong-su was probably running himself ragged trying to clean up the mess. His head might even become shinier.

‘Maybe I should buy him some good hair tonic next time.’

If Kang Jeong-su knew what Rimon was thinking, Kang Jeong-su would have begged Rimon to forget the tonic and just stop causing trouble.

But that plea would never be granted.

If it could be, Rimon, a hero who had saved the nation, would never have been demoted all the way down to team leader.

“Still, honestly, that felt good.”

“Did it?”

“Yes. That man was such an asshole. He pretended not to know anything about almost killing someone, and all he talked about was his money and compensation.”

“That bastard would have said the same thing after beating someone to death.”

“No way. He’s still a person.”

“People drunk on power stop seeing other people as people.”

Rimon smiled coldly.

People only felt humanity toward those they considered their equals.

That was why people sought common ground, whether it was age, hometown, workplace, or hobbies, and spent time with those they felt equal to.

But people intoxicated with power could not do that.

The essence of power was domination.

It was a force that made them see even equals as people to control rather than peers.

Rimon had seen countless once-pure people become corrupted by power. He knew that well.

And if it was Seo Yong-chan, who was a blockhead to begin with and now had a cow’s head, it would not have been strange if he did not see humans as people at all.

“...Hearing that makes me wonder why you kept Seo Yong-chan alive, Team Leader.”

“Why? Shouldn’t I have?”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t have. It just seemed strange. I thought you were really going to kill him.”

“Well, I did want to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Yoo Na-gyeong tilted her head as she asked.

It was a question she could ask because she was drunk, but it was also a sincere question.

The Rimon she knew was not the sort to hold back because of someone’s background, whether the other person was the Infinite Monarch’s brother-in-law or the Infinite Monarch himself.

Rimon’s answer was simple.

“Civil servants get fired if they kill people whenever they feel like it.”

“...That’s all?”

“It’s not a small thing. If I get fired, where is an old has-been like me supposed to find another job?”

“That is a practical reason.”

As Yoo Na-gyeong giggled and emptied her glass, Rimon smiled and refilled it.

* * *

After they traded drinks for quite some time at the shabby street stall, empty bottles piled up around them.

Only then did Rimon rise from his seat. He dropped the dead-drunk Yoo Na-gyeong off at home and headed out onto the street.

Looking up at the night sky, he suddenly muttered.

“The old days were better.”

Before players appeared.

In the age of heroes, he could have killed Seo Yong-chan or sold him into slavery as he pleased.

Sword Masters had been absolute beings then.

They held more unrestricted power than all ten current Monarchs combined.

He could kill a perfectly healthy person, claim they had actually been a monster, and people would believe him and praise him rather than criticize him.

But that was only an old story.

After players appeared, Sword Masters declined.

Just as battleships, once called fortresses of the sea, came to be treated like scrap metal with the development of aircraft carriers and anti-ship missiles.

As skills and players rose to prominence, the standing of Sword Masters crumbled as well.

The Sword Tower, once constantly filled with disciples, could not endure its operating losses and went bankrupt.

Those who had constantly boasted of their friendship with him cut ties, and Sword Master eventually became a mocking insult.

A washed-up relic who knew nothing but swordplay, swaggering around while drunk on past glory.

‘Well, none of that matters.’

Rimon felt no particular emotion about the fact itself.

His loss of power and decline had nothing to do with why he had not killed Seo Yong-chan.

There was only one reason he had kept Seo Yong-chan alive.

He had sensed something in Seo Yong-chan’s cow-headed form.

‘There were definitely two presences overlapping, weren’t there?’

At first, he had not noticed.

But after examining him more closely, Rimon realized that the sense of wrongness he felt from cow-headed Seo Yong-chan came from two different presences mixed together.

There was also a disgusting presence, cleverly concealed among the human ones, like the twitching of a half-rotted brain.

‘Possession, fusion, parasitism... I don’t know which.’

It was no mere ghost.

Nor was it something like a chimera.

Even for Rimon, who had lived a long life, it was a rare kind of overlap he had never seen before.

One thing was certain. Whatever had been laid over Seo Yong-chan was fundamentally different from a human.

‘This isn’t something to touch carelessly.’

What it was, and what its relationship to Seo Yong-chan was.

He could not simply kill Seo Yong-chan when he knew nothing. He might alert the snake by stirring the grass, and keeping him alive to watch would reveal more.

What if it caused trouble?

Then he could cut it down.

It would give him a clean justification to kill Seo Yong-chan.

‘This kind of thinking is probably outdated too.’

Rimon smiled faintly.

Perhaps it could not be helped.

No matter how hard he tried to keep up with the times, he was still a man from the past.

A washed-up relic left behind by the age.

“The Rear Waves of the Yangtze Push the Front Waves.

The front waves die upon the sandy shore.

How long can the rear waves enjoy their glory?

In the blink of an eye, are they not the same?”

Perhaps it was because he had recalled pointless memories.

Or perhaps he was drunk on the unusually clear moonlight.

Muttering to himself despite having no one to listen, Rimon wandered the dim streets without direction.

He was suspended anyway.

With nothing to do tomorrow, he planned to enjoy a leisurely night walk before returning home.

But before he had even taken a few steps, Rimon abruptly stopped.

“The rear waves of the Yangtze push the front waves.

The front waves perish in the shallows of the sandy shore.

If the front waves do not perish and return to the sea,

they will revive unextinguished and become rear waves once more.”

“Hm?”

Hearing the voice ring out beneath the quiet night sky, Rimon narrowed his eyes.

It was not because someone had answered his soliloquy.

Nor was it because of that clear, beautiful voice.

It was because he had only noticed the other person’s approach too late.

“Who are you?”

Rimon was genuinely curious.

He was, after all, a Sword Master.

His senses were sharper than those of most tracers by far.

Of course, if he told tracers that, they would get angry and ask how a washed-up relic dared compare himself to them. But facts were facts.

Very few people could deceive Rimon’s senses and approach this closely.

Even among the Monarchs.

Who had accomplished such a difficult feat?

With interest, Rimon asked the question. The owner of the voice slowly emerged before him.

“I’m sorry for my rude behavior.”

Smooth black hair arranged with a jade hairpin.

An Eastern-style dress embroidered with silver thread across silk.

Skin that shone white beneath the moonlight.

Like someone pulling aside the curtain of night itself.

The visitor stepped out of the darkness.

Too noble to be called a girl, yet still too fresh-faced to be called a woman, she politely asked Rimon:

“Excuse me, are you the Sword Duke?”

“The Sword Duke... I was called that once.”

Rimon made an odd expression.

In the age when Sword Masters were absolute beings, people had given him countless epithets, calling him a hero who saved the nation and humanity’s guardian deity.

Sword Duke was one such title.

But Rimon had not heard it in a long time.

Most of his epithets had been forgotten, and only one kind of person still called him the Sword Duke.

“And your answer to my question?”

Flinch.

She trembled slightly.

As if she feared how Rimon would react upon learning her identity.

But only for a moment.

As though gathering her resolve, she swallowed softly and raised her head.

Then, looking directly into Rimon’s golden eyes, she spoke in a trembling voice.

“Would you know who I am if I told you I’m Li Qing-yu of the Black Dragon Clan?”

“Of course I would.”