WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 82: You Can Tell a Man by His Sword
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“Do you have a clever plan?”
“Not clever enough to call it that. It’s just a very simple, basic method.”
“What method is it?”
Li Qing-yu’s eyes shone as she wondered what countermeasure this Sword Master, who had lived through countless ages, had devised.
Watching her, Rimon scratched his cheek.
“Mm, it’s complicated to explain. For now, could you get me detailed information on all your domestic subsidiaries?”
“Which subsidiaries, and what information?”
“All of them.”
“...All of them?”
“Yep. The locations and scale of the headquarters and branches, major products, profits, employee lists, average visitor numbers, every scrap of information you have.”
“What are you planning to use it for?”
“As you know, I’m still a former PAB agent. And a PAB agent’s job was catching criminals.”
“...?”
Li Qing-yu looked beyond puzzled, as though she could not understand what the documents had to do with Rimon’s former job.
Rimon snorted.
“A detective’s main job isn’t fighting criminals. It’s preventing crimes and investigating them.”
* * *
“...Princess.”
“Yes, Sword Duke?”
“Look, I did say to bring me everything, but... isn’t this a little too much?”
Rimon spoke uneasily.
Li Qing-yu tilted her head at him.
“You told us to bring every document we had, didn’t you?”
“Sure, but there ought to be limits. There’s enough here to build a small library and still have plenty left over.”
Rimon’s discomfort was understandable.
Before him was a literal mountain of documents.
They filled every wall and had been stacked in layers across the floor. There was now more paper in the room than furniture and empty space combined.
“Well, we are the Seven Dragons Society. Even reducing them to this enormous pile was thanks to Chao working incredibly hard.”
“Urgh...”
Rimon groaned.
It was only natural.
Though it had declined, the Black Dragon Clan was still one of the pillars of the Seven Dragon Group. There was no way its subsidiaries would have little documentation.
He had simply forgotten that fact after getting used to reading the slim reports Weiling had recently summarized.
I can’t exactly take it back now...
Rimon glanced at the person responsible for bringing in these documents.
Deep dark circles beneath her eyes.
Lips parched from exhaustion.
Even rough, tired skin.
The normally neat beauty dressed as a man was nowhere to be seen. It was obvious at a glance that Weiling had spent all night preparing these materials.
Rimon groaned again.
He might have been called a mad dog, but he was not so shameless that he could see her like that and take back his words just because there were more documents than expected.
No helping it.
With a sigh, Rimon picked up a thick file from the front of the pile.
Rustle.
“...?”
“...”
Li Qing-yu blinked.
Weiling frowned.
Rimon picked up one file, flipped through it once, set it down, then repeated the process.
“What are you looking for?” Weiling asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t you skimming through them because you’re looking for something specific?”
“No, I’m reading all of them.”
“...You’re reading those documents at that speed?”
“Why do you think I can’t? It’s much easier than seeing an incoming bullet and batting it away.”
“...”
Weiling was left speechless.
It was not entirely impossible.
Even within the Seven Dragons Society, there were several masters who could evade bullets.
But if someone asked whether those masters could do something like this, the obvious answer would be, “Are you insane?”
Even when they dodged bullets, they merely watched the direction of the barrel and stepped out of the line of fire at the right moment.
Dodging after seeing the bullet itself was difficult.
Reading at that speed would require visual acuity sharp enough to read letters engraved on an incoming bullet.
It was not something a human could do.
“Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be particularly difficult for the Sword Duke.”
Li Qing-yu accepted it readily.
As she watched Rimon calmly continue to turn pages, Weiling realized two things anew.
First, this white-haired young man was a Sword Master.
A true superhuman whom even a whole crowd of grandmaster-level masters from the Seven Dragons Society could not handle.
And second...
“Then why haven’t you processed documents at that speed until now?”
Rimon had been slacking off.
At Weiling’s gaze, as though she were looking at a piece of human garbage, Rimon cleared his throat.
“Well, reading and understanding are different matters. Reading a specialized textbook a hundred times doesn’t make everyone an expert.”
“Still, looking at something once when you have time to look at it a hundred times is normally called slacking off.”
“That’s because you’re such a competent little know-it-all.”
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
Rimon shamelessly brushed off Weiling’s stare, claiming that appointing capable subordinates, trusting them completely, and leaving work to them was also excellent leadership.
For a long while, his eyes trembled slightly as he continuously skimmed through the documents.
Several hours passed.
At last, Rimon put down the documents and rubbed his eyes.
“Ah, my eyes sting.”
“Did you really read all of that?”
“Why else would I be crazy enough to stare at scraps of paper for hours?”
Weiling looked doubtful.
Unlike her, Li Qing-yu looked at Rimon expectantly.
“So, did you find anything?”
“No, not at all.”
“...What?”
Li Qing-yu blinked blankly, clearly not expecting that answer.
Weiling questioned him in her place.
“Then why did you read the documents?”
“Don’t be so impatient. I’m about to confirm what I found.”
Weiling looked at him as though he were insane.
But Rimon calmly stood.
Then he strode to the middle of the room and said casually,
“Both of you, move back against the wall. I need to concentrate now.”
“On what...”
Shing.
Weiling fell silent.
It was not merely because Rimon had suddenly drawn his sword.
An oppressive presence flowed from Rimon as he gripped the sword and gently closed his eyes, leaving her unable to speak.
“...The weapons were a knife, 4 chon (12 cm) long, an unusual blunt weapon, 3 cheok 1 chon (930 cm) long, and remote-type Skills.”
“The main methods were slashing while avoiding vital points to inflict as much pain as possible. Frenzied destruction with overwhelming strength. Cold, thorough crushing through Skills.”
“Then...”
As though retracing his memories, Rimon muttered to himself for a moment.
Then, still with his eyes closed, he slowly began to move his sword.
At times, as if stripping flesh from a person.
At times, like a beast consumed by madness.
At times, as if moving a massive boulder weighing a thousand geun.
The sword’s movements maintained a slow pace even as they shifted between sharpness, violence, and crushing weight.
Weiling felt a chill.
Each time the swordsmanship changed, Rimon’s presence changed as suddenly as if he had become a completely different person.
Though he was only cutting through empty air, the chilling sensation that he was truly butchering someone made goosebumps rise on Weiling’s skin.
Flutter!
Perhaps the force of his sword swings had been too great.
Though they had not been touched directly, the documents piled around the room flew into the air and covered the surroundings in white, like a blizzard raging through the night sky.
Yet even amid that storm of documents, Rimon did not panic and continued moving his sword.
The papers rose and swirled through the air as though alive, like a flock of creatures.
The documents, once nothing more than scraps of paper, now fluttered after the sword with dazzling movements, like butterflies chasing flowers.
...!
Weiling’s mouth went dry.
It was not only because of the sword’s movements, which controlled tens of thousands of documents as freely as limbs.
It was because Weiling realized that not a single page in that whirling storm had been cut by the blade.
It was the absolute pinnacle of technique.
A sight that could only be imitated by one who had reached the ultimate realm of the sword. As a swordsman, Weiling could not help but thrill at it.
Rustle.
How much time passed?
At last, Rimon stopped his sword.
The fluttering documents fell.
On Rimon’s sword, held straight and level, three different sheets of paper were stacked neatly atop one another with ruler-perfect precision.
Clap, clap, clap.
“As expected of the Sword Duke. I never imagined you could wield a sword so beautifully even when it isn’t a sword dance.”
Li Qing-yu clapped enthusiastically, as though she had watched a wonderful show.
But Rimon did not look particularly pleased.
He simply flicked his sword lightly.
“Take them.”
Weiling instinctively caught the three pages that slid through the air toward her.
Rimon spoke calmly.
“The next target will be one of these three, so prepare accordingly. Sending one combat unit to each should be enough to avoid the worst-case scenario.”
“...You mean one of these three is where the culprits will strike next?”
“If they strike again.”
“Why?”
Weiling openly doubted him.
The swordsmanship Rimon had displayed was remarkable, but it was only sword technique.
Thinking about it calmly, it looked as though Rimon had merely swung his sword at random and presented several documents that had happened to catch on it.
“Have you ever heard this saying? You can tell a person by their sword.”
“Of course I know that common proverb.”
“Right. If you can do that common thing, the rest is simple. You just have to think of their murder methods as swordsmanship.”
Weiling stared at Rimon, then finally understood what he meant and frowned.
“...You reinterpreted the traces left on the corpses as swordsmanship and inferred their attack pattern?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you think that makes any sense?”
Weiling sneered.
Rimon’s words were the height of absurdity.
It was more complete nonsense than a con artist fortune teller, like watching swallows fly today and declaring the exact date a typhoon would come next year.
“It makes sense.”
But it was Li Qing-yu, not Rimon, who immediately answered Weiling.
“Because the Sword Duke is a Sword Master.”
He was neither a fortune teller nor a detective.
He could not make prophecies.
Nor could he find criminals through deduction.
But when it came to swordsmanship, there was nothing Rimon did not know and nothing he could not do.
Though he was a swordsman who knew nothing but the sword, that was why he was an absolute being, a Master who had mastered everything concerning the sword.
So even by looking at the sword wounds left on a corpse, he could tell how many spoons were in the culprit’s house.
Li Qing-yu said this with a bright smile.
Rimon gave an uneasy rebuttal.
“No, even I can’t tell how many spoons are in the culprit’s house from that alone.”
“But you can tell which hand they use to hold a spoon, can’t you?”
“That much, sure...”
“Then it’s practically the same as knowing how many spoons they have. You can infer and predict it from the culprit’s habits, personality, and financial situation.”
“...Why not just tell me to become a fortune teller?”
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