WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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Chapter 93: Something You Must Forget Even If You Saw It
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* * *
Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword.
The core principle of this sword art, created long ago by the first Sword Master, the Sword Emperor, and completed by the last Sword Master, Rimon, lay in discernment.
The reaction of the pupils.
The degree of muscular development.
Unconscious habits.
Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword was a sword art that began by observing, analyzing, and countering everything.
That had played a major role in Rimon's ability to predict the killers' movements so far.
‘Don't interpret it through swordsmanship.’
But at this moment, Rimon was completely excluding the principles of Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword from his mind.
Kiiing.
What filled that empty space instead was a complex melody.
Li Qing-yu, Youin, and Yoo Na-gyeong struck various odds and ends while the Pitch-Black Violin played. The result was less music than noise.
Patternless sound waves where each rhythm tangled with the others, throwing everything into chaos.
Amid that confusion, reminiscent of the song Eugene had sung in the restaurant, Rimon slightly twisted the violin bow that moved on its own through the curse's power.
Kiing.
‘Don't think. Feel.’
“...?”
“...!”
Perhaps startled by that intense sound, utterly unlike a violin, Li Qing-yu and Youin hesitated, their hands stopping and their rhythm breaking.
But only for an instant.
Perhaps encouraged by Yoo Na-gyeong, who kept wildly carrying on after having experienced this once already, they began striking the odds and ends again.
And matching their sounds, Rimon gradually changed the violin's melody.
He gathered the scattered sounds into one, turning noise into harmony and weaving it into music.
The discordant sounds gradually meshed together.
The clamorous noise became a performance.
It was a wonder.
Like turning lead into gold, melting sand into jewels, or making flowers bloom from a rotten old tree.
‘Just as every sound has a rhythm, even the most irregular result has a pattern.’
Yet Rimon accepted that outcome as natural.
Noise sounded like noise not because it lacked a pattern, but because no one had found that pattern.
With just a little help to reveal it, even the sound of rain or a roaring engine could become part of an orchestra.
There was only one problem.
Finding the one note that could create harmony from sounds that changed and ran wild every moment.
It was an insurmountable problem, like finding needles scattered across a desert.
The fact that he had to do it thousands of times over pushed it into the realm of impossibility.
But he did it.
It was closer to imagination than deduction.
Closer to a premonition than prediction.
Like a master archer hitting a bird ten ri away despite being blind, he relied solely on instinct and intuition to find the melody that would turn noise into music.
In a realm of sixth sense beyond even Super Senses, beyond the reach of logic, Rimon recalled something.
[Then it's the same as knowing how many spoons there are, isn't it? You just have to infer the culprit's habits, personality, and even finances, then use those to make predictions.]
Advice he had heard from Li Qing-yu.
Something impossible even for a Sword Master.
Something she herself had said as a joke.
But was it truly impossible?
More impossible than creating a single melody out of mixed, irregular noise?
Rimon decided to test it.
‘There are three killers. Of them, only one actually plans and leads their crimes.’
A person whose face he had never seen.
Yet using the principles of Demon-Slaying Dragon-Killing Sword, the traces Rimon had read from the corpses that person had killed had told him much about them.
‘More sociopath than psychopath. He sees murder itself as work, but enjoys calculating the consequences and reactions it will produce.’
‘That's why he targets victims whose deaths will have widespread repercussions, creates enemies and pursuers, and enjoys the battle of wits. A self-aggrandizing criminal.’
That was as far as Rimon had been able to determine.
And it was the basis for predicting the killers' next target.
But now, Rimon changed his perspective.
‘What if he intends to choose his targets at random so no one can read his thoughts?’
‘He'll probably use a tool.’
‘Something easy to obtain, easy to carry, and convenient to use.’
‘If I could perfectly predict where he uses that tool, how much force he uses, and exactly how he uses it...’
It was an absurd assumption.
Predicting lottery numbers would seem more realistic.
Yet Rimon took on the challenge anyway.
Leaving behind the realm of logic that weighed probabilities and possibilities, he entrusted everything to the sixth sense spreading through the melody.
Kiiiiiing.
At that exact moment, Rimon's performance changed.
One of the techniques sleeping deepest within the Pitch-Black Violin.
A legend better known as a composer than as a performer.
The one person who created their greatest composition after everyone had declared them finished as a musician.
The technique they had left within the Pitch-Black Violin resonated with Rimon's resolve to challenge the impossible, creating a new melody.
“This is...”
The noise disappeared.
The rhythms gradually fell into order.
But Rimon did not pay attention to them.
He only struggled to preserve his own performance against the Pitch-Black Violin, which tried to play as it pleased.
Rimon had spent centuries as an absolute being, accepting challenges but never challenging anyone himself.
Yet at this moment, he was taking on a challenge as a complete novice.
To overcome the violin's curse.
And to surpass his own limits.
Kiing.
He forcibly drove back the grand tones produced by the Pitch-Black Violin and scattered sharp notes.
He seized the performance trying to ring out cleanly, shaking it until it held the sound of one person.
It was a contest.
A reckless novice who had not even studied the instrument for a year, pitting his technique against a master who had left a mark on music history.
But as that reckless challenge continued,
the scattered notes became ordered.
And the color within them grew clearer.
Kiiiiiing.
The moment he fully captured one person's image within the violin melody that had reached its climax, Rimon felt it.
Of the countless odds and ends spread over the floor, the two dice had made the sounds closest to the preferences of the man he had captured.
And he saw it.
The man threw two dice onto a neatly arranged table.
The rolling dice stopped.
He wrote down the numbers they showed.
Then, from a list of Black Dragon Clan subsidiaries he had prepared beforehand, he determined the order in which he would attack them next.
Rimon watched every number written in turn beside the subsidiaries.
And the moment he saw the man's cold sneer,
Kiing!
The dazzling melody shattered.
Reality swallowed the vision.
* * *
“...Hoo.”
Removing the violin from his shoulder, Rimon wiped the sweat running down his cheeks.
He had the stamina to play all day without shedding a single drop of sweat, yet after barely more than ten minutes of playing, he looked like a drenched rat.
Normally, that would have been impossible.
But Rimon did not find it strange.
The performance he had just given required that much concentration.
‘Hah. Fighting the Demon God might have been easier.’
After briefly shaking his head, Rimon carefully put the Pitch-Black Violin into its case as if it were some kind of dangerous weapon, then spoke abruptly.
“Paper and a pen.”
“...”
“Paper and a pen. Give me those.”
“...Here.”
As if he had suffered some tremendous shock, Youin had stood frozen in place. Only after Rimon asked twice did he politely offer a notebook and pen.
The moment he took the notebook, Rimon scribbled something down. Then he returned it to Youin and said in a lazy voice,
“Give this to that book-smart fool. It's a list of the subsidiaries that'll be attacked next.”
It was an unexpected thing to say.
But Youin neither doubted nor questioned Rimon's words.
He merely looked at Rimon with an indescribable expression, his lips moving as if he wanted to ask something.
“I'm going to wash up and get some sleep, so don't call me.”
“Yes. Rest well, then.”
[Huh? Team Leader, wait...!]
But Youin was given no chance to ask.
Before he could say anything, Rimon simply grabbed Yoo Na-gyeong, who stood frozen with her mouth hanging open, and strode away.
Youin watched his retreating figure with a complicated expression for a long while.
Only after Rimon had completely disappeared did Youin turn to the side.
To look back at the girl still standing there with the same bright smile she had worn while seeing Rimon off.
“Princess, what was that just now...?”
“Forget it.”
Li Qing-yu's calm voice came as though she had been waiting.
Her immediate answer did not allow the question itself, and Youin briefly doubted his own ears.
“...You want me to forget it?”
“Youin, what you saw and what you felt just now are not important. What matters is that the Sword Duke told us the killers' next targets.”
Only important things needed to be remembered.
Everything else did not.
So even if he had seen it, he should pretend he had not.
Even if he had felt it, he should pretend he had not.
He should simply forget it.
“Isn't that right?”
Li Qing-yu still wore a bright smile, but her eyes had turned cold as she spoke.
Youin understood.
This was not a question.
And the answer he had to give had been decided from the beginning.
“If that is Your Highness's will.”
It was the answer Youin should give as the general manager of Leviathan, which handled all manner of secrets, and as a member of a clan that pledged its loyalty to the princess.
Apparently satisfied, Li Qing-yu gave a light nod and turned away.
“I'm truly fortunate to have such a tight-lipped and reliable loyal subject as you, Youin.”
If word of what happened today got out, Youin would no longer be her loyal subject.
With that subtle warning, Li Qing-yu left.
Left alone, Youin slowly turned his head and stared with a rigid expression at the place where Rimon had played only moments ago.
He was a martial artist from the old era.
He had experienced the Sword Duke's power, and unlike the young people of today, he had never underestimated Rimon.
But at this moment, Youin wondered whether believing he knew Rimon well had been a tremendous mistake.
What he had felt while watching Rimon play the violin had shocked him that deeply.
‘I don't know.’
Whether it had been mere coincidence.
Or whether Rimon had intended it.
Whether Rimon had always been able to do it.
Whether he could control it freely.
Youin could not know any of those things.
But if even one of those countless suspicions was true, the Seven Dragons Society would deserve to be called complete idiots.
It would mean they had known not the slightest thing about the archenemy they had fought for centuries.
There was one possible exception.
‘Did the princess know?’
Li Qing-yu had pushed through with her engagement to Rimon despite her clan's opposition.
No one understood her choice, including Youin, who pledged his loyalty to her.
‘If she did this knowing...’
But now?
He could understand her choice.
And why she had tried to silence everyone about what happened today.
‘Princess, what kind of monster are you trying to marry?’
Lamenting the unfathomable thoughts of his beloved princess, Youin could only slowly shake his head.
Footnotes:
[1] ri: A traditional Korean unit of distance, roughly 0.4 kilometers.
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