Chapter 11 - I Remembered

He had been here before, though this was his first visit. Logically, that made no sense. But Limon did not doubt his judgment. He had seen enough mysteries that made the impossible possible: all manner of bizarre skills, magic that overturned divine providence, psionics beyond human comprehension, and even spirit arts that commanded armored monsters. Of course, faith without evidence could become blind belief. But Limon had a way to check.

“Team Leader? What are you doing?”

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

Normally, Limon would have cut straight through an obstacle like this. Yu Na-gyeong watched, puzzled, as he walked up to the thick metal door. When he started pressing the number pad beside it, she grumbled in disbelief.

“Wait, how would you know the code? You can’t just press random numbers and expect it to...”

WHIRR!

“...open. Can you?”

Na-gyeong’s jaw dropped. She stared at the door as it slowly began to open and spoke in a daze.

“Team Leader? How did you just do that?”

“How do you think?”

She looked as stunned as if she had seen two royal flushes in a row at a casino. Limon, by contrast, showed no surprise at all. He answered as casually as could be.

“I guessed.”

“You guessed a one-in-a-billion code on your first try?!?!”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“But—no—that’s—so—!”

Perhaps the sheer absurdity of what she had seen had broken her. Limon paid no attention to Na-gyeong’s sputtering. He merely gazed impassively at the scene revealed through the slowly opening door.

“What? Why’s this door opening?”

“Didn’t they say no one was allowed through until the job was done?”

“Hey, where are you looking? Focus on the front!”

Beyond the door lay a vast space, once a banquet hall, now remodeled to take up an entire floor. Dozens of people filled it, armed with all manner of items, from armor and stab-resistant vests to staffs, bows, and spears. The Liberation Brigade members stopped murmuring about the slowly opening back door and stared in bewilderment.

“Huh? Wh-what?”

“What the...?”

They looked as if they had seen a flying mole. Their confusion was plain to see, but Na-gyeong was just as aghast. Even for a headquarters, this was too much. The sight of so many fully armed players huddled together as though preparing to raid a dungeon was enough to make even an experienced PAB agent recoil.

Limon, however, was unshaken. He had known they were there before he opened the door. While everyone else stood rattled, he alone moved forward calmly. One step to close the distance. One step into the murmuring crowd. One step to spin in place and swing his sword.

THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!

“Aaaagh!”

“Wh-what? What just happened?”

The Brigade members recoiled in horror. They had been looking right at Limon, yet somehow they had failed to register his approach until he was among them, striking down four or five of their comrades. It felt as though they had been bewitched by a ghost.

“What the hell are you staring at? Attack him!”

They were players, after all. The shout from a man who looked like an officer snapped them back to their senses, and they hurried to attack Limon. But their attempts remained just that—attempts.

Whether they swung greatswords wreathed in flame, fired arrows guaranteed to hit, or moved shadows to bind his feet, Limon evaded, cut down, or shattered every attack with no more than a single step.

“This is insane...!”

Gang Seok, an officer of the Liberation Brigade, could not believe it. The public might dismiss the Brigade as a gang of psychopaths and criminals, but they were by no means weak. Low-level players were not even considered fit to run errands. Only seasoned players of at least level 30 were recognized as full members. And they were called a brigade for a reason: they excelled at fighting as a unit. They took particular pride in being better at fighting people than most top guilds.

No matter how strong high-level players were, they were miners who did nothing but hunt monsters. When it came to life-or-death fights between people, no organization could surpass a group with a record of murder and every other sort of crime.

THWACK!

But Limon’s blade cut through that pride like paper.

‘What the hell is this monster?!’

Gang Seok could have accepted that their attacks did nothing. Plenty of high-level players had abilities such as 『Absolute Defense』 or 『Immortal Body』 that rendered attacks meaningless. He could even have accepted Limon dropping anyone with a single blow. Combining defense and attack skills on that level was difficult, but well within the power of a duke-class player.

What made Gang Seok shudder was Limon’s gaze. He had never seen eyes like those, not even in the Liberation Brigade, full of criminals and psychopaths. Those golden eyes remained endlessly still and calm even as Limon smashed people over the head with his sword. They told Gang Seok that only Limon’s appearance was ordinary. He was no ordinary human, but a genuine monster before whom the Liberation Brigade would not dare make a name for itself.

The realization came too late. From the moment Limon had stormed in, there had been no way for them to escape, whether they wanted to or not.

“Kill him! If you don’t want to die, find a way to kill him!”

Like a cornered rat biting a cat, Gang Seok cried out in desperation. He lunged at Limon, swung his crescent blade like a madman, and activated his skill, 『Blade Storm』.

『Blade Storm』 was the combat skill that had earned Gang Seok his position in the Brigade. It unleashed thirty-six slashes in an instant, a finishing move that could reduce even a lump of iron to dozens of pieces in the blink of an eye.

TING!

But as he unleashed 『Blade Storm』, Gang Seok’s eyes widened. Just as the skill took hold and his crescent blade was about to move, Limon’s sword met its tip at precisely the right point. The force dispersed before Gang Seok could complete even one swing. And that was only the beginning.

TING, TING-TING, TING-TING-TING-TING-TING...!

An upward strike, a downward strike, a driving blow, a turning slash, a pulling cut—a sequence of thirty-six attacks. Each time, Limon’s sword clung to the blade’s tip and deftly dispersed its force. Gang Seok could only gape. The skill had run its course without letting him complete a single slash.

“H-how?”

The explanation took time, but Gang Seok’s thirty-six strikes had lasted less than a tenth of a second. Even the most agile player could not launch dozens of attacks in that brief span. Only the skill made that supersonic assault possible, and even Gang Seok could do no more than swing it indiscriminately, let alone control it. How had Limon stopped every completely random strike before it could even begin? Limon calmly answered his stunned question.

“You showed me the same swordplay twice. Anyone who couldn’t block it would be a fucking idiot.”

“... Twice? When else did you see my skill?”

“This was the first time.”

“What the hell does that—!”

Gang Seok was dumbfounded. It was not that he could not understand what Limon meant by claiming to have seen 『Blade Storm』 twice. What stunned him was Limon’s attitude: he thought it only natural to block supersonic strikes after seeing them a single time.

THWACK!

“Ghk!”

“What are you, my student? Why the fuck do you keep asking questions in the middle of a fight?”

Limon knocked Gang Seok unconscious with a blow from his sword’s hilt to the back of the head. As he beat down the Brigade members, now looking doomed without an officer to command them, he thought:

‘More and more is coming back to me.’

Normally, Limon would never have bothered blocking every strike of 『Blade Storm』. One swing of his sword would have ended it; there was no reason to make thirty-six extra moves. He had done it for one reason: the instant he saw Gang Seok’s 『Blade Storm』, he had known how each strike would fall. It had come to him as naturally as a forgotten memory.

The other members were no different. Every time Limon crossed blades with one of them, he knew how they would attack. The fragments of memory he gathered grew clearer with each encounter, awakening other memories.

“M-monster...”

CRUNCH!

After bringing down the last member, Limon stopped dead. It was not merely that there was no longer any need to swing his sword. As though defeating every last Brigade member had flipped a switch, the memories drifting through his mind fell into place, forming a single scene. A scene he had never seen before, could never have seen, and did not want to see. Yet it was one he could never forget. The moment it came to him, Limon murmured:

“... I remember.”

“Remember what?”

Perhaps she had grown bored of watching. As soon as the last Brigade member fell, Na-gyeong came hopping over the bodies to ask him. Limon answered calmly.

“Everything.”

“Do you have dementia or something? Did you forget everything?”

Na-gyeong gave a little snort of laughter, as though she had heard a ridiculous joke. Then she took out her smartphone and checked the faces of the fallen Brigade members one by one.

“Looks like all their key members happened to be here. It’s a shame the boss wasn’t, but I’d say we’ve pretty much crushed the Liberation Brigade already, wouldn’t you?”

“Have we?”

“Yes. We should bring the Director and another team to finish cleaning up. That’ll make it easier to count this as a PAB achievement.”

“Yeah. I suppose it would.”

Limon nodded without enthusiasm. Na-gyeong wondered briefly why he looked oddly drained. “Post-battle clarity?” she muttered, then nodded at her own explanation and held out a hand to him.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“...”

“... Team Leader? What are you doing? Aren’t you going to take my hand?”

“Do I have to?”

“Of course. Aren’t you coming to report to the Director?”

He only stared at her hand, making no move to take it. Na-gyeong asked in disbelief, then looked utterly dumbstruck at his answer.

“I’m not going.”

“What? Why not?”

Na-gyeong tilted her head. She had no idea why Limon insisted on staying. But when he told her, she froze with her head still tilted to one side.

“The moment I take your hand, I’ll end up in a trap packed with tons of TNT. Why would I go when I know exactly what’s waiting for me?”