Chapter 15 - Severed Ties

"But you're this country's hero, sir!"

"I was its hero." Hadn't Kang been the one to call him a traitor? Limon gave a derisive snort, leaving him speechless.

"And so what if I am a hero? Did you think I'd go easy on them for the country's sake, even now? On the bastards who ignored my warning and came at me to kill me?"

"..."

"Fucking lunatic."

Kang Jeong-su could say nothing. The truth was, he'd expected Limon to show mercy. No, more precisely, he had never expected losses like these. All he'd planned for was the cleanup after Limon's death. Failure had never crossed his mind.

"And get your story straight. It isn't the country's future you're worried about." Limon reached out, seized Kang by the collar, and hauled him up to eye level. "It's your miserable little bit of power and political standing you're about to lose over this."

"Ngh...!" Kang gritted his teeth. Limon had struck a nerve.

The plan had cost Kang a great deal to put into motion. He'd strained himself gathering high-level players, even while people jeered that he was burning down the whole house to catch one bug. But if he'd killed Limon and made a connection with the Infinite Monarch, he could have secured a stronger political base in the long run.

Now it was over. Failing to capture Limon was the least of it. After losing dozens of high-level players, he'd be lucky to stay out of prison, let alone keep his position as PAB director.

"Do you think you can do all this and walk away unscathed?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"There are plenty of reasons! For a start, the guild masters of [Stardust] and [Heavenly Bell] who just fled will be after your head for the rest of their lives!" Kang shouted, his voice thick with hatred.

Those two duke-class players had been his trump cards. When Mira and An Dong-gwon had suddenly fled, he'd seethed at their shamelessness. Now they were the only people he could count on. They'd lost the core of their raid teams and disgraced themselves by fleeing while their guild members were slaughtered. There was no way they'd let it end here. They would use every means at their disposal to retaliate. Add the Infinite Monarch's power, and even Limon would die.

"Hm?" Limon looked as though he'd heard a bizarre joke. Tilting his head, he asked, "Fled? Who did?"

"I told you! Stardust and—"

"No, what I mean is..." Limon nudged something on the ground with his foot. "If you mean the ones who abandoned their own subordinates and ran, they're right here."

"What kind of non—"

Kang had been about to scoff at the absurd claim. Instead, he froze. There was something horribly familiar about the head Limon had kicked—the one with both eyes burst that had made him recoil a moment earlier. With its eyes gone and its expression twisted beyond recognition, it was hard to tell. But that face was unmistakably...

'An Dong-gwon!!!'

Guild master of [Heavenly Bell], a giant guild with dozens of smaller guilds and contractors under it. One of fewer than a hundred duke-class players in the world. Staring at the face of a man who was now nothing but a head, Kang trembled. "H-how? I saw him run away!"

"Jeong-su, you hopeless fool. Did you truly not know? Or did you know and choose to ignore it?" Limon wore a smile so gentle and amused he might have been looking at a foolish but endearing nephew. Yet his golden eyes held cold contempt as he looked down at Kang. "Didn't your grandfather tell you that no one can escape a Sword Master?"

"..."

"Yes. I thought as much." Limon nodded at Kang's contorted face. Kang's grandfather had gone to war alongside him several times. There was no way he hadn't taught Kang even that much. Kang must have dismissed it as an exaggerated boast.

'Idiots.'

No one could escape a Sword Master. Long ago, Limon had pursued a fleeing Demon God around the Earth thirty-seven times before finally driving his sword into its heart. After that, the fact had become common knowledge. The changing times had erased even that knowledge, but anyone who had done the slightest research on Sword Masters would never have tried to flee from him. They would have knelt and surrendered from the start, or fought for their lives to the end.

They had come to capture Limon without bothering to learn anything about Sword Masters. Or, like Kang, they had known and laughed it off. Clicking his tongue at their stupidity, Limon said, "If there's anyone else I need to kill, tell me now. You might feel a little less wronged when you die."

"Y-you mean to kill me?!"

"Yeah."

"I only did as I was told!"

"... You fucking bastard. Is that really what you're saying right now?" Limon was dumbfounded. There were limits to shamelessness. For the sake of the subordinates who'd died fighting Limon on his orders, if nothing else, Kang should never have said that.

"Th-that was... a mistake."

"A mis... No. Forget it." Limon shook his head, let go of Kang's collar, and drew his sword.

Only when he saw the gleaming blade did Kang seem to realize Limon was serious. Sprawled on the ground, he scrambled to cling to Limon's foot and pleaded, "Sir—no, Uncle! Spare me! Please, for the sake of your bond with my grandfather...!"

Limon's hand stopped. At the word uncle, another image of Kang overlapped the man before him: a little boy who had wet himself in fright the moment they met and always hid behind his grandfather to peek at Limon. Yet give him a sweet, and he'd scamper over to accept it with a bright smile. A foolish little child.

"B-besides, if you kill me too, you'll be branded a traitor for good! There won't be a place for you anywhere in this country!"

Kang seemed to take the silence as an opportunity and desperately listed the benefits of letting him live. Now balding and potbellied, never satisfied no matter how much power he gained, he had grown accustomed to scheming and betrayal. Limon spoke softly to him. "Jeong-su, I've never once been afraid of becoming a traitor."

"... What?"

"It was the country that feared I might become one."

"What does that—"

SLICE

Kang never finished his bewildered question. He only stared wide-eyed at Limon before clutching his spurting throat and collapsing.

"Ghk... ngh... gurgle!"

Perhaps it was all the items he wore as PAB director that kept him conscious and thrashing even with his artery severed. Watching him, Limon murmured languidly, "I told you to get on the ground and beg for your life if you wanted to live."

Limon had already warned them: he would show no mercy to anyone who stood against him. By ignoring that warning, they had thrown away their last chance to survive.

"Though I was going to kill you anyway."

"Ngh... h-hah!"

"Feel wronged? What can I say? Na-gyeong must've felt wronged too. At least if you go with her, her soul might find some peace." Kang writhed, blood pouring from his throat. Limon sat down lightly beside him and looked up at the star-filled night sky. Then he spoke.

"Remember? That time your grandfather begged me to go watch a meteor shower with you. Even then, you dreamed big. The moment you saw the meteors, you wished to become president. Your grandfather boasted you'd make a fine general. I clicked my tongue and said a child hungry for power already was bound to come to no good."

As though telling his nephew a story from long ago, Limon spoke quietly beside Kang without once looking at the man bleeding to death. He went on as Kang's pain-wracked limbs convulsed, his bloodshot eyes went vacant, and the blood finally stopped flowing. Only when Kang's body had gone completely limp did Limon stop telling his stories to the stars. He looked forlornly at the man whose eyes remained wide open to the end.

'... So it happened again after all.'

He did not regret cutting Kang down. Kang had no right to feel wronged, and Limon had cut down children he'd watched grow up more than once before. Still, he felt sorrow—not for Kang, but because he remembered Kang's grandfather.

"Myeong-jin, your promise didn't even last a hundred years."

Kang Myeong-jin had sincerely promised that his descendants would honor Limon as their benefactor, something others wouldn't have dared say even in jest. The old man had kept his word all his life and left it as his dying wish. Remembering him, Limon sighed. "Then again, after this country used me and cast me aside, it would've been more surprising if your promise had held."

Whether Kang Jeong-su or the Infinite Monarch, Lee Cheon-gi, had planned this, they could never have blown up a building in the middle of a city without the government's tacit approval. Assembling this many high-level players alone could have earned them charges of insurrection. Above all, Unit 909 couldn't conduct an operation without the commander-in-chief's authorization. Its presence proved the government had actively participated.

The country Limon had devoted most of his long life to protecting had ultimately chosen to discard its outdated hero. Just as Kang had betrayed him to gain a connection to a Monarch, the country had done so in the name of national interest.

"Still, I protected this country for hundreds of years, and they throw me out barely thirty years after the times changed? Shameless bastards." Limon let out a short laugh. He'd known this day would come once Sword Masters began to be treated as relics. After living so long, he knew people forgot everything, that no promise lasted forever, and that trust could be broken.

Even so, he had continued to form bonds he knew would someday break, to trust people, and to try to protect this country. Rather than resist the changing times, he'd tried to become part of them. But that, too, was over. Now that the country had abandoned him, Limon owed it no loyalty.

'Though I don't know if they truly tried to kill me of their own free will.'

Limon glanced aside at Kang Jeong-su's corpse sprawled in a pool of its own blood. Or rather, at the shadow of a one-eyed old woman beside it, her head split open and her body melting away.

Kang would never have known that before he could even crawl away, Limon had cut down the shadow of the old woman who had tried to abandon him and flee. He would never have known that this mountain of corpses and sea of blood held not only two hundred bodies but also two hundred shadows cast by the starlight. Or that Limon's warning had not been meant for humans alone.

Even those who held a place among the great stars could not escape a Sword Master.