Chapter 2 - Beware the Rampaging Bull

Yu Na-gyeong looked taken aback by the question that had come out of nowhere.

“Did I die at some point?”

“No. I don’t think so?”

“Then why would you ask me that?!”

“... Good question.”

Limon tilted his head. Yu Na-gyeong was a living human being, not some zombie, and he had never even heard a rumor that she had died. Of course she was alive. Yet the fact felt profoundly wrong to him, as though he had seen her die with his own eyes.

‘Why did I ask her that?’

As Limon puzzled over his own inexplicable behavior, Na-gyeong gave her superior an openly suspicious look.

“Team Leader, don’t tell me you’re going senile.”

THWACK!

“Eek! I told you to stop hitting my forehead! This counts as workplace violence!”

“Want me to show you what real violence looks like?”

“... No.”

Limon clenched his fist, and Na-gyeong shook her head vigorously. Experience had taught her that when her reckless boss got serious about violence, it wouldn’t end with a flick to the forehead.

Having quieted her down, Limon set his puzzlement aside and asked bluntly, “Which bastard is it this time?”

“Huh? How did you know we got a report?”

“Because if you woke me up when it wasn’t an emergency, I’d plant a five-finger combo right in your forehead.”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh on your only team member?!”

Na-gyeong grumbled but pulled out the report and quickly read through the key details.

“At 9:12 p.m., a violation of the Player Special Administration Act was confirmed at coordinates BVI―52.15. At 9:15 p.m., the suspect evaded the responding police officers and fled. At 9:17 p.m., the suspect was identified...”

“Keep it simple.”

“Some lunatic got drunk and started raising hell. They want someone to catch him.”

“... Fuck. Now I have to go out just to catch one drunk?”

Limon furrowed his brow. Once hailed as a hero and a guardian deity, he had been called upon only for matters of national importance. Now he had been pushed down to a lowly post with just one subordinate, and on top of that, he had to handle this? The times might have changed, but it was hard not to feel how far he had fallen.

“No one would complain if you didn’t go, Team Leader. It’s your day off anyway.”

Limon made no effort to hide his irritation, but Na-gyeong didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. She merely nodded with an innocent air before asking, “So, are you going or not?”

“...”

Limon scowled at his shameless team member. She was right. He was off today, so he had no obligation to respond to a report. Even if he had been on duty, it wouldn’t have mattered. He might have been demoted to a mere team leader, but no one was going to call him out for slacking off.

“Enough chatter. Get me my coat.”

“Yes, sir! Right here!”

With a sigh, Limon held out a hand. Na-gyeong beamed as if she’d known all along and handed him the coat she had ready. He shot her smug face a glare, put on the white coat, and picked up his sword.

“So who’s the son of a bitch I’m supposed to grab by the hair and dunk in a barrel of booze?”

* * *

WEEEEEE-OOOO!

[“Seo Yong-chan, stop right now! You’re violating traffic laws!”]

“Fuck off! You pigs live off my taxes. Who the hell are you to tell me to stop?”

[“What did you say? I tried asking nicely, you little shit! Stop right now, or I’ll ram you!”]

“Bwahaha! Go ahead and try!”

Times change.

In the Golden Age, when life first blossomed, primitive humanity, scarcely different from beasts, built a civilization by communing with spirits. Spirit summoners and shamans tended the world with the spirits’ power and wisdom.

In the Silver Age, when divine incarnations descended, peoples taught by gods formed agricultural societies and prospered. Priests and witches ruled the world with magic granted by the gods.

In the Bronze Age, seven dragons awoke. They had slept for ages to escape an ancient calamity, and upon waking, they devoured the divine incarnations. Their followers conquered the world with psionics taught to them by the dragons.

In the Age of Heroes, a human slew the dragons. After the Sword Emperor, the first Sword Master, cut down all seven, Sword Masters reigned as the ultimate symbols of power. No one dared challenge their supremacy.

But times change.

In the Iron Age, the constellations appeared. With the arrival of dungeons and constellations, the legend of the Sword Masters declined. Players took their place. Through contracts with constellations, they gained powers called “skills” and quickly became the dominant force in society.

They could erect skyscrapers with a wave of the hand, create machines far ahead of their time, and effortlessly cure incurable diseases. As their skills made the impossible possible, the world advanced rapidly.

Players became objects of admiration. Even someone born with the right talent might strive their entire life without ever becoming a Sword Master. By contrast, the prospect of gaining reliable power as a player without any training was irresistible. High-level players with unique skills, in particular, amassed enormous wealth and fame.

But Police Sergeant Hwang didn’t think the advent of players had been an entirely positive thing for society.

Why?

Because if players didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have had to chase a lunatic through the middle of the city.

THUDDUDDUDDUD!

“Yeee-haw!”

“That son of a bitch!”

Sergeant Hwang gritted his teeth as he drove his patrol car after Seo Yong-chan, the young man charging down the road like a runaway horse. In police work, you tended to encounter more people who fled harder when told to stop than people who actually stopped. But Yong-chan was no ordinary reckless rider.

“If you’re drunk, sleep it off! What kind of maniac goes joyriding on a summoned creature?”

A body bigger than a truck. A hide made entirely of brass. Two horns as sharp as spears. Sulfurous smoke billowing from its nostrils.

Watching Yong-chan run wild atop a brass bull that looked every bit a monster, Sergeant Hwang swore.

‘Fucking players!’

If it had been a sports car, he might have considered gritting his teeth and ramming it. But he couldn’t do that to the brass bull. Even the summoned creatures of players only in their twenties in level could send a decent-sized truck flying with a body slam. Yong-chan, who rode that bull, was a high-level player in his eighties. A missile might not bring the monster down. A patrol car certainly wouldn’t stop it.

That was why Sergeant Hwang hated players. Once their levels got high enough, they treated the police like part of the scenery, and ordinary police forces had no way to deal with them.

“Hey, where’s the PAB?”

“On their way!”

“Fuck, how long has it been since we radioed them? How are they still on their way?”

Sergeant Hwang grew anxious. If PAB agents arrived, they could capture even Yong-chan. That was what the organization was for. The problem was the damage he could cause before then.

BANG! BANG! KABOOM!

“Ahahaha! I’m a free man!”

“Th-that little...!”

As if merely running had grown boring, the brass bull began drifting like a car, crushing parked vehicles with its rear end. Sergeant Hwang stared in horror at Yong-chan, who had thrown out his arms and was shouting with delight.

A few wrecked cars? Those didn’t matter. The problem was that Yong-chan had veered off the cleared route.

“Stop, you bastard! Traffic hasn’t been shut down over there!”

Despite the uproar, no one had been hurt yet because people had been evacuated from the major roads, which were wide enough for the brass bull to run along. Elsewhere, traffic hadn’t been fully controlled. If that thing charged into one of those streets, there was no telling how many people might be hurt or killed.

“Eek?!”

“Wh-what is that?!”

“Oh, fuck!”

His fears came true. The brass bull charged onto a road still full of cars and people. Fortunately, it made such a thunderous racket that the people crossing at the crosswalk noticed it and fled to either side. But not everyone was so lucky.

“Aah!”

“Waaah!”

“N-no!”

Perhaps she had twisted her ankle after being jostled by the fleeing crowd. A woman lay in the middle of the crosswalk, unable to get up, while a little girl who had been holding her hand had fallen with her and was crying her eyes out. Sergeant Hwang’s eyes widened. He grabbed the loudspeaker microphone and shouted at the top of his lungs.

[“Seo Yong-chan, you bastard! Can’t you see the people in front of you?! Stop! Stop right now!”]

“Huh?”

Had the alcohol clouded his vision too? Yong-chan looked startled, as though he had only just spotted the mother and daughter lying in the crosswalk. But that was all. He neither stopped the brass bull nor dismissed it. The bull was moving too fast for him to take action, and his alcohol-addled brain hadn’t even managed to decide that he needed to stop.

‘They’re done for!’

As the brass bull bore down on them, the woman wrapped both arms around the girl and covered her with her body, as if to shield her daughter from its hooves. It was useless. A mere brush with that enormous body would reduce a human being to mangled flesh in an instant.

Sergeant Hwang’s face twisted as he imagined the carnage about to unfold.

CRACKLE!

Then they appeared.

‘... What?’

For a moment, Sergeant Hwang doubted his eyes. An instant ago, only the mother and daughter had been in the crosswalk. Now a man and a woman stood there as well.

His surprise was brief. At the sight of their pure-white coats with their ornate patterns, his face lit up before he knew it. Only one kind of person still went around dressed so unfashionably.

‘The PAB! They’re finally here!’

If they were PAB agents, even their sudden appearance out of nowhere made sense.

The Player Administration Bureau, commonly known as the PAB, was an organization formed specifically to regulate high-level players. Most of its agents were high-level players themselves. A spatial-type player who could use 『Teleportation』 might not be able to stop the brass bull, but rescuing the mother and daughter would be easy enough.

The immediate disaster had been averted.

Sergeant Hwang had just begun to relax when confusion took its place. The PAB agents stood their ground instead of fleeing with the mother and daughter.

‘What? Why aren’t they getting out of there?’

SHING.

Before his surprise at their behavior had faded, the man in the white coat drew his sword and stepped forward. Sergeant Hwang finally understood what he intended and recoiled.

“Are you insane? You’re going to stop that thing head-on?!”

The man had to have a death wish. Yong-chan might be “only” in his eighties in level, but that put him in the top 0.01 percent of players worldwide. And the brass bull was a combat summon. To face its charge alone, armed with nothing but that flimsy sword, was madness. Only the great Ten Monarchs and a few archdukes comparable to them could do such a thing.

But the instant the man moved, Sergeant Hwang’s mouth fell open, his curses forgotten.

SHRAAASH! BOOM!

“...!!!”

One step as he severed the bull’s thick neck. One step as he cut through its legs, still moving though it was dead. One step as he spun and kicked it in the flank.

In just three steps, the man slaughtered the brass bull and sent what remained of its body crashing to the roadside. Then he sheathed his sword.

He grumbled to the woman standing behind him. “Hey, you said all I had to do was catch one drunk. What’s with the bull?”

“Maybe he brought it along as a bar snack.”

“Who the hell eats brass with their booze?”

“I bet there’s a player with a skill that lets them eat and use metal in the registry.”

“... Fuck. I swear, not one of these players is normal.”

“I’m a player too, you know.”

“That’s why I said not one of you is normal.”

“Team Leader, what exactly do you think of me?!”

He had just destroyed a bull the size of a house, yet he and the woman chatted as casually as if he’d swatted a fly. Sergeant Hwang stared at him in a daze until Officer Kim, sitting beside him, spoke in a bewildered voice.

“Sergeant Hwang, what did we just see?”

“We saw a summoned creature belonging to a player in his eighties get torn apart by one man in less than a second.”

“How is that possible?”

“... Maybe it is for a monarch-class player?”

“But I’ve never heard of a monarch like that.”

“Of course you haven’t.”

Sergeant Hwang found himself agreeing. Of the countless players in the world, only ten qualified to be called monarchs: those who had contracted with monarch-class constellations and reached the ultimate level, 100. But as far as he knew, that white-haired man was neither one of the Ten Monarchs nor one of the archduke-class players ranked in the top hundred.

‘No, wait. White hair?’

Sergeant Hwang’s eyes widened. He studied the man more closely. That pristine white hair reminded him of someone. When he spotted a small scar near the man’s eye, he murmured a name without thinking.

“Could it be... Aspelder?”

“What? Aspelder? You don’t mean Limon Aspelder, do you?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it.”

Sergeant Hwang spoke with conviction. Few people mentioned him these days, but he had once been the most famous person in the world. Before the Iron Age began and players appeared, he had been hailed as humanity’s guardian deity.

“He’s humanity’s last Sword Master.”