Chapter 31 - Qualifications

“Cough.”

The moment Lee Cheon-gi opened his mouth, bright red matter and fresh blood came pouring out. It was proof of internal injuries so severe that his life was in danger unless he received treatment at once.

But Lee paid it no attention. Not merely because he had expected this when he did something as insane as exceeding 【Overlord】’s limits to use a thousand skills at once. There was a far more important problem.

“What... was that?” Lee slowly raised his head. He glared through bloodshot eyes at the white-haired man standing before him and ground out the question again. “What was it?”

What he had seen before he collapsed: the power that had melted the thousand skills he had wrung everything out of himself to unleash, like dew touched by morning sunlight. The light that had been neither fast nor strong, yet impossible to dodge or block. He wanted to know what that trajectory—so beautiful it had been almost entrancing—was. Limon answered him.

“The Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.”

“Don’t lie to me. The Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword has no move like that!” Lee shot back angrily.

Through 『Technique Acquisition』, he had learned not only the original Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword but even some of the swordsmanship Limon had improved. So he could say with certainty that what he had just seen was not the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword. It had no such absurd move, and even Limon could not have created one in so short a time.

Limon looked at him and scoffed in disbelief. “Anyone would think the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword was your swordsmanship.”

“At least, apart from you, I know more about it than anyone.”

“Well, when it comes to the swordsmanship, perhaps you do.” Limon did not deny that. Even if Lee owed it to the cheat skill 『Technique Acquisition』, he had indeed stolen and learned Limon’s swordsmanship properly—with one qualification. “When it comes to the swordsmanship alone.”

“... What do you mean by that?” As though he had caught the subtle implication, Lee pressed him again, even as he vomited another mouthful of blood.

Limon took a step toward him, bent down, and picked up the fine sword Lee had dropped when he fell. “Honestly, I was a little impressed. It’s been a long time since someone stole my swordsmanship after seeing it just once.”

“You mean someone besides me has done that?”

“Listen to this arrogant bastard. Did you think nobody else could do something just because you can?” Lee frowned as if the remark had struck home, and Limon smiled derisively.

Lee Cheon-gi’s unique skill, 『Technique Acquisition』, could steal any technique. It was undeniably remarkable. But for Limon, at least, having his swordsmanship stolen was hardly a new experience.

“Granted, people like that are rare. Only a few even among the prodigies managed it.” In every age, there were geniuses who defied common sense. Sword prodigies in particular had all sought Limon out at least once, and a small number had learned the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword almost immediately.

“So when you started imitating my swordsmanship, I had some hopes for you. I wanted to see how well you could steal the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.”

Before the constellations appeared in the world, when Sword Masters stood supreme, many had wished to learn the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword. Limon had taught them freely. It was his duty as master of the Sword Tower, the hallowed ground of Sword Masters.

But after the Iron Age began, the Sword Tower went bankrupt from operating at a loss. People stopped seeking his instruction. Few even remembered the name of Limon’s swordsmanship, the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.

And now a Monarch, of all people, had gone out of his way to use a skill to steal it. It was ironic—and nostalgic enough that, for the first time in ages, Limon had returned to his role as master of the Sword Tower and taught by showing Lee how he improved his swordsmanship. Even if the result had been disappointing.

“But in the end, you never understood the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.”

“What part of it don’t I understand?”

“What part, huh? When you put it like that, you make it sound as though you know my swordsmanship inside out.”

“Of course I do.” Lee was certain. 『Technique Acquisition』 was an Absolute Skill. Having acquired the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword through it, there could not possibly be a sword move he did not know.

“Oh, really?” Limon gave a small laugh. Examining Lee’s sword, he asked casually, “Then do you understand the principles behind the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword?”

“What principles?”

“I’m asking whether you know why it’s used one-handed, why learning it lets you read your opponent’s movements, and why you have to grip and swing the sword in a particular way at a particular moment.”

“That’s...” Lee found himself at a loss for words. 『Technique Acquisition』 had taught him everything about the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword—but only which move to use and when. He did not know why.

If it had been ordinary swordsmanship, he could have analyzed it with skills such as 『Swordsmanship Theory』 and 『Walking Encyclopedia』. But the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword was far too complex to understand through such paltry skills.

“Then what about its purpose? Do you know who created it, what they created it for, or the history and effort through which it was perfected?”

Once again, Lee could not answer. Before acquiring it as a skill, he had not even known Limon’s swordsmanship was called the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword. How could he know details like those?

“Why are you talking about things that have nothing to do with swordsmanship right now?” It was all Lee could manage to ask, his voice stiff. The question was a protest against changing the subject, but Limon answered calmly.

“Because that’s why, despite stealing the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword, you never got beyond imitation.”

“... You’re saying my swordsmanship was nothing but imitation?”

“Yes.” Limon nodded. As if comforting an injured woman, he slowly stroked Lee’s sword with his fingers and spoke languidly. “If you’d understood its principles, you wouldn’t have needed to steal and learn it all over again, no matter how many thousands of times I changed the swordsmanship.”

It was like any field of study. Understand a formula, and you can calculate the area of a shape however it changes. Understand chemistry, and you can predict the result of mixing substances in any combination. Swordsmanship, in the end, was only a form. Understand the principles within it, and a single school of swordsmanship could take a thousand forms and stand against ten thousand techniques.

“And if you’d grasped the intent behind it, you’d have known at a glance that my final stroke was the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.”

The dragon-slaying sword created by the first Sword Master, the Sword Emperor, to kill the seven dragons. The swordsmanship Limon had refined over long years and perfected after a desperate battle with the Demon God. The culmination of a mere human’s fierce determination to bear the fate of the world and stand against transcendent beings, of bitter grief and indomitable will: the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword.

Anyone who neither understood that meaning nor felt it even after seeing the sword could never wield it properly. Limon said it calmly, then gave a cold smile. “Swordsmanship without its principles or its intent is just an empty shell. What else would you call it but imitation?”

Lee had certainly acquired the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword, and it had made him much stronger. But to Limon, it was like giving a smartphone to a caveman who used it as a mirror and marveled at how wonderful it was. No, that was too cruel to the caveman. Perhaps a shiny stone would be fairer? Either way, Lee understood neither its essence nor its principles, let alone how to use it properly. The gulf between the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword with its principles and intent, and swordsmanship without them, was that vast.

Yet here was a Monarch, one of this age’s supreme beings, talking as though he had mastered it without knowing any of that. Limon could not help feeling disappointed. “Then again, you people are always like this.” Lee was not exceptional. Most players were the same. “You think skills are everything and neglect anything else.”

They dream of becoming swordsmen but make contracts with constellations that grant swordsmanship skills instead of learning swordsmanship. If they find their technique lacking, they look for a better swordsmanship skill rather than train by swinging a sword themselves. If they lack strength, they try to clear dungeons for equipment that raises their strength stat, or they level up, rather than train their muscles. Believing skills and levels determine a person’s worth, they make acquiring good skills and raising their level the goal of their lives.

They take what they are given for granted, never wondering where it came from or when and how it came to be. Then they treat that outlook as common sense, refusing even to learn about anything that falls outside it and mocking it as outdated. At least, that was how the players Limon had seen behaved.

“In that respect, you’re a little more open-minded than most, you bastard.” He was not being sarcastic. In this age, Limon was treated as a has-been. For a Monarch, someone at the pinnacle of all players, to think of acquiring his swordsmanship was remarkable in itself.

Limon chuckled and said that if anyone found out, they would take Lee for the sort of eccentric who tested whether dog shit really could be used as medicine. Watching him, Lee asked in a groan, “Are you... denying the very existence of players?”

“What good would denying the changing times do?” Limon shrugged. He had no intention of denying skills or players. Monarchies had fallen and given way to democracy; cars had been invented to replace carriages. He saw the appearance of players as another turn of the times. If he tried to reject every change like that, even cutting himself off from modern technology and culture in some tucked-away folk village would not be enough.

“It’s just that you people have no right to dismiss something simply because it’s old.”

They looked down on swordsmanship earned through blood, sweat, and tears because it was not a skill. They mocked the Sword Emperor, who had sacrificed himself to free humanity, saying he must have been weak and died because he was not a player. They laughed at the title handed down for centuries in honor of the Sword Emperor and other heroes, calling it the sort of thing a kid trying too hard to sound cool would say. They dismissed a hero who had saved the nation and protected the world time and again as an outdated relic of a bygone age.

In the old days, insults like those would have turned a country upside down. Internet or no internet, they would have been paid for in blood. All the more so when Limon had heard that sort of thing to his face hundreds of times.

“If you’re determined to act that way, I won’t stop you.” But Limon did not demand blood. He merely lifted his fingers from the sword he had been stroking and continued calmly. “But even knowing it’ll sound like the ramblings of an old man, I’ll say one thing.”

CRACK.

The moment Limon spoke, a crack appeared in Lee’s sword. Starting at the tip, it spread across the entire blade. In an instant, the beautiful sword became fragments of metal that clattered to the ground.

Limon gazed sadly at the wreckage, as though it were the remains of a pitiful woman abandoned after giving everything to protect her lover. Then he finished what he had to say. “Bastards like you, so caught up in your damn skills that you couldn’t even hear your own sword screaming, have no right to judge my swordsmanship.”