Chapter 33 - And You Still Call Yourself Human?

Limon Aspelder. The man Lee Cheon-gi had thought belonged to a bygone age. The hero once called humanity's guardian deity.

Watching him claim to be nothing more than human even after accomplishing the superhuman feat of defeating a Monarch, Lee finally understood.

Sword Masters. Beings who had attained eternal youth and life with nothing but the swing of a sword, borrowing no power from constellations or any other supernatural source. Superhumans among superhumans, true monsters feared even by dragons and the Demon God. Absolute beings who had once stood at the pinnacle of the world.

And the man before him was the last surviving one.

"... For someone who doesn't want to show off his power, you took the president hostage and raised hell?"

Why did it unsettle him so much? He had already known what Limon was. Yet the sudden surge of tension was more than Lee could bear, and the retort slipped out.

Limon gave a little laugh. "I said I didn't want to become a monster. I never said I wanted to be a pushover."

He could overlook kids fooling around when they didn't know any better. But little shits who took advantage of lenient penalties for minors to murder, rape, and plunder deserved to be beaten to death. That was only human decency. Holding back even then would just be some pathetic bullshit game of pretending to be weak while hiding his strength.

Limon said it without hesitation. Watching him, Lee thought, 'His whole way of thinking is different from an ordinary person's.'

He didn't mean Limon's argument that even a child should be killed if they showed signs of turning bad—an argument that might have passed in the Middle Ages.

He meant Limon's view of everyone as children, whether they were a president, a Monarch, or even an entire nation.

Lee could sense it. Living long enough to watch a country's rise and fall could not, by itself, give someone that perspective. It belonged to someone who had always seen even a nation of tens of millions as something to protect, tend, and raise—like an old man who had cared for a garden all his life and treated every flower and tree in it as his child.

'The perspective of an absolute being...'

Had he ever looked at the world that way, even once? Lee let out a wry laugh at the thought. He knew better than anyone that he hadn't. Before he was an absolute being, he was a Monarch. No matter how high his level, he was still a player who had lived thinking only about how to use his own power, just as Limon had said.

"May I ask just one last thing?"

"You've been asking me questions to your heart's content, you cheeky bastard. Why ask permission now?"

Limon sounded incredulous, but Lee pressed on. Limon hadn't said no, so Lee took that as permission and asked quietly, "If I understand the principles and intent of the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword you spoke of, will I be able to wield a sword like that too?"

The question seemed to come out of nowhere. Limon, however, wasn't surprised. As though he had expected it from the start—or was impressed Lee had held back this long—he chuckled, put on a mischievous expression, and answered.

"No. You'll earn the bare minimum qualification to learn it."

"I see."

"Disappointed?"

"Hearing that answer is enough for me."

Lee answered calmly. It would have been a lie to say he felt no regret. The paths Limon's sword had traced were so breathtakingly beautiful that merely knowing he could not learn to follow them filled him with grief.

But he wasn't disappointed. Limon's answer had confirmed something he had vaguely sensed after acquiring even the hollow shell of the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword and facing Limon's ever-changing sword several times: the ease contained in that final stroke.

'... He really is a monster.'

It had pierced a thousand skills. Shattered an indestructible sword in an instant. Defeated Lee himself, the Infinite Monarch. He would dare call it the ultimate strike—a sword stroke he was certain no Monarch could withstand.

Yet even that fantastic stroke had merely been one of the best ways Limon could subdue him. It had not been his strongest move, wrung from him at full power like Lee's own 【Overlord】.

If a sword stroke delivered with power to spare could do that much, what would one delivered with everything he had be like? No—was there even anyone who could force Limon to use his full power?

'If all the other Monarchs attacked him at once... could they even draw out his full strength?'

Lee was startled by his own thought. Limon's defeat did not feature in it at all. Even with every Monarch, each possessing nearly invincible skills, placed on the other side of the scales, he could not imagine Limon losing. The Limon he had faced was that unfathomable.

Now Lee understood. This was a true absolute being: unlike Lee and the others, who had played at being absolute beings on the strength of power built up through cheat skills, Limon had stood at the pinnacle of the world by virtue of what he was.

"... How ridiculous."

"What is? The state you're in?"

"Something like that," Lee answered calmly despite Limon's mockery. He really had meant that he found himself ridiculous: he had struggled so hard to surpass 'that man,' never knowing a monster like Limon existed.

Perhaps letting go of that pointless obsession had eased him. Limon gave a small laugh at the sight of Lee's strangely peaceful expression beneath all the blood.

"No regrets left, then?"

"I'd be lying if I said I had none. But I'm ready."

Lee coughed up another bowlful of blood. Looking straight into Limon's golden eyes, he said quietly, "Finish it."

His body had already passed its limits. He was alive at all only because he possessed dozens of survival and healing skills, and even they could do no more than keep him breathing. He no longer had the strength to run away, let alone fight Limon.

Lee had asked everything he wanted to know and accepted his end. Limon sounded a little surprised. "You're not going to beg pathetically for your life?"

"Let's say I have my pride as a Monarch."

"Monarch or noble, I've seen few who held on to their pride right up to death."

It was a judgment born of experience. Limon had killed countless people who, however proud they had been, offered up their money and even their daughters and begged for their lives the moment a sword touched their throats.

Lee's answer was simple. "They weren't me."

"A good answer to a foolish question."

Limon chuckled and rose. Drawing the sword he had sheathed, he said languidly, "If you're ready, I'll give you the end you want."

His earlier laughter might never have happened. His face went cold as ice as he held out his sword. Lee did not avert his eyes. He simply met Limon's gaze calmly.

That was when it happened.

A faint rustling stirred.

As Limon held his sword to Lee's throat, his vision turned black, and what had been invisible came into view. He had experienced it several times before and had grown somewhat used to it.

But this time was different. It wasn't just that Lee himself had vanished from his sight, unlike before, when he had been able to see the constellations contracted to players. Nor was it the something he could see stirring where Lee had stood.

—Eyes.

Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes.

Thousands upon tens of thousands of gazes he had not sensed a moment earlier became unmistakable the instant his vision darkened. As numerous as grains of sand on a beach. As vivid as a candle flame before his eyes. Yet black and clinging as the mud of a swamp.

Following those gazes that seemed to rake needles through his body, Limon slowly raised his head. And understood.

The countless stars shining in the night sky were the source of those gazes—and the gazes themselves. They were the eyes of the constellations. At this very moment, countless constellations—tens of thousands, hundreds of millions, perhaps even trillions—were watching him.

It was sheer terror. The thought alone would have driven an ordinary person mad. The gazes of constellations, beings beyond human comprehension, carried that much weight and power.

"... I see."

But Limon, the one receiving those gazes, did not waver. He slowly surveyed the night sky as though committing each point of starlight to memory, then spoke quietly.

"Unlike the pawns you can use and throw away, is a Monarch too valuable a pawn even for you to lose?"

He had killed hundreds of players over the past few days, yet never once felt such concentrated attention or the pressure within it. His lips twisted in scorn.

"Or wasn't watching the fight enough? Do you want the execution as part of the show too?"

It was less a question than a sneer—a one-sided mockery of their vulgar willingness to make a spectacle of another's death. He wanted no answer.

Immediately afterward, as though answering him, starlight fell from the night sky. A pure white hand emerged from the shadow writhing where Lee had stood.

Limon knew what it was: a hand extended from a star, offered by one of the monarch-class constellations said to stand above the countless others. He knew why it had reached out, too. He had already experienced this once himself.

So he acted without hesitation.

[The constellation that protects the Infinite Monarch intervenes in reality.]

['Watcher of All Things Reflected' offers you...]

"You're in the way."

SLASH!

It happened in an instant. The constellation's hand had barely begun writing the system message against the starlight when Limon cut through it without even reading it. Ordinarily, it would have been futile—like trying to cut light with a sword, an act that should have accomplished nothing but a sweep through empty air.

But Limon's sword produced a different result.

CRACK!

[System error. Error code k51e0i4. Bug caused by forced system severance during contract formation.]

[Fragment of the damaged constellation is absorbed by the target.]

['Watcher of All Things Reflected' is horrified at having a finger cut.]

A sharp cracking sound rang out. The system message shattered, and the hand, its finger cut, recoiled into the shadow in fright.

Only fragments of light remained—proof that a mortal's sword had wounded a mighty constellation. Limon watched them drift through the air and fall at his feet, then spoke quietly.

"This is my burden. It is a blood debt I must collect with my own sword, and mine alone is the will that shall decide it."

It had begun when he cut down Yu Na-gyeong. Choosing from whom and how to collect the price of her blood was something he had to do by his own will, with this sword stained by her blood. It was his duty, responsibility, and right as the man with such an inept subordinate.

"I'm warning you. Constellation or whatever the hell you are, don't interfere in my business."

He could guess well enough what the constellation meant to say. It would either ask him to spare Lee as though cherishing a pet, or order him killed like a spectator at the Colosseum. One of the two. And it would dangle a contract with a monarch-class constellation if he complied, or retaliation if he refused—a tempting carrot and a threatening stick.

Wasn't he going to kill Lee anyway? Why not collect a reward from a constellation while he was at it?

Bullshit!

If a constellation offered him a contract for sparing Lee, should he abandon the blood debt? If it offered him a contract for killing Lee, should he collect the debt while rejoicing at the bonus?

Whatever offer he received or refused, the pure blood debt carried by his sword would vanish. Killing Lee would become a murder committed while weighing a constellation's wishes and calculating the price of a life for his own gain.

He didn't care if it meant making enemies of every constellation in the world. With the sword that had pierced Yu Na-gyeong in his hand, he could not allow himself to swing it with any intention mixed in that had nothing to do with the blood debt.

There was only one exception: if it was proven that the constellations were involved, and he had to drag one down from the stars, put a blade to its throat, and reckon the debt.

"I want neither help nor hindrance in this matter. I won't even allow you to watch."

Perhaps his thinking was outdated. Perhaps it was foolish obstinacy. He didn't care. This was how Limon Aspelder had lived.

"If any of you meant to interfere, withdraw your hands. If any of you are spying, look away while you still can."

And so Limon declared that he would tolerate no interference now—not from skills, constellations, fate, or anything else.

It was a warning directed not at any one person, but at the world itself. An audacious threat that extended even to the constellations.

"Otherwise..."

CLANK.

As though sliding the sword into its sheath, Limon drew it diagonally back. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he looked up at the night sky with cold, steady eyes.

"I'll cut you down."

At that moment, the stars closed their eyes. Stars were not living things, so the expression should not have applied. Yet Lee could describe it no other way. No sooner had Limon finished speaking than the stars scattered across the night sky vanished.

Even the last star, which had flickered as though hesitating, lost its light. Apart from the faint glow spilling in from the city, the world fell into darkness. Looking at Limon standing alone and proud at its center, Lee asked in a daze before he knew it.

"... And you still call yourself human?"

"Sorry, but your question time is over. Now it's my turn."

Lee had asked with genuine doubt whether Limon really was human. Limon ignored the question completely. Instead, he rested his sword on Lee's shoulder and spoke in a cold voice.

"You'd better answer carefully."

His golden eyes were heavy and grave—as much as when he had silenced the world, if not more. An unidentifiable blackness stirred within them as he looked at Lee, his lips twisting into a cold smile.

"Because your answer will decide how painfully you die."