Chapter 35 - The Mastermind

Li Qingyu wore a strange expression, as though she doubted she'd heard him correctly—or perhaps found his outlandish claim intriguing. She blinked at Limon, tilted her head slightly, and asked,

"Do you really mean that?"

"Sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?"

Limon chuckled. In this Iron Age, Monarchs were absolute beings: superhumans who could manipulate even the head of a nation and face an army alone. To claim that the Infinite Monarch, one of their number, was a puppet was hardly something a sane person would say. If Yu Na-gyeong had been alive, she would have cried that her Team Leader had finally gone senile. Limon would have smacked her on the head—and questioned his own sanity all the same. But he didn't take it back. He simply continued in an even tone.

"I don't know if you realize this, but this was actually my first time fighting a Monarch."

"I would imagine so."

Li Qingyu took that as a matter of course. Unless a war had broken out, Limon would have had no reason to fight a Monarch. He wasn't the sort to go out of his way to crush the rising stars of a new age, and the Monarchs had nothing to gain from fighting a hero of the past. Had such a fight happened, the standing of the Sword Master might not have fallen so far.

"To be honest, I've wondered for a while just how impressive these Monarchs are, if I'm being treated like a has-been because of them."

That was why Limon had focused so relentlessly on probing Lee Cheon-gi during their fight. It wasn't merely that Lee had piqued his interest by stealing his swordsmanship. Limon genuinely wanted to know the full strength of the Monarchs, the so-called absolute beings of this age. He had chosen to live with the changing times, and that made him all the more curious about the power of those who reigned at their pinnacle.

"So I fought the Infinite Monarch, and I was surprised."

At first, Limon thought Lee was hiding his strength. As the fight went on, something began to feel increasingly wrong. In the end, he understood.

"I didn't expect a bastard who calls himself a Monarch to be that weak."

Monarchs: superhumans who had conquered the lowest floors of dungeons thought impossible to clear and reached level 100. They stood above every player ruling this age. And they were unexpectedly frail.

"Monarchs are weak?"

Li Qingyu's eyes widened at the outrageous assessment. Limon gave a light shrug.

"To be precise, he fell short of my expectations."

A skill that stole swordsmanship? If it had stolen the principles and intent behind it as well, Limon might have been impressed. No, honestly, he'd assumed a Monarch would be capable of at least that much. That was why he'd kept checking, right up to the very end, whether Lee had anything more to show him. But Lee never truly understood the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword. In the end, he had simply thrown skills around until he collapsed.

"Well, objectively speaking, he wasn't all that pathetic..."

Lee Cheon-gi hadn't been weak. His ability to use thousands of skills at will was undeniably overpowered. The thousand skills he'd unleashed at the end, in particular, had been worth answering with the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword's ultimate technique. But compared to what Limon had expected?

"I can't help questioning whether that's enough to call someone an absolute being."

The Fairy Queen and the Wordsmith who ruled the Golden Age. The Great Witch and the Saint who reigned in the Silver Age. The seven dragons who conquered the Bronze Age. The Sword Masters who flourished in the Age of Heroes. Every age had its absolute beings. As times changed and new powers emerged, only the holders of that position changed. And whatever the age, they all had one thing in common: they possessed the power to overwhelm every absolute being of the age before them. The seven dragons had proved their strength by devouring divine incarnations, and the first Sword Master, the Sword Emperor, had earned the title of absolute being by cutting down those seven dragons.

Unfortunately, Lee Cheon-gi lacked the strength to surpass a Sword Master, an absolute being of the previous age. At best, he was somewhat stronger than the Great Witch or the Wordsmith. Limon's sober assessment was that Lee couldn't handle even the seven dragons, let alone a Sword Master. Of course, that was still an impressive level of power. But compared to the absolute beings of earlier ages, who had been without rivals, it inevitably raised the very question Limon had voiced.

"It makes me wonder how they were ever recognized as absolute beings in the first place."

That was what had felt wrong. He'd taken it for granted as the march of time, but had the ten Monarchs' rise to absolute beings really been a natural change of era? Was it coincidence that they had been called absolute beings without going through what should have been the obvious step: fighting Limon, an absolute being of the previous age? That was where his suspicions began.

"So I started wondering what gave them the nerve to strut around calling themselves absolute beings, and what made them so sure they were stronger than me."

Perhaps Lee Cheon-gi had simply been an especially poor match against Limon. Though he could wield thousands of skills, Skill Duplication was his only unique skill of his own, making him unusual even among Monarchs. But Limon was certain of one thing: someone who couldn't overcome even a disadvantageous matchup had no business being called an absolute being. At least, that was what the term meant to him. His suspicions were reasonable enough that he'd wrung every scrap of information he could from the dying Lee.

"Though the bastard barely knew anything about why."

Limon chuckled. Lee Cheon-gi had been born in the Iron Age. He'd grown up being taught that Monarchs were absolute beings, as though it were common knowledge. Asking him why Monarchs were so weak was never going to yield a proper answer. Lee had, in fact, made quite a face when asked. That alone told Limon he was unlikely to get the answer he wanted from any other Monarch, either. They were players too, accustomed to accepting what they were given and putting it to use.

"But all that questioning did turn up something unexpected."

"What was that?"

"That bastard hadn't originally intended to kill me."

"... Even though he blew up an entire building and sent hundreds of high-level players after you, Sword Lord?"

"Oh, he was trying to kill me then. The way it came about was a bit ridiculous, though."

Limon chuckled and tossed the towel he'd finished using behind him before going on.

"The point is, at first he only wanted to force me into retirement."

When Limon had beaten Lee Cheon-gi's brother-in-law, Seo Yong-chan, to a pulp, Lee ordered action against him. But that went no further than pressuring the PAB to dismiss Limon. At that stage, there had been no plan to frame him for treason or lure him into a trap to kill him. It wasn't because Lee was wary of Limon. If anything, the opposite was true. He had so little interest in a has-been like the Sword Master that he saw no need to deal with him more severely.

"Then something happened, and he decided he wanted to deal with me more thoroughly."

"What happened?"

"Well, there was something the bastard had been looking for like crazy lately. Then he found out the person who had it had met me, of all people."

It might have passed into Limon's hands. Even if it hadn't, Limon might get in the way of obtaining it. With those suspicions, Lee decided that merely getting Limon fired wasn't enough. He needed to deal with him for good.

"His subordinate's overzealous loyalty and that bastard Jeong-su's overreaction seem to have made things spiral out of control on their own... But that's beside the point."

Limon shrugged and roughly smoothed his disheveled hair with one hand.

"The heart of it is that, without 'that meeting,' I might never have ended up crossing swords with the Infinite Monarch."

Of course, that was only a hypothetical. He couldn't state it as fact. Even if all Lee had done was get him fired, Limon might have been angry enough to storm the Infinity Guild and raise hell. Or Lee might have eventually found Limon too troublesome and moved to finish him off. Two tigers could not share one mountain; if Lee sought to become an absolute being, a clash with Limon was inevitable someday. But... was it really inevitable?

"It's quite a coincidence."

Someone other than Limon might have dismissed it as simple bad luck. But the instincts of a Sword Master who had lived through countless events over vast stretches of time caught the faint sense that something was amiss.

"If I hadn't fallen so far that people treated me like a has-been, no bastard would have come at me so recklessly."

The Sword Master's fall from prominence. Was it truly just a result of changing times? Or had someone deliberately eroded his standing?

"And if people hadn't put Lee Cheon-gi on a pedestal as an absolute being, that bastard wouldn't have done anything so reckless either."

The Monarchs were called absolute beings. Was it the times that had made them overconfident? Or had someone inflated their egos by exaggerating their power and calling them absolute beings?

"Then there's the fact that the meeting happened right after I'd had a run-in with the Infinite Monarch."

It was a striking coincidence. Each problem, taken alone, could be brushed aside. But several separate problems had overlapped through bad luck, producing this result.

"It could all be coincidence, of course."

Limon didn't discount the possibility of plain bad luck. Live long enough, and you'd see more misfortunes pile up at once than you could count.

"And it's not the sort of thing anyone could pull off just by trying."

The Sword Master's decline and the Monarchs' rise were social changes that had unfolded over decades. No one could easily bring that about on purpose. Short of intervention by a transcendent being powerful enough to bend the laws of the world, it would take an enormous organization investing vast sums of money and manpower over many years—and even then, success would be uncertain.

"At first, that made me suspect beings beyond humanity had intervened..."

It was a suspicion Limon could entertain because he could now see the constellations. When he'd fallen into the trap, he'd felt their mockery and hostility. That was reason enough to suspect them. Yet when he interrogated Lee Cheon-gi, Limon had merely driven away their gaze. Their hostility, if anything, was too blatant. If someone really had been secretly maneuvering to make the Monarchs absolute beings and manipulating Lee into fighting him, would they reveal themselves so readily? Wouldn't they try to hide their hostility to the end?

"But I know some people who are much better at this sort of scheming than any second-rate god or constellation."

Limon gave a faint chuckle. A force with tremendous influence throughout society. People skilled at plotting from the shadows who also bore him a deep grudge. He knew all too well the force that had fought him—someone called an absolute being—for hundreds of years and stubbornly survived.

"So, with that in mind, let me ask you something."

SHING!

It all happened in an instant. Limon drew his sword, then asked as casually as if he were confirming a detail.

"Was it you?"

There was no trace of a smile on his cold face. His golden eyes were still, their calm gone icy. With his sword pointed at Li Qingyu's throat, Limon asked again in a languid voice.

"I'm asking if your people are the masterminds behind this, princess of the Black Dragon Clan."

He radiated a chilling killing intent, as though he might cut her throat then and there depending on her answer. He looked so terrifying that an ordinary girl might well have wet herself in fear.

But Li Qingyu, the one at the point of his blade, showed not the slightest fear. She met Limon's gaze, a faint smile on her lips, and answered clearly.

"Yes."