Chapter 45 - Thirty-Six Thousand Five Hundred

Limon was dumbfounded. It would have been one thing if he'd swung his sword, but he'd only watched without lifting a finger. Why, then, had Park Hyeon-gun collapsed in a spray of blood?

'What the hell? Did he suddenly develop a conscience and a love for humanity and decide to kill himself?'

Lee Cheon-gi's calm voice answered his question. "It's overheat."

"What? You're saying a little provocation made him so angry he collapsed?" Limon asked, as if he couldn't believe anyone could be that fragile. Lee corrected him. "I mean what happens when you use too many skills at once and exceed your limit."

"Oh, like when you fired off a thousand skills at once yesterday and looked half-dead afterward?" "Yes."

Limon nodded, satisfied for a moment, then looked down at Park again in puzzlement. "Then why is he so much worse off?"

Park was indeed a wreck. Blood streamed from all seven orifices, his crotch was soaked with blood and urine, and blood vessels had burst all over his body. Calling him half-crippled already would hardly be an exaggeration. Lee had used a thousand skills and could at least still move. How had Park ended up like this after using only a handful?

Lee's answer was simple. "Chief Park has probably never trained to activate multiple skills at once."

Lee had certainly acquired his countless skills thanks to the Absolute Skill 『Skill Duplication』. But his ability to wield dozens or hundreds simultaneously at will was the result of years of training and carefully chosen equipment. Even Lee could only activate hundreds at once while in his 【Overlord】 state. Park, however, had stolen only his skills and stats, not the fruits of that training.

"He stole my skills and used them recklessly with an untrained body, without even the right equipment. It's a wonder he's alive."

Limon stared at him. "... So this bastard stole your skills, used them without knowing his own limits, and destroyed himself?" "More or less."

It was so absurd that Limon spent a moment watching Park twitch with a look that said, What kind of moron does that? Then he turned to Lee with a conflicted expression. "Honestly, I thought you were ridiculous for acting so proud when you'd only stolen the shell of my swordsmanship. But compared to him, you were practically sensible."

Was that a compliment or an insult? With Park as the comparison—a man who had done something so mind-bogglingly stupid—Lee had no idea how to take it. After a moment of silence, he said evenly, "For some reason, I feel as though I should apologize on his behalf."

"Don't bother. That's players for you." "..." Lee shut his mouth, having gained nothing by speaking. There was only a difference of degree between Park, who had blown himself up showing off his unique skill, and Lee himself, who had trusted in his copied skills, gotten carried away, and suffered a crushing defeat. Though lumping every player in with Park did seem a bit much.

"Why..." Park spoke then. Apparently aware of his mistake, he had used only one or two healing skills, recovering from a twitching insect to a twitching human being. Blood gushed from his mouth as he cried, "I... I worked hard! I worked hard!"

Lee Cheon-gi had succeeded easily thanks to his cheat skill. Park, by contrast, had fought tooth and nail with 『False God's Renown』, a skill useful for nothing but lying. While stupid, incompetent people consoled themselves with talk of modest happiness and peace of mind, he had struggled desperately to get ahead. He had even siphoned off guild funds to buy equipment and items, risking his life to raise his level.

"So why do I have to end up like this?" Park couldn't accept it. No, he couldn't allow it: that he couldn't do what some lucky bastard like Lee had done without even trying, or that he had destroyed himself so pathetically and now lay twitching like a bug. "It's not fair!" he screamed, tears of blood streaming down his face.

This shouldn't happen. If the world held even the slightest measure of fairness, he deserved to be rewarded more than anyone. Limon had a simple response to his indignant, furious outcry. "You crazy fucker. What the hell are you babbling about?"

"... What?" "I don't know why I have to explain something so obvious..." Limon looked down at Park with weary contempt, too incredulous even to be angry. He sighed, as though having to say it drained the life out of him. "The world isn't a game, you moron."

Clear a dungeon and you gain wealth and glory. Raise your level and anyone can become strong; with enough money, you can buy all the good equipment you want. That was common sense to players—a life where effort naturally brought results. But Limon pointed out something that players found all too easy to forget, his voice languid. "Do you think the real world owes you a reward just because you worked yourself to the bone?"

Work hard and you'll succeed? If you didn't succeed, you just didn't try haa-aard enough? Limon had lived long enough to know what utter bullshit that was.

There were geniuses who learned a hundred things from being taught one. People born with silver spoons and wealth all but assured. Lucky souls who succeeded through sheer good fortune. Their very existence disproved the idea that effort could do anything. They stood as proof that hard work did not always earn a reward, and that some limits could not be overcome through effort alone.

"That's why people have always praised effort and respected those who try." If hard work guaranteed a fair return from the outset, it would be nothing more than drudgery. You knew the world was unfair. You knew you might get nothing for your efforts. You knew some limits might be impossible to surpass. Yet striving to overcome even a little of that unfairness, challenging those limits despite the chance of failure—that was what made effort valuable.

When people told you to try hard, they didn't mean you had to succeed no matter what. They meant you should have the resolve not to break when you failed and the drive to challenge your limits. Only lucky brats who had never tried and failed could chant "try haa-aarder" as if it were the answer to everything, without understanding what effort really meant.

"The point is, working hard doesn't give you the right to kill, deceive, and rob other people as you please." He'd worked harder than anyone? So he had a right to be rewarded? A right to sneer at people who hadn't worked as hard? That was neither effort nor logic. It was baseless fanaticism, a stubborn belief in whatever benefited him. And the funny thing was that people who talked like that always overvalued their own efforts while dismissing everyone else's.

"Well, if you want to ignore the law and all reason and live as if the world were a game, go ahead. That's your choice." Limon gave a faint chuckle. Whether someone killed as casually as they would PK, or worked hard as if grinding levels, how they lived their life was ultimately up to them. That was life. "Just as it's my choice to cut you down and collect the blood debt."

There was only one thing that mattered: unlike a game, where the worst consequence was an account ban, in reality you could lose your life. "K-kill... me?" "What, did you think I'd come all this way just to hand you over to the police?"

Limon's smile turned cold. Park felt his blood run cold too. Only now did he realize that Limon had come to kill him—and that he could lose not just the life he'd built, but his actual life, right here. He shouted with all the strength he had left. "That's murder!"

Whatever crimes he'd committed, judgment belonged to the law. Desperately, Park insisted that killing him over a personal grudge was a crime. Limon's answer was simple. "So what?"

He wasn't playing dumb or mocking Park. He genuinely seemed not to understand what Park's protest was supposed to mean. Tilting his head, Limon looked at the frozen man and said in his languid voice, "If you broke the law to profit from it, you should've been prepared for someone else to ignore the law and kill you, you idiot."

"...!" At those words, Park finally understood. The man before him was Limon Aspelder. A mad dog who had slaughtered some two hundred people, including the PAB director, and taken the president hostage, all to avenge a single subordinate—then defeated a Monarch. A monster the law could never stop.

And at last he understood what Limon meant when he said the world wasn't a game. A game had a system and administrators; the real world had only flimsy laws. There was no administrator to protect Park after he had broken those laws and taken whatever reward he thought his efforts deserved. No—even if there were, it would make no difference. Administrator, god, or constellation: if they stood in the way of collecting his blood debt, Limon would cut them down.

"M-Monarch! Are you just going to stand there and watch?!" Park appealed to Lee. He was desperate enough to beg for help from the man he had tried to kill moments before. But Lee didn't so much as raise an eyebrow. He merely asked Limon, "Will one day be enough?"

"Four days." "That's..." "I said four days." Limon's languid, icy tone allowed no argument. Lee held his golden gaze for a moment, then quietly closed his eyes. "No one will come in here for the next four days."

"... Monarch?" Park couldn't understand what Limon meant by four days, or why Lee had promised to keep everyone out. He trembled as dread surged through him. Limon spoke lazily. "You should be grateful. I ought to make you pay for three months and ten days, but I'm cutting it down to four."

"Grateful... for what? What are you going to do here for four days?" "I already told you, didn't I?" Limon raised his sword and drove its blade into Park's twitching body. "I'm going to kill you."

SHUNK

"Ghk?!" Park's eyes bulged. It wasn't only because Limon's sudden thrust had torn through flesh and organs and driven the sword into his spine. The moment its tip touched a certain point there, searing pain swept through him, as though needles were raking every inch of his body, his lungs were on fire, and he was about to vomit—all at once.

"Don't worry. You definitely won't die in the first three days." Park could only lie there with his limbs shaking from the pain, unable even to scream properly. Limon went on quietly. "After swordsmanship, the thing I know best is the thirty-six thousand five hundred torture techniques I learned fighting the Seven Dragons Society all these years."