Chapter 49 - Sharing a Drink

The Sword Emperor, the first Sword Master, who cut down the seven dragons and ushered in the Age of Heroes, once said that a person craved a drink after a hard-won success, after narrowly escaping death, after staining a sword with filthy blood, after getting red blood on their clothes, or after failing at something.

It was hard to tell whether those were the words of a Sword Master or an alcohol master. Put bluntly, he was saying he wanted a drink every day.

But that was a modern perspective. In the Bronze Age, alcohol was a precious commodity reserved for the dragon race, and humans were forbidden even to drink it without permission. Limon had seen people beheaded for drinking in secret and physicians have their wrists cut off for using alcohol to disinfect a wound. He knew what the Sword Emperor had meant.

He had not said it simply because he liked drinking. His words held the hope that someday humans, too, could have a drink in peace for no particular reason.

Not that the Sword Emperor disliked alcohol.

“Was it around here?”

Seen in that light, Limon’s decision to buy soju and come here right after leaving the Infinity Guild ran a little counter to the Sword Emperor’s wish. This was no place to visit without a reason, much less somewhere to drink in peace. Yet it was a place Limon had to come.

Standing in the deserted vacant lot, he slowly looked around.

“They’ve cleaned it up pretty well.”

It was a strange impression. With no building or even a small roadside tree, the neglected lot looked desolate rather than clean to anyone else. But Limon knew what it had looked like before.

“I expected them to clear away the bodies, but I didn’t think they’d sweep up all that wreckage in just a few days.”

The building that had collapsed into a heap of rubble. The dust the explosion had swept in every direction. The two hundred brutally slaughtered bodies. The fresh red blood that had formed little streams.

Limon gave a faint laugh as he recalled the blood-soaked scene that had filled this lot only days ago.

This was where Haecheong Trading Co., Ltd., the Liberation Brigade’s headquarters, had once stood. It was also where Limon had cut down Kang Jeong-su and the roughly two hundred attackers who had come to kill him.

That had been only a few days ago. The sight of a lot without a scrap of debris was impressive, but Limon was not surprised. Since the Iron Age began, players had made it commonplace for cities—and even entire landscapes—to change overnight.

“Well, it’s better than leaving it filthy.”

With another wry chuckle, Limon sat down on the bare ground, took out the soju he had brought, and poured it into two paper cups. He set one before himself and the other opposite him.

The second cup had no one to drink from it. There was only someone to pour it. But Limon knew there was someone to receive the offering, even if she could not drink it.

“Sorry I kept you waiting so long, Na-gyeong.”

Limon spoke softly at the spot where he had laid Yu Na-gyeong’s body a few days earlier.

“I took the long way around for no good reason.”

He gave a faint laugh. At first, he had thought he only needed to deal with Lee Cheon-gi. But his pursuit of the true mastermind had uncovered an unexpected plot by the Seven Dragons Society, and in the end he had even dealt with a constellation. It had been a tumultuous few days, the likes of which even Limon had rarely experienced in his long life.

“Anyway, I’ve made them pay for your blood.”

One thing was certain: Limon no longer had any reason to wield his sword in revenge for Yu Na-gyeong. Park Hyeon-gun, who had plotted it, had paid with his life. The serpent behind Park had been utterly destroyed. Limon had acknowledged that Li Qingyu, the hidden instigator, was innocent. Even Lee Cheon-gi, who had been used, had taken responsibility in his own way.

If he looked for anyone else to take revenge on, there were the constellations, whose degree of involvement he did not know. Apart from them, there were only politicians and officials like President Han Jeong-guk, who had known what was happening and either turned a blind eye or quietly supported it.

But Limon had no intention of collecting a blood debt from them as well. It was not because he feared the chaos that might follow. They were not even worth cutting down. It might be different if they had directed the scheme from the start, but killing every insect that had scuttled about like a cockroach would be revenge for revenge’s sake, nothing to do with the blood debt.

Besides, Limon knew they would pay a fitting price without his intervention. Whether they would be the only ones to pay it was another question... but that was no longer his concern. He had given up being a hero, and all his ties to this country had been severed.

“And I’ll take responsibility for the children you said mattered more to you than your own life. I’ll look after them until they’re grown.”

The orphanage children were about the only ties he had left. But they were orphans, and they, too, had been cast aside as part of the attempt to get rid of Limon. There was nothing else tying them down. So Limon could say with certainty that Na-gyeong need not worry about them.

“Don’t hang around this world on my account. Go in peace.”

Limon knew this was only for his own comfort. Nothing would change, no matter what he said here. Yu Na-gyeong was already dead; neither revenge nor a memorial rite would bring her back or make her journey to the afterlife any easier.

That was precisely why he had to come. Just as revenge was ultimately for the living, this ritual was for Limon himself. He needed it to wash away the last bitterness in his heart. A sword rusted if the blood was not wiped off, and a grudge left to fester would only turn poisonous.

“Here. Have a drink.”

SPLOOSH

“And since I’m your boss, I’ll have two.”

He gulped down his drink.

“What, Jeong-su doesn’t get any? Like hell he does, that traitorous bastard. He can wait for someone to leave him an offering at a memorial service.”

What he poured out with the alcohol was longing—an emotion some called nostalgia and others called grief. One day it would fade and lose its color, becoming nothing more than a memory. As he called it to mind one last time, Limon kept pouring.

Sometimes he cracked jokes to himself. Sometimes he boasted about how he had taken his revenge. Sometimes he simply gazed up at the moon in silence.

He was still sharing that drink with someone who was no longer there when a voice spoke.

“May I offer the deceased a drink too?”

How long had she been there? The girl in an Eastern-style dress had appeared behind him without his noticing. Limon did not bother to turn toward Li Qingyu. Holding his paper cup, he said flatly, “You didn’t even know Na-gyeong.”

If this was just a gesture to get on his good side, she should forget it. The warning was clear in his words. But Li Qingyu did not back down.

“We never met, but someone dear to you, Sword Lord, cannot be a stranger to me.”

Husband and wife were one, she seemed to be saying, so anyone Limon knew was as good as an acquaintance of hers. She spoke as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Perhaps he was dumbfounded by such an old-fashioned notion. Or perhaps he sensed that she meant it. After a moment’s silence, Limon chuckled and nodded.

“Suit yourself. She was never one to turn down a drink just because someone else was buying.”

“Thank you for letting me.”

As though she had been waiting for those words, Li Qingyu smiled and sat beside him. She took a bottle and a cup from a box she had prepared, poured a drink, then held the cup respectfully in both hands and poured it onto the ground.

Limon watched her with brief surprise at how practiced she looked. Then he noticed the bottle she had set beside her, and his face twisted into an odd expression.

“Isn’t that Macallan? An ’88, at that?”

“Yes.”

“If I remember right, that costs...”

“Yes?”

“... Never mind.”

He made a rough calculation of what the drink she had just poured out was worth and pictured bundles of cash spilling across the ground. In the end, he shook his head.

‘Talking to her about money would be stupid.’

A wealthy family could live on its fortune for three generations even after its downfall. The Black Dragon Clan had declined from its former glory and had already lost nearly half its controlling stake. Even so, the remaining half left few people whose wealth could compare with Li Qingyu’s: the other princesses of the Seven Dragons Society, perhaps, or a handful of Monarchs. The Seven Dragon Group was a corporation said to possess all the wealth in the world. Its fortune was that vast.

“Look at Na-gyeong. Living it up in death more than she ever did alive.”

She had been a high-level player, yet had lived in poverty because she donated her entire salary. Now, after her death, she was getting her fill of expensive liquor. You never knew how things would turn out.

Limon chuckled and tipped his cup back. Then Li Qingyu spoke.

“I’m sorry to say that Yu Na-gyeong’s body has already been cremated.”

“I figured.”

Limon nodded calmly.

Around two hundred high-level players had died here. If that became public knowledge, the country’s standing would plummet, and the ruling party would face demands to take responsibility. Most of the bodies that had disappeared from this place had probably been cremated to cover it up. Without a body, there was no way to prove a death.

Limon had no particular desire to fault them for it. Yu Na-gyeong had been an orphan; even if they had made her a grave, there would have been no one to visit it. But Li Qingyu’s next words gave even him pause.

“So I bought the land around here in the Leviathan Hotel’s name.”

“... You bought this place?”

“Yes. So we can build her a grave here.”

If there was no body to bury, surely it made sense to put a grave where she had died. Li Qingyu said it calmly. Limon gazed at her for a moment, then turned back toward the empty lot.

“Forget it. If you built Na-gyeong a grave in a place like this, she wouldn’t be happy. She’d cry about what a waste of money it was.”

“Ah... She was very thrifty, then.”

“Thrifty, my ass. She just couldn’t shake the habits of being poor.”

Li Qingyu nodded, looking impressed, and Limon gave a faint laugh. Then, as though an idea had come to him, he added,

“If you really want to do something, build a playground.”

“A playground?”

“Yeah. Na-gyeong loved playing with the kids. She’d rather have somewhere they could come and play than a grave.”

“Somewhere children could come and play...?”

Li Qingyu looked troubled, as though he had given her a difficult puzzle. Watching her, Limon found himself thinking, ‘I can’t make heads or tails of this princess.’

She could reveal a conspiracy spanning the world without batting an eye, even with a sword at her throat. Yet a casual joke might leave her tilting her head in confusion—or believing it outright. Just when she seemed cunning, she would be innocent. Just when she seemed calculating, she would be frank.

Soft and deadly as a viper in a greenhouse, yet sharp and beautiful as an orchid on a snowy plain. Where did that strange contradiction come from? Was it because she was the Black Dragon Princess, or was there another reason?

Limon studied the woman who would soon be his bride and who was also his greatest enemy. Then he suddenly asked, “Oh, that reminds me. When are we getting married?”

It was a natural question for a groom-to-be. Yet in another sense, it was not much like a groom’s question at all. Li Qingyu smiled and answered, “I don’t know either.”