Chapter 6 - An Unexpected Visitor

“Hey, Team Leaaader. There’s something I really want to know.”

“What?”

“Fine, I can understand why you were suspended, but why did I have to be suspended too?”

Looking thoroughly aggrieved, Yu Na-gyeong took a sip from her shot glass and asked the question plaintively. Limon answered without batting an eye.

“Because a boss’s mistakes are the subordinate’s responsibility.”

“Isn’t that usually the other way around?!”

“Which do you think happens more often: a boss covering for a subordinate’s mistakes, or a boss pinning his own mistakes on a subordinate?”

Yu Na-gyeong’s eyes darted about. Then she answered confidently.

“If the boss has a proper sense of right and wrong, obviously the first one?”

“Yep. But the good bosses lose their jobs and the bad ones get promoted, so the second one happens more.”

“What kind of hopeless thing is that to say?!”

“You didn’t know? There’s no hope in the real world.”

“Wow. That’s rotten.”

Yu Na-gyeong looked as shocked as a child who had just been told Santa Claus didn’t exist. Limon gave a little snort of laughter at the sight.

Of course, he was only joking. If their boss, Kang Jeong-su, had really tried to dump the blame on them, it would never have ended with a mere suspension.

Yu Na-gyeong knew that as well. She murmured absently, “It’s rather ironic.”

“What is?”

“We’re the ones who got suspended, and we’re drinking without a care in the world. Meanwhile, the Director who suspended us is probably working himself to death.”

“Well, what can you do? That’s what directors are for.”

Limon chuckled.

It would be one thing if they had assaulted an ordinary player. But they had assaulted a Monarch’s relative. Kang Jeong-su was probably running himself ragged cleaning up the mess. His head might end up even shinier.

‘Maybe I should buy him some good hair-growth tonic next time.’

If Kang Jeong-su had known what Limon was thinking, he would have begged him to forget the tonic and please just stop causing trouble. But that plea would never be granted. If it could be, Limon, a hero who had saved the nation, would never have been demoted all the way to team leader.

“Anyway, I’ll admit it felt good to watch.”

“Did it?”

“Yes. That guy was such an asshole. He nearly killed someone, but he pretended it never happened and talked about nothing but his money and compensation right to the end.”

“That bastard would’ve said the same thing even if he’d killed someone.”

“Surely not. He’s still a person.”

“People drunk on power stop seeing other people as people.”

Limon smiled coldly. People generally recognized the humanity of those they considered their equals. That was why they looked for shared ground—age, hometown, workplace, hobbies—and kept company with people they felt were on equal footing with them.

But someone drunk on power could not do that. At its heart, power was domination. It made a person see even their equals as people to be ruled. Limon knew it well; he had seen countless once-innocent people corrupted by power. And if that person was Seo Yong-chan, who had a bull’s head to begin with, it would hardly be surprising if he failed to see anyone else as human at all.

“... Hearing you say that makes me wonder why you let Seo Yong-chan live.”

“Why? Shouldn’t I have?”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t have. It just seems strange. I really thought you were going to kill him.”

“Well, I wanted to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Yu Na-gyeong tilted her head. It was the sort of question she could ask because she was drunk, but she genuinely wanted to know. The Limon she knew would never hold back out of concern for someone’s connections—not even if he were facing the Infinite Monarch himself rather than the man’s brother-in-law.

Limon’s answer was simple.

“A civil servant gets fired for killing someone whenever he feels like it.”

“... That’s all?”

“That’s hardly nothing. If I get fired from here, where’s a has-been like me supposed to find another job?”

“That’s a very practical reason.”

Yu Na-gyeong giggled and drained her glass. With a faint smile, Limon refilled it with soju.

* * *

They passed drinks back and forth for a long while at the shabby street stall. Only when empty bottles were piled high did Limon get up, drop the thoroughly drunk Yu Na-gyeong off at home, and step back out into the street. He looked up at the night sky and murmured, “Those were the days.”

Before players appeared, back in the Age of Heroes, he could have killed Seo Yong-chan or sold him into slavery as he pleased. A Sword Master had been an absolute authority then, more untouchable than all ten of today’s Monarchs put together. He could have killed an ordinary person, claimed the victim had actually been a monster, and everyone would have believed and praised him rather than condemned him.

But those days were long gone. After players appeared, Sword Masters fell from prominence. Just as battleships, once called fortresses of the sea, came to be treated as scrap with the development of aircraft carriers and anti-ship missiles, the rise of skills and players destroyed the Sword Masters’ standing.

The Sword Tower, once never short of trainees, went bankrupt after years of operating at a loss. People who had boasted of knowing Limon whenever they opened their mouths cut ties with him, and before long, “Sword Master” had become a mocking insult: a has-been who knew nothing but how to swing a sword and strutted about, drunk on past glory.

‘Not that I care about any of that.’

The change itself left Limon largely unmoved.

His loss of power and status had nothing to do with why he had spared Seo Yong-chan. There was only one reason: something about Seo Yong-chan’s bull-headed form had caught his attention.

‘There were definitely two things overlapping, weren’t there?’

He had not noticed at first. But after looking more closely, Limon had realized that the wrongness he sensed from the bull-headed Seo Yong-chan came from two different presences mingled together. Hidden cleverly amid the human presence was another, repulsive one that felt like watching a half-rotted brain writhe.

‘I don’t know whether it’s possession, fusion, or a parasite...’

It was no mere ghost, nor was it anything like a chimera. Even in Limon’s long life, he had never seen such a rare kind of overlap. One thing was clear: whatever was superimposed on Seo Yong-chan was fundamentally different from a human being.

‘I shouldn’t interfere rashly.’

He did not yet know what it was or how it was connected to Seo Yong-chan. Killing Seo without knowing any of that could alert whatever lay behind it. Besides, keeping Seo alive and watching him would probably teach Limon more.

And if that thing caused trouble? He could cut it down then. He would have a clear justification for killing Seo Yong-chan.

‘Though I suppose even that way of thinking is a relic of another age.’

Limon gave a faint smile. Perhaps he could not help it. However hard he tried to keep up with the times, he was still a man of the past. A has-been the age had left behind.

『The Yangtze’s waves behind drive the waves before them;

the waves before die upon the sandy shore.

How long can the waves behind enjoy their splendor?

In the blink of an eye, won’t they meet the same fate?』

Perhaps it was the memories he had stirred up, or perhaps he was drunk on the unusually clear moonlight tonight. Murmuring words no one was there to hear, Limon wandered aimlessly through the dim streets. He was suspended, after all. With nothing to do tomorrow, he thought he might enjoy a leisurely walk before going home.

But before he had taken more than a few steps, he stopped dead.

『The Yangtze’s waves behind drive the waves before them;

the waves before perish on the sandy shallows.

But if the waves before do not perish and return to the sea,

they shall rise again, unquenched, to become the waves behind.』

“Hmm?”

Limon narrowed his eyes at the voice ringing through the quiet night.

It was not because someone had answered his muttering, nor because the voice was clear and beautiful. It was because he had noticed the speaker’s approach only when they were already close.

“Who are you?”

Limon genuinely wanted to know.

He was a Sword Master, after all. His senses were keen beyond comparison with those of most tracers. The tracers would no doubt bristle at being compared to a has-been, but that did not make it any less true. Very few people could fool Limon’s senses and come this close—not even among the Monarchs.

Curious who had managed such a feat, Limon put his question to them. The owner of the voice slowly emerged before him.

“I’m sorry for approaching you so rudely.”

Sleek black hair arranged with a jade hairpin. An Eastern-style dress embroidered with silver thread on silk. Skin that shone white in the moonlight. As though drawing back the curtain of night, the visitor stepped out of the darkness. Too dignified to call a girl, yet still too fresh-faced to call a woman, she asked Limon politely:

“Excuse me, but are you the Sword Lord?”

“‘Sword Lord’... I was called that once.”

Limon’s expression turned peculiar. Back when Sword Masters had been absolute authorities, people had given him countless epithets: savior of the nation, guardian of humanity, and more. Sword Lord was one of them. But it had been a long time since he had heard it. Most of those epithets had been forgotten, and only one group of people still called him Sword Lord.

“And the answer to my question?”

She flinched, trembling slightly as if afraid of how Limon would react when he learned who she was. But it lasted only a moment. As though steeling herself, she swallowed, raised her head, and looked straight into Limon’s golden eyes. Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“Would the name Li Qingyu of the Black Dragon Clan mean anything to you?”

“How could it not?”

Contrary to Li Qingyu’s fears, Limon neither grew angry nor drew his sword. He had guessed who she was the moment she emerged from the darkness. Of course he had. Limon, of all people, would recognize a psionic technique. And however vast the world was, only one psionic user could deceive his eyes and ears.

“So what business does a princess of the Seven Dragons Society have with me?”

“I came to ask you a favor, Sword Lord.”

“A favor? You? From me?”

Limon could scarcely believe his ears. The moon was more likely to split in two than for a member of the Seven Dragons Society to ask him for anything. Especially a princess of the Black Dragon Clan.

“Yes.”

With that one word, she overturned everything he thought he knew.

Limon stared blankly at Li Qingyu for a moment, then looked up at the moon.

‘The times really have changed.’

Why did common sense have to change so drastically from one age to the next? Grumbling inwardly, he asked her, “What exactly do you want?”

Limon braced himself. A request that brought a princess of the Black Dragon Clan to him in person could hardly be ordinary. Whatever she said, he would not be surprised.

But the moment he heard her request, his face went utterly blank.

“Please marry me.”