Chapter 17
Chapter 17
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: 7. The Dignity of the Greatest Swordsman (1)
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After Young-woo finished his first meal, a brief silence settled in.
It was because everyone had been so starved that, for a moment, they forgot this world was trapped in that horrific process called the Reset.
“Um… excuse me, Greatest Swordsman.”
Eventually, the wolf-cut old man from the Sky Residence group spoke up first.
“Yes? Oh, uh… if it’s okay with you, just call me Young-woo.”
“Yes, Young-woo.”
What on earth was he about to say?
Young-woo stared at the old man’s rigidly tense face.
The old man then cautiously held up the commemorative coin in question.
“If it’s alright… could we use these?”
30,000 karma per person.
He was saying to speak up now if he planned to take them back.
“Oh, that.”
Young-woo blankly gazed at his own face engraved on the coin before nodding.
“Of course. I handed them out so you could use them however you like.”
“Wow……!”
“R-Really?”
The Sky Residence folks finally broke into relieved smiles.
Young-woo gave a faint smile along with them, then suddenly remembered something and asked.
“By the way, if I may ask, what exactly do you plan to do with them?”
It was a question to gauge how the billions of karma flowing into Gumi City would be spent.
“We haven’t decided anything for sure yet…….”
This time, the woman from the couple duo answered.
“We’re thinking of setting aside 10,000 per person for taxes, and using the rest to boost our stats. That way, we can fight the monsters more easily.”
“I see. So the kids will boost their stats too?”
At Young-woo’s follow-up question, the Sky Residence group’s mouths clamped shut for a moment.
Come to think of it, they hadn’t considered that far.
“Well… for now, shouldn’t we prioritize boosting the guardians’ combat power?”
“Yes. You can discuss and decide. I was just curious.”
After this exchange, Young-woo shifted his gaze to Ye-chan, who was waiting quietly in the back.
“Hungry? Let’s go grab something to eat now.”
“Where to?”
“Somewhere with food, obviously. This is a residential area, so there’s gotta be a mart or something nearby.”
The old man from the Sky Residence group, who had been listening to their conversation, politely gestured south with his hand.
“It’s our neighborhood, after all. We know where the mart is. Let us guide you.”
No doubt a ploy to stick close to the Greatest Swordsman.
But Young-woo needed to secure food before night fully fell, so he nodded without hesitation.
* * *
There had definitely been nine of them when they set out.
Young-woo’s group plus the Sky Residence crew.
But now.
“This… is this really okay?”
Ye-chan gripped and ungripped his spear, constantly glancing back.
It was because people had started gathering one by one at some point.
“…What can we do? We can’t just kill them.”
When Young-woo subtly looked back, reactions poured in immediately.
“Wow… it’s really the Greatest Swordsman.”
“He looks exactly like on the coin.”
“Not as vicious-looking as I thought.”
In just ten minutes, their numbers had swelled to dozens, all chattering nonstop as they trailed behind.
“…….”
Young-woo tried his best to ignore the constant evaluations of himself and asked the wolf-cut old man leading the way.
“Excuse me, sir, are we almost there?”
“We’re here. Right up ahead.”
The old man glanced back as well before continuing.
“It’s bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Yes. A bit…….”
“But they don’t mean any harm. Who would hold a grudge against their lifesaver? Especially people with families.”
Ironically, the old man saying this had no family.
“And it’s the first time.”
“Hm?”
“Since that Reset mess started, this is the first good thing that’s happened. What you did, Young-woo.”
The old man’s dry cheeks and cheekbones crinkled into a grin, and Young-woo found himself bowing unconsciously.
“Thank you.”
Finally, the old man raised his hand and pointed ahead.
By now, night had deepened enough that surroundings were mere silhouettes, but Young-woo could pinpoint the mart.
A huge crowd had already gathered there, and it was incredibly noisy.
“Are we really doing this?”
“What the hell do you want us to do? Starve to death?”
“We all need to eat to survive, don’t we? Just compromise a little!”
Over a hundred people surrounded the mart entrance, shouting back and forth.
And at their center.
“Compromise? You fuckers crazy? This is straight-up robbery! You get that?”
A man brimming with murderous intent, along with what looked like his family, were barricading the entrance in protest.
Both sides were even armed.
“Tch.”
The old man who grasped the situation clicked his tongue.
Young-woo also sensed the tangled mess and made a troubled face.
‘Everyone’s starving and came for food, but the mart owner won’t let them in.’
It was only natural, really.
The Reset had turned most things to stone, but that didn’t change ownership.
Even Young-woo considered the chocolate bar he’d grabbed at the start of the Reset as still his.
Something he’d legally bought and paid for at a convenience store before it all went down.
So, in the same vein, the mart owner was asserting his rightful claim.
‘Right. I thought you had to pay karma to unpetrify, so it’s like paying for it… but if the original owner’s still around, it’s not fair compensation. Unpetrifying doesn’t put money in the owner’s pocket.’
Thus, the bikes Young-woo and Ye-chan were hauling around were technically stolen from someone.
The root causes of this mess boiled down to two things.
First, the mart owner’s family had survived this long.
Second, there was no societal consensus yet on “prior ownership.”
“…….”
A tough problem.
Young-woo felt a headache coming on as he slowly approached the mart entrance.
With dozens of tagalongs in tow.
Then.
“Huh?”
“It’s Gumi’s Greatest Swordsman!”
“Ooh……!”
The crowd besieging the mart snapped their attention to Young-woo.
Meanwhile.
“…Fuck, we’re screwed.”
The mart owner spat on the ground, his face twisted in utter dismay at the turn of events.
Obviously, Gumi’s Greatest Swordsman had come to loot the place too.
Ownership be damned—no one could stop him if he forced his way in.
And if he did, this mob would flood in and ransack everything.
“…….”
Foreseeing this shitshow future, the mart owner instinctively checked on his family.
Young-woo, catching that just in time, instead sheathed Early Bird at his waist and scanned the surroundings.
‘Too many people. If the owner holds out, it’ll turn bloody for sure.’
And what the crowd wanted wasn’t just anything—it was food. Second only to taxes in survival priority. No way they’d back off easily.
So, what to do?
As Young-woo wordlessly pressed toward the mart, the massive crowd parted for him.
The power of the commemorative coins he’d distributed to all and the Greatest Swordsman title hovering over his head.
“Oh, Greatest Swordsman…….”
“Please do something about this guy.”
“Handle it, Greatest Swordsman.”
With every step Young-woo took, people threw in their pleas.
And finally.
Clack.
Young-woo, Ye-chan, and the Sky Residence group arrived before the mart owner’s family.
“Goddamn it.”
“D-Dad.”
The family consisted of the owner, his wife, and a boy who looked about middle-school age—three in total.
Pitifully frail compared to the hundred-plus besieging them.
But the reason no one had forced entry wasn’t sympathy.
Tremble……
The silvery-white blade pointed cautiously at Young-woo quivered faintly.
‘Early Bird, huh. Not your average joe.’
Young-woo stared fixedly at the Early Bird gripped in the mart owner’s hands.
Then he extended his golden gauntlet-clad right hand and lightly nudged the blade tip aside.
“You need to step aside. I get your position, but… you know staying like this means you’ll die, right?”
“What did you say……?”
The mart owner’s eyebrows twitched in discontent, his gaze locked on Young-woo’s golden fingers.
Even he could tell it was no ordinary gear.
“With fate itself reset, who’s gonna respect anyone’s circumstances? Trying to hold onto everything from before the Reset is asking too much. Survive first. We’re all broke now anyway.”
At Young-woo’s words, the mart owner flew into a rage.
“Asking too much? I’m just protecting what’s mine!”
“It is asking too much. If you’re clinging to what you can’t hold anymore.”
As he said this, Young-woo recalled the cop from the exchange office.
The young man who kept picking up coins from the floor even as robbers closed in.
“Stay here, and you and your family will die horribly. If it were me, I’d grab as much food as I could and get out.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
It was a threat, plain and simple.
Young-woo had no intention of starving himself out of respect for the man’s property rights.
“You’ve got Early Bird too. Boost your stats with the coins I gave out, and you can hunt monsters just fine. Start over step by step. Everyone’s doing it.”
At this, the mart owner’s wife, who’d been listening quietly, glanced back into the store and murmured softly.
“I think we should do what he says. If we keep this up… we might not get anything.”
That “anything” included not just food, but their lives.
With Gumi’s Greatest Swordsman here in person, what more could they do?
“…….”
Yet the mart owner refused to bend his stubbornness… no, his pride.
So in the end.
“Gah!”
While Young-woo followed his wife’s gaze into the store, the owner attempted a desperate sneak attack.
Swoosh!
The silvery-white blade grazed past Young-woo’s golden fingers.
But Young-woo had already read the man’s sword path perfectly.
‘Picking the worst option in front of his family.’
A hologram of Gumi Swordsmanship appeared before his eyes, and the sensory boost alert confirmed combat had begun.
「Sensory stat temporarily increased from 100 to 116.」
The golden flash’s sensory steal effect.
‘At least one gain from this.’
Having unwittingly tested his new gauntlet, Young-woo moved to subdue the man but.
“……?”
Seeing the follow-up alerts, he switched priorities.
「Sensory stat temporarily increased from 116 to 131.」
「Sensory stat temporarily increased from 131 to 145.」
「Sensory stat temporarily increased from 145 to 163.」
Even amid this, someone in the crowd was gunning for his back.
The moment confirming “Golden Flash” doubled as a rear camera.
Clang!
Young-woo first smacked away the mart owner’s Early Bird with ease, then spun around, unleashing the Greatest Swordsman’s aura.
Fwoosh!
Scattering golden glow from his eyes, he snarled savagely.
“You fucking bastards, time to reclaim the disaster relief funds.”