Chapter 121
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 121
Chapter Title: You're Dead Meat Now
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A little while back in time.
Just before Wailing freaked out in shock.
Moments after sending the affiliate information to Rimon.
Following the route she'd provided, Rimon crossed the city and arrived at the building bearing the sign for Black Dragon Insurance. He sprang into action the instant he got there.
"Comrades, lemme give ya some advice from me. Don't go throwin' yer lives away for that company..."
Boom!
"Where the fuck do you get off barking like that, you little shit?!"
"Gyaak?!"
He chased the voice chattering from somewhere.
Crashed through the wall.
And kicked the bastard right in the back of the head.
Rimon executed every move with fluid perfection, dropping Ryu Gangcheol in the blink of an eye.
It was a sneak attack, sure, but for those who'd been desperately holding him off in a delaying battle, the scene felt utterly anticlimactic.
"Wh-what the hell?"
"That white hair... Rimon Asfelder?!"
"Why the hell is he here?!"
But the bloodied Black Dragon Insurance martial artists, who'd been gasping for breath, didn't even have time to feel that emptiness.
They were too busy losing their minds at the sudden appearance of Rimon, like they'd run into a tiger.
Saving them, and this was the reaction he got.
Normally, that would've pissed him off.
But Rimon had zero expectations from the Black Dragon Clan to begin with, so he flat-out ignored the martial artists' existence.
He just pinned Ryu Gangcheol to the floor with his sword.
Stab!
"Gah! Wh-what the fuck do ya think yer doin'?"
"I'll make it quick, so shut the hell up."
"Pinned like a goddamn bug specimen, and ya want me to just sit here quiet...! Guh?!"
"Tch, figures a little shit like you can't stop yapping."
Rimon crushed Ryu Gangcheol's balls without mercy, silencing him and making foam bubble from his mouth as a bonus.
Then he pondered for a moment.
'Alright, now what?'
Even a Sword Master only had one body.
No matter how strong Rimon was, he couldn't run around alone protecting every single affiliate company.
Yet he'd boldly declared to Wailing precisely because he had a clever plan in mind.
'Can't cut it with Setsugekka Kaika-kō after all, huh.'
If Ryu Gangcheol's clones had been illusions...
Rimon could've sliced through every single one with a single stroke and taken their lives.
That was the essence of the Demon-Slaying Sword's ultimate technique: Severing Water Moon Blooming Flower Fragrance.
Like cleaving the moon's reflection on the water's surface to sever even the moon in the sky, it cut through illusions to strike the real body.
But after testing it hands-on, Ryu Gangcheol's clones weren't "reflections."
They were solid, tangible entities.
If he had to compare, it was like the difference between countless illusory reflections in parallel mirrors and mass-produced knockoffs straight from a factory.
'I had a pretty good hunch.'
No way to resolve this with one swing, but Rimon wasn't too disappointed.
He'd sensed from the start, when he cut one of the clones, that they weren't mere illusions.
He'd just needed confirmation.
And even without Setsugekka, he had plenty of other options.
"Let's take a peek, shall we?"
Rimon narrowed his eyes.
His pupils, now blackened instead of their original gold, gazed down at Ryu Gangcheol.
Thanks to steadily playing the Heartblack Violin, hanging out with Yujin, and melting starlight, he'd fully internalized the power of the stars.
The Eye that Sees Constellations activated.
If the clones were skill-born, something would show up—he'd predicted as much.
And his prediction hit the mark.
'This is...'
The moment he first saw "it," Rimon thought of parasites.
Countless bugs writhing out from Ryu Gangcheol's eyes, nose, mouth, pores, and torn skin—it looked just like a bug nest.
But after observing for a bit, he realized it was a misperception.
'A tree?'
What looked like skin was bark.
The constant wriggling was roots.
Flowing instead of blood was sap.
A bizarre vision overlaid Ryu Gangcheol: a living tree trimmed into human shape.
'Hmm, so this is the constellation he's contracted with. Kinda...'
Rimon narrowed his eyes.
Ever since gaining the Eye that Sees Constellations,
he'd met tons of players and checked out their constellations.
But this was only the second time he'd seen one where the human form was so obscured by the overlapping constellation.
"Ho?"
While probing the constellation, Rimon spotted something like a red vine dangling from Ryu Gangcheol's tailbone.
He flicked his eyes toward it.
Seeing the red vine stretch across the floor and out of the building, he twisted his lips.
"Well, well?"
Rimon stomped on the red vine.
Thump, thump.
Like a vein connected to a heart.
The red vine pulsed at regular intervals.
Sensing the pulsations with a Sword Master's keen senses, Rimon let out an incredulous chuckle.
This vine was the core sustaining Ryu Gangcheol's clones.
The pipeline supplying fuel and the strings of the puppet—he knew it at a glance.
"First time I've seen a bastard so boldly waving his tail right in front of me."
It wasn't incomprehensible.
The Eye that Sees Constellations was an unheard-of ability to begin with.
So, like most constellations Rimon had seen, Ryu Gangcheol's probably never even considered hiding the vine.
Probably figured even if some puny human spotted it, they couldn't touch a constellation.
One problem.
The one exception among all those "puny humans" had just spotted it and was grinning like a maniac.
"You're dead meat now, you fucker."
After muttering coldly once,
Rimon yanked out the sword pinning Ryu Gangcheol to the floor and focused his senses on the vine's interior.
Thump, thump.
Vast power flowing through the vine with each pulse.
He traced the flow.
From the clone to the vine.
From the vine outward.
As distance grew, his senses dulled, the pulses faded.
But he didn't stop.
Focus, focus, focus.
Sharpening dulled senses, clarifying faint pulses, pursuing the distant flow.
100 meters, 500 meters, 1 kilometer.
Like a master angler pinpointing a fish by a single thread's vibration.
Like when he chased a demon god across the planet long ago.
With a Sword Master's concentration that could slice a speck of dust, he extended his already razor-sharp senses, tracking the invisible flow.
5 kilometers, 10 kilometers, 30 kilometers.
Thus endlessly extending his senses.
Detecting vines scattered everywhere.
The moment he recognized the countless roots—
"—Gotcha."
Slash!
Rimon severed the neck of the half-corpse Ryu Gangcheol, still twitching.
What scattered was the flow.
The constellation's power that had moved the clone abandoned the empty shell and sloshed back through the vine.
That was Rimon's opening.
Step, step, step.
One step tracing the power's flow.
One step toward the root.
One step swinging his sword.
After exactly three steps,
Rimon stood before another root—another Ryu Gangcheol clone—attacking a different affiliate.
"...What the?"
Maybe because he couldn't comprehend how Rimon, who'd just beaten one of his selves, had crossed several kilometers to appear before him.
Ryu Gangcheol gaped, eyes bulging.
Slash!
Before he could even gather his wits,
Rimon's sword lopped off his head again.
An even more pathetic end than the first clone—like an ant crushed under a tank tread.
But that was just the beginning.
Step, step, step.
Slash, slash, slash.
Each time a clone crumbled, he followed the power flowing through the vine, took a step, reached another clone, and cut it down.
The more he did it, the more routine it became.
The more routine, the faster.
Eventually, it turned mundane. Simple labor.
No longer a fight—just methodically smashing potatoes rolling down a conveyor belt.
The only differences: the "belt" was a person, and the "potatoes" were level 80 players.
"What the fu—?!"
"Wait...!"
"This cheap trick... guk!"
"Shit?!"
Of course, Ryu Gangcheol didn't go down easy.
Connected via the vines, he sensed the threat and reacted fast.
But all his flailing was futile.
Counterattack in sync?
Flee the spot?
Spawn more clones for a pincer?
Nothing dodged Rimon, who ghosted along the connecting vines, severing necks at invisible speeds.
And as the slaughter repeated, Ryu Gangcheol's reactions shifted.
From bewilderment.
To intrigue at the surprise.
To rage at the one-sided deaths.
Eventually, to despair at the end.
After all those changes, one emotion filled his eyes.
—Terror.
An alien feeling for Ryu Gangcheol, who'd always seen himself as the predator, toying with others' deaths and even his own.
"Y-you monster...!"
Yet he couldn't shake the fear.
The eerie sword that severed even will.
The despairingly overwhelming skill.
And above all, those languid eyes—like chopping mere logs while cutting him down.
They told him this white-haired man was the true predator.
The apex of the food chain, beyond comparison—a perfect killing machine.
And it wasn't just Ryu Gangcheol who sensed it.
"...What the hell just happened?"
"That white hair—is that the Sword Duke?"
"God save us... The guy who massacred dozens of our warriors, and he did it in less than a second?"
From the experts battling Ryu Gangcheol to the martial artists getting one-sidedly slaughtered, even those carved up like Swiss cheese.
The Black Dragon Clan guarding each affiliate shuddered.
These were all affiliates that rejected Guardian contracts.
Places where the clan mainstream dismissed Rimon as an outdated relic and treated him as an enemy.
But the moment they saw Rimon casually behead Ryu Gangcheol—who'd driven them to death's door—and vanish,
they realized.
What a Sword Master truly was.
How insane it'd been to mock him.
What catastrophe turning him into an enemy would bring.
Why countless ancestors failed to topple the Sword Duke's stronghold for centuries.
And why Li Chingwei might not be a fool for throwing everything away to push for marriage with Rimon.
Amid the surging terror, they were forced to understand.