Chapter 49
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 49
Chapter Title: Sharing a Drink
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The first Sword Master to slay the seven dragons and usher in the Heroes' Age, the Sword Emperor, once said:
After a grueling task finally succeeds.
Or after narrowly escaping death.
Or after staining your blade with filthy blood.
Or after red blood splatters your clothes.
Or after failing at something.
You always crave a drink afterward.
...It was a statement that made one wonder if it came from a Sword Master or an Alcohol Master.
Because bluntly put, it meant he craved booze every day.
But that was merely the modern perspective.
In the Bronze Age, alcohol itself was a rare treasure reserved solely for the dragonkin, and humans were forbidden from drinking it casually.
Rimon knew this well—he'd seen criminals beheaded for secretly imbibing liquor,
and physicians have their wrists severed for using it as a disinfectant.
He understood the meaning behind the Sword Emperor's words.
It wasn't just because he liked booze.
They were a wish that someday, humans too could drink freely without reason, in a relaxed world.
Well, that didn't mean the Sword Emperor hated alcohol, of course.
"Around here, right?"
From that perspective,
right after leaving Infinity Guild,
stopping by a liquor store for soju and heading here was a bit at odds with the Sword Emperor's hopes.
This wasn't a place to visit without reason.
Nor a place to drink in peace.
Yet it was a place he had no choice but to come to.
In the empty lot devoid of any sign of life, Rimon slowly looked around.
"It's gotten pretty clean."
It was a truly peculiar impression.
The lot, abandoned without even a single street tree or building, suited the word "barren" far more than "clean" to any observer.
Yet the reason Rimon said that
was because he knew its original state.
"The corpses make sense, but I didn't expect all those building rubble piles to be cleared in just a few days."
Entire buildings collapsed into heaps of debris.
Dust swept everywhere from the explosions.
Two hundred corpses brutally slaughtered.
Red blood pooling like a small stream.
Remembering the bloodbath that had filled this lot just days ago, Rimon chuckled.
Yes.
This was the site of Haecheong Trading Co., Ltd., the Liberation Brigade's stronghold.
And the place where Rimon had cut down over two hundred assailants, led by Kang Jeongsu, who came to kill him.
It had only been a few days,
yet the sight without a single trace of debris was impressive.
But Rimon was impressed rather than surprised.
Since the Iron Age dawned,
cities transforming and landscapes flipping overnight at players' hands had become everyday occurrences.
"Well, better than it being filthy."
With a single chuckle,
Rimon plopped down on the bare ground and pulled out the soju he'd brought, pouring it into paper cups.
One in front of himself, and another directly opposite.
It was a glass without an owner.
Just one person to pour.
A drink no one would touch.
But Rimon knew.
Even if it wasn't drunk, there was someone to receive it.
"Sorry for keeping you waiting so long, Na-kyung."
A few days ago now.
At the spot where he'd laid down Yuna Kyung's body and left, Rimon quietly spoke.
"I got held up wandering around pointlessly."
Rimon chuckled.
At first, he thought dealing with Lee Cheongi would suffice.
But chasing the true culprits uncovered the Seven Dragon Society's unexpected conspiracy, and in the end, even constellations got crushed.
For Rimon, who'd lived a long life, it had been a rare stretch of turbulent times.
"Anyway, with this, I've paid your blood debt."
One thing was certain.
There was no longer any reason for Rimon to swing his sword for Yuna Kyung's vengeance.
Park Hyeon-gun, the schemer, had paid with his life.
The serpent behind Park Hyeon-gun had been utterly erased.
The hidden mastermind, Li Chingwei, had admitted her innocence.
Even Lee Cheongi, who'd been used, had taken his due responsibility.
If he sought more vengeance?
Excluding the constellations whose involvement was unknown, it would be politicians and bureaucrats like President Han Jeongguk, who knew of the plot and tacitly approved or supported it.
But Rimon had no intention of extracting blood debts from them.
Not out of concern for chaos.
They simply weren't worth the bell value.
If they'd led the plot from the start, maybe.
But exterminating every cockroach-like worm one by one would turn vengeance into vengeance for its own sake, unrelated to blood debts.
Above all, Rimon knew.
They'd pay a fitting price without him lifting a finger.
Though whether they'd bear it alone was uncertain...
That was none of his concern.
He'd already retired as a hero, and his ties to this nation were severed.
"And I'll take responsibility for those kids you valued more than your life until they grow up."
His remaining connections were just the orphanage children.
But those orphans, abandoned to deal with him, were equally unbound.
Thus, Rimon could assert.
No need to worry about the kids.
"But don't linger in this world needlessly—go on in peace."
Rimon knew.
This was ultimately just self-consolation.
No matter what he spouted here, nothing would change.
Yuna Kyung was already dead; vengeance or a rite wouldn't revive her or ease her path to the afterlife.
But precisely because of that, Rimon had to come here.
Just as vengeance is ultimately for the living,
this too was a ritual for himself.
Necessary to wash away the lingering resentment in his heart.
Like a blade unwashed of blood rusts, pointless grudges were mere poison.
"Here, take a glass."
Pour...
"I'm the boss, so I'll have two."
Gulp, gulp.
"Won't pour for Jeongsu? Who cares about that traitor bastard. He can take offerings later."
Scattering with the alcohol was longing.
The emotion some call memory, others sorrow.
Recalling it one last time before time fades it to mere recollection, Rimon kept pouring.
Sometimes muttering jokes alone.
Sometimes boasting of his vengeance.
Sometimes silently gazing at the moon.
As Rimon thus shared drinks in solitude,
"May I offer a glass to the departed as well?"
Without Rimon noticing when she'd arrived,
a girl in an Eastern-style dress spoke from behind him.
Rimon didn't bother turning to Li Chingwei.
He just casually replied, cup in hand.
"You're not even acquainted with Na-kyung."
A bone-chilling warning to skip the formality if it was just to curry favor.
But Li Chingwei didn't back down.
She simply answered calmly.
"Though we've never met, if she's someone dear to the Sword Duke, I can't claim to be unrelated."
Like husband and wife are one body, so your acquaintance is mine—stated as obvious.
Whether baffled by her old-fashioned words,
or because he read her sincerity,
after a brief silence, Rimon chuckled and nodded.
"Do as you like. She wasn't one to refuse a drink from others anyway."
"Thank you for permitting it."
As if awaiting those words,
Li Chingwei smiled faintly and sat beside Rimon.
From a prepared box, she took out a bottle and glass, poured, and offered it piously with both hands.
For a moment, he eyed her surprisingly adept motions with surprise.
But the instant he saw the bottle beside her,
Rimon made a bizarre face.
"Isn't that Macallan? The 1988 vintage?"
"Yes."
"Unless my memory's wrong, that stuff costs..."
"Pardon?"
"...Never mind."
Calculating the cash value of the single pour she'd just made,
imagining bundles of bills dumped on the ground, Rimon shook his head.
'Talking money with her is pointless.'
Even ruined wealth lasts three generations.
No matter how declined the Black Dragon Clan,
even having lost nearly half their controlling shares,
few could match Li Chingwei's remaining fortune—save other Seven Dragon Society princesses or lords.
The Seven Dragon Group's assets, holding the world's wealth, were that immense.
"Na-kyung never got to enjoy luxuries like this in life, but in death..."
A high-level player donating her entire salary, living poor—yet now guzzling top-shelf booze endlessly.
Truly, the world's ways are unknowable.
Chuckling as he tilted his glass,
Li Chingwei suddenly said to him,
"Unfortunately, Yuna Kyung's body has already been incinerated."
"Figured as much."
Rimon nodded indifferently.
Over two hundred high-level players dead here.
Public knowledge would crash national prestige and fuel blame on the ruling party.
To cover it up, most bodies vanished here were surely incinerated. No corpse, no proof of death.
Rimon didn't particularly resent it.
An orphan like Yuna Kyung had no one to visit a grave anyway.
But even he paused at Li Chingwei's next words.
"So I bought the land around here under Hotel Leviathan's name."
"...You bought this place?"
"Yes, to build her a gravesite here."
If no body to bury, a tomb at her resting place is natural, she said calmly.
Gazing at her steadily for a moment,
Rimon turned forward again and spoke.
"Stop it. Na-kyung would cry about wasting money on a grave here rather than be happy."
"Ah... She must have been very frugal."
"Frugal? Nah, just poor folks' grit."
Watching Li Chingwei nod admiringly, Rimon chuckled.
Then, as if struck by a good idea, added,
"If you insist, make it a playground."
"A playground?"
"Yeah. Na-kyung loved playing with kids; she'd prefer a place for them to visit over some grave."
"A place for children to play...?"
She looked perplexed, as if pondering a riddle.
Watching her, Rimon unwittingly thought,
'Unpredictable princess.'
A blade to the throat doesn't faze her; she reveals global conspiracies nonchalantly.
Yet light jokes earn a head tilt—or blind trust.
Cunning, then naive.
Clever, then frank.
Soft and lethal like a greenhouse viper, sharp and beautiful like a snowfield orchid—a paradoxical contradiction.
Was it because she's the Black Dragon Princess?
Or another reason?
Gazing with interest at his fiancée-to-be and greatest rival,
Rimon suddenly asked,
"By the way, when's our wedding?"
A question any groom-to-be would naturally wonder.
Yet in a way, utterly un-groom-like,
to which Li Chingwei smiled faintly and replied,
"I have no idea."