Chapter 93
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 93
Chapter Title: Something You Must Forget Even If You've Seen It
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Discernment Demon-Slaying Sword.
This sword art, devised by the very first Sword Master in ancient times and perfected by the last Sword Master, Rimon, had insight at its core.
The reaction in the pupils.
The degree of muscle development.
Unconscious habits, and more.
It was a swordsmanship that began by observing and analyzing everything to dismantle it completely.
This had played a huge part in allowing Rimon to predict the movements of ferocious beasts up until now.
'Don't interpret it as swordsmanship.'
But at this moment.
Rimon had completely banished the principles of the Discernment Demon-Slaying Sword from his mind.
Kiiing.
Filling that void instead was a complex melody.
The performance of Li Chingwei, Youin, and Yuna Kyung banging away on random junk mixed with the violin from Heartblack—it wasn't so much music as it was noise.
Rhythms tangling chaotically, scrambling everything into a mess of irregular sound waves.
In that chaos reminiscent of the song Yujin had sung in the restaurant, Rimon gave a slight twist to the violin's bow, which had been moving wildly under the curse's power.
Kiiing.
'Don't think. Feel.'
"……?"
"……!"
Was it the intense tone that hardly sounded like a violin at all?
Li Chingwei and Youin faltered, their hands pausing, but it was only for a split second.
Stimulated by Yuna Kyung, who kept stubbornly pounding away despite having been through it once before, they resumed banging on the junk to produce more sound.
And matching their noises, Rimon gradually shifted the violin's melody.
He bound the disparate sounds into one, turning noise into harmony, then weaving it into music.
The clashing tones began to mesh.
The cacophony transformed into performance.
It was a miracle.
Like turning lead to gold, melting sand into jewels, or blooming flowers from rotten old wood.
'Just as every sound has rhythm, even the most irregular outcomes harbor rules.'
But Rimon accepted the result as a matter of course.
Noise sounded like noise not because it lacked rules, but because no one had found them.
If you just nudged them into revealing those rules, even the patter of rain or a roaring engine could become part of an orchestra.
There was one problem, though.
Finding that single note amid the ever-shifting, rampaging sounds to draw out the harmony.
It was as hopeless as finding a needle in a desert.
And the fact that you had to do this thousands of times over elevated it to the realm of the impossible.
But he did it.
Not deduction, but imagination.
Not prediction, but intuition.
Like a master archer blindfolded hitting a bird ten li away, relying solely on instinct and gut feeling, Rimon unearthed the melody that turned noise into music.
In a realm beyond superhuman senses, reachable only by raw sixth sense, Rimon recalled.
[Then it's basically the same as knowing how many spoon pairs there are. You infer the criminal's habits, personality, financial status, and predict from there.]
Advice he'd heard from Li Chingwei.
Something even a Sword Master couldn't do.
Words she'd tossed out half-jokingly herself.
But was it truly impossible?
More impossible than drawing a single melody from tangled, irregular noise?
Rimon decided to test it.
'Three ferocious beasts. Only one among them is actually scheming and leading.'
A face he'd never even seen.
Yet the traces Rimon had read from the corpses the man had killed, using the subtleties of the Discernment Demon-Slaying Sword, had told him much about his foe.
'Less a psychopath, more a sociopath. He sees killing as work, but calculates and savors the fallout and reactions.'
'That's why he targets high-impact marks, creates enemies or pursuers, and revels in the mind games—a self-aggrandizing criminal.'
That was as far as Rimon had pieced together.
And the basis for predicting the beasts' next target.
But at this moment.
Rimon shifted his perspective.
'What if he's picking targets randomly to avoid us reading his mind?'
'He'd probably use a tool.'
'Something easy to obtain, simple to carry and use.'
'If I can perfectly predict what tool, where he gets it, how much force he uses, and how he employs it...'
An absurd hypothesis.
Downright laughable—predicting lottery numbers felt more realistic.
Even so, Rimon took the plunge.
Abandoning the realm of logic, probability, and possibility, he entrusted everything to the sixth sense spreading through the melody.
Kiiiiing.
Right then.
Rimon's performance changed.
One of the deepest techniques slumbering in Heartblack's violin.
From a performer more renowned as a composer.
A legend who, deemed finished as a musician by all, produced his greatest composition.
The technique he'd left in Heartblack resonated with Rimon's will to defy impossibility, birthing a new melody.
"This is……."
The noise vanished.
The rhythm began to organize.
But he paid it no mind.
He simply struggled to protect his own playing against the violin trying to run wild.
Rimon, who had never been challenged as the absolute over centuries, was now challenging as a novice in this moment.
To overcome the violin's curse.
And his own limits.
Kiiing.
He forcibly shook off Heartblack's grand tones, scattering sharp melodies.
Grasping the cleanly ringing notes, shaking them, infusing one person's sound within.
It was a showdown.
A rookie who'd barely learned an instrument for a year daring to match techniques with a giant who'd etched history in music.
But as that reckless challenge persisted.
The disordered notes aligned.
The embedded hues sharpened.
Kiiiiing.
The moment the violin reached its crescendo, fully capturing one man's form within the melody.
Rimon knew.
Among the junk strewn on the floor, the sound closest to that man's taste came from a pair of dice.
And he saw it.
The man tossing two dice onto a neatly arranged table.
The dice rolling to a stop.
Noting the numbers.
Deciding the next assault order from a pre-written list of Black Dragon Clan affiliates.
Watching the numbers fill in sequentially beside each affiliate, Rimon saw the cold sneer curl on the man's lips.
Kiiing—
The brilliant melody shattered.
Reality swallowed the vision.
"……Hoo."
Rimon lifted the violin from his shoulder and wiped the sweat trickling down his cheek.
He who could play all day without a single drop of sweat had turned into a drenched rat after barely over ten minutes.
Impossible under normal circumstances.
But Rimon didn't find it strange.
The performance he'd just given demanded that level of intense focus.
'Ha, feels like fighting demons was easier.'
Shaking his head briefly.
Rimon carefully placed Heartblack's violin into its case as if it were a deadly weapon, then spoke curtly.
"Paper and pen."
"……."
"Paper and pen, I said."
"……Here you are."
As if reeling from some massive shock.
Youin, frozen in place, only handed over the notepad and pen after Rimon repeated himself.
Rimon snatched the notepad and scribbled something down in a rush,
then handed it back to Youin with a languid voice.
"Pass this to the smartass. It's the list of affiliates that'll be hit next."
An out-of-left-field statement.
Yet Youin neither doubted Rimon nor looked skeptical.
He simply stared at Rimon with an indescribable expression, lips twitching as if to ask something.
"I'm going to wash up and crash, so don't bother me."
"Yes, rest well."
[Huh? Team leader, wait a sec...!]
But Youin got no chance to question.
Before he could speak, Rimon scooped up the wide-mouthed, frozen Yuna Kyung and strolled off.
Watching his back with complicated eyes for a long while.
Youin finally turned his gaze aside only after Rimon was gone.
Toward the girl still standing there, smiling brightly as she'd waved him off.
"Princess, what was that just now...?"
"Forget it."
A calm voice returned as if she'd been waiting.
That immediate shutdown, refusing even the question, made Youin doubt his own ears for a moment.
"……Forget it, you say?"
"Youin, what you saw or felt doesn't matter. What matters is that the Sword Duke has revealed the beasts' next targets."
Remember only what's important.
Everything else? No need.
So pretend you didn't see, even if you did.
Pretend you didn't feel, even if you did.
Just forget it.
"Right?"
Despite her ever-smiling face, her cold, sunken eyes made Youin understand.
This wasn't a question.
And his answer had been decided from the start.
"If that's the princess's will."
The proper response from Leviathan's chief steward, loyal to the princess and keeper of all secrets.
Satisfied with that.
Li Chingwei nodded lightly and turned away.
"Having a tight-lipped, reliable retainer like you makes me truly fortunate."
If word of today leaked, Youin would no longer be her loyal retainer.
With that veiled warning, Li Chingwei departed.
Left alone, Youin slowly turned his head, gazing with a stiff expression at the spot where Rimon had just performed.
He was a warrior of the old era.
He'd witnessed the Sword Duke's power firsthand, so unlike the young ones nowadays, he never underestimated Rimon.
But right now.
Youin suspected his belief that he knew Rimon well was a colossal mistake.
What he'd felt from Rimon playing the violin was that shocking.
'I don't get it.'
Simple coincidence?
Or intentional?
Something he could always do?
Something he could control freely?
Youin knew none of it.
But if even one of those suspicions was true, the Seven Dragon Society deserved to be called utter fools.
It would mean they knew nothing of their centuries-old archenemy.
One exception.
'Did the princess know?'
Li Chingwei, who had pushed through her engagement to Rimon against her clan's opposition.
No one understood her choice—not even Youin, loyal as he was.
'If she knew and did it anyway...'
But now?
He could accept it.
Even why she'd tried to seal lips about today.
'Princess, what kind of monster are you planning to marry?'
Lamenting the impenetrable depths of his revered princess's heart, Youin could only shake his head.