The Debauched Lord (1)
[Estimated time until Gate collapse: 23 hours 12 minutes.]
[Repeating. Squad 4, retreat immediately.]
“·····”
I switched off the radio.
Retreat is only an option if there's someone left to retreat. And we came here to stop the collapse in the first place — what nonsense.
Strewn about at my feet were the bodies of the nine hunters who had come in with me.
Actually, less than half of them were even intact enough to be called bodies anymore.
“Haah.”
I exhaled. Something inside me felt broken in more ways than one, but what did it matter?
Kuuung.
The thing ahead of me moved.
A six-meter-tall figure in pitch-black armor — the boss of this Gate. The Gate Keeper.
Whether my comrades' sacrifices had meant anything or not, its body was already half-destroyed.
“·····One more time.”
I regripped my sword. My right hand refused to obey me, so I held it in my left.
I wonder what they'll carve on my tombstone?
Park Wooje, who awakened in his teens and spent ten years as a hunter. Died at twenty-eight, here.
There wasn't a single swordsman hunter in Korea who didn't know my name.
I trained harder than anyone, and I joined more gate raids than anyone. I swung my sword so many countless times that even S-Rank hunters who used blades would come to me for advice.
“·····”
And yet, I was A-Rank.
Awakening Rank doesn't rise with effort.
Knowing that, I still spent ten whole years grinding away.
Sitting still just felt like a raw deal, that's all.
Kwaaang!
“Kgh!”
It should've ended in a single exchange by now, but my body refused to be mine anymore. I had no time to count how many ribs were broken.
I struggled to hold myself together.
Still.
If I take this thing down, the Gate closes.
This isn't some backwater village — this is Busan, Korea's second-largest city. If this raid fails, they're saying a great catastrophe will swallow Busan whole.
If I kill this monster here and stop the disaster, can I say my life meant something after all?
“That's good enough for me.”
I smiled.
If this is all that's left after pouring my entire life into it, it's not a bad ending. I had no lingering regrets left anyway.
Pwah-!
I drove into the Gate Keeper's guard.
The enemy raised its arm.
This was the moment. One of the pieces of information my comrades had bought with their lives.
“Right here.”
Pu-uk.
The sword went in.
Blue light. Proof that I'd cut down the boss.
“·····”
At the same time, I saw the Gate Keeper's sharp blade punch through my stomach in the final instant.
Success.
If it had thought to parry my strike with that blade, I might not have killed it.
But thanks to it swinging at me like that, the disaster gets stopped.
Not that I could've walked out of here in this condition anyway, so honestly, I won. Yeah, that's fair, right? If you say so.
My vision was going dark. So this is what dying is like.
It doesn't matter. Everyone who was ever by my side left me long ago, I had no family to support, and I left no regrets behind.
“·····”
They say your whole life flashes before your eyes like a procession of lanterns when you die — but that didn't happen.
Instead, something utterly trivial surfaced.
(Oppa, you really live such a boring life.)
(Yeah.)
(Look at this. This one's seriously so good?)
Jieun held her phone out to me. On the screen was a drawing of a girl in a dress. One look and you knew it was a novel cover, wasn't it?
(I read this one until four in the morning.)
(Why would you read that?)
(What do you mean why — because it's fun, obviously.)
This was back when I couldn't even give her a proper date, because I couldn't spare the training hours.
(The heroine's amazing. But all the guys around her lose their minds trying to protect her.)
(Way too predictable. You can tell everything just from the cover.)
(It's not predictable — this is what they call a classic.)
“·····”
My ex-girlfriend, Kang Jieun, died three years ago.
If I'd been just a little stronger, could I have saved her?
No point wondering now.
I trained like a madman for ten years and still couldn't climb to S-Rank. Give me a hundred years and I wouldn't be confident of it either.
Still — why, of all things, was that the memory that surfaced before death?
“·····Ugh.”
My head felt like it was splitting open.
The smell of alcohol — and a heavy, cloying perfume. The disgust rising in my throat told me it was cheap perfume, clearly. And beneath it all hung some unidentifiable sour stench.
I opened my eyes.
“What is this.”
The ceiling was quite elaborately decorated. And the whole place had a distinctly medieval-European feel?
Is this the afterlife?
Is this what the afterlife's interior design taste looks like? No matter how I looked at it, I didn't think so.
I sat up for the time being.
“Huh?”
No pain. I was definitely injured badly enough to die, wasn't I?
And the old chronic wounds I'd carried for years were gone, too.
“What the hell.”
I looked at my hands.
They were slender, elegant hands — hands that had never once held a sword, like some fine lady's. These are my hands? They were so off-putting I didn't even want to look at them.
“What is going—”
Knock knock.
“My lord, are you awake?”
“·····”
A voice came from outside the door.
Lord. That single word struck my head like a trigger.
“Kraaagh!”
Something came flooding into my mind.
The memories of Park Wooje, who lived and died in the Republic of Korea.
And.
The memories of Romeo Jackson, twenty years old, the young lord of Milane County in the southern reaches of the Lumain Empire.
“·····No way.”
Strangely, once the two sets merged, everything fell into place.
I had entered a novel.
And not just any novel — that very romance-fantasy Jieun had been reading before she died.
“·····But why, of all people, this guy?”
The memories of this body were jogging my recollection of my impression from the book.
Wasn't this guy one of those glaring, pathetic lunatics from the early chapters?
The man who opened the door and entered was elderly.
White hair and a deeply wrinkled face, yet he stood with his posture perfectly straight — nothing like an ordinary person.
Hans Meyer.
A vassal of House Jackson, and the man who had, in practice, been running the territory of Milane in place of me.
“·····”
“My lord.”
“Yes, Sir Hans.”
“You have been asleep since yesterday evening.”
“Ahem.”
“Today makes three days you have shut yourself in this room.”
“·····”
Hans looked at me.
Expressionless — and it was the kind of expressionless face that was scarier than an openly angry one. Wasn't there a saying that a gentle man's anger is the most frightening of all?
I knew exactly what this old man was thinking, because Romeo's memories were telling me.
So that's the look of a man who's given up halfway.
The only reason he hadn't run off, despite giving up, was his loyalty to the former head of House Jackson — this body's father. No matter how I looked at it, there was nothing else to it.
“I have three matters to report.”
“Go ahead.”
“One. Because of the incident you caused in the capital's high society last night, a formal letter of protest has arrived from House Arden.”
“·····”
“Two. The elders have requested a meeting regarding the division of the Milane Merchant Guild's profits.”
“·····”
“Three. The knights hold their regular training this afternoon.”
“·····”
“You did not attend last year, nor the year before, so I suppose there is little need to mention it.”
“·····”
“Are you listening?”
“I'm listening.”
Reporting each item one by one, then sneaking in the sarcasm at the end. Hans let out a long sigh.
Though this time, I felt a little wronged. All the memories of this body were pouring into my head at once — of course I'd be too dazed to hold a conversation.
But if I said, I've only just possessed this body, let's talk later, I'd be burned at the stake as a witch. Not that I knew whether this world even had witches.
I stood in front of a mirror.
“Wow.”
This much I had to admit.
Pitch-black hair and blue eyes. Judged on the face alone, this was more than enough to be a celebrity in the world I'd come from.
The old me was never told I was ugly, exactly, but being called handsome had been a rare event too.
“But.”
Even with the upgraded face, the reasons I wasn't thrilled about being in this body weren't exactly few in number.
I rolled up my sleeve.
“·····What is this.”
Not a trace of proper muscle anywhere on the body. Arms like chopsticks, narrow shoulders, a hunched posture. For a twenty-year-old man's body to end up like this, it would take considerable deliberate effort — a dedicated campaign to ruin one's own life.
Romeo, you little bastard.
Digging through the memories gave me my answer.
This guy had never once properly held a sword. Instead, he'd bought people with money. When a quarrel broke out, he hired mercenaries. When a duel was challenged, he sent a proxy.
“Hence the reputation.”
The disgrace of House Jackson. The pathetic good-for-nothing. You didn't need any grand turn of phrase to describe the man.
But there was something curious.
“Hm.”
I opened and closed my right hand, then focused my mind on my dantian.
I could feel mana. A little different from my old world, but broadly speaking, it worked on nearly the same principle.
This was a world where magic beasts genuinely existed, and where superhumans dwelled mana in their bodies and shrouded their blades in aura.
And this guy — with his trash of a body and his lazy, idle mind — the mana he was carrying was actually quite substantial?
Well, this is rich.
The classic born-talent cheat. If a kid like this had been my successor among the hunters, I'd have wanted to beat some sense into him.
But whatever the case, this was my body now. I had no idea why I'd entered this world, or why, of all vessels, I'd come into this one.
For now, the first thing I had to do was properly gauge my own abilities.
Looking at everything, there was exactly one thing that hadn't changed.
From here on, I was going to live by the sword.
“Haaap!”
“Too quiet. Again!”
At the Jackson family's training grounds, the drills of the household knights were in full swing.
Müller Guderson, Knight Commander of House Jackson, watched with his arms crossed.
He was in his mid-forties — past his prime as a knight — yet there was no one in all of Milane who could beat him with a sword.
“Commander.”
“Mm.”
“He won't be coming again today, will he.”
The vice-commander spoke. It wasn't a question.
“·····”
Müller didn't answer.
The young whelp who'd only recently become lord was not going to fulfill his duty to attend training. That much was certain.
The reason Müller had come down to this affluent port city in the south was that the former head of House Jackson had visited him again and again, begging him to serve as commander of the knights and as teacher to his son.
And so Müller had placed himself under a noble who'd earned his rank not with the sword, but with commerce — the very kind of aristocrat he'd scorned and ignored in his green youth.
But whether in the former lord's day or now, one thing had never changed: his son Romeo was a man without answers.
“·····”
Müller lifted his head briefly and gazed at the sky.
Why on earth am I here?
Milane was prosperous, the merchant guild ran smoothly, the knights were paid on time. When some weak monster showed up, he went out and killed it, then came back and drank. That was all.
Do I actually need to be here at all?
The thought came unbidden. No sense of fulfillment, no way to look myself in the eye and believe I was living honorably — so why?
If all he did now was coast on his skill and the prestige he'd accumulated, how was he any different from the old fossils he'd once disdained?
“Commander?”
“It's nothing.”
Müller said it curtly at the vice-commander's prompt.
But perhaps it was too late for him now. He might have managed if he were alone, but he had a beloved wife and children.
Yes. Perhaps this was always my limit.
“·····Commander.”
“I said it's fine.”
“No, that's not—”
The vice-commander was staring at the entrance of the training grounds. Müller turned his head.
“The young lord— no, my lord?”
Romeo Jackson was walking toward them.
“Sir Müller.”
I walked onto the training grounds.
The knights looked at me. Forty of them or so? Every single pair of eyes held the same expression.
What is he doing here?
Having the memories, I understood it — but that didn't make it feel great.
“My lord.”
A man with a neatly trimmed beard approached me.
Müller Guderson. In Romeo's memories, the man he'd dreaded most. Though, of course, that was nothing more than Romeo's own persecution complex.
“What brings you here?”
“The lord comes to attend training, and you ask what brings me? What manner of question is that?”
“·····My apologies.”
Müller bowed his head. The exact angle of a bow that observed the barest minimum of courtesy.
This man was no different from Sir Hans, really. His expectations of me? Close to zero.
Swish.
I picked up a wooden training sword from the rack on the wall.
The weight settled into my hand.
This is seriously bad.
It was far lighter than the swords I'd trained with, and yet my wrist felt like it was trembling.
“My lord, that—”
“Sir Müller.”
“·····Yes.”
“Receive one strike of mine. Just once.”
“·····”
The training grounds went silent. Every knight mid-drill froze.
“·····What did you just say?”
Müller asked.
I raised the wooden sword and took my stance — the stance of the swordsmanship I had rehearsed thousands upon thousands of times.
I knew my body wouldn't cooperate. Still, a stance was something I could hold.
“I asked you to receive it just once. Once is all I need.”
Müller stared at me as if he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.
I must look like a lunatic, but what can you do.
When you want to test something, you run at the strongest person you know and find out. That's how I'd always done it, and whatever body I was wearing, I had no intention of changing now.
So — Romeo Jackson and Park Wooje, freshly merged into one. I was curious just how far the blend had come.