Chapter 171 – Barmaid! One More Bowl Here! (3)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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All Mute’s secretary, Kane, was mentally blank. His widened eyes blinked several times.

The shock was so enormous that his head swam. Was this a dream? That was the only hazy question in his mind. But the cold sweat gathered above his upper lip reflected reality.

He forced strength into his eyes and looked at the training grounds. All Mute lay sprawled there with all four limbs severed. Kang Geom-ma was moving toward her.

To conclusively finish this spar that was somehow still not over. He was approaching All Mute, who was already powerless.

At the sight, a thick bead of sweat slid straight down his cheek. Without realizing it, he shouted.

“Ellie!”

As if reacting to that sound, Kang Geom-ma turned his head. Cold, cooled-over eyes stared straight through him. At the same time, it felt as though an invisible hand had seized his heart and clenched it hard. With eyes full of killing intent, Kang Geom-ma said:

Quiet.

At that single muted word, Kane’s focus blurred. Scratching at his throat as though something had been clogged there, he gasped.

“Ghk……”

With that short groan, Kane fainted. Just before his mind went completely black, he thought: so the rumor that he made an ogre die of heart failure was true.

Mao Lang’s face also went rigid when she saw Kane collapse with a thud. The legs she had kept so arrogantly crossed straightened themselves into proper decorum.

After the spar ended, Mao Lang had planned to go up to All Mute, clutch her stomach, laugh uproariously, and mock her. That was exactly why she had rushed all the way here from China.

But the urge vanished entirely. This was too much. Mao Lang looked at Kang Geom-ma. Her lips dried out like crisp seaweed chips.

‘He’s become a real monster now.’

Kang Geom-ma had not simply improved compared to when he sparred with her. That was evolution. In the graph inside her head, a straight line bent to ninety degrees and shot upward.

‘If I had fought the Kang Geom-ma of now……’

A chill rose up her spine. Her pupils shrank. Then her lungs began to contract and expand over and over. Her stomach churned and her throat tickled.

Hic! Mao Lang clapped a hand over her mouth. If Kang Geom-ma’s gaze so much as turned this way, she would fare no better than Kane.

Mao Lang no longer regarded Kang Geom-ma as the same kind of human. He was a yokai that wielded a sword.

Mao Lang bit her tongue to suppress the hiccup. So what if she bit her tongue through. That was better than becoming a sacrifice to that yokai. Tremble, tremble, tremble.

Amid that cauldron of terror, Kang Geom-ma soon drew close to All Mute. He looked down at the result he had created.

All Mute’s life reaction was hanging by a thread. If there were such a thing as a living corpse, this was exactly what it would look like. In short, it was simply horrific. His brow knitted on its own.

‘I didn’t mean to go this far.’

That was because he had temporarily become a blind swordsman due to the Blessing of Interdiction. If he had been able to see, he probably would not have cut her into pieces to this extent. To be honest, there was also a sense in which he had gone too far for the sake of raising the proficiency of the Blessing of Charyeok.

‘I should end this right away.’

With that conclusion in mind, Kang Geom-ma raised the sashimi knife.

At that moment, All Mute moved only her lips and spoke. Blood spurted from her severed vocal cords in thick gushes.

“P… please… spare me……”

All Mute had forgotten that this was a subspace spar. She was drowning so deeply in terror that her awareness had blown away.

Even the strongest hero was still human. A person facing death had a way of ending up with their head all twisted.

At All Mute’s words, the sashimi knife that had been aimed at her forehead stopped short. Kang Geom-ma scratched roughly at his head with the base of the hilt.

“I don’t speak English, so I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“……!”

“Still, it sounds like you’re asking me to finish it quickly.”

An earthquake shook All Mute’s pupils. In desperation, she tried to lift a hand to stop him. But she had no arms. This Sword Demon had taken all four of her limbs.

Urgency and terror twisted together into one. All Mute writhed frantically. Kang Geom-ma spoke low, as though soothing her.

“It’s all right. If it ends in one hit, it won’t hurt.”

Kang Geom-ma spoke like a dentist. But to All Mute it looked different. He looked like a Japanese chef about to drive a knife into a fish’s gills. At that, All Mute let out an instinctive scream.

“FUCK!”

Ah, right. This curse was a universal language. Like Korea’s `ssibal,` for example.

“A curse?”

The reaction was immediate. Kang Geom-ma’s face twisted brutally. A Korean from the land of Eastern courtesy did not tolerate rudeness. The sashimi knife that had stopped in the air moved.

A shining liquid gathered at the corners of All Mute’s eyes. The moment tears of repentance began to flow, the blade smacked against her skull.

Bbeok!

All Mute’s five senses were completely cut off. The price for letting a curse word pass her lips was death.

* * *

“Are you a little more with it now?”

At that sound, All Mute’s eyes opened. She glanced to the side, then let out a sigh.

“…Mao Lang.”

“At least you’ve still got enough sense to recognize my face? Right after the spar ended, your eyes rolled all the way back and I seriously thought you had died.”

Mao Lang sat on the hospital bed, laughing under her breath. Idly swinging her feet, she asked playfully:

“So, what do you think now that you’ve sparred with Kang Geom-ma?”

All Mute could not answer at once. She still had not fully calmed her heart.

Only after clutching and unclutching the blanket for a long while did she speak.

“He’s a monster. To the point that I couldn’t even begin to guess what sort of realm Kang Geom-ma is standing in. Until I faced him, I thought maybe I had at least a little chance, but I was wrong. I didn’t even manage to draw out his seriousness.”

“……”

“If it had only been martial power, I would have had to think of a way to overcome it somehow. But even his inner disposition was so deep I couldn’t see the bottom of it. To be honest, the gap was simply too overwhelming, so if I tried to list the reasons for my defeat, there would be no end.”

Mao Lang stared quietly at the calm self-mockery in All Mute’s voice.

Kan had grown up without knowing defeat. The very woman who had burdened her with inferiority since childhood had suffered a crushing loss today. At the very least, Mao Lang had thought this one would manage to look better than she did.

Mao Lang let out a small groan inwardly. Then, forcing a triumphant air, she said:

“Right? It’s not like I got wrecked by him for no reason at the festival, you know? Thinking about how the hero world kept looking down on me after that, geez. Anyway, now that you’ve fought him yourself, you get it, don’t you. Kang Geom-ma was the monster. It’s not that I was weak. Admit it or not?”

“I admit it.”

Kan nodded readily. The smoothness of that response instead left Mao Lang looking sulky.

With an expressionless face, Kan said:

“And I never thought you were weak in the first place.”

“……?”

Question marks spread across Mao Lang’s eyes. Kan spoke as though nothing were strange about it.

“You were the runner-up behind me during our cadet days. Number two in Hoakin Academy. The meaning of that is by no means small. If you had continued your training steadily, even I could not have confidently promised victory.”

Listening to that claim, Mao Lang bit her lip tightly. She had come here planning to laugh at her, and instead she was the one being praised.

Mao Lang raked her hand harshly through her hair. Having shaken off her stray thoughts, she spoke again.

“So have you completely given up on the Seven Stars now?”

“Yeah. After losing this badly, I can’t stubbornly insist any further.”

“Well, look at that, Miss Flag-Waving. I figured you’d still challenge him again while going on about representing the United States or something.”

“If my opponent had a vicious temperament, I would not have given up to the very end. But that Sword De… no, Kang Geom-ma is the hero of the Hoakin Catastrophe. It would not be right to stubbornly cling to such a person.”

“But if that’s the case, the White House and Lancelot Company are going to put a ton of pressure on you, you know? No matter that he’s the Sashimi Sword Saint, they’ll probably come at you from every direction saying you couldn’t even beat a single cadet.”

Mao Lang’s voice was full of concern. All Mute seemed a little surprised by that. During their cadet days, Mao Lang had only ever glared at her like a feral beast, yet now that they had met again as adults, she was offering advice almost like a friend.

‘It’s because we now share the common ground of having been defeated by Kang Geom-ma.’ It was a strange feeling. She even felt a small measure of gratitude toward the Sword Demon who had mercilessly carved her up.

A smile touched Kan’s lips. Then she shrugged, feigning lightness.

“Just put all those people in front of Kang Geom-ma. They’ll probably collapse like Kane the moment their eyes meet his.”

“Pfft, what’s with you making jokes for once? Hearing that from someone as serious as you is disorienting as hell.”

“That’s American-style stand-up comedy. Come visit America sometime. The food and facilities are no joke.”

“Hmph, you say that, but if you came to China, you’d faint from the food.”

While that exchange kept going inside the hospital room. Outside, Kang Geom-ma, who had been about to knock, stood still for a moment.

“If it’s a class reunion, maybe interrupting would be a bit much.”

He simply set the fruit basket down in front of the door. Then he quietly left.

* * *

[Location of the third fragment of 【???】: Pertinax Secret Auction House.]

[Tip: If you proceed through the auction, you will naturally come to know what the third fragment is lodged in.]

I lay on my bed looking at the status window, then closed it.

“…Of all places, it had to be there.”

Pertinax Secret Auction House. Since I had been a player, I knew the rough story behind it.

A gigantic marketplace created by dark organizations gathering together in groups. It was large in scale, and they said it sold everything except the things it didn’t sell.

Just as that damp and sinister word `secret` implied, it did not sell things one could ordinarily get. The auction lots were all loathsome things that I hated even to put into words.

Rumors even circulated that executives from the villain alliance attended it in secret, concealing their identities. No matter how much one emphasized what a shameless place it was, it still would not be enough.

To begin with, I absolutely hated crime. Going there with my own two feet, into the den of those bastards, was profoundly unpleasant.

But feeling disgusted was something I could manage just by closing my eyes and enduring it once. The real problem was elsewhere.

Pertinax Secret Auction House operated on a membership system. In other words, you needed a membership card to enter. Of course, as a decent ordinary citizen and a teenager, I had no such thing.

‘Damn it, I only just got an Association entry pass, and now I have to get an auction-house membership card too?’

And with the location being an auction house, that meant I would have to bid on something. There was no way I had that kind of enormous money on hand. If I had known it would come to this, I should have just taken the one billion won sparring fee on the spot, damn it.

There were two problems I had to solve.

First, somehow obtaining a membership card. Second, preparing the money to bid.

At least the fortunate part was that I had saved up the living expenses sent by my unknown sponsor one penny at a time.

Of course, compared to the wallets of the people who attended that auction, it was feather-light.

But five million won of this snot-stained money was still worth more than the filthy money of those criminal bastards.

Staring up at the ceiling, I worked out a plan. Membership card first. Since I didn’t know how to get one, I had to think of someone around me who might.

“…But among the people around me, an academy cadet, is there really anyone tied to that kind of underworld.”

As I muttered that, something suddenly shot through my temple like an electric current.

There was, exactly one person. I bolted upright and made a call.

Ddu-du-du- click.

The crashing noises coming through from the other end of the phone. It looked like she had answered in a hurry.

[Uh, uh. Hello, what is it this late at night?!]

“Choi Seol-ah, do you have a membership card for the Pertinax Secret Auction House?”

After pausing briefly after speaking, I added one more order.

“And if you have savings too, even better.”