The Swordmaster Wants To Live Peacefully [EN]: Chapter 76

Swordmaster Wants to Live Peacefully – Episode 76

Swordmaster Wants to Live Peacefully Episode 76

The Grand Lotus

Shua-nel whined and retrieved her keyboard and mouse after Yoo Seong-woo offered to buy her new ones.

And soon, the two returned to Sehyun City.

There was no reason to stay in Seoul, and there were things to check.

Yoo Seong-woo took out his smartphone on the train back to Sehyun City and called Yoo-wol.

-Seong-woo! What brings you to call me? No, actually, I was waiting for it.

“…What makes you think I was calling to ask you something?”

-Are you finally going to accept me….

“Cut the crap, I need you to look into something while I’m on my way to Sehyun City.”

Yoo Seong-woo pressed down on Shua-nel’s head, who was acting up next to him, and continued.

“Figure out the movements of the elves. The elves in Russia have withdrawn, so exclude that area. Especially the ones in Korea, in detail.”

He thought Yoo-wol would have a personal information network.

Otherwise, the Towol Clan wouldn’t have been able to enjoy such prosperity.

That information network would be superior to the Meteor Industry that Yoo Ji-woo possessed.

-Understood. I’ll have it ready for you to see as soon as you get back.

“Okay, thanks.”

-It’s nothing. It’s a good thing if I can prove my usefulness in this way.

“You seem more helpful than the high elf acting up next to me.”

“Take it back!”

Shua-nel pounded with her small fists, but Yoo Seong-woo didn’t even acknowledge them and brushed them all off with one hand.

Then, he flicked Shua-nel’s forehead and continued.

“Something ominous is happening. Something else is about to happen, so keep an eye on things in many ways.”

-Yes, I understand!

Yoo Seong-woo felt a strange sense of foreboding, making the back of his neck stiff.

It felt like something different from what he had experienced so far was about to happen.

* * *

“So, you failed before you even started, huh… this is troubling.”

“Interference came right before the start.”

“Did you figure out who interfered?”

“That… it happened so quickly. The Abyss closed in less than 30 minutes, and the Ents [tree-like beings] couldn’t even come out.”

“No one saw them go in and out? What about the human surveillance cameras?”

“Nothing was captured on any of them. It was as if it closed on its own.”

“I see….”

The elf who had been sitting and listening stood up.

“Bring him here. We may have to move things up a bit.”

* * *

On the way back to Sehyun City, Shua-nel looked up at Yoo Seong-woo and said.

She had been watching Yoo Seong-woo and had some questions.

“Yoo Seong-woo, you’re really strange.”

“Am I?”

“It’s not just strange. How can you possess so much power?”

“What are you talking about?”

Shua-nel paused for a moment to choose her words.

“You have several swords, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I remember each sword having different characteristics. The first sword holds a terrifying amount of murderous intent, and the second sword… holds the power of severance.”

“That’s roughly correct.”

“But what about the third sword? Purification after murderous intent and severance.”

Murderous intent, severance, purification.

When you put the three together, they seem like completely unrelated forces, but the three forces are in opposition to each other.

Murderous intent cannot be separated from the moment you start to have it, and deep murderous intent cannot be purified by any means.

It was as if impurity and divinity resided in the body at the same time.

Whether the mind and body were maintained because of the power of ‘severance’ between the two forces was unknown.

Shua-nel thought that these three forces were not all there was.

Yoo Seong-woo, as seen in her eyes, seemed like a ‘vessel’ containing even more power than that.

Shua-nel was curious about it.

How could he not go crazy and his body not collapse, even with so much power in his body?

It wasn’t a matter of being a Swordmaster or anything like that.

“Do you not have any humanity? Judging by how you treat me, it seems like you don’t.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Yoo Seong-woo flicked Shua-nel’s forehead again with his finger.

Shua-nel clutched her forehead in pain.

Still, he answered Shua-nel’s question in a small voice.

“…I think it’s because it wasn’t originally mine.”

It wasn’t originally mine.

Then it splits into two possibilities.

Either he stole it from someone, or he received it.

Shua-nel stared at Yoo Seong-woo. Which one was it?

Which one was he?

Was he the one who took it, or the one who received it?

Judging by his personality, it seemed like he would be the one who took it… but she couldn’t easily make a judgment.

So she decided to just ask directly.

“Who did you get it from?”

At that moment, Shua-nel saw darkness spreading across Yoo Seong-woo’s face.

Was it something she shouldn’t have asked?

It felt like she had stepped on a landmine.

Shua-nel grabbed his sleeve and muttered.

“Sorry.”

“…No, it’s already in the past. It’s not really your fault.”

Yoo Seong-woo let out a long breath.

The swords engraved in his soul.

They were memories he wanted to forget, but memories he couldn’t forget.

The swords engraved on him were not all his own.

Swords stuck in his soul.

As if someone had deliberately stuck them in.

“…There will be a chance to talk about it later. But not now.”

And now he was about to arrive home soon.

Arriving in Sehyun City, Yoo Seong-woo took Shua-nel home.

Crossing the entrance and heading to the living room, Yoo-wol was there, fluttering her ears slightly and organizing documents.

“You’re here? Most of the data is organized in writing.”

“You’re quick with your work.”

“I’m going to play games.”

Shua-nel went straight into her room, and Yoo Seong-woo sat next to Yoo-wol and picked up a few documents.

It was full of what Yoo Seong-woo wanted.

The current movements of the elves.

The elves in Korea were scattered in various forests in Korea, but there were signs that they had moved to forests around urban areas.

What made it possible to grasp them was thanks to the broken cameras installed everywhere.

The elves moved while destroying all the observation cameras installed in the forest to avoid leaving traces.

Because they were not familiar with modern civilization, it became their footprint instead.

“Thanks to the elves being stupid, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out their movements.”

Yoo Seong-woo agreed with Yoo-wol’s words.

The elves were planning something, but there was a slight sloppiness.

He considered the possibility that this was a trap, but soon realized that it was not something to consider.

If it was a trap, he could just crush it in reverse.

Could there be a trap that could stop the Swordmaster?

Just walking around is a disaster.

Asymmetric power in places where guns and cannons are not used.

Yoo Seong-woo had already confirmed the elves’ power.

There was an elf Swordmaster named Seijak, but he won.

Other than that, they were all just small fries, so he had absolute confidence that he could go into their camp alone and defeat them all.

“What should I do with these bastards….”

He thought they would know their place after the last incident.

They should have known that they couldn’t survive if the Swordmaster and the High Elf joined hands and opposed them.

He was really curious about what confidence they had to act like this.

Still, they must have had something to believe in to do this.

And what Yoo Seong-woo was most curious about was something else.

“…How did those guys appear from inside the Abyss?”

“What do you mean?”

“An Abyss suddenly appeared in Seoul, and when I went inside, there were already elves inside.”

“You mean the elves were already inside the Abyss that was about to appear?”

“Yeah. I headed straight there as soon as the Abyss appeared, so he wouldn’t have been the first to enter. Even so, it doesn’t make sense in terms of time to go all the way to the deepest part. That’s the strangest thing.”

“Then it’s right to assume that they either grasped the signs of the Abyss before it opened, or they have the technology to enter it.”

“That’s right. I don’t know what method they used, but they also tried to corrupt the Ent, a tree spirit, and use it for attack purposes.”

Yoo Seong-woo and Yoo-wol continued to talk.

It was a work to find answers in the information they had found out.

“There was no movement of elves who settled in other countries. It seems right to assume that only the elves who came to Korea are moving.”

“Then there must be guys who joined hands with those elves. In my opinion, they wouldn’t be able to do this with just them.”

“…I’ve heard a strange rumor recently. Do you know about the Ascension Church?”

“I heard about it briefly last time. Do you think the Ascension Church is involved in this?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s also the force that’s building the biggest power in Seoul… and I think there are bad things coming out here and there.”

The force that is building the biggest power in Seoul.

Ascension Church.

Yoo Seong-woo seemed to have seen them proselytizing [attempting to convert someone to a religion] on the streets a few times in Seoul.

They were shouting everywhere that you could only ascend if you believed in the Ascension Church.

They were guys who were too annoying to bother with.

If it was a simple religion, he wouldn’t care, but the fact that they were talking about ‘ascension’ and that a large number of Awakened people belonged to it caught Yoo-wol’s attention.

“There were guys like this in the old days too.”

“There were other guys like the Ascension Church? Why is this country like this?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

He heard that they were gone now, but there used to be pseudo-religions like Shincheonji [a controversial new religious movement] and so on.

It was the religion that was the most active during the Great Disaster and the first to disappear.

At the time when monsters began to pour out, they led countless believers to exterminate monsters, saying it was the road to Shincheonji, but they failed to exterminate them.

It was a pseudo-religious story that ended with the believers, who realized that they were just meat shields after tens of thousands of people died, staging a coup and killing all the leaders and leaders.

But those kinds of guys reappeared under the name of ‘Ascension Church’.

“It was a country of long-standing shamanism [a religion characterized by belief in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits]. The president relies on religion….”

“…We’re not that different.”

“Still, you guys at least have gods who respond. This is a place where they pray to gods who don’t even respond.”

No matter how much you pray, how can you believe in a god who doesn’t respond?

Yoo Seong-woo was most curious about that.

Anyway, he put down the documents and continued.

“So, what’s the reason you think the elves and the Ascension Church are related?”

“Take a look at this. It may be a coincidence, but wouldn’t this be a clue?”

Yoo-wol handed over the documents.

What was there were several pictures.

It was a picture of people wearing robes seeming to have a conversation at the Ascension Church’s proselytizing center.

They were all wearing robes, so it was impossible to identify them as elves, but only one picture.

Really only one picture among the surveillance cameras taken from various angles.