The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#002. The Archmage Who Runs Deliveries

-Become my disciple. I will raise you to be the strongest mage in humanity, no, in the entire universe.

Recalling his master’s voice that echoed like a hallucination whenever he realized he couldn’t use magic, Sung-jun let out a deep sigh.

Even though it was the result of his own choice, the thought ‘What would have happened if I had refused my master’s proposal back then…?’ couldn’t easily be erased from his mind.

Sung-jun took out his Awakened registration card from his pocket.

There, along with the Taegeuk symbol representing the Government of South Korea, was engraved the text “South Korea Awakened No. 0001 – Ma Sung-jun.”

‘Number 1, my ass.’

Of course, Sung-jun was officially registered as South Korea’s first Awakened and the only mage in all of humanity who could use magic.

The only problem was that the level of magic he could use was limited to masking the smell of cheonggukjang leaking through plastic bags or producing light at the level of a half-dead flashlight.

The problem was the lack of mana concentration.

Unlike the other dimension where his master had lived, the planet Earth where Sung-jun lived had almost no mana, an element essential for using magic.

Thanks to this, not only Sung-jun but even his master, who had been the greatest mage in his original world, had become an ordinary person completely unable to use magical abilities.

And as soon as the Government of South Korea realized that Sung-jun and his master couldn’t use their abilities, they canceled all the support they had promised to Sung-jun’s master and kicked both Mina, Sung-jun’s master, and Sung-jun out of the facility.

His master, who had no knowledge of general social conventions after coming from another world to Earth, and Sung-jun, who was only 17 years old at the time.

However, Sung-jun didn’t give up.

Even though the mana concentration in his world was so thin that he couldn’t even activate the simplest magic he had learned, the ‘theory’ of magic that Mina had taught him seemed infinitely attractive to Sung-jun as a field of study.

That day, he opened his mouth toward Mina, who was staring at the tightly closed iron gate at the entrance of the Awakened Training Facility with a lost expression.

“We got kicked out suddenly…”

“Indeed…”

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

“…No…”

“…Then follow me for now. Standing here endlessly won’t solve anything.”

The place Sung-jun took Mina to was an Abandoned Taekwondo Dojo in the Countryside.

The only inheritance left to Sung-jun by his uncle, who had been a taekwondo instructor.

The place that had once been filled with the cheerful shouts of children had now become a neighborhood eyesore, covered in dust and emanating a gloomy atmosphere.

“…What is this place?”

“It’s a dojo my late uncle left in my name. I put it up for sale, but no one bought it, so it’s been abandoned until now.”

Sung-jun, who had been pressing the switch on the wall several times, sighed and said.

“First, we need to take care of the electricity and water bills.”

And so began the strange cohabitation between Sung-jun and Mina.

Days when Mina would organize magic theory to teach Sung-jun while he worked part-time jobs to earn living expenses during the day, and then Sung-jun would learn the theory Mina had organized and stay up all night after coming home from work.

While Sung-jun struggled to learn magic he couldn’t even use, the world outside the dojo began to change rapidly at an unbelievable pace.

***

Pioneers.

Seven superhumans who came to Earth, including Sung-jun’s master Shin Mina.

The superhumans who followed a giant monster that suddenly appeared in the middle of New York to Earth revealed that they were visitors from another dimension.

Along with a terrible prophecy that a tremendous disaster would befall Earth in the near future.

They said they were guardians who had crossed dimensional gates to Earth to prevent humanity, the dominant species of Earth, from experiencing the same future as their home species.

They had come to transfer their abilities to humanity, making them superhumans called ‘Awakened,’ and to teach them the ability to fight against monsters that would come to Earth through dimensional gates.

It was an absurd claim that anyone would doubt, but humanity had no choice but to accept the claims of these suddenly appeared otherworlders.

Above all, the giant monster they had defeated upon their appearance was the strongest evidence supporting their claims.

World governments immediately gave the visitors from another world the name ‘Pioneers’ and began establishing concrete plans to nurture Awakened around the globe.

“The White House announces contract with ‘Weapons Specialist’ Sefasto Relim, one of the seven Pioneers.”

“Chinese Government signs Awakened training contract with Pioneer ‘Kwon Hwang’ Drenex.”

“EU announces recruitment of three Pioneers to Britain, France, and Italy.”

“Japanese Government successfully contracts with ‘Shapeshifter’ Pandora, one of the two remaining uncontracted Pioneers.”

As the governments of the US, China, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan took six of the seven Pioneers, governments worldwide offered tremendous conditions to secure the remaining Pioneer.

Of course, international agreements were made for countries with Awakened training institutes to dispatch their trained Awakened to other countries, but having an Awakened training institute meant securing the most powerful weapon to prepare for future disasters.

And the lucky winner who succeeded in contracting with the last remaining Pioneer in that fierce recruitment competition was the Government of South Korea.

‘Archmage’ Minastrias, Korean name Shin Mina.

The white-haired girl who appeared to be a young girl arrived at Incheon Airport under the Korean government’s devoted protection and immediately began recruiting disciple candidates.

And the Korean government immediately understood why she had failed to secure a contract until the very end the moment they heard her conditions.

“I will only raise one disciple.”

The reason for her condition was that due to the complexity of magic as a field of study, ordinary people couldn’t learn it even if they trained their entire lives.

The Korean government couldn’t hide their bewilderment at her explanation that it would be better not to learn at all from the beginning rather than train half-heartedly and lose one’s life later.

“I understand the concept of elite training, but just one person? I heard that other countries’ Awakened training institutes are training tremendous numbers of Awakened. Even if not thousands, shouldn’t you teach at least hundreds?”

“This is my condition, and you clearly said it too. That you would follow any condition as long as I came to the country called South Korea.”

Government officials who had done their best to persuade Mina for four whole days had no choice but to surrender to her stubborn insistence.

And a week after it was decided to raise only one disciple, a nationwide test was conducted from all kindergartens to high schools in South Korea to find a single mage candidate.

There was only one question given.

‘Draw a path that can pass through the maze drawn on paper.’

It didn’t take long for students who encountered the test paper to realize that it was impossible to get the correct answer from the start.

Following the complexly drawn maze, they could quickly realize that no matter which path they took, it would inevitably lead to a dead end.

Then clever people thought this was a type of nonsense quiz and wrote down numerous methods they could think of.

“Fold the paper like a tube to make the starting and ending points meet.”

“Don’t go into the maze but go around the outside to reach the endpoint.”

“Fold the maze into a cone shape instead of flat and draw a line connecting the back space where there’s no maze to reach the endpoint.”

With hundreds of thousands of papers filled with all sorts of creative methods in front of them, government officials watched with excited expressions to see how Shin Mina would select disciple candidates.

Then she waved her arm to instantly blow away the mountain of papers, and as if picking one at random, she grabbed one paper from among them and handed it to the government official.

“This child. Please bring this child to me.”

That was the decisive moment when Sung-jun became Mina’s disciple.

***

“You’re looking at that paper again. Are you regretting that you should have gotten the answer wrong back then?”

“The opposite. I was thinking how fortunate it was that I got the answer right back then.”

The paper Sung-jun held contained the correct answer to the maze problem he had solved at the time.

A completely absurd answer where he had marked an X on the endpoint drawn on the test paper, made a new dot in one of the maze’s dead ends, and written ‘This is the correct answer’ – literally ignoring the problem itself and creating his own answer.

However, Sung-jun was still confident that the new dot he had marked was the proper correct answer.

“I asked you back then. Why did you ignore the given problem and arbitrarily mark an endpoint? You answered like this back then.”

“I don’t know.”

“Right. Actually, I answered my master the same way in the past. Magic is a field of study without correct answers. We spend our entire lives learning how to guide mana and design spells, but it’s closer to intuition than theory. One great mage left these words: ‘If the information needed to activate a spell is 100, then incantations contain 10 pieces of information, magic circuits contain 50 pieces of information, and instruction manuals contain -20 pieces of information.'”

“That great mage was probably you, Master.”

“You know me too well.”

Mina smiled and patted Sung-jun’s head.

It gave the strange feeling of a young girl patting a grown adult man’s head as if he were precious, but Sung-jun didn’t mind.

Sung-jun had never doubted for a single moment that the young girl sitting beside him was someone who had lived dozens of times longer than himself.

Sung-jun, who had been silently waiting for his master to stop patting him, stood up when her movement ceased.

“Going to work again today?”

“I need to earn magic stones. And while I’m at it, earn money for your chicken too, Master.”

“Good boy.”

“If I’m such a good boy, please teach me some new magic. Not spells from the schools I’ve already learned, but completely new spells.”

“You’ve already perfectly mastered the 12 schools of Dimensional, Mystical, Elemental, Summoning, Necromancy, Illusion, Mental, Life, Transmutation, Protection, Fate, and Divination spells on a ‘theoretical level.’ All that’s left are spells that are variations of the magic you’ve already learned. If I were to teach you a completely new school of magic, I’d have to create an entirely new form of magic that never existed before.”

“I thought you might have some hidden spells or something…”

“I had some, but you’ve already sucked them all dry. Now go to work. By the time you get off work, I’ll have found a new spell that will satisfy you.”

***

“Sung-jun’s here? There are a lot of orders today, will you be okay?”

The delivery office where Sung-jun worked was an office that handled somewhat special deliveries.

Instead of having a set delivery area, it was a unique type of delivery office that operated by delivering food to areas where delivery was normally impossible, and rather than delivering within a certain time after ordering, customers could specify a reservation time and food would be delivered by that time.

Among these, Sung-jun was the only delivery person with ‘Gate entry authorization’ and was exclusively in charge of special deliveries that took food inside Gates located throughout the country.

“How many orders?”

“It’s one order, but there are some additional requirements.”

As he said this, the boss pulled out a giant costume head shaped like a Shiba Inu.

“…What’s this?”

“One of the Gate Explorers has a birthday, so they want to throw a surprise party inside the Gate. The Awakened whose birthday it is owns a Shiba Inu, so they asked for someone to come wearing this costume.”

‘Have these people lost their minds…?’

Sung-jun looked at the location of the designated delivery spot.

Written there was the location of a D-rank Gate that had recently appeared and briefly made headlines.

“The Lotte World Gate?”

“Yeah. Think you can handle it?”

“It’s a D-rank Gate so the danger level should be low. It shouldn’t be impossible. It’s already a stabilized Gate, so they’re even operating the amusement park there.”

“Then please take care of it.”

“I can take all the magic stones as usual, right?”

“Sure.”

After hearing the boss’s confirmation, Sung-jun picked up the costume lying on the desk.

Then he sighed and headed toward where his motorcycle was parked outside.

“A birthday party inside a Gate. They’re really living the high life now.”

Sung-jun’s lips twisted into a strange expression as he looked at the order details.

The request to wear a costume and deliver inside the Gate was absurd enough, but the additional request written below was even more ridiculous.

「If you sing the birthday song as well, we’ll give you 2 additional magic stones.」

It was a request that could be considered insulting to one’s pride, but Sung-jun didn’t mind.

Two fingernail-sized magic stones that might seem worthless to the Awakened.

For Sung-jun, they were necessary items he’d gladly sell his pride to obtain.

Sung-jun started humming as if the magic stones were already in his hands, starting up his motorcycle.

He hummed a familiar melody that anyone could recognize instantly upon hearing.

Sung-jun began moving toward the bakery to pick up his first delivery item: the ‘birthday cake.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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