The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 110

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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110
Episode 110. A Cold Greeting
***
Gate Management Bureau Basement Level 17.
In the corridor where Bae Hyun-gyeom had withdrawn, only a piercing artificial chill remained.
This was a prison of silence where the noise of the surface was perfectly sealed out, where even Mana itself held its breath.
The Anti-Mite plates—a specialized alloy for blocking Mana that covered the walls—caught the light of the white fluorescent lamps and cast a bluish glow.
Each time my shoe heel struck the concrete floor, a sharp scraping sound echoed down to the end of the corridor—click, click.
The sound returned as an echo that struck my ears, but I moved forward indifferently, trampling the hollowness that rang within it.
What meaning could there possibly be in facing that bag of blood now?
All conclusions had already been reached at the Altar of the Successor.
It was my hands that had carved out and torn away the malevolent spirit parasitizing the depths of his soul, in that murky mental realm.
By severing the tangled threads of causality and cutting off the source of corrupted Mana, my physical redemption had already run its course.
Playing the shallow role of a counselor who tears open wounds to extract regret and reflection—that suited me poorly.
There was no work less efficient than stepping into another’s emotional hellscape.
And yet, the condition that Ryu Gang-jin, the Operations Chief, had laid out was too sweet a lure to ignore.
The justification to pause or turn back had already vanished, along with the contract sitting in my pocket.
Interrogation Room 07.
The moment my hand reached toward the cold, lifeless doorknob, the flow of air behind me twisted subtly.
“Do-jin, could you spare a moment?”
With a voice pitched low, someone gripped the cuff of my jacket firmly.
I turned my head to find Inspector Lee Min-young standing there.
She wore her uniform as neatly as always, but her complexion had gone paler than the chill of the basement itself.
She tightened her grip on my sleeve, using her eyes to gesture toward a narrow blind spot at the end of the corridor where fluorescent light didn’t reach.
I followed her footsteps without a word.
The corner was far too cramped and claustrophobic for two adults to stand face-to-face. Only a low mechanical hum rose through the soles of my feet as pipes ran along the walls.
“Is it… close enough?”
Lee Min-young spoke with her back against the wall, her voice trembling slightly. Her breathing scattered across the area near my chest.
It was rare to see this Inspector—one who had weathered countless trials in her career—so visibly shaken.
“It’s fine. Tell me.”
I replied calmly, maintaining my distance from her. At my measured response, she pulled a thin Tablet Terminal from her inner pocket.
Fingerprints smudged the black reinforced glass screen, but she didn’t even seem to have the composure to wipe them away.
“This is Hong Tae-hwa’s Shadow Tracing record. The analysis just finished.”
The screen lit up, and dense text logs and fragmented images flickered in disarray.
The residual images etched into Hong Tae-hwa’s mind, scraped together by her unique trait of Shadow Tracing—the results were laid out with meticulous clarity.
“There was no resistance whatsoever. He cooperated with the Shadow Tracing extremely willingly, almost as if attempting atonement. Cross-referencing the testimony content with the visual information from his brainwaves, all data matched at one hundred percent. No fabricated lies.”
“Did you ask him about the cult?”
I fixed my gaze on one of the blurry images—an indecipherable pattern reflected in Hong Tae-hwa’s field of vision—and cut to the heart of it.
“Of course I did. That was our target.”
Lee Min-young bit her lip and scrolled through the screen.
Each data sheet that appeared was filled with red warning text: “Unknown” or “Data Corrupted”.
“But Hong Tae-hwa himself knew nothing about the Gate Cult. He couldn’t even perceive who they were or what Technique Formula they placed on him. A certain section of his memory was simply cut off blank. It was too artificial to even call it a blackout.”
“They did it directly.”
“Exactly. I ran a precise analysis on the Mana Choker hanging around Hong Tae-hwa’s neck, and it’s a Technique Formula no low-level criminal organization like the Red Blood Alliance could implement. There’s advanced geometric magical computation mixed with archived ancient formulas. It’s an engraving meticulously designed by an Archmage of at least Circle 7.”
“I’m thinking the same thing.”
Lee Min-young turned off the screen. The eyes of her exhausted face reflected faintly in the darkened display. She let out a sigh.
“I tried to reach the very bottom of Hong Tae-hwa’s unconscious, into the realm of his instincts, searching for traces of the cult. But… I couldn’t reach it. It’s as if someone carved out only that section from his memories with a precise scalpel and burned it away. All that remains is a hole in memory that didn’t even leave ash.”
“I understand. I’ve got a sufficient grasp of the analysis results, so I’ll excuse myself. I came here to conduct an interview as a favor, after all.”
As I turned to head toward the interrogation room, Lee Min-young grabbed my arm again. Her trembling was more pronounced than before.
“I’m sorry for dumping this on you… but would you delve into it once more through conversation, regarding the contact point with that cult? My trait only reads fixed information values, but with your method as a Hunter… I have a feeling you might be able to reach where I simply cannot.”
I stopped walking and looked down at her. Her shoulders flinched.
When a favor is asked, demanding fair compensation in return—that was the most equitable principle I learned in this line of work.
“When I need it later.”
“Tell me. Anything.”
“Use it on me. Just once.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your Shadow Tracing ability. There will come a time when I need to scrape the memories from a target I choose.”
“Ah, I promise. I’ll cooperate with you anytime, Do-jin.”
***
Creeeak—
A heavy steel soundproof door swung open with an unpleasant grinding sound, like dry hinges in need of oil.
The pale white fluorescent glare of the interrogation room spilled through, washing the space in harsh light.
The air inside was heavier and more stagnant than in the corridor. The soundproof walls absorbed noise so completely that even my own breathing seemed unnaturally loud.
Beyond the central iron table, a red-haired boy sat with both hands bound in silver handcuffs, head bowed low. He flinched involuntarily at the sound of the opening door.
“Ah···.”
The boy’s head rose slowly. The moment his dull, lifeless eyes met mine, his rounded shoulders went visibly rigid.
“You should greet someone when you see them.”
I pulled back the metal chair opposite him with a long, deliberate scrape and sat, tossing the words out casually. The screech of the metal legs against the floor cut sharply through the interrogation room.
“···· Sorry. Hello.”
The boy bowed his head in a panic. His voice had curdled into a crawl, and all trace of his former arrogance and venom had vanished without a trace.
It was only the voice of a wretched criminal cast alone into the world. A faint sneer flickered across my lips, then disappeared.
It was truly a remarkable sight.
The Hong Tae-hwa I remembered from the previous world, and the one I’d faced on the battlefield mere days ago—neither of them were like this.
A rabid beast that had torn the limbs from countless Hunters and ranted at me with bloodshot eyes, spewing every curse and vulgarity imaginable. That was the Hong Tae-hwa I’d known.
But the boy sitting before me now was bowing his head politely, murmuring apologies.
“Right.”
I leaned deep into the chair’s backrest and observed him carefully.
His hair was still that vivid red, as if kindled by flame, but it no longer held the threatening form he’d once styled it into with a force of will.
Instead, it hung limp and pathetic, like a crow’s nest soaked in rain.
The most dramatic change was in his eyes. The bestial madness that had gleamed with the pleasure of slaughter had evaporated like smoke.
What filled the void was only the hollow gaze of a nineteen-year-old boy, unfocused and adrift with anxiety.
I loosened the tension that had crept into my shoulders and fixed my stare upon him.
“You know who I am.”
At my words, Hong Tae-hwa swallowed dryly. His Adam’s apple bobbed sharply.
Without meeting my eyes directly, he stared fixedly at the handcuffs on the table and opened his mouth carefully.
“Yes. You’re a Hunter from the Ability Management Team···.”
“And?”
“···· You’re the one who saved me from there.”
“No. That’s enough.”
I waved a hand to cut him off.
I hadn’t come down here to listen to sentimental drivel. I scanned his spiritual state through the flow of his Mana.
After the remnants of the Berserker Technique had been purged, his Mana Circuit was unnaturally calm and stable.
It made sense that he’d confessed everything without resistance to Lee Min-young’s Shadow Tracing.
“I deserve to be punished like this.”
“Lock me up here forever.”
Fragments of Hong Tae-hwa’s testimony from Lee Min-young’s report flickered through my mind.
Perhaps he was haunted—somewhere deep in his consciousness—by the phantom sensation of the destruction and slaughter he’d committed.
The warmth of blood his body remembered, the screams that had shattered his eardrums. Those shards of memory were an invisible shackle choking his neck.
“You blew up your friend at school, didn’t you.”
I went straight for the throat. There was no need for euphemism here.
The boy’s shoulders convulsed violently like an aspen, and the chain of his handcuffs struck against the table with a sharp, irritable clang.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
Hong Tae-hwa’s eyes widened for a moment, then darkened as if sinking into a deep bog.
He clenched his fists—still shackled—until his knuckles turned white, and answered in a broken voice.
“Yes. I did it. I···· did it.”
“How did you do it.”
“···· What?”
“I’m not asking for a description of the method. What technique did you use? Was it Class 8 Fire Magic? Or was it your Unique Trait—Mana Detonation? Or was it an outside force someone planted in you?”
Under the barrage of follow-up questions, Hong Tae-hwa’s eyes lost their anchor and began to drift aimlessly. His breathing grew rough.
“That···· I don’t···.”
“What did it feel like? A human body alive and breathing right in front of you turning into raw meat and exploding in just one second. The heat against your fingertips. The smell of burning protein searing your nose. It must be fresh in your memory, right?”
“·· I don’t know. Please.”
The boy’s lips had gone pale blue. Cold sweat traced down his temples and dripped from his chin.
“How can you not know. You said you did it.”
I leaned forward until my face was close to his. I could see my own expression reflected in his trembling pupils.
“You did it yourself, but you don’t remember the process—only the result?”
Beyond the observation room lay a vast sheet of clear glass.
Through the light reflected in that dark pane, I could sense the tension of Investigator Lee Min-young watching from the other side.
She was probably thinking I was psychologically torturing the boy.
“And then there were the punk kids from the other school. You turned them into charcoal, didn’t you. You must have heard their bones crackling as they burned.”
I kept the pressure mounting, pushing his mental defenses toward their breaking point.
“You don’t remember that either? Or did you erase it because you didn’t want to?”
“I, I remember! I did it! I did it all with my own hands!”
Hong Tae-hwa clutched his head with both cuffed hands as though seized by a migraine, his voice breaking into a curse. His shriek bounced off the interrogation room’s walls and echoed back hollow.
But there was no solid conviction in that cry.
It was nothing but a vicious act of self-harm—pushing himself into hell out of loathing and a desire for self-destruction.
Clinging only to the results his body had wrought, turning a blind eye to the intentions of others and the root causes beneath them, he was attempting a cowardly escape by branding himself a “monster.”
The Gwanghwamun Plaza of the world that was.
When countless hunters freed from brainwashing and corruption were forced to confront the horrors their own hands had committed, I had watched them collapse into the depths of their own minds and choose death—countless times before.
I had grown sick of witnessing it.
The boy before me now stood at that same precipice’s edge, no different from the wailing dead I had seen in that plaza that day.
“That so?”
I rose slowly from my seat.
Bang—!
I drove my boot hard into the iron desk in front of me. The heavy steel table, weighing well over a hundred kilograms, shrieked and careened mercilessly across the interrogation room floor.
“Ah—!”
Hong Tae-hwa curled into a tight ball on his chair, his face seized by extreme terror.
I flicked my right index and middle fingers lightly.
A razor-edged blade of wind, compressed from the atmospheric pressure in an instant and honed sharp, tore through the air. It was no simple application of mana.
It was a precise manifestation of physical law—the density of space itself twisted to minimize resistance.
Crash—!
Sparks scattered in all directions. The chain at the center of the Mana Suppression Handcuffs binding Hong Tae-hwa’s wrists snapped cleanly in two from a single Void Slash.
“Ahhh!”
Caught in the explosive shockwave, Hong Tae-hwa toppled backward in his chair and tumbled to the floor.
His broken shackle rings dangling from both wrists, he scrambled backward on terror-stricken limbs, pressing himself into the corner.
“You said you remembered.”
I closed in on him where he lay tangled with the overturned chair, seizing him by the collar. Then I hauled his slight frame half-suspended into the air.
His toes hovered barely off the ground, swaying precariously.
I clamped down on his right hand, now freed from its restraint.
And I forced it against my neck, pressing it hard into the carotid artery where my pulse throbbed strongest.
“Ah—! Sir! What are you doing! Let go!”
Urgent screams tore from Hong Tae-hwa’s throat. The fingertips of his hand at my neck trembled as though convulsing.
“In here, most mana is blocked.”
I drove each word like ice into the boy’s wavering pupils, my voice glacial.
“But forcibly drawing in the trace mana scattered through the air and detonating it—that’s your unique instinct. And the destructive force is more than enough to shatter a barrier this weak and blow my throat away.”
“That’s, that’s impossible—”
“Try.”
I placed my right hand over the back of his hand at my neck, pressing down firmly.
I tightened my grip, trapping him with no escape, forcing him into a situation where killing me became his only option.
“Just like then. Like when you killed your friend. Detonate it now. I’ve tormented you, locked you away, made you this pathetic. Shouldn’t you be getting your revenge right now? This is your chance.”
“No, no! Let go, please let me go! I can’t!”
Tae-hwa thrashed desperately, his face drained pale, trying to break free from my grip. But my hand held immovable.
I pressed his palm deeper into my carotid artery. Close enough that he could feel my heartbeat thrumming directly into his palm.
“This is it.”
I narrowed my vision, staring through to the deepest depths of his soul as though seeing through glass.
“Your first and last chance to kill me and escape this hellish room. Won’t you? You said you were a murderer, a monster?”
…!
In that instant, all strength drained from Hong Tae-hwa’s legs and they buckled beneath him.
Suspended by his collar in my grip, thick tears began pouring from his eyes in torrents.
“I can’t—! I can’t do it!!”
The boy’s anguished wail ricocheted off the sealed walls of the interrogation room.
“I, I can’t, I’m scared—! Please save me—! Please—!”
Beyond the transparent glass of the observation room.
I could sense Bae Hyun-gyeom, who had rushed up to the door, fists clenched tight, watching me with barely contained urgency—as though about to smash through the door at any moment.
“See?”
I released the boy’s hand from my neck. I loosened my grip on his collar.
Hong Tae-hwa collapsed to the floor, his face buried in his hands as he pressed his forehead against the cold concrete. Then he began sobbing—ragged, bestial sounds.
It was less the weeping of a human and more the scream of a spirit that had been caged far too long, finally breaking free.
I looked down at his trembling silhouette sprawled on the floor and parted my lips.
“Listen closely.”
At my voice, the creature’s cry faltered—a barely perceptible hesitation. I placed my words above its head like a proclamation, the most obvious and solid truth in the world.
“It wasn’t you.”
A dry statement of fact, stripped of all qualification, all consolation.
“You were only trapped inside that beast’s belly, forced to watch while its body committed savage acts you couldn’t stop. Your only guilt was weakness—being weak enough to surrender your flesh to the monster. Nothing more.”
Hong Tae-hwa lay prone on the cold interrogation room floor, fists clenched, pounding the ground like a man possessed.
The injustice swallowed by force inside the beast’s gullet, the unspeakable terror, the guilt for those who had died—all of it poured out through the sound of his fists striking stone.
Gasping sobs filled the room until it could hold no more.
Each anguished impact that shook the floor transmitted through the tile beneath my shoes.
I stood motionless and waited—waited for his cries to subside, waited for the corrupted Mana that had festered in his soul to be washed clean by his tears.

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