The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 112

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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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112
Chapter 112. A Bill Comes Due
***
“We managed to pull one name.”
Lee Min-young opened her mouth as she looked at me.
Her fingers tapped lightly against the smooth glass screen of the Tablet Terminal she’d withdrawn from her pocket.
A holographic image rose into the air, casting a pale blue light that brightened the dark corridor.
The only clue we’d barely managed to fish out from Hong Tae-hwa’s Shadow Recording—a “Crystal Prayer House” that had supposedly been closed six years ago.
Lee Min-young laid out before me the property registry of the old building where that prayer house had been located, along with scanned copies of ten years’ worth of lease agreements.
Hundreds of data sheets stacked in layers, forming three-dimensional information.
“It was a phantom facility—never registered as a formal religious institution, so it didn’t show up in the national database. We had to manually backtrack through every single lease contract holder for basement level one of that building, based on its administrative address.”
Her finger pointed to one corner of the complex paperwork, to the inked signature of the lease holder.
The rental period matched perfectly, with no discrepancy, to the exact date when Hong Tae-hwa had first set foot in the prayer house following a mysterious friend.
The moment I saw the three-character name written there, my eyes narrowed slightly.
“Son Jeong-su?”
An unfamiliar name. Even among the information I’d collected across the previous world and this one, it didn’t surface in my memory—an obscure figure, a nobody.
I touched my chin, turning the name over in my mind.
“Yes. If you look at it that way, you’d have difficulty even guessing who it is. That’s the natural reaction.”
Lee Min-young slid the screen aside.
A final results window appeared, cross-referenced between the lease holder’s personal information and classified internal database records of the bureau, highlighted in red.
“This person is far better known by an alias than by the legal name Son Jeong-su.”
Her voice dropped low—a tone far heavier than her usual bureaucratic register, stripped of all warmth.
“Jeon Byeong-jun.”
…….
In that instant, something like an ice pick driven along my spine gouged through my mind.
The cold air I’d drawn in deeply caught in my throat and froze.
The name of a power player whose causal threads should never have tangled at this moment, in this place—entirely unexpected.
“You mean Jeon Byeong-jun.”
“Yes. The man we know.”
Lee Min-young’s pupils darkened. She too seemed to feel the destructive weight this name carried.
“The Boundary Mage, Jeon Byeong-jun.”
***
Jeon Byeong-jun.
In the official record of Hunter society, he was no mere man of strength.
He was commonly regarded as the symbol of the 1.5 Generation and the apex of the Academy—that institution called the traditional seat of modern magical learning.
The savage 1st Generation, led by Lee Do-hyun, who had laid the foundation of magic at the cost of their lives. And the present 2nd Generation, which seized power at the Academy and retreated into the ivory tower of the establishment.
Jeon Byeong-jun was evaluated as a figure who had buffered the collision between those two generations, maintaining a peculiar equilibrium at the boundary between conservatism and progress.
Official chronicles explained that ambiguous position through a single reason.
Jeon Byeong-jun’s overwhelming personal mastery of Mana and his sheer presence.
That power had become, by general assessment, a vast “borderline” binding together the opposite poles of 1st and 2nd Generations.
His unique characteristic, officially recognized by the Academy as his own—Boundary.
According to records, during the chaos when ability engineering and magical tactics were first establishing their foundations, he suppressed and sealed the collisions of Mana and side effects of spells with that power.
Without him, the numerous formulas that form the bedrock of South Korean mages would never have even completed their foundational blueprints—such was the praise that followed.
On the basis of that academic achievement and political acumen, he now occupied the seat of Rector of the Academy—the institution that symbolizes South Korea’s magical authority.
At the same time, in the previous world, by the time I’d been driven from the ivory tower for my thesis on status window improvement, he had already stepped down from the rectorship and disappeared from public view.
That very man had, six years ago, hidden his identity and slipped into a nameless, peripheral prayer house.
There was no physical evidence. But if the power attributed to him in public record was genuine, it would have been possible. The scattered fragments of suspicion converged into a single conclusion.
“……Sir.”
Lee Min-young’s voice sent ripples across the surface of my frozen consciousness.
“The investigation will not be easy.”
She studied my complexion, which had gone unusually ashen, her brows drawn together.
“You know where Chancellor Jeon Byeong-jun currently is, don’t you? The people there are difficult for even our bureau to investigate.”
I nodded briefly, both hands thrust into my pockets.
Something hot churned in the depths of my chest, yet the breath I released outwardly grew only colder.
“I do.”
***
I left the Gate Management Bureau Building.
The sound of my shoe heels striking the marble floor of the 1st floor lobby rang out with unusual sharpness.
As I crossed the lobby, my gaze caught with Bae Hyun-gyeom’s, who happened to be walking out from the opposite corridor.
He seemed to want to ask about Hong Tae-hwa’s condition and what would be done with him after his interrogation had finished in the detention room, and his steps faltered.
I didn’t slow my pace, giving him a sharp nod.
“Hong Tae-hwa is yours to handle. I’m leaving it entirely to you.”
“Some master you are. There’s no one else I can turn to anyway.”
“Exactly. That’s right.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom grinned and waved a hand dismissively.
“Leave it to me. I’ll remake him like he’s been born again.”
The metallic clinking of him grumbling about serving a master faded behind me, but his wavelength carried a solid sense of responsibility.
No need to look back at a hunting dog once you’ve given it meat. The name Hong Tae-hwa had already been erased from my list of priorities long ago.
I descended to the parking garage and settled into the driver’s seat.
‘Jeon Byeong-jun.’
He typically handed off the Academy’s administrative work to his deputy chancellors, spending most of the year abroad under the pretext of international Mana scholarship exchanges.
His meticulous seclusion was likely a perfect smokescreen for managing the Gate Sect’s global network.
But there existed one timing when he absolutely had to break through that iron routine and resurface in Korea.
“The Academy’s regular symposium.”
I murmured it quietly, gripping the steering wheel.
A massive academic conference being held in Korea in a few days.
To deliver the keynote address at that grand stage of intellect, Jeon Byeong-jun had to return temporarily and station himself at the heart of the ivory tower.
The perfect—and only—chance to pull the leash on my prey.
My gaze shifted to the smartphone resting in the dashboard holder. I scrolled through the contacts slowly, and my finger stopped at one name.
[Jung Se-hui]
It had been only days ago.
She’d proposed that I accompany her to the Academy symposium, dangling an extraordinary condition of ninety percent of the Dekima commercialization profits. I’d coldly refused because of my aversion to that space.
But a single clue Lee Min-young brought had overturned the board.
“Hah…”
Now I owed Lee Min-young, and I’d have to swallow my pride with Jung Se-hui.
I had no appetite for retracting my own words and making a pathetic request.
But on a chessboard of extinction where millions of lives hung in the balance, petty pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Only she held the VIP invitation that could pierce through the symposium’s needle’s eye—legally, deeply, to the innermost sanctum.
Without hesitation, I pressed her name.
***
“What’s this? Did the sun rise in the west?”
City Hall Ability Management Team 4th Floor Maintenance Room.
The moment the door unlocked and I stepped in, Jung Se-hui—sprawled across the sofa tapping at her smartphone—opened her eyes wide and grinned.
“You haven’t left yet?”
I asked as I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the wall-mounted rack.
The state of the maintenance room was appalling.
Her biker jacket lay draped on the floor in front of the sofa like a snake’s shed skin, and the once-neat table was scattered with empty beverage bottles and half-eaten containers of spicy rice cake.
My personal maintenance room vibrated with some unidentifiable pungent spice smell.
“Using someone else’s office like this…”
As I tried to chide her with raised eyebrows, Jung Se-hui brazenly shrugged and sat up.
“You told me to rest comfortably, so I did. Very comfortably. What, got a problem with that?”
There was no point in arguing further—it would only spike my blood pressure. I responded with a short sigh and grabbed the trash bag in the corner.
I began silently clearing away the debris scattered across the table, particularly bothered by the plastic container with sauce stains baked on.
‘Dust.’
I grasped the container of food scraps in one hand and deployed the 1st Circle decomposition magic with extreme precision.
The moisture inside evaporated instantly, and complex organic compounds broke down under Mana interference.
The foul-smelling remains transformed in moments into a tightly compacted clump of dry earth.
I flicked the clump into the trash bag and tied the opening firmly shut.
I made a mental note to purify the air at maximum output the instant she left.
“Whoa! What was that just now? That’s amazing! You can use magic like that?”
Jung Se-hui sprang up from the sofa, her eyes sparkling as she approached.
“Could you come by my place sometime? My apartment’s buried in food waste, and it’s a nightmare to deal with.”
“Absolutely not. Call a service.”
“Tch, stingy. With skills like that, you’d buy a building in Gangnam just from cleaning gigs.”
Jung Se-hui chuckled and circled around me.
She couldn’t hide her satisfaction that I’d reached out first, her smile betraying her delight.
“Move. You’re kicking up dust.”
As I tried to push her aside with an empty box, Jung Se-hui planted herself in my path with arms crossed.
“Come on, be honest now. Last time you said you’d die before going, so what suddenly changed your mind? Is it the ninety percent stake? Long live capitalism?”
A smug smile played at her lips. She was clearly convinced I’d capitulated before the lure of massive financial gain.
There was no need to lay bare private circumstances and deepen the emotional rift between us, but a line had to be drawn.
“I don’t need your stake. You keep it all.”
I swept the empty table lightly with my palm as I answered.
“What did you just say?”
“There’s someone within the academy I need to meet with in person. That’s all. So there’s no reason for us to be entangled in money. I’ll accept only the part about accompanying you.”
Jung Se-hui’s eyes widened noticeably. Her fingertips hung awkwardly in the air as she stared at me, her mouth half-open.
“What…… is that really all? What person are you meeting?”
“Someone.”
Jung Se-hui scratched the back of her head, looking sheepish.
“……Anyway, thank you. Regardless of the reason, the outcome is good. Honestly, the thought of going to that viper’s nest of an academy alone made me so anxious I couldn’t sleep. Just thinking about being looked down on by all those mages kept me up at night.”
When she’d overturned the headquarters of Taesung Energy, a massive corporation, her shoulders had been steady then. But standing before the salon of the intellectual elite, she shrank away entirely.
I cleared my throat to reset the mood.
“Tell me if there’s anything you need. I’ll prepare it.”
“Prepare what?”
“It may look like I’m accompanying you at your request, but I have my own agenda. So I’m using you. If you have conditions, I’ll meet them.”
It was my principle to pay fair compensation for what I took. Jung Se-hui pursed her lips and gave me a sideways look for a moment, then her expression softened and she dropped a single word.
“Well, if you insist, there is one thing I’d like.”
“Tell me.”
“After the academy, let’s grab a meal together. You and me.”
My hand, which had been organizing documents, faltered.
“……What? That’s all?”
“Yes. That’s all. And get ready—it’s going to be expensive.”
Jung Se-hui shrugged with a bright smile.
It was a proposal far too humble and incongruous for a condition thrown down on such a ruthless chessboard—one where hundreds of billions in interests and survival hung in the balance.
I simply nodded without asking further.
***
After Jung Se-hui left the office, a heavy silence settled back over the maintenance room. Only the ticking of the clock’s second hand filled the space.
I sat in a cross-legged position on the floor and closed my eyes. With deep breaths, I gathered the mana within my body into a single point.
Since breaking through Red Spiral Tower B12F, the core at my dantian had already been bearing pressure close to its limit.
The compression training repeated at the Altar of the Successor, the experience of mana circulation accumulated in live combat, the output I’d forced upward while facing the lingering forces of the Red Blood Alliance and the Gate Sect—all of it had accumulated in layers within me.
Though it might appear as a sudden breakthrough from the outside, it was actually closer to breaking through a dike that had been cracked for a long time with one final swing of a hammer.
Over the past three hours, I had torn through the threshold of my 2nd Circle mana limit and devoted myself to the agonizing task of expanding my dantian’s core to the 3rd Circle.
A pressure as though my blood vessels would burst covered my entire body. Heat from the expanding mana circuits rose through my skin like heat shimmer.
The sensation of my bones twisting and my muscles contracting followed, but I controlled the mana by decomposing this pain with precise anatomical awareness.
At last, the core at the center of my dantian completed its third orbit with a geometric vibration.
[Successor. The mana density within your core has been detected as abnormally elevated.]
[It exceeds the average measurement of a standard 3rd Circle mage by 214%.]
Airi manifested in the empty air, her silver wings fluttering softly as she reported. Her blue eyes cast a scanning light over my physical state.
“From the 3rd Circle onward, it’s not about sheer quantity—it’s about how finely you can subdivide and compress that density.”
I clenched my sweat-soaked fist, then released it. The sensation of mana felt at my fingertips had become incomparably sharper than before.
[I must admit, I’m astonished.]
[Circle expansion is an extremely dangerous process that physically expands the core.]
[Not even 0.1% of mana leakage or resource waste occurred.]
[Moreover, to maintain connection with the Synchronization skill while handling a workflow of this magnitude……]
[I believe I must rewrite the limits of humanity that I have recorded.]
“Your flattery improves with each passing day.”
I stood with a light chuckle. I pulled out the in-flight carry-on I’d stuffed in a corner of the closet and unfolded it.
I packed several neatly pressed suits, a miniature tool set for equipment maintenance, and emergency mana catalysts with meticulous care.
Preparation could not be half-hearted.
Where we were headed was not a one-dimensional gate where blood and aura ran rampant.
It was an arrogant ivory tower where the most cunning and corrupt minds gathered, manipulating humanity’s extinction behind the elegant masks of ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’.
The Academy.

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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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