The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 14

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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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14
Episode 14. The Weight of Survival
***
“Oh, what do we do!”
“It’s blocking? How are we supposed to break through that?”
Team C’s formation wavered.
An unexpected shift in tactics.
The Mirror Golem raised its left arm to shield its core—not a simple defensive stance. There was intelligence in the movement, a deliberate protection of its vital point.
‘The master’s intervened.’
A monster released into the Test Field learning its own weaknesses and covering them? Impossible.
Some examiner monitoring from outside—or a Summoner—had just switched its posture by manual override.
Either they wanted to reduce the number of passers, or they were pushing us to the brink for their own twisted amusement.
‘Who is it? Not Yu Hye Sung.’
It had to be the Summoner examiner.
But I understood the logic.
If you crumble here, you’re as good as a corpse in real combat.
When you hit a wall, you break through it.
That’s what it means to be a Hunter.
I adjusted my grip on the sword hilt.
I was just considering whether to crank up the output and tear its arm clean off—
“Out of the way!!”
A powerful shout rang through the forest.
It was Lee Sung Chan.
Without bothering to recover his stance, he pushed off the ground and launched himself into the air.
Both shields clasped together in his hands—the posture of a full-power charge.
“Hraaaaah—!”
Bang—!
A dull, heavy impact erupted.
Lee Sung Chan’s shield struck the golem’s flank, dead center on the elbow joint.
Pure, brute-force Shoulder Charge.
But that brutality worked.
“Guh!”
The golem, its weight unbalanced, staggered.
The impact forced open the left arm that had been shielding the core.
A split-second opening.
The red core in its chest lay exposed and defenseless.
“It’s open! Now’s your chance!”
Lee Sung Chan rolled across the ground and shouted.
Excellent support. But the golem’s reaction was just as quick.
Its surface rippled again, grotesquely.
Click, click.
Ivory-colored mirror plates bristled like scales.
If it couldn’t protect the core with its limbs, it would burn us instead—an aggressive tactical shift.
It was a self-destruct pattern: converting the Magical Power it had absorbed into light and releasing it.
Screee—!
A blinding white light erupted, threatening to sear the eyes.
The warriors who were about to attack cried out and covered their faces.
Even Lee Sung Chan turned his head away, ducking behind his shield.
Vision cut off.
I didn’t close my eyes.
Couldn’t, rather.
My sight wasn’t bound to my retinas—it was open through Mana Sensing.
‘There it is.’
In the white void, a red, burning heart of Mana pulsed clearly.
The Magical Power it was unleashing made a perfect target.
“Synchronization.”
Whoosh—
The Mana core in my heart began to spin.
The Mana flowing through my veins transformed into Aura, sending sparks across my entire body.
My muscles contracted, my nerves accelerated.
I poured every sense into the tip of the blade.
This was no mere slash.
If channeling magic through a sword was the foundation of a Magic Swordsman, then a ninth-circle Magic Swordsman had to wield magic itself as the blade.
Energy Bolt. Magic Missile.
I layered the two spells together.
Normally, Energy Bolt travels as a sphere.
But I shattered that form.
I compressed the mana along the blade’s edge into a high-pressure stream.
Like packing gunpowder into a rifle barrel.
And Magic Missile’s excellent homing capability came as a bonus.
‘Quick Cut Slash.’
I pivoted my feet. My body launched forward like an arrow.
A cutting stroke that fired in the same instant.
The air tore apart.
A blue flash streamed in a straight line from the blade’s point.
Crack—!
The sound of stone fracturing erupted across the golem’s chest.
The compressed Energy Bolt detonated inside its body.
Boom—!
A deafening blast, and a pillar of blue mana punched clean through the golem’s back.
Perfect penetration.
The Core didn’t merely shatter—it annihilated.
“Nnnnnngh—!”
Crack, crack-crack-crack.
Spider-web fractures split the hard mirror surface.
Collapse spread from within.
The massive giant crumbled like a glass tower.
Thousands of shards poured down like rain.
“Phew…”
I lowered the blade and steadied my breathing. My wrist ached.
Even a first-circle spell could become an anti-tank round, depending on how you used it.
This was the beauty of efficiency and fusion.
The white light faded.
The Hunters who’d shielded their eyes began lifting their heads one by one.
What greeted them was the powdered wreckage of the golem and me standing atop it.
……
Their jaws hung slack, eyes vacant with disbelief.
Lee Sung Chan was the first to snap out of it.
“We… we did it…”
“Yeaaah!”
“We made it! We actually did it!”
“Do Jin!”
Cheers erupted.
They embraced one another, sank to the ground weeping, screamed with joy.
A first hunt conquered. And the exhilaration of survival.
I could feel the raw heat of a novice thrumming across their faces.
‘I remember that feeling.’
Before the Regression, I’d killed my first goblin—and my hands had shaken.
That tremor would dull someday, but for now, in this moment, they deserved to savor it.
I brushed the residual mana dust from the blade.
Whirrrr.
A mechanical sound came from deeper in the woods.
Trees parted on either side as a crimson iron door came into view.
The entrance to the next stage, no doubt.
***
The space before the iron door looked like a Temporary Maintenance Station.
The smell of rust mixed with disinfectant, sharp and metallic.
Staff in bronze vests moved briskly about their tasks.
“Grab a Maintenance Kit. One per person.”
One of the staff handed me a small box.
My hand moved mechanically across the chart, checking off my name.
I opened the box.
A shriveled Energy Bar, cheap Bandages, and a vial-sized Mana Potion.
‘They’re giving us this?’
I picked up the thumb-sized potion bottle.
The moment I uncapped it, a sour vinegar stench assaulted my nose.
Bottom-tier quality, among the lowest grade.
Incompletely refined industrial Mana.
The moment it touched my tongue, it withered my taste buds and twisted my stomach.
But right now, I couldn’t afford to be choosy.
I swallowed.
It was as bad as I’d expected.
A scraped, unpleasant sensation down my esophagus.
But my depleted Mana circuits flickered back to life, however faintly.
I found myself longing for the sweet potions the Dongguneung Hunter Shop owner used to throw in as a courtesy.
“Excuse me, can someone move the collapsed person outside quickly?”
“Understood. The medical team is standing by.”
The surroundings were in chaos.
The disqualified carried out on stretchers.
Survivors crouched on the ground, retching.
Hunters leaning against walls, gasping for breath.
But the staff’s expressions remained unmoved.
One was checking names off a list.
Another was sweeping up broken equipment fragments.
A third was preparing to call the next group.
Even this pandemonium was nothing but routine work to them.
That’s when I heard idle chatter from behind.
“Man, Choi Sun Ah is going to be furious today.”
“Why?”
“Two Mirror Golems have already broken. And it’s not even noon yet.”
“Ah, right. Didn’t she stay up all night tuning them?”
“Yeah. Apparently she was fiddling with them until four in the morning.”
“Wow… so if anyone talks to her now, they’re dead?”
“Dead? No. But overtime’s definitely happening.”
“Shouldn’t we at least grab her a high-grade potion?”
“Are you insane? Are you joking?”
“No, I’m serious. Summoners burn through a lot of Magical Power, you know?”
“Never mind. Just don’t get caught and do your job. We’ll catch hell again.”
“Yeah, alright. Let’s prep the next group.”
I stopped listening at that point.
Choi Sun Ah?
The name was familiar.
An A-rank Hunter from the Guardians Guild.
And among 7-Circle Summoners, one of the most promising talents.
Before my Regression, I remembered seeing her a few times in major Gate conquest operations.
She wasn’t the type to charge recklessly at the front lines.
Instead, she designed battlefields.
Summoned creature positioning. Magical Power flow control. Battle endurance management.
She had genuine talent in those areas.
But at this point in time, she wasn’t yet a finished product.
She was still in the thick of her growth.
I looked toward the direction the staff had vanished.
‘So that’s why.’
The Mirror Golem’s quality had been abnormally high.
It wasn’t just a collection of raw data fragments—it was a carefully crafted work by an A-rank Summoner.
That shift in pattern at the end, the one that obscured its weakness, must have been her real-time control.
What I’d destroyed wasn’t simply a monster. It might have been her pride.
I may have made quite an impression.
For better or worse.
Either way, the examiners are all heavyweights.
Yu Hye Sung and Choi Sun Ah, no less.
Invictus’s arrival might not have been coincidence.
“Attention, everyone! We’re doing a headcount!”
The megaphone’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.
Group C’s survivors numbered six, including me.
Nearly half were gone.
“We’re now moving to the second Test Field. Once you enter, you cannot leave for twenty-four hours. If anyone wishes to withdraw, raise your hand now.”
No one raised their hand.
The euphoria of defeating the Mirror Golem was clouding their judgment.
Their faces brimmed with confidence.
But I knew better.
The real hell was about to begin.
Screeeech—
The red iron door opened with a sound like a scream.
Beyond it lay absolute darkness.
And from within came a humid, stale wind.
“Do Jin.”
Lee Sung Chan approached my side.
Tension was written plainly across his face.
He’d mentioned this was his first time passing the first trial.
“What do you think comes next? Another boss monster?”
“No. I don’t think it’s an elimination format.”
I read the Mana pattern from beyond the door.
Not concentrated, but spread wide—faint yet sticky, suffused with presence.
“If not elimination, then… a wave defense trial?”
“Not that either. A defense trial would be fortified from the entrance.”
I gestured to the Maintenance Kit we’d been issued.
“Rations and Bandages. And a twenty-four-hour time limit.”
“Ah…!”
Lee Sung Chan exhaled in understanding.
“An exploration format… a survival trial.”
“Exactly. We may have to camp. In the middle of it all.”
“That’ll be rough. Pure endurance.”
Lee Sung Chan scratched his head.
“Enter now!”
Urged by the staff, we stepped into the darkness.
As we passed through the tunnel, our vision opened.
And everyone gasped at what lay before us.
***
“…Wow.”
Someone’s whisper of awe.
It was no forest.
It was a Ruined City.
Collapsed skyscrapers stood like tombstones, their roads split and choked with weeds.
Shards of broken glass littered the ground, glinting in the moonlight.
A desolate wind passed between the buildings with a sound like ghostly wails.
‘Impressive.’
For a test environment, the quality was almost excessive.
It was Seoul during the chaos of the early Gate crisis, reproduced in meticulous detail.
This wasn’t a simple test of combat strength.
This was a crucible meant to grind down a Hunter’s endurance and mental resolve.
“Come on, everyone! Let’s stay positive! We just have to last one day!”
Lee Sung Chan forced brightness into his voice, trying to lift the mood.
But the Hunters’ faces remained grim.
Fear of an unseen enemy.
The unease of something watching from the darkness.
I fell silent to the rear of the formation.
The real enemy here wasn’t monsters.
It was exhaustion, hunger, and mistrust.
We had to watch for the moment we’d collapse from within.
The first few hours had been calm.
The occasional Goblin or Kobold that appeared was dispatched easily by Lee Sung Chan and the warriors.
But as time wore on, the air grew heavier.
“Hah… hah… how much longer do we have to walk?”
One Hunter collapsed to the ground.
His face was caked with sweat, his eyes darting nervously back and forth.
The monsters weren’t strong.
But they emerged relentlessly.
The moment you tried to sleep, an attack began. The moment you tried to eat, arrows came flying.
A calculated Guerrilla Tactics that systematically denied any rest.
“Just a bit further and there should be a safe house. Let’s make it there.”
Lee Sung Chan tried to help him up, but the Hunter shook his head.
“No. I can’t go on. Not anymore…”
“Listen, if you give up here, you’ll be disqualified!”
“I know! I know, but my legs won’t move!”
A cry bordering on hysteria.
His mental state had already collapsed.
The fear of blades that might emerge from the darkness at any moment had eaten away at his body and will.
“I… I want to stop too.”
A female Mage beside him raised her hand, her voice wavering with tears.
Contagion. Fear spreads like a virus.
The moment one person broke, the dams holding back the others crumbled as well.
Whoosh—
A Red Flare burst into the sky.
The disqualified Hunter muttered as he watched the light fade.
“If this were a real Gate… I’d already be dead.”
He wasn’t wrong.
If this had been actual combat, his heart would have been pierced by a Kobold’s spear the moment he sat down.
Acknowledging your limits and stepping back.
Perhaps that too takes courage.
Better than dying from recklessness.
“Let’s go.”
I spoke flatly.
Lee Sung Chan looked at the disqualified Hunters with regret, but eventually he nodded.
Including Group D, the final count was around ten people.
The darkness was deepening.

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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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