The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 19

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

19
Episode 19. That’s What Makes a Hunter
***
The plaza in front of City Hall.
Midday sunlight shattered across the concrete floor.
Above it, the dry click of my dress shoes echoed.
Click, click.
As the automatic doors slid open and I stepped into the lobby, cool air-conditioning embraced me alongside a peculiar tension that settled against my skin.
Then a booming voice tore through the silence.
“Goodness, Hunter Kim Do-jin! You’ve arrived!”
I turned toward the sound.
A middle-aged man with graying hair was hurrying toward me, both arms spread wide.
Late fifties.
His dark navy suit was immaculate, but his shoulders sagged and dark shadows pooled beneath his eyes.
The Mayor of G City.
‘This man.’
I remember him.
Before the Regression, at the time of the Dongguryeong disaster.
When 250 citizens were slaughtered, he had knelt at the scene, sobbing uncontrollably.
A tragic figure who bore all responsibility, resigned his position as mayor, and later took his own life, unable to overcome the guilt.
I remember the chrysanthemums placed beside his portrait at the temporary memorial shrine, next to the photographs of my mother and sister.
But now, he was alive.
Though worn with exhaustion, his eyes still held a flicker of vitality.
“I’m Kim Do-jin.”
I hid my emotions and shook his hand with measured courtesy.
His palm was damp, trembling slightly.
“Thank you. Truly, thank you. When I heard the report from Kim, I still couldn’t believe it. That you’d refuse Invictus and choose our city instead—”
He wrapped both hands around mine and bowed deeply.
It was the gesture of a desperate father who had set aside the weight of his title.
Civil servants passing nearby stole glances.
“Is that the Hunter?”
“Wow, genuinely A-rank.”
“Mayor Park actually going that far—”
Whispers rippled outward like waves.
Reverence and curiosity, mixed with doubt.
I accepted their stares with perfect indifference.
“Just having you here, Hunter, means our citizens can finally sleep with peace of mind. It’s an enormous help to us.”
The mayor’s words were no mere flattery.
They were genuine.
He knew.
How powerless governance becomes without strength, and what tragedies that powerlessness invites.
‘This life will be different.’
I nodded inwardly, steeling myself.
Kim Dae-han and the mayor took positions on either side of me.
We moved forward along a long corridor.
The hallway stretched endlessly.
Aged drop-ceiling tiles, walls with paint peeling in patches here and there.
A far cry from the glossy marble-clad corporate headquarters of the private Guilds.
This was reality.
With each step, memories and knowledge from before the Regression clicked into place.
‘The Age of Guilds.’
Twenty years ago, when Gates opened, the military and police collapsed.
Before monsters that shrugged off bullets, official authority was nothing but a paper tiger.
The void was filled by Awakened Ones—those who wielded supernatural power.
Initially, the government tried to control them.
But everything changed when Magical Stones were discovered.
The cornerstone of an energy revolution and an astronomical fortune.
The Guilds monopolized Magical Stone mining rights and grew into massive capital powers.
The government?
It became a petitioner, handing over half its tax revenue to them under the guise of “security maintenance fees.”
The word “contract” sounds respectable enough, but in reality it’s nothing but a protection racket.
The price of outsourcing national security to private enterprise had been steep.
Guilds guard the profitable city centers, but the outlying districts and slums are left to rot.
That was South Korea now.
‘No wonder the city’s finances are collapsing.’
G City was no different.
It funneled massive sums to massive guilds like Invictus and the Guardians, yet treated dangerous zones like Dongguryeong as expendable—”unprofitable,” they called it.
That was why the mayor clung to me so desperately.
He didn’t need mercenaries you could buy with money. He needed a real ally.
“This way, please.”
Lost in thought, I’d arrived at an enormous set of double doors before I knew it.
The moment the great hall’s entrance swung open, a wave of oppressive heat and noise crashed over me.
Hundreds of people sat packed shoulder to shoulder.
It looked like every employee at City Hall had been summoned.
Their eyes fixed on me in unison.
“He really came.”
“He’s younger than I thought.”
“Kind of has actor vibes, doesn’t he?”
The curious stare of spectators observing a rare creature in a zoo.
And threaded through it all, a current of disbelief.
“So he turned down a hundred billion won? Really?”
“There’s got to be something in it for him. Or maybe Kim Dae-han has some dirt on him.”
“Yeah, if it’s Kim Dae-han, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
The whispers burrowed into my ears.
I walked forward without acknowledging them, my footsteps steady.
A gaudy red banner hung from the platform above.
[Special Appointment Ceremony for Hunter—G City, Gyeonggi Province / A-rank Hunter Kim Do-jin]
Gold letters in Gungsuh serif font.
The quintessential government office aesthetic.
I took my seat without letting the laugh escape that nearly bubbled up.
“Alright, everyone, quiet please! Let’s have quiet!”
The master of ceremonies gripped the microphone, sweating visibly.
As the commotion died down, the mayor took the stage.
He cleared his throat a few times, then unfolded his prepared notes.
“Ah… thank you all for attending despite your busy schedules.”
His trademark slow, grave tone.
The beginning of a tedious address.
I’d expected it, but government ceremonies really did drag on.
***
“Last year alone, this city paid private guilds a total of 120 billion won in outsourced security fees. That’s over 15 percent of our entire budget—a staggering sum.”
The mayor’s voice grew forceful.
He clenched his fist and shook it at the air.
“Taxpayer money is being squandered. Guilds have refused or delayed responding to calls in outlying areas, citing lack of profit, and the citizens bear the full cost of that callousness.”
The crowd fell silent.
Everyone knew it, but they’d all kept quiet about the uncomfortable truth.
“But that changes now. This city has established its own independent response team. We will no longer bow to the guilds—we will defend our own safety with our own hands!”
He stretched out his arm and pointed toward me.
“Standing at the helm of this new beginning is Hunter Kim Do-jin. An A-rank hero with an Immeasurable Power Rating who has chosen this city over a hundred billion won!”
Roooaarrr!
Mechanical applause erupted from the crowd.
My face flushed hot.
But beneath that applause, skepticism still lurked.
‘What can one man do?’, ‘He’ll leave within the month’—cold ridicule, unspoken but palpable.
The mayor waxed eloquent.
Next year’s budget, increased security spending, reduced guild dependence—
Rose-tinted projections filled the PowerPoint slides.
I stared at the screen with a blank expression.
For those plans to materialize, Kim Dae-han had to deliver results.
Which meant hundreds of billions of won in weight had just settled across my shoulders.
“Now then, for the final—”
At last, it’s over.
I was pushing myself to my feet when the emcee’s voice cut through.
“Now we’ll hear the inaugural remarks from today’s honored guest, Hunter Kim Do-jin! Let’s give him a warm welcome!”
This wasn’t in the script.
I glanced at Kim Dae-han, and he just shrugged with a mischievous grin.
The look of someone saying, “Your turn to suffer.”
This was going to cost more than a cup of coffee.
“…”
I was practically pushed up onto the platform.
The lights were blinding.
Hundreds of eyes bored into me.
The front row was packed with City Hall press corps, notebooks open and ready.
I gripped the microphone.
Cold metal against my palm.
I had no prepared remarks.
The silence stretched, and the auditorium began to stir.
“Um…”
The speaker feedback cut through, and people held their breath.
I swept my gaze across the crowd slowly.
Exhausted civil servants, reporters hunting for a scoop, and the mayor’s desperate, eager eyes.
What was I supposed to say?
Public safety? A spirit of service?
Those hollow platitudes didn’t sit right with me.
“Donggu District in G City, Gyeonggi Province.”
People tilted their heads at the unexpected place name.
“That’s where I was born and raised. It’s an old neighborhood. My mother has lived there for twenty years, and my sister commutes from there.”
My gaze drifted toward the window.
A landscape I felt I’d seen before.
The alley where my mother returns from shopping, the playground where children run and laugh.
And ten years from now—that same street swallowed by the crimson flames of the Demon Dragon, erased without a trace.
“I don’t want to see that place crumble. I don’t want to watch my family, my neighbors, their ordinary days of eating and sleeping, torn apart.”
Perhaps it was too simple.
But it was all there was.
“I have a question, Hunter.”
A reporter in the front row raised her hand.
She seemed to be from the City Hall PR department.
“Then does that mean you have some special sense of mission to choose this position over abandoning one billion won?”
A typical question.
I could feel them waiting for a heroic answer.
My grip tightened on the microphone without thinking.
The bracelet around my wrist jingled.
“A sense of mission? Nothing so grand. It’s simply…”
My brother always used to say it.
That Hunters weren’t special people.
That they were cursed, if anything.
“That’s what it means to be a Hunter.”
The silence fell like a silencing spell—complete and total.
You couldn’t hear a single breath.
Some might have scoffed at such an unsophisticated answer.
Clap.
Someone had started clapping.
It was Kim Dae-han.
He was grinning, his palms striking together.
Clap, clap, clap.
The applause spread like wildfire.
One person, two, ten.
Before long, the entire auditorium erupted in a standing ovation.
It wasn’t mechanical clapping.
Some civil servants had reddened eyes, and reporters were nodding along.
“That’s the truth of it.”
A murmur drifted from the rows behind me.
I nodded lightly and descended from the podium.
That single offhand remark I’d let slip became a firestorm across social media.
#ThatsBecauseHeIsAHunter
The video from that day was cut into shorts and racked up millions of views,
while the news outlets ran splashy headlines calling it “a hard-hitting wake-up call to a Hunter society that has lost its way.”
It wasn’t until later that the ripple effect spiraled into a hundred-minute debate on the theme of “the existence and essence of Hunters.”
***
Once the ceremony ended, I stepped outside.
As the excitement of the event faded, the hard reality set in.
“I’m afraid the budget is rather meager compared to the reception you’ve been given.”
Kim Dae-han scratched the back of his head with an awkward smile.
In his worn leather jacket, he’d slipped back into his usual blunt bureaucrat mode.
“Equipment support funds are tight, and the Main Building has no office space available for you.”
“I expected as much.”
“You’re remarkably composed about it.”
Money could be made through stocks.
An office? Any shelter from the wind and rain would do.
“Still, you must have hoped for something better.”
“How about a good cup of coffee? Real beans, not instant mix.”
“Ha! I’ll procure the finest beans at my own expense for that.”
Kim Dae-han laughed heartily and took the lead.
“It’s a bit of a walk. The Annex Building is this way.”
We exited the Main Building and made our way along a back path.
Unlike the well-maintained front gardens, the rear was overgrown with wild grass.
An old red-brick building came into view.
It was the Annex Building, now used as a civic cultural center.
Cheerful trot music blared from the courtyard.
It appeared to be an elderly university dance class.
Grandmothers and grandfathers in colorful hiking outfits were paired off, dancing together.
A peaceful scene, touched with an air of the absurd.
I slowed my pace without thinking.
One figure among them caught my eye—someone distinctly out of place.
An elderly foreign man with long white hair tied back.
Blue eyes.
He wore a loose-fitting modified hanbok, yet his bearing was anything but ordinary.
While the other elderly dancers were stooped, his spine remained straight as a rod.
‘This man…’
His movements were extraordinary.
It was no mere social dance.
The shifting of weight with each step, the arc traced by his hand—
it resembled Poomsae far more than dancing.
Fluid as flowing water, yet with a center axis solid as stone.
“You dance beautifully, grandfather,” his partner, an elderly woman, laughed and leaned into him.
The old man smiled softly and led her with gentle grace.
‘I’ve seen him somewhere before…’
I was about to turn away when it struck.
Crack—
My entire body froze solid.
Not my flesh, but my spirit seemed to be pierced.
A violent current surged through my spine and battered my mind.
‘Aura.’
My breath caught in my throat.
This was no ordinary Aura.
If Yu Hye-sung’s had been like a rough wave, this was the crushing pressure of the deep sea.
So immense, so heavy that merely sensing it felt as though I would be crushed beneath its weight.
The sensation of a blade honed razor-sharp grazing the nape of my neck.
I spun around urgently, searching for the old man.
“……?”

There was nothing.
The white-haired old man who had been dancing moments before had vanished without a trace.
Only the elderly woman remained, looking around in confusion as she searched for her partner.
He had disappeared like a mirage.
‘Did I imagine it? No, I didn’t.’
Cold sweat ran down my face.
He had been there. Unmistakably.
That surge of power that had erupted in a single instant—power that shattered all normal parameters.
A monster hiding here, in a place like this?
“Do-jin? Aren’t you coming?”
Kim Dae-han’s voice snapped me back to reality.
He seemed to have felt nothing at all.
“…No, I’m coming.”
I forced my trembling hands to still.
It couldn’t have been my imagination.
“Here we are.”
Kim Dae-han pointed at a building with his finger.
The very community center where the old man had been dancing.
“We’ve arrived?”
“Yes. The first floor is a senior center and cultural facility.”
Kim Dae-han laughed awkwardly and gestured toward the second-floor windows.
An A4 sheet with [Supernatural Management Team] written on it was carelessly taped to the window.

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