The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 22

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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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22
Episode 22. Thunder in the Twilight
***
The desolate aura finally made it possible to recognize him.
That distinctive deep blue Aura.
Charles Edward Blake.
Alias: the Swordmaster of Blue Thunder.
I hadn’t recognized him at first.
The Charles in my memory bore no resemblance—neither in appearance nor in bearing.
Before the regression, the version I’d seen through media outlets had short-cropped hair and the gaunt, sharp impression of a starving wolf.
The sort of person whose very presence seemed to cut the air around him—pure, merciless sharpness incarnate.
“I’ll repay you properly—just buy me a bottle of soju, would you? Makgeolli’s too bland for my taste.”
But the old man before me wore his white hair long and loose, like a weathered stone dulled by the passage of time.
Instead of a grand uniform, he donned a tattered trench coat—an elderly beggar scrounging for makgeolli.
A broken-winged eagle, pathetic in its decline.
“Why are you staring so hard? Do I have something on my face?”
The old man let out a quiet laugh.
As if he were reading the thoughts in my head, utterly at ease.
I swallowed dryly.
His appearance had changed, and one arm had vanished, yet his essence remained untouched.
He was no relic of the past.
The legend was still alive.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
The old man drained the paper-packed makgeolli in one gulp.
Wiping the white residue from his mouth with the back of his hand in a rough gesture, he fixed me with an unwavering stare.
Deep wrinkles carved into his face, disheveled white hair, and eyes that had lost their focus.
The unmistakable visage of a common neighborhood drunk.
“Oof.”
The old man lifted his unsteady frame upright.
As he rose, my gaze naturally followed upward.
He was a large man.
Hunched as he’d been sitting, I hadn’t noticed—but when he straightened, he was easily nearly six feet tall.
From a frame that had looked like dry kindling, there emanated a peculiar, oppressive presence.
His clothing was equally strange.
Beneath a stained gray trench coat, he wore a crisp white modernized Korean robe, pressed with rigid precision.
East and West, past and present, all mingled in jarring discord.
But what truly captured my eye lay elsewhere.
As the wind picked up, the right sleeve of his trench coat fluttered limply.
It was empty.
One-armed?
My brow furrowed.
It didn’t make sense.
The Charles in my memory had all his limbs intact.
Before the regression, I distinctly remembered him prowling the battlefield right up until his retirement.
For all his age, his blade had always blazed like lightning.
So why…?
This world is twisted somehow.
Just as my brother’s existence had been erased, had Charles’s fate also been bent out of shape?
The sight of his empty sleeve swaying in the wind struck me as disturbingly unfamiliar.
The convenience store plastic bag crinkled.
Two bottles of soju and some dried squid.
A meager tribute for a legend.
“Here you are.”
“Much obliged. You’re the one Manager Kim brought along, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
The old man’s hands, as he sat on the stairs pouring soju, were rough and thick.
A hand bearing calluses like medals of honor.
Yet those hands trembled, ever so slightly.
“Now this is the real taste. Makgeolli just fills your belly and does nothing else, I tell you.”
The old man drank the soju as if it were water.
I sat across from him and watched.
With only his left arm, he uncorked the bottle and poured with movements as fluid as flowing water.
It was clear evidence that he’d lost his right arm long ago.
“I never expected to meet you like this.”
At my words, the old man’s movements stilled.
He turned his head to look at me.
His blue eyes held a strange glimmer.
“Senior? You know who I am?”
“How could I not?”
I continued without hesitation.
“Charles Edward Blake. It’s an honor to meet you.”
The old man drained his glass instead of answering.
But the paper cup he’d been holding crumpled in his grip.
“Old stories. A name that’s been forgotten.”
“No. There are still many who remember. The Yokosuka Gate conquest is even in the textbooks.”
The Yokosuka Gate.
The first tower-type dungeon, a tomb that swallowed hundreds of Hunters.
This old man had cleared it alone, in just two days.
Moreover, he’d donated the astronomical sum of Magic Stones he’d received as reward in full, and the words he’d left behind became legend among Hunters.
‘There’s an art museum I love in that place, you see.’
An eccentricity wrapped in the word romance.
But I knew the truth.
That it was far more than simple romance.
“And then… the Campania Gate as well.”
In that instant.
Ching—
The sound of the soju bottle striking the floor rang out sharply.
The old man’s eyes transformed.
The cheerful drunk from moments before had vanished entirely.
The air around him froze in an instant.
A tension like walking on the edge of a blade.
“Stop.”
His voice dropped low—a warning.
“Don’t bring that up. It’s all in the past.”
Deep shadows fell across the old man’s face.
“I’m asking you to stop.”
“…I apologize.”
I took a step back.
Campania must have been the gate that gave him glory.
Why such a reaction?
Was there something I was missing?
But I had to confirm it.
Whether this old tiger’s fangs were still sharp.
The old man poured the remaining soju onto the floor.
Then he staggered to his feet.
“The drink was good. I’ll be going now.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and descended the stairs.
His shoulders sagged, his silhouette lonely.
It looked like flight—from the memories of the past, and from a gaze that recognized him.
I called out after his retreating form.
“Have you put down your sword?”
His footsteps stopped.
There was no answer.
The silence felt like an affirmation.
I looked down at the floor.
My eye caught on the old Gate Ball Stick he’d left behind.
A crude wooden rod.
But in a Swordmaster’s hands, even that becomes a blade.
I picked up the stick.
If words won’t work, then I’ll speak with my body instead.
To a swordmaster, the blade is language.
‘Resonance.’
A low hum resonated from within.
I spun the Mana Core at my heart.
Mana transmuted into Aura, coursing through my veins and gathering at my fingertips.
A faint white wave bloomed across the wooden stick.
My heartbeat quickened.
Old and infirm though he might be, my opponent was a legend. Even decayed, a legend remains formidable.
‘One chance. That’s all I have.’
A single blow that would pour everything into it.
I had to make him turn and look at me with that.
Crackle.
The air around us trembled.
Dust stirred, and the soil beneath split in hairline fractures.
The resonance of Aura.
The old man turned his head slowly.
His blue eyes fixed on me.
There was no surprise in them, no confusion.
Only the detached gaze of someone watching a restless child throwing a tantrum.
‘That expression…’
I drove power into the balls of my feet.
I kicked off the ground.
Bang!
My body shot forward like an arrow.
I lowered my hips and threw my weight forward.
The stick in my right hand tore through the air.
A swordmaster’s technique—Slash.
My fastest strike, accelerated by Mana computation.
‘It will connect.’
The blade rushed toward the old man’s shoulder.
No mere cutting motion.
A fatal arc that seized space itself and drove through.
A normal Hunter wouldn’t even be able to react to such speed.
But.
Swish.
The old man did not move.
Or rather, he seemed not to move at all.
He simply twisted his upper body—just barely, the barest twist.
The thickness of a single sheet of paper separated us.
My stick grazed the hem of his robe and cleaved empty air.
‘How?’
An evasion my tracking vision couldn’t follow.
Before shock could even grip me, the old man closed the distance.
His left hand struck out like a serpent, seizing my wrist.
Clamp.
Grip like tempered steel.
I thought my wrist would shatter.
The Gate Ball Stick that had been in my hand transferred to his without resistance.
“Your swordplay is… peculiar, isn’t it.”
The old man twirled the stick casually.
Whish, whish.
His hand moved with the lightness of someone wielding a riding crop.
“You’re quick, but there’s no depth to it. A hollow shell built on Mana alone.”
His eyes changed.
The dull haze of intoxication vanished, replaced by a keen Blade Aura that blazed from his gaze like bared steel.
“I suppose I should settle the bill.”
The old man’s left hand rose.
In that instant.
A deep, resonant hum filled the space.
The air itself grew heavy.
I couldn’t breathe.
As though a colossal mountain were collapsing down upon me—that crushing weight.
The same eerie Aura I’d felt that afternoon in front of the Cultural Center.
No—a force incomparably fiercer and vaster than before erupted from the old man’s frame.
‘This is it.’
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Instinct screamed.
Run.
This isn’t a person. It’s a calamity.
But my legs wouldn’t move.
Not overwhelmed by fear.
Gripped by awe.
Charles spun the Gate Ball Stick deftly once, then drew it from his waist and swung it with casual indifference.
No shout. No elaborate preparatory stance.
Just a lazy gesture—as though swatting a fly.
Whishhhhh—
Crack!
My vision warped.
The sound of air tearing struck my eardrums.
A blue afterimage hung along the stick’s trajectory.
Paper-thin. Razor-sharp.
BOOM—!
The explosion detonated.
The Sword Energy that grazed past me struck the heap of scrap materials piled in the corner.
Wooden partitions, steel chairs, decrepit desks—all launched skyward like bowling pins.
No, not launched.
Ground to dust and scattered.
And the floor.
In the direction Charles’s stick had pointed, the concrete floor was split wide open.
A crevasse as if some massive beast had raked its claws across it.
“…….”
I stared down at the scar, dumbstruck.
He hadn’t even put force into it.
No battle cry. No shout like any ordinary Swordmaster would give.
He’d simply swung it.
“Tomorrow I’ll catch an earful from Kim.”
The old man casually planted the stick on the ground.
I swallowed hard.
Everything I understood about Aura shattered.
‘He detonated the Aura the instant before contact.’
An ordinary Swordmaster wraps Aura around the blade, then cuts.
But this old man was different.
He concealed his presence right up until the moment of impact, then at that instant compressed and detonated his Aura.
‘Point Burst.’
Destructive force that exists in that single, infinitesimal span.
Not mere physical force. This was violence of a different dimension—twisting the very arrangement of Mana itself, disregarding all natural order.
A flow of power that nine-Circle calculations could never compute.
And yet, in the same breath, a chill ran through me.
This was it.
The ultimate compression that transforms formless force into a blade with shape.
I had to learn it.
‘So this is… Charles’s sword.’
The “Blue Thunder” I’d only heard in rumor.
Its true form exceeded my imagination by leagues.
His advanced age, his handicap of a missing arm—none of it mattered.
He remained the apex predator of this world.
“I beg you.”
Pride? My past as a nine-Circle mage?
None of it mattered.
I had to learn.
I have to make this strength, this technique, my own.
Only then can I sever the Evil God Dragon’s neck.
“Please,” I said. “I’m asking you.”
“Asking me what?”
“Teach me the sword.”
Charles studied me in silence for a long moment.
His eyes grew distant and hollow.
The look of a man haunted by ghosts—weary, tangled, lost.
“Don’t joke with me, young man. Even managing one sword stroke a day exhausts what’s left of me.”
He laughed softly and brushed dust from his stick with a flick of his wrist.
“Besides, I’m not fit to teach anyone.”
He turned to go.
But I didn’t yield.
I rose to my feet and called out to his back.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Charles stopped walking.
“It has to be you.”
I knew it without thinking.
This was the crossroads that would determine my fate.
This man had been my brother’s master.

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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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