The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 24

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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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24
Episode 24. Civil Complaint Response
***
8:40 a.m.
The coffee machine finished its final extraction and hissed out a plume of steam.
I picked up two paper cups and headed to Chu Jae-hui’s desk.
“Have some coffee.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Chu Jae-hui quickly pushed his glasses up and accepted the cup.
His fingertips trembled faintly from the overnight work, but his eyes remained sharp and focused.
Instead of returning to my seat, I perched lightly on the edge of his desk.
“There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“It’s about Charles Hunter on our team. How exactly did he come to work here?”
Charles Edward Blake.
A legendary Hunter sitting in the City Hall Annex, drinking makgeolli of all things.
The story seemed too pitiful to be mere retirement.
Chu Jae-hui’s brow twitched. He stared at the monitor screen for a moment, then opened his mouth with visible discomfort.
“Well… to be honest, I don’t know the details either. He was here before I arrived.”
“But don’t you manage personnel records?”
“I do, but…”
Chu Jae-hui took a sip of coffee and lowered his voice.
“Officially, he’s classified as a special management case. Just like Hong Tae-hwa. His title is advisory member, but in practice… he’s basically a recipient of basic assistance. It’s like the team lead stretches the budget to give him living expenses.”
I remembered yesterday when he’d carried out groceries worth 450,000 won.
For a legendary Hunter, that was far too modest.
But that wasn’t what puzzled me.
“His arm — what exactly happened to it?”
Chu Jae-hui’s movements froze at my question.
He looked up at me with bewilderment in his eyes.
“Hunter Kim. You mean… you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Why Charles lost his arm. And why he left the Hunter world.”
Chu Jae-hui’s expression turned serious.
The playfulness vanished, replaced by scholarly intensity.
“For Hunters of my generation, there’s no way not to know. It’s famous throughout the Hunter community.”
“I’m a late-blooming Awakener, so I’m unfamiliar with these matters. Tell me.”
Chu Jae-hui hesitated for a moment, then placed his hands on the keyboard.
“I think it’ll be faster if you see it directly rather than hear it from me. It’s classified, but since you’re on the same team and A-Rank, you should have clearance.”
Tap, tap.
The keyboard clacked briskly.
“I’ve sent it to you via the City Hall internal messenger. It’s a secure file, so you won’t be able to screenshot or forward it.”
I returned to my desk and powered on the monitor.
[Ability Management Bureau Personnel Record – Charles E. Blake]
As I opened the file, the screen filled with a document covered in thick black redactions.
[Personal Information]
Name: Charles Edward Blake
Rank: A (S-Rank review suspended)
Status: Special Management Case (Administrator: Kim D■■)
[Notable Information]
██/██/██, S-Rank Gate operation in ████ region, Italy. Participated in assault operation.
Affiliation: Invictus Guild, First Assault Team.
Position: Assault Leader.
Invictus.
That name again.
In this world, Charles was part of Invictus.
I scrolled down.
The moment I read the next line, my breath caught.
[Operation Result]
Operation failed.
46 assault team members: 45 killed. (No bodies recovered)
Survivors: 1 (myself).
[Circumstances of the Incident]
Appearance of a ████-Rank mutant monster from within the Gate.
Requested headquarters support, but ████ reasons led to communication loss and delayed assistance.
Squad Leader Charles engaged ████ alone to secure an escape route, resulting in amputation of his right arm and permanent damage to his Mana Core.
Though rescued afterward, he was expelled from the guild due to the organization’s attempt to shift blame.
“……Sigh.”
A long breath escaped.
Forty-five dead. One survivor.
This wasn’t an accident. It was a massacre.
Redacted passages blacked out in dark ink.
But reading between the lines was not difficult.
Not when you’ve returned from the future.
‘████-Rank mutant monster’.
It was almost certainly the Abyss Knight, Beowulf.
And ‘████ reasons for delayed support’.
Either Invictus decided the numbers didn’t pencil out and refused to send a rescue team, or they’d deliberately left him to die as a scapegoat—the probability was high.
The black letters on the monitor felt like screams.
Forty-five deaths.
That weight would have pressed down on Charles’s shoulders without mercy.
Worse than relief at survival was the guilt of being the sole survivor.
That guilt had driven him to the bottle, and made him a hollow shell of himself.
‘So this is the truth.’
Before my return, the Campania Gate was recorded as a ‘victory for humanity’.
When Squad Leader Charles was in danger, the Sword Saint Kang Tae-yoon crossed the border and charged in to save him.
He had rescued his mentor Charles and returned together, having severed Beowulf’s neck.
All squad members survived.
Though they retired, it was an honorable retirement.
But this world has no Kang Tae-yoon.
A battlefield without a savior.
That place was hell.
Forty-five comrades were slaughtered before his eyes, and Charles survived, maimed and wretched.
Then he bore the blame for failure and was cast out.
The words “45 dead” on the monitor stabbed at my vision.
One man’s absence—his absence—had created this catastrophic result.
Then what of the disasters still to come?
What happens to all the Gates he held back?
My mouth went bitter.
History hasn’t merely changed.
The very axis of history has collapsed.
The massive barrier he was holding up disappeared, and through the gap, calamities were pouring in.
Charles’s ruin is only the beginning.
“I suspected as much, but seeing it in documents makes it so much worse.”
Chu Jae-hui had drawn near, gazing at the monitor with a bitter expression.
“That record—Team Lead Kim Dae-han hacked the Ability Management Bureau’s database to retrieve it. Originally, it was manipulated to read as a simple accident.”
“……I see.”
“The team lead views Charles as a victim. That’s why he brought someone with nowhere else to turn.”
The puzzle pieces fit together.
Why Kim Dae-han had brought both Charles and Hong Tae-hwa.
He was collecting those abandoned by the system, or broken by it.
Was it simple sympathy?
Or was he buying their hatred?
And if so, for what purpose?
To forge a blade of vengeance to strike with someday?
‘I’m in no position to judge.’
This world is far more precarious than I knew.
A sheet of thin ice that could crack at any moment.
This is no time to worry about the Demon God Dragon a decade hence.
‘I have to hurry.’
I must absorb Charles’s swordsmanship, raise my level, and build my power.
The current pace isn’t enough.
I need to run faster, like a madman.
Ring—!
Ring—!
Then the old telephone on the desk let out a shrill cry.
A red lamp marked [Civil Complaint] flashed frantically.
The silence shattered with a burst of sound.
“…….”
My eyes met Chu Jae-hui’s.
He shrugged his shoulders.
A signal to pick it up.
I lifted the receiver.
“Ability Management Bureau, Hunter Kim—”
— Kyaaaa! Help! There’s a monster here…!
A scream that could tear eardrums.
Panicked breathing, the crash of something breaking, and the growl of a beast mixed together in my ear.
From the sound, it had to be them.
— In the residential area…! There’s a Goblin! My child! Please come quick! Please!
“What’s the location…?”
I was already checking the screen before they could answer.
The monitor automatically switched, and a map appeared.
A blinking red dot.
[Source: G City, Sutaek-dong, Address 32.]
[Distance from Central Office: 18km.]
‘Sutaek-dong?’
My brow furrowed.
That was a residential area packed with villas and multi-unit dwellings.
There was no Mana Point that would create a Gate there.
Which meant there was only one answer.
‘A Gate Break.’
Either way, it was the worst case.
If monsters had been unleashed in the middle of a residential neighborhood, civilians could be slaughtered even now, in this very moment.
“Understood. Dispatching immediately.”
I hung up the phone.
My body reacted first.
I grabbed the Civil Service Vest hanging on the chair.
A fluorescent green vest bearing the G City Hall insignia.
Click.
I fastened the Dragon-Head Sword at my waist.
I could feel the Artifact inside my body too.
I was ready.
“Hunter, are you deploying?”
Chu Jae-hui asked, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Yes. It looks like Goblins have appeared in Sutaek-dong.”
“Wait! Let me check if there’s an available vehicle… huh?”
Chu Jae-hui’s face darkened as he typed on the keyboard.
“Oh no, there are no vehicles available right now. Even the cleaning trucks are all out. Should I call you a taxi?”
“It’s rush hour. By the time a taxi gets here, they’ll all be dead.”
By car it would take thirty minutes; an hour if traffic was heavy.
In that time, the caller would become a corpse.
There was no time to wait.
With someone’s life hanging by a thread at this very moment, I couldn’t afford to follow traffic lights.
“I don’t need a car.”
I walked toward the window.
I unlocked the latch and pushed the window wide open.
Two stories high.
Cold wind rushed into the office.
Documents scattered everywhere.
“Please lock up after me.”
“What? Hunter? Surely you’re not…!”
Chu Jae-hui tried to rush over in alarm.
But it was too late.
A low hum—
The moment I triggered Synchronization,
my heart began to pump.
Mana surged through my veins, flooding into my lower body.
My thighs and calves swelled until the muscles felt ready to burst, drinking in my Aura.
A compressed spring.
Every joint in my body screamed in protest, but I ignored it.
What I needed now was speed. Nothing but speed.
“Haste.”
A sharp whistle.
The wind of acceleration engulfed my entire frame.
This wasn’t enough. Faster.
‘Haste, Haste.’
Double, triple layering.
The branches of the Tree of Sephiroth extended, stacking spell upon spell.
An ordinary mage’s circuits would have burned out, but my body endured.
One more on top of that.
“Leap.”
Finally, I overlaid the formula for jumping.
Acceleration married to Leap.
In the past, such a complex calculation would have twisted my circuits and caused Mana backflow.
Not anymore.
Those mindless thirty thousand sword strikes I’d trained with Charles.
That simple, brutal repetition had worn the channels of Mana in my body wider and stronger—or so it felt.
Was it just my imagination? No. I was certain.
It was possible.
“Sorry about the mess.”
Bang—
I pushed off from the window frame.
The concrete wall crumpled inward, generating explosive propulsion.
My body rocketed outward like a shell.
“Hunter!”
Behind me, Chu Jae-hui’s scream mixed with the sound of papers swept up in the windstorm of my passage.
‘Sorry, Jae-hui.’
***
Pat, whoosh!
I pushed off the empty air.
Gravity seemed to lighten; my body felt weightless.
I bounded from the top of a streetlight like a stepping stone.
The contact point was barely a sliver of metal.
But my Aura created grip where there was none.
Shhhhiing—
The landscape stretched behind me like a comet’s tail.
The congested traffic below looked like toys.
Looking down at the frustrated drivers honking their horns on that gridlocked road, I cut across the forest of buildings.
This is the Hunter’s path.
Not following marked roads, but cutting the fastest straight line.
‘Eastward.’
I sensed it—an unpleasant, sticky presence.
Not the artificial wavelength we’d been tracking.
This was… pure chaos.
Space and time twisted without warning or sign, a naturally spawned catastrophe.
‘A Gate.’
It was just as dangerous as a hatched Gate.
A Gate Break is an uncontrolled variable, after all.
Goblins were pouring out, but there was no predicting how many.
But it didn’t matter.
The speed beneath my feet was telling me everything I needed to know.
It wasn’t too late.
The distance was within reach.
He landed on the rooftop of a high-rise.
Without a moment to catch his breath, he ran again.
He vaulted over the railing and hurled himself into the void.
Far ahead, in the heart of the Sutaek-dong residential district.
A scene of chaos—screams and sirens twisted together.
And several kilometers beyond that.
It hung open.
A crimson fissure of light.
A space that writhed suspended in midair.
A Gate.

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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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