The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 35

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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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35
Chapter 35. Ariadne’s Thread
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“Oh? The door was already open. I came up myself to collect both of you. Ha ha.”
Kim Dae-han, the team leader, entered the Maintenance Room with his characteristic warm smile.
The worn door frame shrieked as it swung open, letting a cool draft from the corridor slip through the gap. His gaze moved methodically across the interior.
In his eyes flickered the seasoned composure of a practiced administrator as they shifted between Jung Se-hee, holding her flushed, throbbing wrist with a scowl, and me, regarding her with a dry, appraising stare.
My eyes remained fixed on Kim Dae-han’s face, but more than half my attention was drawn to the hinges and locking mechanism of the door that had been firmly sealed only moments before.
‘I definitely locked it.’
It wasn’t merely a physical lock.
Before entering the Sanctuary, I had set a double-lock mechanism and added a subtle barrier of mana precise enough for a 9th Circle mage.
Unless the internal mechanism were manipulated from inside, approaching from outside should inevitably trigger an alarm or magical recoil during the process of detecting and releasing the mana barrier.
Breaching it would have been impossible without deploying Destruction Magic to obliterate the door itself.
Yet when she entered, my sensory net detected nothing amiss. No alarm, not even a ripple of mana.
It was seamless—as though a phantom had passed through a wall.
I took in Jung Se-hee at the edge of my vision: a sagging t-shirt, disheveled hair, defiant eyes. By the records, an F-rank Hunter.
A wavelength so faint that even rank-measuring equipment barely registers.
‘A unique trait, perhaps.’
It couldn’t be mere coincidence. This surpassed the domain of rudimentary skills like Concealment or Lock-picking.
Rather than disarming a spatial barrier, she seemed to disregard the barrier’s very weave and slip through its gaps—something alien entirely.
Like a needle passing between threads of woven silk, she intuitively threaded the gaps between conventional physics and magical systems.
“Let’s sit, shall we? I hadn’t expected you two to meet so soon, but this works out well.”
Kim Dae-han took the seat at the head of the worn leather sofa in the center of the lounge. With practiced ease, he withdrew a thick folder from his jacket and set it on the table.
I settled deep into the opposite sofa.
The leather creaked under my weight, while Jung Se-hee perched only on the edge of her seat, radiating palpable displeasure from every fiber of her being.
Her short, rapid breaths cut sharply through the silence of the Maintenance Room.
“There’s something I need to ask of both of you.”
The moment Kim Dae-han finished his opening, Jung Se-hee’s brow furrowed sharply. Her mouth twisted as words tumbled out.
“Are you serious? You said I just had to show up once a month for the attendance stamp. Stop making up work that wasn’t on the schedule. I’m not doing it. Absolutely not.”
Her dismissive, defensive posture seemed less like petulance and more like a protective mechanism.
It was as though the very will to cooperate with others within society’s system had been stripped from her—let alone any sense of belonging to the Ability Management Team.
Chaotic waves of emotion rippled around her.
“Se-hee. You know I covered for your unauthorized absence by filing an explanation to the Audit Office, right?”
Kim Dae-han’s smile remained professionally pleasant. But his eyes behind the glasses turned cold in an instant.
It was no longer the face of a benevolent superior, but the gaze of a hunter holding the leash of its prey.
“I can cancel that request right now and formally refer you to a disciplinary committee. What do you say? It won’t end with community service.”
Soft words carrying overt coercion. Jung Se-hee’s brown eyes wavered visibly.
For all her rough tongue, she tucked tail quickly enough when confronted with the concrete threat of discipline.
She apparently had some pressing reason not to be expelled from this refuse heap of a department—this “Ability Management Team.”
“… Ugh, seriously. Damn.”
Jung Se-hee ran her hand through her hair irritably and exhaled a rough sigh. Her shoulders sagged. I gave Kim Dae-han a brief glance.
A silent reproach: ‘Why pair me with such an unvetted variable?’
No combat capability to speak of, unstable mental state, a time bomb difficult to control.
She didn’t measure up by a speck to my standards for a colleague as a 9th Circle mage.
Kim Dae-han, reading the meaning in my gaze precisely, smiled faintly and tilted his chin toward Jung Se-hee.
“Se-hee. I’ll give you the full briefing when work starts the day after tomorrow. Nine in the morning. You have to be there.
If you’re not, I really, truly will file that discipline report.”
“Fine, fine! I’m going!”
Jung Se-hee pushed herself up from the sofa. The leather bounced back with a groan.
She strode toward the door, then suddenly stopped and spun to face me. Her gaze—mingled with grievance and fury—landed squarely on my face.
“Not even an apology.”
The words, spoken as if to herself, came through clear enough. I tapped the armrest of my chair with one finger, my voice stripped of all affect.
Precise enough that her ears would catch every syllable, emotion purged entirely.
“I won’t apologize.”
“Bastard.”
Bang!
The door slammed shut with violent force. The loud friction and reverberation echoed once through the aging walls of the Maintenance Room and faded.
Silence returned to the room, and dust-laden air settled slowly.
Once the sound of her footsteps had completely vanished beyond the door, I turned to Kim Dae-han and spoke.
“Your personnel system seems to have serious issues. Are you really sending someone of that caliber into the field?”
Kim Dae-han had preempted him smoothly, as though he’d prepared his words in advance.
“Ha ha ha. Of course, it’s not that I doubt Do-jin’s capabilities.
But for this matter—no, only for this particular case—her unique talent is absolutely necessary.”
“She’s an F-rank Hunter. Personnel who can’t even manage their mana properly are useless on the field—can’t even use them as meat shields. All they do is trip us up.”
“F-rank, yes. She walked out of the Hunter Practical Exam on her own two feet and got an automatic F grade. The record shows failure, but the substance is different.”
“Are you perhaps a garbage collector rather than a management official?”
Despite my blunt sarcasm, Kim Dae-han showed no displeasure, laughing openly instead. But my words were no joke.
Half genuine, half warning.
One of them was a command-defying villain-in-training, capable of exploding without notice—Hong Tae-hwa.
The other was a third-rate Hunter who’d broken into someone else’s office and then had the audacity to act wronged—Jung Se-hee.
Such a rabble of misfits had never existed. At this point, one had to seriously question Kim Dae-han’s criteria for talent recruitment.
While I was thinking about it, the presence I hadn’t seen in days came to mind—that rough, coarse one.
“Hong Tae-hwa. Why haven’t I seen that bastard?”
“I’ve been unable to reach him for several days now. His location tracker’s turned off, and he hasn’t shown up at the PC Bang he used to frequent.
Tomorrow will be his third day of unauthorized absence. I’m thinking of going to pay him a home visit. With his personality, I’m worried he might be causing trouble somewhere.”
Kim Dae-han kneaded his brow and exhaled a short sigh.
It was a glimpse of the burdens that came with being a supervisor, but he soon wiped his expression clean and pushed the document folder across the table toward me again.
His fingertip pressed gently against the folder’s edge.
“Let’s return to the matter of Jung Se-hee. I know you find her utterly unsatisfactory, but there’s a hint in what I just said. The important thing isn’t that she was disqualified from the Hunter Exam, but that she received a ‘grade’—F-rank or otherwise. It means the Association itself couldn’t completely ignore her abilities.”
I asked flatly, arms folded.
“What ability does she have? Besides her knack for picking locks, what else could possibly warrant all this effort?”
Having reached the apex of the 9th Circle, I’d encountered every conceivable magic and ability that existed in the world.
Those who tore open space itself; wielders of the void who erased mana entirely.
I was certain there existed no ability I hadn’t witnessed firsthand. At least not in this insignificant early era of fledgling Awakened Ones.
Rather than answer, Kim Dae-han turned the first page of the folder. A high-resolution photograph appeared on the yellowed paper.
“Let’s start by looking at this.”
The moment I took the document and lowered my gaze, the fingertips pressing against the paper trembled microscopically.
I tried to suppress the muscle contractions, but the revulsion rising from the depths of my heart was unstoppable.
‘Already at this point?’
The object in the photograph clipped into the document.
The instant I recognized it, the memories from before the Regression—bitter, ruinous memories that had been sunk in the abyss—surged back like putrid water.
I desperately controlled my facial muscles to maintain an impassive expression, but I couldn’t completely deceive Kim Dae-han’s sharp observing eye.
“You seem to know what this is.”
“…… The version—how does it stand? And the color?”
Kim Dae-han’s shoulders stiffened. The pallor instantly drained from his face, though he usually wore an easy smile.
“Your information network exceeds imagination. You’re right. The narcotics division still doesn’t properly know the name of this substance.
They haven’t grasped the grading system at all. It’s an Orange. The Orange-grade Booster is spreading rapidly throughout G City Old Downtown.”
My gaze remained fixed on the photograph. Within it was a small container with a transparent plastic exterior, filled with an orange liquid that glimmered inside.
At first glance, it looked as ordinary as the portable nebulizers asthma patients commonly use, or a rhinitis treatment spray.
[Mana-Based Neural Stimulant – MDI-7]
Commonly known as Booster.
Among those who chased pleasure, it was also called by the revolting slang name Stardust.
It was the forbidden catalyst that had hastened humanity’s extinction.
This demonic invention had originally been created to increase Hunters’ survival rates.
When struck by mortal wounds deep within dungeons, it forcibly stimulated the Mana Core to temporarily numb all pain sensation and push physical abilities beyond their limits—an ’emergency analgesic exclusively for Awakened Ones’.
That had been its initial development purpose.
With only minimal raw material, it produced pain relief hundreds of times more potent than common drugs, and because of Hunters’ powerful metabolic capacity, physical addiction was markedly low.
But that was only a theory applicable to formal Awakened Ones possessing a Mana Core.
When ordinary people without the vessel to contain mana inhaled this liquefied mana, their cerebral neural pathways couldn’t withstand the high-density magical power of forced expansion and literally ‘burned out’.
Their brain cells melted in real-time, the price paid for extreme ecstasy and hallucinations. What remained was only a body, pickled in mana, thrashing about like a beast.
Naturally, the government designated it as a Class-1 prohibited drug and strictly controlled its distribution. But greed had always been faster than law, mocking prohibition as it proliferated.
The International Cartel, smelling profit, conspired with unethical fallen alchemists. They converted this analgesic into a narcotic inhalant and scattered it through back alleys.
To Awakened Ones, it was packaged as a ‘destructive force’ that shattered the ceiling of legal doping. To ordinary people, it promised ‘eternal rest’ with a single inhalation—selling their souls.
Even during that wretched era when the world was engulfed in the Evil Divine Dragon’s inferno and hurtled toward apocalypse, the Booster survived like a cockroach, gnawing away at the very foundation of human spirit.
How many wretches had abandoned the cause of conquering major Gates and plunged their guilds into Booster trafficking, driving daggers into the back of the Human Resistance Army?
‘The poison that even Tu-shin couldn’t overcome.’
Before the Regression, the man who boasted the greatest martial prowess among all S-rankers.
Together with Kang Tae-yoon, the Sword Saint, he had become humanity’s final shield, yet even Tu-shin ultimately couldn’t endure his wounds and reached for this Booster to achieve a Limit Break.
And he killed his comrades with his fists, devoid of reason.
The anguished memory of how I had to embed magic directly into his heart and burn him alive came back with the sharpness of a scar on my palm.
The true terror of Boosters lay in their “purification grade,” which evolved along a rainbow spectrum.
The color of the liquid shifted depending on how precisely the turbidity was filtered out from the Mana extracted from Mana Stones.
Beginning with Red, the crude and defective first form, it progressed through Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue before finally reaching violet.
Once the final form—Purple—was achieved, it was no longer a drug. It was a walking nuclear bomb of Mana, a catastrophe unleashed through the human body itself.
‘Orange already. That’s the second stage.’
It was far faster than anticipated.
If my memory served, at this point—ten years before the Regression—the black market should have only just begun cautiously releasing the first form, the Red grade.
Yet the Orange version, with its purification grade elevated by one full stage, was already in circulation.
Was this a butterfly effect from my alterations to the past, or had the axis of history itself warped, accelerating the velocity of catastrophe?
“Can we stop it?”
I dragged the papers toward me roughly, my voice a low growl laced with killing intent.
This was no mere matter of slaying monsters that spilled forth from Gates. This was excising a cancer that rotted the soul of humanity itself.
Even before the Regression, it had been nearly impossible to completely sever the distribution networks of Boosters.
The point-structure transactions—the tail-cutting kind of trade network—were problematic enough, but the fundamental obstacle lay elsewhere.
Those who inhaled Boosters emitted a Mana signature that was bizarrely subtle, leaving no trace whatsoever.
During manufacturing, the unique vibration of the raw material—the Mana Stone—was chemically “sealed off” in a proprietary process.
Even if you caught an addict at the scene and drew blood, all residual Mana would completely evaporate within an hour.
The turbid Mana that the manufacturing facility itself released would blend into the natural Mana in the atmosphere, becoming impossible to distinguish.
Finding a deliberately hidden factory by a sorcerer’s senses alone was like searching for a needle in sand.
Unless we uprooted the source itself—the massive manufacturing plants and the powerful figures who shielded them—the nightmare of Boosters would repeat identically in this life as well.
A shadow that hundreds of so-called masters of Tracking Magic had ground away without catching.
Kim Dae-han, by contrast, leaned back against his chair with ease, a cold smile playing at his lips.
“It’s possible. If Do-jin and Se-hee work together, that is.”
A confident answer. I furrowed my brow, unable to fathom his reasoning.
“What are you expecting to accomplish by deploying an F-rank Hunter who hasn’t even properly opened a single Mana Core? Do you believe she’ll simply locate the manufacturing facility for us?”
Kim Dae-han’s lips moved with deliberate slowness. A peculiar excitement colored his voice.
“No matter how perfectly Boosters conceal the scent and signature of Mana, they cannot sever the ‘thread’ left behind in the places they pass through.”
“Thread?”
“Her unique ability. The Hunter Association failed to grasp its danger and classified her as F-rank, but for our team, it’s the most precious asset we possess.”
Kim Dae-han’s eyes gleamed with an icy sharpness.
“Ariadne’s Thread. A detection art that visualizes traces of concealed Mana and tracks them to their origin with absolute precision. That is Jung Se-hee’s power.”
I imagined the invisible trajectory left by her receding footsteps beyond the closed door.
If Kim Dae-han spoke the truth, then she was a more lethal tracker than any detection magic in this world.
An ability to find paths through doors I had not even sensed. It was not mere intrusion—it was the discovery of a passage itself.
“Combined with Do-jin’s overwhelming force and her perception, no rat hiding in the shadows of this city will escape our grasp.”
I placed my hand atop the file folder and slowly pressed down on the photograph containing the orange liquid.

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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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