The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 38

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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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38
Chapter 38. Bait and Predator
***
The sky had already twisted into a grotesque crimson, as though someone had poured blood-red paint across its expanse.
Just before the sun hid itself beneath the horizon, the shadows cast by City G’s towering skyscrapers cut through the Entertainment District’s alleys with the sharpness of a blade.
Barely one block away from the garish neon signs that stabbed at the eyes along the main street.
Yet here, the filth necessarily expelled to support the city’s glamour lay stagnant and putrescent.
A dingy bar alley hidden behind the Entertainment District of City G—this was the city’s underbelly, completely severed from the world above.
The humid air hung thick with the stench of rotting fish and the sour reek of vomit.
Shards of broken soju bottles were wedged into every crack of the pavement, and puddles of unidentifiable viscous liquid gleamed with an ominous violet iridescence, catching the stray light of the neon signs.
In that damp, oppressive corner, beside a rusted trash bin, five or six people in their early twenties clung together like animals.
What emanated from them was not the vitality of youth, but the sharp, acrid stench of decay—life hurtling toward death.
“Whoa, damn. This hits different.”
“Shit, this is fucked up, man.”
A long stream of orange mist poured from the unfocused man’s cracked lips.
The cheap synthetic fragrance of an air freshener mingled with the sharp, acrid smell of burning electrical wiring—a sickening, toxic haze.
Through a portable inhaler coated with Mana-blocking compound—a Nebulizer—the substance had been driven deep into the lungs, ravaging the human nervous system with every single breath.
Booster Orange.
A Stage 2 poison crafted by chemically filtering the impurities from red magical stones mined from deep quarries, then mixing in catalysts designed to forcibly expand an Awakener’s Core.
For Awakeners who possessed a Core—the vessel to hold Mana—it granted a temporary surge in output. But for ordinary humans without such a vessel, it was no different than hydrochloric acid dissolving their brain cells alive.
The liquefied Mana coursing through veins burned the nervous system, releasing an overwhelming flood of dopamine. They were burning their own lives like kindling for a fleeting moment of bliss.
“Look at those bitches, they’re already passed out.”
The giggling man’s gaze fell upon two women sprawled carelessly across the wet ground of the alley.
Their limbs convulsed in fine spasms, twisted and contorted, their pupils dilated to the absolute limit—nothing but whites of their eyes glimmering where the irises should be.
From their gaping mouths, saliva mixed with murky foam dribbled greedily down onto their worn T-shirts, soaking them through.
As their brains burned away and their sense of self dissolved, they gasped for breath, experiencing it as a blessing.
Into the heart of that repugnant frenzy, the sound of measured footsteps began to ring out.
Tap. Tap.
The sharp, deliberate sound of Walker Boots grinding against wet asphalt, drawing steadily closer.
At the rhythm of that measured, resolute pulse, the heads of the drug-addled men slowly turned.
Walking through the stagnant air of the alley was Jung Se-hui. A black leather Rider Jacket pulled tight, a Baseball Cap pressed low over her head.
And completing the ensemble—black Sunglasses that looked utterly out of place in this dim, shadowed alley.
“······.”
The man who appeared to be the group’s leader, clutching the Booster, narrowed his eyes.
Despite his brain being thoroughly marinated in the drug’s influence, an instinctive wariness crawled up his spine.
In this district, fists mattered more than law, and drugs mattered more than fists. It was a space too sharp-edged for outsiders to tread.
“Hey, what the hell are you?”
The man who seemed to be the gang’s leader thrust his chin upward and asked in a threatening tone.
In his bloodshot eyes, a bestial violence amplified by the drug rippled and churned.
But she didn’t stop. Instead, her lips curled up at the corners in a slant, and she spoke with the brazen boldness of a child demanding candy.
“Hey, I want to do that too, you know?”
“Do what?”
The man let out a derisive snort. Jung Se-hui pointed precisely at the transparent inhaler in his hand with a flick of her chin.
“That. What you guys are sucking on right now. That thing.”
In an instant, a heavy silence fell over the alley like molten lead. A strange, metallic sound leaked from the throat of the man holding the Booster.
“Guk, kuk-kuk······ kuk-kuk-kuk!”
The laughter that erupted quickly spiraled into wild, manic cackling.
He shoved the Booster inhaler back into his pocket with a rough motion and, walking unsteadily, strode toward her with wide, aggressive steps.
As he moved, the two men standing on either side mirrored his action, closing in on her in a semicircular formation, cutting off her escape.
The long shadows of three men fell across the pavement, engulfing Jung Se-hui completely.
“So what the hell is that, you fucked-up bitch?”
The man, now nose-to-nose with her, spat out his words with vicious menace.
His breath—a cocktail of alcohol, chemical compounds, and the stench of unwashed flesh—washed over her face in a wave.
The oppressive weight of being surrounded by three brawny men was suffocating, crushing.
Yet she didn’t blink once. Instead, she stepped even closer, her voice sharp and irritable.
Her defiant tone, turned now toward them in a fit of anger, made the thugs’ eyes widen in shock.
“You not understanding? That! The Booster you’re sucking on right now. Just give me one hit.”
“······khe-he-he-hee!”
At that audacious demand, one of the women sprawled on the ground suddenly began convulsing in manic laughter.
Even as her brain cells melted away, this situation seemed hilarious to her.
The grotesque laughter, sprayed with saliva, struck the wall and bounced back as a chilling echo.
The man’s face—the one acting as leader—contorted hideously. His eyelids fluttered, and the muscles in his neck swelled to grotesque proportions. A textbook side effect of the Booster.
Mana was stimulating his nervous system, and uncontrolled violent impulses were crossing the threshold.
“You little bitch, asking for this? Did you lose your goddamn mind?”
The man seized Jung Se-hui’s Rider Jacket at the collar with a rough hand.
Thud!
Her back, driven by his massive strength, slammed hard against the cold brick wall. Old flyers plastered on the surface crumpled and scattered.
“What the hell are you? A cop? An enforcement officer? Or some kind of Hunter?”
The man’s eyes blazed crimson with burst blood vessels. The grip strength that allowed no space for breath, twisting her throat—it was no ordinary person’s.
It was the raw strength of a low-rank Awakener, faintly laced with Mana.
“Your face is pretty decent though.”
“Ugh—!”
Jung Se-hui’s head bent backward as she was seized by the collar, a pained gasp tearing from her throat.
Her Sunglasses fell to the ground and rolled away, revealing a pale face twisted with fear and irritation.
Yet even as breath struggled past her lips, the light in her eyes never dimmed.
Instead, she glared not at the man before her but somewhere toward the shadowed entrance of the alley, her voice sharp with anger.
“For God’s sake! I know you’re watching! That’s enough now!!”
“You crazy bitch, you wanna die—!”
The man raised a hand like a cauldron lid toward her cheek.
Crack!
A dull, heavy impact tore through the alley’s silence.
The man’s right arm, aimed to strike her cheek, jerked violently through empty air as if it had been hit by an invisible mass.
“Aaaaaaaaaaagh—!!”
A raw, anguished scream split the alley. The man’s right arm twisted at a grotesque angle. It wasn’t a simple break.
The elbow joint connecting the upper and lower arm bones had dislocated completely in the opposite direction, and white bone jutted hideously through torn muscle as if about to pierce the skin.
Blood sprayed across Jung Se-hui’s jacket and the ground in a fine mist.
“Aaah! My arm! My arm!!”
The man released his grip and rolled across the ground, wailing. The source of fear had reversed in an instant.
The other two thugs, who had been slavering in anticipation of violence, stumbled backward in shock.
“What—what the hell?! What just—!”
At the mouth of the alley, thick with darkness, I stepped forward, my shadow stretching long.
A voice utterly stripped of emotion—dry, colorless—rolled low along the alley wall.
“Timing was perfect.”
***
The sensation of vision splitting into two is always strange, no matter how many times I experience it. The full scope of the alley as it registers on my own retinas, and the scene as it enters through Jung Se-hui’s pupils.
Those two images synchronized in real time within my mind and were processed simultaneously.
Mana Vision.
It was a 2nd Circle-tier vision spell—implanting infinitesimal Mana particles into her eye’s mucous membrane to transmit visual and auditory information to my nervous system.
It went beyond mere sight; we even shared the temperature and minute vibrations in the air she sensed.
Throwing her into the heart of the Booster distribution network was a calculated gambit rooted in cold logic.
The Ariadne’s Thread I’d released from the cafe had led here, to the Entertainment District of City G.
But the thread snapped in the middle of this maze, where crowds and Mana signatures tangled together.
“If you go into an alley radiating that crushing killing intent, those drug dealers will smell it before we can even find them—they’ll scatter. I’ll just go look myself, so you hang back and follow quietly.”
When Jung Se-hui had made the proposal, I’d stared into her eyes for a moment. What burned in those eyes—whether it was recklessness or confidence—was pure instinct.
“And you know where to look?”
“Just follow my gut, really. Head straight for the worst stench.”
Feeling. A word I trusted least in the world. An uncertain factor that couldn’t be quantified or calculated.
A Mage’s reason believes only in proven facts.
That’s why I’d planted the safety mechanism: Mana Vision. The minimum means of controlling the situation before her delicate neck could snap.
But surprising as it was, she’d pinpointed the target in less than ten minutes of searching the alley.
It was the predatory instinct of someone who had learned the biology of the Back Alley with their very body.
The problem wasn’t her acting ability, but her tactical judgment.
As bait, she should have disarmed the target and extracted information subtly—instead, she’d plunged directly forward, demanding the Booster outright.
Watching her pinned carelessly against the wall by her collar, I clicked my tongue.
I’d considered letting her find herself in deeper trouble to humble her arrogance, but these were drug-addled beasts.
I needed to end this unpleasant spectacle before they crossed the line.
I advanced steadily across the wet asphalt. Breaking the man’s arm just now had been no grand magic.
A single crumpled Aluminum Beer Can rolling beneath my feet.
I’d channeled Aura through my foot in that instant, intuitively tracing the can’s mass, air resistance, and the trajectory of impact.
The kicked can screamed through the air at hundreds of meters per second and struck the man’s elbow joint with every ounce of kinetic energy intact.
The empty can became a weapon, mercilessly crushing bone and tendon.
“You bastard!! Kill him! Kill that son of a bitch!!”
The one in the Rider Jacket writhed on the ground, tears streaming down his face as he cursed. The two remaining thugs blazed with killing intent, rushing toward me.
Whoosh!
Turbid Mana rippled over their fists. Crude and unrefined, but it was the shape of an Aura forced forth by someone in a Booster-induced Awakening state.
I narrowed my vision and held my breath. The world that appeared before my eyes began fragmenting with an eerie slowness. Overwhelming dynamic vision inherited through the Sword Saint Transmission.
Combined with the blade-clashing training I’d done with Charles, my body was drawn to the extreme limits of reactive speed.
The movements of those rushing at me felt sluggish, as though they were wading through mud.
The angle at which their fists extended, the imbalance in their weight distribution driven from below, even the trembling of pupils constricting from fear—I read every detail with crystalline clarity.
If I met them head-on with Aura channeled into my strike, their upper bodies would scatter without a trace.
I had no intention of applying the destructive power I’d wielded against a Crawler’s skull to human beings. I still needed information.
I deliberately suppressed the Mana roiling in my Dantian. I met their assault with nothing but bone, muscle, and the pure balance of my body alone.
Whoosh!
I drove upward beneath the first one’s jaw. I knocked his wrist aside lightly, toppling his center of gravity.
His body, whose force I’d inverted against him, hung suspended in the air. I seized his nape and drove him down onto the asphalt.
Thud!
A dull impact rang out and his head snapped back. Without even a scream, he lost consciousness. I turned from him to meet the second one’s kick. A sloppy trajectory.
I caught the flying ankle and twisted it clockwise without hesitation.
Crack!
“Aaaaaahhh!”
The sickening sound of bone dislocating filled the alley. They collapsed like bowling pins across the ground.
Not a single drop of Mana spent—a devastatingly complete domination. The entire exchange had taken barely fifteen seconds.
“Hah… hah……”
Jung Se-hui, leaning against the wall and catching her breath, stared at me with vacant eyes. I ignored her gaze and approached the one in the Rider Jacket, who was crawling across the ground with a broken arm.
I pressed his chest lightly with the heel of my Walker Boots. Even that casual motion made his ribs cry out.
“Hack… spare… spare me…!”
The arrogance he’d worn while drunk on the drug, as if he owned the world, had vanished. Beneath my foot lay only a pitiful creature trembling at the terror of death, having soiled himself.
“W-who are you… who do you belong to?”
What came from his mouth was a craven threat. I turned my gaze deeper into the alley. Women collapsed and foaming at the mouth, their brains liquefied by the Booster.
They would never return to ordinary lives. The price of destroyed nervous systems was that merciless.
A cold rage, crystallized and terrible, flowed through my fingertips. I bent down and seized his chin brutally in one hand.
“Aaaaahhhhhhh!!”
I applied pressure enough that I could hear his jawbone fracturing. Tears welled in his eyes, and his pupils, consumed by terror, trembled without restraint.
I leaned close to his ear and whispered with the most chilling temperature of the deepest hell.
“From now on, answer my questions correctly.”
My expression reflected in his eyes was colder than any monster could ever be.
“If you don’t answer, I’ll rip out your lower jaw. Then you’ll spend the rest of your life like a Crawler, vomiting your own organs to survive.”
“Uhhh… uh…!”
A Crawler. A monster that dwells in the beginner zones of low-rank Gates, and lacking a jaw, unable to absorb nutrients, it dissolves its own organs to stay alive.
Did he know what a Crawler was? His lower half began soaking wet with dread.

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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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