The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 44

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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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44
Chapter 44. Remnants of the Past
***
For a mage, the greatest and most valuable asset is not the total amount of Mana accumulated in the Dantian.
It is the ‘experience’ built up over decades—gazing into the abyss of Mana, deconstructing the principles that compose the world, layering understanding upon understanding.
This is no mere fragment of memory.
It is an absolute formula of incantation carved deep into the walls of the soul, and the law of how to twist the causality of the world.
Once that perfect order is etched into the mind, it becomes a scar that will never fade—even if the body dies and is reborn.
My current Core capacity is meager. I had only just crossed from the 1st Circle into the 2nd, barely beginning to unwind the thread of Mana like a child taking his first steps.
Yet without even needing to ascend to a higher Circle, I carried within me tens of thousands of magical formulas and computational systems accumulated over the path to the 9th Circle, intact and undamaged.
That meant an overwhelming gap.
Unless Jang Yu-cheong before me brought forth some mythic incantation that transcended the 9th Circle, every flow of Mana he unleashed was nothing but a shallow trick that I could dismantle.
The initiation of his incantation, the concentration of his Mana, even the tremor an instant before its release—his intent read as clearly to my eyes as a landscape beyond transparent glass.
The sphere of green Mana that had been quietly dancing on my palm began to take on a long, sharp form.
From the simple shape of a sphere into a single spear—one that minimized air resistance and concentrated destructive force into a single point.
The result of compressing Mana particles to an extreme degree, suppressing the repulsive force they exerted against one another.
The mass of wind rotating in my palm had already achieved a density that could no longer be called gas suspended in the atmosphere.
“Wind magic isn’t just about gathering and throwing.”
“Sh—sh-shit—!”
Jang Yu-cheong, stripped entirely of Mana’s initiative, staggered backward. His legs trembled like aspen leaves.
The sight of the remnants of his Wind Cutter being sucked into my hand and demoted to a component of my spear must have been a horror to him—the very fabric of his world turned inside out.
“Wind by nature wants to scatter. Only by suppressing that nature and compressing it meticulously—like honing a blade—does its power multiply.”
I continued speaking calmly, watching his twisted face. It was instruction in magical truth.
In fact, the Wind Cutter that Jang Yu-cheong had unleashed moments before had been nothing but a hollow shell—the moment it left the caster’s hand, Mana radiated outward in all directions, bleeding away its force.
His will to control Mana was weak, so the projectile could not overcome air friction and scattered apart.
“That’s the flaw I’m pointing out. You never gathered or contained the wind. Forcing output higher with a Booster Original is like pouring water into a leaking pot—it changes nothing.”
I slowly withdrew my right arm. As if drawing back an invisible, colossal bowstring.
My back muscles pulled taut, my lower body anchored firm against the ground.
The spear of wind held in my hand now screamed through the air—spinning mad, tearing the atmosphere with a high-pitched shriek.
The vortex born from the tip of the spear swallowed up stacks of documents and shards of glass scattered through the Executive Office, grinding them to powder.
“The essence of Wind Cutter lies in honing Mana to its sharpest extreme.”
Before the overwhelming density of Mana, Jang Yu-cheong’s face twisted hideously with terror.
He flailed about pitifully, trying to seize the Mana scattering beyond his control.
“You—you, what are you? A—a mage?”
“That’s exactly why I’m teaching you.”
The muscles of my right arm swelled as if they might burst.
This was not mere magical invocation. It was the process of efficiently distributing my body’s full strength, adding kinetic energy to the projectile itself.
The perfect unity of Mana and physical force.
“Before you die, I’m teaching you what real magic truly is.”
“You maniac!!”
Jang Yu-cheong lost all reason and thrashed, squeezing out his remaining Mana to hurl crude spheres of wind through the air in desperation.
It was the convulsion of a beast—his hunter’s instinct paralyzed by the terror of death.
But before his magic could even fully unfold, my body moved first.
‘Wind Cutter, Slash.’
I painted the image in my mind—that overwhelming hand-blade strike Charles had shown on Dawn Mountain.
The Sword Saint’s realm of singular explosive force. Upon the incantation of Wind Cutter refined through a mage’s calculation, I layered the physical impact that a Sword Saint’s body remembered.
At the intersection where incantation and martial technique crossed, strange sparks erupted.
Crash—!!
The spear of wind released from my hand became a single flash of light, shot forth.
Not the sound of air being severed, but the noise of space being torn asunder struck my eardrums.
As the spear carved through the air, a vacuum formed along its trajectory, drawing in all nearby currents.
A violent backwind erupted.
The crude Mana projectiles that Jang Yu-cheong had fired were torn apart like lies the moment they touched the shockwave—dissipating before they could reach my spear.
All the resistance he had built crumpled like meaningless paper.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!”
Meeting no resistance, the spear of wind carved through empty space and pierced precisely through Jang Yu-cheong’s chest.
It was not mere penetration. The blade of wind that buried itself in his body unleashed thousands of rotations within, grinding muscle and bone to dust.
With the sound of blood spraying, Jang Yu-cheong’s body was hurled backward.
Boom—!
His corpse was embedded in the thick marble wall like the carcass of a beast.
But that was not all. As the infused Mana reached its critical threshold, a secondary explosion erupted from behind him.
The compressed air expanded in one violent surge, obliterating the wall entirely.
Boom-boom-boom-crash!
The building’s exterior collapsed in ruin. Through the gaping hole six stories high, frigid night air rushed in with merciless force.
Jang Yu-cheong hung limply from a twisted rebar at the edge of the shattered wall, blood fountaining from his chest.
The thick dust settled.
I heard the crunch of glass shards beneath my shoes as I walked slowly toward the collapsed exterior.
Jang Yu-cheong, dangling in the void, no longer resembled anything human.
His face was hideously charred by the friction heat that had burned through him, and his chest bore an enormous gaping wound through which ribs and ruptured organs were visible.
Only the whites of his eyes showed as he continued to vomit dark blood from the corners of his mouth.
Yet his breath still clung to him.
Precisely because I had calibrated my power to achieve exactly that.
I had targeted the infinitesimal point to the left of his heart where his Mana Core existed, leaving his life-support system barely intact.
If this wretch died here, my thread of evidence leading to the distribution network of Booster Original and the forces behind it would be severed completely.
For now, I needed to keep him alive—a slab of meat from which to extract information.
However, he would cast no more magic.
The slash I had just unleashed had anatomically dismantled not only his body but also the Mana Core lodged in his Dantian.
The core near his heart would have shattered into fragments, scattering throughout his body.
Should he be fortunate enough to survive, he would spend the rest of his life as a Mana Insensitivity Cripple—worse than any ordinary person.
A hell more cruel than death for a mage.
It was not vengeance born of the past.
My time and my anger were too valuable to waste on emotional revenge against such filth.
He was merely an obstacle in my path, refuse that needed sweeping away.
Yet even as I looked down at Jang Yu-cheong’s wretched form, my reason remained cold and still with an almost frightening clarity.
I turned my gaze away and stepped back.
I surveyed the shattered Executive Office slowly.
The gaudy gold-plated luxuries he had collected and artworks by forgotten painters lay scattered in piles of dust.
The chandelier overhead dangled precariously, flickering, and the expensive carpet was already stained with blood and grime, its value lost.
While examining the desk area, I discovered the main computer and server equipment crammed into a corner.
Fortunately, they had been shielded by the wall during the chaos and remained intact.
Crack.
I tore open the metal casing of the tower without hesitation. The cold touch of the machine was vivid against my fingertips.
I extracted the internal hard drives and the USB drives plugged in haphazardly, one after another.
The likelihood was high that they contained the cartel’s money flows, transaction ledgers, and lists of suppliers.
Once I handed them over to Kim Dae-han, his team would know how to extract usable intelligence.
But it was not enough.
‘The Booster Original is nowhere to be found.’
Somewhere in this Executive Office, there had to be a safe hiding the hundred-percent pure drug.
A man of Jang Yu-cheong’s character would never let his most precious asset out of sight.
If I could not find it, destroy it, or secure it, tonight’s operation would be half-finished at best.
“Over here!”
At that moment, Jung Se-hee’s urgent voice rang out.
I turned, and what I saw was almost unbelievable.
She had somehow made her way to the precarious edge of the shattered sixth-floor exterior wall. Beneath her feet, asphalt dozens of meters below opened into a cliff’s drop.
A fierce wind whipped her coat violently. One misstep would send her plummeting.
She stood atop the collapsed wreckage like a tightrope walker, gripping the semi-conscious Jang Yu-cheong by the collar while activating her ability.
“Look at his hands! There’s Mana running through them!”
She pointed to the thin white thread of Mana flowing from Jang Yu-cheong’s palm.
So subtle that ordinary mages’ eyes could never perceive it—a trace of Mana connected to the caster’s life force.
The thread did not break, but stretched across the void and drove straight down through the marble floor beneath the massive mahogany desk in the center of the Executive Office.
The location of the treasure Jang Yu-cheong had wished to protect, even unconsciously.
Direct and certain detection. I moved immediately toward the marble beneath the desk.
I tapped the ground with the toe of my shoe, and the dull sound of an empty space echoed back. I gathered weak Mana in my palm and released it against the floor.
Crack!
The marble tile shattered into fragments. Beneath it, a silver special-alloy safe lay hidden, now revealed.
“Good.”
The tracker’s skill had delivered another excellent result. I was about to bend down to open the safe when—
“I···crazy bastard!!!!! Don’t touch it, you son of a bitch!!”
With a grotesque metallic shriek, the body of Jang Yu-cheong—whom I thought dying—convulsed and lurched upward.
From his shattered core, he wrung out one final murky pulse of Mana, forming a sharp blade of wind at his fingertips.
Jang Yu-cheong had the thin blade pressed directly against Jung Se-hee’s slender neck, which he gripped in his fist.
His eyes were already bloodshot, the whites stained crimson. By this point, I almost had to admire the sheer tenacity of that wretched life force.
No matter how much of a worm he was, that stubborn, demonic obsession was undoubtedly a hunter’s truest virtue—the will to survive.
“You bastard! One more step and this bitch’s throat goes too! You’re marked now, you son of a—! You don’t know who’s behind me—”
As Jang Yu-cheong spattered blood while hurling his final threats,
“Oh.”
A soft exclamation escaped between my lips.
What astonished me wasn’t Jang Yu-cheong’s obsession. It was Jung Se-hee’s mad move in the very next instant.
“Shut the hell up, you twisted freak!”
Instead of cowering in fear as a hostage should, Jung Se-hee gathered the Ariadne’s Thread coiled around her wrist, bunching it tight around her hand like a boxing glove.
The mana-infused cord instantly achieved the hardness of steel. Then she hurled her full body weight into a heavy punch straight at his face.
Crack!!
An F-rank Hunter’s all-out punch, charged with mana. With a dull, shattering sound, Jang Yu-cheong’s nasal bone collapsed completely.
It was the finishing blow, driven straight into the already-ravaged mask of his face.
“Gurgh!”
With a sound like air escaping, Jang Yu-cheong’s head snapped back at a sickening angle.
The problem was that he’d been hanging from the edge of the sixth-floor outer wall.
The impact of Jung Se-hee’s punch sent his body tilting backward, and in a reflexive spasm, he grabbed the lapel of her shirt and pulled her with him.
“Kim Do-jin!”
A scream that tore through the air.
Both Jang Yu-cheong and Jung Se-hee plummeted down past the shattered sixth-floor exterior wall.
Gravity swallowed them. Jung Se-hee’s terrified eyes met mine in the void.
“Damn.”
Even without this, I’d planned to use Airi, whom I kept hovering invisibly in the air, to catch her.
But she always acts one step ahead of my calculations.
Truly, she was a reckless woman I couldn’t control.
Without hesitation, I threw myself into the emptiness.
***
Thud!!
Moments later, a dull, heavy crash echoed from the first-floor ground.
It was the sound of one who could not defy gravity’s law meeting their end, and the period marking the close of tonight’s chaos.
A clear accident. An unforeseen misfortune that occurred during the operation.
Jang Yu-cheong, boss of G City’s Booster distribution network, had toppled from the arrogant fortress he’d built at its peak and cracked his skull against the cold asphalt below, killing him instantly.
Compared to his previous end—rotting alone in some nameless Gate before the regression—this was an even more pathetic and sordid death.
“Haa, haa… Christ! I really thought I was going to die. My heart almost stopped, seriously!”
Ragged breathing echoing from above.
From my perch on the jutting steel frame between the shattered sixth and fifth floors, I looked down flatly at Jung Se-hee dangling limply in my arms.
Catching her as she fell wasn’t particularly difficult for me.
Blink.
I warped the spatial coordinates and leaped across the distance in a single instant.
I grabbed Jung Se-hee’s waist roughly in midair, then reversed the acceleration of Dash to cancel out the falling momentum.
In that fraction of a moment, Jang Yu-cheong’s body plummeted downward according to the laws of physics, but he was no longer my concern.
My only target was one useful detector.
“Come down. You’re heavy.”
At my words, Jung Se-hee flinched and slowly loosened the arms she’d wrapped around my neck like a lifeline.
I felt a faint tremor in her palms transmitted across my shoulder. She crawled down onto the steel beam, brushing her disheveled hair back roughly with both hands.
“Come on, I’m not that heavy, you know? I’m lighter than I look!”
“How much lighter?”
“Wow, that’s… actually the worst thing you could’ve said.”
She grumbled irritably. But the fear from the fall hadn’t fully drained from her—her legs were still visibly trembling.
Every time the cold night wind brushed her cheek, she shrank her shoulders.
“Well… anyway, thanks for saving me. I thought I was dead.”
Jung Se-hee added the words while looking away—that particular expression of someone trying to express gratitude while preserving their pride.
“It won’t be free. I’ll collect later.”
At my dry response, Jung Se-hee let out a hollow laugh as if in disbelief.
“Right, right. But if it wasn’t for me, you’d have spent the night searching for that hidden Booster vault down there, wouldn’t you? Can’t we call it even?”
“Your accounting’s wrong. The vault is a matter of time, but your life only comes once.”
“Stop talking like that.”
She pouted, but had no further rebuttal to offer.
I hadn’t praised her, but I swallowed a short, silent laugh. Even in this mad situation—recklessness and survival instinct.
It had begun to feel less like exhaustion now and more like the keen, well-honed edge of a finely crafted blade.
Whee-ooo-ooo-
Beyond the Club Building, a piercing siren tore through the night’s silence, flooding inward.
By the time the ceiling had been shattered and the outer wall demolished, the Ability Management Bureau’s follow-up response team and police forces—whom I’d sent word to Kim Dae-han in advance—had arrived.
Red and blue strobe lights spread across the distant road like waves.
A night in which the den of malice that had been gnawing at G City was utterly obliterated.
A night in which I had completely shed the fetid remnants of the past.
I pulled out my vibrating phone from my pocket. Kim Dae-han’s name glowed on the screen.

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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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