The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 48

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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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48
Chapter 48. The Hunter in the Dark
***
Follow the weathered industrial canal that winds through the outskirts of G City, and beyond the rusted chain-link fence emerges a grotesque silhouette.
The Abandoned Factory District, left to rot for years since redevelopment fell through.
Once thrumming with the percussion of machinery, it had become a vast tomb where moisture and mold pooled alongside human refuse—the dregs of society that had seeped up from the sewers below.
Rainwater streaming down the factory’s outer wall twisted with black grease into bizarre patterns, and beyond the shattered windows, the interior lay submerged in pitch-black darkness.
On the surface, a perfect ruin that no ant would dare enter.
But my senses caught what the eye could never miss: the abnormal pulse of Mana radiating from the depths below, and the sickening reek of carrion.
Basement Level 2—a makeshift structure sealed from the light. Inside this clandestine space where power flowed in secret, a landscape utterly divorced from the world above was unfurling in its madness.
Click. Clatter.
In the stale air thick with cigarette smoke and the stench of nameless chemicals, mahjong tiles struck each other with a bright, rhythmic clack.
Scattered throughout the cavernous basement, about twenty Awakeners were hunched over their game, their antes piled high with bundles of checks worth millions of won and crudely refined Mana Stones.
“Hey, hey! Grab another Orange for me over there. My head’s buzzing so bad I can’t take it anymore.”
Someone barked irritably from the corner of a mahjong table. At his elbow lay Orange-grade “Booster” in transparent plastic containers, rolling about in casual disarray.
A drug that forced Mana into violent overdrive, delivering temporary euphoria. Those intoxicated by it, eyes glazed and pupils blown, giggled mindlessly as they passed the Booster around.
Every one of their forearms was riddled with dark bruises where veins swelled grotesquely.
Their faces were hideous beyond description.
From wide-eyed teenagers in their late teens, their faces still soft with adolescence yet burning with defiance, to middle-aged mercenaries whose features were buried beneath scar tissue.
And the languages filling the space were not Korean alone.
“This stuff’s quality, man. Korean gear’s got such detail, I love it.”
“Damn it—don’t look at my hand. Lose your wrist if you want.”
Mandarin and Russian, laced with the occasional ghost of Japanese. A cross-section of the underworld, drawn together beneath the common denominator of Booster and violence, indifferent to nationality or age.
They lay in the corrupted comfort of their sanctuary, utterly oblivious to how precarious the ground beneath their feet truly was.
On the opposite wall, several enormous monitors were mounted side by side.
On their screens, a deathmatch was being broadcast in real time: low-rank monsters illegally captured from Gates in the Other World were tearing strips of flesh from one another.
At the brutal spectacle of blood spraying and entrails spilling, the criminals howled like beasts and wagered obscene sums on the outcome.
Unbearably peaceful. Repugnantly routine. The predawn hours of the guilty.
It took less than a second for that solid world to collapse.
Whiiir—
“…What?”
The motor of the ventilation fan that had been roaring suddenly died. At the same instant, every light illuminating Basement Level 2 cut out in perfect synchronization.
Complete blackout—even the backup generator failed to engage. The monitors’ glow extinguished, and in the silence that crashed down, the darkness was absolute and suffocating.
A darkness so pure that human eyes could not pierce even a finger’s width ahead.
“What the hell? Damn it. Is it down again? Hey, where’s the manager, you bastard!”
A large man who had been playing mahjong spat out curses in Mandarin, rough and vicious. He shoved his chair back and lurched to his feet.
“Check the cartridge terminal! Did somebody mess with the breaker? Hey, answer me!”
The man was moving irritably toward the machine room where the terminal lay when it happened.
Crack!
From out of the darkness came a chilling sound—something enormous, a mass of steel cleaving through empty air.
The man’s voice, which had been grumbling just moments before, cut off abruptly with a grotesque, bone-crushing noise, like some great beast being flattened.
His massive frame flew as if struck by a cannonball and slammed into a concrete pillar with a heavy, body-rattling thud.
A sickening crunch of fracturing bone followed. The impact was so overwhelming he never even screamed.
His corpse slumped from the pillar, crumpling to the floor.
“…?!”
“W-what?! Damn it, what’s happening?!”
Only then did the Awakeners grasp the gravity of their situation. They bolted upright, scrambling to draw weapons in panicked haste.
The metallic screech of steel sliding from sheaths, the frantic chanting of forced Mana summoning—a cacophony erupted from the darkness. But it was already too late.
Crackle—! Flash!
A serpentine arc of blue Mana sparked through the perfect darkness, slicing open the void. In that brief blue brilliance, they saw it.
A black shadow dropping soundlessly from the ceiling to the floor. A phantom descent. The hunter had arrived.
“Aaaaghhhhhh!!”
“My legs! My legs—!”
An abattoir was born in an instant.
Each time the formless shadow passed, blood misted like fog and flesh was cleaved with a cold, terrible whisper—a sound of nothing but severing sinew and bone.
I moved through the darkness like a specter, gripping the Dragon Head Sword. Their clumsy sword strokes and wild Mana burst through empty air, unable even to graze my sleeve.
Instead, the weapons they swung caught their comrades’ shoulders; the Mana projectiles they fired wildly only destroyed their own hideout.
“Where are you?! Where?! Lights! Lights, damn it, turn them on, you bastards!!”
Those flailing blindly at phantoms, driven mad by an enemy they could not see, writhed in desperation.
All around them came the sound of comrades falling, yet the threat remained invisible. This was not combat—it was slaughter.
I denied them light.
I shattered the wrist of the man reaching for his lighter first, then crushed the jaw of another chanting an incantation to conjure flame with the heel of my boot.
The sensation of bone fracturing traveled through my foot in a dull, heavy echo. My reason analyzed it coldly and propelled my body toward the next target.
“Ahhh, ahhhhhh……!”
Someone, both Achilles tendons severed, dragged his useless legs behind him, weeping blood as he crawled desperately toward the emergency switch in the machinery room.
His hands kept slipping in the pooled blood on the floor, but even as his torso crashed against the ground again and again, he refused to stop.
With his fingernails torn away, he scraped at the floor until at last he reached the switch. With trembling, bloodstained hands, he forced the lever upward.
Hissss—
The emergency red generator lights flickered to life. Basement Level 2 lay exposed in all its horror.
Twenty-some Awakeners writhed and groaned in pools of blood, their limbs bent at grotesque angles, muscles severed. Not a single one was dead.
Yet none of them would ever again be able to grip a weapon as an Awakener. It was precise neutralization—joints and ligaments destroyed with surgical care.
“Ah, ah……m-mad……!”
The man who’d thrown the switch turned, trembling, to look back at me. In his eyes, my reflection was surely that of death itself.
Face half-hidden behind a black tactical mask, a blade of cool blue light held slant at my side.
Thwack—!
Instead of words, my heel crashed mercilessly against his temple. His eyes rolled back as his head cracked against the wall and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
Silence fell at last. Only the anguished groans of men writhing on the floor remained to fill the space.
***
I pulled the black tactical mask down slowly from my mouth.
Deep in my lungs, the reek of blood and the acrid stale air of Booster flooded in, yet my heartbeat remained steady.
Even the surge of adrenaline was perfectly contained. My reason lay cool and unmoved, regarding this scene from above without the slightest tremor.
The Dragon Head Sword, gripped in my right hand.
Residual mana crackled across the blade in blue sparks, scattering with a faint hiss.
Since the last Goblin Gate assault, bringing it to Choo Jae-hui’s smithy for restoration had been an excellent choice.
The conductivity of mana absorption had risen dramatically, making it far easier to layer pure magical properties atop the aura.
‘First Circle Lightning magic.’
A combination of raw physical impact—pure sword technique—overlaid with the paralytic force of electrical magic.
When the sword master’s extreme speed merged with lightning’s capacity to incinerate nerve fibers instantly, the efficiency of a sudden strike became beyond imagination.
From merely the faint sensation of the blade grazing flesh, the opponent cannot even scream, much less counterattack. The central nervous system overloads and shuts down.
In darkness, strangling an enemy silently and stripping them of combat ability—there was no formula more perfect than this. The hypothesis was verified completely.
“Garbage.”
I walked slowly through the fallen men, stepping through pools of blood. My shoe heels scraped against the floor with a wet, sticky sound.
I rolled up the sleeves of the unconscious men one by one. On the inner side of each right wrist, against pale skin, was a hideous tattoo—burned in like a brand.
Three twisted red lines, like rope coiled grotesquely together. The largest illegal Hunter organization in Asia, a malignant tumor that would soon drag this world toward destruction.
The mark of the Red Blood Alliance.
“Not a single one without a collar, it seems.”
I looked down at the men on the floor and let out a short, bitter laugh. Sparing them was no mercy.
With blood vessels severed, tendons severed, and nerves burned out by electrical current, these creatures would spend tomorrow morning in living hell, unable to move a finger before armed police and the Hunter Association arrived.
Pain lasts longer than death, and helplessness runs deeper still.
The hunt was finished. Now it was time to erase the traces.
I gathered the Booster boxes scattered in the corner and the computer servers used for illegal gambling operations into a single heap.
I drew mana from deep in my core, condensing it at my fingertips. The air grew hot, and I felt the vibration of molecules trembling.
Ignition.
Flame magic erupted from my fingertips.
Leaving no possibility of evidence recovery, the contraband drugs and server equipment were engulfed in searing flames and transformed to ash.
The fire rose menacingly, licking at the steel beams of the ceiling, yet I remained calm and deliberately withdrew the prepaid burner phone from my pocket.
I pressed the speed dial. The destination: the direct hotline of G City’s Police Narcotics Task Force.
[Yes, this is the Narcotics Reporting Center.]
The moment I heard the counselor’s voice, I recited the prepared information in a flat, lifeless tone.
“G City outskirts, Old Industrial Complex Zone 3, Basement Level 2. There are large amounts of Booster residue and evidence on scene.”
[Yes? Hello? Who is this? Your affiliation—! Hey!]
The voice was electronically distorted, the number restricted and untraceable. There was no lead anyone could follow back to me.
I immediately pressed the end call button.
Then I removed the SIM card from the phone and crushed it to powder under the pressure of my fingertips.
I turned up the collar of my black jacket and cast my gaze beyond the shattered windows of the ruined factory.
The city lights glowed in the distance, but this place remained cloaked in silence and darkness.
Blink.
With a strange distortion of space, my body vanished without a trace into the darkened early morning air, erasing itself completely.
***
An empty riverbank cutting across G City. I sank into the driver’s seat of the black SUV parked in a desolate, isolated lot.
The engine’s subtle vibration traveled through the seat. I powered on the Tablet PC and began scrolling through the screen methodically.
The blue glow from the display illuminated my expressionless face.
Hundreds of personal records and encrypted coordinates listing in chaotic profusion—data written in blood.
[You’ve been pulling all-nighters for three days straight now.]
[It’s problematic to ignore human circadian rhythms like this.]
Airi fluttered before my eyes, emitting waves of discontent.
“I know. It’s fine. Just back off a bit.”
I replied flatly and scrolled the screen. My voice was hoarse, but my mind still turned with crystalline clarity.
[It is not fine. According to my calculations, the human body has clear limits.]
[Running the brain without sufficient sleep will inevitably cause overclocking, and that leads to judgment errors in actual combat.]
[Moreover, in two hours you’re scheduled to conduct sword training with Charles Edward again.]
Airi’s nagging buzzed at the edge of my hearing. Ever since the spirit obtained a physical form through Lunaris, this system AI’s demeanor had shifted noticeably.
Gone was the emotionless mechanical drone that once merely recited information. Now there was something uncannily impertinent, as if mimicking human emotion—perpetual chattering.
Less a system and more an irritating partner. Even my ex-girlfriend never reached this level.
“I know my body’s condition better than anyone. I’m suppressing fatigue forcibly through Mana Circulation, so don’t worry.”
[Don’t dismiss my calculations.]
[Human muscle fibers aren’t machine parts. They can’t just be swapped out when worn.]
[My sensors can pick up every cry of distress from your cells.]
“Be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
I waved a dismissive hand, and Airi emitted a pouty pulse before settling gently onto my right shoulder, folding her wings with a sulk.
Silence returned.
I turned my attention back to the Tablet PC.
The massive list I was viewing now was the decrypted contents of an encrypted USB Drive stolen from the secret safe of Jang Yu-cheong, the proprietor of Club Arabian.
When I first opened the USB, it was locked under crude slang and triple encryption, but it was no challenge for me.
Before the Regression, I’d brutally dismantled the Red Blood Alliance’s strongholds so thoroughly that their communication protocols and cipher systems were already burned into my memory.
The decryption results were bleaker than anticipated. The Red Blood Alliance’s network cells had sunk roots far deeper and wider throughout G City’s alleys than I’d estimated.
The outer gambling den in the Abandoned Factory District I’d just cleared was merely one minor branch of that colossal organism.
During the day, I sit in the Ability Management Department office at City Hall, combing through legal information and documents alongside Kim Dae-han, playing the part of a civil servant hunter.
But when night falls, I shed my identity entirely and become a predator in the darkness, physically obliterating their strongholds one by one.
When hunting rats that mock the law, the way of a predator that tears out their throats from beyond legal bounds is the fastest and most certain method.
[There’s one calculation result I cannot comprehend.]
Airi opened her mouth again from where she sat on my shoulder. This time her tone was more serious than before.
“Tell me.”
[Why aren’t you sharing this information with Team Lead Kim Dae-han?]
[If you mobilized his administrative power and public authority, you could neutralize these organizations far more efficiently.]
[It’s inefficient for you to shoulder all these risks alone.]
[Don’t you trust Kim Dae-han? Wasn’t this supposed to be a cooperative arrangement?]
At Airi’s question, I sank deeper into the driver’s seat, gazing out at the dark waters of the river.
The city lights reflecting off the water rippled and wavered.
“Nothing in this world deserves absolute trust. Especially not people who move under the banner of an organization.”
It wasn’t that I distrusted Kim Dae-han as a person.
His resolve and information network were useful, and he was rare among corrupt bureaucrats—someone who hadn’t abandoned his sense of duty.
But if the system itself he belongs to is contaminated, that changes everything.
The Red Blood Alliance isn’t a simple crime syndicate. It’s a vast cartel that has bound together high-ranking officials from various governments—even the upper echelons of the Hunter Association—through bribes and narcotics.
The moment this list reaches the national administrative network, that information will inevitably leak somewhere.
Someone will receive a warning and flee. Someone will cut off their tail and disappear into hiding.
Tedious procedures: administrative processing, warrant issuance, protection of suspects’ rights.
Allowing those bastards room to breathe within the meager bounds of law itself was, to me, intolerable waste and sin.
The embers that would burn down the world—I can only truly rest when I’ve ground them to ash with my own hands. I can’t guarantee perfect annihilation by borrowing another’s strength.
“And.”
I scrolled down through the Tablet PC screen.
Past the rosters of countless network cells, to the very end of the document: a list marked [New Special Management Subjects].
My finger stopped over one person’s profile.
The name had been deliberately blurred, as if to maintain strict security.
But even without confirming the name, the numerical values and traits listed beside it were enough—I could see through to the bone who this bastard was.
One of those who’d driven a blade through my chest before the Regression.
[Age: 19]
[Awakener Class: Rogue]
[Unique Trait: Explosion]
[Provisional Rank: A+]
[Note: Choke adjustment unstable. Continuous management required.]
The Ability Management Department’s greatest headache, a mad dog who’d gone AWOL for days without a trace. A villain who would one day earn the title “Blast Demon” after claiming the lives of countless Hunters.
Hong Tae-hwa.
His profile sat right at the top of the Red Blood Alliance’s recruitment list. Contact had already begun.
“Airi.”
I turned from the window and glanced at the butterfly perched on my shoulder, my lip curling into a thin smile.
“Want to hear one more truth about human nature?”
[Most intriguing.]
[I shall add it to my database, if you would share.]
I tapped the screen of my Tablet PC, jabbing at the number “19” with one finger. Then I spoke in the coldest, most merciless tone reason could muster.
“People never change. Never. And creatures like Hong Tae-hwa least of all.”
I pressed the ignition button. The Black SUV’s heavy engine roar shattered the silence of the empty lot.
Before that mad dog Hong Tae-hwa was cradled in the Red Blood Alliance’s arms and reborn as a true monster, I had to seize his leash first. Or cut it entirely.
Either way, the outcome was the same.

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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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