The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 56

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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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56
Chapter 56. The Division of a Single Stroke
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The unnamed mountain at the edge of City G, barely marked on any map, hung heavy with the cool blue dampness of early dawn.
Deep in the hillside where no human foot tread, he collapsed onto the clearing where wild grass sprawled without order, knees drawn up. He tilted the thick glass bottle in his hand.
Amber liquid gurgled down the bottle’s neck, passing through the narrow mouth and pouring into his throat.
“······Man, that’s something else.”
A burning sensation stretched from his esophagus down to his stomach—that painful pleasure of searing fire through his organs made his brow furrow involuntarily.
The alcohol’s scent caught on his lips, passing roughly through his nostrils.
What he held was a premium single malt whisky worth several million won in any shop.
The refined grain’s fragrance and the weighty aftertaste of oak casks swirled through his mouth, yet scattered before his knees in the dirt were cheap spicy jerky and slivers of bargain sausage snatched from a convenience store—pathetic excuses for accompaniments.
It was a ridiculous sight. A drink worth millions weeping over a thousand-won plastic wrapper.
“Really, what a character.”
He glanced to the side. A roughly excavated hole of dirt. Inside that dark cavity lay several more bottles, still hidden.
These premium spirits were not his own.
Every time he came to the mountain, Charles was too lazy to bother bringing bottles, so he’d haul them by the box and bury them in the dirt as emergency supplies.
Of course, the credit card used to purchase these expensive drinks was registered under his name.
He was simply drinking spirits he’d bought with his own money, yet there was a peculiar sense of transgression in plundering Charles’s secret cache—a feeling that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, one that tickled his tongue.
The relentless pursuit by Hong Hyul-maeng night after night, and the incident with the artificially spawned gate in the heart of the city.
There was no better way to cool an overheated mind.
There was no need to go to some noisy bar filled with fake laughter and affectation.
Better to come to this desolate clearing where he trained with Charles every dawn, let the cold wind slap his cheeks as appetizer, and tilt his glass alone—far more efficient for cooling the mind.
‘Lee Do-hyun.’
The potent alcohol spread through his veins, reaching every corner of his body, yet the questions coiled in his mind resisted evaporation.
The mana waveform of the artificially manipulated gate, the shadow draped across the Administrative Bureau—the highest seat of state power—and the first-generation Archmage who’d been reduced to a nameless slave within that vast machinery of conspiracy.
Scattered puzzle pieces collided chaotically in his mind. To fit them all together, he needed only one key.
He was said to be lying in the Hunter Association Medical Ward with an oxygen mask.
Jung Eun-jin had saved him by sacrificing her own lifespan to pour in her power; within days, those heavy eyelids would lift.
When that moment came, he would face the bare truth this twisted world concealed.
And his hunter’s sights would no longer aim at shadows, but at the thing itself.
Crackle.
He chewed the dry jerky while sinking deep into his thoughts. With each sip of whisky, his senses grew keener, yet his body grew languid.
Cool dawn dew sliding down the ridge dampened his collar. He closed his eyes, leaning his back against a tree trunk.
It was a shallow sleep, consciousness slowly sinking beneath the surface.
Tap, tap-tap.
A blunt sensation disturbing his shoulder.
His shallow consciousness reflexively bobbed back to the surface.
Before his eyes even opened, a voice—distressingly familiar and old—struck his ear.
“You sleep like this, kid, and your mouth’ll go crooked. You planning to become a vagrant at your age?”
He opened his eyes slowly. His vision filled with an old man tapping his shoulder with the end of a weathered walking stick—Charles.
He brushed away the cool dew covering his body and slowly rose to his feet. His joints creaked audibly.
“It won’t go crooked. I’m a mage—can’t even maintain my own body temperature while sleeping?”
“I’ve seen my mouth go crooked more than once back when I was young and stubborn enough to sleep in snowfields. All that magic business—in the face of nature’s law, we’re all equal.”
Charles chuckled and surveyed the surroundings.
His eyes landed on the empty whisky bottles rolling across the ground and the hideously excavated hole, and his eyebrows visibly twitched.
“You thieving cat. How many bottles of my precious emergency supplies have you emptied? This is a direct challenge to an Englishman’s honor.”
“I bought it with my card, so I’ll drink it—any problem with that? If you’re going to lecture about honor, you should’ve come out earlier. Think of it as punishment for making me wait every dawn like this.”
He threw the light jab, and Charles planted his stick on the ground, collapsing onto the rock beside him. A faint smell of cigarette smoke and early morning air emanated from the old man’s body.
“If you were going to drink alone like some mopey fool, why call me? I’m here to be your old companion, aging alongside you.”
“If I called, you’d just spend three hours talking about your wife again. I’ve already memorized all your stories and the episodes by year. I need different material now.”
“No promise in you at all. You show no respect for your senior and mentor.”
“You even know the word ‘promise’?”
“I’m Korean, I’ll have you know.”
Charles burst into hearty laughter. But his eyes weren’t laughing.
The sharp gaze fixed on him from the rock was examining the subtle grain of mana and aura flowing across his entire body like a microscope.
“Your presence······ it’s grown much denser since I last saw you. It doesn’t seem like just the alcohol talking.”
His observation was acute.
“It’s just like that.”
In recent days, even on the mornings Charles didn’t come to the mountain, he hadn’t missed training once.
It was less practice than compulsion born of survival.
That strange euphoria from crushing Jang Yu-cheong’s magic with bare hands in Club Arabian’s basement, from cleaving the invisible trajectory of wind itself.
I couldn’t forget the thrill of that instant when two disparate boundaries—Sword Saint and Grand Mage—locked into perfect unity.
To sear that sensation permanently into every fiber of my muscles and the depths of my mind, I spent every night in darkness swinging my blade tens of thousands of times.
Beyond that, purifying urban Gates and systematizing high-risk monsters including Elite Ogres only reinforced the vessel within my body further.
My Level in the status window had long since broken through the threshold of 20.
“That hunter, Lee Do-hyun—he’s alive, isn’t he?”
Charles withdrew a worn pipe from his pocket and asked the question casually as he lit it.
My fingers hesitated for a moment, but then I nodded calmly. The world inhabited by those legendary first-generation hunters was smaller than one might think.
Moreover, Charles and Association Director Jung Eun-jin were as close as brothers after decades together. Even the Hunter Association’s highest-level secrets would never escape his ears.
“Yes. Fortunately, the Director pushed herself hard, and he’s past the critical point.”
“Lee Do-hyun… truly a pitiful fellow. A young man with both talent and character too noble for this filthy world. To have spent eight years in that hellish pit.”
Charles lit his pipe. The bright flame reflected off the deep creases etched into his face. Smoke exhaled in a long plume mixed with the dawn mist and dissipated.
“But if that friend recovers safely, he’ll become a very reliable asset in overturning this corrupted game. I’m truly grateful you pulled him from the brink and brought him to our side.”
“There’s no need to thank me.”
“No, if not for you, history would have been buried as-is.”
Charles’s voice carried genuine relief and gratitude. Yet I felt an odd resistance to that warm gaze.
Strictly speaking, my motive for saving Lee Do-hyun was hardly so noble.
It wasn’t because he was humanity’s hero, nor because some meager sense of justice lingered in my chest.
Seeing thoroughly calculated selfish action wrapped in the packaging of “righteous rescue” and praised for it felt as uncomfortable to me as wearing a shirt that didn’t fit.
“Praise doesn’t suit my temperament. I didn’t go through all that trouble to play the hero.”
I replied curtly and tapped the sword sheath at my waist.
“More importantly, if you’ve noticed my energy has improved, then move my sword training forward. I’m starting to hit a wall just repeating the same trajectories day after day.”
At my request, Charles chuckled through his pipe.
“Heh, look at this. Now that the foundation’s laid, you want to start raising the roof already? That’s why young people these days have no patience. Back in my time, we’d draw water at the foot of the mountain for three years until the master gave permission, chop firewood even on snowy days, and just keep grinding and grinding……”
“Why don’t you come down from the mountain at a reasonable hour? Stop drinking other people’s emergency whisky. If you keep dwelling on old stories and won’t advance my training, I’ll report this credit card lost and freeze it right now.”
The moment my threat landed, Charles’s long-winded speech cut short. He removed the pipe from his mouth and widened his eyes.
“… You, with such a narrow spirit—what grand cause do you think you’re grasping a sword for? If a gentleman draws his blade, he should cut through demons, not threaten card freezes.”
“I’ve opened the app. My finger’s already on the cancel button.”
“Stop! Let’s be gentlemen about this, junior. Card freezes are way over the line. I’m impressed by that burning scholarly spirit of yours.”
Charles cleared his throat hastily and rose from the rock.
Ahem.
It was instantaneous.
The expression of a neighborhood grandfather telling pointless jokes vanished. What filled that void was the chilling aura of a Sword Demon who’d stood at the summit of the world.
The air around his lean frame condensed heavily, and dust from the ground was pushed outward.
“Very well. If that’s what you want, today we’ll leap over one stage.”
Charles stepped toward me and gently grasped the hilt of the Dragon Head Sword hanging at my waist, drawing it forth.
“A fine blade.”
The sound of the blade scraping against its sheath as it emerged pierced my ears more sharply than usual.
“What you’ve been practicing until now was the concept of ‘Single Point Burst’—compressing explosive Aura into one moment and detonating it.
The principle is much like how a mage focuses Mana on a single point and releases it.”
The one-armed Charles swung the Dragon Head Sword lightly through empty space.
Whoosh—
“Now, look beyond that.”
His movements carried none of the explosive momentum or killing intent I’d been unleashing. They were merely fluid as flowing water, natural as dawn wind.
Not grasping and swinging the blade, but becoming one with it, moving through space itself with a transcendent softness.
No matter how much I’d acquired the body of a Sword Saint and understood the flow of Aura, as someone who’d lived my entire life within the logical formulae of Mana, this was a realm of divine technique I couldn’t even imitate.
“Your crude Single Point Burst has good destructive power, but the weakness is clear.
If the opponent reads the timing and deflects or bounces it away, the recoil from the burst completely severs your follow-up movement. In other words, there’s nothing behind it.”
Charles drew the blade once horizontally, then once vertically, soft strokes through empty air.
“Watch carefully. Cutting with force, and cutting with speed. And how to blend the two together.”
“That’s……”
Was he talking about modulating the strength and pace of muscle power?
It was the moment I was about to ask, frowning.
“You didn’t catch it. Concentrate. See with your senses, not your eyes.”
Charles smiled faintly. He lightly brought the Dragon Head Sword he was holding down at a diagonal angle toward me with a gentle tap.
A simple swing with no special shout, no grand manifestation of Aura.
And yet—
Shwaaaack—! Crash!
A serene blade light shot from the tip of Charles’s sword, grazing my cheek by the width of a single sheet of paper.
The massive boulder standing behind me split cleanly in two, as if bisected by a sheet of paper.
But the horrifying phenomenon unfolded immediately after.
Before the first sharp crack of splitting rock had even faded.
Kaaaaang—!!
Along the exact same trajectory as the freshly fractured stone, a second massive shockwave erupted belatedly from within.
The already-separated boulder fragments couldn’t withstand the colossal pressure building inside and scattered in all directions, crumbling to dust.
“······?!”
My heart went cold.
Charles had swung his sword only once before my eyes. And yet the result was two separate physical blows arriving with different time intervals.
The sword’s trajectory had split in midair into two paths—one cutting space with sheer speed, the other destroying that space with pure mass.
“That’s impossible······.”
The warmth of intoxication flowing through my veins turned to ice in an instant, as if someone had doused me with cold water.
I opened my eyes wide and reverse-traced the afterimage of Aura that had wrapped around Charles’s blade tip and its surroundings.
A 9th Circle Grand Mage’s processing power kicked into overdrive, attempting to deconstruct the supernatural phenomenon I’d just witnessed.
‘Is it illusion? No, the rock became dust—that’s real physical force.’
‘Did he warp space to copy the sword strike? No, the total Aura sensed remained constant.’
‘Then what magical or physical principle could possibly······.’
Watching my face freeze in confusion, Charles bent at the waist and burst into delighted laughter.
“This is when I enjoy myself most! Watching you—always so composed, as if you know everything in the world—stare at me with that stupefied expression. It’s like ten years of heartburn finally draining away.”
“······How did you do it? Don’t spout nonsense. Give me a clear explanation of the principle.”
As I stepped closer with a stern expression, Charles planted his sword in the ground and dropped the playfulness.
“You have no sense of humor. Tsk tsk. The principle is simple.”
He raised his middle finger and drew a single line in the air.
“What swordsmen commonly call a ‘Single Stroke’—the entire process of swinging a blade is called one stroke. Ordinary people believe this single stroke is a fixed mass of energy moving from point A to point B.”
His finger stopped midway along the line.
“But when you reach a level where you can control Aura at the particle level with microscopic precision, you can distort the flow of time within that single stroke.
You split one swing into multiple bursts of energy separated by time intervals.”
“You’re splitting the stroke······?”
“That’s right. First, you minimize resistance and cut through space at the absolute fastest speed—with no Aura infused. It’s nothing but pure blade velocity.
Then, at the tail end of the trajectory, in that infinitesimal moment when the blade grazes the opponent’s armor or completes the slash, you unleash the Aura you’d reserved earlier with the heaviest possible impact, driving it forward.”
Charles’s explanation struck deep into my mind.
“In other words, the physical motion of the body is only one movement, but the energy contained within it manifests as two separate attacks—a leading slash that tears space at extreme velocity, and a delayed heavy impact that erupts afterward.
This is Aura Division—a single stroke that produces the effect of two consecutive strikes, or depending on proficiency, three or more.”
“······.”
“Want me to explain it in a mage’s terms? You cast one flame spell and throw it, but the moment your opponent tries to block, that fireball splits in midair into two spheres connected by invisible threads and detonates with a time delay. Hell itself couldn’t be worse for the defender.”
“Is that even physically possible?”
It was a concept that directly violated the laws of inertia and Newton’s third law.
Building speed while simultaneously hiding mass, then selectively detonating that mass only at the trajectory’s end? It was madness that completely contradicted human muscle structure and nerve transmission speed.
“Why not? Did the rock turning to dust before your eyes look like a magic trick to you? If you still don’t believe me, want me to split something else? I could even target just the buttons on your shirt this time.”
Charles grinned widely and gripped the Dragon Head Sword again. The confidence radiating from him was no mere bravado.
It was the weight of absolute truth forged through tens of thousands of real combats and brushes with death.
“Good grief······.”
I was left dumbfounded.
I collapsed onto the dirt ground. I had been confident that concentrating Aura at a single point and detonating it was strength enough.
But now, having crested that small hill, a colossal mountain hidden within the clouds revealed itself in overwhelming majesty, towering above me.
The edge of the sword. Was this the pinnacle of the sword path?
‘This is maddening.’
Behind the bewilderment, a scorching hunger surged. I wanted to seize that sword immediately and try to embody that principle with my own body—my fingertips trembled.
I was rising from my seat to reach for the Dragon Head Sword in Charles’s hand.
Buzz—buzz—
A harsh vibration echoed from the jacket pocket I’d thrown on the ground, tearing through the silence of early dawn with discordant sound.
“We finally had good momentum, and here comes the troublemaker.”
Charles clicked his tongue and flicked my jacket toward me with his foot.
“Answer it. How does Kim Dae-han that fellow lack any sense of timing? Calling someone out at five in the morning—the nerve.”
I irritably snatched the phone. The name glowing clearly on the screen was exactly who I’d expected—Team Lead Kim Dae-han.
Since we’d just had a heated argument over post-Gate cleanup procedures, I considered ignoring the call. But the fact that he was calling again at this hour meant this wasn’t an ordinary situation.
I forced down the hunger to reach that new level and pressed the call button.
“Yes, Team Lead.”
The irritation was already rising in my voice.
[······Do-hyun.]
Kim Dae-han’s voice came through the receiver.
His usual gruff, earnest voice had vanished without a trace.
In its place came something hollow and emptied—as though his very soul had been scooped clean away.
[Don’t be alarmed. Listen carefully to what I’m about to say.]
Kim Dae-han forced those words out between ragged breaths, and what came next
froze the frantic hammering of my heart in an instant, turning it to ice.
[We just received a call from the medical ward.]
[Hunter Lee Do-hyun···.]
The silence that crackled through the phone line pierced my eardrums more sharply than any scream could have.

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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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