The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 57

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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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57
Chapter 57. The Sanctum Desecrated
***
The hushed hour before dawn.
A black SUV tore up the mountain roads skirting City G at a reckless speed, shredding through the dense ash-grey fog that had blanketed the ridgeline all night like swampland.
Each time the tires shrieked, they carved fresh black marks across the asphalt.
On the sharp curves, the chassis tilted and the suspension groaned, spilling metallic noise into the air.
Thick veins stood out across the knuckles gripping the passenger-side handle. My gaze fixed on the monochrome landscape blurring past outside the window.
The vision should have swum, but the muscles of my eyes were locked tight instead, sharpening the focus.
Two days already.
Not a single minute of sleep had been granted since I first picked up the trail of this damned Booster distribution network.
Adrenaline rushed backward through my veins, forcing my brain cells awake against their will.
My body had clearly reached its breaking point and was screaming in protest, yet I felt none of that peripheral pain or fatigue.
Every nerve in my body was drawn taut as a needle point, frozen sharp and cold.
One word spoken just moments ago by Kim Dae-han—his voice trembling as he wrenched the steering wheel hard—had pierced straight through the center of my thoughts.
[It was suicide.]
Lee Do-hyun. The cause of death of Korea’s first-generation Archmage.
That man whom Chairman Jung Eun-jin had kept breathing by scraping the very dregs of his soul, burning through his own remaining years—he had cut short his own breath with his own hand.
Suicide.
Not sliced open by someone’s sharp blade, not poisoned by toxin flowing silent through his veins.
With his own hand, through his own will, he had halted his own life.
‘How.’
My cold, rational mind began methodically dismantling that impossible proposition.
Lee Do-hyun had been lying in the intensive care unit of the Special Ward with bones shattered and his Mana Core in tatters.
Unable to even control the contraction of his own muscles, his limbs restrained like any other bedridden patient—how in the world could he have ended his life in the Association’s most heavily guarded inner chamber?
“To be precise…”
The knuckles of Kim Dae-han’s hands on the steering wheel had gone bone-white. He bit his lip until blood beaded, then continued.
“He overloaded his own brain with Mana, rupturing his blood vessels directly.”
“…”
That single sentence dragged my rationality down into an abyss colder than ice itself, and intolerably cruel.
Ordinary people could never fathom the depth of that suffering, but for sorcerers who had spent their lives moving with the pulse of Mana, that method was a choice so ghastly and alien as to raise one’s skin.
What happens when a mage forcibly closes the output pathways through which internal Mana is released to the outside, reverses the circuit, and condenses it deep into the brain stem?
The immense pressure of Mana, having nowhere to escape, surges and flows backward.
And it literally boils the brain nerves and delicate blood vessels—the most fragile tissue in the human body.
Like detonating a triggering device inside a sealed, high-pressure pressure cooker.
Cerebrospinal fluid boiling inside the skull, nerve fibers shredding apart—the kind of ultimate agony a human could experience.
It was the most forbidden Taboo for mages.
Without losing one’s mind in a state of raving madness, no sane sorcerer would ever choose such a method of self-harm.
There were ways to stop the heart or elegantly halt the lungs’ function using carefully controlled spellwork, yet he had deliberately chosen that hell-like torment—a choice that aroused a sickening, profound discord.
‘This isn’t suicide.’
I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth.
Lee Do-hyun’s own pure will could never have been involved.
That vicious Mind Control Choker, which for eight years had been used to command Cobolts in the Booster factories—I had smashed it to pieces with my own hands.
But those bastards had clearly embedded a kind of ‘self-destruct switch’ in the deepest reaches of Do-hyun’s brain, in the bedrock of his subconscious. The most malicious and arrogant silencing method.
The fact that the Association’s sanctum—which should have been most secure—had been defiled so utterly helplessly by those vermin stung my skin like a lash.
“…”
Kim Dae-han made no further sound, made no hasty outburst of rage. He simply set his jaw muscles taut and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
The car roared toward the Hunter Promotion Test Ground. The engine’s violent vibration traveled up through the chassis and into my feet.
Screee-screee-screee-crack! Bang!
Behind the test grounds, the tires smoked as they screeched to a halt before the entrance drive of the Chairman’s private Annex Building.
The moment I threw open the door and stepped out, what struck my nose was not the cool morning air of dawn, but the acrid reek of gunpowder and the residue of Mana.
The sight that met my eyes was not the quiet, solemn morning of a sanctum as it should be. It was pandemonium—guards screaming, shattered glass scattered everywhere.
“…Why are the G.A.R.M bastards here?!”
Kim Dae-han leaped from the car, his voice pitched with alarm.
And indeed, the front courtyard of the Annex Building was packed with uninvited guests dressed in black suits.
Multiple black SUVs bearing the logo of the Republic of Korea’s G.A.R.M were positioned like a blockade around the Annex entrance.
And beyond those vehicles.
A corpse covered in white cloth was being roughly shoved into the trunk of a black van belonging to G.A.R.M—not an ambulance.
The withered hand that protruded slightly from beneath the sheet bore familiar scars.
It was Lee Do-hyun’s body.
If a death occurs, protocol dictates that either the police forensics division or a medical examiner from the Hunter Association must preserve the scene.
Yet the Gate Administration and Regulation Ministry—nothing more than a simple administrative body—had marched in with armed personnel and was now absconding with the remains of a 1st Generation Grand Mage, treating them like confiscated private property.
This was no mere information leak. They were openly baring their fangs, wielding force to bury the truth itself.
Hidden behind the pretense of a state institution, they came like a recovery squad retrieving evidence of their own crimes.
“These insane bastards—!”
Kim Dae-han ground his teeth and reached for the pistol at his waist.
But before we could even intervene, the marble steps leading up to the Annex Building’s entrance already bore the unmistakable traces of violent physical collision.
It was the record of a desperate, humiliating last stand that had begun mere minutes before our arrival.
***
Twenty minutes before Kim Dae-han and Kim Do-jin of the Ability Management Team reached the scene.
On the marble staircase of the Annex Building, Yu Hye-sung, a hunter affiliated with the Hunter Association, vented his fury with cords standing out in his neck, his face flushed with rage.
“You bastards! Where the hell do you think you are?! You think this is your office?!”
Behind Yu Hye-sung, Hunter Association guards held their shields with ashen faces.
At the center of their line stood Association Chief Jung Eun-jin, breathing hard.
Unable to support herself, she leaned on a subordinate’s arm, her trembling eyes fixed on the lawless men before her.
“Chief, you also require interrogation.”
From among the G.A.R.M personnel surrounding the lower steps, a man who appeared to be the commander spoke in a mechanical voice.
He produced a crisply printed sheet of paper from his pocket and held it up.
“Charges of improper collusion with the Booster Cartel and the unlawful kidnapping, torture, and murder of a 1st Generation hunter who disappeared eight years ago. An emergency arrest warrant has been issued. We have orders from above to enforce it by force if you resist.”
“Bullshit! The Chief gave up her own life yesterday to save Senior Lee Do-hyun! You’re doing this to the person we just rescued from those monsters’ hands?!”
He descended the steps with heavy thuds, threatening the officers.
“The veracity of that claim can be confirmed in the Underground Interrogation Room. Step aside. This is your second warning.”
“Go to hell!”
The G.A.R.M personnel simultaneously produced custom-made Taser Guns and Mana-Blocking Restraints.
Faced with their arrogant attitude and violence masquerading as law enforcement, Yu Hye-sung’s reason snapped.
A crimson Aura began to shimmer and roil around his clenched fists, heating the air like heat haze.
The instant the frontmost officer reached out, holding Mana Shackles, Yu Hye-sung detonated like lightning.
Crack—! Snap!
“Aaaaugh!”
Yu Hye-sung seized the officer’s wrist and twisted it along his central axis, snapping it clean. The sickening crunch of dislocating bone tore through the silent dawn.
Leaving the screaming officer thrashing on the ground behind him, he lunged toward his next target with bestial fury.
It was a signal. The courtyard before the Annex Building descended into a maelstrom of chaos.
Boom! Crack!
“Ugh!”
“What are you doing?! This is clearly obstruction of official duty—!”
“Official duty? You G.A.R.M rats dare speak of official duty?! Have you forgotten who stands behind us? Come to your senses! You parasites!”
Yu Hye-sung roared, precisely driving his foot into each incoming officer’s solar plexus and shattering their jaws.
In moments, three or four officers lay scattered across the marble floor with shattered limbs. Blood from others now speckled his knuckles.
It was the instant Yu Hye-sung stepped over the fallen and reached for the collar of what appeared to be the fifth officer, the commander of the group.
A sound like wind whistling through a crack.
Through the humid, fog-laden morning air, a sinister Aura slithered in like a serpent, making the spine crawl with dread.
The air grew heavy in an instant, and Yu Hye-sung’s movements dulled abruptly.
“—?!”
His pupils trembled minutely as he instinctively tried to twist his body away.
But a fraction faster, a copper-skinned fist erupted from the shadow-shrouded blind spot, reading his trajectory perfectly and crossing the space between them.
Thud—!!!
A dull, horrific impact that numbed the eardrums reverberated through the entire Annex Building with crushing weight. The sound was far too heavy and destructive to be mere metal and muscle colliding.
“Hye-sung!”
From the steps above, Association Chief Jung Eun-jin let out a piercing scream.
“Khh—aaaugh—!”
Yu Hye-sung, who moments before had dominated the officers and commanded the battlefield, now rolled back his eyes and wrapped both hands around his abdomen.
A thick clot of dark blood spilled from his mouth. His once-solid frame collapsed like an uprooted tree, lifeless against the floor.
A single blow.
The overwhelming destructive force of an A-rank combat hunter wrapped in Mana completely silenced by a single, perfect straight punch.
“That’s enough, Senior.”
Before Yu Hye-sung, who convulsed and spat blood.
A copper-skinned man with a close-cropped sports cut stood casually, rotating his wrist.
Though his frame appeared a head shorter than Yu Hye-sung’s, the dense, sinister pressure emanating from between his bones and muscle pressed down on the surrounding air, making breath itself difficult.
A hunting dog of the G.A.R.M Combat Division.
The Copper-skinned Man flicked blood droplets from Yu Hye-sung’s body off his black leather gloves onto the floor.
He opened his mouth toward the collapsed Jung Eun-jin, his voice stripped of emotion, cold and rasping.
“This is the last courtesy I extend to you as a senior. You’re aware better than anyone that further resistance is futile.”
The man’s voice carried an unpleasant metallic scrape, like grinding steel.
“From now on, we’ll exercise immediate lethal force under the charge of obstructing official duties. It won’t end with a few broken bones. Madam Director.”
“You bastard— don’t spout that garbage—! Eun-jin, the Director— you won’t lay a finger on them—!”
Yu Hye-sung clawed at the man’s pant leg with bloody hands, crawling across the marble floor despite the excruciating agony of ruptured organs. His fingernails scraped against the stone with a terrible, keening sound.
“No. Hye-sung, stop. It’s over.”
Her skeletal hand enfolded his trembling shoulders. To her, who had poured out her Sacred Power, the crisis before them loomed like an unstoppable tsunami.
If she resisted further, her subordinates would be butchered by those ruthless hounds—that much was certain. She reached that grim conclusion.
“I’ll go with you.”
Jung Eun-jin slowly closed her eyes and bowed her head.
“A wise decision. Then, we shall proceed.”
A bloody smile twisted the Copper-skinned Man’s lips. The instant he seized Jung Eun-jin’s arm and began dragging her away—
***
“Stop right there! Where are you taking the Director?! Put down Lee Do-hyun’s body right now!!!”
Kim Dae-han’s voice, trembling with rage, tore through the cold silence of dawn and shook the courtyard before the Annex Building.
The man’s brow furrowed deeply as he turned.
The eyes of Yu Hye-sung, who lay on the ground, and Jung Eun-jin, resigned to her fate, snapped toward us in unison.
In this desperate, humiliating instant—
I stepped out of the car and walked into their line of sight.
I walked forward without pause.
With each step, fresh information flooded my mind’s eye.
Yu Hye-sung, crawling across the ground in a pool of blood.
Director Jung Eun-jin’s bent back, moments before being dragged away, all resistance abandoned.
The hound, standing brazenly, his base and bestial Aura radiating without restraint.
And the black van’s trunk, already closing, its crude cargo—the body of a hero.
The intricate gears of logic that had been turning smoothly in my mind froze in an instant, grinding to a halt.
What filled that void instead was a pure, primal rage boiling up from the depths of my core like an active volcano.
Simple retaliation would not suffice.
Not a single one who had crossed this threshold would leave it alive without my permission.
I resolved to show them what terror felt like, to sear into them what they had touched.
I fixed my gaze slowly upon the man.
An invisible wave of Mana began to radiate from the ground beneath my feet, spreading across the earth to envelop the entire Annex Building.
I had decided.
Today, this place would become a tomb.

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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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