The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 59

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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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59
Chapter 59. The Traces of the War God
***
“What are you doing? Take off your glasses.”
The command was curt. And before that brief vibration even reached Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s eardrums through the air—
The atmosphere of the Front Courtyard of the Annex screamed in an instant. A deafening roar like a massive pressure cooker bursting under the strain of its own steam.
From the feet of both Bae Hyeon-gyeom and myself, Aura surged upward and collided head-on to claim a single point in the void.
The marble floor splintered like a spider’s web at the collision point. The scattered stone dust rose slowly into the air as if suspended in weightlessness.
The Management Bureau agents surrounding the area couldn’t withstand that terrible pressure and retreated, pressing their hands to their ears.
Some lost their footing entirely and tumbled across the ground in an ungainly heap.
Through the veil of dust, Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s eyes gleamed with an icy light.
Without question, among all the Hunters I’d faced since the Regression, none possessed such complete martial prowess as this man.
The force he emanated was not merely vast in quantity. It was an essence of pure violence—compressed to the extreme, honed razor-sharp, refined solely for killing.
……
Bae Hyeon-gyeom didn’t respond to my provocation. Not the slightest tremor of emotion, not even a flicker of his eyelids. He dropped into a low, bestial stance and moved with a light step.
The sole of his shoe struck the ground with a soft sound that rang quietly through the still courtyard. It was only an instant.
The afterimage that had been burned into my vision blurred, and his upper body coiled like a spring, launching backward to open distance in a flash.
As he retreated, his right shoulder wound back taut as a bowstring.
What followed was acceleration like that of a projectile. Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s right fist drew a straight line, surging toward my face.
‘Fast.’
My shock was brief; my body was already reacting.
Bae Hyeon-gyeom was a relentlessly rational predator. He even used the very ripple created by his Aura’s collision as a veil to conceal his movements.
Rather than being swept up in provocation and losing his composure, he struck with surgical precision at the mere 0.1-second opening where his opponent’s vision wavered.
The trajectory was simple and direct, but its speed had long ago transcended the limits of visual perception.
The friction heat generated as his fist tore through the air felt as though it was singeing my cheek.
Crack!!
I raised the scabbard of the Dragon Head Sword and blocked it across my front.
The instant his fist met the scabbard, a shockwave like an explosion tore through my entire body.
The kinetic energy that should have dissipated through the soles of my feet into the ground failed to escape in time, and the floor around my shins buckled under the force.
I dragged Mana up from deep within my dantian, rough and violent.
‘Magic Shield.’
In that fractional moment of impact, instead of deploying a grand protective barrier around my entire body, I spread Mana thinly, coating it between my organs and bones like a membrane.
A 1st Circle application technique that deflects the path of impact.
The Dragon Head Sword’s scabbard blocked the physical trajectory. But Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s violence didn’t end at the surface of the blow.
The Aura wave radiating from the end of his fist had the property of penetrating and passing through solid defense.
The vibration traveled through my bones, trying to burrow into my heart.
If I hadn’t deployed Mana beforehand to disperse the internal impact, my ribs would have lost their form by now, my lungs would have been pulped meat, and I’d be spitting blood from my mouth.
A defensive technique often used by Hunter Yidohyeon. When blocking attacks that look fine on the surface but rot you from within, there’s no more efficient method. And I’d learned it well, having recently been on the receiving end.
“Blocking without even drawing the blade from its scabbard.”
Bae Hyeon-gyeom withdrew his fist, thumbing lightly at the knuckles that had flushed crimson. His voice carried a chilling bloodlust.
“Are you underestimating me? Or have you lost your mind?”
“Let’s say it’s both.”
I rotated my tingling wrist lightly and replied without inflection. Traces of his Aura that clung to the scabbard’s tip scattered as sparks.
Whoosh—
Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s stance shifted. The position of his feet, set front and back, crossed in an odd, syncopated rhythm. An asymmetrical stance with his right foot forward and left foot back.
‘Southpaw.’
The stance of a left-handed boxer.
The War God, Bae Hyeon-gyeom, had been a finished weapon even before his Awakening.
He was a man who had reached the pinnacle of the professional boxing stage, holding an undefeated record as he pushed human physical limits to their absolute extreme.
Then he received the Mana from the Gate and equipped himself with the transcendent engine called Aura.
Not merely a Hunter. He was closer to a precision machine designed for killing—technology and Mana fused into one.
In the previous world, he had earned his name as the youngest A-Rank Hunter in Korea, succeeding Sword Saint Kang Tae-yoon.
But behind that brilliant fame lay a strange ten-year void. The public believed he had departed for secluded training, but the truth was different.
The figure standing before me now. Years spent as the Management Bureau’s “hunting dog,” eliminating the government’s enemies in darkness.
The proof of that erased record was woven into every motion of his body.
Tap—tap!—
A rhythm that allowed no moment for thought. As Aura erupted like sparks from the tip of Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s leading foot, his form slid across the ground toward me.
An Aura Step so eerily smooth it nullified friction with the earth itself.
He drove his leading foot deep into my blind spot—the outside angle of a right-hander.
Just as my vision turned right to follow his movement, an enormous hook like a lump of iron came flying at my jaw from the invisible flank.
Crash—!!
“You, this bastard······.”
For the first time, a note of confusion crept into Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s voice.
A flawless ambush aimed at a blind spot he couldn’t see.
It was the kind of timing that would have sent an ordinary Hunter’s head clean off, but my Dragon Head Sword’s scabbard was already blocking the trajectory, as though it had predicted his fist’s path.
This wasn’t the realm of calculation.
It was instinct—etched into my body and honed through tens of thousands of real engagements—reading the strike point from nothing but his muscle contractions and the shift of his center of gravity.
I bled the defensive impact down through my heel while driving the scabbard forward, elevating the tempo of my counterattack.
‘Energy Bolt Slash.’
I gathered Mana from the Energy Bolt, the fastest-casting among basic 1st Circle spells. But I didn’t release it outward.
Instead, I condensed it into an impossibly thin, razor-sharp film of high-pressure Mana across the scabbard’s surface. A method that married the explosive propulsion of magic with the centrifugal force of the blade.
An incongruous fusion of sorcery and swordplay, designed solely for absolute destruction.
Whoosh—!
A cry like a scream split the air. My horizontal slash, born from my waist, traced a vast arc and drove straight into Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s unguarded flank.
Crack!
With a dull, shattering sound, his suit jacket tore grotesquely. His body, having absorbed the blow, staggered back a good three paces.
“······.”
Bae Hyeon-gyeom furrowed his brow and tore away the tattered scraps of his shirt. Between the ripped fabric, bronze skin gleamed.
Upon it writhed deformed abdominal muscles that seemed armored like a steel plate.
But it wasn’t his physique that held my attention.
My scabbard had struck directly below his ribs, yet not a single bruise marked his skin.
Not a drop of blood spilled—only the cloth was torn, a strange and telling absence of injury.
‘Bestial instinct.’
A mirage-like ripple of Aura was blooming and fading across the surface of his flank.
A true slash wrapped in Energy Bolt cannot be evaded—the speed makes it impossible.
Bae Hyeon-gyeom had read it on instinct. In the instant before my blade touched him, he’d detonated his entire Aura into a single point of impact.
He’d layered compressed “airbags” of Aura between muscle and skin, absorbing and rebounding the shock.
A divine technique—impossible to attempt without the dynamic vision to read an opponent’s timing in advance, and the control to manipulate Aura like water.
The principle was identical to the internal defensive magic I’d just deployed.
In a single exchange, he’d learned my countermethod and adapted it as his own.
This man wasn’t merely strong. He was a genius born for combat itself.
Bae Hyeon-gyeom flexed his tingling fists and growled.
“What the hell are you? A swordsman, or a mage?”
“Why not find out by taking a few more hits?”
I let the blade’s tip drop to the ground and smiled coldly. I needed to goad him. Openings came when composure cracked.
“All mouth, then.”
Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s expression twisted savagely.
Bang—!
The marble floor shattered as his body exploded forward again. This time, no probing.
He would give me no time to cast, no minimum space to secure a sword trajectory. Pure will.
He came at me in a suffocating close-range assault, utterly merciless.
His fists tore through the air, alternating at my face and solar plexus. I used the Dragon Head Sword’s scabbard as a shield, slipped his strikes by mere inches, and stepped backward.
‘Here it comes.’
His left shoulder jerked high. A sharp left jab, cutting toward my jaw.
A feint. Bait to draw my eyes upward and force my guard.
I didn’t bat the incoming fist away. Instead, I twisted my head slightly. The punch slid smoothly past my left shoulder.
Even the wind of its passage stung my cheek—the force was immense.
As expected, his true weapon was crouching below, on the right, then exploded upward with vicious intent.
Screech—!!
A hook detonating from the blind spot of my vision. An ultimate counter, his hips rotating, all his body weight—a full hundred percent—driving the blow.
It came as though it would shatter my sternum and pierce clean through my spine.
But I didn’t dodge. I gripped the Dragon Head Sword with both hands, raising it from its hanging position.
‘Point Detonation.’
I recalled that sensation from the Club Arabian—the hyper-focus that only emerges in extreme duress. I relaxed the muscles of both arms gripping the scabbard to their absolute limit.
An instant before his fist touched my sleeve, I tilted the broad face of the scabbard and rested it lightly across his punch’s trajectory.
Bang—!
In the moment fist and scabbard collided, I didn’t meet his overwhelming forward momentum head-on.
Instead, I followed the flow of his force, rotating the blade in a smooth circle and shunted the trajectory downward.
His fist slid across my defense and shot downward into empty space, driving toward the floor. His upper body lurched forward, exposing a defenseless instant.
I drove the Aura I’d been holding in my lower Dantian into the scabbard’s edge, compressing it to its absolute limit.
‘Breaker.’
The blade’s trajectory, which had flowed with fluid grace, suddenly hardened like steel—rigid, unyielding. Then it bent sharply downward.
The Swordmaster’s finishing technique: concealing speed, maximizing mass.
An overwhelmingly downward slash descended without mercy—like an entire mountain of stone crashing down—toward the defenseless man’s right arm, now left exposed and hanging.
***
CRASH—!!!
The dust cloud that had blanketed the courtyard settled slowly. Through the lingering haze, a devastated scene came into view.
Bae Hyeon-gyeom stared blankly down at his own right hand, his eyes hollow and unfocused. His arm lay buried deep in the marble floor, which had caved inward like a crater.
“……I can’t believe it.”
The shock ran deeper than the bone-crushing agony.
The perfect counter he had spent his entire life perfecting—shattered in such a bizarre, overwhelming manner. That fact alone was unraveling the very core of Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s reason.
A blunt-force killing strike driven downward—channeling the kinetic energy of a powerful hook into vertical impact. Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s composed expression twisted grotesquely into humiliation and horror.
I watched coldly as he thrashed, trying desperately to wrench his buried arm free. I exhaled a heavy breath and forced my trembling fingers to steady.
I’ll be honest about it.
Had the old me before Regression—nothing but the hollow shell of a 9th Circle Archmage—faced the Bae Hyeon-gyeom of today, I would have been on my back, jaw shattered, rolling across the ground before I could even unfurl a single spell.
Even now, I was wringing Kang Tae-yoon’s physical abilities and the Circle’s computational power to their absolute limits. It was the closest call I’d had since the Regression.
He was no mere pushover of an opponent.
And yet the reason I felt not a single tremor of unease before this monstrous force was simple.
I knew the combat mechanics of the man called Bae Hyeon-gyeom better than anyone else in this world.
The timing of his muscle contractions, the rhythm of his breath, even the stubborn habits that erupted in moments of crisis.
The reason was clear.
In the distant future, Bae Hyeon-gyeom—degraded into a monster, his reason lost to the drug called Booster.
I was the one who hunted that madman for three days and nights without rest, clashed with him thousands of times, and finally drove magic into his heart and burned him to death.
I had already ground that man to dust once before.
I adjusted my grip on the Dragon Head Sword. Fear was not mine to claim.
It was only a feeling Bae Hyeon-gyeom would come to taste from this moment forward.

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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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