The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 60

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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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60
Chapter 60. The Deterrent
***
Bae Hyun-gyeom’s shoulders trembled faintly as he stared down at his right hand buried in the floor. The tremor was not merely physical pain.
It was the instinctive shudder a warrior feels before overwhelming, unanticipated force—or perhaps something more grotesque still.
I pressed down the fragments of old, damp memory that writhed from deep within.
Watching the shattered bone joints in my field of vision and the pale Aura hovering around them, I dragged past data one by one to the surface of consciousness.
The reason I could block his relentless assault so perfectly, without even a single breath falling out of rhythm, was crystal clear.
It was not because I merely possessed the advantage of the Regression, nor was it simply a matter of level.
‘Bae Hyun-gyeom, the God of Combat.’
I drew my chin down slightly, lowering my gaze. My eyes fixed on his crown showed no emotion whatsoever.
Before the Regression, the man I remembered was not dressed in a neat suit like this, a bureaucrat.
The forbidden drug called Purple—the final evolutionary form of Booster.
After his brain and core had been perfectly pickled in that demonic drug, a terrible Demon Beast had torn through the husk of human reason and erupted forth.
That was the true essence of Bae Hyun-gyeom as I remembered him.
I recall that monster at a massive Gate in the heart of the city, shredding both the endless stream of monsters and human Hunters indiscriminately.
His entire body was grotesquely swollen with purple veins protruding, and each arm he swung possessed destructive force equal to the main cannon of a tank.
It was the Blade Guild that undertook a national disaster request to subjugate that monstrosity.
I remember that hellish raid vividly. At the front lines, Kang Tae-yoon held that overwhelming pressure with his sword, drawing aggression.
Countless Guild members threw their lives into closing the encirclement against his erratic movements.
And there, in the midst of that chaos, the architect who dissected and analyzed every combat pattern of that monster down to the millimeter, controlling it all—was me, the Vice Guild Master.
The shift in center of gravity hidden beneath fluid weight transfer, the microscopic contraction of shoulder muscles before the fist extended, the trajectory of that bizarre Aura step carving through blind spots.
All that data of carnage was etched into my mind like a simulation.
Even the sensation in my final moment—driving Hellfire into his hollow chest and incinerating him to ash—remained vivid in the palm of my hand.
So what of this Bae Hyun-gyeom before me now, late twenties, still naive?
Ten years hence, his raw power was less than one-tenth of that overwhelming, despairing ‘Demon Beast Bae Hyun-gyeom.’
An amateur’s movements—refined on the surface but clumsy underneath, powerful-seeming but full of gaps.
My mind was already reading his habits, my body anticipating his attack trajectories.
The probability that I would allow a direct hit from this boy’s fist converged mathematically on zero.
“If you want to keep going, fine.”
I adjusted my grip lightly on the Yongdu Sword’s scabbard. The metal sheath made a dull friction sound in my hand.
My dry voice cut through the cold dawn air and dug into his ears.
“But you know what this means.”
I said no more. A silent judgment: you can never surpass me.
Thick veins bulged across the knuckles of Bae Hyun-gyeom’s hand pressed against the ground.
He ignored the pain in his broken right arm, shifting his weight onto his intact left arm, and slowly rose to his feet.
He brushed the dust from his knees with a soft sound, and the humiliation and confusion that had been on his face moments before had vanished.
What replaced it was an eerie composure.
“I acknowledge it.”
What was terrifying about Bae Hyun-gyeom was precisely this. He acknowledged the objective gap in power that the exchange had revealed.
Yet his muscles and skeleton, rather than accepting defeat, burned with an even more savage heat, hungering for combat.
Bae Hyun-gyeom wiped away the blood seeping through his torn lips with the back of his hand. His eyes behind his glasses began to change.
“You’re strong. Different from what I saw on the news.”
He could have known and stepped back. I had neither the leisure nor justification for this tedious, meaningless war of attrition.
Yet Bae Hyun-gyeom did not withdraw. Instead, his eyes began to narrow like a serpent’s.
His pupils clouded, and within them rose pure elation aimed only at slaughter and struggle.
Not fear of the opponent’s strength, but the eyes of a true combat fanatic—each cell of his body awakening, relishing the sensation before a greater violence that crushed him.
I genuinely despise that type.
Not the realistic hunger for honor, power, or money, but that irrational thirst fixated solely on breaking his own limits and growing stronger.
That relentless instinct would eventually be the root cause that, ten years from now, would drive him to inject Purple-grade Booster directly into his own veins.
“I understand your position as a Hunter in the Ability Management Team, but I’m also carrying out official duties.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom let his broken right arm hang like a dead branch, extending his intact left arm diagonally forward. His stance dropped to an extreme center of gravity.
The Aura pouring from his body began to sharpen.
“You must have your reasons for not backing down either. But I have mine as well. The Department Chief’s orders are absolute.”
It was blind obedience—the perfect logic of a hunting dog that, when a command is issued, tears at its target without considering whether its own body shatters.
‘A waste.’
I clicked my tongue softly in my mind.
The tragedy of this world was that someone with such remarkable physical talent and unbreakable resolve should languish for ten long years without seeing light, reduced to dirty cleanup work under the Gate Management Bureau, rotting away.
Perhaps his later turn to the forbidden drug was itself a choice forced upon him at a cliff’s edge—the result of being used and discarded like a consumable by corrupt bureaucrats during those empty years.
But regardless of his circumstances, I had no intention of yielding this line by even a single millimeter.
Behind me stands Jung Eun-jin, the Association President, who sacrificed her own lifespan to save Lee Do-hyun.
And there is Lee Do-hyun’s body, lying cold and holding the key to all these twisted truths.
The moment I retreat and open the way for them, everything I’ve built up until now will crumble like a sandcastle.
Shring—
The blade of the Yongdu Sword sang through the dimly lit dawn air, sliding free from its scabbard. The cool metallic rasp pressed heavy upon the Annex Building courtyard.
I drew the blade, gleaming white as fresh snow, and leveled it diagonally toward the empty air.
“Losing an arm won’t be the end of it. Don’t hold it against me.”
“I don’t mind. An injury sustained in the line of duty is a medal of honor.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom twisted the corner of his mouth and jerked his chin forward.
Kang Tae-min, whose eyes had once shone bright at the playground as he dreamed of becoming a hunter—and this Bae Hyun-gyeom here, heedless of his own crumbling body, throwing himself at combat like a man possessed.
I couldn’t fathom where everyone in this world found such unshakeable madness.
Crackling—!!
The Aura enveloping Bae Hyun-gyeom’s left arm suddenly flared savage and wild. It was nothing like the honest, textbook flow he’d shown until now.
The currents pouring from his shoulder muscle split into two streams, then twisted grotesquely like a spiral before beginning to rotate at ultrahigh speed.
A towering Drill.
The density of the rotating Aura compressed to the absolute limit, congealing entirely at the tip of his fist.
The air shrieked as it was torn asunder, and pressure near-vacuum formed around his knuckles.
My eyes narrowed to sharp slits. I knew exactly what that technique was.
The killing strike that Bae Hyun-gyeom, when he’d transformed into a Demon Beast in some future moment, had poured every ounce of his life force into—to break through Kang Tae-yoon’s Absolute Barrier in his final instant.
A technique that layered the rotational force of Aura to its absolute limit atop the simple, honest trajectory of a straight punch, shattering every physical and magical defense system.
Though the Bae Hyun-gyeom of now couldn’t muster the catastrophic output of his Demon Beast days, the essential destructive mechanism of that technique was genuine.
If that blind mass of a fist stretched forth unchecked, no amount of training could defend against it through simple blocking alone.
Then compromise was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Before his fist punched through my defenses, I had to crush him with overwhelming mass and firepower.
“Airi.”
I murmured softly into the void.
“Remove output limiters. Boost to thirty percent.”
[Command acknowledged.]
[Limiter disengaged. Mana circuits opening.]
[Output elevated to thirty percent.]
[No calibration needed, correct?]
“Of course not.”
The moment Airi’s voice rang out, my suppressed heartbeat erupted into frenzied pumping.
The blood vessels near my chest swelled as if about to burst, and my entire nervous system sharpened to a razor’s edge.
Right after the Regression, when I’d wielded crude Circle-level Mana, pushing Kang Tae-yoon’s Aura output above twenty percent would have been suicide.
Anything further and the Mana backlash would have ruptured every vessel in my body.
Things were different now.
My level had soared past twenty, sweeping through the hellish environment of the Outbreak-type Gate, and through harsh training with Charles, my muscle fibers had adapted perfectly to the explosive expansion of Aura.
More than anything, through deep meditation at the Altar, my core had already crossed the threshold of the Second Circle and completed its expansion.
‘[Synchronization].’
A colossal tsunami of Aura, transcending all limits, cascaded down like a waterfall onto the blade of the Yongdu Sword.
The marble floor around me couldn’t withstand the abnormal weight my Aura exuded and crumbled like sand, sinking away.
‘If he’s destined to degrade and fall to Boosters anyway.’
The thought flashed through my mind—perhaps the mercy for Bae Hyun-gyeom would be to sever him cleanly now, while he still held on to his human self, rather than let him become a Purple monster and tear innocent people apart in some future atrocity.
My consciousness sank into deep abyss. The enormous mana tree of my unique trait, [Tree of Sephiroth], rooted deep in my mind, blazed with radiant light.
Three small branches of the tree wove together organically, merging into a single thick bough.
‘[Fire], [Wind], [Lightning].’
Three Circle-level spells of different natures fused into one beneath my control, without collision.
They coiled like flash-light along the sword blade, igniting bizarre violet flames.
Triple Chanting—the Second Circle core in my dantian screamed as it spun taut.
The destructive force condensed in my grip was rising far beyond the common sense of an A-rank Hunter.
Yes.
I was truly about to cut that blind hound down.
“Kraaaagh—!!”
Bae Hyun-gyeom roared like a beast and kicked off the ground, launching forward. The concrete beneath his feet shattered into fragments, scattering in all directions.
His rotating left fist punched through the resistance of space, driving straight toward my solar plexus.
I too pulled my right foot back, anchoring myself firmly to the ground. It was the very moment I was about to unleash the full force of the tri-elemental point-blank slash condensed on the Yongdu Sword.
“Stop! Bae Hyun-gyeom, halt at once!”
A thunderous roar tore through the tense killing intent of the courtyard. Simultaneously, a man with an enormous frame burst from the direction of the collapsed stairwell.
He threw himself directly into the middle of Bae Hyun-gyeom’s linear trajectory.
“Bae Hyun-gyeom, situation is over! Gate Management Bureau orders—stand down!”
The shout was urgent and heavy.
Remarkably, at those words alone, Bae Hyun-gyeom’s charge—thunderous as a runaway locomotive—froze dead in its tracks.
Blood trickled from his lips as the recoil from forcibly dispersing the Aura in his extended fist rippled through him, yet he swiftly lowered his stance and bent his knees.
“…Understood, sir.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom bowed his head. A beast frenzied by slaughter, perfectly controlled by a single word from its master.
It inspired less awe than a creeping, alien dread.
But unlike Bae Hyun-gyeom, the trajectory of ruin gripped in my hand had no reason to stop. Cessation by intervention does not exist in my lexicon.
Who dares halt my trigger?
“It’s all over! Lower your weapon!”
The broad-shouldered man who had wedged himself between Bae Hyun-gyeom and me threw his arms wide, his angular jaw and the jagged scar bisecting his face sharp with alarm.
By Bae Hyun-gyeom’s reaction, this man was surely the Gate Management Bureau’s chief field officer—his direct superior.
The first face I’d encountered since my Regression. My mental database held no information on this man.
Which meant I had no reason to trust him, and no reason to obey his words.
“Why should I believe you?”
***
I did not halt the Yongdu Sword’s descent. I merely altered the target’s position by the slightest degree.
Crash-!!!!
I did not turn this place into a slaughterhouse.
Instead of driving the blade downward at Bae Hyun-gyeom where he stood, I swung the Yongdu Sword toward the empty, desolate ruins to the left of the Annex Building.
Shrieeeek—
The world dissolved into white light and ringing silence.
From the sword’s edge erupted a convergence of flame, lightning, and hyper-compressed wind—a triple-layered slash that carpet-bombed the courtyard before the Annex, obliterating everything in its path.
“Everyone down! Shockwave incoming!”
The man’s frantic cry was swallowed by the colossal detonation. The earth heaved as though seized by an earthquake, accompanied by a roar that seemed to split eardrums.
The massive concrete sculptures and landscaping trees that had stood in the slash’s wake atomized in an instant, evaporating into ash.
As the blast’s fury gradually subsided and the dust clouds dispersed on the pre-dawn wind.
A perfect, suffocating silence descended upon the Annex courtyard.
“This… this is insane!”
“Ugh… ugh…”
The Gate Management Bureau’s personnel and the Hunter Association’s guards—all of them stood hollow-eyed, staring numbly at the path my slash had carved.
Where empty ruins had been, a crater dozens of meters across gaped in blackened silence, exhaling smoke.
The earth’s surface had melted in the heat, now smooth and glassy as obsidian, while ionized ozone saturated the air.
Before such overwhelming destructive force, even Bae Hyun-gyeom—who had been charging forward so aggressively mere moments before—stood rigid, speechless.
This is why magic is efficient. Pure physical impact alone cannot conjure such overwhelming visual terror as a wide-area technique.
The gorgeous, cruel explosion of multi-aspected magic is the perfect tool for shattering an opponent’s will to fight—a demonstration of power and performance in one.
This is my Deterrent.
An absolute warning: should anyone dare to seize my leash under the guise of authority, I can blow this entire wretched game board to pieces whenever I choose.
Before my Regression, I was a puppet dangling from the System’s strings, dancing on the stage others had built for me.
That is no longer the case. I will not move to anyone’s design again.
I rotated the Yongdu Sword slowly and brought its blade beneath the Department Chief’s jaw—still rigid with shock.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
“Are you threatening me?”
The man’s voice quavered slightly. I flicked a residual spark from the blade’s edge, letting it crack audibly as I replied.
“If a single word of nonsense escapes that tongue.”
I met his eyes directly.
“This time, I’ll really send it right over your heads.”

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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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