The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 63

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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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63
Episode 63. Eye of Lucifuge
***
Everything in existence possesses a Hidden Side.
Where light shatters brightest, an equally deep shadow inevitably pools; beneath the earth where life blooms resplendent, the seeds of decay root themselves in secret. The laws of the cosmos roll forward sometimes with a cruelty so perfect it maintains an absolute duality.
That deceptive natural order which accepts someone’s sacrifice or fall as inevitable, simply to maintain balance.
Yet there exists a being whose duality is so virulent, so paradoxical, that it renders even that vast cosmic law colorless.
Humanity.
Imperfect shells that mimic the sublimity of saints burning themselves to save others, only to eagerly plunge into the abyss of demons, detonating the detonators of their own kin without hesitation for the smallest gain in their palm.
I have witnessed the depths of humanity far too many times.
Once a perfect metaphysical concept that created life, the Tree of Sephiroth.
When that sublime being drifted formless through the universe’s aether, it surely remained immaculate.
But the moment it was sealed into my body under the name “Unique Trait,” and took on physical form, absolute balance began to warp.
The vessel called human.
It was the result of a noble characteristic, in real time, exposed to the innate and vicious imperfection of my flesh and the shallow malice it carried.
When I grew close to the threshold of the 9th Circle in my past life, the shadow hanging from my back had likewise grown vast and dark enough to reach the very bottom of the abyss.
The stronger the radiance, the more grotesque the darkness of its Hidden Side becomes.
The only logic that can explain this strange phenomenon unfolding before my eyes now is precisely that.
“This… what is this space?”
Crimson roots thrust up through the cold tiles of the Medical Office floor. Between those grotesque growths, Ryu Gang-jin’s rough metallic voice cut through.
The unit commander, feeling instinctive threat, attempted to close the distance toward me. But his thick military boots did not lift even a single step from the ground.
Rather, they could not. Black shadows of Qliphoth crawling like cobwebs across the floor wound around Ryu Gang-jin’s ankles like shackles, holding them fast.
Even the overwhelming force this iron mass boasted was reduced to a bound spectator before this grotesque abyss-like quagmire.
Black mana climbing up his ankles spread like capillaries, physically sealing his movements.
“I cannot move. Is this your space?”
I did not answer. It would be more accurate to say I had no leisure to answer.
[Unique Domain]
To manifest the forbidden ritual of Qliphoth in reality requires a perfectly severed phase and extreme concentration.
The mental burden generated during the process of honing mana with precision reaches dozens of times that of ordinary magic.
Deploying this trait in the variable-ridden interior of actual Gates or bloodstained real combat is nothing short of suicide.
A savage risk. Yet despite that, the significance held by an Archmage’s Unique Domain remains absolute.
Once conditions are met and the domain successfully manifests, the physical laws of this space and the flow of mana fall entirely under the caster’s control.
The direction of gravity, the density of oxygen, even the passage of time itself can be subtly distorted—absolute sovereignty.
Within this severed obsidian sanctuary, I alone was creator and sovereign.
Screeeech—
A bone-chilling friction tore through the murky air of the Medical Office, shredding it to ribbons.
The grotesque branches of Qliphoth, grown in reverse direction, cascaded like a waterfall across empty space onto the stainless steel bed.
The cold metallic bed could not withstand the pressure of wooden roots and twisted with a sound like a scream.
The crimson branches moved with serpentine fluidity, like starving snakes, coiling around Lee Do-hyeon’s cold corpse.
The muted crunch of joints bending unnaturally, of bone striking bone, shattered the silence.
The dead flesh was lifted grotesquely into the air like a marionette with cut strings.
The limbs seized by rigor mortis were forcibly extended by the delicate branches—a sight too grotesque to witness.
“Kim Do-jin!”
From Ryu Gang-jin’s lips, watching that grotesque spectacle, burst at last a thunderous roar.
The man’s thick neck swelled as if it might burst, and his restrained legs scraped the floor as his muscles convulsed as though about to tear.
“Tell me it isn’t what I think it is. If you’re summoning the spirits of the dead by force—Necromancy—then stop this instant! Desecrating the peace of the dead is no act a human should commit!”
In his eyes, I must have appeared a mad black mage crossing into forbidden territory.
I moved slowly toward the suspended corpse of Lee Do-hyeon.
With each step, the black liquid pooling on the floor rippled, spreading in all directions. I answered in a dry voice.
“It is not such crude sorcery.”
My gaze fixed on the space between the corpse’s brows.
“I harbor no perverse appetite for enslaving the dead as undead. I will not sully the honor of Hunter Lee Do-hyeon.”
This was not base black magic that manipulates corpses.
One of the essential powers of the Death Tree, Qliphoth.
Prying open the gaps of Causality, forcibly scraping together the fragments of residual thoughts imprinted in the mind of the departed—merely the vicious process of Reverse Calculation.
The act of rewinding the trajectory of time already passed, ignoring even death’s absolute severance.
I fixed my gaze upon Lee Do-hyeon’s brow suspended in empty space, and began to weave Hand Seals with all ten fingers of both hands in geometric configurations.
Whoosh. Whoooosh.
Twelve complex Hand Seals were completed at a pace that felt as though bone joints might shatter.

From my dantian, a pitch-black aura surged in reverse, racing through my veins and coalescing fiercely at my fingertips.
The ends of my fingers burned hot from the friction, and the air reeked of scorching heat.
I stretched my hand toward Lee Do-hyeon’s corpse and invoked the name that lay sleeping in the deepest reaches of the abyss—the key that opens the gates of hell.
“Lucifuge.”
Rumble-rumble-rumble—!!
The entire Medical Office shook violently, as though struck by an earthquake.
In the corner of the room where Qliphoth’s shadow fell darkest, the fabric of empty space tore open like a gaping maw.
Through the rift poured the acrid stench of sulfur and the reek of putrid blood, fouling the air of reality itself.
Clawing through that chasm came a grotesque shape—three massive horns sprouting from its form.
A demon: the upper body of a man grafted obscenely onto the lower half of a goat.
Its entire frame wrapped tight in chains of rust-red black, the executor of punishment.
Before the regression, I had summoned this creature only once, when interrogating the apostles of the demon lord.
Even after all this time, facing it again filled me with dry heaves—it radiated an aura so vicious and overwhelming that it made my skin crawl.
Mere appearance of Lucifuge sent the temperature in the Medical Office plummeting, and a pale frost began to gather on the walls.
Clank.
Clank.
Dragging its chains, Lucifuge approached and slowly lowered its massive knee before me. Where the demon’s breath touched the floor, it blackened and corroded away to ash.
I gazed down at the crown of the demon’s head with cold indifference and issued my command.
“Reveal what is hidden.”
My fingertip pointed toward Lee Do-hyeon’s corpse, suspended in the void.
“Lay it bare.”
Shriek-shriek-shriek—!!
The moment my command fell, Lucifuge let out an ear-splitting wail and spread both arms wide.
The black chains that bound the demon’s entire body shot forth like living organisms, winding around Lee Do-hyeon’s hanging corpse without a gap.
As the chains bit into the flesh and synchronized perfectly with the corpse, a strange harmonic resonance echoed through the air.
The third eye, split vertically down the middle of Lucifuge’s brow, snapped open and blazed forth an ominous, blood-red flash.
Brilliant burst—!!
The instant that searing light struck my retinas, the entire landscape of the underground Medical Office shattered completely from my vision.
Ceiling, walls, and floor fragmented into countless shards and sank into the abyss.
The sensation of consciousness being sucked into a massive vortex.
And beyond my pitch-black field of vision, the fragmented afterimages of the past began replaying at terrifying speed.
Lucifuge is, by nature, the Concealer.
A demon that shrouds the world’s truths, conjuring deception and illusion to ensnare mortals.
And by bending such a creature to my will, I become the inverse—the one who unseals what is hidden.
When my conviction that something ‘is concealed’ aligns with the actual truth, I can use this demon’s eye to forcibly expose that hidden layer of reality.
This is the principle of truth-revealing that Qliphoth possesses.
The complex web of causality that unfolds in that process remains a black box even to my pre-regression self—entirely beyond interpretation.
I merely accept the results intuitively.
***
‘I’m in.’
I am now frenziedly excavating eight years of erased memory buried deep within Lee Do-hyeon’s mind.
I forcibly reassembled the electrical signals etched into every corner of his neurons, rendering them into images.
[······.]
[······System······collapse······will······begin······.]
The violence of the visual information battering my retinas made me swallow a moan I couldn’t suppress.
It was not mere watching. The terror, the pain, the loss that Lee Do-hyeon experienced at that moment flowed directly into my nervous system.
Lee Do-hyeon’s cerebral cortex had been completely burned out by the high-density mana reversal at the moment of death. There should be no intact memory data remaining.
Lucifuge’s power was forcibly stitching together those charred remnants, constructing a virtual screen.
It was like thousands of ancient cathode-ray televisions flooded my vision, each spewing a different feed and vicious static with manic intensity.
The shattered fragments of Lee Do-hyeon’s memory synchronized forcibly with my neural pathways, shredding my optic nerve to tatters.
With each flash across my eyes came a stabbing pain as though my brain were being pierced by needles.
Drip.
Dark red blood burst from my right nostril and ran down my jawline.
It was proof that my mind was beginning to overload, unable to withstand this overwhelming deluge of information.
My mana circuits screamed in agony, and the mana stored in my core burned ferociously, scraping bottom. Every muscle in my body convulsed and trembled.
But I could not stop here. I had to locate that final minute before the cerebral cortex burned away completely, all while maintaining Lucifuge’s chains.
All the truth would be contained in that single minute.
‘Find it······ just a little deeper······.’
Clenching my teeth, I drove my consciousness deeper into the noise of the shattered monitors. I pushed the speed of thought to its absolute limit.
Assembling the scattered pieces demanded a precision that surpassed assembling clock parts by hand.
Crack-crack! Burst!
Through thousands of grayscale screens, Lee Do-hyeon’s past flickered past like fragments of broken glass.
He had been a brilliant hero in this world-line, just as he had been in the previous world where I once lived.
Flashes of him as a Hunter at the Academy, mentoring younger students with a gentle smile; commanding the front lines with overwhelming magic, subjugating countless Gates with authoritative bearing—all of it swept past like lightning.
I brushed aside those meaningless records of glory with a rough gesture, pushing the speed of my calculation forward, racing toward only the moment when the incident began.
Useless memories were discarded without hesitation.
[······If the Guild System continues like this, there will be serious problems. This isn’t mutual benefit—it’s assimilation.]
One noisy screen froze in an instant.
A younger Lee Do-hyeon, face flushed with anger, shouting at someone. His eyes burned with resolve for a greater cause.
[The Association can’t handle this crisis anymore! What they want isn’t order—it’s control!]
The face of the other person was not visible.
As if someone had deliberately erased the memory, the silhouette was blurred black, and the voice sounded like mechanically distorted audio.
But Lee Do-hyeon’s rage came through vivid and clear.
[That’s forbidden territory! Artificial control? Gates are dimensional collisions.]
[We have too many variables we can’t control! This will only bring catastrophe!]
Eight years ago, he had already sensed and warned someone about attempts to artificially manipulate Gates.
It was the beginning of a massive conspiracy that would shake the very foundations of this world.
[I’m done here. I have no intention of taking part in your ambitions.]
Lee Do-hyeon turned away, papers falling from his hands, his face lonely. Did he know that what he was surrendering was not his position, but his own life?
[I’m leaving. I’m withdrawing from this sordid scheme.]
Was this Lee Do-hyeon from when he was leaving the Academy, or perhaps the Association?
Important information shadowed by a massive conspiracy—but if I lingered here much longer, both Lee Do-hyeon’s remaining brain cells and my own optic nerves would burst simultaneously.
I forcefully turned the screens, wrenching the timeline forward.
[······!!]
Vision lurched violently.
Lee Do-hyeon heading toward the Gate entrance. An ambush by masked villain Hunters in a dark alley unfolded in vivid first-person perspective.
Even the cold night air and the metallic stench of blood seemed palpable.
Aura strikes pouring in from all sides. A body collapsing helplessly.
[This… this can’t be······!]
Around the neck of the fallen Lee Do-hyeon, a cyan Mana Choker vibrating with crimson force was forcibly clamped in place.
The cool sensation of metal tightening around the throat and the pain of Mana being violently suppressed created an illusion that my own neck was being strangled.
And.
From that moment onward, Lee Do-hyeon’s vision was filled with nothing but endless grayscale noise and silence.
Eight years of hellish time—brainwashed, his consciousness stripped away, enslaved to an incubation-stage Gate.
The man once called a hero was raised like a beast; in that terrible void, no visual information, no emotion was recorded.
Only endless darkness and emptiness filled the abyss of memory.
Just as I was rewinding that tedious, horrific grayscale film at terrifying speed.
Burst—!
At last the noise cleared, and perfectly clear color vision filled my retinas.
A familiar landscape. A pristine white ceiling and the cold glow of fluorescent lights. The sharp sting of disinfectant in the air.
Right here where I was standing. The ceiling of the Hunter Association’s VVIP Medical Office.
A sliver of vision, thin as a crescent moon.
Lee Do-hyeon’s eyelids were opening heavily.
Yes. Immediately after Association Director Jung Eun-jin finished her treatment and left, Lee Do-hyeon miraculously regained full consciousness.
After eight years, awakening from the vicious chains of brainwashing, the Medical Office visible through his slowly focusing vision was overwhelmingly peaceful.
Drip. Patter-patter.
Blood poured from my mouth and nose like a fountain. My legs buckled under pain as if my skull were being split in half.
The chain connected to the corpse—the chain of Lucifuge—reached its limit and vibrated madly, sparking. The chain pulled taut as if it would snap.
‘Just a little more······ please, just a little longer.’
I forced my lower body, which was about to collapse, to stay upright, clenching my fists until blood ran. I clung to consciousness through the pain of fingernails gouging into my palms.
The moment Lee Do-hyeon’s vision slowly became clear.
Creeeeeak—.
The thick soundproof door of the silent Medical Office began to open very slowly.
That small friction sound traveled through Lee Do-hyeon’s auditory nerves into my ear like thunder, vivid and deafening.
Cold artificial light from the corridor seeped through the gap, and the elongated shadow of someone slithered snake-like beneath Lee Do-hyeon’s bed.
The shadow of death.
The pupils of the now-conscious Lee Do-hyeon rolled toward the door with effort.
In the convulsing movement of his eyes, reflected was it fear, or the hollowness of a betrayal foretold?
And there.
The face of the assassin who had driven a Mana reversal spike into Lee Do-hyeon’s cerebral vessels, sealing his mouth shut forever, at last revealed itself with perfect clarity.
[……You.]
Lee Do-hyeon’s fractured voice from memory rang out into the void, as if refusing to believe.
My eyes too were straining, swelling as though they might tear, bearing witness to that truth laid bare.

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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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