The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 64

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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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64
Chapter 64. Oblivion and Truth
***
The chain connected to Lukifugus synchronized perfectly with Lee Do-hyeon’s corpse.
It was not the sensation of cold metal.
The chain, honed from shadow, burrowed into the stiffened skin of the dead, forcibly linking already-hardened blood vessels and nerve bundles together.
A bizarre sensation flooded through me—my own peripheral nerve endings plugging directly into another’s flesh.
My vision darkened to pitch black. Not merely a darkness where light was blocked, but a void where information itself had ceased to exist.
Within that void, hazy afterimages began to emerge alongside a metallic stench. They were not images forming on my retinas.
They were the intense electrical signals that had been the last to imprint themselves on Lee Do-hyeon’s neural pathways just before death—a reverse process, forcibly extracting the lingering traces locked within a dead man’s memory.
‘This is the threshold.’
I suppressed the burning pain of my Mana Core. I honed my consciousness again and again. Thousands of fractured noise-screens tangled together in my mind.
The landscapes Lee Do-hyeon had seen throughout her life passed in chaotic succession. The interior of unnamed Gates, battlefields reeking of blood, and long, endless darkness of brainwashing.
Among those fragments, I tracked only the final minute—the instant before his breathing stopped.
Crackle, crackle-crackle.
My vision grew clearer by degrees. What entered first was a pristine white ceiling. Fluorescent light so bright it stung the eyes.
The Hunter Association Underground Medical Office. A thick disinfectant smell mixed with the reek of blood, forming a noxious viscosity at the nose’s tip. It was not vision alone.
Lukifugus’s power was synchronizing even the remnants of sound and smell.
This was shortly after Jung Eun-jin, the Association President, had finished the Healing Magic she’d cast by sacrificing her own lifespan.
Lee Do-hyeon, who for eight harsh years had lived as a puppet, stripped of selfhood, was now barely freed from those shackles.
Yet she could not even properly open her eyelids. Her body had become too weakened compared to her recovered vitality.
Then it happened.
Squeeeak—.
The thick soundproof door, which had been shrouded in silence, opened the merest crack. It was not sight that registered the door opening. It was hearing.
Lee Do-hyeon’s gaze remained fixed on the ceiling with unfocused eyes, but the superhuman senses she possessed as a Hunter did not miss the slight friction sound of the door sliding open.
Soft, soft footsteps.
The gait was not ordinary.
It was the presence of a ghost—the impact of a sole striking the ground reduced to an extreme minimum, gliding soundlessly across the marble floor.
Lee Do-hyeon’s pupils, consciousness recovered, rolled toward the door with great effort. The trembling movement of her convulsing eyes was transmitted.
The shadow of someone who had reached the foot of the bed suddenly intruded into a corner of her blurred vision.
Whoosh—.
The wave of Mana rippling through the air dissipated. The refracted light returned to its proper place, and the assassin revealed himself.
The sight of a perfectly deployed Hiding technique being deactivated. And the moment I confirmed that face, my reason grew cold and settled.
‘Jung Chan-hyeon.’
Not an unfamiliar face. A member of the Gate Management Bureau’s administrative division—the one who had obstructed the Ability Management Team over the Mana Stone mine in the Goblin Gate.
[They let this one live?]
Jung Chan-hyeon, approaching the bedside, looked down at Lee Do-hyeon and spat out the words with a grinding bitterness. His voice held not a shred of sympathy or hesitation.
Only disdain, as though regarding filth that needed to be disposed of.
[Crazy bitch. Doesn’t know her place.]
Jung Chan-hyeon pulled his hand from his pocket, hurling profanities.
[Uh……uh…….]
Lee Do-hyeon, sensing the primal threat, wrung her paralyzed vocal cords.
She tried desperately to draw up Mana and activate her defensive mechanisms, but her body, awakened after eight years, betrayed her will.
Her nervous system did not respond. She could not move a single fingertip. The shadow of death was already strangling her throat.
Jung Chan-hyeon did not draw a weapon. He did not cast any spell.
He merely extended his hand and lightly pressed Lee Do-hyeon’s pale neck. Cold fingertips came to rest on her carotid artery, pulsing irregularly.
Jung Chan-hyeon leaned toward Lee Do-hyeon’s ear. Then he spoke in a mechanical voice, softly intoning:
[Shine with light for the divine.]
That was all. There were no grandiose incantations, no explosive bursts of power.
Yet that brief sentence struck something buried deep within Lee Do-hyeon’s core with precision.
[It’s… done.]
Even Jung Chan-hyeon himself, who had spoken the command, seemed to murmur uncertainly, as if he had no confidence in what his action would bring about.
He immediately withdrew, as though his task were complete. A veil of Mana wrapped around him once more.
Jung Chan-hyeon, seeping perfectly into shadow, slipped through the open door and vanished without a trace.
‘What was that?’
My reason, sharing the retinas, detected a peculiar sense of wrongness. Even after Jung Chan-hyeon departed, Lee Do-hyeon’s body bore no sign of external trauma.
There were no marks of strangulation, no traces of magic’s severing touch.
All Jung Chan-hyeon left behind was a light touch and a single cryptic command: to shine with light.
Then came that moment.
Crack, crack-crack-crack—!
Suddenly, the chain of Lukifugus connected to Lee Do-hyeon began to emit a bizarre vibration.
The shared visual information twisted and tore as red noise erupted across it.
[Grraaahhhhh—— Grraaahhhhhhk——!]
From Lee Do-hyeon’s lips, a death cry like that of a wounded beast tore free.
His eyes rolled back white, and every vein in his body swelled pitch-black. Beneath the skin, something writhed and carved a path—a sight so grotesque it defied comprehension.
This was no simple seizure.
[Glory to the God of the Gate——.]
Lee Do-hyeon’s lips, frothing and convulsing, moved with mechanical precision. It was not his will. Like a programmed puppet.
[Glory to the God of the Gate—— Glory——!]
A mindless prayer murmured toward emptiness with unfocused eyes. And then Lee Do-hyeon slowly raised his own fingers, pressing them precisely to the center of his forehead.
‘No.’
There was no time to contemplate what that meant. From the fingertips touching Lee Do-hyeon’s forehead, all the Mana remaining in his Dantian Core began to backflow.
The energy, with nowhere to go, spiraled into a rampage and rushed toward his brain mercilessly.
“Agh——!”
The problem was me. Lee Do-hyeon’s consciousness and mine were perfectly synchronized through the Lukifugus chain.
In an instant, the second-Circle Mana Core anchored in my Dantian began to boil like an active volcano.
The agony of cerebral hemorrhage Lee Do-hyeon was experiencing, the phenomenon of Mana backflow—all of it was transmitting directly into my nervous system through the link.
My vision flooded crimson. Blood vessels screamed as they expanded. A severe fever as though my brain itself were being seared.
If I maintained this link any longer, the moment Lee Do-hyeon’s brain burst, my own neural tissue would shatter under the impact and perish alongside it.
Crack—!
I bit my lip hard and forcibly withdrew my right hand. I wrung every ounce of willpower and severed the link.
“Lukifugus!”
With my voice, the black chains binding Lee Do-hyeon’s corpse snapped free in unison. The blood-red demon’s eyes commanding the void closed harshly.
Even Lee Do-hyeon’s final afterimage filling my vision shattered like breaking glass and scattered into nothing.
“Hah, hah, hah——!”
The moment the link severed, I dropped to one knee on the floor. Ragged breath stabbed at my lungs.
Dark-red blood poured from my mouth and nose, staining the cold marble floor. A vicious headache like an awl boring through my skull.
Cold sweat beading on my forehead fell drop by drop onto the ground.
“Kim Do-jin!”
From behind, Ryu Kang-jin’s urgent voice rang out.
As the pain binding me began to subside, the immense pressure dominating the medical office too was gradually lifting.
As my Mana reserves bottomed out, the barrier of the Unique Domain that had severed physical space began to lose coherence and collapse.
The shadows of the Tree of Kliffoth that had gripped Ryu Kang-jin’s ankles like shackles lost their power and dissipated. Freed from restraint, Ryu Kang-jin strode toward me.
Lee Do-hyeon’s body, which had been suspended in midair, was gently lowered onto the bed as Lukifugus vanished.
“This blood—what happened? Are you all right?”
Ryu Kang-jin gripped my shoulder and asked heavily.
In the force of his grasp, I felt both genuine concern and skepticism about what he had just witnessed.
“It’s nothing.”
I roughly wiped the blood from my mouth with my sleeve. I declined Ryu Kang-jin’s support and rose, though my legs trembled. I didn’t let it show.
“Did you—— find the culprit.”
Hope and tension crossed in Ryu Kang-jin’s voice. Instead of answering, I placed my hand over the back of his hand resting on my shoulder.
And let the faint Mana that remained flow through.
“Found them.”
With that terse reply, I deployed Mana Vision. That one minute in the horrific hospital room I had witnessed through Lee Do-hyeon’s retinas.
The crucial information—from the moment Jung Chan-hyeon opened the door and whispered his command until he vanished—I transmitted it wholly into Ryu Kang-jin’s optic nerve.
“——!”
Ryu Kang-jin’s thick neck convulsed sharply as another’s memory flooded into him.
The broad-shouldered man staggered backward several steps, as though struck by an invisible blow.
His face, which had maintained composure like a slab of steel, contorted hideously with shock and betrayal.
“——This can’t be. Jung Chan-hyeon—why would he——”
Ryu Kang-jin’s lips trembled. The truth was cruel.
At the heart of the special forces he commanded, a viper had coiled. He could no longer deny it.
In that brief moment of Ryu Kang-jin’s anguish and loss of balance, I cooled my reason to absolute zero.
‘Now.’
I had shared the truth. But in exchange, I had exposed far too much information.
The existence of the Tree of Kliffoth and the demon Lukifugus—things the military commander of the nation’s highest authority must never witness.
The memory of this asymmetric power was poison that could not be left in him.
I intoned a rite toward Lukifugus, just before it vanished completely into darkness.
‘Carve but a single truth, and grant him the forgetting of the rest.’
“What are you doing!”
Ryu Kang-jin, sensing the killing intent, instinctively drew up his Aura and moved to take a defensive stance. But within the domain, control still belonged to me.
“Kgh!”
With my response, the final crimson chain of Lukifugus hanging in empty air lashed out like lightning. Giving no chance to defend, the chain’s end pierced straight through the center of Ryu Kang-jin’s forehead.
“You won’t remember any of it.”
***
A bizarre flash swept across the medical office as if inverting it into monochrome. A moment passed, and we moved our steps back to the Annex Front Courtyard.
The thick darkness had already begun to lift. Beyond the ridgeline, the cold light of dawn was brightening with a blue pallor.
Though the crater-scarred courtyard air hung heavy with acrid powder and dust, the tense standoff of moments before had settled like a lie.
Under the protection of elite forces and personnel, Hunter Association staff were carefully placing Lee Do-hyeon’s coffin into a specialized transport vehicle with solemn ceremony.
It was not a violent seizure. It was a legal and dignified transfer procedure carried out with the Association’s formal consent.
Ryu Kang-jin stood beside me, rubbing his temples with a weary face.
His expression seemed vaguely unsettled, yet I could find no wariness or hostility directed at me.
‘Lukifugus doesn’t make mistakes.’
The conditions I had imposed were flawless.
All visual information about the bizarre magic circle I had deployed in the underground medical office today, the Tree of Kliffoth from the abyss, and the demonic form had been permanently erased from Ryu Kang-jin’s mind.
In its place was only one thing: the fabricated causal chain that I had uncovered Jung Chan-hyeon’s true identity through “special detection magic.”
“Thank you for preserving the honor of Hunter Lee Do-hyeon’s final journey.”
Ryu Kang-jin spoke heavily as he watched the vehicle’s door close. His voice carried both the sorrow of losing a comrade and anger toward a traitor.
I responded with only a light nod. There was no need to add words and create room for suspicion.
Then Bae Hyeon-gyeom, who had been controlling the situation from a distance, approached in long strides.
His right arm was still immobilized in a cast, yet his gaze remained sharp as a starving beast’s.
Behind him came Kim Dae-han, team leader of the Ability Management Division who had been managing the scene.
“Director, what’s the status?”
Bae Hyeon-gyeom asked tersely, his gaze sweeping briefly over me.
“You’ve confirmed the culprit?”
The jaw muscle of Ryu Kang-jin, who received the question, tensed sharply. The truth etched into his mind kindled his rage.
“Found them. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Ryu Kang-jin growled low.
“The culprit is Jung Chan-hyeon.”
“…!”
At those three names, the robotic expression on Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s face crumbled for the first time. Stunned disbelief filled his eyes completely.
“That bastard needs to be arrested right now. Summon elite forces and the arrest squad immediately. Locate all personnel positions and issue a lockdown order.”
“Chan-hyeon… you mean Jung Chan-hyeon from the Administrative Division? That can’t be…”
“I confirmed it with my own eyes.”
Ryu Kang-jin’s sharp words silenced Bae Hyeon-gyeom. Ryu Kang-jin turned his gaze to look at me. Complex emotions lay in his eyes.
“Don’t misunderstand. Kim Do-jin. Don’t expect us to show any mercy to one of our own. We’ll root out the Gate Management Bureau’s parasites with our own hands.”
“Please share information on Jung Chan-hyeon with us in real time as promised.”
“Understood. If you have doubts, feel free to come to our side and monitor as well.”
Ryu Kang-jin turned his body.
“Situation concluded. Everyone, let’s move out.”
With Ryu Kang-jin’s brief command, the elite forces and personnel who had been standing by moved in perfect unison. Black vans roared with their heavy engines, kicking up clouds of dust.
The Gate Management Bureau’s hunting dogs vanished beyond the Annex’s access road in an instant.
Only after they departed did Hunter Yu Hye-seong, covered in blood and receiving emergency treatment, limp toward us.
“Kim Do-jin!”
Yu Hye-seong forced a tired smile, drawing her bloodless lips upward.
“Thank you so much for protecting the Association President and Lee Do-hyeon. The Association owes a great debt to you and the Ability Management Team.”
“Not at all. Please focus on your recovery.”
Yu Hye-seong, leaving words of gratitude in her wake, returned to the main building to remain at President Jung Eun-jin’s side.
“Quite a whirlwind of a morning.”
Kim Dae-han, who had watched the entire situation unfold, let out a small sigh as he surveyed the shattered marble floor and crater.
His shoulders too hung heavy from the all-night operation and the extreme tension.
Deep grooves of exhaustion etched his eyes—exhaustion that seemed impossible for all that had occurred in just two days.
But there is no time to rest. We have merely grasped the tail.
Following the tail called Jung Chan-hyeon, a massive body awaits at its end.
“Team Leader, let’s head back as well.”
I brushed the dust from my coat and moved with deliberate steps.
“Indeed. It’s work hours now, after all.”
Kim Dae-han followed behind me with a wry jest.
“Yes. There’s much to discuss and a great deal that needs to be done.”

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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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