The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 67

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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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67
Chapter 67. Shadow Writing and Provocation
***
“The Gate Cult killed Hunter Lee Do-hyeon, didn’t they?”
It was not a question. It was something closer to a cold pronouncement confirming an already-settled fact.
Jeong Chan-hyeon’s head, driven into the floor, bent at a grotesque angle. Dark blood frothed and bubbled from the corners of his mouth.
How much illegal money he’d laundered in collusion with the Red Blood Alliance, which point-man of which organization that tainted cash had flowed through—none of that mattered to me.
Such trivial details were the investigators’ concern.
There was only one truth I wanted.
The Red Blood Alliance masquerading as a drug cartel, and the Gate Cult—that mad congregation that celebrated humanity’s extinction. The point where those two incongruent gears meshed together.
Through Lucifugus’s eyes, I alone had witnessed Lee Do-hyeon’s final minute in this world.
To Ryu Kang-jin, the commander, there would remain only the blurred afterimage of an assassin. But that chilling phrase Lee Do-hyeon had spat out like a death rattle—that seared only into my ears.
‘Glory to the God of the Gate.’
Lee Do-hyeon had been an unmistakable victim of a Brainwashing Technique. Someone had driven a nail deep into his soul and bred him like livestock for eight long years.
And the moment his usefulness expired, they’d detonated the trigger to silence him.
I’d reached the conclusion: the puppeteer pulling all the strings, the axis of that vast malice, was the Gate Cult.
What remained now was evidence. To stitch together the broken links, I needed the mouth of this piece of garbage heaving beneath my feet.
The executor who’d pulled the trigger on the ‘mechanism’ embedded in Lee Do-hyeon’s cerebral blood vessels.
“G… l… aah…”
Jeong Chan-hyeon’s lips twisted in convulsion.
The lingual frenulum had torn under the Gravity pressure I was applying, his tongue muscles rigid. Coherent speech was impossible.
Yet in his eyes still flickered the base survival instinct of abjection, along with a thin venom.
The arrogance that crude pressure wouldn’t make him talk. Or perhaps a calculation that the Cult’s retaliation, once he opened his mouth, would dwarf his present agony.
Either way, it didn’t matter. I would push the limits until that calculator shattered.
I flicked my right hand’s fingers lightly toward the floor. The blue Core lodged deep in my Lower Dantian began to rotate violently.
Refined Mana surged through my veins and exploded into my fingertips.
“Gravity.”
Whooooooosh—!!!
The air within the interrogation room shrieked.
It was not mere pressure. It was a waterfall of Gravity that twisted the laws of mass itself, as the very density of space compressed ten-thousand-fold.
An invisible colossal steel column drove down through Jeong Chan-hyeon’s back.
Destructive force equivalent to dropping five or six midsize cars stacked atop his head.
“Gaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!”
A scream that tore at the eardrums filled the sealed chamber.
Woven through that cry came a sickening crackling sound—’crack, crack.’
The sound of vertebrae giving way beneath the Gravity, collapsing like dominoes.
The Special Marble Floor beneath him caved inward in concentric rings, shattered stone dust erupting skyward.
From Jeong Chan-hyeon’s mouth and nose, and from the capillaries in his eyes burst by the pressure, blood fountained backward in a spray. It was perfect, utterly complete physical annihilation.
Should I flick my finger once more.
The dry voice of reason within asked: there was no loss to me in reducing him to part of the floor.
Fear at the threshold of death always dredges up the deepest layers of human consciousness.
“Hunter! Stop! Are you trying to kill him!”
A sharp cry shattered the silence from behind.
It was Lee Min-young, the investigator who’d been holding her breath in the corner. Face drained pale, trembling legs carrying her forward toward me.
“I figured it out. I saw everything—please stop!”
Her shoe tips halted one inch before the boundary of the Gravity field I’d deployed.
The air within rippled and refracted.
Had she taken even one more step, her slender frame would have been pressed flat against the floor, ground into meat.
I regarded her for a moment with eyes stripped of emotion. Then I flicked my fingers lightly and withdrew the technique I’d been maintaining.
“Kuh—ghaaaaah!”
The transcendent mass that had borne down vanished as if it had never been.
The rebound snapped Jeong Chan-hyeon’s body into the air like a severed rubber band.
He rolled across the blood-soaked floor with a bestial whimper.
“What do you mean, you figured it out.”
I turned from the bloodied man and faced Lee Min-young.
“The answer to your question.”
Lee Min-young forced her ragged breathing down and met my eyes directly.
Her pupils trembled with fear, yet within them burned a faint, determined flame of the investigator.
“Just as you said, Hunter. That man, Jeong Chan-hyeon, and the entire Red Blood Alliance organization—they’re organically connected to the Gate Cult.
Not merely a cooperative arrangement, but more like a subordinate division.”
“How can you be so certain?”
It was peculiar.
I was trying to wring the truth from him by force, crushing bone and flesh through physical torture.
Yet this woman, trembling in the corner of the Interrogation Room, had somehow read into the man’s sealed mind.
“I’m… an Awakened One too.”
Lee Min-young moved closer, her pale lips quivering.
“My Unique Trait is Shadow Writing. Simply put……”
“I don’t need you to explain.”
***
Unique Trait: Shadow Writing.
Even in the world before regression, any guild that secured a hunter with this ability was called a god of information warfare.
Lucifugus, with similar power, is limited to the spirits of the dead—but Shadow Writing has no such constraint.
It forcibly extracts thoughts and memories etched in the human mind, the flow of the unconscious, and outputs them as physical text or visual imagery. The pinnacle of psychic projection.
Yet this godlike ability came with brutally stringent limitations.
It only activates when the target’s sense of self and psychological defenses have completely collapsed—a state known as Soul Submission.
Ordinary torture or crude threats cannot pry open the depths of human consciousness.
‘So that’s why it worked just now.’
I looked down at Jeong Chan-hyeon convulsing on the floor.
Before overwhelming violence and the terror of death, his meager pride had already crumbled to dust.
Lee Min-young had struck at precisely the fissure of despair I’d created, driving her technique through the crack.
She and I.
It was a bizarre yet efficient cooperation, with perfect role division—torturer and observer.
“My ability consumes almost no Mana,” she said.
Lee Min-young drew a worn Notebook and Ballpoint Pen from her inner pocket.
“Even in this underground Interrogation Room where external Mana is blocked, I can manifest it using only the Mana within myself.”
She stretched her right hand straight toward Jeong Chan-hyeon sprawled on the floor, her fingertips vibrating minutely.
Her left hand pressed down on the blank page of the Notebook as though it might shatter.
A low hum—
Sharp waves of Mana rippled across her entire body.
Her left hand, gripping the Notebook, convulsed grotesquely, then began moving at a speed that exceeded human reaction time.
Scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch—!
The pen tip skated across the paper like madness.
It was less an act of writing than the mechanical motion of a Braille printer churning out characters at high speed.
Fragments of truth drifting through Jeong Chan-hyeon’s shattered mind were transmuted into precise text and poured onto the blank page.
I watched her technique with genuine admiration.
Human thought is never orderly language. It’s a muddy torrent of fleeting images, fragmented emotions, sounds without context.
From that chaos of information, she filtered what was needed and translated it into language.
This was more than mere superpower—it was a miraculous computational ability that manipulated the informational arrangement of the universe itself.
It was a moment that proved again why Shadow Writing users were classified as national strategic assets even before regression.
“All done. It was much easier thanks to you, Hunter.”
Lee Min-young’s left hand stopped abruptly.
Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. She tore out the page densely covered with script and handed it to me.
I took the paper, my eyes racing across the characters.
‘….’
Perfect.
The puzzle pieces I’d been seeking were assembled into clear sentences on a single sheet.
How the Red Blood Alliance and Gate Cult distributed narcotics and laundered funds, and even the location of the ‘Sanctuary’ they ultimately sought to reach.
Every ugly truth lay bare.
“Thank you for your work.”
I folded the paper and shoved it into my pocket.
Then I reached toward Jeong Chan-hyeon, who still barely clung to life.
A soft glow—
I drew Mana from my Core and deployed basic healing magic. A warm cluster of light enveloped his shattered spine and ruptured organs with only a surface touch.
“Guh… aagh……”
As the bleeding stopped and breath returned, he groaned in tearing agony.
“I’m sorry, but.”
I looked down at him coughing blood onto the floor with cold indifference and pronounced judgment.
“I’m not the Association President, so I can’t repair nerves that are already severed.”
He would spend his life trapped in a broken body, trembling before the retaliation of the cartel he’d betrayed. That was the price for driving Lee Do-hyeon to his death.
‘Even this is too cheap a price.’
I lifted my head and surveyed the devastated interrogation room.
Steel table bent like a stick of taffy, concrete floor cracked like a tortoise shell, blood spattered across every surface.
The so-called Mana-Blocking Chamber looked as though it had taken a bombing.
“Detective, I apologize for the trouble.”
I straightened my disheveled necktie and offered a dry apology.
“Send the facility repair bill to the Ability Management Team.”
Lee Min-young let out a deep sigh and brushed back her tangled hair. She studied me for a long moment with a complex, delicate expression before speaking.
“······I don’t think that will be necessary.”
She put away her notebook and answered.
“Thanks to you, the Inspection Department has obtained crucial evidence to cut out the rot from within our organization. I have no desire to make an enemy of a monster like you over repair costs.
Instead······.”
She approached me and offered a brief bow.
“When the Inspection Department formally requests your assistance later, don’t pretend you don’t know us. Kim Do-jin.”
It was a thoroughly calculated proposal from a bureaucrat.
But I found myself drawn to this kind of clean, self-interested transaction. Laying cards on the table and paying the appropriate price when necessary.
It is the most reliable form of communication in this cold world.
“I appreciate the consideration.”
I, too, gave a brief nod.
Clang—
The heavy steel door swung open, and I emerged from the interrogation room alongside Team Leader Kim Dae-han, who had been waiting in the observation room soaked in cold sweat.
Before the elevator on the 17th Underground Floor.
Bae Hyeon-gyeom approached with clenched teeth, intending to escort me, but I met that arrogant hound’s gaze head-on and refused him with a single word.
“Hey, Kim Do-jin—all done?”
“Get out of the way. I’m leaving.”
“You bastard—!”
Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s jaw clenched so tight it looked ready to snap, but he no longer blocked my path.
We fled the heart of the Gate Management Authority like fugitives.
***
G City Hall, Ability Management Team Office.
In the pantry room with the blinds drawn shut.
I briefed Team Leader Kim Dae-han on the information secured in the interrogation room and the true nature of the Gate Cult in concise terms.
“Good grief. Good grief······.”
Throughout my report, Kim Dae-han kept his brow furrowed and heaved heavy sighs. The coffee in his paper cup had long gone cold, a thin film of dark oil floating on its surface.
The distribution channels for Booster Orange. Corruption among high-ranking Gate Management Authority officials. The forces behind the Red Blood Alliance. And the Gate Cult itself.
“We should probably avoid the Gate Management Authority for the time being.”
Kim Dae-han drained the cold coffee in one gulp and offered a bitter smile.
“Not quite.”
I gazed out the window at the peaceful nighttime cityscape and replied.
“A fierce process of internal purification will begin within the Gate Management Authority itself. As long as men like Director Ryu Kang-jin and Detective Lee Min-young remain alive, they won’t stop. How many parasites like Jeong Chan-hyeon do you think there are? Now they’ll turn on each other, bite at each other’s throats, and draw blood.”
“That’s true enough. While they’re tearing each other apart, we can finally catch our breath.”
Kim Dae-han rolled a ballpoint pen across the desk and looked at me.
“The testimony Detective Lee Min-young obtained through Shadow Writing carries complete legal force under the Gate Management Authority’s internal regulations. There should be no problem legally implicating Jeong Chan-hyeon and his associates. However······.”
His gaze grew heavy, like that of a damp basement.
“If Lee Do-hyeon’s death is made public, the world will turn upside down. If the nation learns that a national hero was killed by his own colleague’s hand—and because of the Cult’s brainwashing—can you handle what comes next?”
“The chaos actually works in our favor.”
At my resolute tone, Kim Dae-han’s pen went silent.
“What are you saying? We’d be lucky to keep this quiet.”
“We keep the public’s attention locked on us by force.”
“Locked on who? Surely······ you don’t mean the Ability Management Team?”
“Yes.”
I turned and approached Kim Dae-han’s desk. The Gate occurrence points marked on the topographical map glowed red like fresh wounds.
“We’re already their target. We’ve passed the point where we can escape.”
“That’s certainly······ true.”
At the center of every major incident that had occurred recently stood myself, Kim Dae-han, and the Ability Management Team.
If the Gate Cult’s leadership had any sense, they’d already have us at the top of their elimination list.
If we cowered and tried to hide our tails, they would strike with far deadlier fangs from the darkness.
Rather than suffer while in hiding, it was better to dance brazenly right in the center of their sights.
To flip the table here, we needed a counterattack.
An overwhelming, undeniable, brilliant ‘aggro’—something that would shock them into revealing their own identities.
Kim Dae-han still regarded me with an uneasy expression, unable to fully grasp my intentions.
“……Kim Do-jin, Hunter. What reckless scheme are you planning to throw yourself into next?”
He asked the question while washing his face with dry hands.
“No need to ask, really. You’ve already drawn up a plan to whittle away your remaining years, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
I affirmed with a brief nod, then lightly tapped my fingers across the Mana distribution map of G City spread before me on the desk.
My Mana flowed faintly across the map’s surface, highlighting specific zones.
“Which is why I have one crucial request for you, Team Leader. You must become the protagonist of this game.”
“Just tell me already. I’ve gotten used to having my lifespan chewed away by now—it’s practically your signature move.”
Kim Dae-han replied with resignation, pulling his necktie loose with rough, agitated movements.
I let his grumbling fade into the background and slowly curved my lips upward. A smile as cold and mechanical as interlocking gears—devoid of warmth, devoid of feeling.
It was not the excitement of a beast before the hunt. It was the austere satisfaction of a player who had already finished calculating every move on the chessboard and was ready to overturn the entire board.
“Incubation-type Gate.”
“Ah, please. Can’t you stop saying those words?”
“Find me one more. This time, something far larger and far more dangerous.”

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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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