The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 70

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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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70
Chapter 70. The Blind Man’s Space
***
The burly young Awakened One lay sprawled across the asphalt, foam flecking the corners of his mouth, utterly unconscious.
Pale saliva seeped from his lips into the cracks between rough paving stones.
He’d been lucky enough to avoid fatal injury, but his left leg bone twisted at a grotesque angle meant he wouldn’t be walking anywhere on his own for a good long while.
The fractured joint bulged outward, muscle about to split open around shattered bone.
His accomplices had already lost all will to fight.
They stumbled backward with darkened trousers, trembling like prey animals face to face with an apex predator.
Stale cigarette smoke and the reek of fear-sweat mixed in the decrepit corridor, a choking miasma.
I stood at the front of their group and reached toward the chest of the boy in school uniform—the one who couldn’t meet my eyes, staring only at the floor.
Rip, tear—!
“Ahhhhh! P-please, spare me!”
The boy shrank his neck like a turtle and let out a death-rattle scream.
I applied relentless pressure, and his meticulously embroidered Name Tag tore free from its stitches into my grip.
I stared at the coarse fuzz left behind on his shirt, then lifted my gaze and fixed his wavering eyes.
“You lot.”
I crumpled the worn Name Tag and shoved it into my pants pocket. The metal button grazed my knuckles, leaving behind a cold sensation.
“I won’t bother coming all the way to your school so I have to look at your homeroom teacher or your parents’ faces.”
“Y-yes! Yes, yes! Never, never again! We’ll never show up again!”
“And that door.”
I gestured with my chin at the Iron Door crumpled like a crushed can on the corridor floor.
The warped metal door, its hinges torn away, looked like a symbol of this house’s poverty and helplessness.
“Whoever broke that door sends repair money to this account. If it’s not deposited before sunset today, I’ll show you what it feels like to have your front entrance ripped clean off.”
I pulled a plain Business Card printed with the Ability Management Team’s shared account from my jacket pocket.
I flicked the card’s edge with my fingertip and tossed it at him like a slap across the cheek.
As the card tumbled to the floor, he scrambled to catch it with both hands as if it were a marble.
“W-we’ll definitely send it today! No matter what it takes, we’ll—please!”
“Don’t ‘whatever it takes.’ Get it from your parents. If you shake down kids on the streets or cause more trouble and run into me again, you’d better learn to chant that this Name Tag’s owner no longer exists in this world.”
“Yes, understood! I’m sorry!!”
His craven apology echoed to the corridor’s end. They frantically supported their companion, who was gasping and whimpering, clutching his shattered limbs.
As the sound of their footsteps tumbling down the stairs faded away, the silence in the old apartment grew heavier.
Across the corridor, which had emptied like an ebb tide, nothing remained but pulverized concrete dust and acrid cement powder hanging like murky fog.
I kicked aside the metal fragments at my feet and approached the torn Iron Door.
Truth was, I’d stopped expecting full repair money from those punk amateurs long ago. The card I gave them was merely a warning, a brand.
I’d planned to quietly fill in the old man’s shattered life from my own pocket. I’d just funnel it through the management team’s discretionary fund under “Civil Complaint Processing Fee.”
“You’ll be fine now, sir. Let’s get you up.”
I approached the old man sitting on the floor, trembling hands like dry branches, and offered him my hand.
His hands were covered in age spots, and thin skin barely stretched over protruding knuckles.
“Yes, yes… I’m fine. Thank you so much for helping me. Really, I can’t thank you enough…”
The old man, though unable to see, pinpointed the direction of my voice with perfect accuracy and bowed repeatedly.
His unfocused eyes wandered into empty space, yet within them coexisted deep exhaustion and relief.
“Thank goodness. It doesn’t look like you’ve sustained any serious injuries.”
I grasped his thin forearm and carefully helped him to his feet. Through my palm, his body temperature felt unnaturally cold.
He’d been trembling on the cold floor in terror for far too long.
“But… who might you be? Your voice is unfamiliar to me.”
The old man turned his wrinkled face left and right, sensing my presence. It was a desperate movement, a blind man marshaling every sense he possessed to divine the identity of the man standing before him.
“I’m with the City Hall Ability Management Division. I’m here on a home visit regarding Tae-hwa Hong.”
“Ah…”
The moment I mentioned the management team, the tension drained from the old man’s shoulders like a puppet’s strings had been cut. His expression was one of absolute relief.
“You’re not the usual visitor. Isn’t Kim Dae-han coming anymore? He’s always been such a kind and warm person.”
“Kim’s been on emergency assignment out of the city for several days. I’ve temporarily taken over his duties.”
“I see. You’ve come such a long way, and all I can show you is this rough sight… I’m so ashamed. You’ll need my signature on some documents, I suppose? Please, come inside first. It’s cold out here.”
Instead of answering, I lifted the Iron Door off the corridor floor with one hand.
The weight of the heavy metal transferred through my wrist, and I wedged it back against the frame.
The broken hinges wouldn’t hold it properly, but at least it would block prying eyes and bitter wind from outside.
After securing the door as a temporary barrier, I followed the old man inside.
***
Violent Demon Hong Tae-hwa.
A harbinger’s name that would one day transform this city’s skyline into a sea of flames.
The house where that monster grew up—the one that would steal thousands of lives and melt buildings like candle wax.
Yet in stark contrast to the horrific vision burned into his mind, the apartment before him was unsettlingly immaculate.
A cramped, aging row apartment of barely a hundred square feet.
The wallpaper had yellowed under the weight of years, and mold stains marked the ceiling corners where growth had come and gone.
But not a single hair, not a grain of dust marred the floor.
The furniture, though worn and shabby, was arranged with ruler-straight precision in its appointed place.
The level of rigid order was almost impossible to believe in a space shared by a blind old man and two rough street urchins.
It bordered on obsessive compulsion—but it was also someone’s meticulous, almost brutal care for an old man living in darkness.
The old man crossed the living room without a cane, moving into the kitchen with practiced ease, as though reading the space through the texture of linoleum beneath his feet and the subtle flow of air.
“My son, Tae-hwa’s father, lived his whole life in this cramped place, you see.”
The old man opened the refrigerator and withdrew a worn glass bottle. The sound of ice-cold barley tea being poured echoed through the quiet living room.
A faint smile played at the old man’s lips.
“I know this place with my eyes shut—though I suppose it hardly matters when they’re always closed anyway. And that rascal Tae-hwa, he wipes the floor every morning and night, worried I’ll stumble on something and fall. Outside these walls I can’t speak to his conduct, but inside this house, there’s no finer boy under heaven, I assure you.”
The old man’s words painted a portrait of Hong Tae-hwa.
A monster who would obliterate schoolmates who tormented him with his powers, who would descend into a blood-soaked path as a drug cartel’s front-line hunting dog.
Yet within these worn, narrow walls, Hong Tae-hwa was nothing but a dutiful, meticulous grandson caring for his blind grandfather.
The insidious duality of human nature.
The savage cruelty of a predator tearing through another’s restraints and the devotion of wiping away dust from a loved one’s feet dwelt within a single body.
That grotesque contradiction scraped coldly across a corner of my chest as it passed.
“Step outside that door and it’s nothing but darkness, but in here at least I can offer a guest proper hospitality. Please, have a drink.”
The old man held out a tray with trembling hands. Rather than sit on the sofa, I stood before the worn table in the center of the living room.
The violent commotion that had erupted outside moments before seemed to belong to another world entirely; inside, only a heavy, damp silence pooled and settled.
“My Tae-hwa has caused you folks at City Hall no end of trouble, I’m sure. I know. I know he’s been wandering badly lately.”
The old man knelt carefully on the linoleum across from me. His hunched back and withered muscles bore witness to a life of hardship.
I took a sip of the cold barley tea sitting on the table. The cool sensation sliding down my throat chilled my mind.
No matter how profound this old man’s suffering or how filial Tae-hwa’s devotion, Tae-hwa would become what he was destined to become.
A latent instrument of destruction—a bloodstained blade of the Hong Hyeol-maeng, poised to ravage the city.
The chain of causality calculated in my mind pointed to only one conclusion, with perfect precision.
‘People cannot be remade. When the rot shows early, you must pull it out by the roots.’
That was how I had lived, and it was the harsh law that sustained this world. Yet the old man before me bore no guilt.
He was merely a victim—brutally, scrupulously so—who had raised his son’s bloodline tidily in the darkness.
I withdrew a folder from my coat and cut through his words with deliberately detached, administrative tone.
“I’m not concerned with personal circumstances.”
I set the glass down on the table. The sharp clink broke the silence.
“I’m here simply to verify his location according to procedure.”
“Ah, yes… of course. A public official going about their duties. Forgive me for rambling. Your voice is remarkably composed.”
The old man smiled bitterly, his fingers tracing the smooth surface of the clipboard.
Without speaking, I pressed a pen into his hand and laid my own hand over his gnarled, wrinkled one. My cool palm met his lukewarm skin.
Adjusting my pressure, I guided his trembling fingertip to the precise location of the signature line. The bureaucratic inefficiency of demanding a signature from one who had lost sight.
The pitiless logic of a system that records everything while remaining indifferent to anyone’s suffering suddenly felt fresh and visceral.
Scratch, scratch-scratch.
The old man’s fingers wavered, leaving crooked letters. That three-character name looked like a scream for mercy.
“Hong Tae-hwa. Where is he right now.”
I withdrew the clipboard and cut to the core. My voice was low and sharp, cutting through the room.
“His unauthorized absences from school have exceeded two weeks. If this continues, he may be delisted from the management rolls and subject to forced apprehension procedures.”
“That… I truly don’t know either, sir.”
The old man shrank further into himself, his shoulders curling smaller, and released a deep sigh. Despair thickened in his cracked voice.
“Even when Tae-hwa ran wild outside, he never stayed out overnight. Always came home before seven, afraid his grandfather might go hungry… but it’s been a month now with no word. His phone’s turned off…”
Runaway, or recruitment.
Hong Tae-hwa had almost certainly fallen into the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s grip.
The chance of that boy returning to this Old Apartment approached zero.
Woof, woof-woof!
The heavy silence shattered at the sound of sharp barking from beyond the firmly shut door of a room.
The door creaked open, and a small tan mongrel, limping grotesquely on a mangled hind leg, crawled out into the living room.
“Oh dear, Sang-gu. I told you not to come out when we have a guest.”
The old man waved into empty air to locate the dog. The dog wagged its tail vigorously, approached me, and pressed its nose against my pant leg, sniffing.
From its body emanated not wariness of a stranger, but a desperate hunger for human warmth.
“My Tae-hwa picked it up about a month ago, on a rainy day in front of the house. The leg was crushed, and it’d been left by a garbage pile. He said it wouldn’t last the day, so he carried it to his room and cleaned it all night, nursed it back to health, and here it is.”
…
“Come here, Sang-gu. Come along. You’ll get the teacher’s clothes dirty.”
“It’s all right.”
A small creature circled near my shoes, rubbing its head against them. I knelt down and ran my hand over the dog’s thin back. The vertebrae beneath my fingers felt skeletal.
A future murderer who would incinerate thousands with flames—yet when confronted with a worthless creature abandoned by the roadside, I hadn’t had it in me to turn away. I’d brought it into my room instead.
The boy’s hands that had once protected such fragile, delicate warmth would become instruments of death someday, capable of stopping someone’s heart. It was the height of contradiction.
“Teacher, I’m sorry, but my knees aren’t what they used to be. I’m afraid I can’t carry him back to my room without difficulty. Would it be too much trouble to put him in Tae-hwa’s room?”
In response to the old man’s cautious request, I nodded silently.
“Come here.”
I slipped my hands under the dog’s armpits and lifted him gently. His heartbeat transmitted through my palm, rapid and frantic.
I opened the narrow doorway through which the creature had emerged and stepped inside.
Tae-hwa’s Room.
The moment I opened the door, I took in every detail of the space. Like the living room, it held a stillness as if time had frozen—pristine and orderly.
There was nothing of the typical teenage disarray. Everything was arranged with such geometric precision it evoked a military barracks.
The school uniform hanging on the wall had every button fastened, pressed stiff and crisp. The reference books on the desk were arranged in order of height.
In one corner of the worn desk lay two pencils, their points sharpened with meticulous care, still unused.
Strip away the label of potential murderer, and this room was the last refuge of a high school student—desperately poor, yet earnestly dreaming of a future.
I set the dog down carefully on an old, soft cushion wedged beneath the desk.
The dog seemed to recognize its place. It curled itself into a ball and stared up at me fixedly.
‘This is as far as I go.’
I’d combed through the room thoroughly, but there were no physical clues. There was no chance Tae-hwa would have left traces of contact with any organization, or contact information, in a space this immaculate.
Rather, this ruthless cleanliness itself testified to something twisted and hardened deep within him.
There was no point in lingering here any longer.
No—the sad stench of poverty that hung in this room, the traces of a deformed kind of devotion, it made me profoundly uneasy.
“I should be going.”
I offered a brief farewell as I left the room and headed toward the front door.
Just as I was about to push open the broken iron door I’d propped up temporarily, the old man hurried after me, gripping the wall for support, his posture unstable.
“There’s no need for you to see me out. I’ll secure the door myself.”
“No, teacher. Wait—please, just listen to what I have to say.”
The old man gripped the broken doorframe. His fingers had turned white with the force of his grip. His trembling voice hung low in the narrow corridor.
“Today… I truly owe my life to you. Every time those people come, without Tae-hwa here, everything goes dark before my eyes.”
“It’s merely an extension of my duties. Please, think nothing of it.”
“No, it’s not simply that.”
The old man drew a deep breath. His lips quivered as though he were forcing out words that were almost impossible to speak.
“Please… please save our Tae-hwa.”
My footsteps stopped.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean. I’m merely following administrative procedure.”
“No. You… you’re different from the others.”
The old man’s empty eyes turned toward me. Though he had no sight, he perceived me with a keenness no sighted person could match.
“Many people have come through this house. Social workers, police, staff from the Ability Management Team… but you’re the first person I’ve met with your kind of presence.”
Thud.
The old man suddenly dropped to his knees on the narrow, cold concrete floor. Then he began to prostrate himself before me.
His direction was slightly off; his forehead struck not my shoe but the moldy wall of the corridor instead.
“Please… please give that boy just one chance, just one last chance. I’m begging you.”
The old man’s desperate plea echoed through the corridor of the Old Apartment. The dull scraping sound of skin against concrete wall rang out along with it.
“Tae-hwa isn’t a bad child. The world has simply driven him too harshly. Please… please, I beg you, save our Tae-hwa. I’m asking you like this.”
A creature’s desperate plea to save its bloodline. I stood silent, looking down at the old man’s hunched back, his forehead striking the cold floor, weeping without restraint.
Blood dripped from the old man’s forehead, staining the concrete floor dark.
My shoe came to rest just before the old man’s palm. I made no move to remove his skeletal hand that gripped at my pant leg.
Instead, I lowered my chin and met those unfocused eyes head-on.
“Elder.”
The old man’s grip tightened. I paused, watching as blood from his torn forehead pooled on the floor.
Then I spoke slowly.
“Tell me—why should I save Hong Tae-hwa?”

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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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