The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 71

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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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71
Chapter 71. Dilemma
***
“Please. Sir. Save Hong Tae-hwa. Please, I’m begging you to save him.”
The old man, sprawled across the cold cement floor, fumbled with his wrinkled hands. Soon his rough, searching fingers found purchase on my trouser leg, gripping it with desperate force.
I pressed my lips together firmly.
I shallowed my breathing and severed the faint ripple of Mana rising from my Dantian completely. This blind old man pressed against the floor could not see my expression.
I had cut off even the killing intent and aura I emitted as an Awakened One as cleanly as a vacuum seal, so there was no way for him to detect my reaction.
“Sir.”
I spoke, keeping my voice level and measured.
“I don’t know Hong Tae-hwa. I have no idea why you’re saying such frightening things.”
A transparent lie. I understood the nature of that brutal monster better than anyone. But I intended to push forward with the shallow mask of bureaucrat that had been assigned to me.
Yet despite my denial, the old man’s grip on my trouser leg only tightened with greater urgency.
“I… I know it’s disrespectful. I know how ungrateful it is to make such a shameless demand of someone who saved my life, the man to whom I owe everything.”
The old man’s head trembled faintly, still bowed toward the floor.
“But… I can tell. What you intend to do with our Hong Tae-hwa.”
“What do you mean, what I intend?”
“That is.”
The old man lifted his unseeing, clouded eyes toward my face.
“Surely you know it well.”
Pressure gathered in my feet. My clenched jaw tightened imperceptibly.
My inner world roiled in an instant.
‘No. That can’t be.’
My sight found no residue of Mana or the hum of a core emanating from this blind old man. He was merely a frail, sickly ordinary human—a gaunt body with little time left to live.
Then what was that confident assertion from moments ago?
Was it some warped sense developed in darkness by one who had lost his sight, or the desperate instinct of an old beast sensing the death of his blood?
The mechanism mattered little.
What mattered was that before this blind old man’s intuition, I had closed my mouth without uttering a single word of excuse or rebuttal.
I could not mask it with lies. My obvious killing intent had been laid bare completely. Facing this strange humiliation for the first time, my brow furrowed of its own accord.
I could have turned away and slipped out of this old house. I could have dismissed it as the ravings of a blind old man and simply closed the door.
But my nature was not flexible enough to bury this uncomfortable discrepancy and move on.
If I had been completely seen through, then it was my turn to question in return.
“Sir.”
I did not bother to wrench my trouser leg free from the old man’s bony grip.
“Then why should I save Hong Tae-hwa?”
***
I emerged from the rusted front door of the Older Apartment Complex.
Since the vacant lot where I had parked my vehicle required a long walk down the ridge, I descended alone and silently through the abandoned outskirts where even the streetlights had been shattered.
The cold air of dawn pierced my lungs, but my mind churned loudly with the old blind man’s halting, detailed story from moments ago.
‘That boy Tae-hwa has been living in hell ever since his father died in a Gate.’
‘The poor child would return from back alleys covered in blood more times than we could count, all to scrape together medicine money for his blind grandfather.’
‘The world pushed that child to the edge of a cliff.’
‘His tongue is rough and his fists are quick, but his heart is truly warm and tender. Please… I beg you…’
The old man’s sobbing plea clung to my ears, unwilling to fade.
“Insane.”
I clenched my fists in my pockets. This world I had returned to seemed to have conspired deliberately, making excuses for Hong Tae-hwa, a latent murderer.
The Ability Management Team’s Kim Dae-han had done it, and just now, even the grandfather who had prostrated himself had done the same.
As if tossing filthy refuse into a washing machine, they were attempting to launder the premonitions of the horrific massacre he would commit with the shallow indulgence of a troubled environment.
Whoosh.
Just then, silver particles of Magical Power coalesced above my right shoulder, and Airi materialized before me.
[Successor. I have a question.]
Her wavelength seemed oddly cautious compared to usual.
“What is it.”
[From what I have observed in the background thus far, Successor, you exhibit an unusually sensitive and adversarial reaction toward the person named Hong Tae-hwa.]
Airi’s wings fluttered slowly.
[Your stance is clearly different from when you faced an enemy like Jang Yu-cheong before.]
[It seems less rational judgment and more emotional aversion.]
[May I ask the reason?]
I continued walking as I answered.
“If you learned you could prevent a massive slaughter that would tear through thousands of people in advance, would you just stand idle?”
[So you’re saying that this person, Hong Tae-hwa, becomes a future massacrer?]
“That’s right.”
The image of a city reduced to ash flickered vividly in my memory.
“In the previous world, Hong Tae-hwa became a hunting dog for the Red Blood Alliance. The bastard committed his first murder at just twenty years old, and he took human lives as casually as swatting flies.”
The most horrifying part was that he grew into a villain hunter specialized in hunting his own kind—not monsters, but humans.
“He even slaughtered twenty Hunters from our guild in a single Gate, all by himself.”
[I see.]
Airi’s emotionless reply scattered into the empty air.
“So what, you want to just stand and watch while we leave that bomb alone?”
In the previous world, Hong Tae-hwa had been called the “Raging Demon.”
His Unique Characteristic—Explosion—was hideously rare, operating on an entirely different principle than mundane flame magic or physical impact.
A detonation spell like my Ignition works by using atmospheric oxygen and Mana as a medium to trigger a chemical explosion from the outside. There’s room to deploy a Mana Shield or resist through magical defenses.
But the Unique Characteristic he was born with transcends magical formulas—it’s closer to a fundamental concept.
His explosions didn’t burn from the outside in.
The moment his Magical Power touched a target’s body—the muscles, the organs—it triggered a cascading detonation from within, using the living cells themselves as the catalyst. A grotesque and vicious power.
That’s why defense was nearly impossible. Only an S-rank Hunter like Kang Tae-yoon could recognize it in time.
That’s why the twenty new Hunters of Blade Guild were helpless before a single man.
The moment they allowed a scratch from his thin blade, their subordinates’ brains couldn’t withstand the internal pressure and burst like melons.
Eyes ruptured. Blood vessels boiled throughout their bodies as they were burned alive. Even the A-rank woman who trusted and followed me was toyed with by his mobility, her limbs bursting apart as she died.
I haven’t forgotten the horrific screams of my comrades, or the stench of blood in that hell-like Gate, the flesh splattering everywhere.
[Successor.]
Airi, who had maintained her silence, carefully opened her frequency.
[I would like to rephrase the premise of your question.]
[Has Hong Tae-hwa in this worldline already committed that murder?]
My footsteps stopped abruptly on the downward slope.
A bitter winter wind cut through my collar.
“······What are you trying to say?”
[Exactly what I stated.]
Airi flew before my eyes and fixed her gaze directly on me.
[Based on the data I have collected and analyzed, the current Hong Tae-hwa is merely a wandering runaway teenager,]
[An out-of-control adolescent boy awakened too early—nothing more.]
[There is a record of assault during his school years, but he has not yet crossed the line into murder.]
“That’s only the surface record.”
I rebutted firmly.
“You yourself decrypted the documents we secured from Club Arabian. The Red Blood Alliance’s new recruitment list. Hong Tae-hwa’s specs were recorded there exactly.”
[That is true. However, the name Hong Tae-hwa was never explicitly stated in the document.]
[Based on age and characteristics, there is a 99 percent probability it is him, but that 1 percent possibility of it being someone else is also physically real.]
“So what? Because he hasn’t killed anyone yet, I’m supposed to just watch and wait until he awakens into a monster and tears people to shreds?”
My teeth clenched hard.
I know it.
I know that shallow, hollow moral code of society—that you shouldn’t judge and condemn crimes not yet committed, merely surmised from memories of a possible future.
But I am someone who witnessed that horrific future with my own eyes and survived it.
This world’s Hong Tae-hwa is walking the same path—poverty and oppression.
Same conditions produce the same results. He will make the same choice in this world too, surrendering to money and slaughter, degrading into the Red Blood Alliance’s hunting dog.
“Listen carefully, and learn from this.”
I withdrew my hand from my pocket and reached toward the sprite hanging in empty space.
“I will not watch my people get swept away and die by that bomb again. If I can prevent it, the most efficient tactic is to stamp it out before the seed grows.”
Airi did not back down today.
Instead, she spun once in the empty air, then aligned her gaze directly with mine.
[Successor. I agree with your goal as well.]
[The premise of saving innocent lives aligns with the very reason my System exists.]
“Then what are you saying?”
Airi continued speaking.
[You have already saved hundreds, thousands of lives in this worldline, Successor.]
I withdrew the hand I had extended and stared at her silently.
By now we had reached the old empty lot where the streetlamps were lit, and where my SUV was parked, but I felt no urge to open the door.
[The world you now stand in may be an identical stage to your previous memories, but the events unfolding within it are undoubtedly diverging.]
Silver dust scattered from Airi’s wings embroidered the dark air.
[By clearing the Donggureung Gate early, you saved your family who should have died horribly in that future, and team leader Kim Dae-han.]
[What would have happened if Kim Dae-han had died as scheduled?]
“······.”
“Saving one man won’t shift the world’s great gears overnight.”
[No, sir. But a small yet fatal current has changed.]
[This world where Team Lead Kim Dae-han survives generates an entirely different causal law than the previous one.]
[Has not Se-hui’s very fate already twisted completely by your intervention?]
Something in my chest sank.
What had become of Se-hui in the previous world?
I’d never thought seriously about it.
Remembering how Taesung Energy had devolved into a fallen black corporation that wagered on human lives—it was all but certain that she, cast out by her own family, had met no happy end.
Perhaps she’d rotted away as a wretched stray haunting back alleys, intoxicated on boosters until she collapsed and died.
But now was different.
She hadn’t fled. With her own feet, she’d stormed the infernal Taesung Energy headquarters, freezing Mana Stone Cartridges to halt the corporation’s rot, carving out the malignant tumors festering within.
More than that—she’d even devised the Dekima to detect dormant-type Gates, leaving footprints that had never existed in the previous world.
[Perhaps your intervention twisted Se-hui’s trajectory toward hope itself.]
“Keep talking.”
[Yes, sir. I shall continue.]
“What?”
[What I mean to say is… Hong Tae-hwa is a variable too. He could be the same.]
“You don’t know who Hong Tae-hwa is.”
[Perhaps not. But if an overwhelming suppressive force existed—one that didn’t exist in the previous world—one as dominant as you—]
[then the probability of twisting Hong Tae-hwa’s trajectory and saving him before he falls to corruption would, statistically speaking, exist.]
It was the blind probabilism of artificial intelligence, the arrogant gambit of a system demanding the impossible.
“Don’t feed me that nonsense.”
I reached out again, seizing the phantom wings hovering in the empty air.
“Don’t shove such hollow logic at me.”
[Predecessor… I…]
“I told you this before.”
As I tightened my grip, silver mana particles trembled precariously, on the verge of shattering.
“A person’s nature never changes. It can’t be rewritten.”
Look at me.
I’d obtained the miracle of regression, crossing ten years, yet the core of myself remained untouched—still the same murder machine that had prowled blood-soaked battlefields, still slaughtering monsters without mercy.
I’d bought my family penthouses and offered them comfort, yet my soul’s essence remained that of a hunter obsessed with vengeance and survival.
Jang Yu-cheong was no different. That cunning, revolting nature persisted even as worlds twisted, and he fell to become a drug lord regardless.
People don’t change.
I know that absolute formula of despair better than anyone. That’s why I don’t believe in paltry hope.
“You don’t understand.”
I pulled my chin down toward the sprite clenched in my fist, my voice low and cutting.
“You don’t know what demons those things become when they wear human skin and get cornered to the bottom. What do data fragments like you think you know?”
Even before my rough handling, Airi didn’t resist or scatter her presence.
Held fast in my grip, she merely looked up at me with those large, transparent eyes, her voice thin and measured.
[… I am only Airi, a tactical support archive designed to aid you, Predecessor.]
That single statement froze my tangled thoughts like cold water poured over them.
Slide.
I released my grip. Silver dust scattered into the air.
Clutching at a fragment of the System, venting my own trauma and inferiority onto it. A hollow breath leaked out.
I yanked the car door open roughly and threw myself into the driver’s seat.
I closed the door as if fleeing, but my neck stiffened. I yanked my tie loose, gasping for air.
‘A dilemma.’
The unbridgeable gap between a monster that must die and a runaway teenager who hasn’t yet committed any crime.
Until I found the answer to this irritating, unresolved equation, I couldn’t seem to grip the wheel and move forward as I was.
I lifted my gaze, staring through the rearview mirror into the darkness of the back seat.
“Airi.”
[Yes, Predecessor.]
The System returned to command standby, its quiet response steady. I issued a new calculation that would completely twist the helm.
“Get ready to withdraw cash.”
[Yes? Cash, sir? How much do you need immediately?]
“About a billion won.”
[Understood. Disabling security protocols.]
Airi’s holographic status window overlapped the dashboard, immediately accessing the security network of my private account.
[A substantial sum in cash. What purpose do you intend for it?]
The System’s rigid verification procedures left me no choice—I lifted my foot from the brake and slammed it down hard on the accelerator.
“I’ll use it however I see fit.”
Roooaaar—!!
The moment I hit the ignition, the eight-cylinder engine tore through the night air with a bestial roar.
“And.”
I floored the accelerator, punching a new destination into the navigation system with the same hand.
“Lee Do-hyeon’s family contact information and home address. Scan and display them on screen. Now.”
The car lurched forward onto the asphalt with a violent screech of rubber against pavement.
The harsh tearing sound cut through the night, but if anything, that deafening noise drowned out the chaos churning in my mind—and for once, I was grateful for it.

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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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