The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 72

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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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72
Chapter 72. A Fair Price
***
[Master. I have completed a scan of the current financial and living conditions of Hunter Lee Do-hyun’s bereaved family.]
Through the car window as I gripped the steering wheel and cut across the city, Airi’s voice flowed in from the empty air where she’d manifested.
[The situation is dire.]
Above the passenger seat, a translucent hologram window that Airi had conjured.
Dense columns of figures and red-tinted negative indicators crowded its surface, laying bare the family’s bleak reality with merciless clarity.
It was roughly what I’d expected.
The profession of hunter. Wrapped in the glamour of spotlights and the fantasy of sudden wealth, yet fundamentally consigned to the blind spots of capitalism.
An extreme high-risk group whose limbs could be torn away by monsters from the Other Dimension at any moment—naturally, no private insurance company in this world would approve standard life or accident coverage for them.
And Lee Do-hyun’s family circumstances were even worse.
Eight years ago he’d gone missing inside a Gate, but no clear body had ever been recovered, leaving his official death certificate in indefinite suspension.
With death unconfirmed, neither the Hunter Academy he’d been affiliated with nor the Gate Management Bureau had paid out any survivor’s compensation or pension. All that remained for the family of a hero who’d given his life for humanity’s survival was an empty chair at the table and grinding poverty.
“What about royalties.”
I stopped the car at a red light and swiped through the hologram screen.
“He must have written more than one or two books on magical combat theory. Just the royalties from textbooks used across academies worldwide would’ve been enough for his family to live comfortably forever.”
[Zero.]
Airi’s answer left no room for doubt.
[During his lifetime, Hunter Lee Do-hyun renounced all copyright to the magical theories and monster strategy guides he had authored.]
[He appears to have made it his principle to distribute everything freely, for the cultivation of future generations and the survival of humanity.]
[His family currently receives no intellectual property income whatsoever.]
The traffic light outside the window shifted from red to green.
A noble sacrifice—weighing humanity’s future above his own family’s welfare. Yet that altruism had become a poison slowly strangling those he’d left behind.
[Currently his dependents include a university-age son and a middle-school daughter.]
[It is the most expensive period of their lives.]
[Hunter Lee Do-hyun’s wife works day labor at construction sites and logistics centers to make ends meet, but even combined with welfare payments, the income falls far short of living expenses.]
Across the hologram screen, red-tinted demand notices from secondary financial institutions and loan sharks cascaded like a waterfall.
[Most critical is the debt.]
[Monthly interest alone on the accumulated debt exceeds 3 million won.]
A structure of despair where debt swells with every breath.
But as my gaze swept down the screen, it halted abruptly on a single line item in one account’s deposit history.
“Wait. What is this.”
I pointed at a corner of the hologram with my finger.
The 25th of every month. Precisely 1.5 million won deposited without fail through an untraceable shell account—a mysterious cash flow from an unknown source.
[Investigation reveals the transfers were routed through personal assets belonging to Ryu Gang-jin, Director of Operations at the Gate Management Bureau.]
[The payments have continued without a single lapse over the past six years.]
“……That so.”
Ryu Gang-jin. The massive iron fist that controlled the Bureau’s hounds.
That man had been secretly supporting Lee Do-hyun’s bereaved family from behind the scenes since his disappearance—laundering the funds through networks as intricate as a cell structure to keep his identity hidden.
I recalculated the weight of the hand Ryu Gang-jin was holding. Inside the rotten Gate Management Bureau, where hierarchy and power logic were all that mattered.
If there remained even the smallest margin of give in that machine, it would be entirely thanks to the existence of a man like Ryu Gang-jin. Bae Hyun-gyeom had found a good superior.
I pressed the accelerator again. The engine’s low hum filled the car.
But that alone fell far short.
The 1.5 million won Ryu Gang-jin had been sending was certainly a lifeline for a hemorrhaging household. But it was physically impossible to fill a bottomless pit where monthly interest alone exceeded 2 million won.
The descendants of a hero, harassed by creditors and drifting through day labor.
This is no fair exchange when measured against the principle of mana that sustains this world. If someone has cast down their life to save the world, then the world must pay them a commensurate reward of equal magnitude.
***
Before long, my SUV had slipped past the heart of G City and into the main gate of an enormous university campus.
According to Airi’s investigation, the university where Lee Do-hyun’s son was enrolled happened to be my alma mater as well.
“Seems he studies pretty hard.”
Korean University.
Always ranked in the top three across the entire Korean peninsula.
Especially since the Gate era opened, it had become home to some of the world’s finest research facilities in the Ability Engineering field, and its reputation climbed higher with each passing year.
At the main gate, where a visitor barrier had descended.
I pulled out my ID from my wallet and scanned it lightly against the reader.
Beep—
[Ability Engineering Department, Class of XX, Kim Do-jin]
[Status: Graduated]
The barrier lifted smoothly, and a security guard snapped to attention with a crisp salute.
I drove slowly through the familiar campus thoroughfare, watching young students hurry past the windows, clasping textbooks to their chests.
A peculiar sensation hovered at my fingertips on the steering wheel.
From my discharge from military service until I donned my graduation robes, my core had never released a single spark of mana. An ordinary civilian without the ticket of being an Awakened One.
With no background and no power to speak of, the only lifeline I could choose to survive in this cruel world was study—nothing else.
I buried myself in the library, devouring texts on Ability Engineering, and burned the midnight oil trying to prove the fluctuations of mana through physics formulas.
That bitter deprivation and obsession with books became the sturdiest foundation that would later propel me, awakening belatedly, all the way to the seat of a 9-Circle Archmage.
Now, having regressed and taken on Kang Tae-yoon’s body, I was still bound by causality to walk that same punishing path as an undergraduate and graduate from this world in the same manner.
I parked the car in front of the Main Building.
My destination was neither the president’s office nor the Ability Engineering Department campus.
Creak.
The university scholarship support office on the first floor of the Administration Building at the center of campus.
A middle-aged clerk, buried under piles of documents and tapping at a keyboard, lifted his head at the sound of the door opening. An uninvited guest appeared—expensive custom tailoring and sunglasses. Thick wariness bloomed across the clerk’s face.
“Who···· are you. Access is restricted.”
Toward the clerk who made no effort to hide his displeasure, I removed my sunglasses, tucking them into my pocket, and stated my identity clearly.
“Kim Do-jin, Hunter with the City Management Ability Team.”
***
“····· What? A billion won?!”
The head of the scholarship office stood abruptly, dropping the ballpoint pen he’d been holding to the floor.
His pupils trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
Leaning back against the reception sofa, I lightly slid the blank check I’d just signed—bearing that astronomical sum—across the scholarship director’s desk. His jaw fell grotesquely as he verified the number of zeros printed on the figure.
I declared to the scholarship director that I would donate a billion won annually. This was the first installment.
“I understand that Hunter Lee Do-hyun’s son is currently enrolled in his second year.”
Maintaining an even tone, I laid out the terms of compensation across the table.
“Make it so.”
Complete tuition remission for the remainder of his enrollment, provision of the finest single-occupancy dormitory suite through graduation, and monthly dignitary allowance as living expenses. And upon graduation, a guaranteed position as an intern at the highest-tier ability research institute affiliated with the school.
An outrageous demand. To crush that outrageousness, I deployed an amount that transcended common sense.
“B-but Hunter. A donation of such magnitude with a specific designation requires clear disclosure of the source and purpose under regulation···.”
“The source is ‘a special compensation generously donated by an anonymous patron in repayment for the dedication of a first-generation hero.’ Make it so.”
I lifted my back from the sofa, leaning forward slightly. I looked directly into the director’s eyes.
“If so much as a single character of my name or my affiliation with the Ability Management Team leaks outside these walls. Director, you won’t get off with merely losing your desk.”
“Y-yes, I will keep it in mind! I will maintain absolute confidentiality!”
The scholarship director bowed so deeply his waist seemed to bend. The man who, in my previous world, had flatly rejected my scholarship application, citing ambiguous criteria, now looked quite adequately crumpled.
With the university’s administrative procedures complete, what remained was to overhaul the external foundations of his life.
I gave Airi instructions on data processing while walking along the Walking Path.
“Airi.”
[Yes, Successor.]
“Relocate Hunter Lee Do-hyun’s family to a new luxury apartment equipped with the highest-grade security system effective immediately. Fabricate an appropriate reason. Recommend his wife for a regular management position at the welfare foundation under Taeseong Energy. I’ve already told Jeong Se-hui, so she’ll handle it.”
[How should we process the debt repayment?]
“Don’t reduce it by a single won in interest—repay the entire amount in cash today. And the people entangled behind that company will absolutely be connected to Boosters, so anonymously tip off the Hunter Association and the narcotics division. Make sure they never come within a mile of this family again.”
[Understood. I will thoroughly launder all fund sources and disburse them in the form of completely untraceable compensation.]
Tens of billions in capital were distributed and executed flawlessly in the span of a single minute’s computation.
This is how money should be spent.
The shallow injustices of the world dissolve without excuse when one ruthlessly pours overwhelming power and rotting wealth upon them. Within this brutal capitalist system, it was the cleanest and most justified form of compensation.
‘Even this won’t be enough.’
I stepped onto the grass of my alma mater for the first time in ages.
In the previous world, after I tossed away my mortarboard, I never had the leisure to return. Too busy grinding as a low-tier hunter, eking out survival hand-to-mouth, haunting blood-soaked battlefields.
A bench in front of the Central Library caught my eye in the distance.
Fragments of meager youth—clinking canned beers with seniors while waxing romantic, staying up all night on assignments only to doze off with my girlfriend’s shoulder against mine.
But I did not pause.
The weight of impending ruin bearing down on my shoulders was far too heavy to sink into the past and indulge in sentiment. The work was done. I was about to turn back toward home to wash away the body’s fatigue when—
“Hey, isn’t that Do-jin?”
A deep summons from behind.
The voice had a familiar frequency, but the name didn’t match immediately.
“Who······.”
I turned to identify the speaker.
“You bastard, it is Kim Do-jin! You!”
A rough palm slapped my shoulder with a light thud.
A faded red-check shirt and wrinkled cotton pants. A middle-aged man with disheveled hair and round-rimmed glasses—the kind impression of a neighborhood fried chicken shop owner.
The moment I saw the faculty ID badge on his chest, a memory from the past sparked vividly to life.
“Ah. Professor.”
“Yeah, yeah! Do-jin, man, how long has it been? You’ve filled out so much I barely recognize you.”
The man laughed heartily, gripping my forearm and shaking it. Without the title of university professor, he’d be indistinguishable from any middle-aged neighbor.
It was Song Byung-jin, my advisor during my undergraduate years in the Ability Engineering Department and the professor responsible for the entire program.
From the perspective of now—barely after graduation—but for me, regressed as I was, it had been ten years since we last met.
‘Damn it.’
I should have headed straight back to the car once the business was finished. That brief moment of distraction just now had handed over my neck to the one person most exhausting and troublesome to deal with.
Song Byung-jin. On the surface, he seemed like a carefree old man, but in the field of Ability Engineering, he was one of the absolute top authorities in the world, counted among the best ten fingers globally.
A pioneer in fusion technology—analyzing the Mana wavelengths from the Other Dimension that emerged through Gates, and applying them as energy sources in modern engineering.
Professor Song himself was the one who completed the initial foundational design of the Mana Stone Cartridge, which gave Taeseong Energy its grip on global energy supremacy.
He had shown particular affection for me during my undergraduate years. He valued the obsessive tenacity with which I had devoted myself solely to dismantling the logic of Ability Engineering, with no background to rely on.
An obedient and naive undergraduate from a professor’s perspective—extracting experimental data on command and pulling all-nighters.
Had I not awakened as a Hunter late in life, I would almost certainly have been dragged into his graduate lab and had my youth mortgaged away.
“Look at you, now that you’ve tasted the Hunter life, you’ve become quite refined.”
Professor Song handed me a paper cup of sweet mix coffee that he’d pulled from an old vending machine in a corner of the campus.
“No, I’m the same as always.”
I accepted the steaming cup and met his gaze.
“How have you been, Professor?”
At my question, Professor Song took a long slurp of his mix coffee, then knitted his brows and waved his hand dismissively.
“Not well, damn it. There are no dedicated students like your year anymore, none. These days’ kids are so calculating—the moment their hours are up, they bolt straight home. Not a single one stays in the lab to pull all-nighters.”
“That’s normal. Be grateful you haven’t been reported.”
Professor Song’s lips jutted forward.
“There’s no romance in that, no romance. Scholarship is supposed to have the thrill of obsession, of diving deep.”
“If you keep saying things like that in front of undergraduates, next year you’ll be short not just grad students but undergraduates too.”
“Ha, look at you—become a Hunter and suddenly you’ve got a mouth on you.”
Professor Song chuckled, tossing the empty cup into a waste bin with a flick. It traced a perfect arc and disappeared neatly through the opening.
“I hear bits and pieces about you through the grapevine. You’ve really made quite a name for yourself in our department.”
Professor Song settled onto a bench, lowering his voice.
He was referring to my work as a Hunter affiliated with City Hall—resolving the Club Arabian incident and making headlines day after day.
“I was simply doing my job.”
“I didn’t realize that cursed Booster had rotted so deep into the heart of the city. When I saw it on the news… honestly, it weighed on me heavily. I felt real guilt.”
Professor Song pulled at the sleeves of his checkered shirt and wiped his fogged glasses clean. His hunched shoulders looked particularly small and forlorn today.
“To think that the Mana Conversion Technology we researched purely for humanity’s benefit would be so misused as a demonic drug eating away at people. As a scholar, I cannot escape the profound desolation of it.”
Self-recrimination mixed into his confession. The basic mechanism of Boosters was liquefying Mana and injecting it into the nervous system. Since Ability Engineering scholars had established the foundational theory that formed its backbone, it was an original sin he carried as a scholar.
“It’s not your fault, Professor.”
I drew the line clearly.
“It’s not the blacksmith’s fault for forging the blade. It’s only the problem of the madmen who stabbed others with it. Don’t burden yourself so heavily.”
At my words of comfort, Professor Song adjusted his glasses and smiled faintly.
“When you graduated and turned down the nine-figure scout offers from major Guilds to become a low-ranking civil servant at City Hall, I thought to myself then: ‘Of course, it’s Kim Do-jin.'”
“······.”
“The power of Ability. Fundamentally, it’s not our human power. It’s merely the dregs of a dimension we’ve borrowed for a time.”
Professor Song’s philosophy.
It was the philosophy of Ability Engineering he’d hammered into my ears since my undergraduate days, before the Regression.
“Nature’s law is merciless. If we abuse the borrowed power recklessly, where else could the entropy waste go? It can only circle back as the ruin that strangles humanity’s very neck.”
“You haven’t changed on that front.”
“A person should be consistent, damn it. So that borrowed, fearsome power must be used not for selfish gain but for the right causes that sustain the world. Just like you’re doing now.”
I found myself in complete agreement with that.
Though I showed reluctance on the surface, deep in my heart I always held genuine respect for him—and it was precisely because of that solid philosophy.
“I’ll stop lecturing now. I’ve got to get to a class soon anyway.”
Professor Song pressed his knee and slowly rose from the bench.
As he turned to leave, something seemed to occur to him. He stopped and turned back.
“Do-jin. I believe our humanity must prepare for a great bill that will come due someday.”
“······What kind of preparation are you speaking of?”
At my question, Professor Song looked up at the murky sky and smiled bitterly.
“Well, since I’m a science man through and through, the right words don’t quite come to mind. If I had to express it in extreme terms, then······.”
His lips opened slowly.
“Annihilation.”

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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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