The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 79

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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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79
Chapter 79. The Vanguard of the Red Moon
***
On the outskirts of Paju, Gyeonggi Province.
An abandoned place near a military-controlled zone long devoid of human presence.
There stood a standard C-rank Gate designated D23-412, which according to the official database of South Korea’s Gate Management Bureau had been marked as “subjugation complete and permanently sealed” three years prior.
But the records were lies.
The Gate had never closed. More precisely, it had been artificially locked in place through magical engineering, preventing the dimension from collapsing into the Other World.
Moreover, the highest-grade Mana Blocking Barriers were layered around the entrance, rendering it a perfect blind spot to external reconnaissance satellites and Hunter detection networks.
This abandoned Gate, which had changed hands multiple times through shadowy dark web auctions accompanied by hundreds of millions of won, now served as the den of Asia’s largest illegal Hunter cartel: the Hong Hyeol-maeng.
A perfect vanguard for their advance into South Korea.
They called this sealed Other World space the Red Moon.
The landscape within the Gate bore no resemblance whatsoever to the ordinary hillside visible from outside.
The sky hung stained crimson, and across the earth swirled only barren red dust—a lawless domain where the laws and morals of the world had been utterly stripped away.
Not a single whisper of information that occurred here escaped to the outside world.
Over the vast Other World terrain swarmed crudely captured lower-rank monsters. Around the necks of goblins and orcs hung vicious Mind Control Chokers that glowed with a sickly blue light.
Robbed of their wills, they were worked in mana stone mines swinging pickaxes, or were ground down and slaughtered as living punching bags for the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s foot soldiers to practice live combat, dying in abject misery.
And in the deepest recesses of that blood-red earth.
From the second floor of a massive fortress grotesquely woven from dozens of giant export containers, a news broadcast from the outside world droned thinly through the air.
[···This is a report on a large-scale Incubation-Type Gate that our Ability Management Team has independently detected.]
On the wall of monitors, Mayor Park Gwang-cheol of G City stood before a microphone with a stern expression, bombarded by camera flashes from countless journalists.
[Through a specialized Magical Power Detection Device developed in-house by the Ability Management Team, we have located the hidden space.]
[The wavelengths emanating from this Gate perfectly match the Mana arrangements of Incubation-Type Gates previously reported in academic circles.]
The briefing continued, resolute and confident.
[The Gate’s location has been pinpointed to a restricted area near Gongsan Tower in D City, North Gyeongsang Province.]
[We intend to work closely with the D City local government to deploy a large-scale joint subjugation operation three days from now.]
[We have already concluded all negotiations for combat support with the nation’s top-tier major guilds.]
The journalists’ camera shutters rattled like gunfire.
[We will prioritize the safety of our citizens above all else]
[and the Ability Management Team of G City will provide unreserved administrative and physical support for all follow-up measures related to this Incubation-Type Gate.]
[I, Park Gwang-cheol, stake my name on this promise.]
Click.
The monitor screen displaying the resolute mayor’s face went black at the press of the remote’s power button.
“······.”
Against the blank black screen, the faint silhouette of a man sitting deep into a sofa flickered into view.
Ash-bleached short hair. Grotesquely thick scars running sharply from his jawline down the back of his neck. The man wore a matte black lightweight hunter suit tailored to maximize defense and mobility without a single gap.
Lu Tinglong—the core force of the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s Korean division and the commander of the assault unit known as Red Moon.
It was Lu Tinglong.
An iron door rang softly as a masked subordinate in black carefully entered the room.
“Commander. We’ve just received contact from the Cult.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.”
Lu Tinglong drew a silver Zippo lighter from his breast pocket and replied in a low tone. There was no foreign accent to his Korean whatsoever.
“Did the money come through properly?”
“Yes, sir. In fact, they sent about thirty percent more than the agreed-upon advance.”
Lu Tinglong let out a soft snort at his subordinate’s report, flicking his lighter to ignite the thick cigar he held between his lips.
“Funny bastards. Must be rolling in money.”
Whissss.
Acrid cigar smoke unfurled slowly into the stale air of the container room.
“The Gate’s location.”
“It matches exactly what they mentioned in the news briefing just now. A mountainous area near Gongsan Tower in D City, North Gyeongsang Province.”
“Figures. Those Cult bastards must be scared out of their minds—giving us extra money and groveling like that.”
Lu Tinglong tapped cigar ash into an ashtray as he muttered drily.
If that colossal Incubation-Type Gate responsible for producing Booster Original was breached, it would mean the Cult’s funding pipeline and the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s distribution network would evaporate simultaneously.
“Will we proceed according to the date they requested? The broadcast said the subjugation force will be dispatched three days from now.”
At his subordinate’s question, Lu Tinglong stared at the darkened monitor.
“No.”
He crushed out his cigar and rose to his feet.
“We move today.”
“Sir? But, but their troop mobilization is scheduled for three days from now······.”
“Them broadcasting it nationwide like this—blabbing about it everywhere—is likely a perfect bluff meant for our ears.”
Lu Tinglong twisted his neck from side to side, producing the dull crack of vertebrae grinding together.
“Three days from now—worthless. I can already guess what those rat bastards will do. Odds are the Ability Management Team and their ilk have already begun covert prep work in secret.”
Across his scarred face, the cruel teeth of a predator bared themselves.
“Before they can form their lines, we strike first. We seize the Gate and slaughter every last Hunter who crawls in—right there at the entrance.”
“Understood. I’ll assemble the assault teams immediately.”
His subordinate bowed curtly and slipped from the room.
Lu Tinglong stepped to the window and gazed down at the Plaza spreading wide beneath the first floor of the container structure. There was not a hint of excitement or anxiety in the eyes of a predator before the hunt.
Only the detached gaze of a butcher about to clock in for another day’s work lingered there.
***
The ground floor of the massive container-like building.
Within the overwhelmingly vast hall—large enough to fit two soccer fields—the members of Red Moon, the assault unit of Hong Hyeol-maeng, stood arrayed in dense formation.
Contract killers who had clawed their way through dark alleyways, mercenaries with bounties on their heads across nations, and freshly recruited child soldiers drafted into the ranks.
The murky air exhaled by two hundred human figures reeking of murderous intent and Mana pressed down heavy upon the hall.
Clang.
Down the iron staircase descending from the second floor came Squad Leader Lu Tinglong and three or four key executives, moving slowly onto the platform.
The murmur of the crowd died at once, as if doused with cold water.
Lu Tinglong sucked on a fresh cigar wedged between his teeth, his gaze sweeping indifferently across the two hundred members gathered below the platform—as though conducting a mere inventory check.
“Starting now.”
There was no microphone. Yet his heavy, iron-edged voice, suffused with Aura, struck clear and resonant into every corner of the hall.
“We begin the culling.”
At those words, the formation below the platform began to ripple with unease.
The pupils of the newly recruited members, not yet accustomed to Hong Hyeol-maeng’s ways, trembled with anxiety, while the veteran mercenaries, already versed in such brutality, reflexively reached for weapons at their sides and began to gauge the distance to their neighbors.
Lu Tinglong flicked ash from his cigar onto the floor, then pronounced the rules with the casual dryness of someone choosing a lunch menu.
“The person standing right next to you—that’s your target for culling.”
“······!”
“Time limit: ten minutes. When those ten minutes are up,”
Lu Tinglong’s serpentine eyes narrowed with chilling precision.
“if both of you are still breathing, we come down there and grind you both into minced meat ourselves.”
Before his words even finished,
“Gaaaaahhh!!”
A veteran, showing no hesitation while others faltered, drove a short dagger into his neighbor’s throat, his ambush shattering the silence.
As blood erupted into the air—as if fired like a signal flare—two hundred people crammed inside the sealed container hall transformed in an instant into an uncontrollable hellscape.
Spells detonated, arrows flew, sword strikes wreathed in Aura tore flesh and blood in all directions. A merciless slaughter unfolded—gouging out eyes, ripping out hearts, all for the sake of survival.
“Lu Tinglong, isn’t the number you’re culling this time excessive?”
An executive of equal rank standing beside Lu Tinglong, arms folded, asked while gazing down indifferently at the chaos of screams below the platform.
With severed necks and spilled entrails as backdrop music, the two men continued their business conversation with perfect calm.
“Our power hemorrhage is severe, isn’t it.”
At his colleague’s observation, Lu Tinglong exhaled cigar smoke and replied.
“The seeds we planted in South Korea—you know how they’re being systematically eliminated one by one, right?”
“······You mean the G City network and the Gyeonggi Province outer line that Jang Yu-cheong was managing.”
“That’s right. And it was all done by a single individual.”
“What? You’re telling me one person took them all down?”
The executive’s brow furrowed deeply. That elite units from the Gate Management Bureau or the combined guilds of the Hunter Association had not been the ones behind this, but rather a lone vigilante, came as a rather shocking variable even to them.
“The method is identical.”
Lu Tinglong continued, gazing with bland indifference at a single member dying of a knife wound in the midst of the melee below.
“At first, the movements were so efficient I thought it was at least ten Hunters or more. But it’s not. After tracing the patterns, it was just one person.”
“Any suspects?”
“Not yet. Haven’t even caught a whiff.”
“Then could it be Invictus?”
Lu Tinglong laughed bitterly.
“Based on power alone, Invictus would be likely. But they wouldn’t move. Those bastards are even more obsessed with money than we are.”
A thin edge of irritation threaded through Lu Tinglong’s voice. He had himself visited the ruins of the Abandoned Factory and the Underground Gambling Den, but that unknown assassin had left not a single clue.
The traces of slaughter were unmistakable, yet the lingering resonance of Mana or the fingerprint-like signature of Aura had been wiped clean—as if sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.
“Not even a scrap of Mana residue. That precision irritates me.”
He expelled the last of his smoke.
“Since Jang Yu-cheong died, our intelligence network has noticeably deteriorated.”
Lu Tinglong ground out his cigar on the floor and clicked his tongue.
“He was sharp enough to be useful.”
“A headache indeed. Has the Alliance Master reached out directly?”
At his subordinate’s careful question, Lu Tinglong’s shoulders stiffened ever so slightly.
“Not yet.”
Lu Tinglong steadied himself against the railing as he answered.
“Which is why we have to pull this off flawlessly. If it fails, the Red Moon gets scrapped entirely at the Alliance Master’s discretion anyway.”
“Fair point.”
The executive nodded, his eyes drifting down to the carnage unfolding on the floor below.
“You’re right—the weak dregs are nothing but liabilities. Time to cull them.”
As this blunt exchange continued, Lu Tinglong’s gaze suddenly sharpened, fixing on a corner of the ground-floor hall where the slaughter was taking place.
“Hm.”
An intrigued exhale escaped his lips.
Barely a minute into the culling, the boy with crimson hair moved through the chaos of blood and violence with terrible efficiency.
He’d detonated a comrade who charged at him with a single strike, reducing the body to ash, and was now standing at the very front of the formation—blank-faced, having finished his slaughter first.
“So that’s the one.”
The executive, too, watched the boy’s overwhelming destructive power and let out a low whistle.
“The last gift Jang Yu-cheong left us before he died.”
“An Early Awakener, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. That kid’s unique trait rivals a competent mage.”
Lu Tinglong’s eyes narrowed with naked hunger.
“A mutation like that, properly honed, would make a truly exquisite piece—something even the Alliance Master himself would covet.”
Below the platform, the ten-minute timer was running out.
The floor was littered with roughly a hundred corpses, blood pooling beneath them, while the survivors stood gasping, their weapons hanging slack at their sides, drenched in gore.
The executive gave Lu Tinglong a nod and gestured. Lu Tinglong rolled his shoulders and replied smoothly.
“Time to head down.”
***
Clank. Clank.
Lu Tinglong and his men descended the metal stairs, their footsteps echoing across blood-slicked concrete as they crossed the floor.
Exactly half had survived the culling—roughly a hundred elite operatives.
The thick reek of blood and the lingering stench of murder still hung heavy in the air, yet Lu Tinglong’s stride betrayed no flicker of emotion.
Slice—!
“Gack—”
He walked through the ranks with casual grace, his short dagger flashing out to slit the throats of the grievously wounded who sat gasping on the floor, each cut swift and clean.
Those who thought they’d survived collapsed without even a struggle, their deaths mercifully quick and soundless. Thorough. Mechanical. No mercy, not even the luxury of a scream.
“We don’t need deadwood from a botched operation.”
Lu Tinglong tapped the blade clean against the floor, his voice flat as a blade’s edge.
“The client is someone the Alliance Master himself is watching closely. We secure that Gate first—absolutely. Then we slaughter every Hunter fool who crawls inside. Not one lives.”
He snapped his fingers lightly.
On cue, the executives behind him opened several silver metal cases and began distributing something to the waiting ranks.
One item to each of the hundred survivors.
Black gas masks that covered the face, connected via tubes to transparent inhalers. Inside each inhaler, a thick, murky green liquid sloshed ominously.
“Grade Green.”
Lu Tinglong lifted a mask and spoke with cool precision.
“Not some diluted street trash made for cheap thrills. This is combat-grade. Refined to extremes. Modified for actual use.”
He swept his gaze across the silent ranks, his voice dropping lower.
“Once this is in your lungs, failure is not an option.”
As he walked through the formation, Lu Tinglong’s steps eventually halted before the red-haired boy who stood at the very front.
The boy looked up at him with an expressionless face.
Beneath his feet lay the charred corpse of a female comrade—the one he’d detonated moments ago during the culling.
She wasn’t quite dead yet. Her blackened fingers twitched faintly, and she breathed out soft, pained sounds.
“Decent technique.”
Lu Tinglong regarded him coldly, his voice dismissive.
“Your follow-through is sloppy.”
Slice—!
Without another word, his dagger flashed out, severing the woman’s throat with a deep, merciless cut. Blood sprayed across the floor, and her faint tremors ceased completely.
The boy’s pupils trembled microscopically, but he clenched his teeth and offered no resistance.
“Don’t hesitate in the field.”
Lu Tinglong withdrew his blade and pressed the Booster Original—mask and all—firmly into the boy’s chest.
“He’s watching you too.”
“…Yes.”
The boy accepted the inhaler, gripping it tight, and bowed his head with an empty voice.
At his obedient response, a thick satisfaction bloomed across Lu Tinglong’s face. He reached out and roughly ruffled the boy’s crimson hair, whispering low and cold.
“I expect great things of you, 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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