The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 8

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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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8
Episode 8. A Civil Servant’s Proposal
***
Morning sunlight slipped through the curtain’s edge.
A light so clear it illuminated every speck of dust.
The discharge paperwork was complete.
Short for a prolonged rest, but long enough to put my thoughts in order.
‘Time to move again.’
I pushed myself upright.
My joints rotated smoothly. The aftereffects of the Mana Backlash had vanished, and the mana flowing through my veins was thicker and far more solid than before.
“Airi. Briefing.”
[Successor, your current level is 10. You have 15 Skill Points available.]
A concise graph materialized in the air before me.
Level 10.
For a single Gate raid, the gain was extraordinary.
Before the return, it would have taken a year of grinding to reach this stage.
Monopolizing a Gate solo isn’t something that happens every day.
And the reward for soloing elite monsters—even a named one—was sweet indeed.
[Conditions met. You can advance to the 2nd Circle.]
[Shall I proceed with the advancement?]
The system’s temptation.
Reaching the 2nd Circle would increase my total mana pool and grant access to a wider variety of elemental magic.
Most Mages would welcome such an offer with both hands.
“No. I’ll hold off.”
I declined without hesitation.
[I must inquire. This is an opportunity for increased power.]
“A Circle is just the size of the vessel.”
I knew this because I’d stood at the summit of the 9th Circle.
Merely expanding the mana pool was amateur work.
Filling a larger vessel mattered, yes—but more important was the pressure at which I could release that water.
What I needed now wasn’t flashy area-of-effect magic.
The ‘compression ratio’ and ‘precision’ to cram high-density mana through the narrow channel of the Blade Body without rupturing it.
Build a weak foundation and add stories to a structure—it collapses in the end.
The Mana Backlash last time proved as much.
“For now, I focus on efficiency and output. I’ll increase density, make the mana hard as steel.”
I traced the skill tree, branching like the Tree of Sephiroth.
My gaze locked on one node.
[Synchronization].
The heart of a Sword Mage, and the most unstable skill.
Raising its level would let me balance the output of mana and Aura.
“Invest all 14 points into [Synchronization].”
[Confirmed. This is a high-risk investment… but I shall proceed.]
[What of the remaining 1 point?]
“No need to think. Put it in [Blink].”
A survival tool and the key to creating variables.
With that, my foundation was set.
I changed clothes and packed my bag.
Just as I reached for the hospital room door—
Knock, knock.
The door opened with the sound.
A stranger. A man I’d never seen before.
Early forties. Tie half-undone, wrinkled black suit.
He had the typical haggard look of an overworked office worker, but his eyes were sharp.
And there was something subtly off about him.
‘The mana resonance… he’s no ordinary person. But too faint to be an active Hunter.’
Either a retired Hunter or someone with a rare Awakening.
The man stepped inside with a friendly smile.
“Are you Kim Do-jin?”
His face looked familiar from somewhere.
I searched my memory, but the name wouldn’t surface clearly.
But he nodded without letting his guard drop.
“Who might you be?”
“Ah, my apologies. I’m Kim Dae-han, director of the Special Ability Management Team in G-City, Gyeonggi Province.”
Kim Dae-han.
The moment I heard that name, a shadow flickered across my mind.
It was a name I’d glimpsed in a corner of the news before the regression, and a name that had passed through one of the Association’s reports.
“What brings a City Hall official here?”
“I heard you were being discharged and thought I’d stop by. How are you feeling? I understand the Mana Backlash was quite severe when you were found.”
His tone was warm, but there was steel beneath it.
Not a simple courtesy call. A probe.
An assessment of my condition, a calculation of my capabilities.
The way a predator’s eyes trace the vital points of its prey—calculating and relentless.
I straightened my clothes and answered calmly.
“I’m alive thanks to you. I’m grateful for your concern.”
A response that gave nothing away.
Kim Dae-han studied me for a moment, then smiled faintly and moved to the real purpose.
“I’ll be direct. The Dongunung Gate.”
His eyes sharpened.
The eyes of a hunter wearing a bureaucrat’s mask.
“How did you know to enter it?”
Direct hit.
‘As expected—he knew.’
The Dongunung Gate had been hidden behind a Concealment Barrier.
It wasn’t the kind of place a civilian could stumble upon while taking a walk.
But I didn’t panic.
Instead, I settled calmly on the edge of the bed.
“It’s the hill behind our house. Part of my usual walking route.”
“You stumbled through a hidden barrier by accident while taking a walk? A newly Awakened Hunter-aspirant?”
“I Awakened around Christmas. Got careless handling Mana in my excitement and happened to break through.”
A brazen lie.
But the bolder the lie, the more it sounds like truth.
My gaze didn’t waver, and Kim Dae-han’s brow narrowed.
“One more question then. The massive Mana explosion detected inside the Gate. Part of your walk as well?”
“First time casting magic—couldn’t control it. I fired desperately to survive, and that’s what happened. Is that illegal?”
I turned it back on him.
Pushed him instead of being pushed.
Entering a Gate without permission might be trespassing, but hunting monsters was self-defense and a public service.
Silent pressure: you have no grounds to question me.
A moment of silence stretched between us.
Tense, unspoken confrontation.
Kim Dae-han was the first to look away.
“Ha, well. I suppose I did sound rather like an interrogation. No offense intended. I didn’t come to press charges.”
He raised his hand in a gesture of peace and stepped back.
But I understood.
He hadn’t retreated—he was simply reaching for a different card.
“Then state your business.”
“I came to make a proposal to you. But first, would you hear my story?”
***
The story Kim Dae-han told was painfully ordinary and horrifying.
Ten years ago, on the day the Gates first opened.
He had gone to the mart to buy ingredients for tteokbokki.
Because his daughter had been singing.
Just thirty minutes.
In that brief span, the world inverted.
The alley leading home reeked of blood.
A shattered gate, broken windows.
And on the living room floor, blood smeared everywhere.
“There were no signs of people. They’d all been dragged away or eaten.”
Kim Dae-han’s voice was matter-of-fact.
He didn’t squeeze out tears or beg for pity.
Just like reciting a factual report—which somehow made it all the more chilling.
“What we found later was a single finger. His daughter’s pinky.”
He touched his own left pinky finger, worrying it between his thumb and forefinger.
It seemed a habit.
In that one gesture, ten years of pain and obsession were written plain.
“From that moment on, I’ve loathed Gates. That’s what drives me.”
He lifted his gaze to meet mine.
The emotion pooled in those eyes.
Hatred, and obsession.
They were the same kind of eyes as mine.
I saw my own image overlaid—the me from before my return, weeping before my family’s corpses.
‘He means it.’
At least his animosity toward Gates was no lie.
I folded my arms and fixed him with a stare.
“So? What does that have to do with me?”
I cut my tone to steel. I had no intention of being swayed by sob stories.
Emotion is emotion. Business is business.
Kim Dae-han smiled thinly, as if pleased by my response.
“The Dongunung Gate that Do-jin entered. It didn’t occur naturally.”
Now that was interesting.
A mere bureaucrat taking interest in a hatching-type Gate—unusual.
When I stayed silent, he drew a document envelope from his pocket and extended it.
“This is my analysis of the barrier pattern. I’m not a combat type, but I’m quite confident in barrier analysis.”
I leafed through the documents.
Complex magical circles and waveform graphs filled the pages.
To a layperson it would look like nonsense scrawl, but my eyes saw the truth in it.
“This is…”
Naturally occurring Gates emit irregular wavelengths.
But the pattern stamped across these documents was precise.
Geometric designs as if measured with a ruler.
An artificial arrangement reminiscent of arabesque motifs.
I decided to test him.
To see how much he actually knew.
“You’re saying someone deliberately installed it?”
“Yes. And very skillfully at that.”
“You mean humans can create Gates?”
“That, I don’t know. But…”
Kim Dae-han spoke with absolute certainty.
“Someone is concealing and cultivating Gates. Like a breeding farm.”
“A breeding farm…”
It was an apt comparison.
Managing hatching-type Gates artificially, then triggering them to profit? Or inciting larger chaos?
Either way, whoever they were, they were playing this city—this entire nation—like a game board.
That much was certain.
“Apparently, Western circles are calling this an ‘Easter Egg’ and researching it, but nobody in this country gives a damn.”
“What about the Management Bureau? Why didn’t you take this to them instead of me?”
Kim Dae-han’s expression twisted at my question.
Pure contempt flickered across his face.
“Those bastards? What good are reports? They just shred them.”
He clicked his tongue.
“Either they’re incompetent, or they’re in on it. One or the other.”
Another puzzle piece fell into place.
The “Gate Cult” and “Management Bureau” collusion my sister had mentioned.
And the “artificially created Gates” Kim Dae-han was describing.
It was all connecting to a single point.
‘He might be useful.’
I closed the documents and extended them back to him.
But Kim Dae-han didn’t take them.
“Do-jin broke through the Dongunung barrier. Very cleanly, at that.”
“I told you it was luck.”
“You’re telling me you dissolved a high-grade Concealment Barrier by pure chance? Without leaving a trace?”
He stepped closer.
“I lack the power. I can perceive the barrier, but I haven’t the strength to break it, nor to kill the monsters within. That’s the limit of a civil servant Hunter.”
The man’s voice carried desperation.
Yet there was no servility in it.
“But you, Do-jin—you possess the power. The overwhelming force that laid that Gate to waste.”
“And?”
“I’m proposing this: join us as a Hunter attached to City Hall.”
I let out a quiet laugh.
“A civil servant Hunter? Paltry wages, overtime work, and nothing but responsibility?”
“I’m offering you information.”
Kim Dae-han pulled out a card.
A card I couldn’t refuse.
“The coordinates of every anomalous Gate within G-City that I’ve personally surveyed. And access credentials to the Management Bureau’s classified database—the one they keep hidden. My rank does have its privileges.”
“……”
“Your eyes, Do-jin—they’re the eyes of someone hunting for something. Not the eyes of a man out for a casual stroll.”
He met my gaze directly.
“Isn’t this a win-win? I need someone to solve my problems, and you need hunting grounds and intelligence.”
It was a perfect deal.
He’d seen through me—that I wasn’t driven by simple justice.
And I knew he wasn’t some righteous civil servant either.
He was a man consumed by vengeance.
A man who would cast aside his badge in a heartbeat if it served his revenge.
A rational proposal.
The coordinates of every anomalous Gate within G-City.
The Management Bureau’s classified database.
These were precisely the weapons I needed now.
A shortcut a hundred times more efficient than groping in the dark.
I stood with folded arms, staring down at the hand he’d extended.
Before the return, I’d climbed to the apex of the 9th Circle, and in that climb I’d endured countless alliances and betrayals.
Each one had burned a single lesson into my bones.
‘Never use another’s desperation as collateral.’
Words my brother would sometimes say.
A man burning with vengeance is like a sharpened blade.
In the right hands, it cuts the enemy. In careless ones, it cuts the wielder too.
Moreover, I don’t know this man.
Whether he’s driven mad by the grief of losing his daughter, or whether he’s a cunning actor playing even that grief.
It hasn’t been verified.
And above all, the label “City Hall employee” would become a shackle constraining my actions.
I have no intention of becoming a pawn taking orders from someone else.
I set the board myself.
A 9th Circle Mage doesn’t pour mana into an unverified equation.
Not even if it promises the most seductive result imaginable.
“It’s a rational proposal. Almost too rational to refuse.”
Kim Dae-han’s lips curved upward slightly.
“But I’m declining 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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