The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 80

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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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80
Chapter 80. The Predator in Darkness
***
The cold, metallic scrape of metal echoed heavily through the interior of the container.
Hong Tae-hwa secured a palm-sized transparent suction device firmly across his chest, binding it over the black tactical vest covering his torso. Inside, a dark emerald liquid sloshed softly.
It was Booster Green—a narcotic combat stimulant that temporarily disengaged the brain’s limiter and blocked pain signals.
The cool touch of plastic pressed against his chest, yet the boy’s eyes held not a trace of fear or revulsion. There was only the vacant, bottomless blindness that had settled in them—a perfect emptiness.
“All units. Surrender personal communication devices.”
A terse command from the strike team captain standing on the platform.
It was thorough control for operational security. Fifty elite operatives lined up in the hall moved in lockstep, drawing out their smartphones and powering them down.
Hong Tae-hwa pulled an old smartphone from his pocket as well.
The moment he activated the darkened screen, a cascade of red notifications came pouring down like a waterfall, assaulting his eyes.
[42 Missed Calls – Kim Dae-han]
[11 Missed Calls – Recipient Paid]
Dozens of missed call logs left by the government worker. Beneath them lay long text messages sent relentlessly, packed densely into the screen. Hong Tae-hwa’s finger paused—ever so slightly—above the power button.
Buzz—
In that brief opening, a voice message suddenly appeared on the screen with a short vibration.
[Tae-hwa. He came by again today.]
[He paced around your room for such a long time.]
[It’s not too late even now. Come back right away, and everything will be forgotten······.]
Beyond the voice, the face of the blind grandfather who had come searching for him—his back bent with desperate affection as he bowed—flickered in his mind’s eye. And alongside him, the unbearably meddlesome face of the man named Kim Dae-han, who had stood watch before the worn front door, supporting the old man’s arm.
“······.”
Hong Tae-hwa stared silently at the screen.
A deep shadow fell beneath the boy’s crimson hair. The wavering light in his eyes soon grew cold and distant, and without a moment’s hesitation, he pressed and held the power button.
The screen flickered black and went dark.
“No.”
A dry monologue scattered from between the boy’s lips, reaching no one.
“It’s too late.”
Hong Tae-hwa tied back his long crimson hair tightly. Then he pulled a black tactical mask over his face, concealing his lower jaw completely.
The boy’s youthful features were erased entirely. What remained in their place was only the Red Blood Alliance’s Raging Demon—a tool of slaughter that obeyed commands alone.
“Moving out.”
At the captain’s hand signal, fifty operatives of the strike team moved toward the hangar on the first floor without a single footfall. There, several black speedboats waited, ready to connect the gate’s artificial lake to the external waterway.
The boats slid silently into the darkness.
The gleam in the eyes of these beasts—emerging from the blood-crimson dimension, advancing toward the world of reality—turned sharp and cold.
Dozens of large monitors emitted the only blue light illuminating the space.
Lü Tingrong—Strike Team Captain and overall commander of the Red Blood Alliance’s Korean branch.
He leaned deep into a premium leather sofa, his sharp eyes tracking dozens of split screens displayed across the monitors.
The screens relayed in real time the movements of the strike team Red Moon, which was penetrating the mountain terrain of City D through absolute darkness, captured through infrared cameras.
“Beautiful.”
Lü Tingrong exhaled a satisfied sigh, the cigar dangling from his lips trembling slightly.
His admiration was no exaggeration. Despite more than fifty personnel surging through the mountain terrain, their movements were flawless, without a single wasted gesture.
They muffled their footsteps, maintained formation through hand signals alone, and swept through the forest like a single vast organism.
Snap! Snap!
Between the trees, unmanned surveillance cameras and reconnaissance drones that the City D authorities and Hunter Association had installed on the ridgelines appeared. But the assassins leading the Red Moon vanguard approached without a trace, severing circuits with magical force, and took perfect visual control without a sound.
An infiltration sealed tight as a drum.
These were the elite killing machines that Lü Tingrong himself had personally culled and trained from the ground up. An overwhelming force of violence that even elite special operations units of major nations could not compete against.
The strike team on the monitor finally reached a concealed ridge, halting its formation before an empty clearing.
‘Is this it.’
Lü Tingrong’s brow narrowed slightly. The secret fortress that the Gate Cult had commissioned him to defend with a hefty premium. They had reached the coordinates where a large-scale incubation-type gate lay dormant, yet the landscape beyond the screen was eerily, unnaturally quiet.
Neither the City G Ability Management Team nor the Hunter Association’s subjugation squads that had been making noise in the news appeared, nor even the trace of a common scout.
‘Is it possible they didn’t even pinpoint the location correctly.’
Lü Tingrong tapped the keyboard, bringing up screens from different angles being transmitted by the reconnaissance team in sequence. He scanned the forest within a two-kilometer radius, but not a single thermal signature or mana wavelength was detected.
Crackle—
At that moment, the voice of Se Yung-hui, the deputy commander of Red Moon overseeing operations on-site, came through the radio.
[Captain. We’ve reached the coordinates. Should we proceed with entry?]
Lü Tingrong rubbed his jaw, calculating the risk and gain coldly.
If enemy subjugation forces hadn’t arrived, there was no need to enter the gate first. The orthodox tactic—and safest approach—was to ambush from high ground outside, unleashing a devastating crossfire on the hunters who would come huffing up later.
Moreover, according to intelligence, the incubation-type gate buried in this mountain by the cult was an old gate—more than ten years old since its creation.
Though barrier magic had forcibly prevented its collapse, the mana density of the interior space could not be guaranteed as stable, an unknowable marsh of danger. Should they misstep and enter, a dimensional layer collapse could erase even his elite forces into thin air in a single moment.
But.
‘Amateurish orthodoxy breeds variables.’
Lü Tingrong layered that philosophy of survival—hard-won through countless brushes with death in back alleys—over his reading of the match’s flow, staying one move ahead.
If the enemy sensed the external ambush and tightened the encirclement?
The entire mountain terrain risked becoming a sprawling net of fire, trapping them in isolation instead.
But if they pushed into the Gate itself and sealed the entrance, the calculus shifted entirely.
Then there would be only one path in—a bottleneck at the dimensional gateway. Massing troops at that chokepoint and fortifying a position would grant absolute topographical advantage: even the largest Subjugation Team would be slaughtered the moment they squeezed through that narrow mouth.
The conclusion was clear.
“Enter.”
Lü Tingrong pressed the communications button, his voice glacial with command.
“I’m transmitting the deactivation code to the barrier mage.”
[Understood.]
The moment Lü Tingrong’s order fell, the barrier mage of the Red Blood Alliance—having received and verified the code—stepped forward to the head of the column.
Empty space. Void. Nothing at all.
The mage reached toward that twisted curtain’s surface, channeling Mana through splayed fingers, chanting a brief incantation.
Shwooosh—!
The moment the incantation ended, the void split with a sharp crack, and a colossal blood-red vortex yawned open. The highest-grade concealment barrier erected by the Gate Cult was unsealing.
[Deactivation complete. Entering now.]
“Good. The moment you’re through, unleash everything—ambush tactics, Shikigami, the lot.”
[Understood.]
Through the screen fixed in Lü Tingrong’s gaze, the black mass of Red Blood Alliance fighters was sucked without hesitation into the crimson dimension.
Shortly after, the vanguard passed through the Gate’s entrance and into the interior.
The instant Lü Tingrong confirmed the interior landscape of the Incubation-type Gate transmitted through the feed—lounging against the sofa—the corner of his mouth curved up in an expression of intrigue.
“So it only manifests within the human perceptive range, then…”
It was a colossal, majestic circular arena.
Its form resembled the Colosseum that stood in ancient Rome, but its scale dwarfed any structure of the physical world by an unfathomable margin.
Tiered spectator seating rose in concentric rings, vast enough to hold tens of thousands, surrounding a central sandy floor that sprawled as an immense killing ground spanning thousands of square meters.
The sky hung murky and ash-gray, and the weighty density of Mana that pressed down on the entire space was palpable even through the screen.
“Maniacs… what in the hell are they trying to accomplish here?”
Lü Tingrong let slip a bitter laugh, analyzing the space.
Three Shikigami practitioners stepped forward in the feed, withdrew talismans from their robes, scattered them through empty air, and intoned a short incantation.
Flurry-flurry—!
With a plume of ash-colored smoke, dozens upon dozens of single-eyed crimson ravens burst skyward.
Soaring to the heavens above the colossal Colosseum, the Shikigami began to circle, establishing a perfect biological radar network capable of detecting even the most minute fluctuations in Mana.
Information streamed through the Shikigami’s perception onto Lü Tingrong’s sub-monitors in relentless cascades—every blind spot outside, every feature of terrain within. He had effectively become the eyes and ears of this dimension.
‘No gaps.’
The most secure, most certain defensive formation. Lü Tingrong exhaled cigar smoke with satisfaction.
Crackle—.
Then, through the communications device, Se Yung-hui’s voice cut sharply through.
[Lü Tingrong. There’s something.]
Lü Tingrong’s relaxed brow suddenly narrowed.
***
“What do you mean, something?”
[In the center of the Colosseum. Something’s crouched there.]
[The Shikigami’s wavelength didn’t catch it, but I’ve got a visual. Should we approach?]
At the report from lieutenant Se Yung-hui, Lü Tingrong immediately forced the main monitor’s feed to pan toward the central arena floor of the Colosseum.
“Hold position. I’m looking.”
Ziiing—
The camera lens, sharing the Shikigami’s field of view, rapidly zoomed toward the center of the sandy floor. And there, as Se Yung-hui had said, something massive crouched in the murk as the dust settled.
‘A monster?’
The silhouette visible beyond the monitor was unmistakably not human.
The darkness made precise identification difficult, but the outline of a grotesquely protruding leathery wing was starkly visible on a frame the size of a house. Not a dragon—not among the supreme predators—yet a draconic, winged monstrosity boasting an overwhelming bulk to rival them.
‘…Damn cultist bastards.’
This was an Incubation-type Gate under the Cult’s stewardship. Any monster within it would be a Tamed Creature, 100 percent certain to be fitted with a Mind Control Choker and under their command.
Since they’d entered first and claimed position, that creature too would be a defensive mechanism under their control. There was no reason to recklessly poke and provoke it.
“Leave it.”
Lü Tingrong’s voice came through the communications device, resolute.
“Don’t do anything unnecessary. Don’t approach it. Just solidify the ambush formation near the entrance. That beast is a Guard Beast the cult’s running as a maintenance measure.”
[Understood.]
Never introduce pointless variables. Never touch unknowns; eliminate them entirely from the equation.
That was the perfect conservatism, the survival method that had carried Lü Tingrong from the blood-soaked alleyway ecosystem all the way to his current position.
“Stay hidden as planned until the Hunters show up······.”
Lü Tingrong was crushing out the last of his cigar in the ashtray when it happened.
Croooooom-!!!
A terrifying rupture echoed from beyond the screen—no, from the very dimension of the Colosseum itself—tearing through the speakers.
“······?!”
Lü Tingrong lurched forward in surprise.
[Situation developing! Are you watching?!]
Se Yung-hui’s voice crackled through the comm unit, stripped of its usual composure and ragged with genuine alarm.
But Lü Tingrong couldn’t answer.
Even the intellect of a killer honed through hundreds of battles froze completely, unable to comprehend logically what was unfolding on the monitor before him.
Sliiiiide—.
At the center of the Colosseum.
The neck of the massive wyvern that had been crouching there began to slip away toward the void in a grotesque, unnatural angle.
Thud-!
The head of the beast—enormous as a house—severed completely from its body, rolled across the sandy floor with a dull thump.
It hadn’t been crouching at all.
The monster they’d confirmed through the Shikigami just moments before was already nothing more than a corpse with its head severed, life already fading.
Splooooosh-!
From the severed neck, blood erupted like a waterfall, creating a thick crimson mist.
And through that viscous, blood-tinged haze, a silhouette began to emerge, slowly revealing itself.
“······What the hell is that.”
Lü Tingrong’s scarred lips trembled as they fell open.
Walking through the smoke was a man.
A tailored black suit under a leather jacket—garments utterly incongruous with this grotesque breeding ground.
The man walked with a massive greatsword of dark iron held loosely in one hand, its size dwarfing his own frame.
With a flick of his wrist as if bored, the monster’s dark blood clinging to the black blade scattered in a diagonal spray, staining the sand.
[Who is he? Gate Cult?]
Panicked voices of Red Blood Alliance members shouting through the screen, weapons raised.
But the man did not answer.
Instead, his gaze locked directly with that of the one-eyed Shikigami crow hovering in the air—with Lü Tingrong sitting on the other side of the monitor.
That chilling, expressionless predator’s stare.
The man slowly repositioned his greatsword and began walking toward the entrance with unwavering steps, where sixty elite troops lay in ambush.
“······.”
Only then did Lü Tingrong, sitting on the sofa, understand.
That he had not been the one controlling variables, waiting in the dark for his prey.
The true predator was already in the center of the hunting ground, holding its breath.
Quietly waiting for them to walk into this massive cage of their own volition.

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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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