The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 83

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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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83
Episode 83. Satiation
***
‘Airi. Scan.’
At the command, I kicked off the ground and launched forward. Explosive propulsion starting from my feet traveled up my spine, tensing every muscle in my body to a fever pitch.
Airi, hidden on my shoulder, sensed my intention and instantly transmitted the data to my vision.
Whoosh—
A translucent blue holographic panel materialized across my retina.
Despite the violent movement, the cascading data struck my visual cortex with crystalline clarity, as though frozen in time.
[Species: Wyvern]
[Rank: Lagus Class]
[Recommended Subjugation Level: 50]
[Recommended Personnel: 20+ members of an official raid party]
‘Lagus Class.’
As I absorbed the information, I adjusted my grip on the hilt of the Heukchul blade in my palm. The texture of rough leather pressed against my skin, transmitting a cool sensation.
Most Awakened Ones dismiss wyverns as “inferior pseudo-dragons that failed to become true dragons.”
They underestimate these creatures’ threat level based on a single factor—low intelligence and the inability to breathe dragon’s fire, that symbol of draconic power.
But my eyes, honed across decades of crossing death’s threshold in the otherworld and dissecting monster ecology, saw only one truth: such underestimation was a fatal delusion.
If dragons are arrogant sorcerer-kings who command and reign over Mana’s laws, then wyverns are butchers of the sky—evolved to an extreme for nothing but tearing prey limb from limb in melee combat.
Their massive bulk translates not into sluggishness but into the explosive force of tremendous mass, and their animal boldness manifests as relentless, merciless savagery.
Especially the higher mutation variant, the Lagus Class—a terrestrial apex predator that could only be barely withstood by A-rank Tanks who wrapped their entire bodies in Mana and raised shield walls against its charges.
Whomp—!
The air twisted. The Wyvern Lagus, sensing the malevolent killing intent radiating from our side, unfurled its colossal ashen wings.
A single wingbeat tore the stagnant air within the Colosseum, creating violent wind shear that scattered through the stone.
“Krraaaaaaagh—!!!”
A horrific shriek that threatened to rupture eardrums. A roar near ultrasonic frequency resonated off the Colosseum’s stone walls, shaking the ground beneath.
Sand coating the floor exploded like a storm, obscuring vision.
An ordinary Hunter would have had his spinal nerves paralyzed by that overwhelming pressure alone, collapsing where he stood.
But expecting such a rational response from the mad beast charging toward me was meaningless.
He was a mutation long since stripped of fear.
“Hahahah—!!”
Bae Hyun-gyeom erupted in deranged laughter, mocking the beast’s scream. He hurled himself without hesitation into the vortex of the sand storm.
Over his silver gauntlets, cyan Aura coiled like serpents, writhing and ensnaring his limbs. His shadow, launched from the ground, soared into empty space.
Defying gravity, he rose and drove a heavy right hook directly into the wyvern’s massive jaw.
Craaaaaack—!!!
A dull, bone-chilling sound of rupture. It was not the noise of flesh meeting bone.
It was a metallic collision—the kind that might ring out when a colossal steel giant crashed head-first into a mountainside. The wyvern’s enormous head bent sideways under the impact.
“Grrruuuh······!”
With its jaw dislocated, the Wyvern Lagus let out a pained groan and crashed to the ground with a thunderous thud.
The immense mass hammering the floor sent the entire Colosseum into violent tremor. Yet the creature did not surrender its instinctive will to fight.
It twisted its warped body, flapped its wings to regain balance, then used that recoil to drive a log-thick hind leg toward Bae Hyun-gyeom’s abdomen.
“Did you see that, Kim Do-jin?”
A counterattack so merciless it could pulverize a building’s exterior wall in an instant.
Yet Bae Hyun-gyeom had already etched the trajectory into his retina. In mid-air, he twisted his body grotesquely, letting the razor-sharp talons graze past him by a hair’s breadth.
Hisss—
As Bae Hyun-gyeom landed and skidded backward, the cyan Aura lingered around the wyvern’s jaw where his fist had struck moments before, rising like smoke from a flame.
The thick scales on the outer skin appeared intact, but the bone and tissue within had clearly been pulverized beyond recognition.
‘So that’s what a God of Combat truly is.’
Even as I charged forward through the dust, I analyzed that exchange in a flash. The strike Bae Hyun-gyeom had just delivered was no mere product of raw strength.
A technique of compressing Aura to its absolute limit at the infinitesimal point of impact, then detonating it.
The pinnacle of Point-Blank Explosion—the art Charles Edward Blake had once imparted to me, one that ignores the shell and destroys the interior.
Specimens like Bae Hyun-gyeom and Charles wielded that delicate calculation and control as naturally as breathing.
Witnessing such overwhelming talent for violence, a cool competitive fire rose in my chest.
I, too, had to demonstrate it. That single frame, honed in the predawn hours in a rocky mountain pass, shattering stone as I sharpened the edge of my senses.
I compressed both quadriceps as though they might burst. Mana flowing through my veins was explosively accelerated.
Boom—!
The Sword Saint’s instinctive footwork, Dash. My body became an arrow loosed from its bowstring, shot toward the wyvern’s blind spot on its flank.
This was the perfect field test for the crude club I’d forged myself—Heukchul.
I gripped the long, heavy blade with both hands. With precision, I calibrated the transfer of force from my spine’s rotation through my shoulders to my wrists.
I thrust an angled slash upward at the beast’s thick leg joint.
A swift Slash.
And at the endpoint of that trajectory, a Point-Blank Explosion compressed and waiting.
Screeeeeech—
“Raaaaaaagh—!!”
The Wyvern’s roar twisted into a shriek. Distracted by Bae Hyun-gyeom’s presence, it had been moving to lash its tail without guard—but now the motion was perfectly shut down.
The cold blade of Heukchul tore through its rough scales like tissue paper and bit deep. The dull, satisfying sensation of thick muscle fibers severing in one stroke transmitted through my grip.
This blade I wielded absorbed the extreme Aura overload and powerful physical recoil I poured into it without trembling even a hair’s breadth, standing firm and silent.
If anything, it gripped my palm even colder, as though hungering for more Mana. An excellent piece of iron—far exceeding my expectations.
The Lagus Rank creature, its pattern utterly collapsed by the sudden ferocity, staggered backward dozens of meters, scattering blood.
Its sinister reptilian pupils shifted between Bae Hyun-gyeom and me, contracting as if ready to tear.
Its instinct was screaming a warning: there were two apex predators threatening it.
“Ha! One-on-one, Kim Do-jin.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom clapped his Gauntlets together and laughed like a beast. The fighting spirit radiating from his entire body was heating the air around us white-hot.
“Eyes forward.”
I knocked away the grimy bloodstains clinging to Heukchul and answered flatly.
Crack—!
Before the words were finished, we both kicked off the ground in perfect synchronization and charged. No prior tactical meeting. No clumsy hand signals needed.
We despised and wary of each other, yet inside this dead zone, we began to lock together perfectly like teeth in a gear.
When Bae Hyun-gyeom unleashed a relentless barrage from the front, sealing the Wyvern’s line of sight, I would slip through the gaps between its raking claws and drive a Point-Blank Explosion from Heukchul into its vitals.
The moment my blade made it lose balance, Bae Hyun-gyeom would spring upward again and plant an explosive hook into its chest plate.
Combat without a tank, without a healer. Two damage dealers alone, choking a boss monster with extreme firepower—a mad tightrope walk.
Recommended subjugation level fifty. Twenty levels or more above my current Level—an apex predator in the higher echelon.
A single clean hit from its massive tail or talons would shatter bone and rupture organs.
No—it would be strange not to die on the spot. A tension-wire walk where one misstep meant oblivion.
Yet in spite of it all, my mind was flooded with icy clarity. Not a trace of unease, not a moment’s hesitation—absolute certainty.
‘I can kill it.’
Without barrier magic, without magical tricks—only the geometry of my blade could dismantle this monster. An absolute premonition of victory.
Bae Hyun-gyeom beside me seemed to feel the same.
Fist strikes and slashes wove together in strange harmony.
We were oil and water—polar opposites of extreme incompatibility—yet paradoxically, we shared an identical rhythm toward a single goal, perfectly synchronized.
***
[The Wyvern Lagus has been subjugated.]
[Your Level has increased. (Lv. 30)]
Thoom—!
The System’s dry notification flickered in the air. The Wyvern’s massive body, torn to shreds and drenched in blood, collapsed heavily onto the sand floor.
The murky killing intent and Mana pressure that had suffocated the Colosseum’s space drained away like a receding tide.
“Haah…”
Bae Hyun-gyeom breathed heavily, roughly brushing creature remains from his Gauntlets.
“Nothing special. Just a punching bag with size.”
His words were arrogant, but his shoulders trembled slightly with exhaustion.
Clink.
I sheathed Heukchul and steadied my breathing.
On the surface, my expression remained composed, but deep within, an indescribable, intense euphoria was swirling in my core.
I had fought many battles since my return, but never had I felt such pure, physical elation at breaching a bodily limit.
Before my return, I had to control every situation through magical computation.
Calculating variables, weighing efficiency, orchestrating combat like moving pieces on a chessboard—that was my role.
But in our earlier joint assault, there had been no room for that weary scheming.
Without calculating each trajectory through conscious thought, muscle memory alone—primal instinct—guided the next slash. A sensation like a massive barrier finally shattering.
Moreover, my synchronization with Heukchul, deployed in live combat for the first time today, had been flawless.
The sense of distance as I swung, the durability that endured Mana overload, the solid weight felt when crushing an enemy—all of it.
At last, this cold blade of iron had become one with my body. Like savoring a feast at the end of desperate hunger, satiation enveloped my entire frame.
“Kim Do-jin.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom turned to look at me, breaking through my reverie. A drop of sweat mixed with blood fell from his chin.
“You’re far more interesting than I thought. That was quite the hunt.”
He yanked off his Gauntlets and grinned, baring his teeth.
“You’re worthy of being called my rival.”
“What nonsense.”
I grimaced and flatly dismissed it. That deformed, arbitrary way of speaking had not changed since our first meeting.
But unspoken, I too recognized the value of this mad hunting dog.
If Bae Hyun-gyeom had not been here, subjugating the Lagus with nothing but swordcraft alone in this sealed space would have been nearly impossible.
If I had relied purely on my Characteristic and a Mage’s Spell Formula, I would have reduced that creature to ash.
But then I would have missed the exhilaration of breaking through the limits of swordsmanship itself, and the fruits of training my body to master the weight of Heukchul.
It was only possible because of Bae Hyun-gyeom’s overwhelming durability, the way he charged forward like a beast to draw the creature’s attention.
“Well, slaughtered the monster.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom draped the Formal Jacket he’d taken off casually across his shoulders and asked,
“So what now, Kim Do-jin.”
“What else.”
I turned my gaze toward the Colosseum’s massive entrance. From the darkness beyond it, the metallic stench of blood was already bleeding through.
“Time to start fishing.”
“Fishing? How exactly.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom narrowed his brow, gesturing at the empty ground.
“All the murderous intent and Mana fluctuation that were packed into this space have completely evaporated.
Those Red Blood Alliance rats, no matter how stupid they are, will see at a glance the moment they walk through that door that this place is already cleared.”
“Then we won’t let them see it.”
I flexed my neck lightly and began moving slowly toward the Wyvern’s cooling corpse.
“Stay here and keep quiet for a moment.”
“What? This bastard’s mouth again——!”
“How old are you?”
“What… were you older?”
Bae Hyun-gyeom is two years my senior, though that hardly matters.
I stopped before the blood-drenched corpse. Feeling the Wyvern’s fading warmth scatter through the cold air, I extended my right hand into empty space.
The outline of my trap was already drawn.
Now I would paint over it — for the fifty-plus elite killers about to flood this place — with an unknown terror that would shatter every assumption they held.
“Airi.”
I concentrated the surge of Mana at my fingertips and spoke quietly.
“Begin synchronization.”

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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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