The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 85

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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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85
Episode 85. The Trajectory of the Raging Demon
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Everything moved under meticulous, calculated control.
With the Booster’s distribution network severed and the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s elite forces growing desperate, they walked straight into the incubation-type Gate we’d dug for them—this Colosseum-shaped arena—without realizing it was a trap.
They mistook the wyvern’s corpse huddled at the center for a living sentinel, and in that single moment of careless error, we wedged ourselves in and flipped the entire board.
The overwhelming silver radiance of the Mirror Golem manifested through power, and the endless chaos wrought by the goblin shaman’s Illusion.
Within that maelstrom where sight and sound were perfectly scrambled, I moved through the darkness with measured strides, my blacksteel greatsword trailing, severing their lifelines one by one.
Only a few hours ago.
I’d fought across the blood-soaked boundary with the real Wyvern Lagus, honing my combat senses to their razor’s edge.
Against that merciless beast’s trajectory, the movements of these assassins—blind and floundering—were painfully sluggish and clumsy.
As I slashed through the nape of every fool thrashing throwing daggers meaninglessly in the dark, I keenly identified one figure emanating a distinctly alien and seasoned resonance even amid the chaos.
The one who’d slaughtered the goblin swarm in a single stroke, then surged toward the shaman like a wild beast—the field commander of the Hong Hyeol-maeng strike team, a man whose capability rivaled A-Rank.
In the moment he leapt into open air to shatter the shaman’s Illusion, I launched myself off the Colosseum’s rough stone wall in raw violence.
In the exposed emptiness, I drove the blacksteel’s heavy, cold blade down mercilessly at the crown of his head.
A perfect strike from a blind spot that transcended recognition speed.
His shoulder should have been ground away entirely, a geyser of blood erupting along its trajectory.
Crash!!
But an instant before the blacksteel’s edge touched his skull, a eardrum-shattering rupture detonated before my eyes.
A repulsive force so brutally precise and violent that it twisted the very trajectory of my physical strike.
Thanks to that sudden explosion’s recoil, the man who’d been the field commander barely escaped instant death, hurtling pathetically dozens of meters away.
“Well—well done! Hong Tae-hwa!”
He retreated behind the thick smoke, crying out in urgent panic.
A clumsy mistake. In his alarm, he’d blurted out the name of a comrade he should never have spoken aloud.
But even without him speaking the name, I would have known in an instant.
That grotesque trait—precisely funneling the ritual of Explosion at the pinpoint of a target within this chaos. And above all, that ominous red hair piercing clearly through the dust. An uncommon combination.
Slide.
I tilted the blacksteel at an angle and leveled its cold edge toward the red-haired boy, breathing roughly.
There was no reason to chase the leader who’d fled.
The only objective I needed to confirm within this sealed Colosseum had ever been this single creature.
“You.”
I stared directly into his wavering pupils and spoke curtly.
“I know you.”
The air around us still swam with the stench of blood and concussive roar.
Airi, in her butterfly form, had long since withdrawn the goblin shaman’s Illusion and manifested instead as the corpulent form of the Boss Monster “Red Warrior” we’d subjugated at the Dongguneung Gate in the past.
“Krraaagh!”
Did she make sounds like that deliberately?
A warrior in crimson plate armor, hefting a massive greatsword, was dancing a ponderous blade-song against the Hong Hyeol-maeng units, collapsing their formation.
The System’s power synchronized perfectly with my Core’s Level, being the successor.
Now that my Magical Power had expanded to the 2nd Circle and I’d surpassed Level 30, the Boss Monster that Airi manifested was overwhelmingly powerful enough to crush all but the most seasoned Hunters.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
Beyond that, the vicious combat strength of Bae Hyeon-gyeom, the Incarnate, was even now hunting from the shadows, exploiting their blind spots.
Even if I ignored the broader battle and focused entirely on Hong Tae-hwa alone, there was no chance this hunting ground’s outcome would reverse.
“…Damn it.”
Hong Tae-hwa, meeting my gaze, spat out a curse harshly from behind his Tactical Mask.
The feral glint of a creature with its poison fully roused.
“When you see an adult, you should greet them.”
I answered curtly and drove force solidly into my lower body.
Crash!!
The space between us tore with explosion before my words finished.
There was no magical Incantation, no warning sign. In that brief moment as he muttered curses, the atmosphere directly before my face suddenly compressed and burst forth.
“…”
The acrid smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils.
The explosion didn’t reach me. Just before the curse erupted, I’d sensed the Mana density around me spike abnormally and deflected the explosion’s pressure with the broad face of the blacksteel.
‘Fast.’
The more I turned over the trajectory of that detonation, erupting in an instant before my eyes, the more wondrous it seemed.
‘No… it’s not in the category of magic at all.’
Ordinary Explosion-series magic draws Mana gathered in the Core upward and launches it to a designated coordinate. But Hong Tae-hwa’s trait was different.
He seized the Mana drifting naturally in the atmosphere and used it as an immediate catalyst right there, detonating the bomb without a fuse, triggering it directly.
Not a ritual learned systematically from anyone. An inborn, overwhelming talent for destruction that transcended human understanding.
This opponent had skipped the grueling processes of Incantation and Calculation that every mage must endure—they were omitted entirely.
“Tsk.”
When the first ambush Explosion was completely blocked, Hong Tae-hwa clicked his tongue sharply and rolled backward.
Normally, when an Assassin-class fails an ambush, instinct drives them to leap backward and widen the distance from their opponent. The most basic survival tactic to prepare the next move and steady one’s breath.
Crack—!
But the direction his combat boots struck the earth and propelled him was not backward. It was forward, straight into my guard.
With a sharp friction sound, the keen Short Dagger he drew from his waist met my dark iron blade head-on in a perfect collision.
A heavy vibration traveled down through my wrist.
I wasn’t being overpowered. In fact, if I tilted my blade down with the overwhelming strength I possessed as the Sword Saint Kang Tae-yoon, his flimsy Short Dagger would crumble to pieces and snap his collarbone along with it.
There was no way Hong Tae-hwa didn’t understand that vast difference in raw power.
Boom—!!!
Right at the point of contact where our blades met, a second violent Explosion tore loose.
The deafening roar shattered eardrums. A sharp ringing screamed through my ears.
From the start, his goal wasn’t to gain the upper hand through sword-work. He had turned the physical friction of blade striking blade itself into a catalyst for a new Explosion.
Moreover, this detonation dwarfed the one that had burst in midair moments before—its scale and power were exponentially greater. The closer the distance, the more direct the physical contact, the more his characteristic amplified its destructive force in geometric progression.
Where the shockwave had swept, Hong Tae-hwa’s silhouette melted like a ghost into the thick dust and smoke, vanishing from sight.
‘Tactics befitting an assassin.’
I let my dark iron blade hang at my side and gazed quietly into the billowing haze.
By the System, Hong Tae-hwa’s Awakened Class was Rogue or Assassin. But when the Explosion—an anomalous unique trait—fused with his foundation, he had crafted an extraordinarily unpredictable combat style that wove between close quarters and area-denial terror.
Step.
Step.
Rather than scanning the field to locate my fleeing opponent, I walked steadily toward the place where the smoke hung thickest.
Had he run?
No. That vicious killing intent and fighting spirit he’d poured out just moments ago—he was not the type to show his back and flee.
Somewhere in the darkness and smoke, he was waiting for that one fatal moment to sever my lifeline.
I walked into the smoke.
I didn’t need to search with my eyes to find where he was hiding. The rippling Mana in the air was tracing his erratic heartbeat and the direction of his killing intent directly for me.
That’s when it happened.
Whistle—
From beyond the smoke screen, the sound of air being torn open in rapid succession tore through the haze.
Black Throwing Daggers streamed through the darkness like a volley of arrows, pouring toward me.
Not two or three.
Dozens upon dozens of them.
And this was no clumsy, scattering throw. Each Throwing Dagger homed with precision, targeting only lethal points—my heart, the space between my brows, my carotid artery, and the gaps between my joints.
In the instant before those dozens of blades touched my skin, in the narrow margin that remained.
Boom—!!!!
A chain reaction of massive Explosions tore the Colosseum’s sky to shreds all at once.
Flames and thunder consumed my vision completely.
The destructive power embedded in each Throwing Dagger rivaled detonating dozens of 3rd Circle Fireballs in the same space simultaneously—a crazed force.
Had any B-Rank pioneer Hunter or defensively fragile mage stood at the center of this crossfire, they would have left not a bone behind—obliterated where they stood.
‘The Explosion Fiend, Hong Tae-hwa.’
Even as scorching flames assailed me from all sides, my mind remained cold and clear, reaching back into memory.
Before the Regression, new Blade Guild Hunters had died hideously in this madman’s Explosions, flesh charring away.
They had despaired and turned to ash in this overwhelming heat and the agony that tore through the lungs.
That hellish sensation my comrades must have felt in their final moment—I was facing it now, intact, in the flames he unleashed.
Through the roiling fire and dust, steady footfalls rang out through the air.
“Damn it, crazy bastard!!”
Terror and panic mixed in the cry that burst from his throat.
I brushed away the embers clinging to my Black Leather Jacket’s shoulders with the back of my hand and continued walking. The jacket’s hem was only slightly singed by the shockwave; my skin bore not even a scratch.
In the heart of dozens of chained Explosions, walking through the flames without hesitation—there was not a shred of wavering or doubt in my stride.
“It’s impossible… impossible…”
Hong Tae-hwa’s legs trembled.
Of course they did. His all-or-nothing strike had been completely negated.
The moment Hong Tae-hwa’s body turned to leap away, driven by pure instinct.
I simply reached out my hand into empty air.
No flashy footwork or Aura burst was needed. Without breaking my stride, I seized the back of his neck with a single hand.
“Cough—!!”
A strangled, metallic sound erupted from his throat where it was gripped.
Crash—!
I lifted his thrashing body effortlessly from the air and hurled him like refuse against the Colosseum’s jagged stone wall.
The wall cracked like a spider’s web, fragments scattering. His eyes rolled back from the pain, but I didn’t stop.
A dull, explosive sound echoed through the Colosseum’s rough stone walls.
The collar I gripped in my palm felt coarse, and the sound of the hurled body cutting through the air was low and menacing.
The moment Hong Tae-hwa’s body slammed into the thick stone wall, a sharp crack split the surface, fissures spreading outward like a web. I didn’t land.
I twisted the warped gravity in mid-air to alter my trajectory, then plunged forward again through the billowing dust toward him.
The heel of my boot, carrying all the momentum of my acceleration, drove straight into Hong Tae-hwa’s abdomen.
Crash-!!
It wasn’t a mere impact. It was the kind of catastrophic roar you’d hear when a massive crane tears apart a building.
Hong Tae-hwa’s body, half-embedded in the wall, couldn’t withstand the overwhelming force of my kick.
The Colosseum’s thick exterior wall was punctured like paper, and he was hurled outside without even a scream, landing on the barren earth beyond the building.
Dust swirled up like a waterfall over the collapsed wreckage. I stepped through the gap in the shattered wall toward the outside.
With each step I took, broken stones crunched and crumbled beneath my feet.
All those dozens of successive explosions Hong Tae-hwa had unleashed—their deadly flames had never once touched my skin.
Not because I was lucky, or because my reflexes were merely sharper than most.
Hong Tae-hwa had simply been dancing in the palm of my hand.

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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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