The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 88

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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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88
Chapter 88. The Altar of the Successor
***
“Ga……grandfather…….”
Through the rubble of the collapsed Colosseum, a thin whimper mixed with blood seeped out—the name of a blood relative so pathetically weak that it took standing at death’s threshold to wrench from him.
Transparent tears traced down Hong Tae-hwa’s soot-blackened face, scorched raw by the inferno of the dust explosion.
Ash clung in matted clumps, running down the tears and leaving grotesque stains across his features.
But I gave his repugnant regret not a single millimeter of my attention.
What burned into my retinas was his slender white throat, melted by the fire’s embrace, and the blue-glowing chain that coiled like a viper across that fragile flesh, pulsing with an eerie light.
‘Mana Choker.’
My pupils trembled finely. The scattered fragments of memory aligned into a single line, pointing toward a chilling conclusion. This was no mere restraint.
A vicious incantation that burrowed through the pores of skin and clung to the delicate nerve clusters of the cervical spine like a leech.
A parasitic Mana Circuit designed to flatten the subject’s sense of self and, whenever needed, forcibly ignite the detonator in their brain.
A perfect match, beyond any shadow of doubt.
In the cool air of the Hunter Association Underground Medical Ward, it was the lingering trace of that same visceral brainwashing that had burst the skull of Lee Do-hyeon, the first-generation hero, from within.
And now it was wound around the neck of Hong Tae-hwa, gasping beneath my feet.
A fact I could never have known before the regression. The old Kang Tae-yoon had severed this worm’s life in a single stroke.
Before the truth could surface, he was reduced to carrion.
Shing—
I tilted the Dark Iron Greatsword’s edge downward at an angle. A droplet of his blood clung to the blade fell against gravity, hitting the floor with a soft patter.
Slicing through his neck here would be the easiest path. One clean cut with force behind it, and all consequences would evaporate.
But I could not sever this miraculous “thread of truth” that appeared before my eyes so carelessly.
Lee Do-hyeon’s death still left a cold sediment lodged in a corner of my chest.
Even though I had removed the physical restraint of the Mana Choker from his neck, a single trigger word from Jung Chan-hyeon had shattered him pathetically.
The incantation I thought destroyed had detonated again from some unseen abyss, boiling his brain.
That vicious error of causality, that formula of death I could not fathom—a perfect specimen to dissect it was gasping harshly beneath my feet.
I reached into my pocket and pressed down heavily on the radio receiver tucked into my right ear.
“Bae Hyeon-gyeom.”
Crack, crackle—
A noise that seemed to tear eardrums poured from the speaker. Behind violent explosions, the dull friction of shattering bone and ruptured organs overlaid vividly.
[Krraaagh!]
[S-save me……hack!]
The death cries of Red Blood Cult members. The presence of a deity slaughtering them like beasts near the Gate came through the frequency thick and damp.
The scene was so vivid that you could smell the blood carried on the air.
“Don’t let anyone through to this side.”
Ragged breathing followed for a moment. Then, cutting through the blood-soaked air of the scene, came Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s distinctive metallic voice.
[Ha! Just as I thought—you can’t finish anything without me, Kim Do-jin.]
[Since you ask so politely, I’ll oblige.]
Crushing assassins’ relentless volleys from all sides with bare fists while still clawing for control—that arrogance was typical of a madman.
But that madness was reliable.
So long as that hound of the war front kept the entrance sealed tight, even if hundreds of assassins rushed forward, they would never cross this threshold.
I shut off the radio and slowly dropped to one knee. Setting the Dark Iron Greatsword down quietly beside me, I reached out my empty right hand toward Hong Tae-hwa’s neck.
Whooooom—!
Before my fingertips even touched his skin. The Mana Choker carved into his neck sensed the external interference keenly and began to emit a bestial, ominous blue wave.
A sharp repulsive force shot through my fingertips like static electricity. A stinging pain coursed from my fingers up to my shoulder, but I did not pull my hand away.
Even the pattern of resistance was chillingly identical to what had been wound around Lee Do-hyeon’s neck. A complex, intricate geometric arrangement.
But to my eyes, it was merely a dirty tangle of cord knotted a thousand times over—crude and inelegant.
I drew Mana from deep within my core, refining it to a hair’s breadth of thinness and sharpness. I fed this rarefied power precisely into the hairline gaps of the blue chain.
This was not a matter of matching physical gears.
It was perfect Phase Difference Interference—reading the Mana frequency the Choker emitted in real-time, not granting its defensive mechanism even a moment to trigger.
To a mage who had once broken a lock, an identical pattern of code was no different from an automatic door standing wide open.
My Mana became the perfect key, seizing the Choker’s core nexus in a single motion and wrenching it apart.
Screeeech—!
A clean metallic fracture tore through the air. The blue chain constricting Hong Tae-hwa’s neck shattered into tens of thousands of fragments and dispersed into the void.
The remnants of scattered Mana flickered like fireflies across his soot-covered skin before vanishing.
“Ughhhh……hack!”
The recoil of the broken restraint sent Hong Tae-hwa’s body into subtle convulsions as he coughed up darkened blood. Stagnant fluid that had pooled deep in his lungs poured free.
Fortunately, his pupils remained hazily dilated, his consciousness sunk far beneath the surface of sleep.
So far, it had been simple. Smashing the physical shell—anyone could do that. But the real hell was just beginning.
I cut off my optic nerves and began to scan Hong Tae-hwa’s interior with precision, perceiving only through Mana’s wavelength. The outer walls had been breached.
My breathing had stabilized, and the external pressure that had been suppressing my brainwaves had completely dissipated. Yet my instincts continued to sound their alarm.
I replayed Lee Do-hyeon’s death. Despite deactivating the Mana Choker, a single command had detonated his consciousness with that bizarre explosion.
Combining every circumstance and variable, the conclusion I reached was unmistakable.
The true trigger of the brainwashing wasn’t external Mana—it was rooted deep within the target’s inner being.
It didn’t linger in the body’s blood vessels or physical nerve bundles.
A vicious curse clinging like a parasite to the deepest recesses of the soul, to the Swamp of the Unconscious, ready at any moment to seize control of the brain stem.
That was the true nature of the savage Black Magic through which the Gate Cult had controlled the first generation of heroes.
If that were the case, the operating table on which to excise this curse could not be the physical world of reality.
To carve out the tumor inscribed upon the soul, there was no choice but to take up the scalpel and walk directly into that abyss.
“Airi.”
I spoke low to the empty air, commanding.
“Prepare the Altar of the Successor.”
[Command acknowledged, Successor.]
Airi’s resolute voice resonated through my consciousness.
[While the Altar opens, I will defend your physical form with absolute perfection.]
[Not a single intruder will so much as brush a hair from your head.]
I lifted my gaze to the sky.
Beyond the ash-grey clouds hanging low, the shadow of the wyvern Ragus—Airi’s transformed shape—surged upward with a deafening roar.
Ragus’s tearing cry set the remnants of the Colosseum vibrating.
The crimson tempest born from her enormous wings began to crush and obliterate the remnants of the Red Blood Cult hiding throughout the area without mercy.
A bomber that had completely seized the skies. That much firepower was more than sufficient to defend a body.
“I’m taking one more with me.”
[Pardon? What do you mean?]
[The Altar can only admit the Successor alone······.]
“I’m dragging Hong Tae-hwa’s soul in as well.”
***
The Altar of the Successor.
It is not a dimensional space that a physical body enters. It is purely the “Soul Sanctuary”—a realm constructed only of pure thought and the undulations of Mana.
Had the Altar been a thoroughly isolated space for me alone, I would not have risked the gamble of pulling another in.
But the fact that Airi, the System’s administrator, could synchronize with my consciousness and move freely through it was a clear hint.
If I could forcibly match the frequency of the wavelength, it was technically possible to synchronize another’s soul into my Altar.
Of course, forcibly drawing in the soul of a strong being with an unyielding self would be no different from suicide. But Hong Tae-hwa was different now.
I lowered my gaze to the figure of Hong Tae-hwa sprawled across the ground.
His entire body charred by the dust explosion, his consciousness completely severed by the pain of shattered bones. A state of utter Weakness of Mind and Body.
His mental defenses were now thinner than wet paper.
The conditions were perfect to open the door and enter.
I placed my right hand firmly on Hong Tae-hwa’s nape, exactly where the Mana Choker had been fitted. Through my palm, I felt his faint pulse.
Drawing pure Mana from the core in my lower abdomen, I read the wavelength bonds remaining within his body.
Then, wielding forceful suppression, I synchronized my Mana frequency with his soul.
“Now. Open the Altar.”
The moment the command fell, my vision burned white in a blinding flash.
Immediately after, my consciousness was sucked into absolute darkness at a terrifying speed.
The sensation of falling and rising passed through my entire body simultaneously.
Silence. And the cool sensation of nothingness.
When I opened my eyes, beneath my feet lay a deep-blue circular floor, smooth as a mirror.
Beyond the edge of that round platform, a fathomless abyss of the unknown stretched its jaws wide, beyond any measure to perceive.
This is a space of the soul. No matter how much I move my body, no physical muscle attaches to it, and even slaying phantoms yields neither Experience Points nor Levels—a stagnant world.
Now that physical training and real-world instinct had become paramount, this space had long since devolved into a rather inefficient relic.
But the utility of a space depends entirely upon the intellect of its user.
Before the processing power of an Archmage, even this abandoned space transforms into the finest surgical theater—a perfect prison from which no one can escape.
Step, step.
I walked forward slowly, treading the circular floor. Under normal circumstances, only my own solitary footsteps should have echoed through the space. But today was different.
My hypothesis had not failed me.
In the center of the Altar, the soul of the uninvited guest, forced into synchronization with my will and dragged within, crouched there.
“Hong Tae-hwa.”
I called his name flatly. But he gave no response. I halted my step and narrowed my brow.
His silhouette, growing clearer in the darkness, was twisted in something profoundly strange.
It was unmistakably the form of Hong Tae-hwa, with his red hair. But it was not that defiant nineteen-year-old who had cursed at me and lunged forward.
“Hhh···· Ugh, hhhhh····.”
A boy huddled on the ground, burying his face in his knees, weeping in abject terror.
His body had shrunk into a grotesque shape, appearing no older than ten, and his skeletal shoulders trembled without pause from terror.
The Soul Sanctuary projects the subject’s fundamental unconscious with the starkest clarity.
When the shell of reality—armored in violence and recklessness—had been stripped away completely, only the crystallized essence of the vicious dread and weak insufficiency that lurked beneath remained intact.
‘This is Hong Tae-hwa’s true nature.’
I felt no pity for the creature’s pathetic state. What held my gaze was not the weeping child.
From a corner of the Altar’s space, along the boundary of shadow, an enormous and sinister form writhed silently, drawing closer toward the young Hong Tae-hwa.
“Grrrrruuuugh—!!”
It was a ‘black beast’—a grotesque amalgamation of what might have been wolf or bear bones.
A mass of viscous, murky Mana with no clear form, no distinct shape.
Yet the red gleam burning in the beast’s eyes was chillingly vivid.
Blind malice that would consume the young boy entirely and tear apart his very self. And an uncontrollable impulse to destroy everything.
“Now it makes sense.”
I met the beast’s burning gaze head-on and spoke its true name without emotion.
“Berserker.”
The psychic conditioning of the Mana Choker had used it as a host to seize control of the detonator. The vicious parasitic spirit that had triggered Lee Do-hyeon’s mind and driven him to death.
That ferocious manifestation of Berserker Syndrome had finally entered my reach completely. I gripped the Soul Sword’s hilt beside me.
The cold touch of metal transmitted through my spiritual palm. It was time to begin the operation.

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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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