The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 91

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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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91
Chapter 91. The Dissolution of Blind Devotion
***
“For God.”
Ash-grey light poured from the artificial sky of the Colosseum, stretching long across the blood-soaked sand below.
In the center of the plaza, where confused noise still lingered, I looked down at the red-haired boy convulsing on the ground and parted my lips.
The words that left my mouth through the vast amphitheater were so crisp and clean that even I felt them sharp.
“Shine forth.”
It was no mere sentence.
It was the most tragic detonation switch—the one that had boiled the cerebral blood vessels of Lee Do-hyeon, once hailed as a first-generation hero, in real time, and severed his last breath forever.
“W-what···”
Hong Tae-hwa’s shoulders, braced against the ground, went rigid with a flinch.
His pupils, clouded by Mana overload, trembled uneasily toward the space behind my Sunglasses—toward the exact point where my eyes were fixed.
A thin mixture of saliva and blood trickled from between his torn lips.
That was all.
No change I had anticipated or guarded against came to pass.
The blood vessels at the nape of his neck did not swell charcoal-dark and rupture, nor did his brain burst open in a scream.
Only the instinctive confusion and terror of a teenage boy who had heard senseless babble swept across his contorted face.
I withdrew my hand from my pocket and gave the smallest nod.
The Mana Chalk—physical shell and shackle both—had already crumbled beneath my Dark Iron.
And the true core of the detonation that had driven Lee Do-hyeon to death, the Berserk that had parasitized his soul and gnawed away his reason, I had slaughtered it completely.
One does not play a pipe to a viper that has had its entrails torn out and expect fangs.
My hypothesis, proven now through the clarity returned to his eyes, was the perfect answer.
“Gggh, uuugh···!”
That was when Hong Tae-hwa beneath my feet tried to raise his torso, driving terrible force through both arms planted on the dirt.
Pulped muscle screamed, and the sound of a dislocated shoulder joint grating out of place reached my ears.
“Aaaaah—!!”
Before his knees could even straighten. A sickening grinding sound—like the bones of an animal being crushed—echoed through the arena.
Hong Tae-hwa’s body, like a log with its base severed, toppled helplessly to the ground.
“Hck, hah······ Cough!”
He writhed on the ground like an insect, hands clenched around his chest and shoulder, unable to draw breath properly.
Burst blood vessels webbed across the whites of his eyes, and dark-red clots spilled ceaselessly from his lips.
The inevitable result.
The frenzy of Berserk that had gnawed at his sense of self and forcibly paralyzed his pain receptors had vanished.
After the madness that had fogged his brain like mist withdrew, what rushed in to fill the void was a delayed storm of sensation.
His entire body burned from the dust explosion I had triggered, his joints crushed beneath the weight of Dark Iron, the full arithmetic sum of destructive damage I had carved directly into his flesh.
Total skeletal fracture. Multiple organ rupture. Third-degree burns across expanses of skin.
The extremity of agony that a human nervous system—now restored to reason—could not possibly endure; it broke through the restraining dam and struck his brain-core head-on.
“Stop your sniveling.”
I pinned his twisted shoulder lightly beneath my heel, fixing him in place. The vibration of his screams transmitted without mercy through my sole.
I raised my empty right hand and drew Mana from within.
‘Healing.’
A pale green surge of Mana burst from my fingertips like tendrils.
It seeped quietly through the torn muscle fibers and the gaps between broken bones.
Not some perfect blessing of life-force that resurrects the dying.
Merely the minimum emergency care—stemming exsanguination, precariously suturing ruptured organs, keeping the thread of life barely attached.
“Hah, hah···”
As the green light wrapped once around his body, the frenzied convulsions of his breathing slowly subsided.
His limbs still trembled like aspen leaves, but at least he had passed the threshold of shock.
“I···I···”
Hong Tae-hwa lifted both his blood-soaked palms toward empty air.
His fingertips hung senseless and contorted at odd angles, their nails packed solid with the Colosseum’s black earth.
“What did I··· do?”
His eyes drifted unfocused.
Looking down at the unidentified bloodstains on his own hands and the Red Blood Alliance’s distinctive sickly black Tactical Vest draped across his body, his face was painted with terrible confusion.
The time his soul had been consumed.
The indiscriminate slaughter he had committed while Berserk held dominion over him—those memories would be fragmented and scattered through his mind like scorched black-and-white film.
He could not clearly comprehend why he stood in the center of this horrific blood-reek of the Colosseum, why his bones had turned to powder and he was dying.
“Who knows.”
I withdrew the last traces of Healing and met his gaze directly. His pitiful form reflected on the surface of my Sunglasses.
“Take your time. Think it through.”
Hong Tae-hwa clutched his head, swallowing down a groan.
“···I can’t···· remember well. It feels like······ I was having a dream······.”
Within the shattering migraine, his facial muscles twisted in agony as if desperately scraping together the fragmented debris of memory.
His lips trembled, and an unspeakable terror churned in his eyes—something that words could not fully express.
I gazed down at that precarious, bloodied figure in silence.
From within him, a recognition was rising instinctively: that he had been something other than human.
***
Memories of the past locked and turned heavily in my mind.
The age of the great war that had drenched the world in blood, before the Evil Divine Dragon’s arrival.
The mad hound of the Red Blood Alliance—the Berserk Demon—who had thrust my vanguard unit into flames and torn them apart.
He had been a murderer who collected the necks of countless Hunters while laughing in madness.
Yet the boy now trembling beneath my feet, combing through the shards of his past, deviated completely from the vicious predator I remembered.
Taken together, his actions bore no mark of volition. But the blood on his hands was no hallucination.
Even if he had been a puppet, he had served as the sword-arm of the Red Blood Alliance, becoming a cog in the gears of a vast criminal cartel—and the consequences had already been carved irreversibly into reality.
The families of those he had killed, the lives he had destroyed—these could not be repaid with a single phrase: “he was being controlled.”
A faint friction arose at the tips of my fingers gripping the Dark Iron blade.
Those steeped in malice should be cut down without hesitation.
Yet how to classify this boy—my accumulated experience offered no clear answer, the competing judgments holding in tense opposition.
Kill him and root out the problem, or recycle him as a tool with utility?
Then the silence shattered as urgent footsteps struck the sand of the Colosseum behind me.
“Hunter!”
I turned my head. Kim Dae-han, the team leader dressed in his guard uniform, was sprinting toward me with heaving breath.
He had been tasked with sealing the dimensional gateway from outside the Gate with a reverse barrier, and he had read the moment when the suppression was concluding, making his way to join us.
His intuition for grasping the battle situation and his tactical judgment were second to none.
“Is the barrier seal complete?”
“Perfect! Not a single one got away······ eh!”
As Kim Dae-han approached my side with his report, a strangled gasp burst from his lips.
His gaze locked dead-on to the red-haired boy crouched beneath my feet, bleeding.
“······Tae, Tae-hwa?”
Kim Dae-han’s pupils dilated abnormally in disbelief. His voice carried shock, and beneath it a sorrow difficult to name.
“A······ ajusshi······.”
Hong Tae-hwa, responding to Kim Dae-han’s voice, managed to raise his clouded eyes to meet him. A single tear traced down from his eye, washing away the bloodstains.
“Hey, you damn bastard! What the hell are you doing here······”
Kim Dae-han bit his lip as his gaze swept over the boy’s clothing.
The Tactical Vest peculiar to assassins, cut to accommodate short blades efficiently, and that savage black combat gear worn in common by the remnants of the Red Blood Alliance.
There was no denying the mark of his affiliation, however much one might wish to.
“So you really······ you really did join the Red Blood Alliance. Why, for God’s sake, why!”
Kim Dae-han’s thick fists clenched white with rage and despair.
For all his effort pulling the boy from darkness, the grim reality unfolding before him now was cruelly trampling any last shred of hope he had harbored.
“I······ I don’t understand myself······. What have I done······?”
Hong Tae-hwa tore at his blood-soaked hair, weeping bitterly.
His voice had already grown hoarse, emerging as nothing but a metallic rasp, yet the desolation it carried seemed to make the entire Colosseum resound.
“Have I hurt someone? No, right? Or have I···· killed someone····”
Kim Dae-han alternated his gaze between the boy’s hollow cry and his unfocused eyes.
The seasoned investigator seemed to sense intuitively that the boy’s state lay far outside the bounds of normalcy. He turned to fix his gaze upon me, his expression hardened.
His eyes posed a question: why was the boy here in this state, and why had I kept him alive instead of ending him.
“Medical team! Get the transport kit over here now!! Move!!”
Kim Dae-han turned and shouted toward the Association’s emergency responders standing ready at the entrance. His voice rang out with urgency.
The paramedics who came running with the stretcher could not suppress their alarm once they assessed Hong Tae-hwa’s condition.
“Nearly all the ribs are collapsed. High probability of pneumothorax. Severe burns across the entire body, and the ligaments in the lower body are completely ruptured. That he’s alive in this state······ that’s a miracle.”
The medics’ hands moved swiftly. They transferred his body carefully but quickly onto the stretcher.
Hong Tae-hwa surrendered himself to their ministrations like a doll drained of all spirit.
“Thank you for saving Tae-hwa. Hunter Kim Do-jin.”
After confirming that the paramedics had moved out of earshot, Kim Dae-han approached me and bowed deeply. His voice was pitched low and trembled slightly.
“I too had one final thing I needed to confirm.”
“Confirm?”
“I’ll file a detailed report once we’re back. It’s not the sort of matter to discuss at length on a sand floor.”
Kim Dae-han nodded heavily at my terse remark.
He seemed curious about what I had confirmed and what I had drawn out from within Hong Tae-hwa, but he pressed no further.
“Yes, understood. We’ll handle it that way. We’ll take care of the site cleanup.”
I turned my gaze to survey the outer perimeter of the Colosseum. Bae Hyun-gyeom was forcing the remaining members of the Red Blood Alliance to their knees, flanked by hunters from the Guardians Guild.
There were no cheers of victory. Only the cold ring of metal and the harsh bark of commands filled the air.
“There was no contingency scenario if Hong Tae-hwa survived.”
I fixed my gaze on Kim Dae-han again, staring straight through his eyes as I spoke.
“Do you have any good advice on how to dispose of him?”
My question wasn’t a simple request for counsel. It was a test of sorts.
If he let sentiment cloud his judgment and chose release or lenient punishment under the guise of diminished capacity, my cooperation with the Ability Management Team would end on the spot.
No matter how capable a game piece might be, I couldn’t keep by my side a man who let emotion ruin the game.
Kim Dae-han rubbed his jaw in silence, his gaze alternating between Bae Hyun-gyeom and the Guardians Guild.
At the end of his stare lay the receding figure of Hong Tae-hwa being loaded into an ambulance. Soon, a firm answer flowed from between his lips.
“Hong Tae-hwa should be handed over to the Gate Management Bureau.”
“……”
“Whether he was brainwashed or his spirit corrupted, the fact that he participated as a member of the Red Blood Alliance and committed crimes is undeniable.
I have neither the justification nor the right to shield him.”
“A sound judgment.”
Fortunately, the chess piece I’d chosen wasn’t a man whose brain had been pickled in sentimental nonsense. He was an investigator capable of facing reality with cold clarity.
Hong Tae-hwa would pay his debt. And in the most secure, controlled, and sealed location we could ensure.
The Hunter Association’s underground detention cells or the Guardians Guild’s protective custody facilities were far from safe.
As the assassination of Lee Do-hyeon had already proven, their spies could breach any security net at any moment and silence the mouth of truth forever.
The safest sanctuary in South Korea. A place where Mana was fundamentally severed, where all electronic signals fell dead—a perfect fortress of vacuum.
Only the depths of the Gate Management Bureau, where Ryu Gang-jin of the Iron Blood held sway, could safely isolate and verify Hong Tae-hwa—living evidence—away from the Red Blood Alliance’s assassins.
“I’ll contact the Full Power Division chief directly myself. If you get involved, the procedure will become complicated.”
I drew my smartphone from my pocket. My detached eyes flickered briefly in the screen’s reflection.
“That would be easier for me. I appreciate it.”
Kim Dae-han adjusted his glasses and smiled bitterly. His laugh carried a strange mixture of relief and sorrow.
***
I turned away and dialed Ryu Gang-jin’s direct number.
Before the signal had even rung twice, a harsh metallic voice came through the receiver. The situation briefing was brief, and the conditions for transferring the captive were clear.
Ryu Gang-jin, too, immediately grasped the value of the Hong Tae-hwa card. The deal was struck swiftly and neatly.
As I ended the call and turned, Bae Hyun-gyeom was suddenly at my side.
His armor was caked with dried blood and dust, yet his demeanor no longer carried the sharp wariness and hostility from before.
Instead, something like a strange kinship hung in the air.
“Hey, Kim Do-jin.”
“What?”
“You just talked to the chief? The atmosphere seemed off.”
“Yeah, did you get the word?”
I shoved my smartphone into my pocket and replied flatly.
“That red-haired kid being hauled out on the stretcher—extract him to the Full Power Division immediately. Seal him without a scratch on him.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom laughed roughly and brushed his hair back. His eyes followed the receding ambulance.
“Must have quite a story, that one. Hard to believe such a kid was playing ace for the Red Blood Alliance.”
“A little. But that doesn’t grant him pardon.”
Bae Hyun-gyeom pressed the matter no further. He immediately marshaled the Full Power Division personnel and began preparations to escort Hong Tae-hwa.
A capable piece of machinery that becomes perfectly uniform cog under command—that was one reason I held Bae Hyun-gyeom in high regard.
“Move out! Get all the remaining cargo loaded on the vehicles!!”
Throughout the Colosseum, members of the Guardians Guild dragged the remnants of the Red Blood Alliance—trussed in Mana-Blocking Handcuffs and restraint cables like dried fish—out beyond the Gate.
The massive arena that had thrummed with the stench of blood and cordite gradually settled into hollow silence.
Just before Hong Tae-hwa was transferred onto a stretcher and moved to the ambulance, Kim Dae-han approached his side.
He placed a hand on the boy’s dirt-smudged shoulder, very carefully—the way one might handle a fragile glass sculpture.
“Tae-hwa.”
“……”
“Endure. I hope to see you alive again. When that time comes, in a place like this—an ordinary place.”
Kim Dae-han’s weighty farewell. Hong Tae-hwa, fitted with an Oxygen Mask, stared back at him with vacant eyes.
The boy’s lips trembled as if to speak, then settled into a blank expression and gave a small nod. It was the best response he could manage.
The heavy doors of the ambulance shut, and the red emergency light crossed the rippling dimensional wall of the Gate back into the real world.
In the very center of the vast Colosseum, with all hunters and prisoners gone, only Kim Dae-han and I remained beneath the artificial ashen sky.
Beyond the collapsed stands, the distant cry of some nameless beast echoed through the ruins.
“Phew.”
Kim Dae-han let out a deep sigh and abruptly thrust something from his pocket into my hands. Two cans of cold beer, frost clinging to their metal.
Beer at a moment like this—how perfectly like him, I thought.
“Hunter, you’ve done it again. This time, it was something big.”
He handed me a can with a bitter smile.
“You really did save many lives. Well… Tae-hwa, that bastard still has a pulse, anyway. If it weren’t for you, he would’ve crossed the line here today.”
Instead of answering, I took the beer can he offered. The cold aluminum touched my palm through my gloves.
Pop—
Kim Dae-han cracked open his beer first, taking a long, satisfying pull. The sound of alcohol sliding down his throat rang softly through the silence of the empty Colosseum.
The bitter aroma of hops briefly masked the smell of blood.
“Hunter Kim Do-jin.”
After a deep gulp of beer, he wiped the foam from his lips with the back of his hand and looked directly at me.
It wasn’t the round, affable gaze he usually wore. The sharp eyes of an investigator who had sifted through countless crime scenes, piecing together clues, shone with unmistakable clarity.
“Last time, you asked me something.”
···
“Whether Gates could be made artificially. Whether such power even existed.”
At his question, I tightened my grip on the beer can ever so slightly and said nothing. The metal creaked softly under the pressure.
Kim Dae-han turned his head, surveying the Colosseum’s massive tiers—carved with surgical precision to hold tens of thousands—and the artificial arena terrain that betrayed signs of magical-engineering design.
This place bore far too purposeful a structure to be called a naturally occurring Dungeon.
And then, with quiet but unmistakable weight, he spoke his conclusion.
“Back then, I only said that the Hatching-type Gate wasn’t coincidence.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what you said.”
Kim Dae-han’s voice scattered coldly into the ashen sky. His eyes held the chilling certainty of someone who had solved a puzzle.
“Now I think I understand. Gates… they’re something humans can make. Or rather, someone already has been making them.”

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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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