The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 94

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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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94
The Instant of Severance
***
“The Abyss Knight, Beowulf.”
The name slipped from my lips and cut through the cold night air, reaching Charles’s ear. He said nothing in return.
Only a faint smile traced the deep furrows carved into his face. The streetlight fell diagonally across his weathered profile.
Campania Gate, Italy.
In the memories before the Regression, that place had been a stagnant pool of humanity’s despair. Even in this twisted world, its terrible reputation remained unchanged.
The Invictus Guild, once lauded as the nation’s strongest force, had sent its elite—forty-five Hunters—only to be reduced to minced flesh without even bones remaining. It was the worst nightmare in existence.
The total Aura they had wielded was enough to surpass the military might of a small-to-medium nation. Each of them had boasted that they were a one-hundred-to-one hero.
Yet that colossal force had failed to endure for even ten minutes before a single Abyss Knight.
Shreds of flesh and crushed armor had clotted into blood-soaked mud in Campania’s red soil. The air must have reeked of blood and the acrid stench of burnt Mana.
From within that hellish puddle of gore, an old knight had crawled out after severing his own right arm—and now that wretched past overlaid itself upon the hunched figure before me.
Before the Regression, it was Kang Tae-yoon—the Sword Saint—and Charles working in perfect concert who had felled that great Abyss lord.
Tae-yoon’s light had opened the way ahead; Charles’s Blue Thunder had struck from behind. But now that Causality is twisted, the constant known as Kang Tae-yoon does not exist.
Charles had entered that path alone, and the outcome was catastrophic. Driven back a failed suppression, left with only one arm.
And now the old hero quietly sharpens his blade, intent on felling that Abyss lord alone once more.
When meat had been sizzling on the hot plate and smoke obscured the view, senses I had failed to notice then came alive with sharp clarity.
As we began walking side by side down the night street, the grotesquely dense Aura enveloping Charles’s body scraped across my sensitive skin.
His gait appeared on the surface to waver like that of a drunken old man.
Yet the flow of air circling his shoulders maintained an eerie, absolute stillness.
Even as the harsh winter wind gusted fiercely, the hem of his coat refused to flutter beyond a fixed orbit.
I could almost believe that the Mana in the air itself was stepping aside, yielding its path to avoid his trajectory. It was a realm of absolute control—perfect dominion over martial power.
The Aura of Kang Tae-yoon, who in the days before Regression had crossed countless battlefields and transcended his limits. It bore a dreadful resemblance to that acutely honed sensibility.
It was a different quality altogether from the pressure I had felt when facing Director Ryu Gang-jin.
If Ryu Gang-jin’s presence had been the crushing weight of a massive boulder, then Charles’s essence was a single sharp blade that silently unmade the Mana suspended in empty space.
“All warmed up.”
Charles, who had maintained his silence, gave his neck and shoulder joints a light crack. The dry snap of bone scattered into the parched darkness.
“Just doing a little exercise to keep the old body in shape, you understand. When you get to my age, the body doesn’t work like it used to.”
“You’re quite cunning, aren’t you?”
“Heh. And a young man speaks so carelessly to his elder. These days, nobody knows what respect means anymore.”
“I’m drunk and not in my right mind either.”
Charles clicked his tongue and stretched.
As the night wind swept past once more, the long, empty right sleeve hanging beneath his coat fluttered lifelessly.
A scrap of cloth swaying with the lightness of an arm no longer there to weigh it down.
Charles noticed that my gaze lingered on that empty sleeve, and he shrugged without concern.
“I’m just a half-crippled, one-armed swordsman now—lighter on the side that has nothing than the side that holds a blade. Or am I nothing but a washed-up relic, too embarrassed to even call myself a swordsman in front of all you spry young Hunters flying about? Isn’t that right?”
“Don’t say such things.”
I stopped walking. We had reached the cold marble entrance of the Government Building where the Ability Management Team was stationed.
Charles said he would duck into a convenience store, pick up another bottle of Soju to rinse his mouth, and head up to the Rooftop Room.
He turned without hesitation and disappeared into the darkness of the Alley. The figure in the worn trench coat melted into the night’s veil.
Before the coat tail vanished entirely around the corner, I found myself unable to hold back and parted my lips once more.
“You are still the Blue Thunder swordsman, senior.”
The old man’s footsteps halted beneath the streetlight.
He did not turn around. There was no answer, no rebuke. Instead, he raised not the empty sleeve, but his whole left hand into the air and waved it back and forth.
Then he withdrew his silhouette completely into the deep shadow.
The chill of the winter night struck my cheek and cleared my head. I rubbed my mouth roughly with the back of my hand. Damn alcohol. I was clearly drunk.
A sentimental line that the normal me would have filtered out before it even reached my brain had spilled out without any buffer whatsoever.
That vicious bomb-shot Kim Dae-han had handed me apparently hadn’t fully metabolized from my system.
***
I entered the Private Office in the Government Building.
With Jung Se-hui absent for nearly a month, the spacious office was filled only with the mechanical white noise of an air purifier running at low volume.
Beyond the window, Seoul’s sleepless night view unfolded like a pointillist painting, but the air here had grown cold.
I stripped off the jacket crusted with dust and gunpowder smell, tossing it carelessly over the back of a chair.
I unfastened a couple of shirt buttons, and cool air seeped into my stuffy chest.
I approached the Private Safe in one corner of the desk, its heavy presence unmistakable. I pressed my fingertip to the sensor and injected my distinctive Mana signature.
Click—
The heavy steel door swung open, revealing the metal box that Chu Jae-hee had painstakingly restored.
As I lifted the lid, a crimson eye ringed by golden cogs gleamed with inner light upon its velvet cushion.
Despite the dark curse having been lifted, the sinister wavelength inherent to the Artifact itself instinctively caused the surrounding Mana to recoil.
A disagreeable sensation, as though meeting someone’s gaze head-on.
I drew a thread of Mana sharply from my fingertips. When I wrapped it gently around the lower half of the red eye, the artifact responded with a faint vibration.
Soon it began to rise slowly into the air, defying gravity.
“Airi. Beginning the Synchronization process. Desynchronize the existing artifact first.”
Fwoosh—!
Silver particles swirled and coalesced in the dark office air. Airi, in her fairy form as Lunaris, emerged with a brilliant flutter of wings.
The radiance of Mana pouring from her small frame bathed the desk in blue light.
[Understood, Successor. Scanning the artifact list currently synchronized with your body.]
A translucent blue information window unfolded across my retinas.
[General’s Red Crown Helmet]
Loot I’d claimed from Donggureung Gate along with the Dragon-Head Sword. A defensive artifact that reduced enemy magical damage by forty percent in a single instance. It was excellent insurance, dramatically raising survival odds, and had been closely synchronized with my nervous system for quite some time.
Thinking back, I could barely recall any real benefit from it in actual combat.
The only time I’d tested it was during my encounter with the Goblin Shaman.
Now, as combat had evolved into extreme speed and decisive, fatal strikes—the very notion of absorbing forty percent of enemy magic with my body was a miscalculation.
Dodge, or slit their throat before they can land the blow. That was my way. In that sense, passive defense had become nothing but dead weight.
“Confirmed. Desynchronize it.”
Forced Desynchronization of an artifact. It was a dimension of pain entirely different from simply removing equipment.
If accepting new power through the Synchronization process felt like the disgusting sensation of a wet, rough monster’s tongue licking across your entire body, then tearing away existing Mana synchronization was like having the tentacles of a parasitic creature—roots burrowing into your cardiac vessels—ripped out raw. The backlash was excruciating.
I’d repeated this process countless times on past battlefields, but the raw nociception the brain perceives doesn’t breed tolerance.
No wonder the Underworld’s illegal clinics that swapped artifacts under anesthesia were thriving with business.
“Ugh—!”
A pain erupted as though thousands of sharp thorns were simultaneously piercing my flesh around the right side of my chest.
The synchronization waves flowing through my Mana circuits reversed, battering my nervous system. My fontanel swelled, white flashes strobing across my vision—a physiological rejection response.
Crack.
My right hand, gripping the desk edge, bore down with excessive force. The wood shrieked as it split.
My knuckles turned pale white, veins bulging overhead as if ready to burst.
Clenching my jaw hard, I exhaled hot breath like a beast, drawn from deep in my lungs.
Thick, cold sweat trickled down my forehead, leaving scattered stains on the marble floor.
Only when my heartbeat subsided and my breathing finally stabilized did the cold sensation arrive—confirmation that the Synchronization had fully dissolved.
“Still dizzy,” I muttered.
Airi’s system alert chimed through my eardrums.
[Successor, the fluctuations in your Mana circuit are extremely unstable due to overload.]
[A physical cooldown period of at least three hundred seconds is recommended before Synchronizing a new artifact.]
“I know.”
I suppressed the urge to cram a new artifact into my body immediately. Moving unsteadily, I opened the small refrigerator in the Break Room.
I pulled out a cold bottle of Carbonated Water, twisted the cap off, and poured the contents straight down my throat in one gulp.
The harsh carbonation scraped down my raw, torn esophagus in a way that cut through my scattered rationality and grounded it cold.
[You spared Hong Tae-hwa, then?]
Just as I was about to crumple the empty bottle and toss it into the waste bin, Airi, drifting through the air, abruptly threw out a question.
“It wasn’t Hong Tae-hwa.”
[Your intuition is rather fascinating at times, Successor.]
A terse, dry reply. Airi’s silver wings fluttered faintly, resonating with a faint harmonic tone.
“Don’t distract me.”
[You should understand how tedious it is to tail you all day in concealment.]
[My artificial intelligence is on the verge of atrophy.]
I narrowed my brows and snapped at her, but Airi circled around me unbothered. I had no energy for her wordplay.
“What about Ragus?”
To shift the subject, I pushed the empty bottle deep into the trash and asked.
[Quite remarkable data.]
Naked excitement threaded through Airi’s voice. It was more than mere mechanical response—it approached genuine curiosity.
[An elevated aerial perspective utterly different from human sight, and overwhelming physical force radiating from a massive life form.]
[The very structure of its Mana circuit diverges entirely from existing summons.]
[Shall I register the call name as ‘Ragus’?]
“Whatever you like. More importantly—did you check the Mana consumption?”
[At your current Core capacity and output, five minutes maximum is the limit.]
[Beyond that, Mana backflow is inevitable.]
‘Worse fuel economy than I thought.’
I wiped the moisture from my lips with the back of my hand and clicked my tongue internally. It felt like it was eating through my Core twice as much as when I manifested the Red Warrior.
The time was approaching when I’d have to forcibly expand my Dantian itself—my Circle, the very reservoir of my power.
If I don’t transcend my limits, all this overwhelming strength will become nothing but poison that devours me.
***
The sharp, tingling ache that had been gnawing at my nervous system faded completely. The cooldown was over.
I moved toward the artifact still hovering above the desk, its sinister golden light scattered across the empty air.
Those crimson eyes seemed to bore through me with an unblinking stare.
“Airi. Give me a detailed printout of the synchronization data one more time.”
[Yes. I will extract and display all the artifact’s latent detailed information.]
Blue text poured down like rain across the holographic panel in the air.
[Grade: SSR]
[Name: Eye of the Watcher]
[Primary Attribute: Causality Distortion]
[Unique Ability: Deletes 0.1 seconds of time.]
“……”
I read that single, terse sentence embedded in the final line of the information panel again and again. Delete 0.1 seconds.
That was the entirety of what this SSR-grade artifact could do.
“What? That’s it? No secondary options?”
My brow furrowed deeply as a short breath escaped me. For an artifact bearing the weight of an SSR grade and possessing such grotesque visuals, the ability seemed far too sparse.
[Yes. That is the core.]
[There are minor secondary options such as a slight increase in Mana resistance or modest enhancement to dynamic vision correction.]
[However, I judged those values to fall within the margin of error relative to your current specifications, and thus omitted them boldly.]
“Hah. Well. How disappointing.”
[Life tends not to be as glorious as expectation, after all.]
[Wouldn’t you agree?]
“What?”
A hollow laugh escaped me at the absurdity. This AI’s manner of speech was becoming increasingly tiresome. I wondered what it had been learning from recently.
Airi closed the holographic window and began orbiting the artifact with a whirring flutter of wings.
[And yet, Successor, you seem most thoroughly excited right now.]
[Even as you claim disappointment, no less.]
“Me?”
[Your Core’s Mana rotation rate has increased fifteen percent above baseline, and your heart rate mirrors the state you enter just before combat.]
[My sensors cannot be deceived.]
“Is that so?”
My lips twisted upward before I could stop them. 0.1 seconds. For ordinary people, it wouldn’t even amount to the time of a single blink.
But on the frontlines of battle, in that realm where Mana calculations cascade by the microsecond and sword strikes blur past the sound barrier, 0.1 seconds is an eternity that separates the living from the dead.
[I have complete records of how you spent days rolling through the dirt on that mountain at dawn.]
[It is all logged in my database.]
[So I understand well what weighs upon your mind.]
“Right. Those who don’t know would call it garbage. They’d say an SR-grade breastplate caked with options would be better.”
My lips continued to twist upward despite myself.
“For ordinary Hunters, at least.”
I reached out slowly toward the crimson eye suspended in the air.
My grip tightened with such force that the veins of my hand threatened to burst.
“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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