The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 96

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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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96
Chapter 96. The Hunter Fallen from the Sky
***
A blade of wind raked brutally across the back of his neck.
The rooftop of the Ability Management Team Building was far colder than ground level. Standing beyond the safety fence, at the end of a narrow metal railing, he looked down at the city lights below.
The nightscape spreading in all directions like a spider’s web was brilliant, yet from this vantage point it resembled nothing so much as a tomb of cold glass shards.
The piercing night air stabbed into his lungs. But his muscles did not shudder—the heat radiating from the Core deep within his dantian kept them steady.
Instead, the collision of frigid outside air and scalding Mana within his body was honing every nerve in his frame to razor sharpness.
I gazed into the abyss within myself. There, coiled in that inner darkness, lay a massive creature he had taken as spoils from the Spawning-Type Gate in D City not long ago.
It was no match for the Ancient-Grade bloodline of the Dragon itself, but the Wyvern was nonetheless a superior monster, tracing the trajectory of the Flying Dragon.
And not merely a Wyvern—a superior breed: Ragus.
Those massive wings that had dominated the empty sky of the Colosseum and summoned forth a crimson tempest.
I remembered the angle at which those enormous wings cleaved the air, the contraction of every muscle.
This beast was no longer a simple monster. It was now the swiftest and most lethal means of traversal at my command—a way to tear through the heavens themselves.
“Airi.”
I gave a short nod toward the empty air.
[Indeed. Understood.]
[Given the current geographical conditions and temporal constraints, this is the most efficient method.]
[Beginning Sync.]
Whoosh—!
The air above the rooftop began to shimmer with silver particles. Through the forcibly torn rift in space, dark, viscous reptilian skin rose from the darkness.
The Ragus’s jet-black wings unfurled, unleashing a wind of terrible ferocity.
The thick layer of dust and concrete debris accumulated on the rooftop scattered in all directions. The beast’s distinctive, fishy stench mingled with the winter wind and assaulted his nostrils.
Within the heavy pressure of wind that battered his entire body, I held the gaze of the Ragus’s golden eyes.
I kicked off the railing and leaped. My body landed on the Wyvern’s broad, muscular back. There was no saddle for a rider, no handles of any kind.
But it didn’t matter. From the Core at my dantian, I drew forth blue Mana like a fine thread.
I connected it to the beast’s thick neck, condensing it into the form of sturdy reins.
A sharp hiss.
I gripped the Mana reins in both hands. The beast’s pulse, transmitted through my palms, was quite rough.
The Ragus extended its neck and let out a low, heavy rumbling sound. Its claws scraped against the rooftop, scattering sparks.
Its hind legs compressed like arrows, signaling that whenever the master’s command fell, it would defy gravity itself.
“Go.”
I tightened my grip on the reins.
Bang—!
With an earsplitting crack, the Ragus’s hind legs kicked off the rooftop.
Tons upon tons of massive flesh compressing against gravity, shooting vertically upward into the night sky like an arrow.
In an instant, the buildings beneath fell away to the size of grains, the altitude climbed higher, the air grew thinner, and the wind transformed into something sharper than any blade.
***
In the terrible battlefield before the return, he had rarely ever tamed and ridden a monster directly.
All that had been necessary was to pinpoint the bearing coordinates precisely, then tear open space with teleportation magic or a portal scroll and be done with it.
Back when Kang Tae-yoon—the Sword Saint of that time—would gentle and ride a massive griffin, running his fingers through its feathers, I had deemed it unnecessary extravagance.
Inefficient sentimentalism, I had thought.
But now, my mind had shifted slightly.
The sensation of riding the living, muscular body of a beast, breaking head-on through the currents of the sky.
It was a visceral, dynamic experience entirely unlike the cold formulae of magic—one that set the blood burning hot.
‘I’m flying.’
The harder I pulled the reins in my hands toward myself, the more the Ragus minimized air resistance and climbed toward even more furious speeds.
Fully controlling a monster of such extraordinary scale might have been somewhat taxing on the Mana Capacity currently limited to 2 Circles.
Sensing in real time the flow of Mana consumed in maintaining the Mana reins, I gauged the maximum flight duration possible.
Approximately ten minutes. That would suffice.
The route was from the Ability Management Team Headquarters in Gyeonggi Province to the Abandoned Military Zone Outside Paju.
For an ordinary four-wheel-drive vehicle, it would take a full hour of hard driving to navigate the congested roads and checkpoints.
But before the wings of this Flying Dragon, which ignored all obstacles of terrain and geography, tearing a straight path through the sky, it was merely a leisurely stroll—a route with time to spare.
It felt like riding a personal combat aircraft constructed of living flesh, perfectly synchronized with my own Mana.
The thin air of high altitude and the biting, ice-cold wind grazed my cheeks.
It was a coldness that lacerated the skin, yet paradoxically, it was soothing the throbbing intraocular pressure of my left eye—the one recently transplanted with an artifact—in a way that felt almost gentle.
Like a cooling device dissipating heat, the high-altitude wind calmed my nerves into stillness.
About five minutes into piercing the cloud layer, the target coordinates came into view at the edge of my vision.
It was the heart of a forest where all ground lights had vanished, and darkness lay thick as a blanket.
“Here will do. Let’s descend.”
“Yes, entering descent trajectory.”
I bent my wrist downward on the reins, and Ragus turned his massive body heavily, beginning a steep dive.
Between the ridgelines, the vista of an enormous artificial lake, dark as pitch, came into view.
And deep within that forest, beneath a concealment barrier, the foul ripple of Mana stabbed at my retinas.
“There it is.”
The information on the USB drive alone wasn’t enough to pinpoint their exact hideout. But once the Hunter Association’s intelligence was added, the puzzle completed.
What Yoo Hye-sung told me was concise: the remnants of Hong Hyeol-maeng hadn’t lasted even half a day.
‘Burned faster than I expected.’
Yoo Hye-sung had remarked flatly. Before they could even be asked, she’d said, the location of the base and the disposition of its defensive forces had spilled out.
It hadn’t required any particular interrogation technique.
‘She just held an axe to their throat.’
A massive cartel tangled in money and crime. The loyalty they’d proclaimed within it probably sounded grand enough.
But the moment death brushed their skin, that paper-thin conviction tore like tissue. Fear makes humans most truthful of all.
As I approached nearly vertical to the lake’s surface, I rose to my feet atop Ragus’s back. I tensed my legs, anchoring myself firmly to the beast’s hide.
“Airi. I’m jumping here.”
[Successor? You’re still several hundred meters above ground.]
[At this current speed, it will be difficult to absorb the impact.]
“It’s fine. I think I can manage it.”
I roughly untied the cord of the Eye Bandage covering my left eye and hurled it into the empty air. The bandage was caught by the wind and vanished into the darkness in an instant.
At the same time, I released my grip on the Mana I’d been channeling. Then I kicked hard against Ragus’s solid back and threw myself beyond the void.
Shiiiiing—!
Free fall.
I’d never received systematic training in flight or high-altitude descent.
But my body, which had broken through its limits again and again, and the Mana churning in my Dantian were reading the coefficient of atmospheric friction in real time.
Bone and muscle had already sensed the optimal landing trajectory. Before my mind could calculate, my body was screaming that it was possible.
Airi scattered into silver particles high above, returning to her original small fairy form. Mana reserves at roughly five percent.
“That’s enough.”
I was sucked into the fierce mire of gravity, beginning a vertical plunge toward the ground.
A wind so violent it could tear eardrums wrapped my entire body. My vision lurched wildly, but my senses only grew keener.
As I neared the ground, the outline of the hidden outpost deep in the forest expanded at terrifying speed.
The massive Gate entrance shrouded by a concealment barrier. Around it, the sentries of Hong Hyeol-maeng in crimson armbands stirred. The crowns of heads that had seemed like ants moments before were now racing toward me.
“Huh? That’s… .”
“What’s coming down from the sky?”
At the harsh sound of air being split, the men on the ground finally looked up. In that brief instant as their shoulder muscles contracted to raise their weapons.
I stretched both hands downward, maintaining my falling acceleration, and opened the Core of my Dantian to its limit.
‘[Explosion]’
Second Circle explosive magic.
If deployed on ordinary flat ground, it would have been mere flames burning a radius of only a few meters. A level of explosion magic absurdly trivial compared to Hong Tae-hwa.
But now, driven vertically from hundreds of meters aloft, the mechanical conditions were entirely different.
The overwhelming downward air current pushed by my body, which bore hundreds of kilograms of force, and the atmospheric pressure.
The moment the sphere of flame erupting from my fingertips collided with the air layer above the ground, the compressed atmosphere swallowed the spark, triggering a catastrophic chain reaction like a thermobaric warhead.
Kraaaaaaaang—!!
An overwhelming detonation, as if lightning had struck a gasoline depot, consumed the quiet forest. Flame and shockwave burst outward in a circle.
The sentries’ bodies were launched into the air like shattered fragments before they could even scream.
I used the powerful reactive field generated as the spell collided with the ground as a platform. I spun my body in mid-air to cancel my momentum, dispersing the impact as I landed.
Thump—
Both feet descended silently onto the scorched earth where the flames had swept.
Without sparing a glance at the remnants writhing and spitting blood in the thick smoke, I flicked my fingers lightly.
“Stay right there.”
Thick vines erupted through the scorched ground like tentacles.
They wound around the necks and limbs of the men who lay dazed by the sudden explosion, strangling them like serpents.
The loud warning alarm that would have awakened those inside was sufficient.
I pushed through the dust and stepped into the crack of the massive Gate. A foul chill emanated from the cave interior, thick with darkness.
***
“Screeeeeech—!!”
The broad blade of the Black Iron Blade, torn through the air, crushed the ribcage of the monster that charged from the darkness.
With the dull crunch of shattering bone and rupturing organs, the creature’s body was driven into the cave wall like cargo.
I shook the dark blood clinging to the blade and adjusted my grip on the Black Iron’s hilt. This crude lump of metal was less a sword than a blunted bludgeon with an edge.
Its Mana conductivity was abysmal, but for breaking bone and mincing flesh, nothing served better.
I examined the nape of the monster embedded in the wall, its breath ended. A Metal Chalk glowed blue, wedged firmly in place.
It was the same curse as the one the Goblin had used to bind Lee Do-hyeon’s ankle before.
The Gate had already been cleared and the connection to the Other World severed, making it safe—but it was now certain that the Hong Hyeol-maeng dogs had received the ritual from the Gate Cult and turned this place into a monster breeding ground and labor camp.
“Is that all?”
I’d been tearing through the Gate’s interior for over ten minutes, yet aside from a handful of small-time monsters, there had been virtually no resistance.
Likely an aftereffect of the main force’s annihilation at the D City Colosseum last time. The troop density here at this outer base had noticeably thinned.
My breathing as I walked through the darkness was fractionally faster than usual—not from combat fatigue.
As my bones and muscles warmed, the searing pain that had been throbbing relentlessly in my left eye since the Eye of the Watcher implant had vanished clean away.
The Gate’s characteristic murky Mana. The adrenaline that combat summoned.
My Aura wrapped around my skin like a coating, drawing tight, and that peculiar thrill stimulated a primal euphoria from deep within my blood.
“Glad I came out for this walk.”
I clenched my jaw hard.
Forcing my dangerously spiking heart rate down with deep breathing, I shoved the killing tension down beneath the bedrock of cold reason.
There was a clear reason why I needed to maintain control—it was standing right in front of me.
Step. Step.
I stopped.
In the deepest clearing of the Gate, an alien structure that should not exist had taken root like a monstrous growth.
A colossal iron fortress built by stacking dozens of shipping containers on top of one another like blocks.
By privatizing and modifying the Gate’s interior this way to evade the law, even when we crushed Hong Hyeol-maeng’s network cells from the outside, we could never quite get a proper hold on their tail.
Hmmm—
The container’s massive iron door, which had been sealed shut, slowly creaked open with a heavy metallic rasp.
Clang. Clang.
The interior of the rust-laden container had a two-tier structure.
The first floor opened up like a vast arena with a high ceiling, while the second floor housed a command center fitted with floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
On the iron-plated floor where my footsteps landed, a shallow pool of dark crimson blood—whether someone’s, I couldn’t say—had pooled and spread thin.
And at the edge of that blood pool, a man waited for me in the darkness.
Hair bleached ashen gray, a complexion pale as a corpse. He wore a black hunter suit fitted to his frame, over which hung a fluttering jumper.
Kiiiieeeek—!
The man dragged the sharp Combat Knife he gripped in one hand across the iron floor with a long, grating stroke, sending out a bone-chilling metallic screech and spewing unpleasant sparks.
Like a beast sharpening its claws.
The distance between us was roughly twenty meters. But simply by reading his body’s balance and the Mana wavelengths rippling through the space around him, his skill was laid bare in my mind like a dissected diagram.
Lower body with perfectly concealed center of gravity, footwork specialized for close quarters that didn’t even release a whisper of breath.
The dense, viscous Mana pouring from his body indicated at least an A-Rank Hunter’s ability—or higher.
The fact that he stood alone at the center of this vast secret fortress made it unmistakably clear: he was the commander here.
“So… you’re the one. That one.”
The man stopped dragging the Combat Knife and lifted his head. His eyes, slitted like a serpent’s, gleamed unpleasantly.
His entire eyeballs bore a reddish glow, as if completely bloodshot.
“You know who I am?”
I drew the tip of the Black Iron Blade across the pool of blood on the floor as I spoke.
“I know you well. Very well. Thanks to you, we’ve lost more than half our people.”
The man pulled a vial containing some unidentifiable inhalant from his coat pocket and brought it to his lips without hesitation, drawing in a long, hard breath through the mouthpiece.
Hissssshhh—!
Blue vapor trapped within the vial shot out like a viper, sucking deep into the man’s lungs. He tilted his head back, drawing in a long, murky breath.
Crrrack! Crrrack!
His spine bowed like an archer’s bow, then his body twisted grotesquely as he rose to his feet. Beneath his skin, blue veins wriggled like leeches, bulging upward.
Withered muscle began to swell obscenely, threatening to tear through his jumper. The blood vessels in his eyes ruptured, his pupils flooding completely red.
The man hurled the empty inhalant to the floor.
‘Booster Blue.’
This was in an entirely different class from what the low-level operatives had taken at the Colosseum. An ultra-concentrated Mana amplifier that triggered cellular-level rampage.
A forbidden drug that granted demonic strength at the cost of burning away the human nervous system.
The beast-like boss, suppressing the agony of his burning nerves, fixed me with bloodshot eyes. Blue vapor leaked from between his lips.
“Then.”
I shifted my grip on the Black Iron Blade and took a step forward.
“I suppose you understand you’re ending this as a hunk of meat.”

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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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