The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 97

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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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97
Episode 97. Erased Results
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Blood sprayed across the air.
It was a metallic signal that shattered the stagnant atmosphere in a single stroke, reversing the flow of energy.
Clang—!
The earsplitting screech of metal tore through the damp silence of the Abandoned School Gymnasium.
The heavy blade of Black Iron descended without mercy from above, pressing down the Combat Knife he held raised. It was not merely a clash of strength against strength.
A flimsy Dagger had no chance of meeting the overwhelming violence of a chunk of iron saturated with Magical Power.
By normal physics, his wrist should have shattered, or at minimum his knees should have buckled and sent him crawling across the floor.
Yet his lower body stood rooted to the marble floor like a stake driven deep into the earth—not even trembling.
Whoosh.
In the instant the blades locked, his wrist twisted with serpentine grace.
Deflecting the weight of the Black Iron along a diagonal trajectory, a silver arc bloomed from his opposite hip and surged viciously toward my lower abdomen.
‘A Kukri.’
A brutal curved blade weighted at the tip. Born for a single swing, a murder weapon designed to tear flesh and bone clean away in one stroke.
The second blade he had concealed aimed directly at my lower abdomen—where my organs lay.
‘Blink.’
I kicked the ground and shifted across a short distance. As I pulled my torso back, my vision flickered.
Screech—!
The front of my leather jacket tore open, crimson sparks scattering through empty air. It was more than just sharp.
The Kukri’s blade was densely inscribed with fire-attributed Mana, fine as blood vessels.
Had my judgment in that split second been any slower, my organs would have been sliced open and roasted simultaneously. His reaction speed kept pace with the casting velocity of Blink itself—his reflexes were abnormal.
‘Discard all tactics that require casting time.’
I deleted unnecessary strategy from my mind. I ripped off the jacket where embers were spreading and kindling smoke, hurling it to the floor. The acrid stench of burning leather stung my nostrils.
“Good eyes.”
The man interlocked the knife and Kukri he held in both hands, his voice low. His pupils had already dilated to an eerie degree from the Booster Blue’s side effects.
“But I don’t wear glasses.”
I adjusted my grip on the Black Iron’s hilt. The vibration transmitted through my palm trembled finely, synchronized with my pulse.
“Chao nima······.”
Coarse Chinese profanity leaked from between his lips.
Boom!
He charged again, cutting through the air. His footwork was economical, yet the distance he covered was absurdly vast.
The steps that closed the gap contained not a single whisper of sound. The silver arcs pouring from both hands arrived with metronomic precision, tearing the rhythm to pieces.
The Combat Knife in his right hand dragged my gaze upward; meanwhile his heavier left Kukri drove through the opening between my ribs and thigh, probing mercilessly.
In the moment I parried the Kukri pouring down on my head with the flat of my Black Iron blade, his lower body coiled like a spring and launched upward.
Crack!
A kick aimed at my chin. A pale blade suddenly jutted from the toe of his military boot, scraping across the flat of my Black Iron and spitting sparks. His entire body was a weapon.
This was not the orthodox swordplay or martial arts that Hunters typically employed.
It was an alien murder technique honed to extremity—ruthlessly efficient at severing human life in the most brutal way possible.
“Don’t create distance!”
His shout coincided with a surge in attack density.
I tried to gain space to cast Quick Slash, but he dog-in like a starving cur, clinging tenaciously to my opening and refusing to let go.
Crash! Clang! Crack!
I batted back the rain of steel raining down from all sides with the flat and edge of my Black Iron. My hands grew stiff and burning; the muscles in my wrists began to scream.
Since my Regression, no human had ever pressed me into such defensive straits through close-range blade work alone.
If Bae Hyeon-gyeom’s martial prowess was vast and exquisite, this man’s violence was as base and lethal as a viper’s fang writhing from the gutter.
Every motion he made converged toward a single purpose: killing.
Boom—!
The change erupted from a moment of stillness.
We stood locked, blades interlocked, trading force. What erupted from his chest was not a third blade.
A Makarov Pistol.
The blackened muzzle spat crimson flame toward my heart.
I reflexively twisted my head and turned my left shoulder aside, deflecting the trajectory.
Whistle—!
The supersonic crack of the round tore past my shoulder blade, and hot sensation raked across my nerves. Blood sprayed.
The sensation of the round tearing through the lining of my Protective Combat Suit and slicing shallowly into flesh transmitted to my brain. This was not the speed of ordinary gunpowder ammunition.
The incoming projectile was inscribed with extremely compressed Haste magic.
A Magical Power-coated round that physically erased air resistance and accelerated the bullet velocity several times over.
A man at the pinnacle of close combat, concealing a firearm in his embrace, with rounds coated in Magical Power for meticulous lethality.
What was most chilling was that even beneath the madness of Booster Blue, he maintained his rationality with terrifying precision.
‘He’s completely controlling the Booster.’
I wiped away the blood trickling down my shoulder and across the back of my hand without flinching. The wound wasn’t deep, but the heat from the gunpowder made it throb with dull pain.
The man’s serpentine eyes shimmered strangely, mingling with his cyan Aura.
“Thanks to you, the Hong Hyeol-maeng in Korea is on the verge of annihilation.”
He spun the pistol lazily on his fingertip and clicked his tongue.
“Korea was our chance at salvation. This insignificant little nation could only find stability within the order we imposed.”
“Lunatic.”
I cut off the disgusting drivel spilling from his lips with a sharp edge to my voice.
“What?”
“You crawl into someone else’s country, peddle poison, commit crimes through Gates—and you have the nerve to speak of grand designs? You’re nothing but vermin.”
I fixed my gaze on the space between his brows. The tip of my Black Iron Dagger aimed at his throat.
“Listen well. You’re trash and nothing more.”
At least Jang Yu-cheong, who laid bare his greed without pretense, was more human. That bastard never denied what he was.
Men who wrapped their vile atrocities in noble ideals and grand justifications—they were the breed I despised most in this world.
“Fool. You don’t understand the currents of the age at all.”
“No. Not at all.”
I brought the flat of the Black Iron Dagger down hard against the marble floor. With a sharp crack, the stone fractured in a spiderweb pattern.
“I know the currents better than anyone.”
Sparks erupted in a violent shower at Ryu Ting-long’s feet.
The Aura enveloping his entire frame swelled to a ferocious intensity, shoving the air itself away from him.
It was undeniable proof that the emotionless killing machine had lost his grip on reason over a petty insult.
“You brat!”
He kicked off the ground. The explosive burst rivaled the speed of sound—faster than anyone I’d faced before.
It was the product of Booster Blue’s deranged output, forcing open the brain’s limiters and tearing muscle fibers to their absolute limit.
But no matter how seasoned an assassin he was, he couldn’t escape the ten-year statistical network etched into my mind.
Ten years before my Regression.
On the front lines of war, I’d severed the throats of thousands upon thousands of monsters and top-tier villains.
Their combat tempos, the trajectory of their straight-line charges when reason shut down, every data point was already burned into my soul.
No matter how fast his body moved, the Mana formulae calculated in my head reached their conclusion one step ahead.
‘Gravity.’
‘Earthquake.’
‘Ice Field.’
Three branches of the Tree of Sephiroth materialized behind me, tangling together in an instant to complete the triple composite incantation.
I compressed all three environmental control spells into the cool blade of the Black Iron Dagger, then drove it vertically into the marble floor beneath my feet without hesitation.
“What—what is—!”
Ryu Ting-long’s form, about to extend in all directions, twisted grotesquely in midair and crashed.
Gravity amplified a hundredfold crushed his shoulders into the ground, while the heaving earth shattered his lower-body balance at its foundation.
Simultaneously, the rapidly frozen ice beneath his boots stripped away all friction.
A triple link of absolute field control.
Only one person in my faded memories could maintain their stance against this hellish trap. Kang Tae-yoon.
No one else could escape this constraint—except that monster who defied all convention.
“Damn it all!”
Ryu Ting-long proved to be no easy mark. Even under the press of gravity and the slide of ice, he drove the Kukri into the ground with raw force, creating a pivot point.
His instinct grasped that field control magic excelled at binding wide-range mobility but lacked direct lethality.
Especially since the spell was channeled through the Black Iron Dagger as a conduit, the density was high but the impact radius narrow.
In mere seconds, his reserve power would erupt his Aura and shatter these environmental constraints.
That fleeting gap.
That was the only opening I hunted for.
I kicked off the ground and launched myself forward. The blade traced its arc toward his crumbling defense.
‘First Strike Division.’
Within the acceleration’s trajectory, the Black Iron Dagger carved a massive cross through Ryu Ting-long’s chest.
Speed too fast to track with the naked eye. The sensation of the blade shattering bone and tearing flesh transmitted clearly through my fingertips.
“Gaaaaahhhhh!!!”
Crimson blood fountained upward. Ryu Ting-long’s body, split deep in a cross pattern, went flying toward the container wall stacked behind him.
Bang!
The dull clang of warped steel rang out as he crashed to the floor. Dust billowed into the air.
I’d done it.
Even in the extreme conditions of live combat, splitting one strike into two had become as natural as breathing. My training against the Berserker on the stage had paid off.
My body was acquiring the skill faster than my will could command it.
I crossed the dust-covered floor toward him. It was a maximum-power strike, delivered with the intent to sever his life completely.
Yet even as blood spilled from his lips, he continued to writhe.
I lowered my gaze.
His chest, torn open in a jagged cross.
Though it was undoubtedly a mortal wound, the muscle fibers beneath his skin twisted like parasites, forcibly knitting the laceration back together.
The Booster Blue appeared to do more than numb the brain’s pain receptors—it was abnormally accelerating cellular division, forcing his body’s repair mechanisms into overdrive.
“A… a mage?”
Ryu Ting-long, gasping and spitting blood, looked up at me with eyes wide in shock. Fear and doubt now mingled in his gaze.
“The Hong Hyeol-maeng’s intelligence network isn’t as sharp as they think.”
I flicked the sticky blood from the Black Iron blade onto the floor and replied flatly.
I had never resolved to become a swordsman. Nor did I intend to cling exclusively to the mage’s path as I had before the regression.
If it meant severing the neck of the evil god Zephyros and preventing the collapse of this hellish world, I would wield every card in my hand with the utmost cruelty and efficiency.
Swordplay was merely one tool among many to achieve that end. Magic was no different.
Petty pride in titles like knight or mage was nothing but a luxury in the face of the absolute imperatives of survival and victory.
“Haaah······!”
Ryu Ting-long staggered to his knees.
He retrieved that familiar glass vial and inhalant from his breast, drawing the remaining drug deep into his lungs at maximum capacity.
Hisssss!
“Gggggh! Aaaaah!”
His body contorted in a grotesque bow. An aura far more vicious than before erupted in sparks in all directions, scraping away the concrete around us.
Yet the cross-shaped wound carved into his chest remained open, weeping dark red blood.
Even the booster’s forced regeneration could not fully repair the damage where my strike had torn through the critical juncture of his Mana Circuit.
“I will drag only you down to hell.”
A beast’s roar, all reason abandoned. Ryu Ting-long gripped his dagger inverted and hurled himself at my throat with feral desperation.
This charge differed from his previous attacks.
Technique had crumbled away; only a primal, animalistic killing intent remained, coalescing into one massive surge bearing down on me.
Its momentum and speed were far too overwhelming to block with debuff magic as before.
I became aware of it then—the newly transplanted Mana Circuit within me.
It blazed forth with a heat that seemed to sear the nerves, radiating a cool wave in all directions.
“······What?”
A dazed whimper escaped Ryu Ting-long’s lips as he sliced through empty air, his blades meant for my throat.
He had been charging forward with both daggers extended. By his perception, enough time had already passed for him to sever my neck.
Yet in the next moment, as his falling body spun through the air toward the floor, a bizarre and cruel scene registered on his retinas.
His own torso, standing motionless before him, fountaining crimson blood from the severed neck.
And beside that headless corpse, I stood in perfect stillness, gazing with cold indifference at his head suspended in the void.
Within a dizzying distortion of space and time, his consciousness flickered rapidly.
“Why am I… over there…?”
Thump.
Roll.
Ryu Ting-long’s head came to rest far from my feet.
His eyes remained wide open to the last, unable to comprehend why he had died.
I gazed quietly down at his corpse as it convulsed briefly beside me before falling still.
“Well.”
I flicked the blood from the Black Iron blade into the air, speaking toward his head rolling in the distance.
“Think about it.”

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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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