The Archmage’s Swordsmanship Is Too Strong - Chapter 98

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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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98
Chapter 98. Hei Long Jiang
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“Lukifugus, withdraw.”
My low voice shattered the bloodstained silence.
The moment the command fell, the crimson chains that had been warping the air violently, compressing space itself, thrashed as though screaming.
The metallic clang of the chain links colliding with one another scraped against my eardrums.
Those links—smooth and sinister as a serpent’s scales—vanished in an instant into the abyss of shadow.
Lukifugus’s third eye, grotesquely split across its brow, twitched shut in a spasm.
The pitch-black fog dissipated, and its unique domain, the Tree of Kliphoth, collapsed in a heartbeat.
It felt as though a colossal pane of glass had shattered into tens of thousands of shards and come raining down.
The boundary between reality and unreality crumbled, and the sealed air of the outside world came pouring in like a waterfall.
“Damn.”
I instinctively hunched my shoulders and pressed my mouth shut.
A thick, hot liquid forced itself between my fingers—coagulated blood, black as death.
Fragments of Mana backflowed up my esophagus, scraping my organs raw as though I’d swallowed powdered glass. Bone-deep chills wracked my entire frame.
The second unfolding of the Tree of Kliphoth exacted a brutal toll on my body. This was no mere drain of Mana.
Binding the fragmented soul of the dead forcibly to an anchor in the living world, excavating its depths—such an act necessarily brought an overload of information in its wake.
The splintered memories housed within Ryu Ting Long collided at random against my optic nerves and brain stem, each collision throwing off sparks.
The muscles at the base of my skull went rigid, and my eyes felt as though they’d burst from the pressure building behind them.
I wiped the iron taste from my lips with the back of my hand.
I looked down at the ground.
Over a dark crimson pool congealed with sand dust.
Ryu Ting Long’s head lay rolling. He seemed not to have grasped the fact that he was dead.
His wide-open eyes held only confusion—a confusion about that grotesque motion he’d witnessed in his final moment.
I steadied my breathing and retraced the sequence of events in my mind.
Before the Regression, I’d encountered countless assassins and thieves among the Awakened Ones. But Ryu Ting Long—this man occupied an entirely different tier.
An assassin who stood at the absolute limit of the Skill Tree.
In the previous world, Kang Tae-yoon had called him “the Hong Hyeol-maeng’s most troublesome serpent”—and perhaps he truly had been their elite killer.
I didn’t sever his neck and let it roll because I held overwhelming superiority or any margin of control.
The opposite, in fact.
The assault he’d unleashed in that final moment exceeded both the speed of physical evasion and conventional magical barrier deployment.
His blade had already grazed my carotid artery before my body could react. A gap of 0.1 seconds.
That sliver of time was an absolute precipice between life and death.
‘If not for the Eye of the Watcher.’
Had that bizarre power—the one that forcibly severed the flow of causality—faltered even slightly, it would have been my head rolling in the dirt.
Sweat traced a cold path down my spine. My fingertips trembled faintly—the recoil of a nervous system wrung to its limit.
I pulled out my phone.
Drops of blood fell onto the screen, leaving red stains. I moved my thumb and opened the notes app.
The fragments of information I’d scraped from Ryu Ting Long’s shattered mind through Lukifugus’s eyes. Before the volatile memories of the dead could disperse, I recorded those pieces mechanically.
‘[Hong Hyeol-maeng Korean Branch], [Drug Booster Route], [L-3 Zone Distribution Officer]···.’
The more I read through the text, the narrower my brow furrowed.
Concrete evidence was scarce.
Ryu Ting Long had been merely a field commander and operations manager—not someone privy to direct contracts or active communication channels with the Gate Cult.
The fragments of information stopped short just before pointing to the critical ‘higher-ups’ by name.
Thud. Thud.
I forcibly suppressed the dizziness whining inside my skull.
I moved forward. The Colosseum’s outer perimeter held a crudely constructed two-story container fortress.
With each step on the dented metal stairs, the iron groaned hollowly. The door to the upper command center was already half-shattered, swinging loose.
The moment I opened it, a vile stench assaulted my nose.
The smell of burning plastic and the acrid smoke of melting copper wire filled the room.
“As expected.”
The large server racks that crammed the entire room had been smashed to pieces—as though hit by an axe or blunt force.
Torn-out hard drives and motherboards bore the unmistakable marks of high-temperature flames. The contrast was stark from Jang Yu-chung’s amateurish hideout.
Ryu Ting Long was a consummate professional. He had set the protocol so that every database would physically self-destruct the moment an enemy breached the site or the moment he fell.
“Remarkably thorough.”
I nudged the charred debris with the toe of my shoe.
Data recovery seemed virtually impossible. The destruction had been so thorough that not even a trace of magical residue remained.
Just as I turned to leave, a half-charred slip of stiff paper caught my eye in the black ash.
I bent down and picked it up.
A small photograph, burnt at the edges by flames, its form incomplete—yet the outlines of the figures within remained starkly visible.
Ryu Ting Long as he had been, his face still young and unmarked by the hideous scars that now crossed it. And in his arms, a small girl, smiling as though she had found the safest place in all the world.
“Lin Mei.”
The unfamiliar name spilled from my lips unbidden, three syllables I had no memory of speaking.
A fragment of another person, existing nowhere in my knowledge.
I had spent too long peering through Lukifugus’s eyes into the depths of that dying soul; now the lingering neural traces of the dead man had synchronized with my own consciousness in microscopic ways I could not prevent.
The Tree of Kliphoth left a bitter taste on my tongue.
The photograph crumpled in my grip, rustling softly.
An assassin who had trampled hundreds of lives like insects, who had slaughtered the homes and families of others without a thought.
Yet even in that vile swamp of carnage, a twisted, deformed paternity—clinging to keep just one bloodline whole and safe.
“It’s not even funny.”
Disgust rose in me. To treat the lives of others as insignificant, yet weigh one’s own precious thing heavier than any morality in the world—the contradiction repulsed me.
That selfish, shallow parody of love scratched at the cynic within me.
I turned without hesitation and walked out of the command center.
***
A quiet franchise café near Paju Station.
My return was utterly ordinary—nothing like the sirens wailing and troops flooding into the Colosseum hours before.
I’d switched between subway and train to avoid pursuit, then wedged myself into a corner booth to wait for the next departure.
A single cup of dark espresso steamed on the table before me.
The sticky reek of blood and the stench of burnt brain matter that had clung to my nostrils were gradually washed away by the bitter smell of coffee.
Beyond the glass, ordinary people hurried through their ordinary morning commutes.
Someone yawned while checking their phone; someone else walked hand in hand with a lover.
A peace wholly severed from the screams and butchery that had unfolded in that subterranean arena mere hours ago.
I was reminded once again: this stark contrast was the true nature of the world I inhabited.
I pulled out my phone and typed out a dry summary of tonight’s operation and Ryu Ting Long’s elimination, then sent the report.
Before a full minute had passed, it buzzed with a reply.
[Hunter, please—say something before you disappear like that!]
[You’re going to give me a heart attack, I swear!]
Through the wireless earbud, Team Lead Kim Dae-han’s frantic, metallic voice poured out at me.
The news of the Hong Hyeol-maeng remnant’s annihilation at dawn must have been a shock he struggled to process.
“Team Lead, keep your voice down. We’re in a café. Do you understand communications security?”
[A café? That’s your concern right now?! And you expect me to handle the cleanup?!]
“Isn’t that the thing you do best? Paperwork and crime scene preservation.”
[Ugh, ugh—forget it. Just stop talking.]
“I’ve already coordinated with the Hunter Association’s Yu Hye-sung to hand over the survivors and evidence. All you need to do is go put your name on the forms.”
A deep sigh came through the receiver—an odd mixture of exasperation and awe.
[…Understood. When did you make arrangements with the Association anyway. Whatever. Got it.]
[Since the Association Director says it’s fine, I’ll bury this matter as cleanly as possible and spin it as a win for our department.]
“Do that.”
[…Honestly, that was a joke.]
[Without you, a second Jang Yu-chung would’ve emerged.]
[Thanks to you, Hong Hyeol-maeng in Korea is finished. You’ve worked hard.]
“No.”
I ended the call and removed the earbud.
Staring out the window, I reorganized the chessboard in my mind. I had uncovered the truth of the Incubation-type Gate, and I had cut short the rise of Hong Tae-hwa, the Mad Flame who would have reduced cities to ash. And by eliminating the core branch of Hong Hyeol-maeng, I had severed their drug distribution pipeline.
But this was only the opening move.
It was merely the prelude.
“Hei Long Jiang.”
I raised the coffee cup and murmured the words low.
Information sharper than the bitter taste of the coffee was embedded in my mind—a single thread of clue that Lukifugus had pulled from Ryu Ting Long’s memories.
‘The leader was in Hei Long Jiang.’
Hong Hyeol-maeng was an aggregate of cell-based organization. Each branch leader acted on the commands of the leader alone, knowing nothing of the others’ identities.
And now, with that leader’s location finally surfacing, it felt as though I had grasped the tail of an enormous serpent.
Through this series of slaughter, I was hurling a message into the darkness—a cold sentence: touch my territory and lose your head.
I pushed through the café’s glass door and stepped outside.
The winter morning air cut through my collar and bit my skin cold.
The chill oxygen filling my lungs brought a subtle order to the tangled Mana circulation within my body.
“Airi.”
I called out softly into the void, hands thrust deep in my pockets.
A faint shimmer—
Silver Mana particles coalesced above my shoulder, and Airi Lunaris materialized before me in the form of a fairy with translucent wings.
“I’m going to have to tear apart my entire Skill Tree and rebuild it from scratch when I get back.”
[Understood, Successor. I suspect it’s a matter of your current Mana Capacity limitations?]
I ignored Airi’s snide remark and pulled up my status window.
[Current Remaining Mana: 3]
The number was so absurd it didn’t even warrant a hollow laugh. The total output from my Core had literally evaporated.
The newly implanted SSR-grade Artifact—the Eye of the Watcher. This was the price of activating its power in actual combat just once.
A vicious hunger, as if a massive dam had split open and drained every last drop in an instant.
My Mana circuit, forcibly expanded to the 2nd Circle, couldn’t withstand the strain this Artifact was placing on it.
Evidence of a mechanical collision between body and soul, or perhaps of a deformation leak occurring somewhere in the circuit itself.
And yet, I had no intention of giving up this power.
The sensation still burned vividly in my right hand and at the back of my mind.
That grotesque moment in which the world seemed to freeze, and only I continued to move.
Just before the blade of Black Iron touched the crown of Ryu Ting Long’s head, I had leapt beyond even the accelerated space of Haste and interfered with physical ‘time’ itself in that eerie instant.
A deleted 0.1 seconds.
It was not simply speed.
Within that warped void where the world’s very frame had been forcibly carved away, I had already locked in Ryu Ting Long’s death—the ‘outcome’—as absolute.
An absolute authority that erased the very ‘process’ of defense or evasion from the axis of time.
If the price of stepping into the divine realm of bending causality was this much Mana depletion, it was almost a bargain. I’d expand my reservoir even if it meant tearing it apart.
The tedium of reconstructing my Skill Tree from the ground up was something I could endure without hesitation.
Buzz—
As I walked lost in thought, my phone vibrated dully in my pocket.
Three crude characters lit up the display.
The old master blacksmith of Gwi Gum Chul Bang, the original owner of the Black Iron I now held.
I pressed the answer button, and a rough, gravelly voice crackled through the receiver.
[It’s me. Go Gwang-sik.]
“Master, it’s been a while.”
[I’ve tracked down and gathered all the old colleagues who can re-forge Il Hui. We’ll need to stoke the forge again, naturally.]
[I want to have a proper discussion now about the design direction of the blade···]
[When can you come by?]
Barely contained fervor burned in Go Gwang-sik’s voice.
“I’ll be there right away.”
I answered without a moment’s hesitation. My pace quickened toward Paju Station.
Messages from Kim Dae-han regarding scene cleanup kept piling up frantically at the top of my phone screen, but I paid them no mind.

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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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