Retire 259
by Cristae259 Strategy Meeting (1)
At last, Han Tae-kyung had lost his mind.
That was the only way I could see it.
Where had it gone wrong? Was it calling Han Tae-kyung here to stand guard? Leaving him alone at the gate?
But then, Han Tae-kyung had always been strange… Still, I’d believed that, at least when it came to dungeons, he wouldn’t do anything reckless. It seemed it was time to revise that assessment.
“No, just listen to what I’m saying.”
Han Tae-kyung waved his hands wildly, as if pleading his case. His gestures were exaggerated and careless.
If you looked closely, maybe because his favorite comics were American, Han Tae-kyung’s mannerisms tended to be over the top. Maybe that’s why he always got along so well with the kids whenever he was sent to the States…
I turned my gaze away from Han Tae-kyung.
“So, should we… report this, or what?”
Hong Seok-yeong turned away as well.
“We can’t not report it…”
“But it’s a bit much to just tell them everything as is.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that being sighted before… How did it manage to hide?”
“We didn’t notice it either.”
“That’s exactly my point!”
According to dungeon raid procedure, if a new monster is discovered inside a dungeon, it has to be reported.
But the situation was delicate. There was something we needed to confirm inside that dungeon. Did Alex Hope tell us about this dungeon because he knew there was a fairy inside? Was that fairy connected to the Ark? Well, it must be related, but what sort of connection?
Why did my sister leave the dungeon after a failed raid?
“I’m not just saying this for the sake of it!”
Above all, if we wanted to clear the dungeon, we had to catch that fairy capable of conjuring waves beyond all reason!
Hong Seok-yeong and I alone couldn’t do it. Even with Kim Chae-min, I doubted we could stop a mud wave like that. We needed more mages. Or else…
“I think we should ask Mr. Kim about this.”
“A mage?”
“Yes. Could he break through that alone…?”
I paused and glanced at Hong Seok-yeong.
“Could he?”
“Hmm…”
Hong Seok-yeong tilted his head from side to side.
“If the mud itself doesn’t have any mana… assuming it’s just ordinary mud…”
He muttered to himself, doing some calculations, then continued.
“If it’s just a matter of killing without considering anything else, I could do it.”
“…Ah, right.”
“Wait, you’re the one who asked, so why are you looking at me like that?”
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like that, just now!”
Hong Seok-yeong scowled and raised his voice. Not that it was intimidating.
“Could you please listen to me for a moment?”
“So you can kill it, then.”
“Yes. So what should we do?”
“What do you think is best?”
I turned the question back to Hong Seok-yeong. He thought for a moment, then answered.
“Should we try to capture it first, and if that fails, kill it?”
“What if it starts another wave the moment we go in?”
“I don’t like the idea of killing it right away, but…”
While Hong Seok-yeong and I were lost in thought, Han Tae-kyung, unable to hold back any longer, shouted.
“That’s why I said I’ll go in!!”
At last, Hong Seok-yeong gave Han Tae-kyung his attention.
“You’re not just saying that?”
“See, you were listening all along! Why did you ignore me?”
“Well, it just sounded too ridiculous.”
“I’m a pretty well-known hunter, you know!”
Han Tae-kyung pouted, clearly wounded. The Han Tae-kyung I knew was the type to keep talking regardless of whether people ignored him, only stopping when he’d tired himself out.
I kept making the same mistake. That Han Tae-kyung was gone. But this Han Tae-kyung was so consistent with the old one that, unlike with the kids, I treated him the same as always.
“I don’t get ignored like this anywhere else, you know…”
“Hm.”
“I dropped everything to come when you called, but at school you never give me anything to do…”
I quietly stepped back behind Hong Seok-yeong.
He tried to grab me in a panic, but this really wasn’t my problem. Maybe with the kids, but Han Tae-kyung?
He might call me “senior” as a work colleague, but I couldn’t forget: Han Tae-kyung once picked a fight with me just to see if I deserved to be called his senior…
So this was Hong Seok-yeong’s responsibility for bringing Han Tae-kyung along. If I had any responsibility, well… I won’t deny I was a bit cold to Han Tae-kyung out of old habit.
Not that it matters. Park Seo-hyun and Oh Hyun-wook had changed a lot on the outside, but Han Tae-kyung hadn’t. Awakened ones age slowly to begin with… Of course, that doesn’t mean you can avoid twenty years altogether, but Han Tae-kyung wore those sunglasses as if they were part of his body. There were even jokes that those sunglasses were a tattoo.
Han Tae-kyung in sunglasses, Han Tae-kyung plastered in pink cat stickers—he was just too familiar to me. Honestly, every time he called me “senior,” I still got chills. I’d probably never get used to it.
“Maybe that’s how it is at school, but you can’t ignore me when it comes to dungeon raids, senior. No matter how trivial or outlandish a suggestion is, you always said a hunter’s words should be heard. That’s what you taught us.”
“Ugh…”
“I know you took your own senior as your student, but still! I, Han Tae-kyung, have known you, senior—teacher—for how many years now!”
Even that insufferable oddball Han Tae-kyung was now a twenty-something, younger than me. A guy who lived to torment his teenage little sister. And obsessed with some cat character.
“Fine… That was my mistake. I apologize.”
The man’s strength was that he was always straightforward.
He knew exactly how capable he was, and that he could do things others couldn’t. He might sometimes say, “Why can’t you do that?” in a thoughtless way about mental matters, but when it came to physical things—combat and such—he was quick to understand. Because those were the fields he took seriously.
That’s why, even if he boasted, “Leave everything to me!” he never ignored criticism like, “That part is a problem!”
Because in a dungeon, anything can happen.
“I apologize as well, Mr. Han.”
I also apologized to Han Tae-kyung. He wasn’t wrong. No matter how much of a handful he was, I shouldn’t have ignored his opinions about dungeons.
“Oh… okay.”
Han Tae-kyung looked back and forth between me and Hong Seok-yeong, his face a little sour. He’d lashed out in hurt, but hadn’t expected an apology so quickly.
For all he said about knowing us well, he still didn’t really know Hong Seok-yeong.
“Ahem. So, you’re saying you really meant it about going into the dungeon?”
Hong Seok-yeong cleared his throat a few times to lighten the mood.
“Let’s hear it. But if you start spouting nonsense…”
“I, Han Tae-kyung, am not a thoughtless man!”
“All right, all right.”
Hong Seok-yeong pretended not to notice the sunglasses that never left Han Tae-kyung’s face, even in the pitch-dark mountains, or the tablet case plastered with cat stickers from who knows where.
Now that his mood had fully recovered, Han Tae-kyung spoke in a lively voice.
“From what you two said, the thing inside is good at hiding itself, but when it sensed danger, it revealed its true nature, right?”
“…Well. That’s one way to put it.”
Honestly, I still didn’t know what had set it off.
Because we burned the golems? Even so, if it had stayed quiet, we might never have known about the fairy. We hadn’t even gone in to clear the dungeon.
…Maybe it thought we were going to, since we were heading straight for the core.
“And the wave… I don’t know exactly what that means, but anyway, it unleashed a massive attack and you both had to run, right?”
“I don’t like calling it running away.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“A tactical retreat. If I’d wanted to, I could have caught it, you know?”
Hong Seok-yeong sounded wounded in his pride.
“Just ignore the principal. So, then?”
“Oh, right. Like you said, I could have caught it, but I didn’t because there was something to check.”
“We have to confirm the illegal awakened group. Whether they’re in the dungeon or not, there could be other clues.”
“Exactly.”
Han Tae-kyung nodded.
“That’s why I should go in.”
“……”
“……”
Doing my best to stay calm, I asked Han Tae-kyung,
“Could you explain what you mean by ‘that’s why’…?”
“Huh? Wouldn’t it be easier to check if I went in?”
“I mean…”
“To see what it wants.”
“What?”
Han Tae-kyung shrugged.
“I’ve caught a few fairies in Europe, and the smart ones are really smart. I nearly died a couple of times.”
“……”
“In my experience, when they suddenly turn aggressive like that, it’s usually for one of two reasons.”
Han Tae-kyung raised one finger.
“One, it wanted to kill the hunter who came in, but missed its chance.”
I frowned. Hong Seok-yeong shook his head.
When we started heading for the gate, the wave slowed down. The area around the gate was even cleared on purpose. It was an obvious signal to get out of the dungeon.
“So the other reason. That’s the really dangerous one.”
Han Tae-kyung raised a second finger.
“It’s showing off how terrifying it is, so no one else will even think of coming into the dungeon.”
“That makes sense.”
Hong Seok-yeong sided with Han Tae-kyung.
“I’ve never had this happen to me, because I just kill anything that tries something like that right away…”
“That sounds like bragging, so don’t say it in public.”
“……”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“…All right, I get it!”
Anyway, Hong Seok-yeong continued.
“Fairy dungeons have a high failure rate. There was one I failed to clear myself. I never really cared about monster ecology, so I never thought about why they’d do something like that.”
“Because you just kill everything?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get cocky…”
“I said I get it!”
Han Tae-kyung’s reasoning was simple.
If he went in and got attacked, it meant the fairy was warning people not to enter. If not, then it had something else in mind.
Somehow…
Hmm.
It didn’t sound right, but it also did. Or maybe the opposite? A strange unease settled in my chest.
It was like the feeling I got when new recruits at the Bureau brought in bizarre reports, claiming they’d found a perfect strategy. It sounded plausible, but strange; you could find logical holes, but when you tried to point them out, it didn’t seem completely wrong, so you hesitated… That kind of feeling.
“…I’m against it.”
“Why?!”
“It’s too dangerous.”
I shook my head.
“If it wanted to make the dungeon seem dangerous, there’s a simpler way.”
“Huh?”
“It could just kill every hunter who comes in.”
“……”
“I don’t want to take that risk. I’d rather have Mr. Hong go in and kill it.”
Han Tae-kyung closed his mouth, as if he’d been about to argue. I waited a moment, thinking maybe he’d accepted my point, and then he slipped a finger under his sunglasses to wipe his eyes.
“To think you’d worry about me like this… Senior, you’re a good person. I, Han Tae-kyung, am deeply moved.”