Retire 268

268 Meeting (2)

Unlike the somewhat slapdash way things ran at the Hunter Training High School, Guild Mimi operated with a certain order and deliberate planning.

For one thing, Guild Mimi was smaller than Yangseong High. And, in contrast to Yangseong, which was tangled up with Dasun and various other interests, even Lee Miseon couldn’t easily meddle here. She had helped with recruiting Sandra Gamble, but that was as far as it went.

The people involved weren’t students who needed to be looked after one by one, but adults capable of taking responsibility for their own words and actions.

There was no one to scold me if I changed things for my own convenience.

So, naturally, the way things were run was different.

Of course, in either case, Hong Seokyoung was never much help…

“A boss isn’t supposed to be too diligent, you know.”

And yet, he never ran out of things to say.

…Well. He’s not entirely wrong. The best arrangement is for Hong Seokyoung to keep his hands off the guild’s operations and just lend his name.

If he absolutely had to have a role…

“Just go make some money.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You must have spent a lot buying Pharos equipment, right?”

“…It’s not urgent yet!”

“When’s the next dungeon raid again?”

Hong Seokyoung grumbled, but answered.

“March 10th. America. It’s a dungeon out in the desert—apparently a guild was recently wiped out in there. Since it’s so hard to manage in the desert, they decided to close it.”

“A desert, huh…”

I tilted my head and turned on the mana clock. Hong Seokyoung’s eyes widened.

“That’s right, I forgot about that! My perfect cheat sheet.”

“Don’t use it for that.”

“Isn’t that what it’s for?”

“……”

He had a point, but it still seemed a bit much to treat what could be called the pinnacle of modern mana engineering as nothing more than a cheat sheet.

I checked the dungeons my father had cleared. There were more overseas than domestic. I set the year and narrowed the country.

A desert, a desert…

There wasn’t a desert dungeon scheduled for this year.

“Hmm.”

I frowned.

“If it’s a desert…”

“Mojave. Nevada, looks like.”

“…Does it have a nickname?”

“Nickname? Oh, lightning… In Korea, they sometimes call it the Thunderstrike Dungeon. Not particularly famous here, though.”

Thunderstrike Dungeon.

I didn’t have every dungeon my father had cleared memorized. Unless there was something especially noteworthy about it, I wouldn’t remember.

I changed the search parameters.

“……”

“What’s with that face?”

It didn’t show up in my father’s list of cleared dungeons.

“It’s not here.”

“It’s not?”

“If it’s not a dungeon you cleared, then…”

If it wasn’t cleared by a Korean hunter, the information on overseas dungeons was more limited. Still, I tried searching in various ways, just in case.

I could feel Hong Seokyoung coming up beside me to peek at the screen.

America. Nevada. Desert.

Thunderstrike. Or lightning.

Cleared in 2032.

“2032?”

Hong Seokyoung asked in surprise.

“Isn’t that years from now? That’s too far ahead. Was it me who cleared it?”

“…No.”

Cleared by Han Taekyung and 21 others (3 Koreans, 18 Americans).

“Han Taekyung did it?”

I quickly scanned the dungeon history.

It was S-class, and the difficulty was top-tier. But the mana flow was stable, and, just as Hong Seokyoung had said, not many hunters wanted to venture into a dungeon in the middle of a desert.

Like other countries with vast territory, the US didn’t have mana sensors installed in every dungeon. Only those in densely populated cities or, as in this case, in places difficult to access. This Nevada desert dungeon had been stable for over ten years before being cleared just before a dungeon break.

“This is the right one, isn’t it? The one they’re asking us to clear.”

“The monsters that appear… yeah, that matches.”

“Then why are they asking for an urgent raid now… You said a guild was wiped out?”

“Thirty people went in, not one came out.”

I checked the dungeon data.

“…That didn’t happen here.”

“……”

There was nothing more to say.

What had changed?

Too much had already changed.

Sandra Gamble, who should have been holed up in her garage working on a prototype mana sensor, was now surrounded by state-of-the-art mana engineering equipment and grand magi thanks to Hong Seokyoung’s support.

I was tired of talking about dead children.

I just hadn’t expected the ripple effects of all these changes to show up in this way.

“…We’ll need to ask for information on the guild that was wiped out.”

“What reason will you give?”

“I was supposed to get it anyway. You have to know how skilled the guild was to estimate the dungeon’s difficulty.”

“Ah, that’s true…”

Hong Seokyoung folded his arms as he spoke.

“Normally, we’d get the analysis from their side, but this time I’ll ask for it in advance. You should take a look too.”

“Is it all right for me to see it? I mean, even if they’re dead, they’re still hunters from another country.”

“How would they know if I looked at it alone or with my son? If they don’t like it, they shouldn’t ask me for help.”

“……”

Wait. That’s odd, too.

“…Why are they asking you to help clear this dungeon?”

“Hm?”

“From the reports left on the clock, it doesn’t look dangerous enough to need you.”

It wasn’t that I was belittling Han Taekyung—objectively, that’s just how it looked. Han Taekyung in 2032 would certainly have grown much more as a hunter than he was now… but even so, compared to Hong Seokyoung, who was and would always be called Korea’s strongest hunter, there was still a gap.

Hong Seokyoung’s worth couldn’t be summed up as “let’s just hire Hong Seokyoung instead of a bunch of other hunters.” Even if you gathered a hundred hunters who could afford the toll for an S-class dungeon, they wouldn’t equal a single Hong Seokyoung.

Again, I wasn’t belittling Han Taekyung. But to call in Hong Seokyoung for a dungeon that Han Taekyung and twenty others of similar skill could clear?

“……”

Hong Seokyoung stroked his chin, lost in thought for a moment.

“Now that you mention it, it is odd. But I haven’t heard anything more.”

“…Could it be a trap?”

“If I make it out alive, how would they deal with the aftermath?”

Even Noah Michel was careful not to provoke Hong Seokyoung directly.

That wasn’t arrogance, just a statement of fact. I nodded.

“Hm… Not like we can refuse.”

Hong Seokyoung muttered something under his breath, then asked me quietly,

“If it comes to it, would you go with me?”

I looked up sharply at Hong Seokyoung.

---

Now.

Let me say it again: Guild Mimi has its own system.

From the outside, it might not look like it. Sometimes Lee Miseon would give me a look that said she had no idea how the guild functioned. Well, it’s unfair to compare us to Dasun. The difference in numbers alone is massive.

Anyway, if the guild seems to be running with no system at all, that’s probably because there are fewer than five guild members. A guild is a business. And a business with five or fewer employees…

…Enough depressing talk.

Part of it was the small size, but it was also because Hong Seokyoung had run it as a one-man guild for so long.

There’s a big difference between doing your own taxes as a solo act and having to pay salaries, even if it’s just for a handful of employees.

“Oh, right. Hijae.”

“Yes?”

“You’re the deputy guildmaster.”

“…Sorry?”

“Your duties won’t really change… but if you ever go to America, or, well, anywhere overseas, it’s better to use my name than to go begging Hunter Lee for help.”

“I told you, I’m not going to America.”

“I mean, in the future.”

Even though I’d said I wasn’t going to that desert dungeon, Hong Seokyoung kept nudging me about it.

If I said I would go, he’d probably get flustered and say he was only joking, that I didn’t have to.

“Enough of that.”

I cut him off and spoke.

“Before you go into the dungeon—before the semester starts—I’m going to release the mana pen.”

“The rune?”

“Right after that. The rune will be announced through Dasun, same as before.”

“Can’t you do it through Pharos now that Mr. Kim is here?”

“From next time, yes. But this time, the rune includes a concealment function, so I’m dumping the hassle on Dasun.”

Hong Seokyoung listened to my plan and smiled in satisfaction.

“That’s the good thing about working with big companies. Let’s take advantage.”

On the other hand, it looked like Dasun was just as happy to use Hong Seokyoung and Kim Chaemin’s names.

This was the path where everyone won.

If Guild Mimi ever expanded, it would be because the affiliated research lab, Pharos, had grown. I couldn’t even predict the impact once the mana pen was released.

What was it like when Dayeon first mass-produced mana pens? I was too young to care back then. If I’d known things would turn out like this, I would have paid more attention.

Bzzzz.

“Excuse me a moment.”

My phone, left on the table, vibrated. I thought it was a call, but it was a message.

The name on the screen: Kim Chaemin.

[Hope has come out of the dungeon.]

A short message, but it said exactly what was needed. I showed the message to Hong Seokyoung.

He nodded.

As soon as we’d left the Jirisan dungeon and returned to Yangseong High, the first thing I’d done was knock on the door of the Pharos lab.

It was already well past sunrise, but poor mana engineer Sandra Gamble had just fallen asleep. Unable to resist the employer pounding on her door, Gamble shuffled out to deal with her boss’s demands.

‘Alex? He’s in a dungeon right now, so he can’t be reached.’

Whether he was human or fairy, he was surprisingly diligent. Even though he didn’t get along well with his guild, he obediently entered the dungeon when his mother asked him to, which was oddly reassuring.

Gamble replied with a big yawn.

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you know as soon as he’s out. Can I go back to bed now?’

‘Living on a flipped schedule like that can’t be good for your health.’

‘Ah, well… I just focus better at night, so I end up working then.’

‘You know our official hours are nine to six, right? That’s in thirty minutes.’

‘…I’m calling in sick today!’

And so a week passed.

At last, Alex Hope had come out of the dungeon.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t contact Hope directly. Hong Seokyoung and I hurried to the lab.

“Ugh.”

Gamble had begun to show her feelings more honestly. I didn’t expect her to be scared or nervous around us, but… this was something else.

Well, when I worked at the administration office, I used to resent my father wandering around too. People in high positions should stay in their offices, I’d grumble.

Ignoring Gamble’s look of dismay, I said,

“Contact Hope.”

“Don’t you care about the time difference with Australia?”

“How big a difference is it, really?”

“Shanshan just got back from a raid too, she must be exhausted…”

“Exhausted? So she’s not injured. Call him.”

Gamble gave up and video-called Hope. He picked up right away.

[Sandra? Shanshan’s in the shower.]

But instead of the boy with the colorful hair, a woman with black hair and a calm, elegant face appeared on the screen.

Sandra glanced at us and gave a shy wave.

“Hi… Yijun.”

Yijun. Alex Hope’s mother.