Retire 311

311 Method (1)

Bang!!

“Where’s Mr. Han?!”

“D-Doctor! Please, calm down!!!”

“Let go! Do I look like I can calm down right now?!”

With superhuman strength, Gamble shoved me aside. I slid back helplessly, staring at her in disbelief.

That woman—she’d make a fine hunter. She’s overflowing with talent.

Han Eun-young, the recipient of that overwhelming energy, spoke with a resolute expression.

“My brother went bankrupt after going to Seoul three times in a row…”

I looked at the table in the break room.

There was a board game in progress. When did they even set that up?

“No, I’m being serious. Where’s my brother?”

Gamble enunciated each word with force. Han Eun-young shrugged and spoke to Soon Soon-jin, who was sitting beside her.

“I really don’t have any money.”

“Got it. Eun-young’s the first to go bankrupt!”

“I told you, I’m not good at this stuff.”

“Reckless investment is the shortest road to ruin…”

Leaving the murmuring kids behind, Han Eun-young answered Gamble’s question.

“He did go to Seoul. Said he needed to renew his license grade. I think he even got permission from Mr. Woo?”

“What?”

Gamble whipped around to glare at me. I let out a sigh.

“That’s what I’ve been saying… Mr. Han isn’t at school right now.”

---

Sandra Gamble’s reaction was entirely different from what Kim Chae-min and I had expected.

At most, we thought she’d insist on going into the dungeon, saying she wanted to talk to the fairy Tati. Kim Chae-min thought the same, and we’d both been wondering how we might get her into the dungeon. If there was a way, we’d have pushed her to write a paper about it first.

“Han Tae-kyung!”

“Ah, I get it, okay? He’ll come back to school as soon as he renews his grade, so just wai—wait a little!”

“Han Tae-kyung!!”

“I’m not saying he’s never coming back!!”

It took some effort to calm Gamble down and bring her back to the meeting room.

Apparently dissatisfied that Han Tae-kyung wasn’t at school, Gamble kept pounding her fist on the table. Each time, the table shook alarmingly.

…Is it going to break?

If I took her into the Jirisan Dungeon like this, could she pay the toll herself?

I eyed Gamble’s fist suspiciously. Considering the strength she’d used to shove me earlier… with the right training…

“Why didn’t you say something so important?!”

Gamble shouted in a sulky voice.

Well, she’d probably refuse anyway. I’d be in trouble if a valuable researcher suddenly got involved in combat.

I let out a deep sigh.

“To be honest, I still don’t really know what’s so important about all this.”

What was it that Gamble had reacted to?

I retraced my memory. I’d explained about the fairy Tati, and in the early morning, Kim Chae-min, dragged out to Jirisan, had grumbled about Han Tae-kyung.

Han Tae-kyung… We’d been talking about Han Tae-kyung. About seeing inside the dungeon from outside.

Of course, that wasn’t a normal thing.

“Is it because of Mr. Han’s item? It’s not a weapon, but it’s certainly impressive. People with good eyes are always valued, after all.”

Later, I’d asked about the item again, but Han Tae-kyung had deliberately avoided the question.

Hunters tend to keep their trump cards well hidden. Even my father never talked about his identification tag. Not that it was a complete secret, but he’d only tell select people—usually those he needed to reassure that he wouldn’t die, or those he needed to warn that he wouldn’t die.

It was probably the same with Han Tae-kyung and those sunglasses. An item that could pierce through Park Seo-hyun’s shadow. Before I came to this time, I hadn’t even known Han Tae-kyung had such an item. If I had, I wouldn’t have nagged him to take off his sunglasses at every meeting.

Despite his personality, Han Tae-kyung had been remarkably thorough about hiding that item. He probably hadn’t meant to let it slip, even then.

There’s something a bit clumsy about him these days. Maybe that’s just the passage of time.

“Yes! That’s exactly the problem!”

“So…”

“This is why non-specialists are hopeless!”

Gamble slammed the table again. It groaned ominously.

“He saw inside the dungeon!”

“Yes.”

“He saw it!!!”

“Yes. With the item.”

“Ah, seriously!!”

Gamble scratched her head furiously, then turned to glare at Kim Chae-min.

“You’re supposed to be an archmage—don’t you get it?”

“Huh?”

“This is why mages are useless!!”

“Hey, you can’t just blame mages for everything.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!!!”

Gamble was practically screaming now.

“He saw inside the dungeon!”

“Yes… He’s seen through other magic too, so I suspect the item’s essential function is to see mana. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kim?”

“Oh, right. That’s probably it. Didn’t you say Seo-hyun found her way inside the magic? It must let him see mana, or the flow of mana.”

“…So neither of you actually knows for sure?”

“Mr. Han never told us that much. I’m not sure he knows the details himself.”

“Han Tae-kyung—he’s part of our guild, isn’t he? I mean, sort of… He’s lent out items before, right? Other guilds do that.”

He’s half-affiliated, but not really. Strictly speaking, Han Tae-kyung isn’t a member of Guild Mimi, but an employee of Yangseong High School.

“It’s not unheard of, but… that’s Mr. Han’s item, so I can’t just force him to let me see it.”

Kim Chae-min nodded beside me.

“And have you ever seen Mr. Han without those sunglasses? He wears them even at night. I bet it’s a bound item.”

“Bound?”

“Ones that choose their owner. Like my sword. If anyone else tries to use it… it doesn’t end well.”

After listening to my and Kim Chae-min’s explanation, Gamble finally calmed down a bit.

The change was so abrupt it was hard to keep up. So why had she gotten so worked up in the first place?

“The exact ability of the item isn’t important. Well, it is, but it’s not my top priority right now.”

Thankfully, now composed, Gamble spoke up.

“I get the sense you don’t really understand what this means. Maybe it’s because we’re looking at it from different perspectives. You two—what do you think it would mean to be able to observe the inside of a dungeon from outside?”

“Obviously, it’d be great.”

“Convenient.”

“In what sense?”

“What do you mean, in what sense…? It’s safer, obviously.”

The place where most accidents happen during a dungeon raid is right near the gate. Especially in higher-grade dungeons.

A higher dungeon grade means the monsters inside are more dangerous, and that usually means they’re more intelligent.

Like that fairy in Jirisan, or the monsters from the future that appeared before Hong Seok-young—if they had the will, they were intelligent enough to learn human language. They knew that the moment when hunters first entered the dungeon was when they were most vulnerable.

The Jirisan Dungeon was the same. Fairy Tati had even submerged the gate in mud. If not for Kim Chae-min, getting out safely would have been nearly impossible.

But if you could know that in advance—

The survival rate of the raid team would skyrocket… I’d asked Han Tae-kyung about that when I asked about the item.

‘That would be nice, but I don’t think it’s possible.’

‘Because there’s only one of you, Mr. Han?’

‘Ha. Ha. Ha. That too, but this thing has more conditions than you’d think. So, no, it’s not possible.’

He was annoying, tipping up his sunglasses like that, but he wasn’t lying.

Gamble nodded.

“That’s the difference.”

“So don’t just say that—tell us what’s so frustrating about it.”

“Look. He saw inside the dungeon from outside.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Woo, you asked me something before, didn’t you?”

“I’ve asked you a lot of things…”

Grit.

Gamble ground her teeth, then steadied her voice.

“That thing—making it possible to communicate between inside and outside the dungeon.”

“…What does that have to do with anything right now?”

“Just listen, will you! Why do you think the inside and outside of a dungeon are cut off from each other?”

“It’s another world. Of course it’s different.”

“No… Yes, that’s right. Another world. A different environment, I mean. Mana density, air composition, everything is different. That’s why there’s no interference. From inside the dungeon to outside, from outside to inside.”

Kim Chae-min and I nodded. Gamble took a deep breath and continued.

“But the fact that someone was able to observe the inside from the outside—even for a moment—means there was a connection between here and the dungeon. That means, in some way, interference is possible!”

“…Mr. Han only said he could see.”

“He can learn the rest! What matters to me is that there was a connection between inside and outside!”

Bang!

Gamble slammed the table again and again. Miraculously, it didn’t break. Imi-seon must have picked out a good one.

Back at the Administration Bureau, tables used to get broken all the time…

“That’s the clue Noah Michel has been desperately searching for—the link between inside and outside!”

To be honest, I barely understood half the technical jargon and complex numbers Gamble started spouting in her excitement. Kim Chae-min was probably the same.

But I understood now why Gamble was so desperate to find Han Tae-kyung.

“You can see, can’t you! Who knows what could be possible if this is developed further? You could conveniently observe the inside of a dungeon from outside!”

And the way she spoke gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.

Once, there was someone who had spoken with a similar passion before me. Well, not to me, but to my father and sister.

‘This is just the beginning! It’s going to develop even further from here!!’

He was a young doctor who’d studied in America. He’d turned down offers from famous universities and companies to return to Korea, where he worked for a pittance compared to his reputation. He was considered the next-generation mana engineer to follow Sandra Gamble.

That man, affiliated with the Korea Mana Research Institute, developed the mana watch.

He connected the inside and outside of the dungeon.

‘Director, if you wear this and go into dungeons to collect data, we can do even more research! This will bring a revolutionary change to dungeon raids!’

‘Yes, yes, Dr. Kang. Calm down a bit… It’s good to look to the future, but let’s focus on the present. Did you include all the features we requested?’

Perhaps the change he dreamed of was exactly what Gamble was talking about now.

There’s no way to know anymore.

But as my father said, I’d already changed, so I decided to focus on the present, rather than worry about a future that would never come again.

“Yes, it’s me, Han Tae-kyung! I’ve returned as an S-rank hunter!”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Haha, look at this, sir! To celebrate, I bought a new Chasie doll! It’s the new edition that just came out in America…”

“Come with me. Now.”

“Huh?”

I grabbed Han Tae-kyung and handed him over to Gamble.