Retire 331

331 Mud-Covered (2)

The bodies Tati pulled from the mud numbered exactly thirteen. I wondered if these were all the Hunters who had died in this dungeon. I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

Oblivious to human worries, Tati climbed up onto a tree branch like a captive bird. Mud still dripped from her legs, but the way she rocked back and forth was childlike.

Even if she had buried corpses in her own home.

And not just one or two.

“Hmm…”

Hong Seokyeong examined the bodies with a grave face. Though they were covered in mud, the corpses themselves weren’t badly damaged. With a little imagination, you could almost picture what they looked like in life.

After a while, Hong Seokyeong looked up.

“This… What’s with you? Why are you standing so far away?”

I took another step back.

“Why are you moving even farther away?”

“Uh… Please, go ahead and finish.”

“Hm?”

He followed my gaze and burst out laughing.

“Didn’t you ever go into dungeons?”

“I did.”

“With your rank, you must have gone in pretty often.”

“I went in a fair amount.”

“But this is your first time seeing a corpse?”

“It’s not that.”

I frowned.

“This is different.”

Hong Seokyeong frowned as well.

“Is it? Doesn’t look all that different to me.”

“It is different.”

I clicked my tongue and grumbled, but Hong Seokyeong just shrugged as if he didn’t understand.

“They all died in combat, didn’t they?”

Combat…

Yeah, I suppose so.

“Are you worried about when they died? Freshness?”

“Don’t use words like that about people!”

“Well…”

He watched me for a moment, then nodded as if realizing something.

“You’ve never been in an uncleared dungeon, have you?”

“……”

“There are more Hunters left in dungeons than you’d think. Not all monsters eat humans, after all.”

I had nothing to say.

Nor did I want to argue. It was true.

I kicked at the ground and muttered,

“…Regardless, watch your words. You have to raise a kid now.”

Hong Seokyeong grinned.

“Miss your dad’s embrace, do you?”

“Don’t joke in front of the dead.”

“Makes me feel good to know I raised you right.”

He brushed off his knees and stood.

“Right. Kids shouldn’t see things like this. Want to go wait over there for a bit?”

“…I’m not a kid.”

“A child is always a child in their parent’s eyes.”

I wanted to argue again, but didn’t. Hong Seokyeong smiled at me and gestured. I hesitated, but moved closer to him.

“Still, you shouldn’t avoid it. It’s not respectful.”

“…Even these guys?”

“You told me not to use words like that about people, remember?”

He chuckled.

“Whatever their intentions, once they entered the dungeon, they were—”

He glanced up at Tati perched in the tree.

“—helping to save our world. You shouldn’t turn away from people like that.”

He meant every word. And even as he said it, he was testing the fairy. In many ways, he was an impressive person. I wondered if I could ever do what he did, or learn from him—it made me nervous.

His eyes, which had been on the fairy behind me, turned back to me. Realizing I understood, he smiled, just like my father used to.

I looked away, as if burned, and stared at the thirteen corpses.

It wasn’t my first time seeing bodies, just as Hong Seokyeong said. I’d even seen people die right in front of me. That’s what dungeon raiding is. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how strong by normal standards,

You can’t save everyone.

Father had protected me fiercely. I’d known that even then. But because of that, he had always spoken about what happened in dungeons with brutal honesty.

A Hunter who doesn’t know what can happen in a dungeon is always the first to die.

‘Ugh. I told you, I’m not going to be a Hunter.’

‘Still, you never know what’ll happen in life. It wasn’t even that long ago. Don’t you remember when you were little? Dungeon breaks happened all the time.’

‘Now we can prepare for them.’

‘You never know what’ll happen. If you don’t know how to do something, that’s one thing, but if you can and you get careless, that’s not okay.’

I’d never had trouble understanding my father’s words. In fact, I’d accepted them readily.

I’d gone into dungeons, gotten in trouble with my sister, spent whole days sparring with Father after he heard what we’d done.

“When you’re just raiding, maybe you don’t need to see this, but now you do.”

Hong Seokyeong pulled a pair of leather gloves from his pocket.

“You never know what might happen. I don’t want to make you do this, but…”

He turned over the bodies with gloved hands, searching for something. There was no hesitation in his movements.

“There’s a difference between not doing something you know how to do, and not knowing how to do it at all.”

He pulled down the collar of the nearest corpse’s clothing. The armor was tough, but with enough force, he tore it away.

On the shoulder, between the shoulder blades, was a dark mark. I couldn’t tell exactly when they’d died, but the mark was clear enough to recognize at a glance—the sun, and the hand supporting it.

There was no Atlas being punished. Only the sun, the hand, and the arm remained. It made for a strangely eerie image.

“Hey, Tati.”

“Yeah?”

He called to Tati.

“Did all the other humans have this mark too?”

“Yeah!”

“I see…”

Despite her answer, Hong Seokyeong checked each body carefully.

It wasn’t that I was squeamish, or that I hadn’t seen dead people before. But this… I’d never done anything like this.

But I understood why Hong Seokyeong had called me over. He’d explained everything so I wouldn’t miss anything. So I watched him work in silence.

Was he doing it slowly on purpose, so I wouldn’t miss a thing? I watched his hands with the determination not to overlook a single detail.

Come to think of it, Hong Seokyeong was the top expert in Awakened investigations. There were a few other Hunters worldwide who were said to be on his level.

But could they do exactly what he did? That was another matter. The reverse was also true. Everyone had their specialty.

Honestly, when I worked at the Agency, I’d sometimes felt frustrated that my father was such an outstanding Hunter. It was a waste for someone like him to be investigating Awakened crime instead of tackling high-difficulty dungeons.

Of course, the Agency didn’t handle Awakened crime. But if a Korean Hunter caused trouble, the responsibility always ended up with the Agency.

Sometimes, especially when something happened in a foreign dungeon, it was hard to find someone to take responsibility. Usually, it got pushed onto a non-national Hunter. By the same logic, the Agency worked hard to protect its own.

As I’d told Kang Taewoo, I wanted to create an investigative agency. At first, I’d vaguely thought of rebuilding the Agency, but now I thought Korea needed a dedicated Awakened crime unit more. For the future, too.

To do that, I couldn’t afford to be squeamish about things like this.

“Technically, you’re not supposed to just rummage through them like this.”

As if to mock my resolve, Hong Seokyeong suddenly muttered something deflating.

“For all that…”

Despite his words, his hands moved without hesitation.

“You’re pretty good at it.”

I shouldn’t say things like that, but he clearly wasn’t new to this. …He hadn’t hesitated when searching Kim Yuhwa’s body, either.

“It’s an emergency, isn’t it? We can’t waste time.”

“Are you just saying that, or do you mean it?”

“What are you talking about! Normally, you’re supposed to record the exact circumstances when you find a body. Take photos if you can. If not, at least make a drawing. Did you ever go to art school? I feel like I would’ve sent you… Maybe I should send Irok to art school?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Ahem. Anyway, you have to check everything thoroughly. Even the surroundings. You have to determine whether it was done by a human or a monster.”

After checking the nape of the neck, he pulled a wallet from the Hunter’s chest. A rough leather wallet—probably linked to a subspace.

“Sometimes people kill someone and blame it on a monster. You have to be careful.”

“…True enough.”

“In this case, the cause is obvious, though.”

He started to scratch his head, then stopped when he saw the gloves. Even Hong Seokyeong wouldn’t want to touch his head after handling corpses.

“Normally, you’d have to recover the bodies.”

“Even if they’re criminals?”

“Even if they’re criminals.”

He said it firmly.

“But right now… we’re sneaking into the dungeon ourselves, aren’t we? It’d be hard to take these people out.”

“So you’re just taking the subspaces?”

“You wouldn’t carry stuff around in your hands in a dungeon, would you? At the very least, they’d have put their phones in there.”

Since subspaces didn’t have locks like mine yet, you could open them easily, even if they belonged to someone else.

I nodded.

Let’s see. I should have gloves somewhere, too.

I didn’t wear them often, but when you needed them, you really needed them.

I helped Hong Seokyeong gather up all the things that looked like subspaces. I had no intention of staying here long. I had plenty of other things to do, and Hong Seokyeong had said he couldn’t stay in Korea for long, either.

Once he’d collected the pile of subspaces, he dusted off his hands.

“Tati.”

And he didn’t forget to question our only suspect and witness about the circumstances.

“When did these guys come into the dungeon?”

“Hmm?”

Tati blinked, then answered energetically.

“A long time ago!”

“……”

There was no day or night in a dungeon, so it was impossible to check. Hong Seokyeong grunted and moved on to the next question.

“Did they all come in at once?”

“Hmm? Nope!”

“In groups?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember who came in with whom?”

“Nope!”

Tati answered brightly.

She answered every question dutifully, but just being dutiful didn’t solve everything.

Hong Seokyeong and I sighed at the same time. We could already see where this not-quite-interrogation was going.

At least this monster was still friendly toward us. She even seemed better socialized than Uirok.

Amazingly, Tati started watching our reactions.

“U-um, those guys…”

That was when Hong Seokyeong’s voice softened.

“Anything is fine. Do you remember anything about them?”

After a long moment of pondering, Tati started nodding vigorously.

“Yeah! That one. That’s the one.”

“That one? Who?”

“That one.”

Tati pointed to the last corpse I’d checked. It was in especially bad condition.

Blackened skin, a face twisted in agony. The inside of the mouth was clogged with mud. Given that Tati had submerged the gate in mud, maybe this one had died in the mud. It was noticeably different from the others.

Tati’s face twisted in anger. The mud on the ground surged upward, brimming with murderous intent.

“That one—chased Heejae.”