Retire 445

445 San Francisco Doomsday

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠October 15th.

San Francisco, USA.

Clear weather.

An ordinary day, nothing out of the ordinary.

Who could have known that peaceful day would turn into hell in just five short minutes?

The first was the Golden Gate Bridge.

The suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate Strait was, in many ways, the very history of San Francisco itself. The red bridge stood tall over the blue sea, connecting the city.

Cars crossed the bridge as usual. It was an everyday scene.

At the end of the bridge, on the road leading into San Francisco, a dungeon appeared.

The dungeon swallowed not only the cars on the road, but also the tourists who had come to see the famous Golden Gate Bridge, and the city’s residents.

The location was unfortunate, but if it had been only the Golden Gate Bridge dungeon, it might have been resolved quickly. The guilds based in San Francisco were always on standby to protect the city.

But before news of the Golden Gate Bridge dungeon could even reach the guilds, a second dungeon appeared.

In the center of San Francisco.

Then, a third and a fourth dungeon appeared in quick succession.

“Another dungeon just opened?!”

From the time the dungeon appeared at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge to the fifth dungeon’s appearance, only about forty minutes had passed.

By the third dungeon, the San Francisco guild master was already requesting help from the guilds of neighboring cities.

But this unprecedented crisis was not limited to San Francisco alone.

To be precise, it affected all of San Francisco and its surrounding areas.

Just as five dungeons appeared in San Francisco within about forty minutes, during that same period, dungeons along the coast, in national parks, and in protected areas around San Francisco all broke simultaneously.

Instead of responding to San Francisco’s call for help, the surrounding areas were sending their own pleas for aid to San Francisco.

With casualties, including the missing, estimated in the tens of thousands—a disaster of a magnitude never before seen—even the U.S. government was thrown into chaos.

About two hours after the dungeon appeared at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge, news of San Francisco reached Korea, crossing the Pacific.

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Bang bang bang!!!

“……”

Bang bang bang bang!!!!

I lifted my head from my pillow and finally sat up.

Checking the time, I saw it was past four in the morning.

What the hell is going on at this hour?

Bang bang bang!!!!

I dragged myself up at the relentless pounding on the door. Instead of my familiar room, a bleak, unfamiliar scene greeted me. Only then did I remember that I hadn’t gone home, but had stayed the night at the school.

I checked my phone. It was off. Did it not charge?

Bang bang bang!!!!

The door was shaking under the force of the knocks.

This was the school. The staff dormitory. Who at school would be looking for me so urgently…?

The kids?

I was instantly wide awake.

I hurried to open the door.

“Why is your phone off?!”

“…Hope?”

A face I hadn’t expected at all.

Relief washed over me as my tension—born of worry that something might have happened to the kids—eased.

But Hope’s pale, stricken face brought a different kind of worry. I didn’t even have the will to ask why she’d ignored my instructions to stay in the lab and not let the guests at the school see her.

“Ah, damn it!”

Hope ran her hands through her hair and barged into the room.

What could have Hope this agitated? Sandra Gamble? Had something happened to Gamble?

But if that were the case, Hope wouldn’t be here like this…

“What’s wrong?”

“This!”

At my cautious question, Hope thrust her phone into my hands.

I squinted at the screen. Some social media app filled the display. Videos, apparently shot by bystanders, showed a city collapsing and people screaming as they fled…

Alarmed, I took the phone from Hope and scrolled through. The videos were all similar. Monsters roamed the streets. Dungeon break?

If it were just a simple dungeon break, Hope wouldn’t have come looking for me.

Someone had posted a video of San Francisco from across the Golden Gate Strait. A blue light shimmered at the start of the bridge. Visible mana. A dungeon gate. Beyond it, soldiers and hunters, and citizens barely managing to evacuate.

The caption posted alongside the video was short and clear.

SAN FRANCISCO DOOMSDAY.

“I don’t know how much of this is real, but at least three new dungeons have opened, and it’s certain that five dungeons around San Francisco have broken.”

“……”

“If we poke our master or that healer from the U.S., we could probably get more accurate news. But everything’s so chaotic right now, even the official announcements are a mess.”

Social media was updating in real time.

The chaos across the Pacific reminded me, absurdly, of a scenario that might happen twenty years from now.

Is this actually better than that?

At least not every dungeon in San Francisco had broken. Nor every dungeon in the U.S. or the world…

No.

That didn’t mean this was any less serious.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many people had died. I clenched my teeth.

“Just to check—did anything like this happen in the future…?”

“No.”

I didn’t remember every single event, but there was no way I wouldn’t know about something like this.

I answered firmly.

Dungeons were still shrouded in mystery, so it wasn’t impossible for something like this to happen.

But Noah Michel did have methods—albeit not entirely reliable—for reopening closed dungeons or artificially triggering dungeon breaks.

It wasn’t a proper method. Even Sam Bloom, who twisted open a gate during the forum, used explosives to shock the gate.

And unless she solved the issue of lifespan, Noah Michel wouldn’t open dungeons like this.

But this was just too obvious.

“Did Noah Michel do this?”

“…Multiple dungeons can break at once, but this is just too suspicious.”

“Is Noah Michel even capable of something like this?”

“Just as I haven’t shown all my cards, Noah hasn’t told me everything she can do.”

Hope’s face was twisted in confusion and disbelief.

“But… I don’t know. Could Noah really do this? Of course it must be her. If not, that’s even worse. But why… why would she do it? How could she?”

“Was there any dungeon in San Francisco that Noah Michel would be interested in?”

“…I don’t think so. I don’t know much about America.”

“If you’re going to say it’s because you’re Australian…”

“No! That’s not it!”

Hope shouted, her face scrunched up.

“I told you, America isn’t my—”

Only then did I recall a name I’d half-forgotten.

Henry Lehmann.

“Henry’s in charge.”

One of Noah Michel’s crew, and the head of a criminal organization that dominated the Americas, including the United States.

It sounded absurd, but the archmage dreaming of world destruction and her cohorts didn’t get along. All three had laid traps for each other. The Boston dungeon break Hope used to fake her own death was one of them.

At least Hope, who operated independently without any real faction, didn’t get into open conflicts with them. Whether that was truly the case, or whether Hope just didn’t notice, was up for debate. But since Hope said so, I let it go. Still, even to Hope, the power struggle between Michel and Lehmann seemed pretty blatant.

Especially considering Lehmann had used Michel’s magic to attack Kim Chaemin in Busan… It was clear that, when faced with a common enemy, even those two would join forces.

“…San Francisco wasn’t really Atlas’s main turf, was it? They were pretty quiet on the West Coast.”

“Remember? I was supposed to be dead.”

“So?”

“So I can’t say for sure.”

“You never could.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Hope shrugged.

“They were pushing hard to catch Henry in the U.S. Even our master. That’s why she was in America for a while—because of Henry.”

“…That’s true.”

“The West Coast was quiet, probably because Sandra was in California.”

“That thing about not touching your family?”

“Henry’s surprisingly strict about that.”

“Hmm.”

“If he suspects I’m alive, he’d keep poking around. And since he’s under pressure himself, maybe he hit San Francisco while he was at it. I don’t really know.”

“…No. You’re the only one who’s met him face to face, so I can’t ignore what you say. If Henry Lehmann is in San Francisco…”

Posts on social media were updating rapidly.

There were many self-deprecating posts about San Francisco being destroyed. Given the city’s location, the best they could do was try to prevent it from spreading elsewhere.

“So this was done to stop Lehmann?”

“With a city in chaos like this, it’d be easy for Michel to do something in secret.”

“Isn’t the reverse also true?”

“Henry’s not a mage. Forcing open dungeons is something only someone like Noah could do. Honestly, I thought it couldn’t be done without my guidance or Semi’s eyes.”

“Sam Bloom’s eyes?”

“To open a dying dungeon, you need to know where the door and the power source are. I only gave them a rough location. The rest was Noah and Semi. I bet even our Mr. Han could manage a rough imitation.”

I set aside the matter of Han Taekyung for now. It didn’t matter—especially not right now.

I led Hope to my father’s room.

“If Noah Michel really did this, then things are truly over between her and Lehmann, right?”

“Noah’s too stubborn to change her mind now.”

“Damn it, how are we supposed to figure out what’s going on…?”

My father’s room on the top floor was empty. I wondered where he’d gone at this hour, then checked the time. Was it time to change his bandages?

It was almost five in the morning. If it was my father, he’d be up by now, grumbling about how annoying it was to get up. In that case, there was only one place he’d be.

There weren’t many places to kill time at this school…

“Sir.”

“Oh, Heejae?”

“Ugh.”

Maybe I was more rattled by the San Francisco dungeon break than I realized, or maybe I just wasn’t fully awake yet, but I made a mistake.

There was no denying it was my mistake.

My father was sitting at a table in the greenhouse. Given the hour, I was out of it, and so was Hope.

So I failed to notice that my father wasn’t alone.

No, I never would have imagined anyone else would be there at this hour. Especially not students.

“T-that person!”

Across from my father sat two small students, wearing gym jackets over their pajamas.

“What’s wrong? Do you know them?”

Sunsunji, rubbing her sleepy eyes, asked her childhood friend.

Clatter.

Lee Seungyeon’s eyes went wide as she shot to her feet. Her chair scraped back and toppled over.

“That person!!”

“Huh?”

Hope made a dazed sound beside me.

My father’s mouth fell open.

“That crazy bastard!”

Lee Seungyeon shrieked, pointing at Hope.