Retire 458

458 Frustrating (1)

—Be careful.

With those words, Gamble ended the call.

It was an ordinary enough phrase, yet a strange unease lingered in my chest. Compared to the others, Gamble was on the quiet side… Actually, that’s unfair to Gamble. It’s the people around him who are excessively bizarre. Gamble, by comparison, is normal.

But even so, I hadn’t seen him this subdued since Alex Hope’s funeral. I stared at my phone, unsettled. A document had arrived from Gamble, confirming that he’d unlocked the files on the magic watch.

I was dying to check it immediately, but—

“Welcome!”

A clean-cut white man in military uniform had come to greet us.

Rubbing the wrist where I used to wear my magic watch, I stood behind my father. My father—our guild master—stepped forward, grasped the outstretched hand, and shook it firmly.

“Thank you for coming, Hunter Hong. And thank you for last time as well.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just part of the job.”

Apparently, they were acquainted; the man spoke with a certain warmth.

My father introduced us to the soldier.

“These are my guild members.”

It would be a while before I got the chance to check the document Gamble had sent.

---

The magic watch was, after all, just a prototype.

They said the ways it could be used in the future were limitless, but unfortunately, even by the time I used the prototype, no real system had been established.

Of course, there were plans for how it would be used.

The administration was planning to set up a comprehensive control room.

The biggest advantage of the magic watch wasn’t the data stored inside. It was that it allowed communication between the inside and outside of a dungeon.

If something unexpected happened during a dungeon raid—say, if the initial exploration went wrong, like in the dungeon I entered with Han Taekyung and Eva Robinson in Okinawa—you could send a distress signal. The rescue team could communicate in real time with those inside, either to organize a rescue or to support the raid.

Not that the data stored in the magic watch was useless. But as I said—it was a prototype.

Since the internal server of the administration had simply been copied over, the quality of the information in the magic watch was not great. Old, obsolete data was mixed in. What use is it to look up a hunter’s career history when raiding a dungeon? As for monsters or dungeons, the information was… lacking.

It’s not that the administration’s information-gathering was poor, but the reports had all been written by me and my subordinates, back when we were called the secretariat. We’d organized the haphazard files, checked for missing parts, and supplemented them with hunters’ testimonies.

Even if I hadn’t handled every single document, I’d at least glanced at them all once. I knew the general details.

As for how I’d used the magic watch in the future… Well, mostly just to test whether the communication worked with my father. Or to check that he was safe.

The next prototype was supposed to go to my sister.

My father had no intention of going back in time, but he’d prepared my sister. He’d even written his will, thoroughly and without forgetting a thing.

But knowing my father, he’d never bet everything on something so uncertain. Time travel was a last resort. If things went his way and he saved the world, he’d just laugh and say, “Guess I’ll have to rewrite this!” and tear up the will.

Yoo Jieun. Unlike my sister.

That man, for all his temper, had a cold, rational side.

Anyway… even then, it was impossible to use the magic watch to its full potential, and it was still impossible now.

The one and only magic watch in the world. Gamble had copied a few functions to make an emergency signal device, but that was it. There were other reasons for making it in the form of a watch, but honestly, it barely even qualified as a watch.

I couldn’t use it for its original purpose, but the documents stored inside were still useful. Not just for dungeon raids, but especially for tracking “people.” If I wanted to figure out the runes Michel used, having the magic watch would save a lot of time.

I’d debated whether to bring the magic watch, which I’d left with Gamble to unlock the documents.

My father would just tell me to do whatever I wanted, so I excluded him.

Han Taekyung, who hated complicated things and was always running away, was out of the question.

Alex Hope, who had no interest in time travel, was no help.

In the end, there was only one person I could ask for advice.

“A magic watch? If you take that again, Sandra’s going to get annoyed.”

“But I might need it.”

“In America? Hm, but you said the data inside is all Korean. There’s nothing foreign in there, right?”

“It’s not useless, though.”

“That’s true, but…”

Kim Chaemin thought about it for a long time.

But her answer, after all that, was simple.

“I think you should leave it here.”

“Why?”

“I doubt you’ll need it much inside a dungeon.”

“……”

“In the end, dungeons are places you have to handle on foot.”

“Well… that’s true.”

“What’s more important is what’s in those documents. The Jieun I know isn’t that smart, but she’s passionate, lively, and full of sparkling talent. If a kid like that protected her data so carefully, I doubt it would start with, ‘If you’re reading this, I’m dead.’”

“……”

I couldn’t tell if Kim Chaemin was joking or being serious. She burst out laughing.

“I think it’s better to leave it with Sandra than to bring it to America. Who knows? Maybe there’s a decisive clue to tracking Lehmann in the data she’s decrypting right now.”

That made sense, too.

“And as long as you’re not in a dungeon, you can always ask Sandra to check the watch.”

“Hm.”

“Honestly, Sandra’s probably better at sorting and searching data than you are.”

That was true as well.

Kim Chaemin laughed again as she watched me agonize in silence.

I took her advice. And judging by Gamble’s reaction when I said I’d leave the watch this time, I wasn’t sure I could have gotten it back even if I’d insisted….

“Don’t worry. It won’t take much longer.”

“…Really?”

“This time, really! The security itself isn’t that amazing, but it’s still security from twenty years in the future! It’s different from now. That’s why it’s taking so long to read. See, originally, this was—well, now it’s…”

“Yes, I’ll leave it to you, Doctor.”

I didn’t know the details, but Gamble had succeeded. That was what mattered.

“So what exactly are we supposed to do here?” Hope asked, raising his voice.

“Same as always,” I replied.

“Same as always?”

“Usually…”

My father handed out the materials he’d received from the soldier.

A dungeon.

“A dungeon near Las Vegas. If I remember right, they didn’t raid it before because it produced good resources, but I guess they finally decided to go for it.”

“Hmmm?”

“Since it’s Vegas, there’s a good chance a gang had its hands in it. It’s near the Nevada desert, right? The last time, the dungeon where that magician was hiding was also in the Nevada desert.”

The dungeon had been managed for a long time, so the information was fairly detailed.

It said there were no dangerous monsters as long as you didn’t disturb the plant roots underground.

Given my experience in Okinawa, I wasn’t inclined to trust that, but the circumstances here were different, so it should be fine. Should be…

“I thought we were going after Henry right away?”

“How would we know where he is?”

My father shook his head.

“And unfortunately, we don’t have investigative authority here.”

“Ugh.”

“For now, we’ll be running dungeons.”

“Can’t America handle a dungeon like this themselves?”

“No. We have to do it.”

My father’s tone was firm.

“Unfortunately, our guild is used to solo play, so we don’t have much experience working as a group.”

He explained it as if it were nothing.

“Given the dungeons we’ll have to tackle, it’s better to get used to each other’s movements. I’ve run dungeons with Ms. Kim, and she’s run dungeons with Heejae.”

“I’ve run dungeons with Master and with you, senior!”

“Uh… I, um. Haven’t really run one together, have I? We’ve fought, but not raided together.”

“…Honestly, the only ones who’ve really raided together are Mr. Han and me.”

“See? You get the problem?”

Everyone was a veteran at dungeon raids.

But no matter how skilled a hunter is, it’s hard to coordinate with someone you’ve never worked with before.

“There aren’t enough high-level dungeons in Korea right now. We can’t just insist on raiding them.”

So my father was planning to use America as our practice ground.

Daniel was probably relieved that our guild didn’t have any rookie hunters. There are often accidents when inexperienced hunters are dragged into dungeons above their level in the name of training. Not that my father would ever do that, but…

Well, we weren’t rookies, so it should be fine.

“This is practice.”

My father laughed cheerfully.

“And we’ll have to take one of the US soldiers with us.”

“As a minder?”

“You think they could keep an eye on us?”

“No.”

“It’s just to handle annoying things like reports. It’s Daniel, so there’s no need to worry.”

“So he’s not a healer, either?”

“These days, it’s hard to make a living with just one job.”

My father chuckled.

I joined in his laughter, and finally opened the document Gamble had sent.

Everyone would need to see it eventually. But although Gamble had announced in a group message that he’d unlocked the data, he’d sent the actual document only to me.

That meant there was something I needed to see first. Given who wrote it, it was probably personal.

Sure enough, the first line of the document was a mischievous message.

[Whatever you did to open this, just ask me. Don’t go snooping around, Woo Heejae.]

My sister, of course, assumed I was sneaking a look.

…Well, technically, I was peeking without permission.

[No, really. There’s a reason I didn’t explain everything. Don’t act like a brat—just come ask me. Then I’ll let it go.]

I ignored it.

[Don’t ignore me.]

“……”

[Stubborn as ever. Just like when you were a kid.]

It almost felt like I could hear my sister’s voice, even though I knew I couldn’t.

[See, see? Don’t just sit there agonizing over it—come ask me. It’ll be easier if you just let me explain…]

I snorted.

I scrolled through the rest of her nagging. My sister’s scolding and swearing went on for quite a while. How could she have so much to say?

Annoying, but not something I could completely ignore. The nagging ended with a single photo.

A monster walking through a city in ruins, as if a dungeon break had occurred.

I frowned.

The ruined city wasn’t in Japan. The Spanish on the signs proved that. But the fairy, with a cape or wings made of pink butterflies, looked almost identical to the fairy I’d seen in the Okinawa dungeon in Japan.