Retire 460

460 Frustrating (3)

Though the document had passed through Gamble’s hands, my sister’s traces were everywhere.

This wasn’t the kind of thing you could put together in a day or two. It wasn’t limited to Korea, either—she must have combed through dungeons all over the world, hunting for information as if after a rat.

And as she’d emphasized again and again, it was unfinished.

Unfinished.

I’d always thought my sister had carefully planned to return to the past with my father.

But seeing documents as messy as her room, I had to revise that idea a little. Maybe it hadn’t been so planned after all.

No, she must have thought about it to some extent. Once she learned it was possible to go back, she would have kept it as a last resort. But…

The father and sister I knew would never have tried to abandon the “present,” no matter how hopeless things looked.

And at the same time, knowing them, if they’d decided to return to the past, they would have made more thorough preparations. In hindsight, it was obvious.

The dungeon breaks in Seoul and around the world must have been as unexpected for my father and sister as they were for anyone. It was probably the moment my father’s defeat became inevitable.

I couldn’t know for sure if my theory was correct… but in any case, what mattered now was how I would use the information my sister had left behind.

Fairies.

[Things to watch out for.

—Ones with patterns on their wings.

—Ones with a lot of fur.

—Ones that speak.

—Ones where the same individual is observed more than once.]

Why did she investigate fairies so thoroughly, and nothing else?

Because they were the monsters most likely to have traveled back in time?

Maybe, but as my father’s experience showed, it wasn’t just fairies that had come back. Like the centipede in the Bangi-dong dungeon…

My sister didn’t know about the centipede in Bangi-dong. If she had, she would have snuck in and cleared the dungeon herself, no matter what I said. Since when did she ever listen to me… No, never mind.

Anyway, if she’d worked with my father and done this much research, she must have known it wasn’t just fairies that had come back.

As expected, she’d left a brief note about those as well.

[Probably time travelers: Anomalous individuals, so not worth worrying about. The teacher usually takes care of them. I don’t know how they got the item, but they probably used it for transport. As single entities trapped in a dungeon, who knows how many times their time has looped—so, no problem.

If found, eliminate.]

The list of dungeons, briefly annotated, was unfamiliar. Since nothing stood out, it meant, as my sister said, there was no need to worry about them.

“Hello.”

Daniel entered the conference room.

This was right after the griffin dungeon raid, as we prepared for the next one.

“I look forward to your help with this raid.”

“…We’ll be in your debt.”

“Haha, what do I have to be grateful for?”

“It’s rare to have a healer who can enter dungeons.”

Daniel scratched his head sheepishly, but didn’t bother with false modesty.

We’d already been into several dungeons with Daniel. At this point, denying his skill would be less humility than deceit.

A healer who was also a competent combatant.

If he hadn’t been a secret agent for the US, he’d be the kind of talent you’d want to steal away. Considering you have to be a licensed doctor to be a healer… surely he’s someone America can’t afford to lose.

They’d assigned a surprisingly elite agent to change my father’s bandages. What an honor.

“Still, with your skills, I might just get in the way.”

“Not at all.”

Kim Chaemin, reviewing the raid plan, answered Daniel with a meaningful look.

Whether Daniel was really there to keep an eye on us or not, we couldn’t speak freely with an outsider present. That’s why we’d left him behind for the griffin dungeon, when we needed to discuss the next raid.

But this time, everyone agreed it was better to bring Daniel along.

I handed him a copy of the raid plan.

“If there’s anything you don’t understand, just ask.”

“The raid plan? We’d already compiled one on our end…”

“I just find it easier to do it myself. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just my way.”

According to the American dungeon report, this dungeon was inhabited by mole-like monsters.

But in my sister’s disorganized notes, it said a fairy had appeared here.

The fairy had been discovered in 2027—still in the future.

If you asked which source I trusted, the answer was obvious. And we would take the safer path.

My sister had left records of which dungeons produced fairies, but not exactly how they appeared.

I didn’t think America was hiding information from us. There must be a fairy hidden somewhere in that dungeon. No matter how well it hid from humans, if we tried to destroy the dungeon core, it would show itself.

In that case, the more hands, the better. Especially if those hands could be crucial in an emergency.

“…This is impressively thorough.”

“My son’s always been like that.”

“That almost sounds like an insult.”

“It’s a compliment.”

My father replied shamelessly.

“I didn’t mean it sarcastically. I meant it as praise. When did I give you the dungeon report? Wasn’t it just a week ago? And you’ve already cleared the griffin dungeon in the meantime—when did you find time for all this…?”

“If I couldn’t do this, I wouldn’t be teaching at the school.”

A week was plenty.

At the administration… during the busy season, I sometimes had to put together a plan in two days.

“But do we really need to check the underground? The dungeon core is on the surface, isn’t it? Sure, it’s important to make sure there are no monsters left, but this will take a lot of time.”

“Oh, I just included that in case. We can decide based on the situation. Just, well…”

I smiled awkwardly.

“You know the Okinawa dungeon? I just want to be sure. There’s no harm in being careful.”

“Right, right.”

Unforgettable experiences change people. Hunters are no exception.

I added for Daniel’s sake,

“It’s not that I don’t trust the American team… It’s just, anything can happen in a dungeon. Even in a supposedly easy one, a fairy might pop out.”

“Haha… Yes. Better safe than sorry.”

Daniel nodded, apparently thinking I was suffering from some kind of trauma.

Well, a fairy really could appear. If I put it like this, maybe he’d be mentally prepared.

That’s what you call consideration.

---

[Look further into the fairy reportedly seen in the ‘Snowfield’ dungeon in the Alps.]

[Butterfly? Moth?]

[How do monsters communicate with each other?]

Why had my sister focused so much on fairies?

The answer was surprisingly simple.

Just seeing what kind of file this data was stored in made it obvious.

Because the king under Mont-Saint-Michel, Noah Michel’s king, was a fairy.

You have to know your enemy to know your chances of victory.

Decades’ worth of data, scraped together over years, felt even more overwhelming for being so unorganized. As soon as Gamble realized what kind of data this was, she searched for any fairies reported in American dungeons during this period and flagged them for us. She even put a cute checkmark at the top of the file as soon as I opened it.

As for the rest? She’d tidied it up a bit, but there hadn’t been time to build a proper database. Even while we were in America, Gamble was still working on it. Of course, I didn’t leave it all to her—I checked the contents whenever I could. This kind of thing needs multiple perspectives.

“Fairies, huh. Actually, I haven’t caught many myself,” Hope said, popping a chocolate into his mouth. It was the night before the dungeon raid, during our last meeting.

Not that you could really call it a meeting—it was mostly just checking our supplies.

“They don’t show up much in Australia. I guess the climate doesn’t suit them.”

“You’ve never caught one at all?”

“Well, not never. The first time I saw one was… I told you before, right?”

“China?”

“Yeah, there.”

Hope grinned. He was talking about the dungeon where he himself had once been a fairy.

“And besides that?”

“I’ve been to Europe a few times, so I saw them there. I think I ran into one in America once, too.”

“In America?”

“Wait, maybe it was Mexico? Or even farther south.”

I looked at Hope with cold, flat eyes. I’d figured out what he was talking about before he had.

I’d heard stories of Hope and Gamble scamming gangs in South America…

Did he really have to bring this up in front of Daniel? And why start talking about fairies all of a sudden?

“Oh, they do pop up there sometimes,” my father said nonchalantly.

“Don’t know if they just like trees, but they seem to show up a lot in dense forest dungeons. I’d never heard there were fairies in there, but I’ve gone in and found them a few times.”

“Okinawa was a forest dungeon, too, wasn’t it?”

“Though you burned it down, senior…”

At Han Taekyung’s comment, Kim Chaemin burst out laughing.

“Do you know how shocked I was when a fairy showed up in a dungeon I thought would be easy? You’re not going to do that again, are you?”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“You’re the one who said anything can happen in a dungeon, Mr. Woo.”

“Doesn’t mean I want it to.”

“Me neither!”

I didn’t want to talk about fairies. But at the same time, I understood why everyone had to say something. If Hope hadn’t started, I probably would have.

Everyone was tense.

About the fairies we’d soon have to face.

Honestly, it might be better to just leave Daniel behind or come right out and say a fairy would appear… but that would mean a lot of annoying explanations, and if I just made something up…

……

I considered all the possibilities.

It seemed more trouble than it was worth.

[Investigate fairy abilities further.]

[Where did the ones that returned learn human language?]

[From hunters?]

[Check if translation magic works on monsters.]

[Check if translation magic works on monsters—(it doesn’t).]

My sister hadn’t left any other information about the dungeon we were about to enter, except that a fairy appeared there, but she had left a note describing what kind.

[Confirmed that one of the Vegas guilds raided it. That guild has since disbanded, so there aren’t many records. Only a brief report remains with the Association.]

[Black fur. Moth-like appearance. Gold dust falls from its wings. Gray patterns on the wings. Defensive.]

“Words have power, you know. Don’t jinx it—just focus on staying sharp.”

“Come on, I know what I’m doing. It’s not my first dungeon.”

“That’s when you get careless…”

“You’re the one tempting fate, Mr. Woo!”

[Probability of having returned from the past: unknown]