Retire 462

462 Nightmare of All Hunters (2)

“There are some monsters that move in groups, I’ll grant you that….” Daniel wore a doubtful expression at Kim Chaemin’s words.

“Some of them even follow a leader, like animals do. But I’ve never heard of fairies behaving that way.”

“Monsters don’t abide by common sense. You can’t think of them as ordinary animals.” Han Taekyung countered. Daniel gazed at Han Taekyung’s eyes—or perhaps his sunglasses, or whatever they were—then nodded.

“That’s true. And if Mr. Kim says the Okinawan fairies are like that as well… Yes, it’s possible.”

After that, well. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, but their opinions came together quickly enough.

Kim Chaemin’s suggestion that we were standing in a passageway was worth investigating. These little fairies showed a suspicious lack of interest in us, even with the remains of their own kind scattered across the floor.

No matter how indifferent they might be to their kin, if corpses were strewn about like flies, there should have been some reaction. There are herbivorous monsters that live by grazing, but I’d never heard of such among fairies. Especially not ones with those sharp teeth… It would be hard to call them herbivores.

In that case, they should at least react to blood.

Originally, this dungeon was home to monsters resembling moles. They were larger than any mole you’d imagine, more grotesque in appearance, and far more violent in temperament. Their habit of burrowing underground made the dungeon harder to conquer, but not impossibly so—at least, not for our guild.

After all, we had the great mage, Kim Chaemin.

If you tore up the earth with rose vines, the moles would come bursting out. Unlike the Okinawa Butterfly Dungeon, this one was ranked S, with a size to match. Considering the dungeon’s proximity to the desert, burrowing moles were the worst possible monsters. With Las Vegas nearby—a city built on tourism—this was, in every sense, the worst place for the worst monsters.

Yet despite all that, the dungeon remained unconquered. No one really knew what effect the moles’ burrowing had on the land, but all sorts of rare plants grew within the dungeon. In the end, though, even that couldn’t overcome the anxiety caused by the incident in San Francisco.

It wasn’t as if America had left the dungeon alone without thought. Thanks to the dungeon’s structure, even if a break occurred, the moles couldn’t get out.

The dungeon was shaped like a basin. The central depression, where the moles lived, was soft earth. But the surrounding perimeter was solid rock. The gate was set into that outer rim, and the moles couldn’t cross the rocky zone. After dozens of experiments, the Americans had confirmed it.

So we hadn’t considered this dungeon particularly difficult. It was large, yes, but as I said—we had Kim Chaemin.

At least, until we found out about the fairies.

“So, what do you think these things are up to?” Han Taekyung asked, carefully tracking the fairies’ movements.

“Honestly… maybe they’re gathering nectar or something?”

“There are flowers, so there must be nectar,” someone said.

“Do dungeon plants even have nectar?”

“Some species do,” Kim Chaemin replied.

At that, Han Taekyung pursed his lips in mock admiration.

“So that’s why mages pay so much for plants.”

“Mages aren’t the only ones who use them,” Daniel interjected.

“Some honey from dungeons is effective for healing wounds. It’s a little tricky to harvest, but it’s great for treating burns.”

“…Should we collect some honey after we deal with the monsters?”

“Would that be all right?!”

Daniel’s face lit up as he asked.

There’s a certain kinship between healers and mages… Both awaken in similar ways. I remembered reading a paper somewhere that claimed healers were just a type of mage with limited attributes.

I thought of Yoo Hye-eun, the only healer I personally knew. If it were just people I’d met professionally, maybe… But Yoo Hye-eun? That quiet girl, a mage? The idea was laughable.

“If the fairies aren’t too troublesome, it should be fine,” Father said, pointing at Kim Chaemin.

“If you can pluck griffin feathers, honey should be nothing. It’s much more docile, isn’t it?”

“You said I could pluck them!” Kim Chaemin protested.

“Did I say otherwise?”

“Tch.”

“But these are clever creatures,” Father added.

We’d encountered the swarm of small fairies not at the edge of the basin, but inside it, on earth and grass-covered ground. We’d run into them while crossing the basin toward the core, which lay opposite the gate.

“This dungeon gets a lot of foot traffic, doesn’t it? The moles are dangerous, but the land is rich enough to make it worth the risk.”

“Fertile ground always leads to conflict,” someone remarked.

“There’s no river, though. Historically, weren’t such lands the cradle of civilization?”

“Let’s not talk history in a dungeon.”

“That’s exactly why I’m saying it,” came the reply.

Kim Chaemin chuckled. Unlike the previous griffin dungeon, which had been conquered in utter silence, this time, though we weren’t boisterous, we didn’t lower our voices completely either.

If the fairies revealed themselves just by overhearing us, so much the better.

“Whatever these fairies are, they’re cunning enough to let humans come and go without a fuss.”

“And they showed us the location of the core, too.”

“They must have been sure we wouldn’t destroy it right away. That’s cunning.”

Father spoke in a tone that was half admiration, half lament.

“If we hadn’t spotted them along the way….”

If my sister hadn’t left anything behind.

“We might have been caught off guard when we tried to destroy the core.”

If we hadn’t known there were fairies in this dungeon.

“Still, there’s no way they wouldn’t show themselves if we tried to destroy the core.”

“What a troublesome creature.”

“These are the worst kind,” Father said, glancing at Daniel.

“Have you ever caught a fairy before?”

“…I have, sort of, but I’m not sure it counts.”

“Oh?”

“I wasn’t there as a combatant. And once, it was during a dungeon break….”

Daniel scratched his cheek, trailing off. But even without prompting, he continued, cautiously.

“This is, uh, classified information….”

“There’s no one here to listen! None of our people are going to go blabbing,” Father said quickly, glancing back at us. Daniel’s gaze followed his. We nodded to reassure him.

If anything, our show of reassurance seemed to make him more uneasy, but Daniel pressed on.

He’s sharing classified information so easily? He’s more flexible than he looks. Maybe he trusts us that much, or maybe he thinks this much is safe to share. Or perhaps the situation is urgent enough that he feels he must.

“A few years ago, a dungeon broke out in Yellowstone National Park. Fortunately, it happened in a restricted area, so… but that doesn’t mean the damage was minimal.”

“Yellowstone National Park?”

“Dungeons break out in national parks pretty often. Wasn’t the Okinawa one in a national park, too?”

“Most of those places aren’t inhabited. Cities get cleared quickly because people live there, but national parks and deserts… Still, a park that size must have a patrol, right?”

“Yes. The Yellowstone patrol was wiped out.”

Daniel spoke calmly, but we—including Father—were taken aback.

“I’ve never heard that before.”

“That’s why it’s classified. The Yellowstone patrol doesn’t just cover the park itself, but also the surrounding deserts and national forests. They’re an elite group, government-affiliated, but the name covers all the connected guilds as well. They’re the largest hunter alliance in the western US.”

And then Daniel spoke again.

“They were wiped out. Not completely, but the losses were devastating.”

“How did they cover that up?”

“Magic?”

Daniel gave a hollow laugh.

“No, I’m not just saying that. They really went to desperate lengths to hide it. If word got out that a pillar of the western US had collapsed, it would have been more than a brief commotion.”

“…Was that five years ago?”

“About that.”

“No wonder. I remember getting a lot of requests around then.”

“They’ve been short on manpower ever since.”

“So that’s why they called me this time?”

“Probably. That’s decided by people much higher up; I’m just a field agent, so I don’t know the details.”

Daniel let out a deep sigh.

“…What kind of monster came out of there?”

“Fairies.”

Daniel shrugged, as if that explained everything. And, absurd as it was, that one word really did explain it all.

“I was assigned to the support team. There had already been heavy casualties, but the main monsters went down with the vanguard. There were no major losses after the initial phase.”

“Hmm… And I never heard a thing. That’s surprising.”

“You were busy at the time, Mr. Hong.”

“I was swamped preparing for school. I should have paid more attention….”

Father pursed his lips, clearly frustrated at having missed it.

Five years ago, that would have been when he started looking after the Yoo sisters, Hye-eun and Ji-eun. A man used to raising only sons, suddenly caring for two girls—of course there would be missteps. Father wasn’t the most sensitive person, but he wasn’t so oblivious as to let things slip by unnoticed, either.

“Well! In all this wide land, there can’t be more than a handful of these wretched monsters. All we have to do is catch them, right?”

“Right.”

“So, Mr. Kim. Your thoughts?”

“Ah… I think, maybe…”

“I think it’s the passageway!” Han Taekyung interrupted, raising his hand high.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. From what I’ve seen.” Han Taekyung used the tip of his weapon to draw on the ground—a spiral.

“They move like this. I said it before, but it really is like a beehive, isn’t it?”

He drew a circle around the spiral, then tapped a spot at the bottom.

“This is the basin, and here’s the gate. We crossed the basin like this.”

A line was drawn from the gate, cutting the basin in half, stopping about two-thirds of the way.

“They don’t go down here. If they did, hunters and mages passing through would have noticed right away.”

“Because of the moles, no one went in too deep, right?”

“Right. They only grew plants within a safe distance, close enough to retreat to the rocks if needed.”

“So here… like this. They avoided the areas near the rocks, probably for that reason. The inside… yes, they’re circling the basin in a spiral. We crossed the basin to hunt moles and gather plants, so that’s why we ran into them.”

“Hmm. If we’d walked on the rocks instead of crossing the basin, we might never have known.”

“…But! The rare plants!”

“I’m not blaming you, Mr. Kim. In fact, in this situation, it’s a good thing.”

Though it sounded a bit like an excuse for Kim Chaemin, the truth was he really had collected the plants, so he couldn’t deny it. Kim Chaemin closed his mouth with a sullen look.

Daniel blinked at us in a daze. Even if he didn’t grasp the details, he seemed to realize there was something he was missing.

We waited a moment for Daniel to speak. We were curious what he would say.

With a complicated expression, Daniel stared at the diagram Han Taekyung had drawn on the ground.

“…How did you know the fairies’ route? I mean, sometimes there were a lot, sometimes few, but… didn’t we just walk through here like this?”

A sharp question.

I looked at Han Taekyung. Han Taekyung tilted his head slightly, glancing at me and Father as if asking for help. Kim Chaemin also glanced over.

But then, as if deciding to handle it himself, Han Taekyung looked away.

“……!”

He beamed at Daniel, giving him a silent thumbs-up.