Retire 502

502 Universe (2)

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠We tried many things.

To be precise, it was Kim Chaemin who tried many things.

She sent out vines, layered her unique spells for exploration, and even had me set things on fire.

She went so far as to leave the dungeon and come back in.

None of these were things one would ever do upon entering a dungeon for the first time.

“…What is this!”

But all of Kim Chaemin’s efforts came to nothing.

Her magic found nothing, my father’s animal instincts proved useless, and both Han Taekyung and Alex Hope shook their heads.

“Hijae, what about you? Do you see anything at all?”

“The problem is, I see too much…”

Everywhere I looked, magic shimmered. Dungeon skies were always rich with magic, blue mana flowing like the Milky Way.

And here?

Here, it was the same.

The magic flowed very slowly along the starlight.

There was only one thing that told us.

“So it is a dungeon, at least…”

“Michel might not be here, but there should at least be a core.”

Kim Chaemin spread her arms wide, sweeping them through the air as if she couldn’t make sense of any of it.

“There’s nothing here!”

The universe.

Everyone groaned, falling into gloom.

At this rate, there was no way to close the dungeon, let alone find any trace of Michel.

“What do we do? Should I go out and ask Grandma?”

It was maddening that our only reliable source of information was a single monster.

I wondered if even that was accurate, but my father shook his head.

“No. If we come out of the dungeon empty-handed and go looking for a monster, it’ll look suspicious. They’ll definitely think something’s up.”

“In a situation like this, isn’t it impossible to clear the dungeon? We don’t even know how to find the core.”

“We didn’t come to clear the dungeon. We came to investigate it.”

My father corrected me.

“You haven’t forgotten, have you? This dungeon already broke out, Hijae.”

“……”

“We’re here to see if we can put the monster back in, and if we can close the dungeon faster that way.”

That… was true. I nodded, though my face was sour.

“At least, that’s the excuse we’ve given.”

With that excuse, going out to make contact with Moby would be risky.

It was one thing to retreat when faced with unfamiliar dungeon terrain. But to go out, find the monster, and then come back in—that we could not do. And if we withdrew now, we might never be able to enter this dungeon again….

How tiresome it was, having to worry about appearances.

But we couldn’t ignore them, either.

If this were Korea and not America, Imi-seon’s authority would have taken care of things. This was why working in someone else’s country was always so frustrating.

“So what do we do? We can’t just stay here, but there’s no way to explore this place.”

“Hmm… Mr. Kim, is there really nothing you can do?”

“What do you want from me? I’m an archmage, not a miracle worker!”

“You’ve been a miracle worker so far…”

“Thanks for the compliment, but what I can’t do, I can’t do.”

“Excuse me.”

While my father and Kim Chaemin bickered, Han Taekyung suddenly cut in. Kim Chaemin turned to him, her expression almost desperate.

In truth, no one felt more frustrated in this situation than Kim Chaemin. A dungeon like a void in space was shocking enough, but she had done everything she could to probe that universe.

She claimed not to be a miracle worker, but as the one who always found solutions, she must have felt responsible for finding a way out of this. She was our guild’s only mage, after all.

“Master said this dungeon already broke out, didn’t he?”

“Hm?”

“What if the core is already destroyed?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, this dungeon.”

His face, without sunglasses, was unfamiliar even though I’d seen him many times before.

Han Taekyung blinked innocently and said,

“What if it’s in the process of collapsing?”

---

Starlight.

A void with no up or down, no left or right.

This wasn’t Earth’s sky, so there were no familiar stars to guide us. Only unfamiliar stars filled the expanse.

Ironically, the only thing we could use as a reference point was the mass of mana, so out of place in this dark universe—the “gate.”

We still huddled together in front of that gate. We couldn’t just go out and come back in, in case something changed in the dungeon while we were gone.

Kim Chaemin’s magic was still holding. Each of us floated in the universe, taking whatever posture was comfortable. If it weren’t for the baffling circumstances, we might have enjoyed the novelty of it. Even if it was a fake universe, when else would we get to drift through space?

Probably, even without Kim Chaemin’s magic, we wouldn’t have fallen…. We’d tested that, too. But Kim Chaemin insisted it was safer to reinforce the spell.

“So…”

In the midst of all this, Han Taekyung had come up with a plausible theory.

“Mr. Han, are you saying the dungeon turned off its life support?”

And Kim Chaemin translated his words into more understandable terms.

“Let’s go back to basics. What is a dungeon?”

“A spaceship.”

“Well, calling it a spaceship is… No, you’re right. It is a spaceship.”

Hope closed her mouth under Kim Chaemin’s sharp gaze.

“Most passengers can’t control it. But it provides for them—water for monsters that need water, forests for those that need forests. It even supplies food. All of that is maintained by power from the core.”

“But right now, this dungeon has no core. Maybe we just can’t find it, but what if it really isn’t here? What if the engine’s been destroyed?”

“Then the spaceship would stop.”

Kim Chaemin looked up, taking in the dungeon. No matter how you looked at it, it was nothing but space. The dungeon had always been big enough to hold Moby, but now, who could say where its limits lay?

“I don’t know exactly how the core supplies power, but… I doubt it’s easy to maintain the terrain.”

At this point, even my father, as simple as he was, understood what Kim Chaemin was getting at.

“So what you and Mr. Han are saying is, the life support’s been turned off, but the spaceship is still running a little longer?”

“In dungeons, you always see space.”

Kim Chaemin nodded at my father’s words.

“The dungeon is basically like this.”

“…Space?”

“The core overlays terrain on top of it, with various adjustments.”

“Hmm.”

“It sounds like a convincing theory. Hope? What do you think?”

“I… don’t know how to access the core, so I can’t say for sure. But it could be true… I think it’s possible.”

“What about Moby?”

“Huh?”

“Wouldn’t that monster know?”

Hope frowned in thought, then answered.

“Maybe. Should I ask later?”

“We’re racking up questions to ask.”

“And since there’s the matter of the item, it’s better to put him back in the dungeon. Easier to avoid prying eyes.”

“But if the core’s already destroyed, the dungeon won’t last much longer… and Michel doesn’t seem to be here. Hope, you said you never told Moby about the item, right?”

“Uh, yeah. He just asked how we managed to get to Earth and things like that. The artifact, we kind of stumbled into that, too.”

Hope hesitated, then added,

“Since we don’t know how things will turn out… I avoided asking anything too direct, like you said.”

If there’s any way to separate that damned item, we have to try. Whatever the outcome, we have to know.

But with everything so uncertain, and the dungeon in this state…

Why do things never go smoothly? After all the work I’ve done in a foreign country, you’d think the heavens would help me out for once. If only my life were pitiful enough for that.

I leaned my head back and looked up at the sky.

But all that greeted me was this infuriating universe. Not even a real universe. And if Michel wasn’t here…

Wait.

“When Moby escaped from the dungeon, the dungeon was fine, right?”

“If you can call it fine after Noah blew it up.”

“No, there wasn’t space like this. So if Mr. Kim’s theory is right, then it was Michel who turned off the life support…”

Since Michel disappeared from France, I had no idea what he was thinking. How did he feel about his parents’ will, about the mages who cared for him? If he’d blown up European dungeons for revenge, I could have said, so he’s human after all. But he hadn’t. Was it really, as we first thought, all aimed at Lehmann?

Michel’s life plan was unpredictable, but one thing hadn’t changed: Noah Michel was a mage. There were mages who didn’t act like mages, but in the end, a mage is still a mage.

Just as Choi Jinwoo had been recognized as having the qualities of a mage.

The mages I knew never did anything pointless.

We still knew little about dungeons, but siphoning off the power that maintained the terrain to keep a collapsing dungeon going—there’s no way that could be done with a mere nod of the head.

Yet Michel was going to such lengths to keep this dungeon intact.

“…Why this dungeon, of all places?”

“Moby?”

Thinking back to the forum, when we’d forced open a dungeon…

But back then, it was because we needed to see the winged monster. Not Michel, but Sam Bloom.

But in this dungeon, Moby had been driven out. After his eye was taken.

“Do you think the dungeon itself has a purpose?”

“Why else would he be keeping it going?”

“Hmm. May I say something?”

“Yes?”

My father, who had been floating and shifting his posture as he listened, raised his hand for the floor.

“Noah Michel is in this dungeon.”

“…Why do you think that?”

“Just a hunch?”

“A hunter’s hunch…”

I almost finished the old saying—can’t be trusted.

But that saying was meant to remind you never to let your guard down in a dungeon, to always double-check even what seems safe.

But for a hunter with sharpened senses, sometimes instinct picks up on things before reason does. That’s what the phrase “hunter’s hunch” really meant.

Maybe I’d relied too much on Kim Chaemin’s magic, Han Taekyung and Hope’s eyes, and my own vision.

“I just have a bad feeling…”

My father, who had none of those tools, narrowed his eyes and glared into the void.

He spun his spear in his hand.

I watched him, uneasy.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to poke it once.”

“…Poke what?”

“The dungeon.”

“…With what?”

“This thing?”

My father grinned.

“It’s hard to get any force without a foothold…”

“You can’t just do something reckless like that—!”

“It’s fine.”

A sharp aura began to gather around the spear. Even we, floating in space, were buffeted by it, staggering.

My father spread his legs wide and drew his shoulders back. The spear pointed forward.

“Just trust your dad.”

With a face that inspired anything but trust, my father said,

“No, I told you, stop using your body first!!”

“I said it’s fine.”

Without even pretending to listen, my father hurled the spear with all his might.

It happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time to react.