Retire 513

513 The Magician’s Child (3)

It would be a lie to say he hadn’t expected the word “revenge.”

If anything, wasn’t that the most primal motive that could move a person’s heart? It was better than some mad rambling dressed up to sound profound.

At the very least, there was room to try to understand this. Empathy was another matter.

“Is that so?”

Hong Seok-young looked at the broken doll, unmistakably cradling a child.

There was no sign of the child itself…

Michel couldn’t tear her eyes from the doll. She seemed hardly aware of what she was saying.

Hong Seok-young didn’t interrupt her.

In fact, he watched her with a faint sense of welcome.

Michel had been unstable from the start. The claim that no real adult would do something so absurd still held true.

Surprisingly, there weren’t many people Noah Michel had harmed directly.

No, it was fair to say there were almost none.

She may have manipulated things behind the scenes or set events in motion, but even then… The laboratory with the children hadn’t been Michel’s doing from the beginning. She had only deepened and continued the research in another direction; the lab itself had started with the pharmaceutical company Atlas’s illegal activities.

A hunter who had hunted monsters would know: harming people required extraordinary mental fortitude. Just look at what the Ark had done.

Had the will served as a kind of trigger? Had it forced Noah Michel to confront reality?

“Who do you want revenge on?”

“………Humans.”

“Yes. Humans. Which humans?”

Hong Seok-young continued carefully.

Even if Michel was a pitiable child who had never developed emotionally, that didn’t absolve her.

But still, Hong Seok-young had to consider what would come next. The kids might all chatter thoughtlessly about stopping Michel as if that alone would save the world from destruction, but…

……

Well, that was true enough.

Henry Lehmann, like Michel, had little interest in unleashing monsters, and no matter how devious the fae of Mont-Saint-Michel, without humans, he had no way to exert influence outside the dungeon.

Even if he used runes to learn about the outside world, what could he do if he couldn’t leave the dungeon? If Michel could be convinced to give up quietly, all that would be left was to pour resources into Sandra and Kim Chae-min’s research and find a way to close the dungeon.

Yes… Saving the world was simpler than he’d thought.

The real problem was getting Michel to give up.

He hadn’t mentioned this in the usual guild meetings, which focused on subduing or “dealing with” Michel. It was surprising that his son, who had once been a civil servant, hadn’t noticed, but then, he’d never handled cases like this. He probably hadn’t even considered it.

The same went for Kim Chae-min. She sometimes helped with these matters, but she probably didn’t know exactly how things worked. She disliked getting too tangled up with the government, not wanting to invite further misunderstandings as an archmage.

If Alex had thought about this aspect, that would have been even more surprising. Han Tae-kyung… that guy would pretend not to know even if he did. He’d probably noticed Hong Seok-young’s worries from the start. Annoying brat.

“I…”

Michel’s voice grew hazy. The unmoving eyes began to move again, creaking like rusty gears.

“I…”

This time, he did not rush her.

Hong Seok-young did not let his guard down.

Even if Michel had rarely killed anyone herself, that didn’t make her innocent.

But, as Alex had said, even if she acted capriciously, sometimes impulsively, Michel was clever—clever enough to leave no evidence behind.

Did Michel really trigger the San Francisco dungeon collapse? Who would believe that?

Noah Michel was a respected archmage. She worked mostly in Europe, but was one of the few magicians liked even in other countries.

France’s pride, a leader in modern magical theory—could she really be conducting illegal experiments on children in a secret lab?

Imi-seon and Kim Chae-min had tried everything to find evidence tying Michel to the lab, but failed.

It was the same with everything else.

Nothing could be linked to Noah Michel.

Whether that was the result of meticulous calculation or some unconscious boundary Michel herself had set, he didn’t know.

But the lack of evidence was a headache.

Even if they caught Noah Michel here, they couldn’t arrest her.

Henry Lehmann was a wanted criminal to begin with, so that was different. But Noah Michel? With the contents of the will now public, she was winning sympathy worldwide. As Mallet had said, if she claimed she just wanted some time alone to process the shocking news, everyone would accept it.

And then this would all repeat itself.

That was why Hong Seok-young hoped things would resolve more simply.

He wanted Noah Michel to recognize and admit her own crimes.

If she gave up on her own, that would be best. Even for Hong Seok-young, he wanted to resolve things as peacefully as possible in front of the kids. With as little bloodshed as possible.

Looking at that doll, the possibility seemed greater than he’d expected.

“I… to humans…”

But Michel couldn’t take that final step.

“To humans… I will have revenge.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously.

If only she had stopped short, but she seemed ready to go in the worst possible direction.

Hong Seok-young let out a sigh.

I really do want to resolve this peacefully.

“Listen, Miss Michel. I don’t know exactly what happened in Mont-Saint-Michel.”

Through her disheveled hair, he saw eyes that no longer looked like those of the living.

“I can see you had a terrible experience in there. I get it. Anyone would feel wronged. You were just caught up in it, weren’t you?”

“……”

“It’s natural to end up hating people. I’m not saying I can’t understand… Did you do what you told Alex, killed those people? Well, even so, it’s all right. No, it’s not all right, but what’s done is done, so let’s move on for now.”

Hong Seok-young waved his arm limply through the air. It looked as if he was completely unguarded, but the opposite was true.

Still, he hoped Michel would be fooled by the gesture.

“All right. If we keep talking in circles, we’ll never get anywhere, so let me ask you directly.”

It was by chance that he noticed Michel’s fingers clenching her sleeve.

There was no special reason. In Michel’s otherwise motionless posture, that tiny twitch stood out.

“If you killed those people, did you have a reason?”

“…A reason.”

“Yes, a reason. I’ve been asking all along. Did those people treat you badly?”

“……”

The doll, still trying to embrace a child, continued to move.

Michel’s fingers trembled.

He saw a faint line at the joint of her finger.

“So you killed them for that?”

“……”

A line?

“In that case, you’ve already had your revenge.”

“………?”

It wasn’t just on one finger. There were faint lines at every joint. Hard to see, but not impossible if you looked for them.

No, there hadn’t been any lines at first. But the longer they talked, the more pronounced the lines on her joints became. Not just her fingers, either. On the parts not covered by her clothes—her wrists, her neck—faint lines appeared.

“The ones who tormented you are all dead now. Isn’t your revenge over?”

Michel froze completely. The lines on her joints all surfaced.

And from those lines, another line extended, connecting to her eyes. A thread so transparent it had gone unnoticed until now.

Hong Seok-young continued, his tone sour. Now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

“If your revenge is done, who else are you after?”

Even after realizing that this Noah Michel was yet another puppet.

“The magicians who hid your parents’ will? You know exactly who they are. So why are you here, in America, where they have nothing to do with it?”

But even that puppet, moving like a marionette, was Michel’s magic. Whether puppet or not, the real Noah Michel would be listening.

Probably somewhere in this dungeon, still checking her books, the Noah Michel who had recreated the Mont-Saint-Michel library.

“What is it you want to do, not in this fake place, but in the real library?”

---

The reason magicians still commanded such awe in modern society was, in the end, because of their overwhelming power.

Overwhelming force inspires fear. That was a primal instinct, not just human, but animal.

Kim Chae-min’s magic, though lacking in raw destructive power, was useful in many ways. Kim Chae-min herself preferred to play to her strengths rather than compensate for her weaknesses. That was how the archmage Kim Chae-min had come to be.

But Noah Michel was the complete opposite. Michel’s magic wasn’t versatile like Kim Chae-min’s. But what she lacked in breadth, she made up for with firepower—enough to burn her enemies to ash.

“My, my.”

With a speed that belied his size, Hong Seok-young darted between the bookshelves. His movements weren’t refined, nor did he hold back his strength. Each time he changed direction, the floor caved in and bookshelves toppled behind him.

Thud!

When Alex had done that, his eyes had rolled back in anger, but this time, Michel showed no reaction. If anything, she wielded her magic with a chilling composure.

Wasn’t Michel’s magic said to be gold in color? It fit her perfectly. Even if not for her flowing golden hair, it was hard to imagine any other color. All of Michel’s magic shone with gold.

She didn’t even seem to bother hiding the lines drawn across her joints. The puppet, so like Michel herself, conjured a small orb at its fingertips. Whether Michel was controlling the puppet from somewhere else as a magical medium, or whether the puppet was truly casting the magic, he couldn’t say. He wasn’t a magician.

But he knew the magic was real, and that touching it would not end well.

“Good! I like your style—straightforward!”

Normally, Hong Seok-young wasn’t one to talk much in a fight… but as long as his opponent understood him, there was no reason not to.

Even from a distance, the fist-sized orbs radiated a heat that promised disaster if they touched him. Dozens of orbs raised the temperature of the entire dungeon.

Hong Seok-young found himself recalling the nickname the French so loved to give Michel.

The Sun, was it?

“Are you planning to burn this place down? Or is it somewhere else you want to burn?”

Once the orbs were complete, they moved away from Michel’s side. They weren’t fast, so dodging them wasn’t difficult yet, but it would depend on how many more appeared.

It was fortunate none of the other guild members were here. The crack in space remained still. At least the one most likely to be his son was safe. Hong Seok-young considered the others as well. With his abilities, Alex would be able to escape even if he ran into Michel. Han Tae-kyung and Kim Chae-min were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

He could only hope that what he was about to do wouldn’t put so much strain on the dungeon that it would collapse.

Hong Seok-young raised his spear and pierced the nearest orb.