Retire 544
by Cristae544 (Hunter Academy Side Story 11) Additional Personnel_3
“I don’t know.”
Unlike Kim Chae-min, who couldn’t hide his unease about first-year Shin Ye-won, Woo Hee-jae wore an infuriatingly unconcerned expression.
“Awakening is basically genetic. If even one out of three generations is an Awakened, the probability that their descendants will also awaken increases dramatically, right? Teacher Kim, didn’t you say your great-grandfather was a mage?”
“That was so long ago, there’s no way to confirm it. My grandfather just said, looking back, he thought that might have been the case.”
“Nobody really knows how awakening is inherited… Honestly, with everything we’ve seen so far, I could believe it’s the influence of monsters that crawl out of dungeons. Mana addiction, for example.”
Woo Hee-jae poured hot water from the coffee pot into a paper cup. The sweet aroma of instant coffee drifted up. He handed a cup to Kim Chae-min and sat down on the sofa.
Watching him, Kim Chae-min was overcome by a strange feeling.
‘Is this how the kids feel when they come to Teacher Woo for advice?’
He hadn’t done anything wrong, but he felt guilty, like he should confess worries he didn’t even have…
Woo Hee-jae sipped his coffee and continued.
“You know, there are rare cases of symptoms similar to mana addiction? The body opens up to mana and gets a kind of booster effect.”
“……”
“……”
Kim Chae-min shuddered and blurted out,
“Don’t say weird things!”
Woo Hee-jae feigned ignorance and shrugged.
“Back to the original topic.”
“Ugh.”
“Tae-woo said his mother raised him, but it was later confirmed his father was an Awakened.”
Unlike most of those managed by the lab, Kang Tae-woo was one of the few children with a registered birth. His father had been a solid Hunter, but died in a dungeon only three months after Tae-woo was born.
So-hee, that child, remembers having a “name,” but there’s no birth record. Even digging through the lab’s files, no parents could be identified. So far, there’s no sign of awakening.
Woo I-rok… well. The person who knew the situation best was sitting right across from Kim Chae-min.
First-year Yoo Baek-min was a child with no records, but Shin Ye-won had been kidnapped as an infant. Her parents were Awakened, but otherwise just ordinary people. After her parents died in a car accident, the only surviving infant disappeared from the hospital—a case that even made the news.
“If the research was supposedly for artificial awakening, shouldn’t genetic variables have been excluded?”
“Considering they ended up being graduated or disposed of, they must have been used for other purposes.”
If you compare the data Lee Mi-seon found with what Michel left behind, it’s obvious. Lehmann’s obsession with Hunter corpses was probably for the same reason.
Just as Hope once said, to find a way to interfere with dungeons.
Not a way to exert influence from outside to inside, as Woo Hee-jae and Kim Chae-min wanted, but rather, a way to extend influence from inside to outside.
“…I can see the logic in using the bodies of Awakened, who can physically affect both the inside and outside of a dungeon.”
“Do you think that’s more likely, Teacher Kim?”
“No.”
Kim Chae-min shot it down immediately.
“If the body were the key, why can’t non-Awakened cross the gate? It’s not a physical issue. Awakening doesn’t change the components of the human body.”
“Then…”
“The difference between Awakened and non-Awakened.”
“Mana?”
“Michel took control of the dungeon using a part of the dungeon boss as a medium. That’s what we’ll focus on.”
“…If you’re saying you need the boss’s body to control the dungeon, then our plan is doomed, you know?”
That ambitious plan to close the Mont Saint-Michel dungeon without facing its king.
“We don’t have to catch it! Just pluck a feather and run away!”
“Even Michel drove out the original master, so maybe that’s a necessary step…”
“Are you going to start being a downer already?”
Woo Hee-jae looked like he wanted to argue further, then gave up. Kim Chae-min snorted.
“We’ll start by distinguishing the properties of mana inside and outside the dungeon more clearly. It was hard with just Sandra and me, but now that we have more mages, it’s doable. Especially with Jin-woo. If we can figure out how guide magic identifies the core…”
“I’ll trust you with that part.”
“Teacher Woo, you know the theory inside and out. Don’t think about running away—show up in the lab.”
“You know I’m busy with other things, too.”
“That’s that, this is this. It’s not like I’m not busy.”
When the archmage calls, you come quietly. It’s not like he’s calling to hang out.
Even if he looked less than thrilled, Woo Hee-jae nodded obediently. Kim Chae-min burst out laughing as he patted Woo Hee-jae’s shoulder.
“Cheer up. You know more about Seo-hyun’s magic than anyone. What happened to your ambition to make her an archmage?”
“She already has a real archmage as a teacher, so what am I…”
“Hahaha.”
Kim Chae-min put a little more feeling into the hand on Woo Hee-jae’s shoulder. But the infuriating man didn’t even flinch, not even pretending it hurt, though he could have.
Still, laughter is contagious. Eventually, Woo Hee-jae smiled faintly too—not his old crooked, annoying grin, but the neat, official smile you’d see in a government pamphlet. At times like this, it really hit you that he’d been a civil servant.
And with that neat expression, Woo Hee-jae said to Kim Chae-min,
“Even an archmage should follow safety rules, don’t you think?”
“…I have something urgent to do.”
“Sit down.”
“……”
Kim Chae-min clutched his half-full paper cup in both hands and avoided Woo Hee-jae’s gaze.
Yeah. So this must be what it feels like for the kids when Teacher Woo scolds them. No wonder they always look half out of it after leaving his office.
“I won’t bother with the obvious about setting an example for the kids. That’s a given. No matter how confident you are, or how unlikely it is you’ll get hurt, accidents happen in an instant. Are you listening, Teacher Kim?”
“Yes, I’m listening…”
“Whether it’s the greenhouse or the lab, anywhere mana is involved, you never know where a reaction might occur.”
Kim Chae-min nodded mechanically as he sipped his coffee in response to Woo Hee-jae’s continued lecture.
This coffee is pretty good…
“Is that true? That’s harsh.”
Park Seo-hyun and Choi Jin-woo, sorting through materials from her grandfather’s warehouse at the big table in the corner of the lab, stared wide-eyed at Kim Chae-min.
“What’s true?”
“The first-years.”
Kim Chae-min, handing out coffee and drinks he’d gotten from Ji Yu-geon at the cafeteria, looked at the two young mages.
Maybe misreading the look in his eyes, Seo-hyun shook her head.
“Ji-eun said that, uh, Kim Abel? She said he was quiet, so I thought he’d be like that…”
“It’s really something. The plants in the greenhouse look dangerous just by looking at them. How do they expect to be Hunters with that little caution?”
“That’s what I’m saying! Even for first-years, you should have some sense!”
“Haha…”
Kim Chae-min let out a breathless laugh, half in disbelief.
“You two are the ones saying that?”
But apparently, the words of a grown-up mage didn’t reach the young mages.
Sandra, sipping her coffee, suddenly burst into a fit of coughing. It sounded suspiciously like laughter.
“Tae-woo and Ji-eun, too. They went into so many dungeons with us, but the moment they went in alone, they failed?”
“They should be embarrassed. It’s not like it was a dungeon they couldn’t clear.”
“If it was Teacher Woo, you know he would have picked a dungeon that was annoyingly perfect for them. To fail in that kind of dungeon…”
“They didn’t even get to see the core, right? Teacher Yu-geon told us.”
Sandra, unable to hide her laughter with coughing, buried her head on the desk, shoulders shaking. Seo-hyun and Jin-woo, sitting with their backs to her, didn’t seem to notice.
Kim Chae-min could understand how Sandra felt, and found the graduates’ prim faces as they gossiped about their juniors rather endearing.
But as a teacher who remembered all the trouble those “graduates” had caused when they were students, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“So, do you think you’ll even be able to graduate?”
“They don’t have the right mindset.”
They should be grateful no other teachers were present. If the principal, Woo Hee-jae, or Han Tae-kyung were here, the reality checks would have started in earnest.
Fortunately, Hong Seok-young was teaching those notorious students, and Han Tae-kyung was in America for a while. Or maybe not America—last week he was there, but soon he’d be following Lehmann’s trail.
And as for Woo Hee-jae…
‘I must have been too lax with staff training. That’s right. Schools should pay extra attention to safety education…’
After hearing about the greenhouse incident, he’d unleashed a torrent of nagging. Just when they’d finally escaped that lecture…
Looking at these kids, he was sure Woo Hee-jae would start up again…
Not that he was afraid of the nagging—it was just that teasing these young disciples was one of the few privileges of being a teacher.
Kim Chae-min mimicked Woo Hee-jae’s annoying smile as he laughed.
“Don’t you remember your own first dungeon failure?”
Seo-hyun and Jin-woo, who’d been so busy critiquing their juniors, immediately shut their mouths.
“That was a fun time… You know, the teachers even held a meeting to cheer you up because you were so down?”
He hadn’t told them that the raid had been designed to fail from the start. He figured they’d realize it themselves once they’d gained enough experience.
“And let’s see… There was that time you almost burned down the greenhouse practicing growth magic because you couldn’t control the light.”
“We said we wouldn’t talk about that!”
“Oh? Did I promise?”
Jin-woo squirmed, face red as a beet.
“T-that was just a mana calculation error.”
Seo-hyun, who’d helped with the calculation, tugged at her own hair and pretended not to hear.
“Who was it that almost started a fire while watering the plants?”
Seo-hyun jumped up.
“That wasn’t me!”
“Who was it, then?”
“…Soon-jin!”
“Soon-jin?”
“……”
Maybe remembering her own tadpole days, she coughed and rolled her eyes.
In Kim Chae-min’s eyes, it would still be a long time before they became frogs.
“The first-years have only just awakened. There aren’t any mages among the students, and the graduates are curious, so you should talk to them sometime.”
“Talk to them?”
“Just about this and that. It’d be good if we all had a chance to go into a dungeon together someday.”
“A dungeon?”
“You’re their seniors, aren’t you?”
Seo-hyun and Jin-woo blinked.
Sandra’s laughter finally subsided, and Kim Chae-min picked up Park No-gyeong’s log, which Seo-hyun and Jin-woo had sorted.
“All right, that’s enough of that. Time to work.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
“Everything that happens in this lab is confidential. Remember, there’s a non-disclosure clause in your contracts?”
The two young mages swallowed nervously. Kim Chae-min’s smile grew even wider.
“Our goal is simple.”
Now, it was truly about to begin.