Retire 277

277 Betting (1)

Noah Michel had posted exactly twenty-four runes.

Fortunately, none of the runes I’d set aside for future release were among them. At the very least, that meant those runes had nothing to do with Noah Michel—or so I wanted to believe.

I checked to see who had originally revealed Noah Michel’s runes. There were some mages I’d already marked as his followers from the start, and others who weren’t, though most were European mages, so there might have been some connection to Noah Michel regardless… In a way, having it confirmed like this was almost a relief.

“Let’s look on the bright side.”

That’s what Kim Chae-min said, too.

“They say the shield rune was originally made public by Noah Michel, right?”

“Yes.”

“So far, only monsters have come from the future. So, just like Hope said, it’s really not something we need to worry about.”

Kim Chae-min had Noah Michel’s runes pulled up on his phone, copying them one by one into his notebook.

Do grand mages have a natural talent for drawing runes? Even the complicated ones he’d never seen before, he managed to sketch out in pencil in a single try. It was an impressive skill.

Well, Kim Chae-min did say he often used runes his grandfather created. Runes probably weren’t as unfamiliar to him as they were to other mages.

“I agree with Master that you’re probably the last in line…”

“Don’t call me that.”

“So until then, the monsters couldn’t leave the dungeon, right?”

Kim Chae-min traced the completed rune with his finger. As it activated, mana gathered around it, shining and slowly swirling above the rune.

“There are some pretty useless runes mixed in here. Was Noah Michel desperate, maybe?”

“We included some useless runes ourselves.”

“The intelligence one? But that’s actually useful.”

“Not that one.”

“Well… if you try hard enough, you can find a use for anything. Nothing’s truly useless—except those lunatic Ark bastards!”

Kim Chae-min tilted his head, then continued.

“Anyway, the monsters are in the same boat… Even if they crawled out and into another dungeon, how much could they really know about the human world? They don’t even know the language.”

“There could be someone like Hope.”

“Ah, but Hope actually lives in the human world. The quality of information you can get is totally different.”

I listened quietly as Kim Chae-min spoke.

“So Noah Michel doesn’t have any information that could change the future.”

“……”

“Even if Noah Michel knows about the mana shield rune at this point, he can’t be sure if this is the first time it’s happened or if it’s happened countless times before.”

“Because I was the last one to come back from the future?”

“Exactly.”

Kim Chae-min chuckled.

“I read an old sci-fi novel like that once. The alien invaders ended up dying because they couldn’t adapt to Earth’s environment. It’s lucky the monsters couldn’t adapt here, too. If they’d come out and shared information, that really would’ve been a disaster.”

“……”

“No matter how strong that thing in Mont-Saint-Michel is, it’s still trapped inside the dungeon. And you said the Break didn’t even happen, right? That means it never planned to come out.”

“…That makes sense.”

“Anyone who values their own life never takes risks.”

And look at what those who didn’t value their lives ended up doing.

No, if they were going to send someone to the past, they should have prepared thoroughly. At first, I missed my sister out of emotion, but once I’d cleared my head, it was just absurd.

No matter how I think about it, shouldn’t they at least have told me? I get why they kept it secret at first—if it were me, I never would have joined in on such a crazy plan.

But after that, they should have told me. Was the plan just to drag me into the past and then say, “Well, this is how it is now, so let’s work hard from here”?

…If it’s the Yoo Jieun I know, that’s entirely possible.

I need to make sure little Jieun never ends up like that. Hopefully, she’s not still interested in those mana-purification cults.

“Still, wouldn’t they be suspicious?”

“Assuming Noah Michel already knew about the mana shield rune?”

“Well, I guess that doesn’t really change much.”

I shrugged.

Noah Michel was already wary of Hong Seok-young. Adding one more thing to be wary about wouldn’t change anything.

Besides, it was a little annoying that everyone but me could laugh and go on without a care… Well, except for Imi-seon. She was genuinely angry that Noah Michel had posted the runes only on the mage community.

She said at the very least, he should have the confidence to release them to the whole world, like we did.

I wasn’t sure, but I definitely didn’t want to mess with an angry Imi-seon.

“Well, since it’s come to this…”

Now that things had gone this far, it was almost fun. I wondered just how far we could take it.

And with Hong Seok-young and Dayeon as shields, I figured we could get away with almost anything.

“Should we just release everything?”

“Huh?”

“All the runes related to Noah Michel. You’re right, Mr. Kim. Why should we care what anyone thinks?”

“I never said we should care what anyone thinks…”

“We’re already under suspicion, so what difference does it make if we give them more reason? At most, Mr. Hong will just get mentioned even more.”

“Did you mean you weren’t going to care about Mr. Hong’s opinion?”

“I never did. So let’s just claim all of Noah Michel’s achievements for ourselves.”

“Oh my.”

Kim Chae-min’s eyes sparkled.

“I only held back because I believed Noah Michel wanted to save as many people as possible, but now, does it really matter? Who knows how many of those runes he actually developed himself? Honestly, some of them could have been used by monsters.”

“Right, right.”

“So let’s just release them all at a pace Noah Michel can’t keep up with… even the runes revealed by mages connected to him.”

“Wow. That sounds fun.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Kim Chae-min nodded enthusiastically.

“And there’s no way anyone could memorize hundreds of runes.”

“I only remember the ones I use often. I didn’t even know some of these weird-effect runes existed.”

I pointed to the rune Kim Chae-min had drawn. He hadn’t deactivated it, so mana was still swirling around it. It was so useless, you could leave it alone and nothing would happen.

At most, it would slightly increase the humidity around the rune. So little you couldn’t even feel it—only measurable as a decimal.

“So it could cause confusion, right?”

Kim Chae-min grinned mischievously.

It took me a beat to catch his meaning.

“…If there’s a Prophet on this side, it might not be just one?”

“Exactly.”

Kim Chae-min nodded emphatically.

“Any other information we could release? Preferably something outside of runes—something no one person could possibly know all of.”

---

The more runes that were released, the more runes the students at the training high school had to learn.

Even when I only taught them the essential ones, leaving out the “useless” runes Kim Chae-min mentioned, the classroom was filled with groans.

But on the other hand, there was someone who let out a shriek of joy at the sight of so many runes.

Well, “joy” might not be the right word.

“…You mean you just know all these runes? You really don’t know any of the theory?”

Sandra Gamble looked at me with an expression that was hard to describe.

She seemed happy, but also like she’d just heard something insane, and maybe even wished I’d disappear from her sight—a complicated mix.

Gamble questioned me with what felt like desperate intensity.

“There must be some logic to which stroke does what, right?”

Probably.

But how could I possibly explain something so complicated? Even I, who had learned magic theory, gave up on runes early. There are plenty of people in the world who dedicate their lives to runes; someone like me trying to butt in would just be a nuisance.

I just took the easy route and memorized the finished runes. Park Seo-hyun, who taught me, said it was convenient to memorize which parts did what… but in the end, you only use a handful in the dungeon. It was faster to just memorize the whole thing.

But that didn’t seem to satisfy Gamble. She was burning with the soul of an engineer, trying to break down each rune one by one.

I spoke bluntly.

“I’m not a mage.”

Gamble whipped her head around to glare at me.

“But you know how to make the mana pen! With that, anyone can use runes, even if they’re not a mage!”

This is why smart people are so troublesome. They never let anything slide.

I shrugged and feigned ignorance.

“I didn’t develop these runes. A mage who helped me in the Ark taught them to me.”

Imagine how happy Noah Michel would be. Just as he always said, the runes were released even earlier than before, so even more people could be saved.

That’s a good thing.

“…All of these runes?”

“I said an anonymous mage taught me, not that they made all of them.”

“……”

“Of course, that mage did make some of them.”

Gamble’s expression didn’t lighten at all.

Well, that’s not really my problem.

I looked around the lab. Somehow, it got messier every time I came in. I think Kim Chae-min tried to organize it at first…

While I wandered around, Gamble finally gave up.

No, even saying that is odd. It’s not like I refused to teach her what I knew—I just said I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Am I supposed to teach not just the kids, but the staff now too?

“Fine.”

Gamble let out a half-gritted sigh.

“Fine, fine. Whatever. Shanshan did whatever she wanted, so I should get to do what I want, too. That’s only fair.”

Then she started muttering ominous things.

“Feels like I’m always the one getting the short end. I do all the work.”

“…Excuse me?”

“So I should just…”

“Are we done here? Can I go?”

“No! We’re not done yet!!”

Gamble grabbed my arm in a panic, then startled herself and let go. For someone who’d been so pushy, she shrank back quickly.

“……”

“……”

“Can I go now…?”

“I said no.”

“I told you, I don’t know much about runes.”

Gamble eyed me suspiciously. It was obvious she didn’t believe me.

But instead of pressing me further about runes, she asked something else.

“You… you didn’t come from the future, did you?”