Retire 292
by Cristae292 Magic Lamp (1)
“Wahahahaha!!!!!”
Han Taekyung burst into laughter, bound tightly by Kim Chaemin’s magic.
I had no idea what he found so amusing. My head was already starting to ache.
“Huh? You want to know what that monster is?”
Han Taekyung looked around at the vines Kim Chaemin had conjured, as if he found them entertaining. Compared to when she’d restrained Hope, this magic seemed almost playful, but the way he laughed made it all the more irritating.
Kim Chaemin clearly felt the same.
Squeeze.
The vines tightened.
“Ow! It hurts, Teacher Kim!”
“If you’re a hunter, you should be able to handle this much.”
“A true hunter never gets hurt. I, Han Taekyung, am weak to pain.”
“……”
“……”
“Why are you looking at me like that? Have either of you ever seen the principal get hurt?”
“…Uh, no?”
“…No serious injuries.”
“See!”
Han Taekyung grinned triumphantly.
The more I listened, the more he almost made sense…
No, I couldn’t let myself get sucked into this. This wasn’t why we’d called him over.
“Anyway, Teacher Kim said you know something about this creature.”
“Rather than knowing…”
Han Taekyung scrunched his face, trying to push up his sunglasses since his hands were bound. It looked ridiculous, but Kim Chaemin had no intention of letting him go.
Han Taekyung eventually gave up, shrugging his shoulders. Still, I’d never seen him actually lose those sunglasses, no matter how much he was roughed up in dungeons—they clung to his face like they were glued on.
“That thing, it’s the upper-half-missing monster from Boston, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I won’t ask why it’s here. I do have a brain, you know.”
Hard to believe, honestly…
Especially when looking at those annoying pink sunglasses. Whether he was looking at me or at Kim Chaemin’s look of disgust, Han Taekyung kept grinning smugly.
“I mean, after the Jirisan incident and all. I can take a hint, you know? Senior Hong didn’t call me here for nothing!”
“Right… I suppose so?”
“Don’t hesitate like that! Right, senior? You know what I mean?”
“……”
“Come on!”
“…Well, I know how skilled you are, Teacher Han. The principal trusts you, that’s why he called you.”
I remembered how Han Taekyung had felt left out during the Jirisan incident and tried to soothe him. He beamed at that.
“It wouldn’t be right if the people you and Teacher Kim are after were ordinary. That’d be disappointing.”
It felt odd to be left out. Well, compared to Hong Seok-young or the great magician, my name didn’t carry much weight.
“Anyway, I don’t know everything about that thing. I just spent some time in the Middle East, following someone I knew.”
“The Middle East?”
“Yeah. Dubai and… all over the place.”
“I thought you were in Europe?”
I’d practically memorized Han Taekyung’s record. I never thought I’d pay so much attention to him in my life.
He’d never mentioned entering dungeons in the Middle East. He wasn’t the type to keep stories to himself, either—he’d chase you down to tell you things you didn’t want to hear.
‘Hijae, do you know what happened earlier? Some bastard was hanging around the gate again…’
Not a pleasant memory.
‘Hijae, I brought you a souvenir from my trip. Isn’t it cute? It’s a limited-edition Vacation Chase plushie you can only get at a certain store in America…’
Not a pleasant memory, I tell you.
‘What? You want to hear how great a hunter your uncle is?’
‘I never said that. The report’s overdue.’
‘When I was young, back in the Red Sea…’
‘The report. The report! Just turn in your report!!’
Not a pleasant memory…
Han Taekyung used to force all sorts of stories on me. I’d even assigned him extra dungeon raids just to keep him out of the office. Workplace harassment? No, it was because I trusted his abilities.
Anyway, he’d never mentioned the Middle East. If he’d hidden it, or if it just hadn’t seemed important enough to mention, I couldn’t say.
Judging by how easily he was talking now, it was probably the latter.
“Ah, well… When I was in Europe, there was a hunter from Qatar I used to work with.”
Suddenly, Han Taekyung seemed to realize something and started mumbling.
“That friend… um, he said he knew someone somewhere…”
“…And?”
“There was a time we stayed in Türkiye for a while. The Qatari guy wanted to sightsee after we finished a raid… I stuck around too, and, well, one thing led to another.”
Han Taekyung rambled on in an uncharacteristically roundabout way, talking about sightseeing and whatnot, until he finally blurted out,
“I ended up going to Egypt with that friend, then through Sudan… Ha. I entered the country illegally.”
Maybe it wasn’t the latter after all.
Seeing our faces, Han Taekyung quickly added,
“Well, technically it wasn’t illegal! Not really. Someone important over there pulled some strings…”
“…So it wasn’t illegal, but you snuck in?”
“If you put it that way, I guess so?”
Kim Chaemin sighed and held her head.
Han Taekyung, thinking he’d said his piece, grinned widely.
“Was it for a dungeon raid?”
“Yeah. We failed, but no one died, so it’s fine, right?”
It’s not unusual for foreign hunters to be called in for dungeon raids.
Look at Hong Seok-young—he’d gone to America to help.
But usually, even if a hunter is personally requested, you have to go through the Ability Association to enter a dungeon. They need to keep track of which hunters go into which dungeons.
It’s not about restricting hunter movement, but so there’s someone to notify families if a hunter dies or goes missing.
Han Taekyung knew that. If Hong Seok-young hadn’t said anything about it, he probably didn’t know. My father wasn’t a stickler for rules, and sometimes went into dungeons without notice, but he never did so without telling anyone. Someone had to handle things if you didn’t come back.
I asked Han Taekyung to confirm my thoughts.
“Did Teacher Hong know?”
“I never told him.”
He answered immediately.
“If he found out, I’d be in so much trouble.”
So he did know.
“Ugh. Please don’t tell the principal.”
I shook my head.
“That depends on what you tell us.”
Han Taekyung grumbled, but straightened up. He wasn’t getting out of Kim Chaemin’s magic anyway.
Still, unlike his earlier bravado, he seemed subdued, and Kim Chaemin pretended to kick his shin.
“So what is that thing? What is it? I’ve run every test I can, but all the numbers are weird and the results are a mess!”
“Well, it’s hard to say for sure… but those things pop up occasionally over there. They all look different, though.”
Han Taekyung squirmed, as if wanting to move his hands, and continued.
“They’re big, for one.”
The one from Sam Bloom’s dungeon, and the one Hope fought, were both huge. Once Kim Chaemin finished her tests, it would be a problem figuring out how to get rid of it.
“They have wings.”
“……”
“Well, sometimes they’re not really wings, but they flap and fly. White feathers. Like that one. The ones I saw were the same.”
“Them?”
“They show up from time to time in that region. The dungeons where they appear are relatively calm… Annoying, but not deadly. Just lots of traps.”
“What do you mean, ‘from time to time’? I’ve never heard of monsters like this in the Association’s records.”
“They usually don’t attack humans. As long as you follow certain rules.”
Han Taekyung started twitching his nose to push up his sunglasses again.
“They show up now and then in desert dungeons, and when they do, it’s kept top secret.”
“Are the dungeon byproducts useful?”
“If you mean useful… yes, they are.”
He trailed off, less boisterous than before.
But then, as if making up his mind, he shook his head and spoke, his previously restless manner settling.
“In that region, they call them ‘magic lamps.’”
“Magic lamps?”
“Yeah. You know the story. Rub the lamp, and it grants your wish.”
“That magic lamp?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not quite like the story, though—they demand a price. But if you pay the right price…”
Han Taekyung looked at the snake’s corpse on the field. He couldn’t see it past the tarp, but his expression was as if he could see right through.
“Or if you meet a particularly sympathetic magic lamp and talk well enough…”
“……”
“They can grant quite a lot.”
“…Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know what all the locals have tried, but from what I’ve seen, they can easily reattach lost limbs.”
Sam Bloom came to mind.
The image of him kneeling before that massive bundle of feathers.
Hope had warned us we needed to kill Sam Bloom, and Sam Bloom had attacked us with a feather embedded in his arm.
“They can fix internal organs, too. As for diseases… I’m not sure. The price was steep.”
“…Did you try it?”
“When I was there, some bigwig asked me to take his daughter, who had an incurable disease, into the dungeon. She was an Awakened, so it was possible. We managed to request a deal, but…”
Han Taekyung shrugged.
“They wanted blood from thirteen people. Said they had to change her blood or something. So we gave up and left. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“…If that’s the price, it’s not really a magic lamp, is it?”
“Come on. Since when did hunters care about that?”
Kim Chaemin shuddered, as if creeped out, and Han Taekyung laughed quietly.
“If it can reattach arms or legs, people will jump at the chance.”
“……”
“You can’t do that with potions.”
I understood. I understood, but…
“Arms, legs. Sometimes both, or all four. I’ve even seen people drag someone barely alive into a dungeon for this.”
“……”
“Even if half their guts are gone, or their eyeballs are rolling on the ground…”
Han Taekyung’s voice was still tinged with laughter, low and calm.
“If you talk well enough, they’ll give you new ones.”