Retire 332
by Cristae332 Mud-Covered (3)
A dungeon deep in the mountains of Jirisan. No matter how much the government claims to manage such places, dungeons like this are unmanageable from the start.
The Agency’s guideline is simply to close them off.
Resources… might be found, but nothing particularly valuable, and they can always be replaced. Even if it’s S-rank, it’s not especially hard to clear—so why bother leaving it open? It’s easier to just seal it and forget about it.
Look, even this Jirisan dungeon showed few signs of illegal entry when we arrived. Now, that might have been left by these… corpses, but there were probably people who snuck in, grabbed what they wanted, and left. Since the fairy’s existence wasn’t known, it was probably those types.
If not for Tati, we would have just checked the dungeon, destroyed the core, and left. There was no reason to leave a suspicious dungeon open. Once a dungeon closes, no one can tell who cleared it. People might just assume it vanished on its own.
But Tati’s words changed things a little.
“This one?”
“Yeah!”
I examined the man’s face. Hong Seokyeong stroked his chin.
“Can you draw?”
“…Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
“You can’t take photos with a phone camera in a dungeon. Or can you use that thing to take pictures?”
He pointed at my mana watch.
I shook my head.
“It can’t record images.”
That was in the plans, but only in theory. Maybe, given more time, I could have managed it. For now… there’s nothing I can do with just a mana watch.
It’d be faster to pester Gamble about it.
“Never wanted to try art?”
This guy, so persistent.
“I can’t draw.”
“No, but—”
“I don’t think I could capture this face accurately. It’d be faster to go to America and check the known members of Lehmann’s gang.”
Hong Seokyeong considered this for a moment.
“That’s a good idea.”
“This guy’s wallet is black with gold trim… Yes, that one. There should be some ID inside.”
“Good.”
Among the Hunters who had entered and left this dungeon, Tati had clearly killed these with a purpose.
If she’d just been a monster killing humans who entered her dungeon, it would be simple. But Tati had only dealt with those who came after Heejae—our brother.
What on earth did my brother teach this monster?
…That was honestly my first thought.
The second was: Why was my brother being chased?
Well, there were plenty of reasons. He didn’t just disappear one day for no reason. He’d been working with Kim Gun to escape from the Ark.
I didn’t know exactly how Kim Gun had died, but it probably wasn’t some sudden heart attack.
Kim Gun was caught. The inside collaborator was caught.
But what I didn’t understand was… The lab—meaning the Ark—had its own cleanup crew for this sort of thing. So why was this guy chasing my brother?
“Tati.”
While I stared at the dead man with a troubled face, Hong Seokyeong began questioning Tati on my behalf.
“Was this guy the first to come in?”
“Hm?”
“The first one to chase your friend?”
“Oh… first. Yeah. First.”
“Can you tell us what happened? It might help us find his brother.”
It felt odd to use words like that with a monster, but Tati just looked gentle.
“Heejae said there was a human.”
“A human? What kind?”
“A human who was chasing.”
“This one?”
“Yeah.”
The words “find his brother” were like magic to this monster. Tati let the mud settle and spoke.
There was no sign of the initial wariness.
“After that, they just kept… kept coming.”
“What about my brother? Did they come in chasing him?”
Tati shook her head.
“No. But Heejae said. Humans would come again. And then—”
“And then?”
“Just kill them, he said.”
What on earth were you up to with Kim Yuhwa, hyung?
“Did my brother keep coming to the dungeon?”
“He did. But…”
Tati’s expression darkened.
Eventually, he stopped coming.
Now I started to understand why Alex Hope had given us this dungeon’s location. If Henry Lehmann kept sending people to some dungeon in East Asia, even Alex Hope would find it suspicious.
Ah, I just don’t know.
What was my brother thinking, doing all this? If I could see him again, I’d want to ask.
Sensing my tangled thoughts, Hong Seokyeong suddenly ruffled my hair.
“…Where are your gloves?”
“Oh.”
“You realize what you just touched, right?”
“I’ll just wash up.”
This guy, honestly.
He never gives me a chance to wallow.
“Heejae, find him.”
Tati saw us off all the way to the gate. The mud, which had calmed for a bit, was dripping again. I had no idea where she kept getting all that mud from.
At least when I first saw her, she looked the part of a “fairy,” matching the preconceptions the word brings.
But now?
If I hadn’t known her original form, I’d never call her a fairy…
“Tati.”
What causes a monster’s appearance to change so drastically?
I’m no monster ecologist—how should I know?
“Hm?”
“Your mud. It wasn’t like this last time.”
“Mud?”
“Yeah. What’s dripping off you right now.”
Tati looked where I pointed. Whether it was oozing from her pores or what, the mud covering her body was leaving dark stains on the ground.
She stared at me.
<@*%$*!!>
Ah.
A voice, transmitted straight into my mind.
A clear, birdsong-like tone. Tati smiled.
“That’s why.”
“…What?”
“Goodbye.”
Tati pushed me in the back. I hadn’t been on guard, so I stumbled straight toward the gate.
Before I could react, my vision spun.
……
I was outside the gate.
It was the first time I’d ever been manhandled by a monster like that. Had I let my guard down too much? Damn. Hong Seokyeong was probably going to give me an earful.
I thought about going back in, but Hong Seokyeong came out right after me. He looked like he was about to say something, then saw my face and grinned unpleasantly.
“You know what I’m about to say, right?”
“…Always stay alert in a dungeon.”
“Just because you can talk doesn’t mean you can trust them.”
“Weren’t you being pretty friendly yourself?”
He clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“That’s just because there was information to be gained.”
“…And if there wasn’t?”
“Honestly? If it wasn’t about you and your brother, I’d have blasted her the moment she opened her mouth.”
His voice was sly, but his eyes were cold as ice.
I nodded. This was the Hong Seokyeong I knew. He checked the items he’d brought out from the corpses. Most were wallets. They’re inconspicuous and easy to carry inside a coat. I kept mine in a wallet, too.
“I didn’t expect to find those guys here.”
“Same. Didn’t expect her to pull out the bodies.”
“Right.”
“I figured your brother might have told her something, but…”
He looked vaguely dissatisfied.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No, I just think your brother… hmm.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“…The odds are high.”
“Of course.”
I took off my gloves. I didn’t want to put them back in my subspace, but I didn’t want to use them again, either.
“I told you from the start—I want to find my brother. I never thought I’d find him alive.”
“……”
“If I’d believed even a little that he was alive, I wouldn’t have played the role of hyung for Irok.”
“…That makes sense.”
Hong Seokyeong opened the subspace belonging to the first guy Tati had caught. A famous brand logo gleamed. The first thing he pulled out…
“This looks like Ark property.”
A jet-black mask.
“The cleaners who worked at the lab used to wear these. Animal-shaped.”
“Your brother was the crow, right?”
“Yes.”
Hong Seokyeong had pulled out a lion mask. The crude mane looked ridiculous.
He set the mask aside and rummaged through the subspace.
Something completely unexpected came out.
“…A passport?”
“What, did that guy actually enter the country legally?”
“Even if he’s in a gang, as long as he has no criminal record, there’s nothing stopping him from coming in through the airport…”
“In a way, he found a loophole.”
“Is it really his passport?”
Hong Seokyeong tossed it to me. Judging by the photo, it was probably him. Tati had been pretty rough.
I flipped through the passport. I didn’t know if immigration worked exactly as I remembered, but the process for Awakened entering the country probably hadn’t changed much. They’d be screened more strictly than civilians, and this guy… what was his name? Steven Fowler?
If Steven Fowler, some mafia or gang member, really entered Korea through official channels—
“What are you looking for?”
Naturally, there should be an entry stamp after screening.
“July 2, 2019.”
“Hm?”
“The date Steven Fowler entered Korea.”
“That’s in there?”
Someone like Hong Seokyeong might get a free pass, but regular Hunters would have it, of course. The entry stamp always had a date.
I flipped through the pages. There were stamps from all over the world. No way I could investigate all this myself… Should I tell Imi-seon?
At some point, Hong Seokyeong had come up beside me to look at the passport.
He narrowed his eyes.
“This guy must have a license, right?”
“Judging by the passport type, he’s a Hunter.”
“…Then is it him?”
“Do you know him?”
He took the passport from me, scrutinized the entry stamp, photo, and name, then nodded.
“I don’t know him personally, but I’ve heard of him. The timing matches, so it must be him.”
“……?”
“Around that time, there was a big fuss about a Hunter from America who went missing.”
“…Ah.”
“He didn’t come to raid a dungeon, just for sightseeing. Then he suddenly disappeared… It caused a lot of trouble.”
“How was it resolved?”
“How do you think? No one wanted to take responsibility, so after a lot of fighting, it got swept under the rug.”
I stared at him blankly.
Maybe he felt accused by my look, because he jumped.
“What was I supposed to do?!”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You look like you did…”
He pouted and grumbled.
“If there’d been testimony that he went into a dungeon, or if there’d been a dungeon break, it’d be different. But he told everyone he was coming for sightseeing, and that’s all he did after he arrived. Then he vanished? What would you think?”
“Murder?”
“…If he were a civilian, maybe, but he was a Hunter.”
Hong Seokyeong sighed.
“At the time, Russia was pushing a Hunter immigration policy. If he’d gone there, it would’ve been a headache, so everyone just let it go.”