Retire 348

348 Interference (1)

“Inside from inside?”

“You can only destroy a dungeon core by entering the dungeon in the first place.”

“Well, that’s because the core is inside the dungeon…”

I almost asked why he was stating the obvious, but stopped myself. It wasn’t as if Kim Chaemin didn’t know that; there was something elusive, something just out of reach, that was catching at me.

Inside the dungeon, from inside.

Henry Lehmann, who had turned into a wooden puppet inside Kim Chaemin’s vines.

It was a situation I had never seen before, but let’s add a touch of imagination, assuming it was magic—specifically, Noah Michel’s automaton. After all, every event begins with imagination. Magic is no exception.

“That thing, you said it wasn’t a monster.”

Kim Chaemin immediately understood what I was referring to. The small smile on his face told me I’d guessed right.

“Yes.”

The thing that had been Henry Lehmann, which Kim Chaemin had retrieved, had already been analyzed using Gamble’s equipment. If it had been a monster, like the one that had fallen onto the field with Hope, the scientific analysis would have been less precise. But since it was an object crafted by human hands, it was different.

Kim Chaemin and Gamble agreed that the puppet, though it straddled an ambiguous boundary, was not a monster but an artificially created object.

“But once it was taken out of the dungeon, all its magical effects disappeared.”

“So it can’t be used outside the dungeon?”

“Yes. That’s a relief, isn’t it?”

I nodded silently.

“So, it’s a magic that allows for remote control from within the dungeon, in some way.”

“Michel might… reveal it to the public in the future? I mean, she worked so hard on it, it’d be unfair if she didn’t get recognition… Ah, this is annoying. No one’s going to come looking for us anyway, right?!”

Kim Chaemin, fumbling over the tense of his words, suddenly snapped in irritation and cast a spell.

“No one can interfere. I’ve blocked everything. Even Michel won’t be able to hear us.”

I thought it would be enough just to keep the sound from leaking out… but since I was the one who’d insisted on caution, I just shrugged.

Well, there’s no harm in being careful. Even Park Seohyun once eavesdropped in secret, didn’t she?

I glanced suspiciously at the shadows. So this is the problem, even with all that skill.

Only after Kim Chaemin had separated the space with magic did he relax and continue.

“The magic Michel will reveal later and the one she’s using now work on the same principle. In fact, the public version is a degraded one.”

“Which one?”

“Obviously, the one that’s going to be made public.”

Kim Chaemin stretched as he explained.

His calm, steady explanation reminded me of the magic lectures I used to hear from Park Seohyun long ago.

…I’m not trying to compare them, but Kim Chaemin’s explanations were a bit easier to understand. Maybe that’s just what it means to be a teacher. As far as I know, Park Seohyun never had a teacher except her late grandfather, nor did she ever take on a student.

And not just her appearance—her personality was gloomy enough to inspire fear. She was called a witch for no other reason.

Now that Park Seohyun would never become that witch, I found myself wondering what kind of mage she would become in the future… Maybe this is why Father and my sister kept attending the academy.

“Look. Michel’s automaton magic is basically remote control, right?”

“There were similar magics before, but this one wasn’t too dependent on attributes, so it became popular.”

“This…”

Kim Chaemin laughed awkwardly. It was rare to see him laugh like that. What was this about?

“I tried it once.”

“Michel’s magic?”

“Yes.”

Kim Chaemin gave a sheepish smile, like a child who’d done something wrong and was checking for a reaction.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“…Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Why would I? Magic is magic, and Noah Michel is Noah Michel. The only reason I don’t use her magic is because I’m not a mage.”

“…So that’s why you use runes, sir?”

“Yes.”

At my words, Kim Chaemin’s face brightened. It was clear he hadn’t really been worried; he’d just been pretending.

Good grief. If I were going to complain about Michel’s magic, I wouldn’t use runes in the first place.

“So, what’s that magic like?”

“Ah, well, Michel did explain it, but honestly, it’s more of a sensory magic than her explanation lets on.”

“Sensory?”

“She warned that using it leaves the mage defenseless, remember?”

“Oh… right. She said not to use it unless it’s safe.”

Michel’s thesis didn’t explain any further, and the mages just accepted it. That’s how magic is. No matter how deeply I delved into magical theory, who was I to question a magic that was simply said to be that way?

It’s not like that’s the only magic that requires concentration…

“I thought maybe sharing senses with the puppet would make one’s mind scattered.”

“Sensory sharing… Yes, that’s right. It’s a kind of sensory sharing.”

Kim Chaemin explained with a subtle expression.

“Have you ever piloted a drone?”

“…Drones in this era are still in their infancy, so not really.”

“Ah, really. When you pilot a drone, you usually watch a screen, right? Normally?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, if you have good equipment, you can get more immersed, but basically, you’re watching a monitor and controlling it through equipment. You don’t become the drone itself.”

“…Does Michel’s magic let you become the drone?”

“Yes. It’s closer to that feeling. Even with the latest VR or whatever, you don’t actually lose your bodily senses.”

“And yet?”

“This is different. You lose control over your own body and become the drone. You move the drone’s parts as if you were moving your own arm. Naturally, if the drone gets damaged, you feel pain, too.”

“……”

“It’s not just automaton or sensory sharing—this is more like possession, don’t you think?”

Possession.

A word I’d never expected to hear used to describe magic. In a magical context, though, it made a certain kind of sense.

Kim Chaemin said this was the degraded version.

“…Then, the magic we saw in the dungeon?”

“If you possess a drone, does the drone become a person?”

“No.”

“Right? But Henry Lehmann, by possessing the drone, became something with Henry Lehmann’s characteristics.”

“……”

“We can’t confirm exactly what magic it was… since the dungeon’s gone. Maybe that’s why they destroyed the dungeon!”

Kim Chaemin shouted, sulking, then smacked his lips in disappointment.

“Judging by how those puppets looked almost like monsters, maybe they used a specific monster.”

“And the magic left in the puppet you retrieved disappeared once it left the dungeon, didn’t it? Maybe that’s also due to the monster’s properties.”

“That’s likely, isn’t it?”

Now the conversation circled back to the beginning. I understood why Kim Chaemin had insisted on the phrase “inside from inside the dungeon.”

“So, is it difficult to possess from outside the dungeon?”

“If it were possible, Michel would’ve controlled the dungeon. That’s exactly what Sandra and I are trying to do now.”

“Dungeon interference… Any progress?”

“Can’t just pluck out Mr. Han’s eye, can we?”

“Try negotiating with Mr. Han.”

Kim Chaemin burst out laughing at my words. I’d meant it as a joke, but knowing the temperament of mages, I realized he might have taken it seriously.

Noticing my concern, Kim Chaemin grinned mischievously.

“…Don’t make that kind of joke in front of Mr. Han.”

“I know, I know. If we’re stuck relying on someone’s eye, it’s not worth doing. Better to catch that, what was it, wish-granting lamp? Pluck every feather from that monster instead.”

But there was one thing Kim Chaemin was missing.

I told him what I had just realized.

“You said ‘inside from inside the dungeon,’ didn’t you?”

“Yes?”

“And Mr. Han has eyes that can see from outside into the inside.”

“The results aren’t precise, but I’d guess at least the eyes are close to being monsters.”

Kim Chaemin nodded.

The experiments involving Han Taekyung… or whatever they were, Gamble kept sending me regular reports. If it were magic, I could at least pretend to understand, but I knew nothing about magical engineering.

All I could do was wait for that genius to figure it out.

But even Sandra Gamble was missing the same thing as Kim Chaemin.

I wondered if they really hadn’t noticed, but then again, maybe they were so close that they simply didn’t see it. From what I’d heard, the two had grown up together like family.

Or maybe, just as they hadn’t told us, they didn’t think it was important enough to mention to Gamble. Honestly, that seemed more likely. Gamble, awakened or not, wasn’t the type to enter dungeons, so she wouldn’t have followed them in; in fact, she’d been protected to keep her away from Michel.

“There’s something I realized.”

“Yes?”

I wondered how I could break the news to Kim Chaemin with the least shock.

No matter how I thought about it, it seemed impossible.

“I don’t think interfering from outside the dungeon to inside is entirely impossible.”

“…Are you talking about the time Sam Bloom opened the dungeon?”

…That, too, I suppose.

“I considered that as well. Since a mage died, both the Association and the Academy investigated. It wasn’t a great investigation, though…”

Kim Chaemin clicked his tongue.

“Anyway, I think Sam Bloom didn’t so much open the dungeon as knock on it. The dungeon had to be there, too.”

“You call that knocking?”

“Like asking someone to open the door. We can’t confirm it, but probably the monster inside.”

White feathers.

“I think it might be something that came from the future.”

“…So there’s no way to confirm.”

“No, it’s impossible. Anyway, that’s how they concluded things. If I’d considered this possibility from the start and investigated, maybe… but looking into it now…”

“Well, that’s not what I was getting at. I wasn’t talking about Sam Bloom.”

“Oh, you weren’t?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Kim Chaemin’s eyes widened.

I braced myself for the shock to come.

“I mean Alex Hope.”

“Hope?”

“Yes.”

“The one sleeping in the infirmary?”

“Yes.”

“What about him?”

“He once moved from inside the dungeon to the outside.”

“……”

Kim Chaemin froze.

“Remember the forum, back then? Hope pulled Sam Bloom out. He grabbed him and ran. If he’d stayed until the dungeon disappeared, he would have been caught. There were so many hunters around.”

It was as if the entire hotel where the forum was held had been swallowed by the dungeon. Civilians were caught up in it, and the uproar lasted for quite some time.

Hope succeeded in snatching Sam Bloom from Hong Seokyoung. When the dungeon closed and we came out, we heard the news of Sam Bloom’s death. Hope was calmly mingling with the Australian hunters.

Even before that, Alex Hope, not even a mage, moved easily. He said it was a lingering ability from his days as a fairy, as a monster—interfering with people’s perceptions.

So I hadn’t thought much of it…

But that day, Hope definitely moved from inside the dungeon to outside. Without using a gate.

“Isn’t this the interference you’re talking about, Mr. Kim?”

“……”

“From inside the dungeon to the outside. From outside to the inside.”

“……”

“Come to think of it, Hope might be the first case of interference from inside to outside. Whether he was parasitizing a fetus or whatever, the very act of coming out is a kind of interference, isn’t it?”

“……”

“So… Mr. Kim?”

“……”

“Mr. Kim?”