Retire 485
by Cristae485 Sinking Swamp (1)
November 30th.
Hailey Lawton was dead.
There was still debate over whether it was truly Hailey Lawton or Luise Kruger, since Hailey Lawton had been a real person as well.
But this was easily resolved. Hailey Lawton had family. A DNA test conclusively proved that the Hailey Lawton of Cactus Mirage was, in fact, Luise Kruger. Lawton’s family raised a huge commotion, demanding to know what had happened to their Hailey, but that was another matter—one for the American authorities, not us.
Still, the chances that the real Hailey Lawton was alive were slim. No one even knew when the switch had occurred.
After things settled down, Kim Chaemin gave a long-winded explanation of his achievement—how he’d managed to strike a blow against Lehmann.
I understood about half of it, and the rest went over my head. In any case, Kim Chaemin had managed, using my mana as a medium, to pin down Lehmann’s magic within Kruger’s body. He broke the spell, pierced through its traces, and struck Lehmann’s true form.
‘Ahaha! You should have seen the look on that bastard’s face when he recoiled!’
‘Ah, yes… I did feel the mana pulling back.’
‘He was terrified, I tell you, terrified! It must have been fun in Busan, huh? Did he think I’d fall for it twice?’
Kim Chaemin had laughed heartily, as if he’d been holding onto that memory for some time.
Still, Lehmann was Lehmann, and Kruger was something else.
Honestly, I—no, we—had not expected Kruger to survive that situation.
Daniel, who helped recover Kruger, raised a fundamental question.
‘What… is this? Is this really a person? Not a monster?’
Kruger, sprawled on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, didn’t move at all. We hadn’t inflicted a fatal wound on Lehmann, yet blood was pooling around Kruger’s body. I didn’t know exactly how Lehmann’s magic worked, but breaking the spell hadn’t restored Kruger’s body to its original state.
Her face and the muscular build had reverted to their original form, but beyond that… White feathers still remained on Kruger’s body. When Lehmann had inhabited it, the feathers had seemed to grow; now, on Kruger, they looked as if they were embedded in her skin. The blood was seeping from those wounds.
And the newly sprouted arm had withered, dried up like a brittle branch…
Even in that state, Kruger was still breathing.
For various reasons, the incident was announced as a mage attack, but there were some who said it should really be called a monster attack.
No one could look at Kruger and call her human.
But then again, she didn’t look entirely like a monster, either. Aside from the feathers, the remnants of Henry Lehmann’s body scattered here and there, and the golden dust clinging to her skin, she did resemble a human.
‘Well, some say fairies look human, too. Not that I agree,’ Han Taekyung commented as he looked at Kruger.
So the debate continued—should Luise Kruger be called a human, or a monster?
There was still no answer. The surest way to know was to ask her directly. To interrogate her, Luise Kruger had to survive.
It might have been fortunate for Kruger that Daniel was nearby. As soon as he realized she wasn’t dead, he immediately tried to heal her. He couldn’t close all her wounds at once, but he managed to keep her alive until she could be transported to a hospital.
But after that, Kruger never regained consciousness.
“Kruger is reported dead.”
“…I figured as much. Her body was used like a puppet. Like the dolls in the Busan dungeon.”
“It was the same with the dolls in the Mole Dungeon.”
“Kruger’s joints didn’t twist quite like that, but it’s strange magic, all the same. It’s odd that her body could withstand it at all.”
Kim Chaemin spoke calmly.
Having seen what Kruger had become, it wasn’t an unexpected outcome. In any case, Kruger wasn’t some innocent victim who’d been caught up in things without knowing anything.
“Ugh. Enough. Let’s set aside the headache-inducing talk for a moment.”
“Because there’s another headache waiting?”
“Argh!”
Kim Chaemin shouted in frustration.
Considering he was the one behind the wheel, it wasn’t exactly reassuring. He pouted.
“Let the people left in America handle it.”
“Can we trust them?”
“……”
“It’s the Master, Mr. Han, and Hope.”
“Well, the principal can get things done when he has to…”
That was true enough.
Sometimes he acted more childish than Woo Irok, but he was still reliable. Actually, well… I was a little worried.
Would my father’s blood pressure survive dealing with Han Taekyung and Hope?
He’d lasted twenty years, so he’d probably be fine this time, too.
“What can we do? There’s no turning back now.”
“Oh, don’t say it like that! So grim!”
“It’s the truth. Want to go back to America?”
“Ugh, seriously.”
Kim Chaemin grumbled as he drove.
The car traveled down a familiar road. Still unpaved, bumpy, and dusty, with fields of reeds stretching out on either side. It would be a long time before the bustling city I remembered sprang up here.
At the end of the road stood a gleaming white building. I could see a grassy athletic field and flower beds bursting with color. The students gathered on the field craned their necks to watch the approaching car.
Everyone recognized one of Kim Chaemin’s many yellow cars.
“Teacher!”
“Is your business trip over?”
“We missed you!”
“Sir!”
“Teacher!!”
The children quickly surrounded the car.
I waved at them half-heartedly, then looked up at Yangseong High.
The white walls dazzled in the sunlight.
As if untouched by the storms of the world.
“Ah, yes. Welcome back.”
Unlike the boisterous welcome from the teenagers, the young man in his twenties greeted us with dead eyes.
I’d mentioned it before returning to Korea, but I repeated myself anyway.
“I can’t stay long.”
“I know. So let’s get this over with.”
Gamble glared at me with an exhausted look, but the sharpness in his eyes didn’t last long.
Either way, I knew he was busy. Even complaining takes energy.
A few days ago, Gamble had said he’d found a clue about the problematic rune. Surprisingly, it was Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo who’d discovered it.
I didn’t know whether to be more surprised that the pattern on the fairy’s wing really was a rune, or at the growth of those two young mages. The latter was good news; the former only brought more headaches.
I wasn’t sure whether I’d hoped it was a rune or not. If it was, it was a lead; if it wasn’t, that would have been easier. But if it was part of the enemy’s plan, we had to figure it out. And if we could not only discover it but also interfere, all the better—especially considering the possibility my father had mentioned.
Even while we were in America, we’d kept in touch with Gamble by every means possible—phone, messages, video calls. From sorting the list my sister had left to tracking Atlas’s suspicious movements, I knew I was giving Gamble a lot of work, but there was no one else I could trust with it. We were simply short-staffed, and there was no solution.
So when he said he’d figured out the rune, I decided to make a brief trip back to Korea. There were security concerns, but I also didn’t feel comfortable leaving the school unattended for so long. And no matter how advanced modern communication was, nothing beat checking things in person.
Since this was a matter of runes and magic, Kim Chaemin naturally came along…
“This is the new rune Jinwoo drew.”
Gamble handed a thick stack of papers to me and Kim Chaemin.
“He compared the two runes and tried to draw patterns that could actually work in practice.”
“Did he test them?”
“No. If he had, this stack wouldn’t be so thick. He thought about trying, but who knows what kind of rune it is? With no teachers around, he didn’t want to take the risk.”
I nodded.
“We ran those runes through the mana clock database. Of course, nothing came up.”
“But you caught resonance, didn’t you?”
“With my improved! database system, yes!! But that’s as far as it goes.”
I looked at the outer strokes shared by what must have been hundreds of runes.
The rune of resonance.
“No matter what, it looks like they never revealed such a valuable rune to humans.”
“But they did reveal one, didn’t they?”
“Michel used runes himself, so he must have found it inconvenient without the auxiliary runes.”
It was the mana barrier rune that had changed how we thought about runes. But later, the five auxiliary runes had an even greater impact on modern dungeon raiding. Not that the barrier rune lost its importance, but the auxiliary runes had become essential.
Auxiliary runes were just that—auxiliary. Inside a dungeon, they made fragile runes last a bit longer. They were used outside dungeons, too. But in stable conditions, the restrictions eased a little.
If you didn’t need to draw them on paper, all the better. Hunters would inscribe waterproof runes on their combat suits. Mages would embroider amplification runes in large letters on their backs to boost their magic.
As for the fairies… well, whether they dyed their wing feathers or tattooed them, the patterns were at least semi-permanent. If so, they wouldn’t have needed other runes to increase durability.
The resonance rune was clearly drawn for a purpose. Like every other rune in the world.
“The problem is how to verify it.”
I looked at Kim Chaemin.
We’d tested runes before. The ones drawn on corpses in the Bangidong dungeon.
But those had already been activated, hadn’t they?
We’d only tried it because we knew they wouldn’t explode or anything.
Kim Chaemin took the bundle of temporary runes from me and examined them.
“…Do you have any idea what they are?”
Seeing his serious face, hope flickered in my heart. Hadn’t Kim Chaemin solved most of our headaches so far? He’d even struck back at Lehmann, just as he’d promised.
Maybe, just maybe, this talented, capable, and efficient archmage could see through the mystery of these runes at a glance!
“Of course not.”
“……”
“…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s nothing.”
Of course.
Kim Chaemin pouted when he saw my face.
“Honestly. Mr. Woo knows more about runes than I do.”
“But if you were a great archmage, I thought you’d know at a glance.”
“That would make me a psychic, not a mage. If I could do that, I’d be running a fortune-telling stall.”
“Psychics don’t use mats.”
Gamble, still looking half-dead, joined the conversation.
“I didn’t mention this before since you were coming to Korea, but…”
“Yes?”
“There is a way.”
“…What?”
“It’s not a perfect method, but… for now, it’s the most promising. And safe.”