Retire 504
by Cristae504 Sun (1)
The structure of Mont-Saint-Michel’s library consists of a single ground floor, called the lobby, and five basement levels. The underground floors may go even deeper. At least, that’s what has been revealed as of twenty years later.
Of these, the main reason the dungeon came to be called the library is the second and third basement levels. Bookshelves thick with the scent of dust. Shelves crammed with books.
There are dungeons where you might find a book or two, but nowhere else is there a place with so many books.
As Kim Chaemin walked toward the arched doorway, her gaze was repeatedly drawn to the shelves.
It was the mages who coveted Mont-Saint-Michel. Countless mages wanted the books said to have taught Noah Michel magic. To be honest, no one really knows if those books truly taught him magic. The reason Michel awakened as an archmage in the dungeon may have been entirely due to his own talent.
But the books in the library truly do contain magic. Some of the runes Michel published are thought to have come from the library.
Hope, the only one among us who had actually visited Mont-Saint-Michel, said this place was just like the library, only smaller in scale.
…Were the books the same? What could be inside those books?
“……”
Even I, who wasn’t a mage, was curious—how much more must Kim Chaemin want to open them?
But though her hands twitched several times, Kim Chaemin never stopped walking.
Perhaps because the place was so similar, even the dust on the floor, which should have attacked people, simply drifted like ordinary dust. The heavy, musty smell of dust seemed far from healthy.
One of the few safe zones in Mont-Saint-Michel’s library is the lobby with the gate, and the staircases connecting each floor. Whether this fake library followed the same rules, I couldn’t say.
In the dungeon, the library floors are the second and third basements. According to Funes and Hope, the stairs going up and down were at opposite ends of each floor.
In this fake library, there was only one staircase. Whether this space reproduced the second or third basement, and whether the single staircase led up or down, we would have to find out for ourselves.
“……”
A staircase going up.
My father looked at us. Only after confirming there was nothing wrong did he ascend the stairs. We followed him cautiously.
The silence was still suffocating.
Even with five hunters climbing the stairs, not a single footstep was heard.
Behind my father, who led the way, was Hope. Fake or not, he was the only one familiar with this structure.
To be honest, if Michel had modified the dungeon’s structure, there was no way he wouldn’t know we were here. Some had even suggested we should just charge through instead of moving so cautiously.
But in the end, caution won out. Our opponent was an archmage. Who knew what might be waiting on the upper floor?
Not that I expected Michel’s attacks, or puppets… At worst, perhaps a feathered subordinate like Sam Bloom would appear. In the very worst case, Lehmann would be waiting.
But what awaited us at the top of the stairs was a sight none of us had anticipated.
“Ugh…!”
Kim Chaemin couldn’t help but pinch her nose.
For awakened ones with heightened senses, the stench was enough to bore into the brain.
Kim Chaemin’s breathing grew ragged. I glanced back in concern, but she nodded that she was alright. Of all of us, she had the least dungeon experience. It was understandable that she wasn’t used to sights like this.
Not that I was used to them, either.
Hope, his face ashen, retreated to the very back. He had a surprisingly delicate side.
With Hope moving back, Han Taekyung stepped forward. Wearing a perfectly calm expression, he moved to my father’s side. I could glimpse a bit of the path Han Taekyung had walked. He’d struggled so much when the mana was torn, but now showed no sign of distress.
Well, my father’s face hadn’t changed a bit, either. He gestured to Han Taekyung, who quickly moved his hands.
‘Not real.’
That much was obvious at a glance.
The bodies staining the dust red on the floor—none of them were intact.
But not in the way that hunter corpses found in dungeons are usually incomplete, bitten, or crushed.
Everything was simply vague. You could tell there were eyes, a nose, a mouth, but the features were indistinct, like a poorly carved wooden doll. The hair was lumped together, like on a cheap plastic toy.
The bodies were the same. Arms. Legs. The joints bent in ways that mimicked a real person. The hands, which required the most detail, were just clumps.
Such clumsy bodies—or dolls—littered the floor. Some were missing arms, some legs. Some were just torsos, and hands or feet whose origins were unclear filled the empty spaces.
They reminded me of the piles of dolls in the Busan dungeon, or in the Cactus Mirage where the black faeries had been.
But unlike those, these didn’t move. And a red liquid, looking like blood, covered them. At a glance, it was so dark it could easily be mistaken for real blood.
Was it real blood?
I didn’t know. But the smell—the stench of rotting flesh and blood—felt all too real.
Kim Chaemin carefully conjured a rose in her hand and tossed it into the red mist.
Perhaps she’d cast a levitation spell in that brief moment, for the rose floated gently down like a petal. I wondered if this time, unlike the floor below, the infamous library fog had been recreated—but it wasn’t so. The rose landed softly on the floor, untouched.
My father carefully stepped further into the library.
“……”
The dust didn’t move. My father raised his hand, signaling us to advance.
Walking among the stinking dolls was torment.
Even with my nose numb, the stench didn’t fade. In desperation, I rummaged through my subspace and pulled out some old cloth to cover my nose and mouth—the same cloth I’d used in the crocodile dungeon where we’d found Jeong Yuhwa’s body and my brother’s hidden sword. It was better than nothing, but not by much.
The red dust scattered weakly with every step we took, but stretched out behind us like blood.
This floor was larger than the one below. I’d heard that the second and third basements of the real Mont-Saint-Michel library were about the same size.
…Wait.
I looked back at the path we’d walked.
Corpses—or dolls, or whatever they were that looked like corpses—were sprawled in every direction. But all the scattered limbs pointed one way.
I saw a doll with severed legs. One hand braced against the floor, the other stretched out, as if crawling. A desperate posture.
The only survivor of Mont-Saint-Michel’s library, Noah Michel, had given testimony about the dungeon only to hunters attempting to clear it.
According to Funes, when the dungeon first formed, people were on the third floor. Following the instructions of the mages and hunters caught up with them, they moved upward, passing through the second floor to the first. There, they were attacked by a tree-shaped monster.
Most were civilians, unable to withstand the monster’s attack. Fortunately, the monster was rooted and couldn’t move, so they managed to escape. They descended to the second floor, but this time, the library’s dust, which had let them pass before, attacked.
A handful who barely survived that attack fled to the stairs between the first and second floors.
I looked at the direction the dolls seemed so desperately to be crawling. It was the opposite of the stairs we’d climbed. Since this place was smaller than the real library, if I thought about it that way…
I looked at the red dust on the floor.
I smelled the stench.
I’d heard that the dust in the library could eat away at a person’s body, like mold or insects.
I didn’t know how many had been devoured by the tree monster on the first basement, but since there were mages and hunters, perhaps the casualties weren’t as great as one might think.
If so, most would have made it back alive to the lower floor. And then died there.
Time passes even in a dungeon.
What happened to the bodies left behind by the dust? How long had Noah Michel been trapped in the library?
What was this stench?
What were these broken dolls?
Perhaps.
Perhaps this scene was Noah Michel’s…
“Noah.”
It was Hope’s soft murmur that broke my thoughts.
While I was looking back, Hope was staring straight ahead. I followed his gaze.
At the end of the path the dolls seemed so desperately to crawl toward, a slender figure stood.
Golden hair, cascading in waves like a waterfall. Even in this space filled with the stench of rot and blood, it shone with a clarity almost refreshing. Hair as brilliant as the sun. Cheeks flushed with health. Freckles dusted across the bridge of the nose. Eyes that curved softly.
A long lace skirt reaching to the calves. A soft ivory sweater. A shawl draped over her shoulders.
The girl I’d seen in Marseilles. Not a mage, but a simple, innocent smile better suited to a straw hat in a field of sunflowers.
“Hello, fairy.”
Noah Michel whispered sweetly to Hope.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
That radiant smile didn’t suit the heap of broken dolls. It was even more out of place amid the blood-red mist.
But Noah Michel stood tall within it. The red mist curled around the hem of her white skirt, as if spattered with blood.
“Look at this. I couldn’t recreate everything with the power I had left, but I did a pretty good job, don’t you think? I made sure to get the important parts right.”
Her dreamy tone, as if floating or walking through a dream, was unchanged.
Michel stepped forward slowly, her movements as graceful as a dance. Her gaze passed over my father, Kim Chaemin, Han Taekyung, and me, but always returned to Hope.
It felt as if she didn’t care about anyone but Hope. And indeed, she smiled brightly as she continued.
“I believed you weren’t dead. There’s no way a fairy like you would die so easily.”
“Did you miss me, Noah?”
Just like Michel, Hope replied in a voice so sweet it was almost cloying.
I never knew he even had the vocal cords for a voice like that. It wasn’t just sweet—how to describe it? Like soothing a fussy baby, or perhaps even kinder than that.
“If you missed me, you should have said so. I would have come sooner.”
That voice made me feel small, weak, and foolish. Even though it wasn’t directed at me.
“If I’d known you wanted to see me, I would have come right away.”
If Hope had always spoken to Michel in that tone, I could understand why she hated him so much.
“Were you very lonely? Playing with dolls like this.”
So that was where he’d learned to summon monsters by calling for his mother—such skills weren’t conjured out of thin air.