Retire 508

508 In a Dream (3)

“Let’s look on the bright side.”

We walked along the roses. Aside from his hair being a bit tousled, Kim Chaemin looked perfectly fine as he and Han Taekyung greeted us.

Kim Chaemin, still maintaining his magic, looked a little tired, but he grinned confidently, insisting he was fine.

He said this was the best way to minimize Michel’s interference.

With that kind of conviction, there was no room to argue. I told him to speak up if it got to be too much, and Kim Chaemin laughed as if I’d just told a ridiculous joke.

Then he said this:

Let’s look on the bright side.

He wasn’t the type to say something pointless in a situation like this.

“Right now, Michel has made contact with the dungeon’s core power source.”

“There’s no core, though.”

“Even without a core, he’s using that power!”

I didn’t know the details of the process, but I could follow the reasoning.

“He’s changing the internal structure of the dungeon at will—look! I didn’t even know this could be changed!”

“I didn’t know either. So what’s the bright side?”

Kim Chaemin snorted.

Even in this situation, seeing him act the same as always was oddly reassuring.

“If we can figure out how Michel is controlling the dungeon, it’ll be a huge help to Sandra’s research.”

“…Dr. Gamble’s research?”

“I can’t say for sure what the exact causal relationship is, but that’s always been the case, so it doesn’t matter.”

It was a sharp point. No one really knew how dungeons worked. We only knew the facts, not the principles. All humanity had learned so far was that destroying the core made the dungeon disappear.

There were other minor facts, like the dungeon actually being an emergency escape spaceship, but that wasn’t common knowledge, so let’s leave it aside.

“At least, it’s certain that Michel has detonated dungeons before. He’s done it several times.”

Kim Chaemin looked me straight in the eye, as if to make sure I was really listening. He was making it clear with his whole body that what he was about to say was important.

“Yes…”

“So what have we learned here?”

“That you can drive out monsters by detonating a dungeon?”

“No, that’s just a dungeon break… Think carefully.”

I usually didn’t say things like this, but I protested to Kim Chaemin.

“I don’t know much about mana engineering…”

“This isn’t engineering! Seriously, none of you get it?”

Unable to hide his frustration, Kim Chaemin looked around at the others.

Unfortunately, all of our guild members were pretty much the same. Han Taekyung was polishing his sunglasses and pretending not to listen, Hope yawned openly, and Father was no different—he averted his gaze and pretended to whistle.

Kim Chaemin let out a deep sigh, as if lamenting the fate of having to save the world with people like us, then said,

“Fine, fine. I’ll start with the principle Sandra and I were working from. The idea came from that forum last year, the one Mr. Woo and Master attended. The dungeon that Sam Bloom opened… Alex, you were there too, right?”

“…It’s good manners not to ask about a man’s past.”

“How did you manage to pick up only the worst habits from your teacher?”

“What did I do!”

“Anyway.”

Kim Chaemin ignored Han Taekyung.

“According to Mr. Woo and Alex, that dungeon was originally closed. More precisely, it had run out of power.”

Kim Chaemin looked at Hope. Maybe all the time he’d spent being dragged around by Kim Chaemin and Gamble had paid off, because Hope quickly nodded and added an explanation.

“Uh… It’s not possible in every dungeon, but you can control the doors to some extent. The basic system is, if there’s not enough power, the first thing it does is open the doors.”

“But that dungeon blocked the gate.”

“Instead, it probably drew power from other parts of the dungeon. When I was running low on power, I even considered just opening the door and letting myself die.”

If you’d die whether you stayed or left, it was a matter of personal choice.

“See? What does that tell us?”

“……?”

“…That you can close the gate using the dungeon’s own power. If there’s no external stimulus, the gate won’t even appear on the surface of the Earth.”

Kim Chaemin gave up on getting an answer.

“The inside of a dungeon isn’t fixed. This has been proven now. To skip the complicated explanation you wouldn’t understand anyway, if you can access the control system, you can redirect the power however you want. For example, you could hide the gate so no one can get in or out, from inside or outside.”

“…Hide it?”

“Look. When this place turned into a maze, we lost track of where the gate was.”

The universe and the eye on the ceiling.

The endlessly sprawling maze.

In truth, it wasn’t as big as the real Mont Saint Michel. It was bigger than the library floor, though. But if Kim Chaemin weren’t here, and if we didn’t have to climb the maze walls, we could have found our way out quickly.

The problem, as Kim Chaemin pointed out, was that we didn’t know where the gate was.

Normally, the location of the gate doesn’t change inside a dungeon. Or rather, the terrain doesn’t change. There might be traps, but you’d never see the sea turn into a mountain or anything like that.

But since we entered this dungeon, this was the third terrain. Space, library, maze. If you counted the one Moby originally described, it was the fourth.

In Mont Saint Michel, the maze is on the fourth basement level. If we went up, would we find the library floor where the gate had been? Or something else?

“What if we could hide the gate like Michel? Not in this dungeon, but in another. Imagine a dungeon crawling with monsters. What’s a dungeon break?”

“…It’s when monsters come pouring out through the dungeon gate.”

“Monsters can only leave the dungeon through the gate. If you don’t know where the door is, even if the power runs out, they can’t get out.”

I finally realized why Kim Chaemin wanted us to sit and listen instead of chasing after Michel. I’d wondered why he was talking about difficult research when we were already short on time to find Michel.

Father and Han Taekyung also stopped pretending not to understand.

“Of course, the ultimate goal is to close a dungeon without having to go inside. But if you can hijack the power and change the dungeon, wouldn’t that be useful anywhere? At the very least, you could wipe out dangerous dungeon terrain completely!”

Kim Chaemin clenched his fist and punched the air, as if beating up an invisible enemy. Or, more specifically, as if Noah Michel were right in front of him.

“That’s why we need to figure out how Michel is interfering with the dungeon.”

“…So this is the main point?”

“I told you, it’s the bright side!”

Kim Chaemin insisted firmly.

“We need to be certain that Michel really is interfering with the dungeon. Sam Bloom only found the gate by forcing it open with an explosion—he didn’t create a new dungeon or change the terrain to isolate people.”

“That’s… true. They just got caught up in the creation.”

“I’m not saying we have to make Michel talk. Of course, that would be best.”

Kim Chaemin looked at the arched doorway at the end of the maze.

There were stairs going up and down. Assuming this place was modeled after Mont Saint Michel’s structure, we decided to head upward.

The gate had originally been on the third floor, and given Michel’s obsession with maintaining the library’s books and dolls, it was unlikely he’d gone elsewhere.

“If it doesn’t work, try again—force him to change the terrain on a large scale. Or repairs are good, too. Like Alex did, damage things so Michel has to keep fixing the dungeon.”

“Will that tell us anything?”

“I don’t know. But all three of you, watch as closely as you can.”

Kim Chaemin urged me, Hope, and Han Taekyung.

“Mana flow, or whatever. I tried to track it earlier, but there wasn’t enough time. I need time to analyze it. We can’t exactly ask Michel to take it slow…”

“…So you want us to keep making him repeat it. Understood.”

Honestly?

I understood Kim Chaemin’s point, more or less, on a gut level. I was the one asking for this, and it was up to Kim Chaemin and Gamble to carry it out.

Of course, I wasn’t a cruel employer, so if the researchers needed something, I tried to accommodate them. It’s not like they were suddenly asking me to reveal the cruel truths of the world, and causing a ruckus in a dungeon was par for the course in a raid anyway.

Having a concrete task to focus on, instead of dithering over what to do about Michel, was a relief.

“But, if I may…”

Just before we started up the stairs, Han Taekyung cautiously raised his hand.

“Are we just going to leave that eye alone?”

The eye spinning on the ceiling.

“It’s not attacking us, is it?”

“Still, it’s unsettling.”

“Is there something suspicious about it?”

“The way it looks is suspicious enough.”

“……”

A sharp observation.

I looked at Father.

“What should we do? Honestly, it wouldn’t be hard to attack it from here.”

“What does our raid leader think?”

“…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just made it up. You’ve been planning our strategy all along, so you deserve a fancy title.”

“I don’t need one.”

Still, I looked up at the eye again.

Sometimes it spun, sometimes it paused and twitched, but it showed no aggression.

At first, I thought it was watching us, but that wasn’t it. Even now, the golden iris was pointed away.

What about the one that had floated behind Michel? That one spun too, but basically followed Michel’s gaze.

“…Let’s leave it alone for now. At least it isn’t attacking us. If we mess with it and it explodes, it’ll be a pain.”

“You think it’s a bomb?”

“With Michel, it’s possible. His magic is a bad match for Mr. Kim’s, so… it would be hard to block.”

Michel’s magic, at its core, burned everything. Remembering the magic I’d seen in Marseille, Kim Chaemin pursed his lips, but said nothing more.

We cautiously entered the arched doorway. It was a pitch-black space with not a hint of light.

Just before climbing the stairs, I asked Kim Chaemin,

“When we get out of the dungeon, ask Moby, too.”

“Huh? Ask what?”

“How you can change the structure of a dungeon. I don’t know about other monsters, but a monster of that level would probably know.”

“…Oh. Right?”

“I can’t be sure, and even if we learn it, I don’t know if we can use it. But if there’s a way to communicate, it’s worth asking. Besides, there’s plenty else to ask about.”

Like questions about items that let you go back to the past.

Though there was no guarantee we’d get a straight answer.

“All right. Enough talking.”

My mind, which had started to get tangled, was cut off by Father’s voice.

“Alex. You’ve provoked Michel enough for now.”

“Got it.”

“Unless things get urgent, follow Mr. Kim’s advice and move carefully.”

Father looked up directly at the eye on the ceiling, which had spun around to face us again.

“Let’s go.”

The stairs.

And before us, the maze appeared once more. A beautiful rose maze, with Kim Chaemin’s roses still covering the walls.