Retire 518
by Cristae518 To Remain a Magician (2)
Twenty-some years ago.
A dungeon appeared at the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey, a small island in France.
Hundreds of tourists were caught up in it. Most were civilians, with only a handful of Awakened and magicians among them.
Everything that happened inside was known solely through the testimony of the sole survivor, Noah Michelle. Given Michelle’s age at the time, her account was never fully trusted. In fact, it wasn’t until a year after the incident that Noah Michelle first spoke about what had happened in the dungeon.
She was still a child, but apparently old enough to be considered a full-fledged magician—at least in the eyes of the magicians who had been protecting her.
If it had been any other child, a raid party entering Mont-Saint-Michel based on the testimony of someone too young to even write their own name… Well, that story has been told enough times.
As we followed Hope, we encountered more dolls.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if “dolls” was the right word anymore. Some were made only of light, and, well… it didn’t seem as if they were moving entirely according to Michelle’s will.
If Kim Chae-min were here, he could probably explain it in more detail. As Hope said, even alone, Kim Chae-min was diligently investigating Michelle’s magic or the dungeon itself. The occasional strengthening of the rose scent was proof of that.
“…It’s getting worse.”
My father frowned.
His gaze was fixed on the crack Hope had just reached into.
At first, when we started following Hope through the dungeon, these cracks were rare or invisible. Now, there were so many that Hope didn’t even need to tear open space himself—there were enough to choose from.
“Our moving around like this is probably making it worse, too…”
Hope sniffed the air.
“My nose must be numb by now. Can you still smell roses?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Not here. Let’s go this way!”
With so many cracks, Hope didn’t have to check every one. Han Tae-kyung swept his arm wide.
“I can see rose petals here. Isn’t this the first time we’ve seen petals?”
“Petals?”
“Can you see Mr. Kim?”
“No. Just the same as before. The child-shaped one.”
My father clicked his tongue briefly.
We squeezed ourselves, now with practiced ease, through the crack Han Tae-kyung had found.
Sure enough, just as Han Tae-kyung said, there were rose petals. Like the other dolls, a few crimson petals were tangled in the cloud-like hair of the child running somewhere in a hurry.
Fluffy golden down fluttered past us. The magic still did not attack us. It didn’t even acknowledge us.
Fragments of shattered memories.
It felt unpleasant, as if I’d been made privy, without permission, to the secret someone least wanted to reveal. Even if that someone was Noah Michelle. No, perhaps especially because it was Noah Michelle, I disliked the truths pieced together.
It was like watching a film you knew would end in tragedy.
Fundamentally, a child’s testimony is not accepted as evidence. A child’s memories are easily distorted, and they can lie without even knowing they are lying.
Noah Michelle’s testimony, too, was not accepted as fact. But it was referenced. Later, the accounts of hunters who returned from the Mont-Saint-Michel library lent it further weight.
We filled in the gaps in Michelle’s account with what Hope had heard directly from Noah Michelle and the “king” of the dungeon. Since the magician in the Ark had continued her insane research, no one doubted the claim that she had sacrificed everyone else, including her parents.
But perhaps we should have doubted.
At the time, Michelle was at an age where being carried in her parents’ arms was more natural than walking. Young enough to be deceived by the words of a beautiful, cruel fairy.
“Good grief, just how far has Mr. Kim gone? How are we supposed to find the gate like this?”
My father grumbled as he crossed through a crack.
“Next time, try tearing it vertically instead of sideways. I need to watch my joints at my age.”
“If a hunter your age needs to worry about joints, maybe it’s time to retire.”
“Hey now. I’m not short like you, so I have to bend down a lot more.”
Han Tae-kyung gaped in disbelief.
“What’s height got to do with anything!”
“It’s just a fact.”
“I’m about average, you know?”
“Did I say otherwise? Still, you’re shorter than me.”
“Who’s taller than you, Master!”
Han Tae-kyung protested, looking wronged. I couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that no one seemed tense anymore.
Maybe we just didn’t want to waste energy being nervous. Michelle didn’t seem likely to attack, and all we could do was follow Hope and search for Kim Chae-min.
“If you think about it, it’s all his fault! He tears space to fit his own height because he’s short!”
“Me? I’m going to get taller! I haven’t stopped growing like you, senior!”
“What are you talking about? You’ve been the same height all year. If you were going to grow, you’d have done it already. Look at our kids—Oh Hyun-wook, he shot up like a bean sprout…”
Hope opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it. He must have realized that whatever he said would just sound like a lame excuse.
I’d never really thought about height… Who was the shortest in the guild? Was Hope shorter than Kim Chae-min? I always remembered Kim Chae-min dragging Hope around, so regardless of their actual heights, Hope just seemed shorter.
Hope shook his head and checked the next crack. With the rose scent now joined by petals, it seemed likely Kim Chae-min was close. I wasn’t sure how this dungeon was structured, but it seemed like… a series of rooms with no doors, maybe. As if Michelle were calculating things to confirm what had really happened at Mont-Saint-Michel.
“At this point…”
Hope tore open several nearby cracks.
“I think the only thing fixed in the dungeon is the gate.”
“Fixed?”
“The gate’s location doesn’t change. Even if you remodel a house, it’s hard to move the front door, right?”
“That’s true…”
My father and I helped Hope tear open other cracks. We weren’t as skilled as he was, but with weapons, we could manage a rough imitation.
He’d said he was fully human now, but I still didn’t know how much of him remained inhuman.
“Everything else is unstable, so if we keep poking at the dungeon like this, it won’t be able to hold its structure. I told you—the dungeon is breaking apart.”
“So the gate will appear?”
“Probably? That’s the most likely outcome right now. No matter how out of her mind Noah is, I doubt she’d show us the gate… especially me.”
“…….”
“Ah. Here it is.”
A few rose petals drifted through the gap Hope had just torn open.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Who said you could think?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Am I not allowed to think?”
“You always say you don’t want to.”
“…….”
Han Tae-kyung fell silent at my father’s jab.
I was curious how he’d respond, but Han Tae-kyung just ignored the question.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah, yeah. Did you come up with something good?”
“I don’t know if it’s good… I don’t really care, and I don’t know much about this stuff, and it’s the kind of needlessly complicated setup you only see in movies, right?”
Han Tae-kyung’s words grew longer.
Even my father, Hope, and I stopped tearing through cracks in search of roses and looked at Han Tae-kyung.
“It’s kind of embarrassing, actually.”
“Just say it already.”
I hurried him along, annoyed by his bashful face as he scratched his cheek. Han Tae-kyung just shrugged, unbothered.
“Why, hasn’t time always been tangled up in all this?”
I looked at Han Tae-kyung with suspicion. From the Las Vegas hotel—no, even at the Yangseong High meeting—he’d always dodged and pretended not to know anything. Even when it became impossible to deny in Las Vegas, he had stubbornly looked away.
Why bring it up now?
“And before the fish monster appeared, didn’t you go to school with Mr. Kim? To find out what the pattern on the wings meant.”
But unexpectedly, Han Tae-kyung continued calmly.
“Junior, didn’t you say the boss in Mont-Saint-Michel had also gone back to the past?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah.”
“Do you know when?”
“…Before they even tried to escape using the dungeon. Pretty early on.”
Han Tae-kyung checked a few more facts with Hope, mostly about the fairy at Mont-Saint-Michel.
My father and I had heard that story when we first met Hope, but now that I thought about it, we’d never explained it to Han Tae-kyung.
“Hm. So, here’s what I was thinking.”
Han Tae-kyung spoke slowly as he crossed through a crack.
Michelle’s golden magic still flickered.
There were minor differences, but the scenes shown by the magic didn’t vary much. Usually, a child appeared. Sometimes, figures who seemed to be her parents showed up.
Most of their actions overlapped with those of the dolls tangled together in the library of light. If the parents were present, they always picked up the child. The most common sight was them running, glancing back as if being chased. Even when the child was alone, it was the same. There were many scenes of her taking out or reading books, like the doll I first saw, but often she was running in a panic.
“I still don’t know exactly how the runes work, but we’re assuming they were used to gather information from outside, right?”
“…That’s right.”
“Even if that annoying fairy went back to the past early on.”
Han Tae-kyung emphasized “early on.”
“The dungeon didn’t appear right away, did it? Dungeons have a long history.”
“…So?”
“The dungeon doesn’t just pop up here and there. You said earlier, junior, that the gate is fixed.”
“…….”
“So, let’s sum up. There’s a monster that, one way or another, has found a way to check changing information in a repeating timeline. And there will always be a dungeon at Mont-Saint-Michel in France. Time was turned back—well, not exactly turned back, but traveled to the past. But let’s call it turned back, because even if you don’t go back yourself, others are affected by that time.”
Han Tae-kyung’s eyes had been glimmering gold ever since entering the dungeon. Without his sunglasses, it was even more noticeable.
“If you didn’t know time was changing, it wouldn’t matter. But that creepy monster knew… and in front of a monster that knows time is looping, hundreds of innocent people—‘natives,’ as they call them—are dropped in every time.”
“…….”
“What would you do, senior?”
I checked inside the crack. There was no sign of Kim Chae-min’s roses.
I didn’t answer Han Tae-kyung’s question. I realized that the answer was, quite literally, right before our eyes.
“If it were me, hmm… I’d try everything. It’s the starting point, after all. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and snag a conveniently manipulable archmage.”