Retire 527

527 The Human’s Child (1)

“Uuuuuugh…”

Gamble sprawled across the conference room table, making a strange noise. The way he scratched at his short-cropped hair looked genuinely painful.

I watched him with a rather cheerful heart. I thought I was hiding it, but unfortunately, Gamble quickly caught on to the mocking glint in my eyes.

“Ugh…”

His bloodshot eyes, red from lack of sleep, were plenty intimidating. I cleared my throat and looked away, then decided to meet Gamble’s gaze directly.

It was a pity.

The fact that our guild wouldn’t be adding new members for several years to come.

“What can you do.”

Still, once we got through this, the biggest part would be over, wouldn’t it?

Unlike us, who still had tedious negotiations with the US government ahead, Gamble—the guild’s only non-combatant—was in a better position. Our work couldn’t be passed off to others, and even if it could, it would just end up circling back to us. Even now, my father had been called away to soothe the hastily assembled Las Vegas Hunter Union.

I mean, what can you do about a closed dungeon? Is it our fault the dungeon disappeared? Sometimes dungeons just vanish! I understand that the monster wandering near the city feels threatening, but for a monster, he’s shockingly gentlemanly! Damn, these hunters who can’t communicate with monsters are just prejudiced.

…We should have taken more rest after coming out of the dungeon. If I’d known meeting Gabriel Marceau would be my last real break.

I regretted it, belatedly.

Even as a hunter, I’m not immune to fatigue. Honestly, I’d be less tired if I were still in the dungeon. The tension of battle, in its own way, is invigorating—if you can call it that.

But this… this pile of complicated, tedious tasks wore down even the toughest body and mind. All I wanted now was to collapse into bed and sleep. To throw away all this annoying, tiresome work. Who ever said a hunter just had to fight well? Even when my father taught me, he never said a hunter had to deal with all these tangled human relationships and politics.

…Come to think of it, maybe I brought this on myself. I should have just sent my father and Kim Chae-min to America and stayed in Korea. What glory was I hoping for, crossing the Pacific to work here? At the very least, I could have stayed in Korea when I went back mid-mission…

I forced my sleep-deprived mind, floating for three days without rest, to come back to earth.

“Why do you think we brought you all the way to America, Doctor? There’s no one else but you.”

Let me say it again: Gamble’s got it better than us…

At least Gamble doesn’t have to deal with loud-mouthed hunters in the field. It’s not like I’m asking him to go out and catch Lehmann.

“Because of security, we couldn’t check the USBs ourselves… but I think the contents are similar to the documents.”

“So you want me to check them.”

“There’s no one else, Doctor.”

Gamble didn’t pick up on my hint at all.

I was about to wait until he figured it out himself, but the sound of someone urgently knocking on the conference room door forced me to postpone it.

The visitor didn’t wait for my answer and burst in.

“Excuse me, Mr. Woo. Can you come right now?”

A pale-faced white man staggered into the conference room. I wondered when was the last time he’d slept.

There was no trace left of the clean-cut American intelligence elite from a few months ago. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Daniel, even though I knew I looked just as bad.

The answer was obvious anyway. Work, of course.

“…What’s the problem this time?”

“It’s about Moby’s route. Mr. Hong is asking for your help.”

See? Work.

“What’s that guy even good for…”

“He said that since you’d be dissatisfied no matter what he did, it’d be better for you to check yourself from the start.”

“……”

I looked up at the ceiling.

I couldn’t deny it.

I sighed. Daniel looked apologetic but didn’t leave. I sighed again, more deeply, and waved my hand.

“I’ll be right there. Just… tell the Las Vegas hunters not to pick a fight.”

“I’ll try.”

Daniel closed the door and hurried away, his footsteps fading.

Gamble was still making inhuman noises with his head buried in the table.

A monster big enough to destroy a city with ease. And with parasites living in its blood, you couldn’t just kill it. Half of the three months we needed to hold out had passed, but just because things had been quiet so far didn’t mean they’d stay that way.

We’d all agreed to shove it back into the dungeon, but now that the dungeon was gone…

The aftermath of San Francisco still lingered. I could understand why people were on edge. If a monster like that were flying around near Seoul or Busan, I’d be running around with a knife in my teeth, too.

We knew Moby had promised not to harm natives… but honestly, who besides Hope would trust a monster’s word?

Wouldn’t it have been better if it had just been a normal dungeon? Or if we’d killed the monster inside? Why did that troublesome magician have to drive the monster out and make things difficult for us to the very end?

“Stop whining and get up.”

“Whining?!”

“I’m not asking you to do everything, Doctor.”

I thought about teasing him a little more, but let it go. That’s something you do when you have the energy. If Daniel came looking for me despite my saying I had an important meeting, I must really be needed.

I pulled up a chair and sat down.

Gamble glared at me suspiciously.

“Then why did you give this to me?”

There was a box on the table. Gaudy pattern. The box Gabriel Marceau gave me, left behind by Noah Michelle.

We could check the documents inside ourselves. The first page was in Korean, and about a third of the documents were about a Korean “research institute.” But the rest were in other languages: English, French, German.

Those three made up the bulk, but there were other languages as well. Sometimes just a single page. In total, the bundle used seven languages.

Not all the documents were connected. They were written at different times. Some were just fragments.

The oldest was a report in German, with the Atlas Pharmaceuticals logo.

By that point, it was hard not to guess what the USBs contained. But for security reasons, and in case there was something else we couldn’t handle, we’d called Gamble to America. None of us could return to Korea right now.

“I told you. We need to check the contents.”

“That’s my job.”

“Just check, that’s all.”

Gamble looked at me as if I was speaking nonsense.

“Wasn’t the research institute stuff never our job anyway?”

Gamble blinked slowly.

Finally, he realized what I meant, and his face lit up.

“Just check if there’s anything we can’t hand over. This hunter here will take care of the source.”

“The Association will handle it? This hunter?”

“If it’s Atlas, it’s bound to be connected to Lehmann. As long as there’s no link to Michelle, it’s fine. If it comes up in an investigation, that’s one thing, but if we hand over data with that connection, it’ll be a headache.”

After all, Noah Michelle was still a beloved archmage. Now she just had one more descriptor: a victim of other magicians’ greed.

“Ah, you should have said so from the start.”

“I did say so from the start.”

“I thought you’d just dump more work on me and disappear!”

“Anyway, what’s in there?”

Gamble’s attitude changed in an instant. He started typing briskly, and somehow even the exhaustion seemed to vanish from his face.

“Hmm, no viruses, as I feared. Just pure data. There’s a lot, but…”

Gamble shrugged.

“I’ll have to look at the rest, too.”

As he quickly skimmed through the USB documents, his face darkened again, even as his shoulders stayed light.

“What is it?”

“The contents are all over the place. If the rest are this much, it’ll take a while to sort.”

“Research institute?”

“That’s in there, but… no. This is…”

Gamble showed me the screen.

I doubted I’d recognize much even if he did…

“Hmm.”

“How is it?”

“This…”

It was nothing like I expected. The tangled numbers were dizzying.

I’d have to look more closely, but on some level, I instinctively understood what it was. Money. More precisely, funds. Probably the operating funds for the “Ark” that passed between Henry Lehmann and Noah Michelle.

Gamble opened other documents one after another.

Building purchase records.

Transport payments.

Donations to children’s organizations.

Investments in technology development.

“……”

“…They must have had a pretty bad relationship, huh?”

“I guess she wanted to keep track of how her money was spent…”

It wasn’t organized in any easily readable way.

Unlike Gamble, I didn’t think Michelle had kept this to use against Lehmann.

If she had, she would have organized it much more neatly.

I still didn’t know what Michelle had wanted to do in the end. Maybe she didn’t know herself.

But Michelle left this with her uncle. Her last remaining family. The only person who told her he loved her.

Gamble carefully checked the other USBs as well. They were all similar. Disorganized, jumbled information. Scans of old documents mixed with files dated recently.

I’d told Gamble to check the files and pass them to Lee Mi-seon, but this wouldn’t be finished easily.

There were also records about small magic societies Michelle had sponsored. Normally, she would have used this to pick out magicians who could become her hands and feet. Sam Bloom’s name was among them.

“…How long is this going to take?”

Gamble swallowed and asked.

“The sooner, the better.”

“Of course… Uh, give me a priority list.”

“Priority?”

Gamble said, checking the third USB.

“Even if we try to leave out everything related to our dear magician… we can’t ignore it entirely, right?”

“Right. Focus on the magicians. We can’t miss another Sam Bloom.”

“Okay… What about the research? I don’t think Lehmann is still funding things in this situation. There might be places continuing independently. I don’t know how much information is in here…”

Gamble tapped his lips with a finger, then continued.

“And there’s Lehmann. I doubt there’s any recent info, but I’ve been tracking him separately, so if I combine it with what’s here… who knows? Maybe I can trace where he’s hiding.”