I’ll Retire After Saving the World

TL: SHW

“Now, not much longer.”

“No matter how I think about it, I feel like I’ve been tricked.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to get stronger?”

“I got scammed too, didn’t I?”

“I went out of my way to make time to help you. Keep going.”

Clap, clap.

I clapped twice to urge him on. Han Tae-kyung looked at me with an aggrieved expression.

“Hey now. You have time to look at me? Excellent. I suppose we can shorten your breaks.”

“No!!!”

Han Tae-kyung shouted in horror.

“Sunbae-nim, no, even the Principal guarantees us proper break time!”

“I’m not the Principal, so shouldn’t I differentiate myself somehow?”

“What kind of logic is that!!”

Despite all his whining, Han Tae-kyung was diligently swinging his sword. It had been a good idea to borrow a decent sword from Hong Seok-young.

The goblins leaping around were swept away like fallen leaves.

“You said you weren’t confident in your own abilities. If you clear several dungeons in a row, you should be able to judge yourself more objectively.”

“Judge what! Aren’t you just exploiting me for free labor?!!”

For Han Tae-kyung, he could be surprisingly perceptive.

But I played dumb.

“Haha. If that were the case, why would I bring you into a dungeon with goblins? I’d take you into an A-rank dungeon instead.”

In fact, I planned to.

We only came here because this was the closest dungeon to the pension. Clearing it out would put my mind at ease in case anything happened, and Lee Mi-seon had also given me a look that said if I wanted her to do something for me, I should at least make myself useful somehow.

That look from Lee Mi-seon probably hadn’t meant for me to clear some measly C-rank dungeon, but... if she wanted something, she should say it properly.

Well, anyway, I planned to go as far as A-rank, so that should be enough to satisfy Lee Mi-seon. Since it would just be the two of us clearing them without anyone else, even I would find anything beyond that burdensome.

For starters, I wasn’t going to fight.

“Extend your leg farther there. Your stance looks awkward because you keep stopping halfway.”

“Kieek!”

I kicked away a goblin that came toward me. The one I kicked in the back staggered forward before falling over. Coincidentally, it landed right at Han Tae-kyung’s feet.

“Sunbae-nim, are you seriously not going to kill even one?”

Han Tae-kyung asked as he cut off the goblin’s head.

“I came here to help Teacher Han.”

“How is this helping me!”

“Let me rephrase that. I came to instruct you.”

I had once taught the kids at Pilot High School how to clear a goblin dungeon. The hypothetical dungeon I had given them to tackle had also been assumed to be C-rank, just like this place. The difference was that their dungeon had been an underground burrow, while this one was aboveground.

When I looked up, I could see the distinctive night sky of a dungeon. A sky packed with stars that looked as though they might come pouring down at any moment.

There wasn’t a single structure in sight, nor were there any natural features like the trees commonly found in dungeons. There were only thousands of goblins scattered across a vast open plain. If the monsters appearing in this dungeon hadn’t been goblins, it would have been classified as S-rank. With no cover at all, it was humans who were at a disadvantage, not the monsters.

Even so, Han Tae-kyung was doing well. Considering he was an A-rank Hunter with little experience, he was fighting extremely well.

“Turn around there. Bend at the waist. Don’t straighten up.”

Han Tae-kyung grumbled incessantly, but still moved according to my instructions.

I knew the finished version of Han Tae-kyung.

Having seen the answer sheet in advance helped here just as much as it had when teaching the kids. It was like how I knew Park Seo-hyun would become a great mage, so I had helped her realize her own attribute. Once I nudged them in roughly the right direction, they figured out the rest on their own.

Han Tae-kyung was the same. If anything, the changes were even more noticeable with him because he already knew how to fight to some degree. If Han Tae-kyung had been the kind of guy with nothing but filthy pride, like that pig bastard from the past... from the future, Oh Hyun-wook, this method wouldn’t have worked. Every word I said would have wounded his pride, and he would have resisted like hell.

But the current Han Tae-kyung had already lost to me once, then lost to Sem Bloom, leaving his confidence somewhat shaken. So no matter what I spouted beside him, even if he complained nonstop with his mouth, he still followed my instructions faithfully.

“Now do one full turn. Curve both arms and raise them.”

“...What is this?”

“It’s called en haut, one of the basic ballet positions.”

“What?”

“I’m saying good work. Let’s break the Dungeon Core and get out of here.”

Han Tae-kyung looked at me with an expression that was difficult to describe.

Still, as expected, he walked toward the Dungeon Core without another complaint. There were some goblins still clinging to life, but they looked too terrified to attack us.

The Dungeon Core, sitting in the middle of the empty plain just like the goblins, glowed mysteriously. It resembled a massive uncut crystal, with every imaginable color contained within it. From one angle it glittered like a star, while from another it looked like the deep sea. There was a depth to it that seemed capable of drawing someone in if they stared too long.

Han Tae-kyung slashed straight through the core.

Despite how solid they looked, Dungeon Cores were fragile. Even without using Mana, a light physical impact was enough to crack and break them. Han Tae-kyung’s strike had just left a long vertical crack running down the core. A creaking sound came from it. Before long, the core would collapse. The reason he hadn’t destroyed it outright was to buy us time. Time to return to the Gate and get outside.

“Let’s go, sunbae-nim!”

“No.”

But I grabbed Han Tae-kyung.

I already knew. Even if the core shattered and the dungeon collapsed, the Hunters inside would still emerge safely outside.

“What? We have to leave now!”

“It’s fine.”

At some point, it had become accepted as fact that once a core was destroyed, everything inside the dungeon disappeared with it. It was still the same twenty years later. Because nobody wanted to remain inside a collapsing dungeon.

But had there really never been anyone left inside a dungeon after its core was destroyed? Surely there must have been. Had they simply dismissed the survivors as lucky?

Then again, there probably hadn’t been many survivors. In a low-rank dungeon, everyone would have escaped through the Gate, while in a high-rank one... they would have been killed by the remaining monsters before the dungeon collapsed. And if they had killed every monster, there would have been no reason to stay inside the dungeon in the first place.

Han Tae-kyung groaned as he stared at the distant Gate. He tried to shake off my arm and run for it, but I subdued him almost immediately.

“Stay still.”

“No, the dungeon is collapsing!”

“I told you it’s fine.”

Han Tae-kyung and I wrestled with each other for quite a while. At last, the creaking core shattered completely. Even after the core broke, the dungeon maintained its form for quite some time.

“Ki, kieek....”

The surviving goblins began digging at the ground. The sight of them sticking their heads into the holes made it seem as though they desperately wanted to escape somewhere.

We waited for quite a while longer. Han Tae-kyung finally gave up trying to break free from me.

How much time had passed? The plain covered in dry grass began cracking apart with brittle crunches. The withered grass crumbled into powder whenever Han Tae-kyung or I touched it. Each time that happened, the goblins’ screams grew louder.

The dungeon was collapsing.

Even so, the dungeon held out for a long time. The goblins that had buried their heads in the dirt raised them again, coughing and choking. The soil inside the holes had turned black. The goblins leaped around frantically and ran off somewhere. Not that it mattered. There was nothing to obstruct our view, so we could see exactly what they were doing.

Black powder scattered through the air along the goblins’ path. The earth and grass were crumbling into dust. It was a sight I occasionally saw whenever I was late getting out through the Gate. Perhaps because this was only a C-rank dungeon and relatively small, the process was moving quickly.

Even so, it took quite a long time. I was starting to get bored. I had been curious about how a dungeon met its end after its Dungeon Core was destroyed, but if I had known it would take this long, maybe I should have tried it with a smaller dungeon.

Right then.

Crash.

The sound of glass breaking came from overhead.

I looked up. A single line had appeared across the star-filled sky.

Crash.

Another one.

Crash. Crash.

Again and again.

The sky cracked. As if the sky itself were a pane of glass.

Countless thin lines intertwined like a spiderweb, and Mana poured through the gaps like sand. It was brilliantly golden Mana, almost like liquid gold.

“Whoa....”

Han Tae-kyung let out a quiet exclamation. The sunglasses he hadn’t removed even while clearing the dungeon glowed faintly.

“Sunbae-nim. What kind of phenomenon is that?”

“I don’t know either.”

I had never remained inside a dungeon until it collapsed this far. The higher a dungeon’s rank, the larger its interior became, and even after breaking the core, it could take days for the dungeon itself to collapse.

The sky began to fall apart. No, more precisely, the glass began to crack and shatter. Though I wasn’t sure whether that could even be called glass. The shards didn’t fall straight to the ground, instead drifting in the air as if gravity didn’t exist. Mana cascaded through the shattered gaps like waterfalls.

For some reason, I found myself thinking that Gamble would probably love this scenery. Hadn’t she said that even seeing the wrecked pension made inspiration well up inside her, rambling about the apocalypse or whatever?

Beyond the collapsing gaps, I could still see a sky filled with stars. I could also see golden Mana raging like a storm. The Mana, moving with an almost terrifying violence, was leaking through the cracks. The pressure made the already fractured sky groan and screech. It began breaking apart even faster.

Han Tae-kyung fell silent. Judging by how brightly his sunglasses were flashing, he might have been seeing something similar to what I was. That item had managed to find a path even inside Park Seo-hyun’s shadow, where not even I had been able to see anything. I glanced at Han Tae-kyung, then turned my gaze back toward the collapsing ceiling. I couldn’t even make a sound.

Amid that silence, the distant screams of the goblins. The pressure of Mana raging overhead like a storm and bearing down on us. And the grandeur of witnessing what felt like an entire world breaking apart. For a long while, we stayed like that. Motionless.

“...Huh?”

Han Tae-kyung let out a dazed sound.

“We... we’re out?”

“Hmm. So this is what happens after all.”

The scenery changed in an instant. It happened just as I thought the cascading Mana was making it difficult to see ahead. A strange sense of reality washed over me, like waking from a dream.

Swoosh....

I heard the sound of waves. The dungeon had been located by the sea. Perhaps the tide was going out, because the tidal flats of the West Sea lay exposed before us. It was exactly the same scenery we had seen before entering the dungeon.

“So normally, uh... you just come out?”

“Apparently.”

“Huh. I, I see....”

“Don’t tell anyone about this. I’m still verifying it.”

“Ah....”

Han Tae-kyung scratched his head, then hurried after me when I started moving.

“Wouldn’t this make clearing dungeons easier?”

“Why? I don’t think much would change.”

“Because all we have to do is break the core! We can get out without going back through the Gate.”

“If there aren’t any monsters left, yes. Well, I suppose it would be useful as a last resort. You could destroy the core and run, and as long as you stayed alive, you’d eventually get out.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

Han Tae-kyung grinned and climbed into the driver’s seat. I glared at the pure white classic car. The cat painted on the hood looked infuriatingly smug.

...First, I needed to get that driver’s license I’d forgotten about. Then I’d ask for a car as my overdue birthday present. Hong Seok-young would gladly buy me one.

***

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