I’ll Retire After Saving the World - Chapter 31

[ Chapter 31: Spoiled Meat (1) ]

Strictly speaking, the term “international crime organization” was not incorrect. Rather, it was an accurate description.

Bangju was not some cult-like hobby group meditating in a small room. It was large enough to operate a five-story underground secret laboratory. All that requires money, a lot of money.

That’s right.

Running any organization costs money.

What do you think the Bureau was always dragged to hearings for? It was all because of money. Something about taxpayer money and so on. In reality, the Bureau was more fueled by the money earned from dungeon by-products than by taxpayer money.

In any case, Bangju was not an organization confined to Korea.

Although East Asia was its main base, it didn’t mean it wasn’t active in Europe or across the ocean in America. They mainly secured funds from there and funneled it into their research labs.

In some ways, their operations over there might be larger in scale. Therefore, it wasn’t strange for Hong Seok-young to have some misconceptions.

Hong Seok-young frowned and then opened his mouth to speak.

“Mr. Woo. Where do you think I could have learned about Bangju?”

“…Where did you learn about it?”

“In the black market in South America.”

According to Hong Seok-young, two years ago, there was an incident where a raid team in the United States was annihilated. Hong Seok-young knew one of the victims, and the bereaved families wanted to recover at least the remains of their loved ones.

While tracing and tracing the clues, he ended up in the black market of South America, where he witnessed Bangju.

In the process, he discovered that the frequent dungeon massacre incidents, which had become a social issue in the United States, were the work of Bangju.

As Bangju’s atrocities worsened, a special investigation team was formed in the United States.

“I decided to help them too.”

I frowned. This was the first time I heard such a story. It wasn’t mentioned in any of the reports Uncle had written.

It must have been omitted when transferring data to the Bureau, or Uncle deleted it. If not, he might have kept it hidden from the beginning.

“But as I dug deeper, I realized it was much bigger than expected, and each affected country was conducting its own investigation. It was the same in Korea.”

“Was Hunter Lee Mi-sun one of them too?”

“Yes. And so was Mr. Kim here.”

Grand Mage Kim Chae-min nodded with a heavy expression.

Watching them, I felt like I was missing something.

What was it? Why did I have this uneasy feeling?

“Um….”

“Hmm?”

“……Never mind.”

I stopped myself from asking when Mr. Kim had infiltrated the organization. There was no need to risk being suspected again after barely earning their trust.

But something felt off… indeed.

Something….

What if the Bangju that Hong Seok-young was chasing and the Bangju I knew were entirely different organizations?

I’m not suggesting that two criminal organizations with the same name coincidentally existed.

Bangju conducted funding and research separately. Due to the cell structure of the organization, many might not know about the research at all.

And that would be the same for those pursuing them.

No matter how much they interrogated captured criminals, they couldn’t speak about what they didn’t know.

So, if Hong Seok-young didn’t know about it?

“What is it? Why did you stop talking?”

“…Then, what do you think was the reason they kidnapped the children?”

Hong Seok-young answered without hesitation.

“Ransom?”

Why did that sound like a question?

“Were you not sure?”

“There was no contact demanding ransom.”

Hong Seok-young rubbed his chin. The stories he had either hidden from me or told me differently began to flow out smoothly.

“Actually, that’s why the initial investigation was so delayed. The parents thought it was a kidnapping and waited for contact.”

“Then, when they got no contact, they reported it?”

“Yeah.”

“And when you saw the lab at the training center? Did you not suspect anything then?”

“Rather than suspicion….”

“Did you have no thoughts at all?”

“What am I supposed to be if you put it that way?”

Hong Seok-young frowned.

“It was also related to illegal awakeners, and most of the drugs distributed in South America came from these guys. I thought it was related to that.”

“Drugs?”

“They dealt with a lot of things besides that…. Even the children….”

Hong Seok-young trailed off.

I roughly understood what he meant.

Hearing it this way, it wasn’t incomprehensible.

Everything actually fit together better. It made more sense that he stumbled upon them while investigating a crime organization rather than chasing a cult-like hobby group.

It also made sense why Kim Yoo-hwa, who was a police officer, infiltrated the organization.

I could understand that Hong Seok-young in front of me learned all this because I told him now.

But when did my uncle find out about this? Before raiding the lab? After the raid?

Did he only learn about it after adopting me?

…Or.

Did he never know?

Did he only wipe out the Bangju as an international crime organization, missing the other part?

Did the remaining ones keep feeding the centipede in the Bangi-dong Dungeon? Did the centipede, which grew by eating corpses, cause the dungeon break?

I don’t know. It’s something I can never find out now.

Speculating about the things that happened or might happen here won’t lead to an answer.

But.

There are things I can change.

If that’s the case. If Bangju was really feeding and raising the centipede.

If the monsters they raised were not just one or two.

If one of them was the one that burned Seoul.

“…….”

I can stop it.

Now, at this time, I can stop it.

* * *

It had been nearly two months since I came to the past.

Time seemed to fly by, yet it was also surprising that it had only been two months.

“I’m back!”

A yellow sports car drove onto the field. Grand Mage Kim Chae-min greeted with a cheerful voice as he unloaded luggage from the sports car.

“Hey, kids! It’s lunchtime. Come and eat!”

The zombies that had been rolling in the dirt jumped up.

“Food!!”

“Why do they look like this again?”

Kim Chae-min was horrified as he looked at me. I shrugged, pretending not to know, as I put down my wooden sword.

Do you know what dungeons and Hong Seok-young have in common?

You can never predict where they’ll go.

As soon as Hong Seok-young finished the story, he went to Seoul. It’s not that he didn’t trust Lee Mi-sun, but he said he needed to confirm with his own eyes. He didn’t say much about Yoo Ji-eun, but… he’ll figure it out.

In fact, I got kicked out of the pub. They said it was closing time.

Today, too, there was no sign of Hong Seok-young at school. To be precise, I was the only one here.

Despite having passed the final exam, they left someone like me to stay with the kids. Even Kim Chae-min came in the morning, dropped off the kids, and then drove away in the sports car parked in the corner of the playground.

No matter how much I had asked for a favor, isn’t this crazy?

“Why do you look like that?”

“How do I look?”

“Did you eat a bug?”

“…”

“Your face should brighten up now that you’ve had your protein.”

“…”

Kim Chae-min burst into a loud laugh.

It’s not just Hong Seok-young who had gotten strange. Although he was always weird, even Kim Chae-min seemed unusually high-spirited.

Maybe he thought it was safe to relax now that all the invisible probing was over?

I was truly moved by their trust in me, almost to the point of tears, but also truly worried.

Is this really okay? Is it okay to be this careless?

Both Hong Seok-young and Kim Chae-min seemed out of their minds.

I swore I would never become an adult like that. And I haven’t. That’s what’s important.

It’s really a good thing it’s me.

Clearly, Uncle can’t do without me.

“…You didn’t just bring lunch, did you?”

“Of course not!”

With a proud face, Kim Chae-min handed me a bag.

“I bought everything you asked for.”

I checked the bag that Kim Chae-min handed over.

It was a plastic bag with the logo of a nearby supermarket. The things he bought were quite heavy.

When I peeked inside, I saw chunks of meat still cold. I had asked him to buy the cheapest stuff since we weren’t going to eat it, but why was it all beef? This is why you can’t trust mages; they have no sense of money.

Since it wasn’t my money but his, I couldn’t really complain. I took out the meat that Kim Chae-min had bought and placed it on the parasol table.

Then I handed a notebook to Kim Chae-min.

“What is this?”

“Just draw this.”

“Runes?”

Kim Chae-min tilted his head and looked at the runes drawn in the notebook.

“Are these the ones from the photo? But there are multiple of them?”

“The runes weren’t clear. I just drew what I thought they might be.”

“Wow… Mr. Woo, are you sure you didn’t create these runes yourself?”

“I told you, a mage I know drew them. I’m not a mage, so I can’t use runes.”

“Somehow, I feel like even if you’re not a mage, you’d know how to draw runes….”

“….”

Sharp as always.

I pretended not to hear Kim Chae-min’s words.

“Anyway, hurry up and draw the runes. They aren’t even difficult.”

“Hmm…. What effect do you think these have?”

Kim Chae-min twirled the pen in his hand and then started copying the runes I had drawn.

Unfortunately, the magic clock didn’t have any information about the runes drawn on the corpse. Still, there were some guesses.

“It’s probably meant to lure insects or accelerate decomposition.”

“Ew, monsters that eat rotten corpses. I hate it.”

“You’ll see even worse things when you raid dungeons.”

“I handle dungeon break aftermaths more than raids. The monsters that come out of dungeons usually…”

“Prefer fresh meat?”

“Don’t say it like that!”

Kim Chae-min pouted. Nevertheless, his hands diligently drew the runes.

“That’s wrong there.”

“Oh, really!”

While Kim Chae-min groaned and drew the runes, I checked the lunch boxes. The ones Hong Seok-young brought were packed with meat, and the ones Lee Mi-sun brought were high-end lunch boxes, evident from their elegant containers.

On the other hand, the lunch boxes Kim Chae-min brought…

were filled with sandwiches, neatly arranged fruits, and salads.

It was amusing how their personalities clearly reflected in their lunch boxes.

“Done! Should I draw the auxiliary runes too?”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“We have to make the runes as identical as possible. Drawing auxiliary runes might make the rune effect stronger…”

I had drawn a total of five runes. If none of them worked properly, it would be troublesome. More complex runes were difficult to reverse-engineer.

I meticulously checked if Kim Chae-min had drawn them correctly. After confirming there were no issues, I placed the rune on the beef.

“Activate it right away.”

“Teacher, what are you doing now?”

As soon as Kim Chae-min activated the rune, a voice abruptly interrupted.

“Is this a rune? What kind of rune is it? We haven’t learned this, have we? Oh, they look kind of similar.”

Choi Jin-woo widened his eyes as he examined the runes Kim Chae-min had drawn.

“But why are you putting it on the meat like this?”

Behind Choi Jin-woo, I saw Park Seo-hyun hesitantly standing. She couldn’t bring herself to come closer and hovered around. If she was going to come, she should just come. Why was she hesitating? Feeling uneasy, I tried to call her over, but she ran away.

What am I supposed to do with her?

He regretted not taking a course like child psychology as a general education class back in college. Since he intended to join the Ability Management Bureau, he didn’t take it, but it turns out that learning anything can be helpful someday. The price for mocking a colleague who took that class seemed too high.

“Teacher?”

“…Hmm. I have something to experiment with.”

“An experiment? With runes?”

Choi Jin-woo widened his eyes.

“Are you developing new runes? Ah, that’s why they all look similar!”

He couldn’t tell the kid what kind of rune it was. He didn’t deny Choi Jin-woo’s chatter and just let him talk.

“Ah! Is it a rune that Teacher Chae-min made? By the way, how do you make runes? Do these shapes have specific meanings?”

Words kept coming without giving a chance to answer.

…He briefly thought that it might have been better when Jin-woo found him intimidating.

“Mr. Kim hasn’t eaten yet, so don’t bother him and go play.”

“Oh, you haven’t eaten yet. Sorry, teacher.”

“Hmm? No, it’s okay.”

The kind Grand Mage Teacher Kim Chae-min pointed to an empty chair.

“Jin-woo, you haven’t been a mage for long, right? You didn’t have any adult mages around you?”

“Nope. Among my entire family and relatives, I’m the first awakened one.”

“Oh my…. Mages usually come in family units. It must have been difficult to learn magic. Is that why you joined the pilot high school?”

“I originally didn’t plan to become a Hunter…. They say if mages don’t learn how to control their magic, accidents can happen. I saw it in a documentary.”

“That’s right. Magic is very sensitive.”

“I woke up to find my room in a mess…. No, I was watching TV, and something funny came up, so I laughed a bit, and the TV exploded! So I thought, ‘This won’t do,’ and started looking into it. That’s when the principal came to see me.”

At that point, Choi Jin-woo paused and wrinkled his nose.

“But teacher, don’t you smell something strange?”

“Huh?”

While Kim Chae-min was bewildered, I found the source faster than Choi Jin-woo.

A musty smell detectable by the sensitive senses of an awakened one.

I frowned.

How long had it been since the rune was activated, and already?

One of the five pieces of beef had spoiled.