I'm Retiring from Adventuring (Part 1)
Deep within the Central Deep Dungeon of the Nueria Continent.
"Cough, hack!"
Consciousness returned alongside a fit of dust-choked coughing. Staring blankly up at the cavernous ceiling of the dungeon, I mumbled under my breath.
"...Where the hell am I again?"
My ears had been ringing with a dull, muffled thrum for a while now, likely from taking a direct blow to the head. Wondering what on earth had transpired, I took stock of my situation.
The pure white armor adorning my body was blackened and scorched, looking as if it had been swallowed whole by an explosion, and my entire skin smarted with stinging, fiery burns. Brow furrowed in genuine bewilderment, I racked my foggy brain for a few seconds.
"Ah."
Just like that, shattered fragments of memory snapped cleanly back into place.
A colossal dragon. A brutal, desperate clash. And then—an apocalypse of fire.
Only then did the entire sequence of events rush back into focus, and I replayed what had happened just moments ago.
Winding the clock back roughly an hour—
—KROOOOOAAARGH!
It was the memory of our raid against the boss of the Central Deep Dungeon, the monstrous beast known as Magmus the Magma Dragon.
At the bitter, violent climax of that battle against the molten titan, driven completely into a corner, the dragon had made its final move.
"Cunning little vermin! If it has come to this, I shall drag every last one of your miserable lives to hell with me, even if it costs my own!!!"
In its dying throes, the cornered beast gathered every ounce of its molten energy to trigger a catastrophic self-destruction. In a split second, our entire party was staring down total annihilation.
"No, don't do it!"
"Teresia! Stop!"
"Don't go! You don't have to sacrifice yourself!"
Leaving behind the desperate cries of my companions screaming my name, I seized the moment. Using quick wits and sheer audacity, I charged straight into the swelling blast radius of the detonating dragon, throwing up an ultra-dense barrier engineered specifically to absorb internal shock waves around the two of us.
"What is this?! Let go of me! Release me, wretched human!"
Those were the monster's last words before a deafening roar shattered the world, and the beast tore itself apart in a blaze of volcanic fury. By all accounts, I should have been vaporized in the very heart of that explosion.
"..."
I slowly clenched and unclenched my fingers, soaking in the indisputable sensation of being alive. Then—
"...Pfft."
As if overcome with profound gratitude just to draw breath, a quiet grin tugged at the corner of my lips. A heartbeat later, the floodgates opened.
"AHAHAHAHAHA! I did it! I actually pulled it off!"
The sheer, unadulterated exhilaration welling up from the depths of my soul was impossible to suppress. I threw back my head and howled at the cavern walls, venting every drop of emotion I had bottled up for years.
"I can finally retire from being an adventurer!!!"
Retirement. It was the one desperate, heartfelt dream I could never dare confess to another living soul.
Yes. If I retired, I would never have to risk my neck on another suicide mission again. And even better, I would never again have to deal with endless droves of pathetic men swarming around me just because of my fame.
"Phew..."
Letting my excitement cool just a fraction, I gazed up at the shattered dungeon ceiling with a look of pure, unburdened bliss.
"Flawless! That was an Oscar-worthy performance! There's no way in hell anyone could doubt it—they all think I'm dead as a doornail!"
It was the sort of callous declaration that would have driven my mourning companions into hysterics had they heard it. Yet frankly, I couldn't bring myself to care in the slightest about their delicate feelings.
I mean, can you blame me? I seriously can't take this adventurer bullshit for one more day!
With an indignant roar in my mind, memories of the sheer hell I had endured over the years flooded back.
"Excuse me? You're telling me to hold off that entire horde of monsters by myself?"
"You'll be fine! If anyone can do it, it's you! We'll back you up as best we can!"
"No, that's not the problem. At a glance, that looks like at least a thousand of them?!"
"Don't worry, you won't die! You can do it, Teresia! We believe in you!"
"..."
It had always been like this. Constant, brutal clashes with monsters that brought me within inches of death far more times than any sane person had lives to spare. And that was just on the battlefield.
"Ahem. Teresia? There's something I need to tell you."
"What is it?"
"Well... I was hoping... you'd marry me..."
"Piss off!"
Because the adventurer profession was wildly skewed with an eight-to-two male-to-female ratio, men swarmed like flies purely because I had the misfortune of possessing a female body. Hell, there were even scumbags who had tried to spike my drink to take advantage of me.
"Are these lunatics completely insane?! Why are fellow adventurers trying to murder each other?!"
"Who knows? Maybe to those bastards, we look like golden goblins dripping with high-tier loot."
"That is a depressingly plausible explanation!"
I had even experienced the gruesome reality of humans slaughtering other humans. Reluctantly or not, I had taken human lives with my own hands. Early on, I remember wrestling with heavy pangs of guilt. But after it happened three or four times, every scoundrel ambushing me began to register in my eyes as nothing more than a two-legged monster.
Never again. Not in a million years.
Recalling those bitter memories, I shook my head violently. After weighing everything thoroughly, I had reached a single, undeniable conclusion: cutting my losses and ditching this cesspool of an industry was the only winning move.
Which is exactly why I set my mind on retiring.
What good was obscene pay if you weren't alive to spend it? Walk the tightrope between life and death enough times, and your sanity inevitably grinds down to dust.
Every single time I brought up retirement, it was always the same damn excuse. 'We can't survive without you.' 'Please, reconsider.' 'You can always retire later, there's plenty of time.' God, I'm sick to death of it.
Well, no more. That nonsense ended today. Having staged such an irrefutable, blaze-of-glory death, the Guild would have no choice but to process me as KIA or missing in action. Once the paperwork cleared, I would finally be a completely free agent.
"Whew..."
As the lingering heat of my adrenaline finally settled, I lay quietly back against the shattered rubble, lost in contemplation.
"Come to think of it, it's been one hell of a long road."
My mind drifted back to how this whole mess had started in the first place.
It was roughly eighteen years ago when I, an ordinary guy living on Earth, suddenly woke up in this bizarre fantasy world. Opening my eyes, I found myself reborn into the frail body of a little girl named Teresia. My adventure began when I slipped out of a religious facility because I wanted nothing to do with the suffocating destiny of becoming a Saintess. After running away, I spent about two years doing whatever odd jobs I could get my hands on just to keep food on the table.
I was desperate just to survive back then. ...Honestly, living hand-to-mouth like a Mayfly.
Eventually, I picked up adventurer work. The reasoning was dead simple: given my circumstances at the time, it was the fastest possible track to climbing the social ladder and hitting the jackpot.
And my reason for wanting success was equally simple. I needed financial independence so I could live on my own terms in this unfamiliar world—free, comfortable, and answering to no one.
So, I became an adventurer. Thanks to an obscene amount of natural talent and an absurd aptitude for combat, I clawed my way through countless hardships to become a renowned figure. The problem, however...
Was that I got played for a total sucker and missed my window to walk away.
That was what sparked the brilliant idea to use the Magma Dragon to fake my own demise. Of course, taking the brute's self-destruct blast completely raw would have actually killed me, so I had emptied every single defensive artifact, barrier, and protective ward in my arsenal to pull off the illusion of my tragic end.
"Heh. Even I have to admit, my acting was sublime."
Right before the blast consumed us, I had looked back at my party like a tragic martyr delivering her final will. What had I said again? 'Thank you for everything until now.' And, 'I'll go on ahead and watch over your journey from above.' Even thinking about it now, the delivery had been nothing short of art.
"Well, my conscience does prickle just a tiny bit, but hey—a guy's gotta survive first, right?"
Truthfully, I did harbor a microscopic sliver of guilt toward the comrades I had left behind. But being completely honest, if I hadn't pulled a stunt like this, they would have kept me on active duty until I was an old crone forced into mandatory retirement. This was a tactical necessity.
So please, don't hate me too much.
Dragging my aching body through the lingering fallout of the explosion, I began clambering out from the heap of rubble. That was when—
"Lady Teresiaaaaa!"
"Can you hear me?! If you can hear my voice, answer me, Teresia!"
"Ugh... Teresia, without you, I... I can't...!"
Familiar voices echoed through the cavern.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Reacting on pure instinct, I dove right back into the wreckage, holding my breath and flattening myself against the debris to survey the area.
"Teresia! Please, say something! Teresiaaaaa!"
"Lady Teresia!"
"Teresia!"
As their voices drew steadily closer, terror spiked through my chest, and I screamed internally.
A-Are these lunatics seriously still looking for me?! Who in their right mind assumes someone survived an explosion like that?! Why are they so goddamn persistent?!
I already knew how stubborn they were, but their sheer refusal to give up was downright terrifying. Cowering behind the rocks, I watched them anxiously, praying with every fiber of my being that they would just give up and pass by.
"Sniff... What are we going to do without Lady Teresia...?"
"Don't talk like that! Teresia is definitely still alive!"
"I want to believe that more than anyone, but... even for Teresia, taking an explosion of that magnitude point-blank..."
"Shut your cursed mouth, old man! I'll break your jaw!"
"Uwaaaah... Waaaaaaaah!"
"D-Damn it, stop crying! When you bawl like that, it makes it feel like she's really dead! Cut it out!"
"B-But...!"
Listening to their raw, sorrowful cries, a strange feeling washed over me.
...What the hell am I doing right now?
Hearing them search for me with such frantic desperation, cherished memories of our time together began flickering across my mind. Sure, the adventurer gig had been an endless conveyor belt of misery, but it wasn't as if every single moment had been terrible.
There was the genuine camaraderie and friendship forged while dancing on the razor's edge of death in the darkest depths of dungeons. The deep, unspoken bonds formed when we entrusted our very lives to one another. Perhaps it was precisely because of those bonds that I had managed to endure such a grueling journey and make it this far.
And yet, right now... was I really severing all of those ties over my own selfish agenda?
"..."
A heavy pang of guilt, which I had tried so hard to brush aside, tightened painfully around my chest.
Step.
Before I even realized what I was doing, my foot crept forward, carrying me back toward the sound of their voices. It was right at that moment—
"Damn it all... I was planning to propose to her the moment we got back from this expedition...!"
"...?"
I froze dead in my tracks.
My brain screeched to a halt at a declaration so absurd I couldn't possibly let it slide. Thinking I must have misheard, I strained my ears, focusing intently on their conversation.
"Everyone knew you had feelings for Teresia. Though, to be fair, she never seemed interested in courting anyone."
"That's why... I wanted to wait until I became a man worthy of standing proudly beside her before confessing my feelings...! Damn it all!"
"Sniff... Lady Teresia..."
"..."
The second those words registered in my skull, the foot I had extended toward my comrades snapped back, and I spun around on my heel.
Then—
Farewell, suckers.
Without an ounce of lingering attachment, I crept away into the shadows, taking painstaking care not to make a single sound that might give away my location.
Comrades, my ass.
There's no such thing as pure friendship between a man and a woman in this line of work.