WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 10: Master of the Tower (2)

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Why show me that of all things.

I nearly died over here, and this guy's out having a team dinner with his coworkers. Unbelievable.

I let go of the (View) button and thought it over.

R-1354 Dimension.

If that Choi Suhyun was the Choi Suhyun I knew, then the stage for all this was very likely the dimension where Kang Hangyeol lived.

There's a god using a fake name.

And hunters who serve that god.

Kill monsters, clear dungeons, earn merit points, same as experience points.

Offer merit points to the god you served, and in return you could draw on that god's power.

I'd heard this during Hunter training.

"The god who secures the most merit points by the Day of Final Battle becomes the Dimensional Ruler."

That part hadn't been covered during training.

Now I understood why that world was crawling with so many gods of unknown origin.

I didn't know how or why, but according to the system, I apparently qualified to challenge for this "Dimensional Ruler" title too.

"Ha."

I brushed back my blood-caked bangs and laughed, bitter and hollow.

What a mess, ending up here after going in circles like this. Still, if I played my cards right, maybe I could drag down the gods responsible for reducing me to this state.

Since I qualified.

It wasn't like I was crashing the party illegally, right?

No more hesitation.

"Participate."

[Registration complete.]

[You have been recognized as a new challenger.]

[Please register an epithet. An epithet can only be registered once, cannot be changed afterward, and carries no power of its own.]

"Soter."

['Soter' has been registered.]

That was all the notifications for now. I opened the status window.

[Kang Hangyeol (Soter)]

- Master of the dimension 'Tower of Trials.'

Rank: Proxy (5%)

Strength: C (1%)

Vitality: C (2%)

Mana: D (10%)

Healing: D (21%)

Merit points: 480

Skills

Talent <Guardian's Protection> <Blessing of Soter>

Now that I had an affiliation, the status window looked noticeably different from before.

Just as I was about to close it, I noticed another status window sitting off to the side.

I swiped my hand and the second window opened.

[Community (Soter)]

Rank: Administrator

Board

- Free Board (0)

Looked like some kind of communication space that hunters under the same affiliation could use together.

Going in with admin privileges, I could adjust practically everything, board names, rank designations, rank-specific board settings, all of it.

Of course there weren't any posts. I'd only just made this thing less than an hour ago.

The bigger gods probably have huge communities.

That was basically internal intelligence.

As a latecomer, I was clearly at a disadvantage.

[Soter]

Divine Name: *****

Level: 1

Attribute: Darkness

Ranking: #15,487

Dimension: Tower of Trials

Cumulative merit points: 0

Followers: 0

Traits <Guardian's Protection> <Blessing of Soter>

The moment the status window opened, I hurried to blur out the divine name.

It's embarrassing, okay!

Even if the status window was visible only to me, some things you just didn't want to look at.

A divine name basically told you what kind of god you were.

Nothing matched me quite as well as that name did, but nope, still no.

To me, that divine name was straight-up dark history.

[Dimension Management]

Name: Tower of Trials

Description: A dimension left unattended for a long time. Seems the owner has finally returned. Shows a stunning lack of conscience.

Dimensional conquest rate: 0%

No dimension information available

"Isn't that description a bit much?"

That hurts a poor guy's feelings, you know!

Once I'd finished with every status window, I could finally take in my surroundings.

* * *

I buried the four bodies in a small flower bed at the tower entrance.

Even someone like me couldn't bring the dead back to life.

"Feels kind of wrong."

We'd only spent a single day together, and I couldn't honestly say all four of them had been friendly toward me the whole time.

I wasn't soft enough to feel sympathy for an enemy, but I wasn't cold enough to feel nothing when people who'd once been on my side died, either.

Leaving the bitterness behind, I placed my hand on the massive door.

['Tower of Trials' has recognized its master.]

[Clearing this floor grants you ownership of the floor.]

[Entering Floor 1.]

[Goblin Village]

Floor: 1

Objective: Annihilate Goblin Village.

Reward: Floor 1 administrator authority.

It was a bit different from actual dungeon info, but the overall structure was roughly similar.

I closed the status window and looked around.

A familiar-looking grassland and forest greeted me. The only difference this time was that I was alone instead of part of a group.

Goblins appeared past the treeline.

"Pretty similar to what I saw in the dungeon."

I quietly drew the twin daggers at my waist.

* * *

[You have cleared Floor 1 of the Tower of Trials.]

[You have obtained Floor 1 administrator authority as a reward.]

Since it resembled the dungeon named 'Goblin Village,' clearing it wasn't a problem in itself.

"Rough."

No matter how easy the difficulty had been, doing alone what four people were supposed to handle together was naturally brutal.

Honestly, that was way too close.

Now that the fight was over, I was a complete wreck.

I sheathed my daggers, my legs giving out under me, and sat down on the ground.

[Floor 1]

- Administrator authority acquired.

- Administrator: Kang Hangyeol

- Additional settings available.

The additional settings included difficulty adjustments and various other options.

"Too much of a hassle, leave it be."

I genuinely felt like the admin of some game.

I gulped down a small healing potion and got ready to leave Floor 1.

That's when it happened.

"A presence?"

I looked around, sensing something unfamiliar.

After becoming administrator of Floor 1, I'd cleared away all the goblin corpses.

There shouldn't be anyone else on this floor besides me.

But this presence wasn't nearby.

At the edge of the forest.

I opened the map, but nothing showed up on it.

"A ghost? I'm not really into ghosts."

Not joking, ghosts genuinely creeped me out.

I closed the map and headed toward where I felt the presence.

Reaching an empty clearing, I spotted an unfamiliar person.

Looks young.

The guy was leaning against a tree, staring at a goblin corpse, trembling.

Covered in dirt with wounds all over his body, it was obvious how fierce a struggle it had taken him to kill even one goblin.

That look of terror on his face, that was the face of someone killing a living thing for the first time in his life.

Getting closer, I realized what he was wearing was a school uniform.

I'd never seen this particular uniform before, but somehow it felt like the kind you'd commonly see in Korea.

And he looked Korean too.

I thought I'd cleared out all the goblins.

I had no idea what was going on.

Face a mess of tears and snot, the guy muttered a string of curses.

"...Bastards, you damn bastards. Are you even human? Ugh!"

Looking at the corpse again, he turned and threw up whatever was left in his stomach.

Watching him, I was reminded of the first time I'd been transported to another world.

After killing one goblin in the Devil's Forest, I'd spent nearly a week straight throwing up and crying on and off.

Looking back, I hadn't had any survival skills back then either, which should've made me easy prey for monsters. It was a miracle I'd survived at all.

Whether from sheer terror or panic, he hadn't even noticed me approaching.

I spoke to him.

[Hey. You okay?]

"Aaargh, aaaaaahhh!! What the hell!! Aaahh!!"

The instant I spoke, he screamed.

Back against the tree, he scanned his surroundings frantically, then bolted toward the goblin's corpse.

He wrenched the dagger out of its chest with desperate force.

Blood splattered on him and he fell on his backside again, then grabbed the dagger and scrambled back to the tree.

"Y-you, who are you? Where are you! Where!! Show yourself!"

Back against the tree, sitting on the ground, he waved the dagger wildly and screamed.

Wrong direction.

Is this guy out of his mind?

I circled halfway around the tree and stepped in front of him.

He was wearing a school uniform anyway, so I figured I could drop the formalities.

[I'm right in front of you.]

At my answer, his face went pale. Then, in a shaking voice, he spoke.

"D-don't lie to me!! Where are you!"

[I really am right in front of you, you know?]

"Stop messing with me!"

He lunged at me with the dagger.

I had no intention of just standing there and taking the hit, so I twisted my body slightly to dodge, then reached out to grab his wrist.

At that moment, my hand passed right through his.

[What the?]

"S-something just touched my hand... wait, what are you?!"

Hearing me mutter, he startled and dropped the dagger.

He tried to snatch it back up in a hurry, but his hands were shaking so badly he kept dropping it again.

Watching him finally end up hurting his own hand, I shook my head.

Guess he can't see me.

At first I'd thought this kid was some kind of memory embedded in the tower.

Right now, this tower was malfunctioning.

A dimension malfunctioning wasn't something you could compare to a machine breaking down.

Distortions in time or space were part of that malfunction too.

If that was the case, then it wasn't entirely impossible for someone from the tower's past to cross paths with me in the present.

What the hell happened here?

The kid in front of me looked, for all the world, like an ordinary Korean high schooler.

Which only made it more baffling why someone like him would end up trapped inside a tower like this.

While I stayed quiet, he kept looking around and finally spoke.

"Who the hell are you? W-where are you?"

Watching him stare off in completely the wrong direction, I was sure of it now.

Right now, he couldn't see me at all.

Footnotes:

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