WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 100: The World Point (1)
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The slime boiled past mere agitation and turned red.
Got quite the temper, this one.
[Idiot.]
"Hey, this slime just called you an idiot."
"What are you talking about. How's a slime supposed to talk?"
[Not you.]
Why me? This was ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous.
Absurd as it was, this was no ordinary slime.
Descent? Or a demigod, maybe?
At the very least, it definitely wasn't a possession vessel.
Was there some idiot god out there who'd descend into a slime?
And how would that god even have a conversation with a slime in the first place?
"Do not interfere!"
Furious, Faillia Duke planted both hands against the ground.
Rizu had already transformed into a massive cocoon, her original shape lost beyond recognition.
Black wood grew up behind the cocoon.
The endlessly growing branches formed a shape that looked like it was protecting Rizu.
"This is bad. And no matter how I look at it, this is way past Floor 11 difficulty."
I scratched at my hair, matted with blood.
The moment I brought Rizu down, Floor 11 should have cleared. That was how it was supposed to work.
Lee Eunyheui looked at the huge cocoon at the base of the tree and asked.
"You know something about that, don't you?"
"What is that thing? If it hatches, does some monster come crawling out of it?"
"No."
I tore off part of my clothing and bound it tight around the sword's hilt along with my hand.
A monster crawling out, sure, right. That wasn't what this was.
"It's calling a monster."
"Calling a monster?"
"Yeah. I don't know what kind either. Think of it like a lottery ticket, maybe? Oh, one thing I can tell you."
"It's a lottery with no losing tickets. Real generous lottery, that one."
"What does that mean..."
"Whatever comes out, once it does, you're dead."
Lee Eunyheui gripped her bow, her face twisting into something between confusion and disbelief.
"Why just me?"
"If it's just me alone, I might get lucky and slip away."
[Trash.]
Getting called trash by a slime hit different, somehow.
Lee Eunyheui looked at the sword in my hand.
"Idiot."
I didn't need anyone to tell me how contradictory that sounded coming out of my own mouth.
"I said I'd need luck just to escape alone, didn't I? If I get even luckier, maybe I break that thing before it calls the monster, and we both make it out."
"Give it up."
Faillia Duke had already fully transformed into the giant tree.
Rotted from root to trunk, the whole thing looked cursed.
"No mana left, no healing potions left either. You said you might get lucky and escape alone, right? Then go, alone! Better than being reckless with no plan at all!"
"Who said I had no plan?"
"Then what do I do! I, I..."
Lee Eunyheui's eyes went red.
Her face looked like she'd burst into tears the second the tension broke.
"I just told you, this is way past Floor 11 difficulty."
"So what!"
"I told you they broke the rules, remember? So we get a pass to break a few too."
The slime, back to its normal color, bounced its way right up in front of me.
"Like a slime's going to help with anything."
"Heh, that's what it says. Hear that, you useless slime."
I pointed at the slime and burst out laughing.
It started boiling inside again.
Real hot-tempered little thing, and it wears every feeling right on its surface.
[Because of you.]
"Unbelievable. I'm just doing what needs doing. How is that because of me?"
[You know.]
[This is a World Point.]
I'd wondered about this ever since taking over the tower.
The tower, in the end, was a process.
Even given the exact same objective, no two processes could ever be identical.
Take Rizu, for instance. If another challenger walked in, wouldn't the exact same being just form all over again?
I felt like I understood the answer now, at least a little.
Different stories sitting on the same timeline, that was what a World Point was.
[That thing over there is definitely cheating.]
"Right?"
"Hey, you can actually talk to slimes?"
Lee Eunyheui looked at me like I'd grown a second head.
"This thing can talk."
"What? Why can't I hear it?"
"Maybe you're just assuming you can't. Have you actually tried?"
[Don't want to talk to that one. Enough.]
[Just this once.]
The slime kept growing.
It swelled up like it was about to burst any second.
A huge mouth split open and it swallowed me and Lee Eunyheui whole.
"Hey! What's with the eating!"
"Aaah! Mom! I can't swim... huh? The wound..."
[Idiots.]
The slime, having swallowed both of us, popped with a loud burst.
We touched down, feet hitting the ground.
The liquid from the burst slime splattered across the tree.
Wherever the liquid landed, it burned away like someone had poured holy water on it.
"Aaaargh! Do not interfere! You have no right, none of you have any right to this!!"
[Tier 7 Protection activates.]
Felt like something got skipped over pretty hard there.
Is this normal?
Not the important part right now, though.
Tree roots shot up beneath my feet.
"Take care of the rest!"
"W, wait a second!! What am I supposed to do alone!"
"You got help once, then twice, third time you're on your own!"
I stepped through a stance of the Hundred Beasts Sword and cut down the roots flying in from every direction.
To get to Gross, I had to bring this whole tree down first.
Can I even do this?
[Pfft, with that?]
A finger-sized slime popped up out of my pocket.
When the hell did this thing get in there?
"So what am I supposed to do! No choice but to try!"
Running from Lachesis had drained every last drop of my strength.
Right now I was a quarter of what I used to be, at best. Still, all I could do was give it everything I had left.
[Not happening.]
Is dumping cold water on a guy trying his best allowed or not allowed?
[Allowed.]
"Hey!!"
[Move aside.]
The slime climbed onto my shoulder, vanished, then sank straight into me.
What kind of monstrous power is this?!
I tried pushing back against the thing invading my body, but it did nothing.
It felt like facing off against the ocean, against a sky with no visible end.
If there was any mercy in it, the sky was clear and impossibly blue.
Warm sunlight poured down, as if that vast sky had no intention of harming me.
I understood the gesture, but it didn't sit well.
And apart from that, it all felt strangely, uncannily familiar.
Like I'd felt this exact sensation once before, somewhere.
I gently closed my fist and looked up at the endless sky.
[Just a little longer. Damn brat.]
Kang Hangyeol, gripping the Sky Sword, ran forward through the tangled mess of tree roots.
Kang Hangyeol raised the sword.
Hundred Beasts Sword.
He planted his feet on the shifting roots and set his stance.
Thousands of blades poured down onto the massive tree.
Every single strike carried its own distinct shape.
If there were a hundred attacks, all hundred were different from each other.
Kang Hangyeol walked forward one step at a time, sword in hand.
Lee Eunyheui couldn't believe her eyes.
She'd already sensed that something about Hangyeol's presence had changed, strangely.
He was only walking, sword in hand, but the roots closing in on him fell away in clean sweeps, cut down by something she couldn't see.
Kang Hangyeol was clearly slicing through every attack coming at him.
Her eyes and her mind couldn't keep up with what was happening, and all she could do was stare, dumbstruck.
"Are you interfering, Librarian!!"
"Just doing what needs doing."
"You are not the true master of this world!!"
"For now, I am."
"You think you'll be sitting in that seat forever!"
A black roar erupted from the tree and crashed down over Hangyeol.
Whatever castles had still been standing from the previous attack all collapsed at once.
Kang Hangyeol's form emerged from the wreckage.
He seemed taller somehow, and his face and presence had shifted into something different.
"That's really him?"
Lee Eunyheui had sharp eyes.
Her eyesight had been good even before she entered the tower, and after getting the bow, the skills and traits she'd unlocked along that path had naturally sharpened it further.
Lee Eunyheui knew Hangyeol's name as Yu Jihan.
The Kang Hangyeol standing in front of her now wore a face nothing like the one she knew, an entirely different face altogether.
He turned, and their eyes met.
An ordinary person wouldn't have even sensed someone watching from this distance, let alone locked eyes with them.
But he was looking straight at her, precisely.
He raised a finger to his lips.
Shh.
The pose looked like someone asking for a secret to be kept.
Lee Eunyheui had no way of knowing who that someone was, not as things stood now.
The finger dropped from his lips and pointed toward Lee Eunyheui's bow.
Third time, you're on your own!
Strange, really.
Whatever stood in front of her now was, by any measure, a completely different presence from the person she knew. And yet, oddly, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was still him.
The Librarian, borrowing the body of Kang Hangyeol, Cha Seongjin, raised the Sky Sword high.
Mana rippled and surged along the blade.
She could feel, on instinct, that this wasn't just some ordinary attack.
The cursed tree pulled itself together desperately, trying to block it.
Kang Hangyeol swung the sword from low to high.
Just once.
The force of that single stroke was staggering.
One strike, and every thick branch shielding Gross was cut clean through, all at once.
Lee Eunyheui gripped her [Bow of Unknown Name] tight.
She'd held onto it that way ever since the slime first carried it over to her.
Strange, really.
There were plenty of weapons she could have used.
She'd never so much as fired a bow before entering the tower, hadn't even considered it.
At first she'd swung around an efficient club instead.
Just one shot, though it had caused an accident.
After that, she'd fired arrows like someone possessed, obsessively.
If she just hadn't made that mistake that day.
If she'd tried a little harder beforehand, that accident never would have happened. Thoughts like that had ruled her mind ever since.
There were other ways to switch weapons, sure.
It was the first weapon she'd ever held, and honestly, there wasn't really a reason beyond that.
It was just in her hand. That's all there was to it.
Lee Eunyheui gripped the bowstring.
"When we get back to the lobby, I'm asking your name."
No answer came back.
She let out a hollow laugh, not even sure who she was talking to anymore.
Kang Hangyeol swung his sword slowly.
Slow enough that anyone watching would know without question that it was an attack.
It felt like time itself had slowed down, but only around Kang Hangyeol.
Once the strike landed, Kang Hangyeol sheathed the sword.
Craaaack.
The massive tree, which had seemed like it would never fall, toppled backward.
"Damn it...!! Damn it all!!"
Gross emerged from beneath the tree that had been hiding it.
Lee Eunyheui's arrow found its mark, pointed at Gross, now in its fully realized form.
This won't be enough.
Meteor Shower, the skill she'd used with Kang Hangyeol's help earlier, was powerful and explosive, sure, but it wasn't right for this situation.
Third time, you're on your own, he'd said, even so.
This was a skill she hadn't touched once since the day it hurt an ally.
Now wasn't the time to be picky about that.
Why blame someone else for your own injury? What kind of lunatic does that?
Real self-centered brat, that one.
Lee Eunyheui released her fingers from the bowstring.
Endless Arrows of Searing Flame.
The arrow shot in a straight line and buried itself in Gross's head before detonating.
A shriek tore through the air.
Struck by the arrow, Gross burned red.
It screamed like a living creature.
Listening to it kept turning her stomach.
"That sound..."
A hand reached out from behind and covered both of Lee Eunyheui's ears.
The lightest touch, and the nauseating scream vanished completely.
Not just the screaming. Every sound in the world seemed to disappear along with it.
Silence.
A world of quiet she would never experience again.
She turned her head and looked back.
Different.
This wasn't the person she knew.
And yet something about it still felt strangely, achingly familiar.
Gross crumbled into a handful of ash and vanished.
The Librarian's eyes met Lee Eunyheui's.
His lips moved silently.
I missed you. Hang in there.
If Lee Eunyheui's guess was right, the presence inside this person right now was the unidentified slime.
She'd first met that slime back on Floor 1.
And it missed her?
Why would it say that?
It had taken her a full year to climb from Floor 1 to Floor 11, but somehow, whatever time this thing had spent didn't feel like a year at all.
The eyes smiling back at her, so clearly happy, looked more sorrowful than anything else in the world.
Once Gross had fully disappeared, the hand covering her ears dropped away.
"Who are you..."
"Bluuuurgh!"
Blood spilled out over Lee Eunyheui's clothes in a thick wave.
"Aaaaugh! You son of a bitch! My whole body's wrecked!"
Footnotes:
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