WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 103: The World Point (4)
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Having seen me smile awkwardly, Park Siyu sighed.
One minute, sure, but it was still one minute late for the assembly time.
There was still time left before the raid started.
Stingy bastard.
I breathed in the mountain air I hadn't smelled in a while and checked over the hunters gathered around, one by one.
There were hunters obviously from Raon Guild, hunters from outside guilds who'd earned tickets, and the Aria Guild hunters, myself and Park Siyu included.
A little way off stood Yu Seyeon and three or four other hunters. Yu Seyeon was talking with a man dressed in what looked like work clothes.
"Is that..."
"Seo Jihoon."
Figured as much.
This was the first time I'd seen Seo Jihoon in person.
"I think Park Siyu's got him beat on looks, honestly. Ow! Why'd you step on my foot! That hurt!"
"You had it coming."
Choa, sharpened to a fine edge, snapped at me.
Choa had tied her hair up high with a band.
Standing next to her, I noticed her face really was tiny.
To my eyes, she was the one who looked more like a doll.
Honestly, no matter how much Lee Eunyheui praised Rizu's looks, it never really landed for me.
Guess what a woman notices in a man and what a man notices in a woman are just different things.
"By the way. Seo Jihoon's a Transcendent too, right?"
Choa tilted her head slightly, apparently not understanding what I was getting at with the question.
"Shouldn't you be asking if he's an S-Rank Hunter?"
"Come on, you know that doesn't mean anything. Why ask that?"
Rank labels like A or S were nothing more than a yardstick the Association had made up based on dungeon records and public recognition.
Most S-Rank Hunters happened to be Transcendents.
But not every S-Rank Hunter was a Transcendent.
Not that becoming an S-Rank Hunter without Transcending was easy, either.
Likewise, there were cases of Transcendents who weren't S-Rank Hunters.
Jeong Choa was a prime example.
"Seo Jihoon became an S-Rank Hunter two years ago."
"I know what it was like when he officially became one. On the surface Siyu said congratulations, but I overheard him muttering under his breath that it didn't make any sense."
"What do you mean, didn't make sense?"
"I think it was something like, Seo Jihoon shouldn't have been able to become an S-Rank Hunter."
"A matter of talent."
Talent, huh.
People say there's no limit to what a person can do, but that's not really true.
If there really were no limits, if hard work alone could get you anywhere, then ordinary people shouldn't exist in this world at all.
"I let it go at the time, but thinking about it now, I think I get what Siyu meant."
"Really?"
"Just a little."
Choa turned slightly and smiled.
Seo Jihoon was currently a follower of the god Beritaas.
Take on more than you can handle, and you always pay the price eventually.
I didn't know if Choa was aware of that when she said it, but it was clear something was off about Seo Jihoon's condition.[1]
Turning my head back, I spotted the Raon Guild hunters.
Choi Jaebyung, spotting me, waved excitedly.
"You here for fun?"
Next to Choi Jaebyung stood a man I hadn't seen before.
He wore a cape like the rest of the Raon Guild members, but the rose on his chest was blue.
"That's definitely a Blue Rose..."
I remembered hearing that within Raon Guild, that color marked someone of high rank.
"Jin Sangbyeok. Raon Guild's vice representative."
"Guess the old man's not coming?"
"Aria Guild isn't the only guild he has to keep in check."
"Still, this looks like their full strength out here."
"Siyu has his own circumstances."
Choa cut it short, saying it wasn't the guild's circumstances so much as Park Siyu's own.
Choa said time was up and shoved me forward.
The other hunters gathered toward the center one by one.
I hadn't thought much of it while everyone was scattered, but seeing them all gathered together like this, it was a genuinely strange mix of people.
Choi Jaebyung drifted over naturally and poked me in the side.
"Brought a shield this time."
"So what. Want me to skip the boss and fight you instead?"
"Not a bad idea, actually."
"You not planning to fight the boss?"
"Nope."
Choi Jaebyung put an arm behind his head and whistled.
Choi Jaebyung stood a little apart from the Raon Guild hunters clustered around Jin Sangbyeok.
Looked like both this guy and Representative Kang Moonkook were the odd ones out inside the guild.
The problem was, the awkward parts stuck out so much that nobody could just brush them aside.
Jaebyung's gaze drifted toward the back of Jin Sangbyeok's head.
"I'm only here because the boss told me to come."
Figured.
Kang Moonkook owed Park Siyu a debt, even if nobody said it out loud.
I'd killed Han Jongho back in the Cockatrice Dungeon, and that had cut off Jin Sangbyeok's money pipeline.
Officially it got filed as a death from fighting monsters inside the dungeon, but questioning just a handful of the surviving Raon Guild hunters would've been more than enough to figure out what really happened down there.
He's probably not picking a fight with me because of Park Siyu.
Me killing Han Jongho alone wasn't grounds enough for guild warfare.
Turn it around, and how many Aria hunters had died in dungeons at Raon Guild's hands over the years?
Package it up as an unfortunate accident, and it evened out either way.
From Park Siyu's position, just having Choi Jaebyung, one of Kang Moonkook's people, present here was enough of a check on its own.
There'd been some friction, sure, but the stage was set.
"By the way, heard the reward for this raid is the Dragon Orb."
"Heard that too. Supposedly it grants wishes?"
"Don't you want it?"
I dropped the question casually, and Choi Jaebyung's reaction was one of pure incomprehension.
"Not really."
"There's no way an item like that actually exists. Probably just hype. How many of those supposed wish items have there ever been?"
"But what if it's real?"
"Why are you so hung up on this?"
Choi Jaebyung rested a hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip.
I scratched my cheek.
"Was it that obvious?"
"What are you even gonna do knowing my wish?"
"Nothing, just asking."
I'd heard Choi Jaebyung got chewed out pretty hard by Representative Kang afterward.
No matter how much of a grudge I still held from our trainee days, that didn't sit right with me.
Choi Jaebyung looked off into the distance, let go of his sword, and crossed his arms.
"My wish isn't something some item like that could grant anyway."
Something about the lonely look on his back made me stop asking about his wish.
"I'll spar with you again once the raid's over."
"Really? That's a promise. No backing out later."
"I don't lie."
"You don't lie, but you sure know how to scam people!"
This guy read people faster than he looked like he could.
But he didn't seem like a bad person.
"We'll see, depending how it goes."
While I was chatting with Choi Jaebyung, the boss raid began.
[The 'Boss Raid' begins.]
[Presiding god: Mitchell]
- Content: Defeat Yeongno.
- Difficulty: ★★★★☆
- Reward merit points: 15,000,000 (cumulative)
- Participant list (1/30)
[A 'Boss Raid' is currently in progress. Would you like to participate? 2/30]
[The 'Boss Raid' is open only to holders of a Raid Ticket.]
[As a Raid Ticket holder, you may join the raid.]
['Park Siyu (Mitchell)' has joined the boss raid.]
['Jeong Choa (Moros)' has joined the boss raid.]
['Kim Gangwoo (Fluffysoft)' has joined the boss raid.]
The join notifications kept coming before I even hit the button myself.
"Gangwoo-hyung's here too?"
Looking again, I spotted Kim Gangwoo standing diagonally from Park Siyu.
We'd both been busy with other things and hadn't noticed each other.
Kim Gangwoo spotted me and raised a hand casually, saying it'd been a while.
That aside.
Fluffysoft, seriously? Even for a fake name, that was pretty low effort.
['Yu Seyeon (Pavan)' has joined the boss raid.]
['Kang Hangyeol (Soter)' has joined the boss raid.]
Yu Seyeon's god was one I hadn't heard of before.
I read the room for a bit and hit the join button somewhere in the middle of everyone else.
['Choi Jaebyung (Lux)' has joined the boss raid.]
['Jin Sangbyeok (Lux)' has joined the boss raid.]
['Seo Jihoon (Beritaas)' has joined the boss raid.]
[Participation closes in 1 minute.]
Sure enough, Seo Jihoon's god was Beritaas, just as expected.
A few hunters murmured at the sight of Seo Jihoon's god, but the stir didn't last long.
The raid had already started.
A massive digital clock appeared at the base of the mountain.
For that one minute, a heavy silence settled over the peak of Yukbaeksan.
['Boss Raid' participation has closed.]
[Participants 54/60]
[The raid begins.]
The clock's second hand hit zero, and a small circle formed around it.
The black circle spread out in an instant, swallowing the area around Yukbaeksan.
"Oh, so this is the ARF everyone's been talking about."
An augmented reality space that only appeared during specific events, boss raids included.
Augmented Reality Field, ARF for short.
Whatever they call it though.
Apparently the actual terrain and the terrain inside the ARF had nothing to do with each other.
Put simply, the inside of the dome was basically a real-world dungeon.
A massive Pavilion appeared, looking exactly like a Joseon-era palace transplanted whole.
['Kim Gangwoo' has invited you to the 'Aria Guild (Black)' comms room.]
[Cancels automatically in 1 minute if unanswered.]
I hit accept right away.
Seemed like a different function from the community app Raon Guild hunters had used together back in the Cockatrice Dungeon.
At the very least, it wasn't a function I already had.
"Ah, mic test."
Kim Gangwoo's voice, standing some distance off, rang out inside my head.
Seeing me startled, Choa raised a finger to one ear.
"This is how you talk."
Since I could see Choa's mouth moving and hear her voice at the same time, I couldn't tell what the difference was supposed to be.
Then I noticed the hunters around me whose mouths were moving with no sound at all, and it clicked.
"Like this? This is wild."
Choa nodded, confirming.
I checked my status window and found a "Comms Room" tab had been added.
[Comms Room]
- Aria Guild (Black)
Participants (4): Kim Gangwoo (Room Owner), Park Siyu (Vice Owner), Jeong Choa, Kang Hangyeol
Well, look at this.
With this many hunters gathered here, the comms room only had four people in it?
However I looked at it, it had the unmistakable feel of a secret chat room.
['Kim Gangwoo' has invited you to the Aria Guild (General) comms room.]
Sure enough, a few seconds later I got invited to the general chat room too.
The general room had most of the hunters in it.
But how do you even manage something like this?
I tilted my head, and Choa, catching on, added an explanation.
"You can set it up."
"Oh, you can configure it?"
Choa folded and unfolded two fingers, giving me a rough rundown.
"Just set it however you want."
The moment I finished setting up the chat room, another notification went off.
['Choi Jaebyung' has joined the Aria Guild (Black) comms room.]
"Hyung, no matter how you slice it, this guy doesn't belong here!"
"Quiet. I'm just following orders."
Hearing Kim Gangwoo's reply, I looked over at Park Siyu.
What's he thinking? Seriously?
[1] A common web-novel trope: a character who advances faster than their fundamentals justify is implied to be paying for it somewhere else, physically or otherwise.
Footnotes:
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