WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 104: Park Siyu (1)

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Kim Gangwoo replied in Channel 1.

The first room to form had become the black channel, Channel 1, and the general room became Channel 2.

Channel 2 had every hunter participating in the raid packed inside, while Channel 1 held only a handful of people.

No matter how much of an outlier Choi Jaebyung was within Raon Guild, inviting him into a secret chat room felt like way too generous a treatment.

"Hey, you got no shame at all?"

"Hangyeol-ssi, who exactly are you still talking to?"[1]

"Who else? Choi Jaebyung. If you're the last one in, at least say hi! You're the maknae here, aren't you? Huh?"

"Are you seriously an old fart?"

Kim Gangwoo, busy managing a different comms room, couldn't resist chiming in.

Choi Jaebyung was currently with the Raon Guild hunters.

Outlier or not, it made sense for Choi Jaebyung, a member of Raon Guild, to be with his own guild's hunters.

I had no idea how many of them were actually on Choi Jaebyung's side, but they weren't stupid enough to miss that something sketchy was going on if mouths were moving with no sound coming out.

Choi Jaebyung's back was turned, but our eyes met anyway.

I stuck my tongue out and blew a raspberry, and his face went bright red.

Ha, if it bugs you that much, say something yourself!

I could understand why Choi Jaebyung, despite getting the invite, couldn't manage a single word.

"Still, though, sensitive stuff's bound to come up, and you're fine with him hearing it? What if he just hands it all over to that Kang Moonkook guy?"

I thought I heard a voice somewhere off in the distance insisting there was no way that would happen, but that had to be my imagination.

Right, of course it would.

"Doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter... you planning on making an alliance with Raon Guild or something?"

"Representative Kang, at least, isn't some thick-skulled idiot who can't hold a conversation, unlike a certain someone."

Wow.

Thick-skulled idiot. I had a pretty good guess who that was aimed at, but wasn't that a bit much?

I left the channel and tore open the last Choco Emong, popping it in my mouth.

Standing next to Park Siyu, Kim Gangwoo looked like they were losing their mind.

This whole "comms room" thing right now was entirely Kim Gangwoo's doing.

"Here it starts," Choa said beside me.

The sky darkened, storm clouds rolling in fast.

Flash.

Rumble, crash.

Lightning struck down on the large pavilion at the center.

One of the buildings collapsed, wrecked.

Without a word, the nearly thirty hunters drew their weapons and took up positions.

The mood here was clearly different from the Cockatrice dungeon.

"You don't seem all that nervous, Hangyeol-ssi."

"I'm nervous."

"Doesn't really look like something you'd say while drinking chocolate milk."

"Choco Emong didn't do anything wrong."

If Choco Emong was guilty of anything, it was just being in my pocket.

I crushed the empty carton with one hand.

"I really am nervous. They say in real combat, you just do what you practiced."

"This is your first raid though, Hangyeol-ssi. You've never even practiced."

"Ah, that's true."

I scratched my head, and Choa let out a light laugh.

Not nervous, huh.

It was true I didn't feel much tension, but hearing that from Choa of all people felt off.

Looking at the current situation, Choa seemed even less nervous than I was.

She wasn't in a dress like she'd been heading to Trollwood, but her outfit was just as casual either way.

Standing with her hands clasped behind her back, no weapon in sight, Choa looked like she'd come out for a stroll rather than a raid.

"How are we planning to approach this?"

A deep male voice came through Channel 2.

Raon Guild's vice representative, Jin Sangbyeok.

There was no established clear strategy for the bosses in a boss raid.

These were S-rank bosses at minimum, and S-rank dungeons rarely got cleared to begin with, and even when they were, sharing information wasn't the norm the way it was with other dungeons.

One small piece of intel could decide whether a clear succeeded or failed.

That was the gap between an A-rank dungeon and an S-rank one.

To outsiders it might look like just one step up, but that single step was far higher than ordinary hunters could imagine.

That was why the raid leader's role mattered so much.

Unlike a game, real-world hunters all had different stats and traits, and on top of that, nobody fully disclosed their information, which was a problem in its own right.

The raid leader had to account for every one of those uncertain variables and give orders accordingly.

"We watch the situation first."

The thick storm clouds swallowed the sun completely, and a chilling wind picked up.

Leaves torn loose by the wind scattered in every direction.

Lightning struck all at once on the four pavilions surrounding the one that had already collapsed.

The ground split open, and something massive surged up through the gap.

The thing kept rising, endlessly, big enough to swallow half the western sky.

That was just a figure of speech, though. It didn't actually look like it was flying.

Part of its body, hidden behind the pavilions, still touched the ground.

Thousands of scales in every color covered its body.

The only real difference from a dragon was how absurdly long its snout and face were, and how narrow and slitted its eyes looked.

The wind, which had been battering everything without pause, vanished in an instant.

Leaves that had been whipping and rustling through the air dropped to the ground all at once, as if on cue.

"A flute sound?"

Not exactly a pleasant sound, for what it's worth.

The flute's note seemed to be a signal, because the neatly laid stone floor cracked open.

If devils had ever crawled back up from hell, I figured this was probably what it would look like.

The problem wasn't the monster that had just appeared.

Even a brand-new hunter could've guessed that guardians would show up alongside the boss.

Bad positioning.

Given its size, we were well within Yeongno's attack range.

On the flip side, our side didn't have many hunters capable of hitting something at that kind of range.

If it swung its tail out this far, climbing up its body might be worth considering, but...

"That thing's not gonna move, right?"

I scratched my cheek, checking Choa's reaction.

"Probably not."

With guardians present, it wouldn't make sense for the king to move first.

"Feels like it'll take forever just to get over there."

I wish the boss would just drop right on top of us. What kind of boss raid is this, huh? Making everyone go through all this hassle!

The low buildings around us had thrown off my sense of distance, but that thing was genuinely far away.

We were supposedly elite hunters, so pushing straight through wasn't impossible if we committed to it, but wasting strength before even reaching the boss was something better kept to a minimum.

I lined up my fingertip against Yeongno to gauge the distance.

"This terrain is seriously garbage."

Fairly tall wooden towers stood scattered between the pavilions.

That wasn't all. Snake-like monsters coiled around the towers, blocking the path.

A straight line my frozen ass.

"We go straight."

Did I mishear something just now?

Right now, Channel 2 was muted for everyone except the handful of people Park Siyu had approved.

So I switched back to Channel 1 and let it out at Park Siyu.

"Hey, you blind or something? How is that anywhere close to a straight line?"

Park Siyu ignored my complaining entirely.

A voice came through Channel 2 again. Yu Seyeon this time.

"How are you handling the path?"

"I'll make one."

"No problem there, then."

No problem, seriously?

Even she was on board with it, and somehow that made me feel like the only one left out of the loop.

Kwaaaaang.

Yeongno's roar shook the air behind us.

It sounded furious at whoever had woken it up.

So this crowd's not exactly rookies, huh.

Yeongno's roar wasn't a simple cry.

For an ordinary person or a middling hunter, it might've caused a drop in morale, fainting, even vomiting.

Nobody here seemed affected by it, at least as far as I could tell.

Taking that as a cue, goblin-shaped monsters nearby charged in.

Their numbers were still small enough that the hunters up front could handle them without trouble.

I rested a hand on the hilt of Sky Sword and looked back at Park Siyu, standing furthest in the rear.

Come to think of it.

"I've never actually seen Park Siyu fight."

Between his public image and everything else, almost nothing was known about Park Siyu's dungeon clears.

Not even on the wiki.

Seriously, nothing on the wiki either?

Even now, it struck me all over again how much of a mirage Park Siyu was.

He couldn't possibly be running the guild as just a figurehead.

Compared to the other hunters, decked out in heavy gear and carrying their weapons front and center, Siyu looked pretty much the same as always.

A gray shirt, dress pants, and a navy coat that came down past his knees, that was it.

If I forced myself to find something different, maybe his rings were a bit flashier, and he'd put on earrings and a necklace he didn't usually wear.

But plenty of the other hunters had done the same, so it wasn't exactly unusual.

I heard he uses a sword.

I looked him over from every angle, but I couldn't spot anything resembling a sword.

"Siyu uses a light saber," Choa said.

"A what kind of saber?"

"Light saber. Gwang-geom."[2]

"Wait, he uses a crazy sword?"

"Not that kind of crazy sword."

Just a joke.

As the number of goblins grew, Siyu pulled something out of his pocket.

A gray rod, slightly bigger than his palm.

"He's a user of the seventh-generation Light Saber made by ACKO, only five in the whole world."

"Hold on, ACKO? Didn't you say that's some super famous magitech engineering company?"

ACKO, the multinational company specializing in magitech engineering production.

I was pretty sure I'd heard a single mana grenade from them ran over ten million won.

A light saber made by them, one of only five in existence worldwide, meant this wasn't just expensive, it was the kind of premium item you couldn't buy even if you had the money.

There's such a thing as too much gear flex, you know, and past a certain point it just gives everyone else an inferiority complex.

"How did Park Siyu even end up with that sword?"

"Siyu's a major shareholder in ACKO."

Choa lowered her voice and gave me a knowing look, like it was a secret.

So that explained why he'd handed over a mana grenade without batting an eye.

"Did Park Siyu save the country in a past life or something?"

Damn it, this is way too much to be jealous of!

If I had to get isekai'd into someone else's body, I really wish it had been into a diamond spoon like Park Siyu's.

Guess this life's a lost cause, so I'll just have to stay on Park Siyu's good side.

Siyu pressed a button, and a soft glow rose upward.

The growing light gradually took the shape of a proper blade.

Pretty.

Setting aside how strong it actually was, it was the kind of weapon that made you want to swing it around at least once.

Siyu gripped the light saber with both hands.

Every hunter, including the ones who'd already cleared out the nearby goblins, held their breath and watched him.

The blade, which had dropped below his knees, rose above his head.

He twisted his body slightly and settled into a stance.

For a moment, Yeongno seemed to sense something off, and its eyes met Park Siyu's.

Siyu's hand, gripping the sword, cut through the air.

It looked like a single streak of laser light had been fired straight across the ground.

The light shot forward without hesitation and stopped precisely in front of Yeongno.

Whether that was Park Siyu holding back on purpose, or the limit of his actual power, I couldn't tell.

Siyu spun the handle of the light saber, its blade now vanished, once in the air.

His voice came through clearly over Channel 2.

"Let the hunt begin."

[1] Maknae — the youngest member of a group, typically expected to defer to elders; the joke is that Choi Jaebyung is being ribbed for skipping the courtesy despite technically holding that role here.

[2] A pun on "gwang-geom," the Korean term for "light saber," which sounds identical to "crazy sword," hence Hangyeol's mock confusion.

Footnotes:

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