WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 109: The Marksman of the Magic Bullet (2)
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Choi Jaebyung dropped down, drove his sword into the rock wall, and caught my arm.
"Hey! Tough guy! You okay?"
"Kuh, ugh! Who's a tough guy!"
So that's what he actually thought of me this whole time. I'd remember that.
Seo Jihoon, who'd been knocked down the rock face, climbed back up.
Choa came scrambling down like she was racing a slope and stopped partway.
"Hangyeol-ssi! Are you okay?"
Blood dripped steadily from the gash torn open in my side.
If I lost much more blood here, I was going to go into shock. Actually, my vision was already starting to blur.
I copied what Seo Jihoon had done, driving the Sky Sword into the wall and clinging to it.
Choa held out her hand.
"Will you be alright?"
Choa's ability pulled the other person's wound onto her own body.
In the process, she could read the memory of the wound.
Would I be alright.
I wasn't sure who should be asking who that question, given the wound went well past a broken arm like last time.
Ah, and the dizziness was starting to creep in...
"As long as you're okay with it, Choa-ssi."
The second I finished speaking, Choa grabbed my hand.
The man was a Hunter from an outside guild, part of the support team.
He was the same suspicious young man who'd helped block Yeongno's roar earlier.
He pulled down the hood he'd been wearing and looked down at me.
"Heuh..."
My head cleared instantly.
The wound on my body was gone, but I'd already lost a lot of blood.
"Whoa, no way. What is that?"
Choi Jaebyung, seeing Choa's Origin Recovery for the first time, looked stunned.
Having taken the wound onto herself, Choa's body looked disturbingly fine.
Still, it would've been a lie to say I felt no guilt over it.
"Twice would be rough."
I nodded and climbed back up.
[The boss raid will end.]
[Dragon Orb - An Seojun (Akhtaion)]
[Park Siyu (Mitchell) - Merit points: 2,000k]
[Jin Sangbyeok (Lux) - Merit points: 1,000k]
[Kang Hangyeol (Soter) - Merit points: 700k]
Merit point notifications kept ringing off one after another, and while I ignored the chaos, a whisper came in from Choi Suhyun.
Seemed like Gangwoo-hyung had something to say and got patched through.
"Hey, who is that guy?"
"That's what I want to ask you."
Choi Suhyun was a mid-level administrator at the Association, wasn't he?
He couldn't have spent all that time just goofing off, so surely he'd seen or heard something through the Association.
Choi Suhyun scoffed.
"Do I look like an encyclopedia to you? Why'd he attack you in the first place?"
Even accounting for me getting careless, that attack had clearly been lethal.
And that face.
Strangely familiar, somehow.
I was sure I'd never seen or heard that name before.
It was an odd sense of familiarity, more like an unidentifiable wrongness than anything warm.
One thing I could say for certain.
"I'm innocent."
"Bullshit."
"You don't know anything about him, hyung? Who's his god, Akhtaion? You know who that is?"
"Seven-Star God, Babylon-affiliated."
Babylon, as I understood it, referred to gods ranked within the top 1000.
Park Siyu's god, [Mitchell], and the god [Lux] were both Babylon-affiliated.
Didn't seem like a particularly high tier, but considering how many gods out there still went unnamed and forgotten even now, it was still an impressive feat regardless.
"Isn't the Seven-Star God supposed to mean the top 7 gods or something?"
"Similar, but different. Babylon isn't something you get sorted into cleanly just by ranking under 1000."
Top 1000 was, quite literally, just the minimum bar for joining Babylon.
Which meant, in practice, that most gods filed their Babylon membership the instant they hit rank 1000.
Apparently the actual number of Babylon-affiliated gods had never once reached a full 1000.
"So what about the Seven-Star God?"
"The most influential gods in Babylon. I guess you could call it a social club for the elite gods. I don't know the details either. Why? Because Servia, the god I used to follow, wasn't a Seven-Star God."
Putting it together, the Seven-Star God seemed to mean something like the first-string club among Babylon's gods.
Korea generally had a wide mix of gods coexisting, but apparently overseas, the influence wielded by Hunters affiliated with a Seven-Star God was on a whole different level.
"Didn't expect them to drag a Seven-Star God into this."
Choi Suhyun, off in the distance, scratched his head.
The original goal for me and Choi Suhyun had been to use the Dragon Orb to bring Eunyoung-noona back out.
The Dragon Orb was basically the heart of the imugi.
Yeongno had failed to become a dragon, but the pure mana it had stockpiled toward that goal hadn't just vanished.
I had no idea if the Dragon Orb actually had wish-granting power, but if I could tap the concentrated mana packed into it, it seemed worth trying to pull Eunyoung-noona out of the god Beritaas's divine temple.
Choi Suhyun and I had been keeping in constant contact through the community feature.
This was the plan we'd worked out after hearing about the Dragon Orb on the way to Yukbaeksan with Choa.
A rushed, half-improvised plan, but I'd still thought it was worth a shot.
An unexpected wrench had gotten thrown in.
I stepped off a nearby rock face and moved toward Choi Suhyun.
Seo Jihoon and Yu Seyeon approached from beside An Seojun.
Seo Jihoon held out a hand to An Seojun.
"Can't even handle one person."
"Skip the useless talk and hand over the Dragon Orb."
An Seojun tossed the glowing blue Dragon Orb to Seo Jihoon.
The rock face between An Seojun and Seo Jihoon split cleanly in two.
The pair, having barely dodged the attack, turned their heads.
Seo Jihoon held out the hand gripping the Dragon Orb toward Park Siyu.
"Park Siyu, why didn't you stop Chaeyoung from entering the dungeon that day? A man like you would've known Raon Guild was scheming something behind the scenes."
Park Siyu clenched the Light Saber tight, jaw set.
"I didn't have the right to stop her."
By the time Yu Chaeyoung entered that dungeon, Park Siyu had already ended things with her.
Seyeon, who'd been listening from behind, stepped forward.
"Same as ever. Coming from the murderer who killed my sister."
"Is there anyone here who isn't a murderer?"
"You're saying the people you killed are the same as my sister?"
Park Siyu bit down on the edge of his lip. The answer came, unexpectedly, from Jeong Choa, who'd stepped up beside Siyu.
"You people don't know a single thing about Siyu."
Her voice carried real killing intent.
I'd never seen Choa that angry before.
An uncomfortable, tense standoff dragged on for a while.
"What the hell is even going on right now?"
The one cursing over Channel 2 was none other than Jin Sangbyeok.
He'd apparently heard there was some kind of split forming inside Aria Guild, but he clearly hadn't expected it to be this bad.
Seo Jihoon held out a hand to Park Siyu.
"Park Siyu, I'll forgive you."
"I'm going to kill every last person from Raon Guild who killed Chaeyoung. And the Association bastards who buried the whole thing too. If none of that had ever happened, you'd never have had a reason to kill Chaeyoung. So I'll forgive you."
"You want me to take revenge with you?"
"That'd be about right."
The light on the Light Saber in Park Siyu's hand went dark.
Less than 30 seconds remained before the return to the original world.
"And after that, what then?"
"That's something to think about when we get there. Not what matters right now."
"Sorry, but I can't join you."
"You mean whatever comes after revenge matters more than the revenge itself?"
"Seems there's been a misunderstanding, let me correct it. I asked what's left after revenge."
"The moment you start worrying about that, it's not revenge anymore! You know why I said I'd forgive you? The Dragon Orb grants wishes. I'm going to use this wish to bring her back!"
Park Siyu swung the Light Saber at Seo Jihoon's arm with everything he had.
A massive flash of light grazed across the arm holding the Dragon Orb.
And at that exact moment.
[Final settlement has concluded.]
[The raid has fully ended.]
Space and time shuddered like breaking glass, and we returned to the original Yukbaeksan.
I dropped into the middle of the dense forest and let out a long sigh.
While I was still getting my bearings, Gangwoo-hyung's voice came through.
"The Representative's 500 meters to your right."
"Whoa, hyung, you can do that too?"
"This and that, nothing. It's GPS, you idiot."
Ah, come on, way to kill the moment.
Electronics didn't work inside the ARF, but out here in reality, things were different.
I ran 500 meters toward where Kim Gangwoo pointed.
Right up ahead, trees were getting swept clean away in an explosion so obviously Park Siyu's doing that there was no mistaking it.
That deforestation menace!
Something felt off.
The instant I pushed through the underbrush, a massive monster's leg came sweeping in from the side.
A bullet flying in a straight line struck the monster's leg and detonated.
"How many monsters are there even supposed to be!"
Choi Suhyun's irritated voice came through Channel 1.
Right before we'd left the ARF, Choi Suhyun and I had definitely been standing on the same rock face.
He'd gotten pretty far off in the meantime.
I could sense Choi Suhyun's location just from feel, no need to even use Mana Detection, since he shared Soter's affiliation with me.
The direction the bullet had come from and where Choi Suhyun actually was didn't line up at all.
Distance aside, he was firing from a spot that shouldn't have been able to hit anything by any normal logic.
I'd heard the marksman-style shooting worked differently from a regular gun, and seeing Choi Suhyun in action made that click immediately.
"Suhyun-hyung, thanks!"
The instant I got the thanks out, another bullet went flying past me at the monster ahead.
Use your words. Words.
We were on the same side, but I was too scared he'd shoot me from behind to even open my mouth.
Another loud crash rang out from the direction Park Siyu was in.
I cut down monsters as I made my way toward him.
"Hey, you good..... what is that?"
Park Siyu turned his head as if he'd known I was coming.
Choa pointed a finger behind Seo Jihoon.
"Hangyeol-ssi, didn't you say there was no item that could grant wishes?"
Especially not the kind of wish that brought back the dead.
Where Choa was pointing stood a gray cylinder of unclear make.
Inside it was a woman in plain clothes.
She still seemed unconscious, eyes closed, submerged in the liquid.
Choa gave me a look full of doubt.
"I've said it a bunch of times, no item like that..."
"I know. I know that, so how do you explain that thing, then?"
"Choa-ssi, do you know why a Transcendent is called a Transcendent?"
"Because they transcended, obviously..."
"Transcended what, exactly?"
Choa fell silent, apparently caught off guard.
Transcendent meant something that had gone beyond human.
The fact that a Transcendent could put out power far beyond an ordinary Hunter's meant, in the end, that they'd broken through some kind of limit.
"A Transcendent, just by being a Transcendent, is a demigod."
You could become a demigod by accepting a god into yourself, but that wasn't the only path to the title.
A Transcendent couldn't become an actual god, but they were someone who used a god's power to surpass humanity.
Same as the Muel inside the tower, who inherited a god's mark and used mana and divine authority through it.
And being only half of something still meant being not human, which in turn meant being capable of things no one could've imagined.
"The Dragon Orb isn't a wish-granting item. So bringing back the dead is impossible."
"Then what the hell is that?"
"But it could probably build a shell, at least. And do you know what that means?"
"What does it mean?"
"You said Yu Chaeyoung was Beritaas's Guardian and a Transcendent, right? Which means her body would be the most familiar one for Beritaas to inhabit."
A god deciding to take direct revenge using its follower's own body, whoever came up with that idea, it was genuinely inspired.
"Beritaas must have really cherished this woman named Yu Chaeyoung."
Not sure whether that was something to be glad about or not.
Footnotes:
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