WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 110: The Marksman of the Magic Bullet (3)
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He'd said it half joking, but it was no joke at all.
Right now, inside the god Beritaas's divine temple, Yu Chaeyoung's spirit stood alongside Eunyoung noona.
The chances of Eunyoung noona lying about that were vanishingly small.
Park Siyu messaged me on the 1-channel.
― I've got a question. Uh... damn it, if that really is her, how likely is it to actually be real?
He was clearly trying to hold onto his composure.
Nobody blamed him for it.
Choa kept her mouth shut, her gaze turning toward me.
He'd spoken on the shared channel, but the question was really aimed at me.
Like I'd know either.
― It might really be Yu Chaeyoung.
― How is that even possible?
― Bringing back the dead is possible.
Choa's face twisted, like she couldn't quite follow.
It probably sounded absurd, insisting there was no such thing as a wish-granting item while turning around and claiming resurrection was possible.
But reviving the dead and wielding true omnipotence were two completely different problems.
― But there are plenty of issues with it.
Resurrection wasn't an easy thing to begin with, and even if it happened, achieving a full, intact resurrection was close to impossible.
The most obvious problem was that there was no guarantee the resurrected body would be a normal one.
Once a heart stopped, the body started decaying fast.
― So this is less "Yu Chaeyoung came back to life" and more "something used the Dragon Orb's power to construct a human being called Yu Chaeyoung."
With the condensed mana packed into the Dragon Orb, building a living human wasn't a hard trick at all.
Of everyone here, Park Siyu was the one who'd have the hardest time swallowing this.
I figured I needed a little more information.
I asked Gangwoo hyung to set up a one-on-one channel with Park Siyu.
[A 1:1 comms room between 'Park Siyu' and 'Kang Hangyeol' has been opened.]
― What is it?
― What was it like back then?
― Back then?
― When you killed Yu Chaeyoung. I need to know why you did it.
It was a sensitive topic, but there was no way around it.
The Seoul great disaster had been a dungeon break triggered by Yu Chaeyoung's death and the failure of an S-Rank dungeon.
― Half the Hunter casualties from that incident were caused by one person.
― Yu Chaeyoung?
― Yeah. Hard to believe, but yes. This is just my guess, but even if she'd been betrayed, her state of mind wasn't right. Thinking back on it now, it looked like some form of incursion.
― One more thing. Do you know her taboo?
― I do.
― Did Yu Chaeyoung break it?
― No.
Putting together what I'd gotten from Eunyoung noona, the Yu Chaeyoung standing in the gap of the temple was, in all likelihood, the same Yu Chaeyoung that Park Siyu remembered.
― There's something called the Mark of the Underworld. It's a mechanism built in the underworld to stop the dead from being resurrected. If someone who's already died comes back, that mark makes their own body reject them. I guess you could call it a kind of taboo too.
Even if Yu Chaeyoung came back, the odds that she'd be in her right mind were slim to none.
― If someone bearing the Mark of the Underworld gets resurrected without passing through the underworld first, the body ends up following nothing but its instincts from when it was alive.
― You mean...
― It could happen all over again. What happened back then.
I didn't know how strong that woman, Yu Chaeyoung, had actually been, so I couldn't say anything careless.
― If she comes back with the mark stamped on her, can she still use Transcendent Mode?
― Probably not.
― That's all I needed. If things go wrong, I'll handle it somehow.
― Handle what how? You're saying something weird.
I didn't know whether Park Siyu's feelings for Yu Chaeyoung had been real or not. Even so, there was no way he felt fine about having killed his own former fiancée.
Making him kill the same face twice was just cruel.
― That's not your job.
Luckily, I had a card to play here. Eunyoung noona's revenge.
You dare lay a hand on my, no, our noona?
― Thanks for the thought, at least.
― Don't get any dumb ideas. You're not laying a hand on Yu Chaeyoung.
Despite my warning, Park Siyu didn't answer.
He probably had no intention of giving me a straight answer anyway. That should be fine, right?
The 1:1 chat between me and Park Siyu closed.
I didn't need to look to know whose doing that was.
Around the still-unconscious Yu Chaeyoung stood Seo Jihoon, Yu Seyeon, and An Seojun, follower of the god Akhtaion.
"Are we done talking now?"
"Thanks for the consideration."
"Consideration, my ass. We just needed the time too."
Seo Jihoon answered with a low laugh.
Choi Jaebyung burst out of the underbrush.
Caught in the middle, he kept glancing back and forth between where Park Siyu, Choa, and I stood and where Yu Chaeyoung was.
"The chat room host told me to come, so I came, but this isn't exactly a nice view."
A heavy tension hung in the air, thick enough that a fight could've broken out at any second.
Park Siyu leveled the tip of his Light Saber at Seo Jihoon.
That was when it happened.
The air shuddered unstably, like someone had launched a bomb into the sky.
At the same moment, a huge line appeared in the middle of the sky.
The line, curled up like the corner of a mouth, kept growing larger.
It looked like someone had drawn a picture across the heavens.
The thick line split into two, then peeled apart, top and bottom.
A black space appeared in the gap between them.
Monsters poked their faces out from beyond that space.
Some still had recognizable shapes, but most had faces twisted out of proportion or bodies mutated so grotesquely their original forms were unrecognizable.
The two lines pulled apart to their limit, forming a massive circle in the sky.
The entire sky above Yukbaeksan turned black.
A personal barrier was a space similar in kind to an ARF.
If an ARF sat somewhere between a dungeon and reality, a personal barrier connected a divine temple to reality itself.
It was reality, yes, but at the same time, it was also the divine temple of the god Beritaas.
"What the hell is that?"
Choi Jaebyung scrambled over and ran straight to Park Siyu and me.
Why does this guy keep hiding behind me, though?
You're the tanker! And bigger than me too!
"Nobody told me this was gonna turn into some huge fight like this!!"
I could kind of see now why the guild rep had dragged Choi Jaebyung out here.
"If you want to run, go ahead and run. This is our business anyway. Way I see it, you're an outsider here."
"You promised me a sparring match after the raid, though."
"I'll help. It'd be a problem if you died here."
Something about his priorities felt seriously off.
I shot him a sour look, and Choi Jaebyung cleared his throat again.
"Ahem. Besides, those things look like they've got a grudge against Raon Guild too. We were gonna cross paths with them eventually anyway, right?"
Fine, help out all you want, just don't hide behind me. It's ruining my image!
"You don't look surprised. Guess you saw this coming."
"Might not have known, if somebody hadn't gone and done something unnecessary."
Park Siyu's gaze landed on Yu Seyeon.
She was the one who'd given the hint connecting all this to the bossless dungeons that had been popping up for years now.
Seo Jihoon scolded her.
"Unnecessary, my ass."
"Oh shut up, I just figured it wasn't a big deal to mention. It's not like it was some huge secret."
― Ah, aaah!
Unfortunately, I didn't get to hear the rest of Seo Jihoon and Yu Seyeon's spat.
The reason was Choi Suhyun's voice, cutting in out of nowhere.
Every Hunter who caught Choi Suhyun's voice on the 1-channel tilted their heads at the exact same time.
Since nobody else was asking, I stepped up as the representative.
― Hyung, what's wrong?
― That Akhtaion bastard. It's him.
― Him who?
― You know, the guy. The key broker from Skyfield. That's him. Different name, but I'm sure of it!
I'd assumed the whole Skyfield dungeon thing had just been Yu Seyeon poking around out of curiosity.
Finding out there'd been someone pulling strings behind it left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
Also, that's pretty far away. Impressive that he's been keeping such a close eye on things.
― Hyung, how do you even know that key broker's face?
― Obviously I looked into it. He's not exactly famous, and Siyu said he'd handle it so I let it slide, but... Siyu's probably seen a photo of him too, at least.
At Choi Suhyun's words, Park Siyu's eyes narrowed.
Judging by his reaction, this was a face he hadn't put together either.
― Seems about right.
If even Park Siyu was saying so, there wasn't much room left for doubt.
Monsters kept dropping across the whole of Yukbaeksan and the surrounding area.
Most were D-Rank or C-Rank bosses, but a fair number of large A-Rank bosses were mixed in too.
What is that guy even doing?
The unease I felt was different from what Park Siyu or Choi Suhyun felt.
Mine was a more tangled, complicated kind of discomfort.
I could figure it out later.
The Hunters scattered across the clearing all moved at nearly the same instant.
The Hundred Beasts Sword's ragged blade swept toward An Seojun.
An Seojun drew the sword at his hip and met it head on.
A brown-hilted straight blade, its edge glowing white as it drank in mana.
An Seojun's eyes gleamed just as white as the blade.
I spun once and fell back.
A bullet fired from a distance streaked toward An Seojun's face.
An Seojun spun and swung his sword to knock it aside.
― Hey, what's wrong with you all of a sudden?
Choi Suhyun, watching from wherever he was, called out to me.
Unfortunately, this wasn't exactly a good time to answer.
I wiped the cut on my cheek with the back of my hand. During the raid it had happened too fast for me to think much of it, but that last attack made it certain.
Yu Jihan the Transcendent, sure. Say he just picked up something similar from me teaching him swordwork basics.
But then who the hell was this guy, using that same sword?
An Seojun closed the distance to me in an instant.
I'd gotten hit once. I wasn't stupid enough to let it happen twice.
I managed to knock his sword aside, but that was as far as it went.
Our skill was about even.
"Who am I? That's what I want to ask you. What are you?"
I spun my body and used Meteoric Slash.
An Seojun planted a hand on the ground, flipped backward, and closed in again, murmuring something under his breath.
Huh?
He scowled at my blank reaction.
"Playing dumb, are you?"
"Playing dumb about what? I don't know, so I'm saying I don't know. What is that supposed to be?"
"Forget it, if you don't know."
An Seojun swung his sword through empty air, and the trees nearby got sheared clean off.
Ka-thoom.
Watching the trees topple, I curled my mouth into a smile.
I could guess, vaguely, that something dangerous was about to come.
Might as well try it again.
Choa and I locked eyes.
An Seojun's sword flashed and came bearing down toward my face.
I used Wind Fang, and wind kicked up around the blade.
I fell back, and Choa appeared from underneath An Seojun.
A blind spot created by the difference in their heights.
That sword...
The more I looked at it, the more suspicious it got.
An Seojun's blade grazed across Choa's body.
"What the..."
The instant the sword carved a wound into her, it healed over, gone.
Choa caught the blade bare-handed. Blood poured out, but she didn't even blink.
An Seojun scrambled backward in a hurry.
Choa closed the distance and grabbed his arm.
It wasn't even an attack, really, just her gripping his wrist.
"I'll pay you back for Hangyeol-ssi's share too."
The moment Choa let go and stepped back, a massive wound opened up across An Seojun's body.
He staggered and stumbled backward.
The ground shook around An Seojun and the still-unconscious Yu Chaeyoung.
This place was the god Beritaas's personal barrier.
Changing the terrain around here was nothing at all.
I leapt high, raised the Sky Sword, and used the Hundred Beasts Sword.
The savage blade knocked Seo Jihoon's scythe aside.
― Hangyeol-ssi! Come down!
My body floated up into the air.
Yu Seyeon fired off a spell at me, and a bullet flying in knocked it aside, triggering an explosion.
I spun midair and landed on the ground.
"Ugh, these bastards."
A huge rock wall rose up some distance away.
Ka-thoom. Thoom.
Monsters kept dropping through the rift and onto the ground.
A notification chimed in the comms room, saying some members had dropped out.
[The ones here come first!]
A voice, thick with fury, rang out through the personal barrier.
Footnotes:
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