WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 114: Alliance, My Foot (3)
──────
My sword clashed with An Seojun's in midair.
An Seojun twisted his body and thrust his blade in.
The sword moved with fluid ease and went for Choa's throat again.
Choa caught the blade barehanded.
The wound on the hand that gripped it healed at a startling speed.
Calling it recovery wasn't quite right. It was closer to absorption, but there was no way An Seojun could've known that.
An Seojun pulled back and stared at Choa's hand, his face twisted.
"Doesn't it even hurt?"
"Who knows. Maybe it would, if you swung a little harder?"
"Don't bother provoking me."
"Do you dislike me?"
"You went after me while leaving everyone else alone. If Hangyeol-ssi hadn't stepped in, that blade would've gone straight through my throat. Well, half of that was on purpose, I suppose."
I'd already known that, but I hadn't expected her to actually say it out loud.
I'd felt it since the day we met. Choa made me uneasy.
Small frame, cute face, but her way of fighting was chilling in a way that didn't match any of it.
Sometimes I even resented Park Siyu a little for knowing and just letting her do it.
Just a moment ago was a good example.
Park Siyu had been standing closer to Choa than I was.
Even setting aside whether he'd known An Seojun was targeting her, Park Siyu's reflexes were more than sharp enough to block someone closing in like that.
There was no way Choa or Park Siyu didn't know I hated that kind of fighting style.
Not that I meant to say anything about it.
It just made me uncomfortable, that was all.
Man, I need something sweet.
Choco Emong. If I'd known things would go this way, I should've bought a few more.
Times like this made me jealous of the inventory options Yu Jihan and Lee Eunyheui had.
Choa pointed at An Seojun's arm.
"By the way, is your arm okay?"
"What? Ugh."
Blood was dripping steadily from An Seojun's sleeve.
He rolled it up, and the same wound Choa had taken showed up on his own arm, exactly as it was.
Yu Seyeon, standing on the other side, tossed An Seojun an elixir.
An Seojun drank it and caught his breath.
"Do you not feel pain at all?"
"Who knows."
"What an unpleasant ability."
"I've heard that a lot, so I'm used to it."
"I think I asked if you disliked me. Isn't that obvious?"
"Obvious? You're the one who attacked Hangyeol-ssi first. I only gave back what I got. If anything, I should be the one who hates you, shouldn't I? Am I wrong?"
At Choa's clipped, matter-of-fact reply, An Seojun's face showed his displeasure openly.
The snake body attached to Hresvelgr's head got severed and dropped nearby.
A huge cloud of dust kicked up.
Before the dust fully blocked the view, my eyes met Park Siyu's.
Park Siyu pointed in the direction where Yu Chaeyoung was.
Guess it makes sense for me to go there.
I turned to head that way, and An Seojun's sword came flying out of the dust.
Choa swung her leg hard and knocked the blade off course.
"Go! Hangyeol-ssi!"
Right on cue, a magic bullet fired by Choi Suhyun went for An Seojun's head.
I've got plenty I want to ask, though.
I looked up at the massive cliff that had risen in the middle of Yukbaeksan.
There was something I had to take care of first.
There's something I want to ask the god Beritaas too.
I couldn't say nothing was bothering me.
Choi Jaebyung came up beside me.
"Together, let's go together!!"
That guy really stuck like a leech.
Noise erupted from every direction, scrambling my thoughts.
Loud enough that a bomb could've dropped on the mountain and nobody would've so much as blinked.
I looked down at the ground stained black and frowned, stopping in my tracks.
The soil around us had turned black, and the trees and grass had all withered.
"Why, what's wrong?"
Jaebyung had already seen Hresvelgr's attack and clearly didn't understand what the problem was.
The attack fired from the snakes on its head had an effect that made living things rot away.
I got that part.
"This is different."
"This is something else."
When I tensed up, Choi Jaebyung raised his shield.
Seo Jihoon was still up on the cliff.
The space split open, centered on the direction I was looking.
Through the gap that opened, a monster appeared alongside a stranger wearing a hood.
The man pulled the hood back from his face.
"Jung Hyeonseong. The unaffiliated Hunter who got kidnapped along with Eunyoung-noona."
"For someone like that..."
Choi Jaebyung watched Jung Hyeonseong's reaction and gripped his sword tighter.
It made no sense at all for someone supposedly kidnapped to show up so calmly through one of the god Beritaas's dimensional gates.
Jung Hyeonseong tilted his head at what I'd said.
"You know me? This is the first time I've seen either of you."
"If you were really Jung Hyeonseong, maybe."
Something had been nagging at me ever since the conversation about Eunyoung-noona and Jung Hyeonseong.
Every awakened person was supposed to serve some god. And yet, rarely, unaffiliated awakened people appeared.
Something like 0.1 percent by ratio, but the number was never zero either.
Why did the gods turn away from awakened ones like Eunyoung-noona or Jung Hyeonseong?
Why did they have to vanish from people's memories?
And why did awakened people like that keep showing up anyway, no matter how many times it happened?
This was purely a personal theory of mine, so I'd found it hard to bring up with anyone.
Actually, there was one more thing Eunyoung-noona and Jung Hyeonseong had in common.
This body. The existence known as Kang Hangyeol.
The Kang Hangyeol who'd existed right before I moved in had also been an unaffiliated Hunter.
Guess you could call it lucky.
I had no way of knowing what had happened to him before that, but looking at Jung Hyeonseong now, I felt sure of it.
An unaffiliated awakened one wasn't a straggler left behind because no god had chosen them.
They were exactly the kind of soul that carried the possibility of becoming a god themselves.
They didn't want the competition growing.
I understood that feeling well enough.
Even that bastard Lachesis had said he never expected me to rise to godhood either.
Just as the god Soter had settled into this body called Kang Hangyeol, the same thing had happened with Jung Hyeonseong.
That thing standing there was Jung Hyeonseong, but it wasn't Jung Hyeonseong.
That was a demigod body, same as me.
The difference was that the other side was a god who'd already broken taboo, and the corruption had progressed considerably.
Jung Hyeonseong took a step forward.
"Seo Jihoon said his goal was to bring Yu Chaeyoung back to life and get revenge on Raon Guild and the Hunters who turned a blind eye to her death."
"Is there some problem with that?"
"I don't think you cooked all this up just for Yu Chaeyoung's revenge."
Sorry to say this in front of Park Siyu, but this was the reality of it.
It wasn't a lie that the god Beritaas had cherished Yu Chaeyoung.
It was just that the standard for that fondness was different from what people assumed.
To a god, the Hunters who served as followers were nothing more than sources of profit.
Even if Yu Chaeyoung got brought back to life, there was no way she could function as a normal Hunter, belonging to a god who'd broken taboo.
The moment a taboo got broken, it was already a rule violation.
If Yu Chaeyoung had really felt wronged by her own death, she wouldn't have helped Eunyoung-noona the way she did back in the divine temple.
From what Eunyoung-noona told me, the Yu Chaeyoung in that gap wasn't much different from the real one in reality.
Holding a gap open for a month inside the divine temple of a god who'd broken taboo wasn't easy.
Yu Chaeyoung had to already be at her limit.
To me, that looked like both a final act of defiance and a signal at the same time.
Yu Chaeyoung's will, asking someone to stop the god Beritaas she served from going out of control.
Proof that Yu Chaeyoung and the god Beritaas were walking down different paths.
"Pffft, hahaha! Hahahaha!"
At my words, Jung Hyeonseong doubled over laughing.
The laugh sent a chill down my spine.
"Accepting him was my own will, and no one else's."
Accepting a god whose Sane-Corrupting Incursion was already in progress from breaking taboo was practically suicide.
Jung Hyeonseong, as a person, hadn't had that big a vessel to begin with.
No one could say how long he'd hold, or how far he'd make it.
"Why?"
"Because I learned the truth."
Jung Hyeonseong's rage landed on me and Choi Jaebyung both.
"You, chosen by a god, could never understand! Our fate!"
Jung Hyeonseong reached out a hand, and the ground rippled.
The terrain around us twisted into something grotesque.
This was the god Beritaas's own personal barrier, so Jung Hyeonseong, as a demigod, could wield power nearly equal to a god's.
Choi Jaebyung knocked away incoming spikes with his shield.
A shield of light protected me and Choi Jaebyung.
"That still didn't mean you had to team up with a god who broke taboo!"
"Then what was I supposed to do?"
I clamped my mouth shut.
What could someone choose, once they learned their fate was to vanish without a single person ever remembering them existed?
I couldn't do what Eunyoung-noona did, finding and helping every unaffiliated awakened person out there.
"You're going to die."
"I was fated to die either way."
"Not just die, that's not what I mean!"
"To me, dying this way or that way is the same. And besides..."
Jung Hyeonseong's expression darkened.
The trees around us turned a deep blood red.
"If I'm going to die anyway, doesn't it pay off more to take as many people down with me as I can?"
His resolve looked set in stone. Talking this out didn't seem like it was going anywhere.
"What happened to Eunyoung-noona?"
I'd heard from Choi Suhyun that he'd left a message for her after the raid ended, but I hadn't heard anything about a reply coming back.
Jung Hyeonseong reacted to the name Eunyoung.
"What's your relationship with Eunyoung-ssi?"
"None of your business."
"Are you two, you know, something like that?"
Not that Eunyoung-noona wasn't attractive, but that had nothing to do with anything.
"So you're colleagues, then. Serving the same god. But you should give up now."
"I heard Eunyoung-ssi was an unaffiliated Hunter for six years too. She'll regret it for sure, once she learns the truth. Though you'll die before she ever gets the chance to see you again!"
Jung Hyeonseong closed the distance in an instant.
I ducked low and barely dodged the attack.
His movements were far from ordinary.
Creak, creak.
A metallic sound rang out behind Jung Hyeonseong.
Hresvelgr's summoned army of the undead.
"Even if I get erased, you still won't be able to beat me."
Jung Hyeonseong reached his hand out to the side.
A massive mouth appeared in midair and swallowed his arm whole.
"What the hell, what is that!"
Watching the grotesque sight, Choi Jaebyung flinched in shock.
Jung Hyeonseong pulled his hand back out of the mouth, and his arm had transformed into something like a blade.
Thick veins running along the arm writhed.
It felt like he'd fused a living sword onto his own arm.
Jung Hyeonseong kicked off the ground and closed in at tremendous speed.
Bang.
Jung Hyeonseong's arm collided with my Sky Sword, sending out a shockwave.
As I got pushed back, Choi Jaebyung appeared and swung his sword hard.
"What kind of monster strength is this!! My wrist's about to snap!"
Choi Jaebyung barely managed to knock Jung Hyeonseong back and pulled a pained face.
I called out to Choi Suhyun.
"Hyung! Can you back me up?"
"What? You can't even handle that alone? Get lost!"
"I'm actually in trouble here!"
"You think you're the only one in trouble? I'm in trouble too!"
Choi Suhyun's answer left me speechless.
Sounded like he was busy backing up Park Siyu, who was fighting Yu Seyeon.
Yu Seyeon was a mortal, while Park Siyu and Choi Suhyun were both Transcendents.
Come to think of it, Jeong Choa was a Transcendent too.
What kind of balance is this?
"You're wasting time on one measly mortal!"
"I ate something."
"What did you eat?"
"That thing you kept teasing me about, the shard of profane will."
Wait, that thing could be eaten?
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
