WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 115: Alliance, My Foot (4)
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I didn't know exactly what was going on over there, but I could tell Choi Suhyun had no spare attention to throw my way.
Expecting anything from Choi Suhyun at this point felt like a lost cause.
I lowered my shield and met Choi Jaebyung's eyes as he gripped his sword.
Several expressions crossed Choi Jaebyung's face at once.
He clearly had a lot of questions, but his eyes said he'd pretend not to notice, at least for now.
Choi Jaebyung lunged at Jung Hyeonseong first.
Wherever his sword passed, a trail of light lingered behind.
Nothing like the guy who'd been whining about his wrist a second ago.
Jung Hyeonseong's arm twitched, and a chunk of vein tore loose from it.
The vein, now sharpened into a blade, shot toward Choi Jaebyung.
Choi Jaebyung threw himself backward.
I cut the vein down before it could reach him, then followed up with an attack of my own.
Jung Hyeonseong's monstrous arm and my Sky Sword clashed nonstop in midair.
Getting power from accepting the god Beritaas was one thing, but Jung Hyeonseong wasn't exactly a Hunter with much combat experience.
"Damn it!"
Jung Hyeonseong, getting steadily pushed back, stamped his foot into the ground.
He twisted his body and swung the sword in a wide arc.
The blade cut close to Jung Hyeonseong's own neck.
I'd meant to take his head off clean.
But black scab tissue had already formed across the gash.
A hand rose out of the black shadow pooling beneath his feet.
Behind him, Choi Jaebyung gave his sword a small twist and drove it into the ground.
Red magic circles bloomed across the earth and neutralized the black hands in an instant.
The sword in Jung Hyeonseong's hand split into two.
That thing had already stopped being something you could really call a sword.
I kicked away a blade flying straight at me and threw my body backward.
At the same moment, a slash I'd sent flying in a straight line collided with Jung Hyeonseong's sword again.
Before I could even set my stance, Choi Jaebyung's shield knocked Jung Hyeonseong's sword aside.
The shield vanished from view, and Choi Jaebyung's blade opened a gash across Jung Hyeonseong's shoulder.
Wounded at the shoulder, Jung Hyeonseong stepped back.
"You people don't know anything! Nothing, not one thing!!"
Jung Hyeonseong gritted his teeth.
Bloody tears streamed down his face, while Choi Jaebyung wore a bored, indifferent expression.
Whatever Jung Hyeonseong had to say, Choi Jaebyung didn't seem to care much.
"Kill, die... die. I'll kill you all! As many as I can!!"
Every bone in his body twisted grotesquely, and his frame kept swelling larger.
"Jesus, this guy's insane!"
Jung Hyeonseong threw everything he had into an attack aimed at Choi Jaebyung.
The force of Choi Jaebyung's swing shook the trees around them.
At the same moment, Choi Jaebyung went flying and slammed into a tree.
He struggled up, spat blood, and tried to steady his breathing.
Black skin, red eyes, and in place of arms, a pair of things attached to him that were barely recognizable as swords anymore.
The ominous power radiating off Jung Hyeonseong made Choi Jaebyung's hand tremble.
He hesitated, then took a step back.
"Hey! What are you doing!"
"What do you think I'm doing, running for it."
I gave him a look of disbelief, and Choi Jaebyung just shook his head.
This was exactly the guy's problem.
He fought well when he thought the opponent was manageable or worth the risk, but the moment things went even slightly sideways or looked dangerous, he had a habit of backing off.
Choi Jaebyung pointed at the forest, where explosions kept going off without pause.
"Th, think about it logically! It doesn't make sense! There are three Transcendents over there!"
"Maybe one of them will come help us out."
Guy had no shame at all.
"Still, there's two of us."
"Can you actually beat that thing?"
I glanced over at Jung Hyeonseong.
The oppressive presence radiating off him now that he'd become a full demigod was overwhelming, no question.
Beyond that, I couldn't think of anything else.
"Won't know until we try."
"Earlier."
"Earlier what?"
"If the deputy rep hadn't backed off just now, were you actually planning to fight her? She's a Transcendent too, you know."
"Being a Transcendent doesn't automatically mean anything."
"You're probably the only person alive who'd say that."
"So you want to give up, then?"
Choi Jaebyung sighed at my question.
There was no way I couldn't tell what he was getting at, falling back and going to grab some real firepower.
"Do we have to be this extreme about it? How the hell are we supposed to beat something like that!"
"All you did was clash with him once."
"One clash tells you plenty!"
The hand gripping Jung Hyeonseong's sword was shaking.
Seemed like it was about time to cut the argument short.
If Choi Jaebyung really couldn't do it, I wasn't going to force him to stay.
Fully transformed into a monster now, Jung Hyeonseong swung both blade-arms and charged.
Weight pressed into the sword the instant it made contact.
Looking at him now, Jung Hyeonseong was already long past sane.
Every swing of the sword tore a scream out of his whole body.
I gritted my teeth and knocked aside his wild, reckless swings.
More attacks came flying out of the torn-open space around him.
I used Falling Petal Flower Sword to sweep away the attacks coming from every direction.
Whatever got through, I sent flying with Haejoo's Ring.
Wounds kept piling up on my body, one after another. The more they piled up, the hotter my blood boiled.
Whether I could win or not wasn't the point anymore.
I would win!
I had to.
I couldn't afford to stop here.
Gritting my teeth, I brought the Sky Sword down in a hard arc. The gap in raw power had almost stopped mattering by now.
Every time he attacked, my whole body staggered.
I braced a hand against the ground, pushed myself back up, and struck again.
"Hey! Choi Jaebyung!"
Jung Hyeonseong's arm grazed past my throat.
I twisted at the waist to knock the blade aside, then used Line to carve a wound into his arm.
The gash writhed for a second, then closed up almost instantly.
"How long are you gonna keep fighting only the fights you can win!"
I spun in midair and drove my sword straight into Jung Hyeonseong's eye.
He stumbled backward, screaming.
The moment his foot touched the ground, the earth rippled violently.
That was always how Choi Jaebyung fought.
Being A-rank, being a Hunter that Kang Moonkook, the Raon Guild's rep, personally favored, meant he'd been handed a mountain of advantages without ever realizing it.
What kind of fight is it, fighting from a position of overwhelming advantage the whole time?
Sure, it counted as experience, but that wasn't a fight, that was just one-sided violence being inflicted on someone weaker.
I'd once asked him, if the Dragon Orb was real and he could make a wish, what he'd wish for.
"My wish isn't something a thing like that could grant."
I still didn't know what Choi Jaebyung's wish actually was.
Wishes were abstract things, deeply personal.
But one thing was clear, whatever Choi Jaebyung's wish was, it wasn't the kind of thing you could get with an object, or by borrowing someone else's hands.
I think I finally understood why that old man Kang Moonkook had thrown this guy into a place like this.
"Fight!"
"But that, that thing's..."
I gripped the Sky Sword with both hands and blocked the blade coming down at me.
Jung Hyeonseong and I locked into a straight power struggle.
The ground cracked under the crushing pressure.
I never let my feet leave the ground, not once.
"I'm disappointed."
"You're all this thing amounts to? Ugh!"
Jung Hyeonseong pulled his sword back and swung a kick straight into my body.
I coughed up blood, and my body floated up into the air.
Think I can't attack you just because I'm airborne?
I twisted my wrist and drove my sword into Jung Hyeonseong's chest.
He brought the blade fused to his arm down against the sword buried in his body.
The Sky Sword shuddered under the tremendous impact.
Any ordinary sword would've shattered under a blow like that.
When I tried to pull it back out, the mouth-shaped split in his blade swallowed my Sky Sword whole.
"You son of a!"
He spun his body, and mine spun right along with it, sword still clenched in my grip.
I pulled Angervadir from my waist and swung it in the same motion.
Space split open, and black spikes came flying out through the gap.
Every single one of them aimed straight for a vital point.
I might've been able to negate a few with Haejoo's Ring, but the rest were beyond me.
Guess I can't help it.
I activated Haejoo's Ring.
Light burst from the ring and erased several of the incoming spikes.
Right as I braced myself to lose an arm and a leg, Choi Jaebyung moved.
Two shields materialized around me.
The moment I touched down, Choi Jaebyung clenched his fist.
I'd assumed his shields only worked as summons, but apparently they could be used this way too. First I'd heard of it.
Choi Jaebyung gripped his sword tight.
"I... I made a promise to myself that I'd survive, even if it meant running away, even if people called me a coward for it. So I can't pull that two-lives stunt you're doing. Won't do it!"
Everyone chases something different.
For Choi Jaebyung, there was just a reason he needed to survive, even if it meant going this far.
I had no intention of criticizing that.
"But I know I can't just keep living like this forever! I know, I know I'm someone who never grows! But even so!"
"I don't want to hear you call yourself that from your own mouth! And I want it even less if you're going to walk out ahead of me while doing it!"
Choi Jaebyung drove his sword into the ground, and the rippling earth settled for an instant.
I blocked Jung Hyeonseong's next attack.
White light rose up behind me, and orbs of white light began circling around my body.
My body felt lighter than before, by a lot.
Jung Hyeonseong, twisted into that grotesque shape, opened his mouth.
"You don't understand us. You don't understand me!"
Choi Jaebyung cast his buff skill again.
Orbs of red and blue wrapped around my body in sequence.
I gritted my teeth and kept knocking aside the blades flying at me nonstop.
"So what! What am I supposed to do about it!"
I raised my sword high overhead.
Hundred Beasts Sword tore through Jung Hyeonseong's arm and body.
I kicked Jung Hyeonseong's body as he closed in.
Jung Hyeonseong had been an unaffiliated Hunter.
Knowing your own fate was to vanish without a trace, anyone in that position, not just Jung Hyeonseong, would break down and suffer.
Jung Hyeonseong taking the god Beritaas's hand wasn't something that needed understanding. It was simply the obvious choice.
"I don't understand you either, but you don't understand me!"
I'd never expected anyone to understand me in the first place.
Ju Seohye wanted revenge for a friend, Han Jongho wanted to climb the ladder using his family's money.
Rizu felt isolated by the power of death she carried, and Ifeseph, the head steward, believed loyalty to House Faillia was the only reason he had to live.
There was no way I could understand all of that.
My body got flung back, and Choi Jaebyung ran in to block the follow-up.
Hands shaking, he swung his sword with everything he had, desperate.
Arbelisia was the dimension managed by Lachesis, the one who'd summoned me here.
The longer I stayed in this world, the more certain I became.
The reason that thing had feared me climbing to divinity was probably because it feared I might end up joining this damned game myself.
Erasing the existence of unaffiliated awakened ones wasn't as easy as it sounded.
Something like that could only happen with the tacit agreement of every single god.
Wiping out beings who hadn't even ascended to divinity yet, purely on the grounds of what they might become someday.
With the hidden pieces finally surfacing, the blurred picture was coming into focus.
Choi Jaebyung, unable to withstand Jung Hyeonseong's strength, got flung back.
I moved to react, and Choi Jaebyung got back up again.
I made him an offer.
"Can you hold him off, just for a moment?"
Gritting his teeth, Choi Jaebyung gave a silent nod and ran forward.
Every time he swung his sword, a burst of light tore through the trees nearby.
Using the opening, I pulled up the god Soter's status window.
Ranking: 13,421st
Cumulative merit points: 6,992,540P
Followers: 3
Adding in the merit points Choi Suhyun had sponsored along with what Kang Hangyeol already held put the total near seven million.
[Ability 'Possession' acquired.]
[Ability 'Descent' acquired.]
[Trait 'Furious Charge' acquired.]
Choi Jaebyung, who'd been doing his level best, got sent flying.
He flew clear to the sloped ground, drove his sword into the dirt, and barely avoided falling any further.
Jung Hyeonseong, drenched in blood, closed in.
I grabbed Angervadir and cut into my own body.
I avoided anything vital, but blood poured freely from the open wound all at once.
Choi Jaebyung ran over, saw it, and shouted.
"Are you out of your mind, what the hell are you doing!"
"Are you in your right mind?"
"What, of course I am!"
[Conditions for 'Furious Charge' met.]
Footnotes:
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