WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
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◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 117: The Only Hope (2)
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"Noona, wait a second..."
Before I could stop her, noona Eunyoung stepped in front of Choi Jaebyung, blocking his path.
"Ah, yes! I'm Choi Jaebyung!"
Choi Jaebyung's shoulders had gone rigid with tension.
"Take good care of Hangyeol for me."
"I'll protect him with my life!"
No, you really don't need to protect me with your life.
There's no need for that at all.
Can we just talk for a second here? Talk!
Even if I could talk, I wasn't sure what I'd even say.
I rubbed at my eyes, blinking hard.
Bringing noona Eunyoung along was great and all, but something strange had tagged along with her.
That was...
I couldn't be sure from the back, but the shape looked awfully familiar.
Yu Chaeyoung.
Her spirit form was clinging to noona Eunyoung.
I'd thought I'd only pulled noona out, so I had no idea why this had happened.
While I was still working through the confusion, noona Eunyoung stretched her body out and took off running.
"Leave it to me. I haven't exactly been sitting around doing nothing this past month either!"
The god Beritaas, back in a more presentable form, collided with noona Eunyoung.
Sitting around doing nothing was exactly what she'd been doing.
A memory surfaced of her begging Choi Suhyun in the comments every week for spoilers on some drama she'd been watching religiously.
Thud.
Choi Jaebyung drove his sword into the ground beside me as I sat there.
A faint light rose up around the blade.
A mass of white light drifted around my body.
Every time it passed over me, I could feel small wounds closing up.
Shield, buffs, and now healing too. Choi Jaebyung turned out to be way more versatile than he looked.
Using the lull, I turned to Choi Jaebyung standing beside me and asked.
"Hey, seriously, what's the god Lux's divine name?"
Choi Jaebyung hesitated at my question, clearly flustered.
He wasn't a Transcendent, but he was still a follower the god Lux cared about.
He had to know at least the divine name.
When he looked reluctant to say, I snapped at him.
"Come on, between us? You can't even tell me that much?"
Lee Eunyheui had said the god of light was named "Lumo."
If the god of light was Lumo, then what kind of god was Lux supposed to be?
"Y, you know you can't say this anywhere, right?"
"Just between us."
"It's a secret! Especially, don't ever tell it to the master!"
Choi Jaebyung brought up his guild master and gave me a stern warning.
Only after I promised not to tell did I finally get to hear the god Lux's divine name from him.
"God of Rancor."
"God of what now?"
Just hearing the name, I had no idea what kind of god that was even supposed to be.
Choi Jaebyung sighed, saying he figured I'd react like that.
He pulled his sword out of the ground and traced out characters in the dirt.
What appeared through the soil turned out to be Chinese characters, of all things.
Han. Rancor.
"You're seriously telling me that's what it means?"
"I told you, right? Even I didn't believe it the first time the master told me."
Choi Jaebyung scuffed his foot over the writing to erase it.
"What kind of mismatched combo is that?"
Sure, you could name your alias whatever you wanted, but the alias was Lux and the divine name was God of Rancor. On top of that, the representative guild was "Raon."
Choi Jaebyung muttered that he felt the exact same way.
"I think the same thing."
I really wanted to meet whatever this god actually was, just once.
A huge burst of flame rose up, blocking an attack from the god Beritaas.
Right now, Beritaas was using Jung Hyeonseong's body.
Even if Jung Hyeonseong was a being of potential the same way noona Eunyoung was, whether he was actually a fit vessel to hold a god was a completely different question.
Noona Eunyoung fought Beritaas head on, making skillful use of Ishtar's Ring, the one she'd gotten from Choi Suhyun.
Something about it.
There was something to it that went beyond simply handling the ring well.
Ishtar's Ring was clearly Choi Suhyun's ring, but somehow it felt like the ring had belonged to noona Eunyoung from the very start, more than it ever had to Choi Suhyun.
Since leaving Skyfield, I hadn't gone into a dungeon directly with noona Eunyoung.
I knew she'd been clearing dungeons hard. But the noona Eunyoung standing in front of me right now had become a completely different person compared to a few months ago.
Strength: A+ (21%)
Vitality: B- (10%)
Mana: C (2%)
Recovery: B (5.2%)
Merit points: 77,100
Skills <Body Reinforcement> <Blessing of Wings> <Sovereign's Fist> <Enhanced Perception>
Talents <Blessing of Soter> <Executioner's Sword> <Furious Charge>
Current sponsorship ranking: No. 3.
Looking over noona Eunyoung's status window, I noticed something strange.
Sovereign's Fist? What is that?
The other skills made sense, I'd gifted them here and there over time, but Sovereign's Fist was something I'd genuinely never seen before.
Without a god to serve, a follower couldn't use skills at all, but skills weren't something you could only ever get as a gift from your god.
Some awakened, after becoming followers, gained their own special skills, personal skills, through individual insight or ability.
Even so.
Where on earth had she picked up Sovereign's Fist?
Trapped in that cramped gap with Yu Jihan for a whole month, what was there even to do?
Noona Eunyoung had said she hadn't spent the whole month just goofing off.
The reason Jihan had shown up at the amusement park that day was to kill noona Eunyoung.
After getting trapped in the gap, he seemed to have given up on that, but learning martial arts from the person who'd tried to kill you took some serious nerve.
Besides, had she actually been taught this?
Or had she just gotten beaten up over and over and secretly copied the moves?
Given noona Eunyoung's personality and everything I'd seen of the Transcendent Yu Jihan so far, the second option seemed way more likely.
"Feels like we should help."
Choi Jaebyung eyed the gap between noona Eunyoung and the god Beritaas.
I held him back.
The plan involving the Dragon Orb had failed, which stung, but at least I'd succeeded in pulling noona Eunyoung out using Jung Hyeonseong, now Beritaas's demigod.
I didn't know exactly what had gone on between noona Eunyoung and Jung Hyeonseong.
One thing was clear, though. Noona had cared about Jung Hyeonseong in her own way.
Maybe noona Eunyoung was the one person who could understand Jung Hyeonseong's heart better than anyone else.
Whether he picked up on what I was thinking or not, Choi Jaebyung's eyes still held that same anxious look.
"I honestly envy your damn nerve sometimes."
"What about me?"
I frowned at Choi Jaebyung's random comment.
"You've got zero sense of crisis."
"That's just my personality."
I had a sense of crisis, thank you.
I just dealt with crises differently, that's all.
Some people get worked up the moment things turn dangerous. Others give up fast and start looking for the next move instead.
Ever since way back, the more tense or angry I got, the calmer my head became.
Noona Eunyoung? Of course I was anxious.
Just like Choi Jaebyung was bracing to jump in the second things looked bad, so was I.
Watching noona's razor-thin fight, Choi Jaebyung muttered.
"Is that noonim a Transcendent?"
"And she's fighting at that level?"
Even with Jung Hyeonseong's soul collapsing and weakening Beritaas's power along with it, a demigod was still a demigod.
And this was happening inside Beritaas's own personal domain.
I clenched my fist.
"I trust noona."
I'd made myself a promise when I took on followers.
Even if every single person in the world turned their back on noona Eunyoung, I decided I'd be the one who still believed in her, no matter what.
It wasn't just noona Eunyoung either. Choi Suhyun, and even Yu Jihan, iffy as he was, same thing applied.
Besides.
There was another reason I could trust noona Eunyoung right now.
The white spirit form hovering near her had come into clear focus.
That's definitely Yu Chaeyoung.
I had no idea why Yu Chaeyoung's soul was clinging to noona Eunyoung of all people.
Dozens of black hands closed in on Song Eunyoung as if shielding the unconscious Jung Hyeonseong.
I can do this.
Song Eunyoung fed more flame into the ring.
Flames stretched out from her hand, slicing sharp and fast to block the hands.
Cutting through the flames, Song Eunyoung leapt up and drove her fist toward the massive eye above Jung Hyeonseong's head.
The empty air where her fist connected cracked like shattering glass.
She planted her foot lightly on nothing, spun her body, and delivered a kick.
Thanks to Blessing of Wings, Eunyoung had a massive edge whenever fighting in the air.
Floating slightly above the ground, Eunyoung looked down below.
Jung Hyeonseong.
Both his arms were already severed, and he knelt there with his body half-rotted.
He was long past any state of clear mind.
"I'm not letting this go."
[Foolish, child. You have, no reason to fight me.]
Beritaas's divine words pushed straight into Eunyoung's mind.
The voice, coming from somewhere she couldn't even locate, was deeply unpleasant.
Eunyoung caught a black hand flying toward her neck.
"No reason to fight, huh?"
The hand caught in her grip twisted, its palm splitting open to reveal a mouth.
The mouth that had appeared in the palm spoke to Eunyoung.
[Accept me. I am, the only one on your side, who can understand you all.]
Eunyoung tightened her grip on the hand.
Whoosh.
Flames swallowed the black arm caught in her grasp entirely.
"Don't feed me that garbage."
Eunyoung was furious.
Hangyeol's injuries were one problem, but Jung Hyeonseong's condition was serious too.
[He, simply made, the choice he was bound to make.]
She bit down hard on her lip and drove her fist forward along with the flame.
Black mana mixed with the pure, high-grade flame of Ishtar.
Divine punishment, the abyss, whatever that all meant, she didn't fully understand it.
If it was really true, like Jihan had said, that an unaffiliated awakened was fated to vanish within a year without leaving a trace in anyone's memory...
And if Eunyoung had known that fact before ever meeting the god Soter, before ever meeting Hangyeol, she might have made the exact same choice Jung Hyeonseong had.
Eunyoung pulled her flames back and dropped down.
The hands surrounding Jung Hyeonseong writhed and stirred, the motion almost like they were trying to tempt her.
[You have, it. The qualification.]
[You'll regret this. So will you. And so will your, pitiful follower.]
Eunyoung's brow furrowed.
Something boiled inside her chest. She had no idea how to let this anger out.
"That's not understanding at all."
Just look at the state Jung Hyeonseong was in.
Even if it had been Jung Hyeonseong's own choice, there wasn't a shred of consideration for him anywhere in what Beritaas had done.
[Do you really think, you all could receive, proper treatment!]
Spears formed by the god Beritaas came flying in around Eunyoung.
It was Beritaas's will made clear. If she wouldn't listen, it would drag her along by force.
Song Eunyoung raised her hand high.
"Hangyeol-ah!"
Watching from a short distance away, Hangyeol threw his sword.
Eunyoung caught the Sky Sword flying toward her.
Are you going to be okay?
Yu Chaeyoung's voice sounded inside Eunyoung's head.
Honestly, I'm not sure.
Eunyoung sighed inwardly.
She'd gotten a rough account of what happened that day, straight from Yu Chaeyoung's own mouth.
Yu Chaeyoung had said she wasn't in her right mind back then, consumed by the Incursion.
That didn't mean Yu Chaeyoung's apology hadn't been sincere.
It just meant she needed time before she could fully accept all of it.
Eunyoung closed her eyes, and Yu Chaeyoung's soul sank into her.
The spears closing in on Eunyoung were all sliced clean through and fell away at once.
The cuts looked like the work of something razor sharp.
Gripping Hangyeol's sword, Eunyoung charged straight into the god Beritaas.
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