WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 119: The Only Hope (4)
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I caught on to what Jin Sangbyeok was after and stepped over.
"Keep your eyes off Eunyoung noona."
"Haven't said a word yet."
Jin Sangbyeok cleared his throat.
He didn't have to say it out loud, I already knew. That expression a second ago belonged to a man scouting talent, no mistaking it.
Go find someone else to poach!
Other guilds, maybe. Raon Guild, absolutely not.
I glared at him, and Jin Sangbyeok let out a sigh.
"You're not her guardian, are you?"
"Not her guardian. Let's just say I'm the one responsible for her."
Jin Sangbyeok checked Eunyoung noona's reaction.
She didn't seem to care one way or the other about what I'd said.
Jin Sangbyeok tightened his grip on the bastard sword, eyes on Hresvelgr.
"Strange relationship you two have."
"So how do you want us to help?"
I flicked my hand back toward Choi Jaebyung.
Choi Jaebyung cast a recovery skill on Jin Sangbyeok.
Hresvelgr, covered head to toe in wounds and gone completely feral, was tearing the whole mountain apart.
Jin Sangbyeok's body was a mess.
For someone who'd claimed confidence going in, the damage looked pretty bad.
For a Transcendent...
"You weren't about to say something like 'pathetic for a Transcendent,' were you?"
"Oh, no, never."
"Don't lie to me. Damn brat."
Man, this guy.
His instincts were annoyingly sharp.
Damn brat, huh. He wasn't even bothering to hide his personality anymore.
"There's no way I lose."
"Where's that confidence coming from?"
"It's not confidence. It's a fact."
"Based on what, exactly?"
"I've fought Hresvelgr before. I'm not pathetic enough to struggle against a monster I've already beaten once."
"You're struggling right now."
"That thing's different from the other Hresvelgr. And Choi Jaebyung, forget these useless skills, hand over an elixir! Elixir!"
Jin Sangbyeok stuck his hand out toward Choi Jaebyung behind him.
Anyone watching would've thought Choi Jaebyung had been put in charge of guarding his elixir stash.
Choi Jaebyung clutched the elixir in his coat tight to his chest.
There's caution, and then there's whatever this was.
How many of those was he even carrying?
Singling out Choi Jaebyung like that, Jin Sangbyeok clearly knew exactly what kind of guy he was dealing with.
"Hand it over. Now. You're not planning on disobeying a direct order from the vice representative, are you?"
At the word order, Choi Jaebyung's face crumpled.
This was basically robbery at this point.
Choi Jaebyung threw the elixir at Jin Sangbyeok.
Making that face over one elixir, anyone watching would've thought his whole nation just collapsed.
Jin Sangbyeok downed the elixir Choi Jaebyung tossed him in one go and chucked the empty bottle aside.
He'd only put out the immediate fire. The rest of his wounds were still there.
"How's that monster different from the others?"
"It's insane."
"That thing's a lunatic."
"Monsters can go insane?"
"Guess so. You expect me to know exactly how a monster loses its mind?"
Fair point.
'Well, then again...'
If it was corrupted like the other monsters, going insane wasn't exactly strange.
Hresvelgr's massive leg came down onto the ground.
All four of us leaped at the same instant.
Jin Sangbyeok twisted his body midair and swung his sword at the thick hide.
The skin split open, blood pouring out, but Hresvelgr didn't stop its assault.
"There's a way to handle this."
"You mean the eye on its forehead?"
The eye on the forehead wasn't Hresvelgr's own eye.
Jin Sangbyeok nodded.
"Sharper than I expected."
"Why not just get Suhyun hyung to help?"
Long-range precision shots like that were Choi Suhyun's specialty.
There was no way Jin Sangbyeok didn't already know that.
At the mention of Choi Suhyun's name, Jin Sangbyeok's face soured.
"Hmph. Ask him? I'd rather die."
Picturing Choi Suhyun cackling about it later, even I found it hard to actually ask him for help.
Choi Suhyun had a real talent for getting under people's skin.
More than that, Choi Suhyun didn't exactly have the bandwidth to spare us any attention right now.
"Let's try it."
With Hresvelgr blocking the path, reaching the cliff was going nowhere.
We had to bring it down anyway.
"I'll clear out the monsters nearby."
Eunyoung noona stepped forward, gripping her ring tight.
Jin Sangbyeok pointed the bastard sword at Hresvelgr's head.
"I'll cut you a path straight to the eye."
The ground shook and split apart.
Round two against Hresvelgr began, with the fallen trees between us.
I used the Falling Petal Flower Sword technique to slice apart the wings flying at me.
I fell back, and Choi Jaebyung swung his shield wide.
The orbs circling his body shifted color.
Eunyoung noona was first to close in on Hresvelgr.
Made sense, since she could fly.
Bursts of flame erupted all around Hresvelgr.
I called out to her through the comms room.
"Noona, slow down!"
"Got it."
At my words, she eased off her pace a little.
She pushed forward, clearing out the monsters surrounding Hresvelgr along the way.
Raon Guild Hunters appeared through the collapsed cliffside.
"Vice Rep!"
"Damn it, was that thing always this strong?"
One of the Hunters there had apparently taken down a Hresvelgr with Jin Sangbyeok before.
Jin Sangbyeok swung the bastard sword, cutting down monsters as he went.
"I'm fine."
"But... we're out of elixirs now. Ah."
The Raon Guild Hunter and Choi Jaebyung locked eyes.
Something seemed to click between them in an instant.
"We'll be fine as long as he's around."
"What's that supposed to mean!"
"Your paranoia about safety is famous, you know."
Choi Jaebyung snapped in anger, but given the circumstances, nobody was in a position to actually listen.
"Th-that was a rare elixir!"
Choi Jaebyung raised his sword, cut down a corrupted troll, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"You've got healing too."
Choi Jaebyung was a tank and an all-around buffer.
Nothing about him stood out as exceptional, but being solid across the board was a strength in its own right.
"Hey, you have any idea how much stamina and mana that thing burns through?"
Still, Choi Jaebyung didn't exactly seem like the type eager to hand out buffs generously either.
The snake attached to Hresvelgr's body opened its mouth wide.
Eunyoung noona came flying down from the sky and slammed it away with a scissor kick.
That gave the other Hunters room to clear out safely.
"Not bad."
"I told you, don't get any ideas."
"Didn't I already say I got it?"
Jin Sangbyeok grumbled at me to knock it off, but his face didn't look like a man who'd actually given up.
The ground around Hresvelgr began to ripple.
The corpses of dead monsters rose back up and charged in again.
At this rate, it might as well have been an undying army.
The Raon Guild Hunters rushed in together, opening a path toward Hresvelgr.
Jin Sangbyeok and I climbed onto Hresvelgr's body.
Not exactly a great plan, but the horns on its head made reaching the eye on its forehead any other way nearly impossible.
I blocked the endless barrage of attacks coming at us.
The bastard sword in Jin Sangbyeok's hand hummed and trembled.
"Move!"
I kicked off Hresvelgr's hide and dodged sideways.
Blue lightning crackled around the bastard sword.
Every time Jin Sangbyeok swung, lightning struck without pause.
The eye on the forehead cracked open, and Hresvelgr let out a roar.
I used the Heavenly Dragon's Peerless Sword Style to cleanly slice through the debris flying our way.
Jin Sangbyeok's bastard sword moved like it was the same giant blade wielded by the knight he'd summoned earlier.
The air itself trembled unsteadily.
He raised the sword high, and the clouds parted, revealing a clear sky.
"Second Form: Rain of Falling Thunderbolts."
Was there a better phrase than a bolt from the blue for this?
Jin Sangbyeok swung his sword, and dozens, hundreds of lightning bolts rained down on Hresvelgr all at once.
Hresvelgr screamed, and its body crumpled.
I climbed up its body, dodging the falling bolts as I went.
Even though it should already be dead by now, Hresvelgr kept thrashing.
The last remaining snake on its face lunged toward me.
"Hangyeol-ah, go!"
Eunyoung noona flew in and wrenched the snake's head sideways.
I reached Hresvelgr's head, gripped the Sky Sword tight, and set my stance.
The cloudless sky made the blade look even more vividly blue.
"Hey! Skill!"
I called out to Choi Jaebyung through the comms room, and his booming voice came from below.
"You! If this fails, you're dead to me!!"
Choi Jaebyung, teeth gritted, raised his shield instead of his sword.
A massive pillar of light rose around me and Hresvelgr.
Wounds vanished wherever the light touched.
"This only lasts a few seconds."
Choi Jaebyung's skill, Raphael's Hymn, fully restored every ally inside its range and granted additional buffs on top of that.
We'd killed plenty of the monsters Hresvelgr had resurrected on the way here, so I was getting the full benefit of the Executioner's Sword as well.
I gripped the Sky Sword with both hands.
'End it in one strike!'
I had to shatter the eyeball controlling Hresvelgr in a single blow.
I leaped over its head and twisted the blade slightly.
Black mana wrapped around the Sky Sword.
The falling lightning bolts vanished with a sound like thunder.
Sword energy stretched out with enough force to knock down the sun and pierced straight through the eye on Hresvelgr's forehead.
Its eye burst apart, and its body collapsed.
Twitch.
The fallen Hresvelgr's skin trembled faintly.
A massive mouth appeared through the wound.
The mouth's corners curled up like it was smiling at me.
"You bastard...!"
It really doesn't quit, does it.
Bulges rose all over Hresvelgr's body, and then the whole thing exploded.
"Cough, cough... ugh..."
What was that.
The blast sent me flying pretty far.
It felt like a last-ditch death throe, so the actual force behind it wasn't that strong.
I spat out a chunk of some unidentified monster flesh from inside my mouth.
The entire Yukbaeksan area looked like someone had dumped black paint all over it.
The black liquid smeared across the mountain carried a debuff effect.
For the Hunters, it wasn't much more than sticky ground making movement a little annoying, nothing too serious beyond that.
Trees and grass touched by the liquid were withering fast.
Animal cries of pain echoed from all directions.
The withered trees gave off a thick, acrid smoke and a foul smell.
"Hey! Kang Hangyeol, Song Eunyoung! You two okay? What was that explosion just now!"
"Snake-brained bastard, thrashing till the very end."
"I told you to finish it in one clean shot! Kang Hangyeol's not dead, is he?"
"Ugh, keep it down."
The blast must have reached the Hunters farther out too, because the whole comms room erupted into noise.
'Noona seems fine, at least.'
Sensing Choi Suhyun nearby told me I'd been sent flying a pretty good distance.
Though it did put me closer to the destination, so there was that.
'Still, though...'
Jung Hyeonseong should already be down, but I could feel one more foreign mana signature nearby.
Standing next to Park Siyu, that had to be Yu Seyeon.
'She switched sides.'
The energy coming off Yu Seyeon felt different from before the raid.
Looked like she'd jumped ship to the god Beritaas once the raid ended.
Something came flying toward me at incredible speed.
Park Siyu drove his sword into the ground to slow himself down and stood up, brushing off dust.
"I'm not fine."
Park Siyu snapped at me for even asking.
Footnotes:
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