WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
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◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 121: Resurrection (1)
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Park Siyu had killed Yu Chaeyoung.
I still didn't know exactly what had happened between the two of them at the time, but if Park Siyu had known Yu Chaeyoung's taboo, then killing her made a certain amount of sense.
[You might already know this, but Siyu's taboo is...]
[Not to take revenge, right?]
Yu Seyeon and Park Siyu's fight had nothing to do with revenge.
But if the opponent became the god Beritaas itself, that changed everything.
Yu Chaeyoung ending up that way was, in a sense, because it had broken its taboo, which meant Park Siyu confronting Yu Chaeyoung fell within the bounds of "revenge."
Yu Chaeyoung's expression drooped as I brought up Park Siyu's taboo.
[I didn't know it'd turn out like this either.]
[Turn out like what?]
[My taboo. When I first found out, I laughed it off, said there's no way I'd ever do something like kill myself.]
Suicide and self-sacrifice were entirely different things.
Back then, Yu Chaeyoung had probably been trying to end her own life to stop further harm from happening.
[That's exactly why it's a taboo.]
[What do you mean?]
[A taboo isn't something you must never do. It's the thing you're most likely to do.][1]
In other words, it pointed straight at the god's identity, the transcendent's identity.
If Yu Chaeyoung's taboo had come out as "don't take her own life," that meant during her time as a transcendent, she'd been the type to sacrifice herself for the greater good if it came to that.
Yu Chaeyoung didn't seem to understand what I was getting at.
I had no intention of spelling it out for her.
I looked at Yu Chaeyoung, still clinging to Eunyoung-noona.
Becoming a follower meant something beyond simply serving a god.
When an awakened person who'd received a god's power and become a transcendent died, that power returned to where it belonged.
The problem was Yu Chaeyoung. She'd overcome the corruption from the god Beritaas, but she had no place left to return to.
[Hey, remember anything else?]
[Hey? I'll have you know I'm way older than you.]
[Better than being called ma'am, isn't it. And you should be grateful I'm even letting you stay attached to Eunyoung-noona's body.]
[I heard you're the one Siyu's fond of. Guess his eyes went bad while I wasn't looking.]
This woman, seriously.
I turned and killed the monster behind Eunyoung-noona.
The blade grazed dangerously close to her cheek, and she flinched.
"H-Hangyeol?"
"Monster. Monster. There's no way I'd hurt you, noona."
I used Mana Detection and pointed toward the direction with comparatively fewer monsters.
Yu Chaeyoung thought it over for a moment, then answered.
[Akhtaion. There was a follower of Akhtaion on that expedition. That's as far as my memory goes.]
[Akhtaion, you mean one of the Seven-Star gods?]
There happened to be a follower of Akhtaion here too.
An Seojun.
The fact that Yu Chaeyoung had brought up Akhtaion, and that An Seojun was here, that was no coincidence.
[Right. So do you know what the suspicion about the oldest thing is?]
[I know.]
Countless gods existed in this dimension right now.
Even in this very moment, new competitors kept being born, and the gods, trying to stop new gods from ever being born, had resorted to the ugly move of wiping out anyone who showed potential.
[It's the Origin.]
The origin of the gods.
More precisely, it referred to what this game called its final prize, the "Dimensional Ruler Authority."
Though I had no idea what exactly the god Beritaas had uncovered.
[What's the Origin?]
[Not telling.]
[I told you quite a lot already. That's just cruel.]
[Which is why I've already told you as much as I'm going to.]
Besides, Yu Chaeyoung didn't even remember the important parts anymore.
She seemed to think the corruption hadn't affected her, but from where I stood, that wasn't true.
[Anyway. Are you okay? With your sister, and Seo Jihoon.]
Park Siyu aside, this whole mess had happened because of the two people who'd tried to bring Yu Chaeyoung back.
[I hoped they wouldn't make such a foolish choice.]
[Guess you meant that much to both of them.]
[They're idiots.]
[I'm not just saying that to be nice.]
[Hmph, and here I thought they wanted me out of our noona's body. I never asked anyone to avenge me.]
[They don't see it that way.]
That's why they'd abandoned the god they served and turned against Park Siyu to pull off something like this.
Revenge only breeds more revenge.
Keep repeating that cycle, and at some point, you lose sight of the point.
Revenge that's lost its own identity stops being revenge at all.
[I never thought things would turn out like this either.]
Even with the good luck of attaching herself to Eunyoung-noona, there was nothing Yu Chaeyoung could actually do.
Maybe she'd worn herself out talking so much, because her form kept fading.
[Stop the two of them for me.]
Yu Chaeyoung's presence vanished from Eunyoung-noona.
Eunyoung-noona and I climbed up onto the cliff.
Seo Jihoon stood there waiting.
"I knew you'd come."
I held Eunyoung-noona back from rushing forward, drew my sword, and stepped ahead.
"She won't wake up."
"Even if Chaeyoung doesn't wake up, that's got nothing to do with you."
"Guess that's true."
Well, up until a few hours ago, anyway.
I swung my sword sideways, batting away an incoming chain.
Yu Chaeyoung's rampage, born from the god Beritaas breaking its taboo, had triggered the great disaster in Seoul.
That incident had killed Eunyoung-noona's parents, and ironically enough, Yu Chaeyoung's spirit was now the one clinging to her body.
Calling this none of her business would've been an outright lie.
"Chaeyoung wasn't someone who'd die that meaninglessly. If those Raon Guild bastards hadn't betrayed her, if Park Siyu hadn't called off the engagement the way he did... those Raon Guild bastards wouldn't have dared touch her either."
"No, you two were having an affair."
I frowned at that ridiculous excuse.
Besides, I'd heard Yu Chaeyoung and Park Siyu had called off their engagement by mutual agreement.
Yu Chaeyoung breaking off her engagement with Park Siyu had been because of Seo Jihoon.
Seo Jihoon closed the distance and swung his scythe in a wide arc.
I could barely feel any weight behind his approach.
"Maybe so."
"Not maybe so, that's just an affair, plain and simple!"
"What Chaeyoung needed was power. The power Park Siyu had."
I ducked low, and Eunyoung-noona came in with a flying kick wreathed in flame.
Yu Chaeyoung and Park Siyu had a fair age gap between them.
What kind of power could some guy barely in his early twenties even have?
Eunyoung-noona, listening in on our conversation, cut in.
"Park Siyu. From the Park family."
What was that supposed to mean.
His surname's Park, so of course it's the Park family, what, was it going to be the Kim family instead?
I tilted my head, and Eunyoung-noona added an explanation.
Not that it needed much explaining.
"Park Jinwoo."
"Wait, that name rings a bell... don't tell me, Association Chairman Park Jinwoo?"
I'd never met the man in person, but that name wasn't hard to find in the news.
Korea Hunter Association Chairman Park Jinwoo.
Every stat at Transcendent grade, one of only seven All-Master Hunters in the entire world.
Awakening was fundamentally random, sure, but over generations, certain families had naturally produced more awakened descendants than others.
Among awakened families, some had produced an unusually high number of exceptional awakened ones, the so-called prestigious houses.
Park Jinwoo's family was known as one of those, having produced the very first generation of S-Rank Hunters and steadily turning out famous Hunters ever since.
Huh, no wonder there was basically zero information on Park Siyu anywhere.
Unlike Choi Suhyun, who had an entire wiki page written about him, almost nothing could be found about Park Siyu.
Back during the Mosman incident, Park Siyu, who'd been nothing more than a single guild representative at the time, had somehow held enough influence to keep the press quiet.
The kind of power the chairman of the Hunter Association must have wielded made the whole thing almost funny to think about.
No surprise at all if information on Park Siyu had been deliberately buried.
"How'd you know that, noona?"
"Heard it."
The subject was missing, but it wasn't hard to guess who she'd heard it from.
Yu Chaeyoung.
Come to think of it...
Choi Suhyun had also casually brought up something about an arranged marriage once, without a second thought.
The twisted puzzle pieces clicked back into place.
What Yu Chaeyoung had needed wasn't Park Siyu himself, it was the protection of Park Siyu's family.
Other awakened ones didn't always welcome someone who'd shot up out of nowhere with open arms.
She'd had too many enemies around her to handle everything by force alone.
"Wow, could've just told me. That hurts."
"Heard he doesn't like it getting out."
"His brother's Park Jinwoo."
Seo Jihoon's attack sent Eunyoung-noona and me leaping high into the air.
With Blessing of Wings active, Eunyoung-noona's jump cleared higher than mine.
An inferiority complex over his own brother, huh.
Doesn't look the type, though.
Well, if your brother's one of only seven Hunters in the entire world, I guess anyone would develop some kind of complex about that.
It's just hard to buy when the guy in question is Park Siyu.
Seo Jihoon's mana grew steadily denser.
"If I'd been a little stronger back then, none of this would've happened!"
Seo Jihoon raised his scythe, and shadows rose up from the ground.
Holding scythes like his own, they took shape as summons made of black mist.
Eunyoung-noona's voice reached me from behind.
"Honestly, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about Yu Chaeyoung."
Corrupted or not, Yu Chaeyoung was still the one who'd killed Eunyoung-noona's parents. That hadn't changed.
Through the contact of our backs, Eunyoung-noona's feelings bled through to me.
She'd resented her parents for leaving her behind, once upon a time, but she'd loved them fiercely too.
If Yu Chaeyoung hadn't helped her, Eunyoung-noona would've been caught by the god Beritaas outright.
Her parents' death hadn't been something Yu Chaeyoung had chosen.
Watching Yu Chaeyoung still struggle and suffer every time that memory surfaced, what had Eunyoung-noona felt?
She should hate her. She probably couldn't.
"Honestly. Never thought the day would come where I'd feel this kind of love-hate thing for another woman."
The flame Eunyoung-noona conjured surged toward Seo Jihoon's summon in front of us.
"Still, this isn't the way."
Eunyoung-noona's foot clashed against the summon's scythe.
She knocked the summon's body down and slammed her fist into the ground.
The summon dissolved back into smoke and retreated, and the ground where her fist had landed caved in.
"Yu Chaeyoung can't come back. She shouldn't come back."
Black smoke came flying toward Eunyoung-noona. I moved to use Falling Petal Flower Sword, but she stopped me.
"Trust me, Hangyeol."
Ishtar's Ring flared to life on her hand.
Ever since joining Aria Guild, noona had thrown herself into dungeon runs with an almost excessive obsession.
At first, I'd figured she just liked being free of her Unaffiliated status.
I'd figured wrong.
That wasn't it at all.
She'd worked that hard so she could stand next to me, so she wouldn't feel ashamed in front of the person who'd first reached out a hand to her.
The flame stretching out from Eunyoung-noona's hand took shape as one enormous dragon.
She thrust her fist forward, and the flame dragon shot straight at Seo Jihoon and his summons.
The cliff top went up in a storm of fire and black mist.
Guess I really do have an eye for people.
Ishtar's flame left allies the user felt goodwill toward completely unaffected.
Even standing right in the fire, I felt no heat at all, only the force of noona's fierce resolve.
The flames swallowed the black mist, and my figure emerged from within them.
The summons vanished all at once, and Seo Jihoon's mouth showed a trace of blood, apparently from some internal damage.
I planted my foot into the ground and poured every ounce of strength into my sword.
A stance from the Heavenly Dragon's Peerless Sword Style clashed against Seo Jihoon's scythe.
"You die by my hand today!"
[1] A recurring rule in this series: a transcendent's "taboo" isn't an arbitrary prohibition, but a mirror of their core nature, the act they're most prone to committing under pressure.
Footnotes:
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