WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 137: Resolve and Determination (5)
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I didn't know what to say to that.
Yu Jihan moved his arm, irritated.
"My arm's broken."
I could vouch for it, Park Siyu wasn't weak.
Yu Jihan was just stupidly strong.
'I knew he was on another level, but...'
Grumbling about one broken arm after going up against a level 2 Transcendent awakened, that gave me absolutely no way to gauge how strong he actually was.
There wasn't even time to ask what had happened. The air sank heavy around us.
Hundreds, thousands of eyes covering the god Beritaas's body all turned this way at once.
The gaze was disgusting enough to make me want to gag.
[Complete. Finally. The last. Fragment]
The space around Yu Chaeyoung split open, and black hands emerged from it.
They swallowed her body and soul like they'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Too late."
Yu Jihan drew his sword and moved to block, but I already knew.
There was no stopping that.
At the time of the great disaster, the incursion-corrupted Yu Chaeyoung had managed to preserve her sense of self in the final moment by refusing to break her taboo.
The god Beritaas had used Seo Jihoon and Yu Seyeon to create a half-formed version of Yu Chaeyoung.
The bastard had engineered a situation where Yu Chaeyoung had no choice but to break her taboo.
'It must have been one or the other.'
If Park Siyu killed Yu Chaeyoung again, he'd break his taboo without fail.
There was no way he'd hold anything but hatred for a god that kept toying with her corpse.
That vengeance wouldn't stop at just Beritaas.
The god's plan had been to win over a taboo-broken Park Siyu, to pull him to its side.
And if Yu Chaeyoung couldn't stand watching that and broke her own taboo instead?
That worked out just as well for the god.
"You look pretty unhappy with all this."
I was certain that whatever had made Yu Chaeyoung suddenly break her taboo, it had to be because of Yu Jihan.
"Do you even know what you did?"
"Wanting to keep both is just greed."
"That doesn't mean you had to tell her to break her taboo!"
Yu Jihan's attitude had shifted the moment he learned Yu Chaeyoung's soul had been forcibly bound to a fake body built to imitate her.
"If I'd left it alone, that whitebread wasn't going to stop. I just made a choice. Or what, you think I should've saved the woman and the whitebread both?"
"You could have."
"No, I couldn't."
"So then..."
Yu Jihan turned and walked closer.
"Don't act righteous about it."
"I heard you're the one who cut the connection between Song Eunyoung and Yu Chaeyoung's soul. If you'd left it alone, that Song Eunyoung woman would've been the one to suffer the incursion instead."
"That's..."
"Yu Chaeyoung told me the gist of it. The reason you couldn't choose between the whitebread and her, that's guilt talking."
I clenched my fist.
The Transcendent Yu Jihan was different from the Yu Jihan I knew in the tower.
He backed me into a corner, but he did it with absolute conviction in every word.
He was clearly the same person, and yet it felt like looking at someone else entirely.
And I couldn't deny a single thing he'd said.
If I hadn't cut the connection between Eunyoung noona and Yu Chaeyoung, Yu Chaeyoung never would have acted, and none of this would have spiraled this far.
"You made the choice you had to make in that situation."
"You crazy bastard, you call that comfort?"
Yu Jihan didn't answer.
"I'm not going to say thanks."
"Suit yourself."
Yu Jihan turned toward Park Siyu, who lay unconscious on the ground.
Choi Suhyun appeared between Park Siyu and Yu Jihan, using Blink.
"They suddenly pulled back and I wondered what happened... what's going on here?"
"Hah. I don't know either."
Choi Suhyun had already run into Yu Jihan before reaching where Eunyoung noona was.
Maybe that was why he didn't look too shocked seeing Yu Jihan standing next to me.
"Hangyeol-ssi! Are you okay... oh."
Choa, running in right behind Choi Suhyun, froze when she spotted Park Siyu on the ground.
I waved my hands frantically, telling her it wasn't what she thought, as a faint killing intent rolled off her.
That killing intent, a little stronger now, landed on Yu Jihan.
"Did you do this to Siyu?"
"Yeah. I beat him up."
"You human being, how could you..."
Cutting off all the context and saying it that bluntly, so proud of himself!
I swear I'm going to crack this bastard's skull open one of these days.
Not now. Later.
Sure enough, hearing Park Siyu's answer, Choa's killing intent flared.
"Beat him up... Siyu is a Transcendent."
"So? Transcendent's some kind of title? Transcendents aren't allowed to get hit? Besides, is there anyone here who isn't a Transcendent? Ah."
"What!"
Yu Jihan noticed me late and turned his head away.
Ugh, this is so unfair I need to hurry up and transcend already.
"That whitebread should be thanking me. If I'd met him alone, he'd be dead. For real."
"Whi, whitebread, wait, you don't mean Siyu..."
Choi Suhyun held back Choa, whose face had gone bright red.
"You're the least useless one here. I'll forgive you for stabbing me in the back and running."
"Back? What are you even talking about? I'm going to hit you again, so brace yourself, you bastard."
Yu Jihan turned his head away like he had no more patience left for this.
"Hyung, where's Eunyoung noona?"
"With Choi Jaebyung. She avoided anything fatal, but she can't keep fighting. Beritaas suddenly pulled back from targeting Song Eunyoung, so I came over."
"Will she be okay?"
"At this distance I can Blink over if things go bad, so don't worry about it."
"Got it."
Yu Jihan walked up to Choa, who'd brought over Park Siyu's wound.
Choa kept her fist clenched, wary of him.
I wondered what he was doing, and then Yu Jihan opened his palm in front of her.
An Elixir of the Six Spirits.
"You'd better eat that."
Yu Jihan tossed one at Choi Suhyun too.
"What is this?"
"He said it's called Elixir of the Six Spirits. I ate two of them, they worked fine."
At my answer, Choi Suhyun popped it into his mouth.
Choa still looked wary, but Yu Jihan didn't seem to care whether she ate it or not.
He acted like handing it over was the extent of his obligation.
"Wait, why aren't you eating one?"
Yu Jihan wasn't unharmed either, not compared to the other hunters, but still.
Maybe a broken hand didn't matter to him?
I knew from experience, since mine had been broken, that swinging a sword like that had to hurt like hell.
Come to think of it, the guy who'd wrecked my hand before was standing right next to me.
Damn it.
I'd assumed he was skipping it out of pure bravado, but Yu Jihan's expression soured fast, nothing like what I expected.
"Don't say something insane."
"How is that insane? You handed it out to everyone else. Don't tell me you actually poisoned it or something."
"Who do you think I am, some piece of trash?"
"Weren't you?"
That he hadn't even realized he was trash until now, that was shocking in its own right.
"Stop calling me trash!"
"Why are you yelling about it?"
"I said I'm not trash."
"Yeah, okay, fine."
I waved a hand and cut Yu Jihan off before this went anywhere.
Sword in hand, Yu Jihan muttered.
"I've got a weird constitution. Elixir of the Six Spirits doesn't work on me."
"Then just say that."
Carrying around a stash of something he couldn't even use himself, what a strange guy.
Yu Jihan looked at me like there was something he wanted to say, hesitating.
"Twelve hours."
"Twelve hours?"
"How long until the wound goes back to how it was."
"What? You mean..."
"Cough, cough... damn it! You could've said that before we ate the thing!"
Choi Suhyun, listening off to the side, grabbed his throat and started coughing.
Too late already.
Choi Suhyun shot me a resentful glare.
What? I didn't know either until Yu Jihan just told us!
Ah, screw it.
"You're not skipping it just so you can dodge that side effect while feeding it to the rest of us, are you?"
"Like hell that's it! I told you, weird constitution."
Yu Jihan frowned like his arm hurt.
Leaving the arm untreated even while wincing like that, it didn't seem like a lie.
Choa stepped closer and rested a hand on Yu Jihan's arm.
Once the wound vanished, Yu Jihan just looked her up and down without a word.
"One thing left, no, two things."
Still having trouble accepting the whole situation, Choi Suhyun asked Yu Jihan.
"Weren't you trying to kill Song Eunyoung? I want to hear why you suddenly switched sides."
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not on your side. I just had a reason I needed to kill that spider bastard."
"A reason?"
"Not your business."
Yu Jihan didn't seem to want to talk about the god Soter or the Covenant Oath.
"Fine, I guess I can hear the details after this is all over."
Choi Suhyun stretched, gun in hand.
Kuuuuoong.
The presence surrounding Gross grew denser.
Gross already had six eyes open.
[It's over now. You die, all of you.]
[Foolish, slaves, of the gods]
The clones scattered across the mountain gathered toward Beritaas as if on cue.
The spider's body, once the size of a house, kept swelling, writhing.
It shifted from spider shape into something like a black clay doll, sculpted and evolved.
"Hah, didn't think I'd end up fighting a god again."
"Sounds like you've done it before."
"Well, it happens."
"Then you won't be dead weight."
The massive clay doll began to move.
Every time it moved, the surrounding terrain shifted with it.
Yu Jihan swung his sword in a wide arc.
Hands emerging from his own body quickly closed the wounds that had torn open.
"Can we actually beat this thing?"
Choa, having left Park Siyu behind, muttered anxiously.
"Nothing we can't handle. Gods aren't immortal. And that thing especially is bottom of the barrel, even among the low ones."
"Saying it like that doesn't really make me feel better."
"If you're scared, run. Nobody's forcing you to fight."
Choa, mid-conversation with Yu Jihan, let out a sigh.
The Transcendent Yu Jihan was a frighteningly binary kind of person.
'Not that I can't understand it.'
I could understand it, precisely because I knew the Yu Jihan from back when he'd first entered the tower.
'But did the Transcendent Yu Jihan climb the whole tower and make it outside?'
The thought crossed my mind for a second, but the situation being what it was, I didn't dwell on it long.
"To take down the god Beritaas, we need to destroy its divine artifact."
"A divine artifact?"
"Think of it like a core, basically."
"Where is it?"
At Choa's question, I pointed a finger at Beritaas's body.
"Somewhere in there?"
"If you're being serious right now, I'm a little disappointed in you, Hangyeol-ssi."
"I mean it."
"No need to make it complicated with talk of cores or artifacts. Tear it apart enough and you'll find it. More importantly, that thing's already dying."
Breaking a taboo didn't turn someone into an incursion entity right away.
What Yu Jihan meant by dying was the time Beritaas had left before it could no longer remain a god.
[Die, in regret!]
Beritaas's attack came crashing down on the heads of the four of them.
As if they'd agreed on it beforehand, everyone leaped high to dodge.
Choi Suhyun used Blink.
Yu Jihan stepped off into midair and flew toward Beritaas.
Choa and I followed after him.
Something like a small cloud drifted toward me.
[You have been invited to the comms room 'Die Yu Jihan' by 'Gomdolus the Fourth'.]
"This little bastard..."
"Pfft!"
"That's cute."
The notification hadn't just gone off for me, it hit everyone else too.
Judging by the comms room title, I could roughly guess who it was.
The Transcendent Yu Jihan had a helper skilled enough at hacking and communications to slip past Choi Suhyun's tracking.
Though given the name they'd picked for the room, this helper didn't seem to hold Yu Jihan in particularly high regard either.
Or maybe they just had no fear at all.
Thinking back to that conversation I'd had with Choi Suhyun through the teddy bear, the second option seemed more likely.
['Kang Hangyeol' has joined the comms room 'Die Yu Jihan'.]
The moment I joined the room, a voice came through, gender impossible to place.
― Aah, mic check. Can everyone hear me clearly? This is GM Gomdolus the Fourth.
― Cut the crap.
― Aah! Finally my moment to shine and you say something that hurtful!
The voice was different, which threw me for a second, but it was definitely the same one.
Wait, Gomdolus the Fourth?
Where'd the Third one go!
Footnotes:
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