WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 17: Reason for Living (1)

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I didn't even get a moment to panic before I was moved from one layer to the space between.

Was I about to get shipped off to somewhere weird again?

I'd braced myself, tense all over, but the ordinary gym in front of me made me let out a sigh of relief.

That's exactly what it was.

A wooden floor, a plain stage, basketball hoops on both sides, and a second-floor balcony. The kind of gymnasium you'd find in pretty much any school.

Why a gym, of all places? No idea.

Maybe it was because I hadn't expected it, but looking at that gymnasium stirred up some oddly specific old memories.

Still lost in that little wave of nostalgia, I turned toward a sound of movement nearby.

[You again?]

"Aaargh! What now!"

[You already got surprised by this once. Why're you jumping like that again?]

"You wouldn't get surprised either if a voice suddenly started talking to you out of thin air?"

It was Yu Jihan.

Compared to the first time I'd met him, he'd gotten noticeably scruffier.

His school uniform, which had looked practically brand new before, was now shredded to threads, and his hair wasn't just unwashed, it was caked stiff with blood.

He looked like he could pass for a war refugee at this point.

Did this guy even realize what he looked like right now?

Yu Jihan glanced around.

"What is this place?"

[Can't you tell? It's a gym.]

"No shit, I can see it's a gym."

At Yu Jihan's irritation, I shook my head and settled myself lightly onto the edge of the stage.

I'd healed up with a potion, so I had no visible wounds, but I was plenty worn out myself.

Apparently, wherever I happened to be, my voice still reached Yu Jihan just fine.

[Might as well sit down and relax.]

"Relax, my ass. I can't even see your face. What is this, a marriage meeting?"

[You're not even twenty and you're already talking about marriage meetings. Have you even been to one? If you don't like it, stand then.]

Standing in the middle of the gym, Yu Jihan kept muttering off into some random direction.

I really couldn't get used to this.

Turning this way and that as he scanned the gym, Yu Jihan suddenly started waving his hand through the air.

What was he doing? Warming up for some kind of exercise?

I was watching from a distance, tilting my head, when Yu Jihan spoke.

"You still in front of me today?"

[Nope.]

"Where are you, then?"

[Over by the stage. Not like you can see me anyway.]

I wasn't sure what the point of locating me was, but at my answer Yu Jihan turned and sat facing the stage.

There was some distance between us, but it wasn't enough to get in the way of talking.

Yu Jihan, sitting on the floor, had a dagger in his hand.

He kept it drawn from its sheath, still watching the space around him warily.

[There's no monsters here.]

"How can you be so sure?"

There was an edge to his voice.

Wariness. Anxiety. Nerves stretched thin.

I didn't even need to get close to read Yu Jihan's state of mind.

[Don't believe me, then. Suit yourself.]

Monsters wouldn't show up here.

The reason was simple.

This wasn't a proper Layer 2. There was no reason to argue with Yu Jihan over something that was just a plain fact.

Back on Floor 1, everything had been sudden and chaotic, but Layer 2 gave me some breathing room. I felt like I needed to get a read on the situation.

[What happened with Floor 1?]

"That ended a while back."

Judging by how he acted, it seemed like a fair amount of time had passed since he cleared Floor 1.

[So what happened in between?]

"A lot."

Yu Jihan's expression soured. Judging by how short his answers were, he clearly wasn't in the mood to talk about it.

[Let's finish the conversation we didn't get to last time.]

I was genuinely curious about what had happened to Yu Jihan inside this tower.

If I understood what had gone on inside the Tower of Trials, I felt like I'd get a clearer picture of the fight happening outside it too, the one over who'd claim the authority of Dimensional Ruler.

"Why should I trust you?"

Yu Jihan lifted his head toward the stage.

Just a coincidence, probably, but for a second it felt like our eyes had actually met.

'That thing about monsters, too... this kid.'

The Yu Jihan I'd met the first time hadn't had this much wariness in him. This was distrust toward people, plain and simple.

I was more convinced than ever that something had happened back in the lobby. I checked Yu Jihan's merit points.

[Yu Jihan]

Merit points: 722

Probably from clearing Floor 1, his merit points had piled up quite a bit since we'd first met.

I opened the gift window.

[Gift]

Gift-eligible target: Yu Jihan

Gift-eligible items: Small healing potion (12), Small mana potion (33), Painkiller (6), Shower bomb (2)

[Consumed 2 merit points to gift a shower bomb to 'Yu Jihan'.]

[Obtained 2 merit points.]

He must've gotten a notification the same as me, because Yu Jihan naturally opened his item window.

[Go take a shower first.]

In Yu Jihan's hand was a ball that looked like a blue softball.

"How do I use this?"

[Pop it.]

Before I even finished answering, Yu Jihan clenched his fist around the shower bomb.

Water and foam burst out and washed over his whole body.

About ten seconds later, a considerably more presentable Yu Jihan emerged.

[Way better than looking like a corpse that crawled out of a ditch. Wish I had a mirror to show you right now.]

Yu Jihan fiddled with his hair, which had dried bone dry like he'd just used a blow dryer. He must've felt gross himself, honestly.

Who knows their own condition better than they do?

Yu Jihan scanned the gym once more, then sheathed his dagger.

He didn't say he believed me when I said no monsters would show up.

Smart move.

Whatever tension had been holding him up seemed to drain out of his body all at once.

"Not sure where to even start..."

With that, Yu Jihan carefully began to talk.

Yu Jihan was an ordinary high school student living in Daejeon, South Korea.

"It was just a normal day, same as always."

And it wasn't just Yu Jihan.

There were over a thousand people in the lobby, all of them people who'd been suddenly transported there, just like him.

At first there had been a thousand, and after that, new arrivals kept trickling in, anywhere from five to ten a week.

Yu Jihan had come in fairly late, and by the time he arrived, the earlier arrivals had already carved out their own rules and their own order in the lobby.

Not understanding a thing, Yu Jihan had walked into the lobby, and the first thing he saw was the corpse of someone his own age, killed in some brutal, wretched way.

"Choose. Follow their rules, or go into the tower."

He said he'd gotten lucky, managed to steal a dagger, and fled into the tower.

There, he'd barely managed to kill a single goblin before getting hurt, and that was right around when he ran into me. Not hard to piece that together.

[How much time has passed since then?]

"About four days. Not totally sure, but somewhere around there. You lose all sense of time in the lobby."

Four days.

Counting from when I left the tower, got questioned by the Association, and had drinks with Choi Suhyun, at least a full week should've passed by now.

Seemed like Yu Jihan and I were running on different timelines.

'Does time not matter here?'

Something new to check on.

[Did you clear Layer 2?]

At my question, Yu Jihan shook his head.

He'd gone in to challenge Layer 2, only to get shunted into this gym and run into me instead.

Meanwhile, I'd already cleared it.

'Might need more confirmation, but.'

Too early to be sure of anything yet.

[So? What happened after you cleared Floor 1?]

The moment I asked, Yu Jihan launched back into his story.

When Yu Jihan came back to the lobby, everyone was stunned.

Nobody, apparently, had gone into Floor 1 with nothing but a dagger and bare hands, the way Yu Jihan had, and come out alive.

'Yeah, figures.'

Being a late arrival meant, by definition, that the early arrivals already knew the tower's rules and were among those who'd survived.

They were people ready to kill, monsters or humans, whichever came first.

And they knew, better than anyone, that the newcomers weren't ready for that kind of thing yet.

For all that Yu Jihan talked tough.

I hadn't actually expected him to wipe out an entire goblin horde on Floor 1 and walk out alive.

Surviving something like that.

It meant he clung to life with real ferocity, one way or another, and that he wasn't just tough, he was the stubborn kind that refuses to die.

Once Yu Jihan cleared Floor 1 and came back out, apparently some people came looking for him.

The same ones who'd thrown Yu Jihan and the others into Floor 1 in the first place.

"Told me to join their guild, the Central Guild. Assholes, I couldn't believe it."

Yu Jihan's gaze drifted toward the stage where I sat.

If he'd taken them up on it, there was no way he'd have gone into Layer 2 looking like a beggar with a busted-up dagger. Meaning he'd turned them down.

[Might've been smarter to take the offer?]

If they were the early arrivals, the offer probably wasn't even a bad one. At that, Yu Jihan's face twisted into something close to disgust.

"You crazy? Survive under the protection of psychopaths like that, for what? That place is just... forget it."

Yu Jihan clenched his fist, looking pretty furious about it.

Seeing that, I got a decent sense of what those early arrivals were actually like.

'Yeah, no way should he act like those bastards.'

Honestly, that part I wanted to praise him for.

The problem came after.

Yu Jihan turned down the offer, and just like on Floor 1, ran straight into Layer 2.

I could guess why those guys hadn't bothered stopping Yu Jihan from fleeing into Layer 2.

'There's no way Layer 2 is something you clear solo.'

Especially not for Yu Jihan in his current state. Absolutely no way.

[You go into Layer 2 right now, you die.]

"What? Then what am I supposed to do?! You messing with me right now?"

[You can still leave.]

He hadn't entered Layer 2 yet, so he'd be fine.

"You want me to go back to the lobby?"

[Yeah.]

Yu Jihan crossed his arms, scowling. Looked like he needed a bit more explanation.

[If you do exactly what I tell you, you can clear it. Can't promise it'll be right away, though.]

"And if I just go in without listening to you?"

[You die, guaranteed. You won't last thirty minutes, let alone an hour.]

The goblins waiting in Layer 2 were the same breed as the goblin army I'd run into at the entrance to the Tower of Trials.

I knew better than anyone how Hunters who'd gone through thorough guild training had still died against them.

A shadow fell over Yu Jihan's face. I didn't push him for an answer.

If some voice with no face suddenly started laying that on you, of course you'd need time to think it over.

Yu Jihan's hesitation, his conflict, all of it was fair. It made sense.

"If I do what you say, can I actually clear it?"

[Depends on how well you follow through. Still beats a flat 0% chance, doesn't it?]

"Fine. What do I do?"

[Fair warning before you go in, it's going to be brutal. Forget whatever happened on Floor 1, that was just a warmup. You still want to do this?]

"You said if I just go in I'm dead. Guess I'm going back, then."

Something shifted in Yu Jihan's eyes.

Saying there was no fear or anxiety in that look would've been a lie.

But having that look on his face at all meant he already understood, in his head, what he was walking into.

That this place was nowhere close to paradise, and that the road ahead of him was a blood-soaked thicket of thorns.

In a way, Yu Jihan right now looked like he was handling it a lot better than I had, back when I first got dropped onto the Continent of Arbelisia.

[So, you know how to use a sword?]

Footnotes:

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