WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 2: Kang Hangyeol (1)

──────

I opened my eyes. A white ceiling divided into a grid pattern greeted me. I looked around slowly.

"Where..."

An ordinary hospital bed, the structure of a modern building. Had I made it back to my original world? I couldn't be sure.

"A hospital?"

My memory of it was hazy, but before I got pulled into the other world, I'd been struck by lightning. Getting carried off to a hospital would've made perfect sense.

Beyond the curtain, I heard a sliding door open. The person who came in and pulled the curtain back was neither a doctor nor a nurse.

He wore a suit.

The moment his hand drew the curtain aside, I knew for certain this wasn't a hospital.

The room was too shabby to be a hospital ward. It looked more like a school nurse's office.

Strange. A nurse's office?

Something about it didn't add up.

A man who looked like an office worker in his early thirties walked up to me.

"This is why young awakened ones are no good. Always picking pointless fights. How's the body?"

He pulled a chair over, sat down in front of me, and loosened his tie slightly.

His face looked pretty worn out. I looked at him and asked, casual, like it was nothing.

"Who're you?"

"Why the casual talk?"

He finished loosening his tie, stuffed it in his pocket, and started rolling up his shirt sleeves, tilting his head with a faint grin. Something like killing intent came off him.

It wasn't like the pressure of it actually bothered me, but no matter how I looked at it, that wasn't the kind of killing intent that should come off a guy dressed like a modern office worker.

Hm. Not an office worker. A soldier, maybe?

"Excuse me, but who are you?"

"You were talking casual a second ago, and now you're being needlessly polite?"

The answer that came back gave me no way to tell if he was testing me or just messing around.

Fair enough, even I thought my own tone had been a bit much.

The good news was that whatever killing intent he'd had aimed at me, my question made him drop it.

"I don't think anyone mentioned you hit your head."

At his words, I quickly reached up and touched my head.

Thankfully, it was fine.

"You don't know who I am?"

At his answer, I opened my mouth, dumbfounded.

How the hell would I know who you are?

You think you're some kind of celebrity?

Luckily, he had an ID badge hanging around his neck.

I read the name on it fast.

Hunter Education Division, Choi Suhyun.

Didn't look like a celebrity to me.

Choi Suhyun stood up and started rummaging through a fridge against one wall.

He pulled out a Bacchus energy drink and downed it. In that brief window, I turned my thoughts over as fast as I could. The first question that came to mind:

What's a Hunter Education Division?

Korean was working fine, and the name was Korean, so this had to be Korea. But something crucial was different.

Choi Suhyun sat back down in front of me and grumbled something that wasn't quite a complaint.

"Kids these days really don't know when to quit. When to just quit. Here, your phone and your bag. Though the screen's cracked, you'll need to get that replaced."

He tossed a brown backpack and a phone onto the bed.

The smartphone wasn't the latest model, and a crack ran right down the center of its screen.

More than the bag, seeing a smartphone again after so long felt like running into an old friend.

If this was the modern world I remembered, a smartphone alone would make getting information easy.

No matter how I look at it, I think I've possessed someone else's body.

Instinct told me this body wasn't mine. And the modern world around me was different, way too different, from the one I remembered.

However much time had passed, my memory of reality didn't include anything called hunters, or a Hunter Education Division.

I put the phone in my pocket and bowed my head slightly.

"Thank you."

Between the words "Hunter Education Division," Choi Suhyun's grumbling, and my situation, it wasn't hard to guess I'd gotten into some kind of accident during training.

In short, I was a trainee here, and he was the one managing me.

Best to just go along with it naturally.

Better than asking something pointless like what was my name again, I think I hit my head hard enough to lose my memory, or some other nonsense like that.

Whether my judgment was right or not, Choi Suhyun kept his hands in his pants pockets and studied me quietly.

That look in his eyes, like he was watching some small animal dropped into a jungle, bothered me a little.

Right on cue, the phone in Choi Suhyun's pocket buzzed.

Unlike the beat up phone with the cracked screen, this one was the latest model, its case gleaming.

"Hello? Yeah, just woke up. Condition? Looks fine. What? Hey! I told you not to cause trouble. Damn it, why does he keep doing this? I'll be there in ten minutes, so clean up as much as you can in the meantime. Bye."

Choi Suhyun hung up unilaterally.

I could hear someone calling his name through the phone, but he didn't so much as acknowledge it.

After ending the call, Choi Suhyun sighed openly.

Dark circles under his eyes, hair that must've been styled that morning now a mess before evening had even come. All of it added up to someone stuck somewhere between senior and mid level staff.

Like any organization, that was exactly the rank that got paid the least while doing the most work.

Or maybe not.

Whatever, forget it.

"Sorry about that. Still, since it happened on my watch, I wanted to look after you a bit more. Here's my card. Don't bother with training today, just head home early. It's not important material anyway, and even if it were, none of it's getting through your head in your state, right?"

"Not really something an instructor should be saying."

"What good does knowing dungeon history do you? We only teach it because the higher ups say to, but you can find all of it just by searching online. I already gave the guys who caused this a good talking to, but contact me if anything happens. Also, you forgot to grab your ID last time. Make sure you get it this time. Take care."

Rattling off everything he wanted to say like he was rapping, Choi Suhyun turned his back and immediately made a call.

His voice carried from down the hallway as he talked.

Strange guy.

Having reached a tidy conclusion about this man named Choi Suhyun, I grabbed my bag and got off the bed.

A few words from what he'd said kept circling in my head.

A dungeon. So dungeons exist here?

Unlike the reality I'd lived in, the continent of Arbelisia had monsters, magic, gods, mercenaries. Every fantasy element that even someone who'd never touched a novel or popular genre fiction would recognize existed there.

Naturally, among those elements was something called a dungeon. Assuming the dungeon I knew and the dungeon Choi Suhyun meant were the same thing.

As I headed for the door, I noticed a wall mirror fixed to the inside wall. I walked over to it.

"Figured as much."

Talking with Choi Suhyun, I'd already vaguely noticed my voice was different, so this wasn't much of a shock.

In the mirror was a man wearing a navy hoodie and sweatpants, a bag slung over his shoulder.

Even generously guessing, he looked early twenties at most, and with a young enough face that he could've passed for a teenager.

The clothes were shabby, but he was tall, and his face was pretty decent looking.

Not as good as my real face, of course.

"First, the ID."

Time to admire the possessed kid's face was over.

Seeing that Choi Suhyun had told me to go get an ID card gave me some quiet relief.

Having an ID meant, at minimum, being a person with a clear, verifiable identity.

I stepped into the hallway and calmly set a goal.

Set even a small goal, then act on it.

That was a method I'd used for studying before I got summoned to the other world, and it doubled as a survival rule I'd relied on to stay alive there.

Get a read on the situation.

My final goal was revenge against the gods who'd ruined my life.

That was a matter for much later. For now, like always, the objective was simply to survive.

Aside from the dimension I'd originally lived in and the world I'd been summoned to, I'd already confirmed with my own eyes, through the gods, that many other dimensions existed.

Among all those countless dimensions, it wasn't especially surprising that one of them happened to be a modern world where dungeons coexisted with everyday life.

At the end of the hallway was a large lobby.

I needed to go get my ID or whatever it was, but I had no idea where to go.

"Excuse me. Do you know where I can get my ID?"

I caught someone who looked like an employee or staff member and asked.

The woman looked me up and down, then pointed toward the end of the hallway.

"Turn left and go in, it's there."

"Oh, okay."

Following her directions, I turned left and found something like a bank teller's window.

What in the world is this place?

I pulled a number ticket and sat down on a sofa set up in the corner.

A little while later, [073] came up on a large monitor.

"What brings you in today?"

"My ID."

"Please scan your fingerprint up front."

Following the staff member's instructions, I placed my palm on the tablet screen at the desk. Once the fingerprint and iris scan finished, the staff member handed me an ID card and a sheet of paper.

Having assumed "ID" meant something like a national resident registration card, I stared at the blue card curiously instead.

"Please carry it with you as much as possible. This paper has a QR code with your ID on it. You can throw it away once you've registered."

"An ID QR code? ID for what?"

"The Hunter Association ID, obviously."

The staff member tilted their head slightly, as if surprised I'd asked something so obvious.

Finished getting my ID issued, I stepped back out and checked the name.

Korea Hunter Association
20981124-49926658
Kang Hangyeol
Rank D, Unaffiliated Hunter

The name was printed alongside a photo.

Kang Hangyeol. A name completely different from the one I remembered as my own.

I'd already noticed my face was different back when I left that nurse's office looking room, so the unfamiliar name didn't shock me much either.

"So what's unaffiliated supposed to mean?"

Contrary to my expectation that getting the ID would settle things, it seemed like there was a mountain of things I still needed to learn.

I stepped out of the building and pulled out my phone.

[Breaking News] Raon Guild Clears Its 10th 'SS Rank Dungeon.'

According to a report by dungeon scholar Kim Uitae submitted to the Association, the global dungeon occurrence rate has "increased every year" over the past decade. Within the next ten years, dungeons are projected to outnumber hunters.

Choehan Guild's S Rank Hunter Min Seokjun transfers to guild 'Luce.'

"What is this?"

The world I remembered and the news in front of me were different. Too different.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried