WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 21: Song Eunyoung (1)

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The sword sliced clean through the soldier fire ant's body.

The severed limbs of the soldier fire ant twitched.

"What? How'd you do that?"

"Isn't your strength stat really high?"

"Let's just call it technique," I said, catching the murmurs of the hunters behind me.

It really was technique.

Cutting through a soldier fire ant's body cleanly required a strength stat of at least B+.

It would've been nice to have enough raw power to ignore my surroundings entirely, but when you didn't have that, you had to know how to work smart instead.

As long as something's alive, it has a weak point.

The shell wrapping the body was as much a part of the soldier fire ant as anything else. I'd just cut through the weakest section as efficiently as I could.

"Hey, help out over here!"

Min Seongtaek raised his voice, blocking soldier fire ants with his shield.

I ran over. Min Seongtaek stepped back and knocked a soldier ant's body aside with his shield.

I planted a foot lightly against the wall and jumped, cutting through the airborne ant along with its weak point, the chest.

After that I joined Min Seongtaek against another soldier ant.

"This is the last one."

A leg-severed soldier fire ant crawled across the ground.

I drove my sword into its chest.

When I pulled the blade out, air hissed through the hole.

It looked like we'd cleared out most of the soldier ants in this area.

Once I confirmed no monsters remained, I sheathed my sword.

While I flexed my aching wrist, my eyes met Kim Yuhan's.

Done with his own cleanup, Kim Yuhan slung his pack over his shoulder.

"Looks like it's getting dark, let's move! Come on, hurry up!"

"Yeah! Coming!"

Min Seongtaek and the others, having scouted ahead, called out to me.

Kim Yuhan walked past between the ant corpses, bags and gear on his shoulders.

I walked alongside him.

Blood pooled on the ground splashed toward Kim Yuhan.

I'd stepped wrong.

Seeing the blood splatter on his clothes, Kim Yuhan sighed behind his mask.

But I was genuinely curious about something.

"You're not hot in that?"

Kim Yuhan looked at me.

The look on his face asked if I was seriously talking to him right now.

Who else would I be asking? Everyone else was up ahead, and it was just the two of us back here. Was I supposed to be talking to thin air?

I was too dumbfounded to say anything.

Just as I was about to say something, Kim Yuhan answered first.

"What business is that of yours?"

Now that was a hell of a comeback.

Business of mine, huh. Actually, come to think of it, it wasn't.

Man, what a prickly guy.

"It's not my business, but a person can just ask, can't they?"

"Just don't ask."

He'd used formal speech a second ago, now it was banmal.

Well, I'd started with banmal myself, so I couldn't really complain.

"Why are you so twisted up inside? You don't have any friends, do you? Seriously, they say one out of every two hunters is a psychopath and the other one's got something wrong with them, and WoodWiki wasn't lying about that one bit."

"You don't exactly look like a proper hunter yourself."

"I am a hunter, okay? Where's my ID... damn it, I shoved it in my bag."

I didn't feel like digging through my bag just to pull out my ID.

Kim Yuhan watched me scratch my head, then turned away.

Weird bastard.

Then again, Kim Yuhan wasn't the only oddball hunter I'd run into these past few months.

There'd been the guy who showed up decked out like some medieval knight, another one cosplaying a cartoon character, and someone who'd dragged along a drone of unknown origin.

This isn't some superhero shoot.

Not a single one of these so-called Awakened was normal!

At this rate, Choi Suhyun, who just went to work, came home, and collected his paycheck like a regular person, was starting to look like the sane one.

"Ugh, forget it. Just forget it."

Min Seongtaek must have spotted something, because he waved me forward.

There didn't seem to be any monsters trailing us, so I ran ahead without a second thought.

* * *

The dungeon expedition went smoothly.

At this rate, we'd probably clear out much earlier than expected.

I tore open a nutrition calorie bar from my backpack and ate as I walked through the cave.

Kang Hyeonseung, walking beside me, made a face at the sight of it.

"That taste good to you?"

"It's fine for me. It's not like you eat it for the taste anyway."

"Sure, but usually people get sick of it."

"You think so?"

I turned the empty wrapper over in my hand.

As long-term dungeon expeditions had become more common, the emergency ration industry had grown right along with them. The nutrition calorie bar was the poster child of that industry.

Calling it a "bar" was generous. It was closer to a white yanggaeng, a kind of dense sweet bean jelly.

The downside was that it packed in so many different nutrients that it barely had any flavor.

Unless you were on a high-rank dungeon where every ounce of weight mattered, most people didn't bother bringing them along.

"I don't like lugging around a ton of stuff. And honestly, if you keep eating it, it grows on you."

"You've got a weird taste in food."

"That guy's eating one too, you know."

I pointed my finger at Kim Yuhan, off in the corner.

Kim Yuhan was eating the exact same calorie bar as me.

Feeling Kang Hyeonseung's gaze, Kim Yuhan turned his back a moment later.

After we finished eating, everyone drifted off to sleep on their own. We rotated watch through the night, but nothing happened.

The ant cavern exploration continued.

The Giant Ant Cavern wasn't a particularly large dungeon. The paths weren't complicated, and the patterns were mostly the same throughout.

On the second day, Kang Hyeonseung came back from scouting ahead.

"Find it?"

"Yeah. The queen ant."

"You know the drill. We need to grab the egg. Problem is who's carrying it..."

The five of us looked at each other and fell quiet.

The queen ant's egg was a guaranteed reward, and a good one.

Thankfully, nobody started fighting over who got to claim it outright.

Nothing was more foolish than hunters turning on each other over a bonus reward.

"I think Kang Hyeonseung should take it," Min Seongtaek said, backing him up.

Even if the cavern's patterns weren't complicated, Kang Hyeonseung had done solid work as our scout to get us this far. It was a reasonable call.

"Honestly, I don't mind either way," I said, taking a step back.

I'd be lying if I said the egg didn't tempt me, but I had no intention of souring the team's mood just to grab it for myself.

I'd rather just take the final blow.

People say landing the killing blow is all luck, but that's total nonsense. For someone who'd killed monsters more times than he could count, this was the far easier path.

The discussion settled on Kang Hyeonseung taking the egg.

"All right, let's set down our packs and get ready for the fight."

The queen ant assault began.

Min Seongtaek charged in first to pull aggro.

Kim Yuhan and An Juhye handled the soldier fire ants swarming Min Seongtaek.

While the ants' attention was locked on the three of them, I went after the queen ant.

Noticeably larger than the other soldier ants, with red-tinted skin, the queen ant stood out clearly.

I dodged the queen ant's attack by a hair.

Heat flared against my cheek.

I swung my sword, drawing a clean line through the air.

The queen ant's leg came off and dropped to the ground.

Thrown off balance, the queen ant staggered.

At my signal, Kang Hyeonseung moved in.

He darted forward and snatched the massive egg the queen had been cradling.

The queen ant's egg was about the size of a watermelon.

"Fall back!" Min Seongtaek shouted.

I did a backflip, putting distance between myself and the queen ant.

Seeing Kang Hyeonseung with the egg, the queen ant stamped its feet in fury.

The cave's outer walls shook, and rocks began falling from the ceiling.

Robbed of its egg, the queen ant's eyes deepened to red.

The other soldier fire ants, caught in its rage, turned savage too.

The queen ant breathed fire.

As if we'd rehearsed it, we all ducked behind Min Seongtaek.

He thrust his shield forward.

Light flared from the shield, shielding everyone.

Along with the protection, the light temporarily blinded every ant in the cave. It doubled as a kind of flashbang.

Before the light faded, An Juhye and I moved.

An Juhye's poisoned dagger sank into the queen ant's shell.

It didn't deal enough damage to reach the flesh underneath, but that was all we needed.

[The power of the god Soter blesses you.]

[Tier 2 Protection activates.]

The shell around the buried dagger turned black and cracked open.

An Juhye pulled back, and I swung my sword to the side.

A soldier fire ant threw its whole body in the way to shield the queen.

Where my sword passed, a moonlit afterimage lingered.

The bisected soldier ant's body dropped to the ground. The queen ant's foot grazed past my cheek.

I swung the sword down from above.

The queen ant's leg came off.

This ends it now.

I drove the sword into the queen ant's chest.

Struck through the chest, the queen ant thrashed in one last desperate spasm, but it was useless.

It's over...

The instant I sensed the queen ant's death, something felt off.

My instincts were usually pretty reliable.

On pure reflex, I yanked the sword out of the queen ant's chest and jumped back.

The moment I put distance between us, the queen ant's body twisted into something grotesque.

"What? Wh-what's happening?"

An Juhye, dagger still in hand, tensed up hard.

Black, unidentifiable fluid dripped from the torn wound instead of blood.

Min Seongtaek, having finished off the remaining soldier ants, tilted his head.

"What the hell? What's wrong with that thing?"

"I don't know either, so don't ask me!"

Everyone's eyes turned to Kang Hyeonseung, the one among us with the most dungeon-clearing experience in the Giant Ant Cavern.

Cradling the egg against his chest, Kang Hyeonseung shook his head.

"This is a first for me too."

The black fluid oozing from the queen ant's torn wound shot toward me and An Juhye.

It felt like watching someone slice through a huge blob of jelly.

The severed globs of fluid burst apart and scattered across the ground.

An Juhye seemed to have dodged without help.

I frowned at the fluid on the ground.

I loosened my grip on the sword and took a slow breath.

Faint mana spread outward from me.

Something's definitely wrong.

The black fluid spilling from the wound soon covered the queen ant's entire body.

Whatever that thing was now, it could no longer be called a proper monster.

The black mass gathered together into one clump.

It looked like a ball. If I had to put a word to it, it was closer to a living cocoon.

Looking at it, I knew.

I recognized what that thing was.

An incursion entity.

An incursion entity was something that had broken a taboo.

Small as it was, this was a fragment of one. To be precise, it was an incursion shaped by profane obsession.

A corrupted thought gives birth to another corrupted thought.

That was what an incursion entity was.

Why is this here?

Before I could even process the situation, another thought hit me.

Could I actually handle this with the body I had right now?

I turned and looked back.

If it were just me, I could probably find some way to survive, but the problem was the people behind me.

Rotten luck.

After what happened at Goblin Village last time, a total wipeout was the last thing I wanted to go through again.

While I was scrambling for some way to get everyone out alive, my eyes landed on the queen ant's egg cradled in Kang Hyeonseung's arms.

"Drop that! Right now!"

Footnotes:

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