WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 22: Song Eunyoung (2)

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Kang Hyeonseung froze at my shout.

The egg was a valuable merit-point item, sure, but it also came with a penalty if destroyed.

Losing the merit points that came from breaking it wasn't cheap.

But none of that mattered right now.

The egg in Kang Hyeonseung's arms flashed black.

He was the one standing farthest from the rest of us.

We're not going to make it in time.

Right as I braced for someone to get hurt or worse, Kim Yuhan wrenched the egg out of Kang Hyeonseung's arms.

"Hey, what are you doing..."

The force behind Kim Yuhan's grab was considerable.

He shoved Kang Hyeonseung out of the way when he tried to grab it back, then hurled the egg away with everything he had.

The egg burst open, and black slime spilled out where blood should have been.

A clump of the fluid shot toward the two of them.

A gust of wind burst from the tip of a blade and scattered the slime midair.

Kim Yuhan pulled Kang Hyeonseung back with him.

The ground where the slime landed corroded on contact, and an unidentifiable mist rose up from it.

I caught up with the group and spoke.

"Let's take it down."

"H-how are we supposed to fight something like that?"

"He's right!"

An Juhye, having retreated with the others, backed Kang Hyeonseung up.

"So we're just going to die here instead?"

"That's..."

An Juhye's eyes darted around.

If this had been some wide-open field dungeon, maybe running would've worked, but the Giant Ant Cavern was tight and enclosed by nature.

Even if we ran, there was no telling when a rescue team would show up.

An Juhye knew that as well as anyone.

"So what's the plan?" Min Seongtaek asked, raising his shield to keep the incursion entity at bay.

"Just buy me a few seconds."

There wasn't time to be polite about it, so I dropped the formalities.

Min Seongtaek didn't seem to mind the shift in tone. He just wanted to understand the situation.

"A few seconds, meaning what, exactly?"

"Two or three seconds should do it."

"You think we can hold that thing off for two or three seconds?"

"If we play it right."

An incursion entity's strength depended on how potent the profane will behind it was.

At this size, it still looked manageable.

"You've got a plan, right?"

I answered with just a small nod.

Small as it was compared to an incursion entity capable of wiping out a continent, the thing itself still packed serious power.

I had no idea why a perfectly normal monster had suddenly changed like this, but figuring that out could wait until we were out of here.

Dungeons were inconvenient in more ways than one.

I didn't know about Kim Yuhan, but the three of them together could probably hold it for maybe ten seconds, tops.

Whatever it took, all that mattered was stopping its movement.

"Fine. Let's try it."

"Either way, we're dead if we don't."

Kang Hyeonseung raised his weapon too. An Juhye didn't look thrilled about it, but she seemed ready to join the fight regardless.

"Hey, you're helping too."

"Yeah, yeah."

Min Seongtaek dragged Kim Yuhan into it.

Kim Yuhan drew the sword at his waist.

Except he never actually unsheathed the blade.

I'm too strong to bother pulling my sword out.

Some kind of new-age chuunibyou thing, maybe.

Well. There were plenty of strange people in this world.

Since it was his own call to make, there wasn't much room to complain about it.

"All right, let's go!"

At Min Seongtaek's signal, all four of them charged the black incursion entity at once.

Kang Hyeonseung fired an arrow.

The arrow flew silent and buried itself in the entity's body.

Black slime rose up around the wound and swallowed the arrow whole. It didn't seem to do any damage.

"Whoa, what the hell?"

The skin that had swallowed the arrow split open, and something like a sharpened spear shot out.

Kim Yuhan blocked it with his sword, sheath and all.

It wasn't finesse so much as raw, brute strength.

I genuinely started to wonder just how strong someone had to be to pull that off.

Is that guy pure Strength stat or something?

Like maybe every other stat was D rank but Strength alone was S.

Except his Vitality and Agility both looked plenty solid too, so that theory didn't quite hold up.

With Kim Yuhan's help, Kang Hyeonseung fired again.

Something about this feels familiar.

Honestly, I'd felt it the moment I first saw Kim Yuhan.

His ridiculous getup had distracted me at first, but there was something oddly recognizable about him.

Kang Hyeonseung looked genuinely surprised that Kim Yuhan, the group's designated pack mule, could fight this well.

He wasn't in a position to be picky about it though, and adjusted fast.

Something was off about the incursion entity.

Its lower half split open vertically, and its mouth gaped wide like a Pokéball snapping open.

White teeth sprouted from inside the opening. It could no longer be called a queen ant, or even a normal monster at all at this point.

Black hands crawled out from inside the mouth.

Everyone grimaced at the grotesque shape.

The skin swelled up like it was filling with air, and hundreds of spines burst out through the surface and scattered in every direction.

Kim Yuhan swung his sheathed sword, and a gust of wind scattered the spines in every direction.

That skill...

I couldn't be totally sure since he hadn't drawn the blade, but it looked a whole lot like Wind Fang, the skill I had myself.

Unlike Kim Yuhan, who cleared the spines without trouble, Min Seongtaek seemed to be struggling.

Some of the spines punched through his shield and grazed his shoulder.

He was bleeding a little, but thankfully it wasn't serious.

"Do you know how much this shield cost me?"

Min Seongtaek charged forward, shield raised.

The hands circling the gaping mouth reached out and touched him.

Chains of light burst out from the shield.

Hunters who played tank usually served gods tied to protection.

The chains that appeared from the shield wrapped around the queen ant's incursion entity, binding it in place.

The instant Min Seongtaek moved, I realized it was my turn to move too.

[Attempting 'Descent'.]

Black lightning dropped down over my head.

When I used Tier 3, I couldn't hold on for even a full minute.

'Descent,' which temporarily borrowed a god's power, definitely wouldn't last more than a few seconds.

Power surged through me until it felt like my insides might burst from the pressure.

The chains binding the entity snapped apart.

As Min Seongtaek's body flew backward, I leaped forward.

The entity seemed to notice me and opened its mouth. I swung my sword into that grotesquely wide-torn gash.

Light trailed from the blade and tore straight through the entity's body.

[You are...]

I barely managed to stay standing, sword driven into the ground for support.

Kang Hyeonseung and Min Seongtaek, thrown by the entity's attack, both looked to have lost consciousness.

An Juhye, who'd come out with the least damage, came closer.

"Are you okay?"

I caught my breath and nodded.

I thought it was over, but part of the entity on the ground still twitched.

It looked like the incursion entity had used the queen ant's egg as its medium after all.

Split in two like a pair of scissors, it lunged toward An Juhye.

I shoved her out of the way and drew my sword.

My arm went slack for a second, like something had wrenched wrong inside it.

Right as I thought this was getting dangerous, Kim Yuhan kicked out at the entity.

It flew back, splitting into two pieces mid-air, and came at Kim Yuhan.

He drew his sword from its sheath and swung.

The diagonal strike cleaved both fragments of the entity cleanly in half.

The attack didn't just cut through the entity. It left a massive gash carved into the cavern wall behind it too.

That guy really is something.

He was no ordinary D-rank hunter.

The ranking system had more holes in it than people liked to admit.

A rank and S rank were vetted pretty strictly, but anything below that just needed to clear the Association's minimum requirements.

Which meant a hunter with S-rank talent could hold back on purpose and still walk away with a D rank.

Except nobody actually does that.

Freshly awakened hunters usually couldn't wait to show off during their rank assessment.

Barring some circumstance they couldn't talk about, or some story behind it, almost nobody was dumb enough to hide their real strength like that.

There's no way around it this time.

I spat out the blood pooling in my mouth onto the ground.

A strange tension hung in the air between me and Kim Yuhan.

I didn't know what Kim Yuhan's deal was, but it was true that without him, this could've gone very badly.

"Thanks for the help... hey, what are you doing!"

Kim Yuhan lunged at me out of nowhere, sword swinging.

I barely managed to block the strike in time.

Man, that nearly stopped my heart.

"What's your problem?"

I blocked his blade sideways with my sheathed sword.

Seriously, what is with this guy's strength?

"What do you mean, what's my problem? What are you doing?"

"A god."

"What?"

"Which god do you serve?"

The power struggle between us continued.

My insides felt like they were twisting apart from the injury, ready to kill me, and this guy clearly had no intention of holding back.

The wall still bore the mark of the attack that had wiped out the queen ant egg's incursion entity in a single blow.

"That's..."

Wait, can I even say this out loud?

Right now I was standing in a human body while also holding the authority of a god.

On top of that, the god Soter had only just entered the game.

With it still unclear whether Soter had even properly registered as a participant, I couldn't just throw that name around carelessly.

"It's a god you wouldn't know even if I told you."

Plenty of hunters in Aria Guild served gods outside the mainstream.

Most of them served gods nobody had ever even heard of.

Within the guild, everyone respected each other's chosen gods, so asking who someone served was considered rude in itself.

Of course, that courtesy only applied to hunters actually affiliated with Aria Guild.

"Doesn't matter."

"I said I don't want to tell you."

Get lost already!

I ducked low, knocked his blade aside, and stepped back.

I thought that might be the end of it, but Kim Yuhan came at me again.

His fist drove toward my stomach.

He was already strong to begin with, and between that and my internal injuries, my head started to swim.

So he got a good one in, huh?

Say what you want about me, but I'm real good at tolerating pain.

I steadied my mind, drew my sword, and aimed it at Kim Yuhan's throat.

"Damn it."

Right, that guy's carrying a small arsenal on him.

Kim Yuhan blocked my sword with a dagger.

Glaring at me, he loosened his grip on the dagger.

It dropped to the ground, and my sword swung toward him.

The next moment, Kim Yuhan vanished from sight, and my vision blurred.

"Damn it."

I opened my eyes, sprawled out on the ground.

I must have blacked out for a second or two.

A drop of water pooled on the ceiling fell onto my cheek.

I grabbed my aching body and tried to get up, only for a blade to touch the base of my throat.

It was even the sword I'd dropped.

When did he even pick that back up?

Fast hands too.

The blade lowered until it pointed at my chest.

The look in his eyes as he stared down at me was ice cold.

This guy was dead serious.

"I'll ask again. What's the name of the god you serve?"

"And if I don't tell you?"

"You familiar with the hundred ways to torture a human being?"

"Vector."

"What?"

"Didn't you ever learn geometry and vectors in school? That vector, genius."

I left Kim Yuhan looking baffled and watched for a chance to get up.

But no opening came. This guy was infuriatingly thorough.

"There's no way a god like that exists..."

"There is. And what are the two of you doing right now?"

The one who stepped between me and Kim Yuhan was none other than An Juhye.

Unlike the two unconscious hunters, she'd watched this entire absurd situation unfold from start to finish.

Wait, does the god Vector actually exist?

I just made that name up on the spot.

Footnotes:

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