I Returned as a God - Chapter 25

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 25: Their Own Circumstances (1)

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Awkward air settled over the room.

Water trembled at the very rim of the glass, threatening to spill.

"What do we do?"

"It's fine."

I tipped my head down and took a sip of water.

The woman seemed to be debating whether to leave the room or stay put.

There was no doubt about it. She was the same woman I'd seen during the dungeon break.

Coincidence or fate, I couldn't say, but I was genuinely glad to see her.

I spoke up immediately.

"Hey, what's your name? You're a Hunter, right? So why are you working here? If you don't have an affiliation yet, maybe...ugh!"

Choi Suhyun, sitting across from me, kicked me in the knee.

He kicked so hard my bones throbbed.

"Rein it in."

While I clutched my knee, Choi Suhyun shot the woman a look, telling her to hurry up and leave.

"Wait a second..."

I half rose to chase after her as she left the room, then reluctantly sat back down.

Choi Suhyun clearly didn't approve of me sitting there with my elbow propped on the table, chin resting on my fist.

"Oh? You wanna talk back to me now?"

"Not talking back. Just voicing a legitimate complaint."

"Legitimate my ass."

"That woman's a Hunter."

"I know."

I'd sensed a faint trace of mana from her. There was no way Choi Suhyun hadn't noticed it too, if I had.

Which meant this had been a blatant case of interfering with someone's job.

Choi Suhyun watched the woman working through the glass wall for a moment, then turned his gaze back into the room.

"Unaffiliated. Free schedule. Hasn't given up on being a Hunter despite bouncing from place to place. Underrated for her actual skill level. And what else was it?"

"It'd be nice if she also had some pent-up resentment toward society."

Wasn't it Choi Suhyun himself who'd said nobody else fit that description but me?

Choi Suhyun wiped his mouth with a napkin.

A brief silence passed between us.

That was when it hit me, the reason he'd bothered renting out a private room just to eat hotel buffet food.

"Is that her?"

Choi Suhyun nodded, asking if I'd only just figured it out now.

I'd said all that stuff about pent-up resentment as a total throwaway line. I hadn't expected him to actually go find someone who fit the bill.

Choi Suhyun tapped his finger against the table.

"Name's Song Eunyoung. Twenty seven years old. Both parents were A-Rank Hunters."

"She came from a Hunter family?"

At my question, Choi Suhyun's expression turned faintly complicated.

He hesitated, seeming unsure where to even start, before he finally spoke.

"You know about the great disaster seven years ago, right?"

"You mean the S-Rank dungeon break in Seoul?"

"Yeah. That one."

I had a vague memory of reading about it online.

It was the single most destructive dungeon break incident in Korean history.

Of all the timing, multiple SS-Rank dungeon clears had been underway across the country at once.

Hunters' combined strength had been more depleted than usual when it happened, which made the damage even worse.

"The people who fought on the front lines back then were Song Eunyoung's parents. They died."

"Damn."

"Song Eunyoung awakened a year after her parents passed. Seems like she genuinely wanted to follow in their footsteps and become a Hunter. But the result was, well..."

Choi Suhyun trailed off.

She'd wanted to become a Hunter to carry on her parents' legacy, but all her awakening had earned her was the label "Unaffiliated."

The moment Choi Suhyun heard I was looking for an unaffiliated Hunter, Song Eunyoung had apparently come to mind right away.

There weren't many Unaffiliated Hunters to begin with, and even years later, none of them kept knocking on guild doors as persistently as Song Eunyoung did.

She'd apparently gained a quiet reputation as something of an unusual case.

"So why do unaffiliated awakened people even exist in the first place?"

People who awaken but can't use any real abilities because no god will take them in.

I had no idea why people like that existed, or why the gods avoided them.

"Why are you asking me that? How would I know?"

At Choi Suhyun's counter question, I kept my mouth shut.

"Not many people think about it and approach it the way you do."

Most people just accepted that unaffiliated meant unaffiliated and moved on.

Even if someone did wonder about it, there was no way to find out, and no real reason to bother finding out.

It wasn't their problem.

No point agonizing over and digging into something with no upside.

Feeling a little embarrassed, I changed the subject.

"Anyway, so you had your eye on Song Eunyoung already?"

"Yeah. Not sure if she's got any resentment toward society or not, but. How do you even know Song Eunyoung?"

Choi Suhyun had brought me here planning to tell me about Song Eunyoung himself.

But I'd blurted out that I was looking for a woman and acted like I already knew her, so of course he was surprised.

I explained what had happened during the recent dungeon expedition.

It was a pretty simple story, really. After we came out of the dungeon, a dungeon break triggered fielding nearby, and Song Eunyoung had saved a civilian who was about to get killed by an orc.

"That knee strike to the face was insane. I just knew right away. Like, this could actually work, you know?"

"Are you out of your mind?"

"What's crazy about it? I'm being completely reasonable."

I got excited just thinking that I might actually be able to bring Song Eunyoung in.

Choi Suhyun had said he'd join, but he was effectively still on hold.

I wasn't sure if he was testing the waters or what, but constantly pestering him about when he'd finally sign on felt a little awkward.

For now, I was just leaving it alone, figuring he'd come around eventually.

My mind was already busy working out how to bring Song Eunyoung on board.

"By the way, you sure you're gonna be okay with this?"

"Okay with what?"

"Song Eunyoung's unaffiliated. Is your god actually fine taking in someone like that?"

Choi Suhyun's question left me thinking for a moment.

There had to be a reason someone ended up unaffiliated.

No god had accepted her.

Other gods surely had their reasons for avoiding unaffiliated awakened people.

I agreed with that, honestly.

The best move would be to do what other gods did, sending out love letters to freshly awakened people left and right.

Who wouldn't know that's the easiest way to go about it?

It wasn't that I didn't know. It was that I couldn't do it.

I didn't know how, so I couldn't.

"But why, really?"

I couldn't understand why the other gods hadn't chosen Song Eunyoung.

It had only been a brief moment, but the Song Eunyoung I'd seen clearly had talent.

And with both her parents having been Hunters, she'd surely be used to fighting monsters.

Eventually, I decided it didn't matter either way.

"Of course."

I spread both arms out to the sides and put on my most convincingly benevolent tone.

"My god is fair to everyone."

"Bullshit."

Choi Suhyun looked at me like I was pathetic.

Feeling a little sheepish, I pulled my arms back in and sat comfortably again.

"So anyway, you said you nearly died in the dungeon? Tell me the details."

"It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like."

"What? You nearly died fighting a queen ant in a C-Rank dungeon? You think I'm gonna believe that? Not just anyone, you?"

Choi Suhyun eyed me with open suspicion.

Being rated highly felt nice, sure, but I couldn't figure out why the conversation had taken this particular turn.

Choi Suhyun currently belonged to the Hunter Association.

As a government agency, the Hunter Association handled a wide range of duties.

One of its main jobs was overseeing guilds.

That said, Choi Suhyun wasn't part of the guild management or dungeon management divisions.

He worked in the Hunter Education Division, which meant information probably reached him a bit slower than other parts of the Association.

I found myself hesitating over whether to say anything at all.

Noticing my hesitation, Choi Suhyun spoke up.

"You'd better spill while I'm being nice about it. Now I get why Park Siyu called you into his office."

Choi Suhyun had already convinced himself that I clearly knew something.

Having finished weighing it over, I raised both hands.

"Fine, I'll tell you."

Figuring there was no point hiding things from someone I'd be eating out of the same rice pot with anyway, I told him what I could about the dungeon.

* * *

A back alley thick with darkness.

It must have rained recently, because every step made a squelching sound in the puddles left behind.

A woman in a hoodie, hood pulled low, glanced around before slipping into an abandoned building.

The place used to be packed with offices, but now it had gone to ruin, cold air hanging heavy in the space.

Room 412.

There was a door lock, but it hadn't worked in ages.

A sign for some long-defunct company still clung to the office entrance, barely hanging on.

An Juhye shouldered the door open and stepped inside.

A man in a black raincoat stood silhouetted against the moonlight through the window.

"You failed."

"Failed? I did exactly what you told me to! What the hell even was that thing?"

An Juhye had been stuck at D-Rank forever.

Hunters who started at D-Rank usually took three to four years to climb out of it.

That was the average.

Some talented Hunters managed to escape D-Rank within a year, even starting from the bottom.

She'd been active as a Hunter since high school.

She'd figured three to four years would be more than enough, but six years later, she was still stuck at D-Rank.

The god An Juhye served wasn't a named god.

She'd believed things would get better after a few years passed, that she'd improve, but nothing had changed.

Trying to make up for it with gear only went so far.

The best dungeons a D-Rank Hunter could even enter topped out at C-Rank, generously.

While drifting through that kind of uncertainty, An Juhye had received a covert offer.

Someone anonymous had reached out through her personal guild email.

If she did exactly as told, they said, they'd write her a recommendation letter for Raon Guild.

What kind of guild was Raon Guild?

Unlike Aria Guild, which existed in the same Gangnam district but had no single dominant patron god, Raon Guild was made up mostly of followers of the god Lux.

The man said nothing.

Growing impatient, An Juhye raised her voice.

"Damn it, you told me all I had to do was put the glass fragment inside the monster."

She'd been told to cut the queen ant with a dagger and slip the fragment into the wound. That was supposedly all there was to it.

Who could have known the monster would turn into something like that?

If Kang Hangyeol hadn't been there, she might have come out of that dungeon dead for real.

She'd heard lately that dungeon accidents had been happening more often inside Aria Guild, and it occurred to her that this might be connected somehow.

"How did you get out alive?"

"Why the hell should I tell you that? Forget it, just give me my payment, or... gack!"

The figure in the raincoat turned and stepped toward An Juhye.

The raincoat was wrapped in black mist.

The mist made it impossible to see what was underneath.

Mist poured out from the sleeve and coiled around An Juhye's throat.

"What is this...?"

An Juhye thrashed, her throat crushed shut.

Something made a sound that couldn't be called a human voice by any stretch.

"...do it, curse it. You are weak because your god is weak. Curse your god..."

The ceiling rattled.

The instant the voice cut off, a sheet of metal fell from the ceiling above.