WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 26: Their Own Circumstances (2)

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Kim Yuhan caught the mist on his blade and stepped back.

The scattered mist spread out in every direction.

He noticed part of it rippling, aiming for An Juhye.

Kim Yuhan lunged and swung his sword at the tendril reaching for her.

The opposite sleeve got sliced clean off and fell away.

The mist went for An Juhye a few more times, but Kim Yuhan kept swinging fast enough to block it.

The man watched Kim Yuhan and asked.

"Question. Who are you?"

"You know the god Soter?"

Both of them just kept saying whatever they wanted, ignoring the other completely.

The tip of Kim Yuhan's sword pointed at the black mist.

The mist rippled, then surrounded the crouched An Juhye and Kim Yuhan both.

"First I'm hearing of it."

Hearing that voice from beyond the mist, Kim Yuhan sheathed his sword.

A faint sigh escaped from behind his mask.

He'd heard there was a god recently breaking the rules and started an investigation, but it seemed he'd guessed wrong this time.

Kim Yuhan, who'd been radiating killing intent just moments ago, muttered something under his breath, sounding disappointed.

The instant Kim Yuhan turned his back, the mist reshaped itself into a sickle and lunged at both him and An Juhye.

Kim Yuhan spun and blocked it with his blade.

"Got no business with you."

"That's for me to decide. Asking again. Who are you?"

Kim Yuhan clicked his tongue in annoyance and knocked away the sickle-shaped mist.

He shook out his wrist, driving the retreating mist back further.

"How many have you eaten so far?"

"What are you talking about?"

Kim Yuhan's form vanished.

All the mist surged backward at once, swallowing him whole.

"Wait, hold on...!"

The black mist devoured Kim Yuhan in an instant and clumped together into a single mass.

An Juhye staggered to her feet, staring at the round clump of mist.

That had unmistakably been Kim Yuhan.

None of that mattered right now, though.

If Kim Yuhan hadn't stepped in to help, she wouldn't be standing here at all.

"Why on earth..."

That was what the black mist had said.

That An Juhye was weak because the god she served was weak.

Was that actually true?

Was this the price she paid for not being chosen by some named god, some famous god?

There was no way she hadn't thought about it before.

The mist wrapped around Kim Yuhan thickened even further.

It didn't even look like mist anymore, more like a solid black orb.

It looked eerily similar to the mass she'd seen back in the dungeon.

An Juhye drove her dagger in with everything she had.

The blade seemed to sink in for a moment, then bounced right back out.

"Damn it! What even is this thing?!"

An Juhye swung her dagger without pause.

Part of the mist sharpened into a point and shot toward her chest.

I'm dead.

The instant she squeezed her eyes shut, something flashed in front of her.

Kim Yuhan burst out from between the cleanly bisected halves of the orb.

Moving fast, he shielded An Juhye and knocked the mist away.

Kim Yuhan pulled something from his coat and threw it. The ball-shaped object burst, triggering a massive explosion.

The force wasn't far off from a grenade.

Smoke from the blast filled the space.

A siren wailed somewhere beyond the shattered window.

Kim Yuhan grabbed An Juhye's hand and jumped down through the window.

The mist tried to chase after them, but pulled back when it spotted a fire truck and ambulance racing up the street.

Once they landed, Kim Yuhan reached a hand toward An Juhye, who'd collapsed onto the ground.

Only minor scrapes covered her body.

Even as a D-Rank, she was still a Hunter, so a fall from that height hadn't led to any serious injury.

Kim Yuhan slipped into the alley, dodging the paramedics and firefighters rushing over.

An Juhye chased after him.

Keeping up with Kim Yuhan's pace was brutal.

Once they reached a spot with no one around, An Juhye worked up the nerve to speak to him.

More accurately, Kim Yuhan had stopped on his own, but that didn't matter.

"What the hell are you?"

"You, and Kang Hangyeol too... what are you people?"

Kim Yuhan reacted at the mention of Kang Hangyeol's name.

Kang Hangyeol.

Someone he'd never met before, yet somehow the name felt familiar.

The way he'd handled the incursion-corrupted queen ant had looked practiced too.

And that attack, that mana.

Faint as it was, he'd sensed the same energy as the god Soter.

Too early to jump to conclusions, though.

Either way, he agreed with An Juhye on one point at least: the guy was strange in more ways than one.

Kim Yuhan crossed his arms and stepped closer to An Juhye.

An Juhye felt a pressure she couldn't quite place.

In the heavy air between them, Kim Yuhan's voice dropped low.

"That day. I saw you slip something into the monster."

He clearly didn't care about hiding his identity anymore.

An Juhye bit her lip.

"Are you going to report me to the guild?"

"Why would I bother with something that troublesome?"

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. Don't plan to, either."

An Juhye's face twisted with confusion.

"Don't touch it again."

Kim Yuhan issued the warning plainly.

He'd been undercover inside Aria Guild for about a month now, for personal reasons.

He'd only heard the rumors relatively recently.

The Hunters who touched the corruption shards each had their own reasons.

Someone had been deliberately approaching Hunters.

The offers ranged wildly, from billions of won just for planting the thing inside a monster, to a transfer into some famous guild.

The targets tended to be people like An Juhye, stuck at the same rank for years and sliding into complacency, or Hunters whose distrust of the god they served had reached a breaking point.

He understood how she felt, more or less. But the method was wrong.

Doing something like that changed nothing.

It was the same now as it had been before.

"So what am I supposed to do, then?"

The strength drained out of An Juhye's body.

Don't touch it? As if she didn't already know that. Did anyone think she'd touched it out of ignorance?

Choi Suhyun, said to have awakened a year before her, was already an S-Rank Hunter.

Choi Suhyun hadn't even started at D-Rank, he'd started at C-Rank. It only took him a year to climb from C-Rank to B-Rank.

Even Kim Yuhan, who'd looked like the most pathetic of the bunch, had turned out to be stronger than her too.

What exactly was the problem here?

"You think I want to be like this?"

She'd thought that if she joined Raon Guild and proved herself there, maybe she'd end up serving the god Lux eventually.

"I started before all of them, but everyone's ahead of me now. People I used to look down on are standing above me. So what the hell am I supposed to do!"

It came out as a cry closer to rage than words.

She hated the god she served.

She'd cursed her own god before, just like the black mist had said.

Asking why it had to be her, of all people, that got chosen.

Nothing ever came back in answer.

"Pathetic."

"What exactly does the god you serve even exist for?"

An Juhye couldn't answer Kim Yuhan's question.

In all her years as a Hunter, she'd never once seriously thought about her own god.

The shock hit her like a hammer to the skull.

What kind of god was hers, anyway?

She'd resented her god plenty of times, but she'd never once tried to understand it.

Had that really been all there was to it?

She didn't know that either.

Kim Yuhan's voice reached her as she stood there in silence.

"Have you ever talked to your god?"

"What are you talking about? A god's a god. There's no way you can just talk to one. That's impossible."

"Did you ever try?"

An Juhye had no answer to that.

"I don't know. Doesn't feel like it would change anything even if I did."

Kim Yuhan didn't answer.

Giving up without trying everything you could was a foolish thing to do.

"Don't give up."

As far as Kim Yuhan could tell, An Juhye had potential.

She simply hadn't realized it herself yet.

Potential wasn't some grand, special thing.

It was the strength to keep moving forward, even in the moment right before death, even when everyone around you says it's hopeless.

If she'd truly had no potential, then back when Kim Yuhan had been trapped inside that mist, An Juhye would have chosen to run rather than fight.

Whatever else was true, he wanted to give her credit for one thing: the courage to charge in without hesitation in that moment.

Kim Yuhan turned his back on her.

Seeing his back made An Juhye's chest tighten with urgency.

"What the hell are you? Kim Yuhan, that's a fake name, isn't it? At least tell me your real one."

"I won't say it. Promise."

An Juhye wanted to know.

After becoming a D-Rank Hunter, she'd told herself one year would be fine, two years wouldn't be so bad either, comforting herself along the way.

As the years passed, nobody remembered her as the youngest Awakened anymore.

At some point, everyone had just started treating her as a D-Rank Hunter with a somewhat long career and moved on.

Kim Yuhan pulled the lowered mask back up over his face.

A heavy voice came from behind it.

"Yu Jihan."

Jihan stated his own name clearly.

Kim Yuhan really had been a fake name.

Now that he'd been found out, he couldn't use it anymore, but in this situation, it felt wrong somehow not to give his real name.

Kim Yuhan hopped over the wall and left.

Instead of chasing after him, An Juhye just watched quietly.

Even the smallest sliver of possibility felt like the birth of hope.

Hot sunlight poured in through the window.

Air conditioning hummed through the classroom.

The space beyond the window and the space inside it felt like two different worlds entirely.

I sat in front of the podium.

Yu Jihan sat on top of a desk.

In a classroom big enough to hold more than thirty students, there was just one student and one teacher.

Not that the student could even see the teacher's face anyway.

[Hmm, where was I?]

"You were talking about Layer 3. Something about a train."

[Before that.]

After finishing my talk with Choi Suhyun, I went home and immediately challenged Layer 3 of the Tower of Trials.

I hadn't gone in for nearly a month, so I had no idea what state the inside of the tower would be in.

The time gap between me and Yu Jihan was about a week.

A week and three days, to be precise, so around ten days.

Once I cleared Layer 3, I got moved to the "space between layers" again.

Last time it had been a gym. This time it was a classroom.

At first I'd assumed the space was shaped by my own memories, but hearing him talk, it seemed more likely this space was reconstructed based on Yu Jihan's memories, not mine.

This classroom apparently resembled the one Yu Jihan had studied in during his first year of middle school.

There was always a slight time gap between our meetings.

For instance, if Yu Jihan went in to challenge Layer 3, I'd end up meeting him only after I'd already cleared it myself.

I had no idea how the structure worked, but the upside was that I could give Yu Jihan advance information about whatever layer he was about to challenge.

Contrary to my worry that he might be dead, Yu Jihan had cleared Layer 2 and survived just fine.

He still had the weapon he'd bummed off Choi Suhyun.

Honestly, the sword at his waist bothered me more than Yu Jihan himself did.

I checked Yu Jihan's merit points.

Merit points: 40,390

Maybe it was because he'd cleared Layer 2, a party-only floor, all on his own, but Yu Jihan's merit points weren't exactly low.

Meanwhile some people worked their asses off clearing the tower and got nothing to show for it but administrator authority.

[You've got a decent chunk of merit points there.]

Footnotes:

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