WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 27: Their Own Circumstances (3)

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Yu Jihan nodded.

Before we got to the topic of Layer 3, I got to hear how he'd cleared Layer 2.

Unlike me, who'd killed off every single monster that came charging in to protect the Mana Core, Yu Jihan had apparently set the forest on fire right from the start.

Once the forest caught fire, the goblins panicked.

Yu Jihan used that opening to run a strategy of picking off only the chief and officer-tier monsters, throwing the whole battle into chaos.

Hearing it laid out like that made me feel like an idiot for brute-forcing my way through.

"You only learned swordplay from me for like a minute."

The mission objective had just been surviving until the timer ran out.

Didn't matter whether you killed every goblin or found some other way through.

Still, who thinks to set a forest on fire?

"You gave me some information to work with."

Being basically an outcast in the lobby, Yu Jihan had no access to floor intel.

He looked visibly relieved, like he was genuinely grateful I'd given him what I had.

[You're not exactly sane yourself.]

That wrapped up the talk about Layer 2.

Yu Jihan hesitated, like he had something else to say.

Sitting up on the podium as I was, Yu Jihan couldn't actually tell exactly where I was.

No matter how I looked at it...

Kim Yuhan kept coming to mind. The atmosphere was way too similar.

Yu Jihan's dimension resembled the one I'd originally come from.

When I'd asked Yu Jihan about Hunters or Awakened, he hadn't reacted at all.

"I heard some stuff about gods from the guys in the lobby."

[Didn't you say you're basically an outcast there?]

"I said something like an outcast, not that I actually am one."

Yu Jihan's face soured at the word "outcast."

Something like an outcast but not actually an outcast, what was that supposed to mean?

[Don't cope. You're just an outcast.]

"I am not!"

[What, you got friends?]

Yu Jihan, who'd been yelling a second ago, shut his mouth at the word "friends."

[See, no friends. That's exactly what an outcast is.]

"You're seriously annoying. Not friends, but there's a guy kind of like that, someone I saved from getting messed up by the Central Guild people. He told me this whole thing is like some kind of game arena for gods. What's that supposed to mean?"

Yu Jihan looked uncomfortable that the topic had drifted off course.

I decided to cut the teasing there.

The lobby had lower-tier challengers all mixed together.

Naturally, there'd be gaps in the information everyone had access to.

In an unknown space like this, information was power.

Early arrivals had the advantage, and latecomers like Yu Jihan were at a disadvantage.

There was a time gap between Yu Jihan and me, and a spatial gap too.

The space between layers.

It was a space where the future me and the present Yu Jihan coexisted.

It was only natural to wonder whether whatever happened outside the tower had also happened in the past.

The question of why I'd ended up owning this tower still hadn't been answered.

[Similar.]

That was the best answer I had, unsatisfying as it was.

At my answer, Yu Jihan's eyes wavered.

"Why are you doing this? What's the point of any of this? You think being a god means you get to do whatever you want? Or is it that we're just toys to you because we're human? Hey, you're a god too, so say something!"

Yu Jihan's face flushed red, his voice climbing.

Jihan had survived, but someone else in the lobby had met their death again today.

And this was only the beginning.

At first, Jihan had been the type to flinch at the sight of a corpse, but in less than a month, his personality had changed enough that he felt like a different person.

[I don't know either.]

"How can you be that irresponsible! Are you even a real god? Some kind of scammer?"

[You seem pretty worked up. Calm down.]

I decided to steer things toward calming Yu Jihan down first.

I had no idea exactly what had happened in the lobby, what he'd been through, but in his current state, anything I said was bound to set him off.

Was it because he was young, or just his personality?

Given how he flared up every so often, I was leaning heavily toward personality.

The classroom went quiet as I stayed silent.

Sure enough, Yu Jihan realized I was deliberately avoiding the question.

"Hey, you ignoring me? Come on, say something... What the hell are you, all of you. What are you."

As the silence dragged on, Yu Jihan ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

He kept glaring up at the ceiling, breathing hard, before finally letting out a settled breath, like he'd calmed down.

"Did you seriously bail on me?"

[.......]

"Okay, fine, I'm calm now, so just say something."

[I don't know about other gods.]

Back when I was a dimensional traveler, I'd met a few gods here and there, but ever since becoming a god myself, I'd been a total outsider.

I hadn't met any other gods, inside or outside the tower, so there was nothing to tell even if I wanted to.

"Guess that makes sense, otherwise you wouldn't have taken in a follower like me. Can I ask one more thing?"

[Not like telling you to stop asking would actually stop you. What is it?]

"What does it actually mean that the more merit points you offer your god, the stronger you get?"

[Exactly what it sounds like.]

Living outside the tower had made it pretty clear.

Merit points were basically a god's strength.

Hunters affiliated with named gods who held large amounts of merit points grew at a different pace entirely.

That didn't mean a D-Rank Hunter serving a named god would suddenly start fighting like an A-Rank Hunter overnight.

To put it the way Choi Suhyun had, it was more like starting the game with a beginner's package equipped from the get-go.

While everyone else got 100 exp for killing one monster, you'd have something like a permanent 100 percent bonus buff, or access to better gear.

That was basically the whole of it.

"Then just take all my merit points and make me stronger than I am now."

[It's not that simple.]

"So what am I supposed to do."

Yu Jihan crossed his arms, looking like he genuinely couldn't understand.

There was something childish about that side of him.

[Just hand over all your merit points first.]

"Don't talk like some petty crook just because you're a god."

[I said hand it over.]

Yu Jihan grumbled but pulled up his status window.

He'd been fumbling around not knowing how to do it at first, but now it looked pretty natural.

I peeked at Yu Jihan's status window.

Strength: A- (31%)

Vitality: B- (71%)

Mana: C+ (90%)

Recovery: B (45%)

Those stats were just cheating, no matter how I looked at it.

His average grade was already pushing close to B from the start.

If it weren't for our current arrangement and I actually had to fight Yu Jihan using Kang Hangyeol's body straight up, I wasn't even sure I'd win.

I had more experience, so I'd probably win, but still.

Yu Jihan hit the [Sponsor] button on the side of his status window.

[Received a sponsorship of 30,000 merit points from Guardian 'Yu Jihan'.]

[Yu Jihan is currently ranked No. 1 in sponsorship.]

Thirty thousand merit points came in all at once.

I'd made barely 20,000 merit points in nearly three months of work. He'd earned a month's worth in a single day.

So why was he holding out on me?

[I said hand over all of it.]

At my voice, Yu Jihan made an annoyed face like he didn't want to hear it.

Yu Jihan had also apparently noticed by now that I could see his merit points.

"Give me some potions and items. Especially that shower bomb thing."

[Do I look like a shop to you? You think I'll just hand it over because you asked?]

"I sponsored you thirty thousand. I'll buy it with the rest of my points."

Ever since I'd heard about him setting the forest on fire and dragging things out by taking down the commanders first, I'd had a feeling Yu Jihan's head worked pretty well.

It made all my worrying, after I'd gifted him the sword from Choi Suhyun, about whether he'd die anyway, feel a little pointless.

I'd been planning to give him potions regardless of whether he asked, so that part didn't matter.

[What do you need shower bombs for?]

"Gonna do some business after Layer 3's done."

[Business? What are you talking about? Explain it so I get it.]

I had no idea what things were like in the lobby.

Yu Jihan explained how life worked there.

According to him, challengers in the lobby used an item called a water ball to shower.

There are water balls here too?

Honestly, that surprised me a little.

A water ball was, exactly as the name suggested, a ball that held water.

Depending on capacity, it could hold up to nearly 100 liters of water at once.

The water inside was also drinkable, making it a genuinely useful item in more ways than one.

Using it was simple.

You could stick a pointed straw into the rubbery surface to drink from it, or poke a hole and hang it up to use as a makeshift shower.

The water balls currently circulating in the lower lobby were the smallest size, holding one to five liters.

"The problem is, the Central Guild guys basically monopolize the followers of whatever god hands out water balls."

Showers were one thing, but controlling drinking water was a pretty serious problem.

It wasn't a total monopoly, but because of it, water balls apparently traded for a hefty price.

[Can merit points even be traded?]

Jihan nodded.

Merit points seemed to function almost like currency there.

[I'm guessing no challenger's gotten a shower bomb yet?]

"Not yet, no."

The items I could give Yu Jihan were mostly survival essentials, potions, painkillers, shower bombs, that kind of thing.

[So how much are you gonna pay me?]

Yu Jihan muttered something about how ridiculous that was.

"Aren't you my god? And it's not like there's a limit on how many you can make. This is straight up robbery."

[How much were you planning to sell them for?]

Jihan held up two fingers.

[Double?]

At my guess, Jihan gave me a pitying look.

"Two hundred each."

[You do know how much a shower bomb actually costs, right?]

The one being ridiculous here is you, buddy, not me.

Two merit points a piece basically made it free.

A hundred times markup, seriously.

Yu Jihan looked down at the empty schoolyard.

Unlike me, who was stunned by the sheer nerve of it, Jihan looked completely shameless.

"I priced it pretty conscientiously, if you ask me."

[Looking at you, I can tell exactly how messed up everyone else in that lobby must be.]

"Just hand it over already. It all comes back to you anyway."

That part was true, at least.

[Consumed 400 merit points to gift 'Yu Jihan' a set of 100x2 shower bombs.]

[Obtained 400 merit points.]

The item I'd gifted showed up in Yu Jihan's inventory.

[Take the potions and painkillers too.]

Yu Jihan scratched the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish.

"Those don't really work that well."

[You should still take them.]

It seemed like Yu Jihan's growth rate was moving a lot faster than I'd expected.

"Better than nothing, I guess."

Yu Jihan bought extra potions and painkillers on top of it.

We'd gone in circles for a while, but it finally felt like we could get to talking about Layer 3.

"You mentioned something about a train. I heard bits of it around the lobby, but I don't actually know what it's about."

Layer 3 was themed around a train.

The mission was simple: assassinate someone on board.

The content itself was straightforward enough, but there was one thing that worried me.

[You ever killed anyone before?]

"A person, you mean murder?"

After clearing Layer 3 myself, I'd come across one particular fact while digging through information.

It concerned what happened if the assassination failed.

In that case, the clear difficulty spiked dramatically, and the method for clearing it stopped being simple at all.

Kill every single person on the train.

That was the hidden route for a failed assassination. Personally, I hoped Jihan wouldn't end up going down that path.

At my question, Jihan's eyes darted around.

Given the state of the lobby, he'd probably witnessed a murder or two by now.

But witnessing something and killing another person with your own hands were completely different things.

Jihan took a long moment before answering.

"Never."

Footnotes:

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