I Returned as a God - Chapter 30

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Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 30: Memories of Murder (1)

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I realized something had gone seriously wrong.

When had she even slipped away?

I hadn't sensed a thing.

None of that petty detail mattered right now.

I sheathed the dagger and stepped out into the corridor.

The moment I saw the long stretch of the train's hallway, my mind went blank.

This train was longer than it looked.

Checking every single passenger one by one was impossible.

Calm down.

I went back to the room first.

Maybe Lia had just gone to the bathroom, or stepped out for some other reason.

I sat on the edge of the bed and gripped my head.

One minute felt like an hour.

Time passed, and Lia still didn't come back.

I realized it was time to move.

I pulled the sword from my item window.

I hid the sword inside my coat and stood up.

I'd donated thirty thousand merit points to the god Soter and received a skill for the first time.

Strength: A- (51%)

Vitality: B- (80%)

Mana: C+ (93%)

Recovery: B (62%)

Merit points: 8,490

Skills <Line> <Mana Detection>

Items held <Shower bomb x200> <Small mana potion x10> <Small vitality potion x100>

Line and Mana Detection.

The first skill was obviously an attack skill, so I knew roughly how to use it.

The problem was the second one.

Mana Detection.

He'd told me the second skill would probably end up more useful than the first.

I hadn't felt anything in the space between layers he'd mentioned, but maybe here it'd be different.

I took a deep breath the way he'd taught me and focused on my surroundings.

Something was there, definitely.

A faint shimmer, close to a small flame.

I think I can do this.

I pulled a little more mana in, and I could feel the presence of people even farther away.

The train jolted slightly. Must have entered a tunnel.

My head throbbed.

I felt like I shouldn't push it any further here.

I let out a slow breath and took another deep breath.

If I used this method, I wouldn't have to search the whole train car by car.

Though the fatigue seemed pretty rough.

I remembered the conversation I'd had with him about Mana Detection.

"Fine, forget the flame thing, the presence thing, whatever. My point is, how does this skill actually help me?"

"That mana, that presence, is a little different for each person, each individual. You know that feeling when you sense someone's arrived without even looking? Like when a close friend suddenly walks up to you."

"I mean, sure, that happens. But that's because we're close."

"Meet someone once, and you're close enough."

Nothing in there seemed like it would actually help.

Using the skill, I could tell there really was some subtle individual difference in mana, just like he'd said.

So what shape had Lia's mana even been?

How would I know that... wait a second.

Back when Lia gave me the jerky, our hands had brushed, just for a second.

I hadn't used Mana Detection then, but I felt like I could still recall that sensation.

I tried again.

Being the second time, it went noticeably smoother than the first.

The farther back through the train I went, the stranger the feel of the mana got.

Somewhere around third class, it seemed like. Not just the feeling of a crowded car, something different from that.

If first and second class felt blue, or clear and cool, most of third class felt like muddy water.

I thought back to entering the dining car, and the man who'd been denied entry alongside me. Maybe the reason for that distinction had been this "mana" all along.

Found it!

There was exactly one foreign presence at the very end of the third-class cars.

I was certain. That mana belonged to Lia Angelina.

It looked like quite a distance away. I had no idea why she'd gone all the way back there.

I'll head over first.

Since we shared the same room, if things got awkward I could always say I'd come looking because I was worried about her.

No more mistakes this time, I told myself, and headed toward the third-class car where Lia was.

There were crew members scattered here and there, but since I was a first-class passenger, none of them paid me much attention.

I opened the door to the third-class car.

The moment I stepped inside, the smell of food hit me.

Something like ramen, maybe gimbap, or some kind of greasy smell mixed in.

I'd never smelled anything like it before, and it wasn't exactly pleasant.

I strode forward.

Around here, I think.

Just as I was about to move into the next car, the door ahead swung open first.

A woman came bursting out and collided into me.

I managed to keep us both from falling, thankfully.

"P... please help me!"

Something was clearly wrong with the woman I'd bumped into.

Shabby clothes, sure, but there was also a lot of blood on her body.

Was she hurt? What was going on?

"Are you all right?"

I bent down and reached a hand toward her as she collapsed to the floor.

The scabbard poked out from under my disheveled coat.

The woman flinched at the sight of it and scrambled backward.

She was limping, and there was a bite mark on her leg.

The wound looked less like something a person had done and more like it had come from an animal.

"M... monster! It's a monster..."

A monster.

Don't tell me an actual monster had appeared inside the train.

He'd never said anything about that.

As I reached for the door of the compartment she'd come running from, she grabbed the hem of my coat instead.

"No, don't!! You're a... a Muel, right? We have to stop the train, stop it! Or we're all going to die... kuh..."

The woman vomited blood onto the floor.

I pulled a potion from my item window.

It barely worked on my own body anymore, but maybe it would work on her.

I tore open a vitality potion and poured it into her mouth.

Muel, what was that supposed to mean?

"Cough...!"

She wasn't in any condition to swallow anything, and spat the whole potion back out.

Blood mixed with the potion sprayed up over her.

I needed to change my approach.

I'll have to go find someone.

With this many people on the train, there had to be at least one doctor, or someone good with medical treatment.

I laid the woman down on the floor and reached for the door handle to the next car up.

At that exact moment, the woman shot upright.

I turned around, wondering what was happening, and she lunged at me.

"Grr... GRAAAAH!"

My body went crashing to the floor with her.

She vomited an enormous amount of blood, over and over without stopping.

It looked like she was about to empty every last drop of blood in her body.

"GRAAAH! Help... ugh... GRAAAAH!"

Every vein in her body swelled like it was about to burst, and bloody tears streamed from her eyes.

Blood dripped from her open mouth and soaked her cheeks.

Mouth gaping like an animal's, she tried to sink her teeth into my shoulder.

Startled, I shoved her off.

What the hell kind of strength was this?

No other choice.

I grabbed her by the collar, spun her around, shoved her away, and got to my feet.

"Grrrrrr, grr..."

Whether her mind had completely gone or not, she made sounds I couldn't understand at all.

She staggered upright and looked back and forth between the compartment and me.

She looked exactly like a zombie.

I braced a hand against the wall of the train and took a deep breath.

It felt like her condition was somehow my fault.

The thought kept surfacing, over and over. I shouldn't have let Lia leave the room.

The wound on the woman's thigh looked serious.

Looking closer at it, I realized it hadn't come from an animal. It had come from another person.

She wasn't in her right mind.

Less human at this point than beast.

I drew my sword, watching her slowly.

She wasn't my assassination target. I couldn't afford to die to her.

I tripped her, knocked her down, and climbed on top of her as she fell.

I raised the sword gripped in both hands, aiming to drive it through her heart.

Damn it.

I couldn't hesitate.

I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed every curse word I knew, silently.

I want to live!

"Don't think too hard about the dead."

His words came back to me, the ones I'd written off as nagging.

Thk.

The tip of the sword sank into flesh and pierced straight through her heart.

Her body trembled like a fish pulled onto the shore, then went limp.

I left the dead woman behind and staggered upright, barely managing it.

The train's rocking and noise rang through my skull.

"Ugh..."

My stomach churned.

Without thinking, I clamped a hand over my mouth, and the warm blood on my fingers smeared across my lips.

"Hey, did you hear something weird just now?"

"Yeah, I think I heard it too."

"Is something going on?"

Voices murmured from beyond the compartment.

Thud.

I pulled the sword out of the dead woman's chest.

The moment I pulled it free, blood sprayed out of the wound like a fountain.

Before I could even process the fact that I'd just killed someone who wasn't my target, the door of the compartment behind me tore off its hinges.

"AAAAAAH!"

"AAAAH!"

The compartment behind me had turned into complete chaos.

I braced against the wall and fought off an infected person lunging at me.

Other infected pounded on the door of the crowded compartment across the way.

A man sitting near the back opened the door.

"What the hell is that noise? Wh, what are you people? Right now... AAAAH!"

The moment the door opened, an infected person bit into him, and the front compartment descended into chaos just as fast.

I swung my sword at the infected blocking my path.

Thankfully, this infected didn't revive, or keep coming back to life no matter how many times I killed it.

If it didn't die at all, that would've been a whole different kind of problem.

Because then it wouldn't be an infected. It'd be a zombie.

Come to think of it, I'd talked with him a bit more after the conversation about the skills.

"What happens if I fail to kill the target?"

"That's why I'm telling you not to fail."

"Just in case, though."

I'd asked mostly to cover myself, figuring it couldn't hurt to prepare for the worst case.

He'd gone quiet for a while after I tossed out the question without much thought.

Was that really such a hard question? I remember tilting my head, wondering, right before he finally spoke.

"Kill them. There can't be a single living person left on this train."

At the time, I hadn't understood what that meant.

There had been plenty of chances to kill Lia already.

I used Mana Detection.

Lia was still in the back of the train.

Unlike the chaos up front, the rear compartments were almost completely wiped out.

I gripped my sword and looked around at the infected filling the train.

Whew.

Sweat pooled in the hand holding the sword.

All kinds of thoughts ran through my head.

I used to be an ordinary student.

Studies, relationships with people, all of it, ordinary.

Everything about me had been average, unremarkable.

If none of this had ever happened to me, I probably would've gotten into some decent university based on my grades and landed some decent job at some decent company.

Honestly, I'd hated that.

I used to envy people who threw themselves into something completely, who didn't care what anyone else thought, who lived their whole lives chasing one single want.

I'd cared too much about what people around me thought to ever risk giving something up in exchange for accomplishing anything.

Maybe the truth was, I wanted too much.

"Live anyway. Isn't it a waste to die like this?"

I'd never thought about it that way before.

The moment I heard those words, my head cleared.

I understood exactly what I needed to do, exactly why I'd been dragged here.

Hearing it put that way, desire wasn't really such a big thing after all.

Survive!

Survive, and then, like he said, I'd punch whoever set all this up right in the face.

No more hesitating.

There wasn't any reason left to hesitate.

Crunch. Something burst open in my mouth.