I Returned as a God - Chapter 34

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 34: A New Encounter (1)

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Jihan pressed a hand to his forehead.

His mood had already soured from that bad dream, and this Ichan guy was about to push him over the edge.

"If this isn't interesting, I'm killing you."

The voice carried genuine bloodlust.

"C, Choi Suhyun's the one who recommended Kang Hangyeol to Aria Guild!"

Whether it was interesting or not, it was definitely unexpected.

Choi Suhyun was Korea's youngest S-Rank Hunter, practically the face of the Hunter Association.

He'd been operating as Unaffiliated for three or four years now, famous for being quite the eccentric.

Even if it was just a passing whim, the connection between Choi Suhyun and Kang Hangyeol looked suspicious to anyone.

Jihan didn't know all that much about Choi Suhyun either.

"So about Kang Hangyeol's info. Security's too tight, I can't get in. Heh."

The only information available on Kang Hangyeol came through the Hunter Association, and even that was suspiciously clean, like Choi Suhyun had been covering for him behind the scenes.

That guy...

Jihan couldn't forget what happened in the dungeon.

Talking about geometry and vectors, give me a break.

That had unmistakably been the power of the god Soter.

Even the skill Kang Hangyeol used was one Jihan had learned directly from the god Soter.

There were too many suspicious things. Way too many.

"Dig into Choi Suhyun."

"What? Are you crazy? Do you even know who that guy is! I don't want to poke the wrong thing and end up dead! If you want to know, go check WoodWiki! I'm not doing it!"

Ichan protested hard, but the only answer that came back was Yu Jihan's silence.

That silence was practically pressure without words.

As the silence dragged on, Ichan grew anxious.

"Uh, hello?"

"..."

"You're joking, right?"

"Do it if I tell you to."

Jihan's tone carried a warning, and Ichan took a breath to steady himself.

"B, but if something happens, you gotta save me, okay? Not my fault if it does."

"Yeah."

Jihan thought Ichan was making way too big a deal out of this.

It wasn't like he'd asked for anything crazy, just a simple background check, and he didn't get why that warranted this much anxiety.

He's not even leaving his room anyway.

After passing the responsibility back onto Jihan several times over, Ichan finally agreed to look into it.

Even if Ichan was a total shut-in, the guy had his uses.

Just as Jihan was about to hang up, Ichan hesitated like he had something else to say.

"Hey."

"What?"

"So how long am I supposed to keep looking into this Soter god thing? Huh? Nothing's coming up at all."

The very first favor Ichan had gotten from Jihan after they started working together was to look into a god going by the epithet Soter.

Ichan had been baffled from the start.

Ever since dungeons and monsters began appearing across the world, awakened individuals with special abilities had emerged.

Gods granted their followers stronger powers.

But there were an absurd number of these gods, all different kinds.

Hunters joked among themselves that there were probably as many gods as there were hunters.

There was a ranking system called "Babylon," but the god Soter wasn't even listed in it.

Unless a god had some particular fame, searching by name alone was like finding a needle in a desert.

When Ichan first heard about the god Soter, he'd assumed Jihan had made up the name of a nonexistent deity.

Now that he knew Jihan's skill and personality, he understood this wasn't some joke request.

At Ichan's question, Jihan answered like it was such an obvious thing to ask.

"Keep going."

Jihan, who'd only ever chased after the god Soter, had shown interest in someone else, and Ichan had wondered if maybe this time was different. Nope. Same as always.

Jihan's obsession with the god Soter was borderline pathological.

Sometimes it was honestly a little scary.

"What are you even trying to do, hunting down some third-rate god like that? Did you two have beef in a past life or something?"

"You nailed it."

"Pfft, what? Hey! I just spat out my coffee because of you!"

"Don't report every little thing like that."

"You two are seriously sworn enemies? For real?"

"None of your business."

Back then, he had been saved by the god Soter.

He still remembered that time, summoned into the tower's lobby and thrown onto Floor 1 with nothing to his name.

That was where he'd met him.

For one brief moment, he'd fallen under the illusion that he might actually be able to change the world.

Jihan had climbed to the top of the tower, and the god Soter had betrayed him.

Practically driven out of the Tower of Trials, Jihan had worked to stop the god Soter from ever being born, in an entirely different dimension.

He'd failed.

Jihan, who everyone had thought was dead, came to his senses in a third dimension.

In this world, similar to the modern one but slightly different, Jihan realized that the exact same events he'd experienced in the Tower of Trials were happening all over again.

Jihan was certain of one thing. That guy had definitely become a god.

He's out there somewhere.

He just had that feeling.

"Next time I see him, I'm killing him."

That was all Jihan had to say about the god Soter.

"Ahem, ah-hem."

At the bloodlust bleeding through the voice, Ichan cleared his throat awkwardly through the phone.

He'd sensed it a few times before, but Jihan's feelings toward the god Soter were twisted in some way.

"By the way, how'd that disguise idea I recommended work out?"

"Bring me one more outfit like that and I'll bury you."

"Wh, why!! That was my masterpiece! Especially that roasted chestnut hat!"

"Die."

When An Juhye had recognized him instantly, Jihan had genuinely wanted to go find Ichan and kill him.

Jihan sighed.

Deciding there was no point talking any further, he hung up on him without warning.

* * *

The pharmacist in the lab coat set the medicine down on the counter.

"That'll be sixty five thousand two hundred won."

Did I just hear that wrong?

Cold medicine costs sixty thousand won?

I genuinely blinked in shock, eyes going wide.

All I'd done was feel unwell that morning, gone to the clinic near my place, and come down here to pick up my medicine.

The doctor had told me it was just a mild cold.

I couldn't even remember the last time I'd caught a cold.

Guess even a hunter can't fight off a cold virus.

Still, this was way too much.

Wasn't Korea supposed to have national health insurance?

Or had the whole insurance system collapsed without me noticing?

"You're Kang Hangyeol-ssi, a hunter, right? Hunters aren't covered under national health insurance."

The pharmacist said there were other patients waiting and hurried me to hand over my card.

Oh. That's why.

No wonder the clinic visit had felt weirdly expensive too.

Reluctantly, I pulled out my card and handed it over.

I grabbed the receipt and the medicine bag and stepped outside.

On the way home, Choi Suhyun called.

"Hey, did Song Eunyoung get hurt?"

"What are you even talking about this early in the morning?"

Is this guy out of his mind.

Song Eunyoung, my ass.

I hadn't even seen her face since that day.

"Your card just got charged for a hospital visit. Figured something bad must've happened."

"Hey. Ever think maybe I was the one who went to the hospital?"

Unbelievable, honestly.

While on the call, I stopped by the convenience store right in front of my place and paid for orange juice, a few snacks, and a boxed lunch from the display.

"You buying more stuff at the convenience store?"

"Bought a boxed lunch. I gotta eat to live, don't I?"

"You little punk, I lent you that card to bring Song Eunyoung in, not so you could cover your hospital bills and grocery runs. That's embezzlement of guild funds, you know that? And why the hell would a guy with all his limbs intact even go to the hospital!"

"I had body aches, that's why!"

"Why? Talking back now?"

"I'm sick, I can go to the hospital if I want."

I got home and slumped down on the floor of my studio.

Not even covered by health insurance, and I'm supposed to just accept that misery.

"So what's going on?"

There's no way he actually called just about the hospital thing.

I tore open the boxed lunch and stuck it in the microwave.

Choi Suhyun's voice came through the speaker.

"You've still got that thing, right?"

"What thing?"

"You know. That thing."

"So what is it, that thing! ...sir."

"That glass shard looking thing."

The mention of a glass shard made it click what he meant.

Could've just said that from the start.

That day at the restaurant, I'd given Choi Suhyun a rough rundown of what happened in the dungeon.

But I don't remember mentioning the shard...

I'd told Choi Suhyun some of it, sure, but not all of it.

How did he find out?

The moment I set the boxed lunch on the table, Choi Suhyun's voice came through again.

"Didn't I tell you not to hold out on me?"

"How'd you find out? That Park Siyu guy seemed like he was keeping his mouth shut."

"Guess so. Bastard. Hey, you think he's my only friend?"

"Who else you got, then?"

At my question, Choi Suhyun went quiet, genuinely flustered.

What? He's got more friends?

Between Yu Jihan and Choi Suhyun, I don't know what gives either of them the confidence to talk like that.

Neither of them even has friends.

Flustered, Choi Suhyun quickly changed the subject.

"Never mind that, hand it over. I want to take a look too."

"You want me to give it up, or just look at it?"

"Bring it here while I'm still asking nicely, hyung's word."

"Some hyung, more like a straight up robber. It's actually dangerous, I'm telling you."

"Between what you're holding onto and what I'm holding onto, which one do you think is more dangerous?"

Wow, where does this guy get this confidence?

For an Unaffiliated guy.

Guess he's still an S-Rank hunter, though.

I chewed the hot rice slowly and swallowed.

Back when I first told him the story, Choi Suhyun really hadn't known anything about what happened in the dungeon.

Part of it was because he worked in a different department, but there was also a fundamental issue with how reports flowed between the Hunter Association and the guilds.

Dungeon reports ultimately got submitted from guilds to the Association, but the Association had almost no way of catching it if a guild manipulated information along the way.

To be precise, it wasn't even the Association's job to catch it.

All the Association cared about was whether a dungeon succeeded or failed, and dungeon breaks, the things called rifts.

What actually happened inside a dungeon wasn't their jurisdiction.

Since they didn't care much either way, there was a quiet, unspoken practice of letting guilds get away with covering things up as they saw fit.

Which meant guilds had no reason at all to file a report saying something like "the monsters mutated strangely," the kind of thing that would raise every red flag imaginable.

From a guild's perspective, rather than dealing with the headache of a problem that came up in a low-rank dungeon, it was far better to just write "there were a few injuries, but we cleared it fine" and move on.

A complicated issue in a lot of ways.

"Fine. How do you want me to hand it over?"

"I'll contact you again, so don't lose it and keep it safe. Oh, and I hear honey's good for colds."

Having said his piece, Choi Suhyun hung up without warning.

I stared blankly at the phone screen for a while after the call cut off.

"Honey, my ass."

If you care that much, buy me some and then say it!

Once I felt a bit better, I headed back to the hotel where Song Eunyoung worked.

I got off at Gangnam Station and walked down the street.

No matter how I look at it, that guy really did seem like Yu Jihan.

Ever since clearing Layer 3, I couldn't get Kim Yuhan out of my head.

If I'd known this would happen, I should've tried to knock off his mask or glasses during the scuffle, even by accident. I regretted not doing it.