WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 49: The Eerie Tall House in the Fog (1)

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I didn't care about the 800,000 gold. What I cared about was the 300,000 merit points.

Tearing open the red request slip drew glances from nearby mercenaries.

A man sitting at a table close by couldn't resist his curiosity and came over.

"Never seen your face before. Hey, buddy. You're not seriously thinking of taking that request, are you?"

"I am, actually."

Just glancing over it, this one looked like the toughest request in the whole area.

The merit points looked pretty solid too.

At my answer, the man shot a glance back at the table where his friends sat, looking startled.

"Not sure how skilled you are, but you should quit while you're ahead."

"Why?"

"That red request slip, that's a hundred-year request."

"A hundred-year request?"

"Yeah. Named that because nobody's cleared it in a hundred years. Most decent mercenaries won't even look at it twice."

"Even better."

Older wine's worth more, isn't it?

At my answer, the man's face went pale.

His friends at the table couldn't help chiming in one after another.

"Hey, quit it. You trying to kill yourself?"

"Even the guild's elite mercenaries couldn't pull it off. What makes you think you can?"

"Leave him alone, there's always one like this. Fresh up from the provinces, trying to prove something. Listen, the capital's not as soft as you think."

The men burst out laughing together.

The guy next to me casually threw an arm around my shoulder.

These idiots acting all buddy-buddy out of nowhere.

"But hey, you sure you're even qualified? Hundred-year request or not, not just anyone can take it."

I knocked his hand off and pulled the gold nameplate out from my coat.

The man stumbled backward the instant he saw it.

"Wha... what are you..."

How could someone like you possibly have this?

His startled face said it all.

An easy man to read.

Showing him the nameplate once clearly did the trick, given how fast he backed off.

The personal nameplate issued by order of the guild master wasn't for show after all.

People shouldn't be judged by appearances, you know.

The real experts are always the ones hiding in plain sight.

"Anyway, I'll be off."

Not wanting to cause more of a scene, I waved the paper and headed for the counter.

"Oh my."

The clerk in charge of requests looked just as startled seeing the red slip I held out. Thankfully, showing the personal nameplate, same as before, shut them right up.

Even while bringing over the contract, they kept glancing at me with obvious unease.

"Are you really sure you want to go through with this? I, I'm not saying this because I doubt your skill or anything."

Worried I might take offense, they added the extra line.

Was this thing really that dangerous?

While signing, I went back over the contents written on the request slip.

This wasn't a status window, just plain text written on the paper itself.

[House in the Mist]

Difficulty: Unknown

There exists an ever-lingering Mist Forest on the outskirts of the capital. Inside it stands a tall, small house. Deliver a certain item there.

Requester: Randolph Carter

Reward: 800,000 gold

Nothing much to it, huh?

I couldn't figure out why this counted as a hundred-year request.

After signing, I handed the contract back.

"Um, actually, there's a problem."

"A problem?"

"Yes, even though it's called a hundred-year request, it's not like nobody's ever tried. It's just that everyone who's attempted it in the last ten years has been turned away."

Turned away. That was a wrinkle I hadn't expected.

So the request gets posted, but the requester still picks and chooses who gets to take it?

"I honestly don't know the exact reason people get turned away."

Apparently every mercenary who came back without even setting foot in the Mist Forest cursed out the requester, Randolph Carter, without fail.

I took the clerk's words to heart. Didn't matter what the details were, all I needed was to clear one request.

Whether I earned a little less merit points or a lot more, either way it wasn't a losing deal.

"Do you happen to know where the Mist Forest is?"

I must have looked like enough of a country bumpkin, because the clerk pulled out a rough map and marked the spot for me.

That kind of consideration felt more like gratitude than anything else.

"Thanks."

I took the marked map and stepped outside.

Well-paved roads and a downtown packed with people spread out before me at a glance.

Pretty sizable scale, this place.

Whatever else it was, this was clearly a thriving nation.

No reason to waste time, so I headed straight for the outskirts of the capital.

Showing the request slip and the personal nameplate at the gate got me through quickly.

Seemed like the guild master's personal nameplate carried more weight than the request slip itself.

Passing through the capital gate and heading west into the outskirts brought me to a forest wrapped in mist.

Forest was just a guess, since nobody actually knew what lay beyond it.

Even on the rough map, the forest's interior was painted white, like mist itself.

Even at the very entrance, the fog was already thick enough to block my view.

"Where the hell is this house supposed to be?"

I tried to find the house using the map, but it was useless.

Should I try Mana Detection instead?

The instant I stopped walking, something came flying fast.

I drew my sword and cleanly cut down the incoming arrow.

Calling it an arrow wasn't quite right. It was magic.

I frowned as I activated Mana Detection.

What kind of messed up fog is this?

A fog that never clears couldn't exist in nature. Not really.

For something like that to exist, there was only one answer.

It was artificial.

Whether human hands or magic made it didn't matter.

This fog was absolutely not something that formed naturally.

The fog itself was pure flowing mana.

Finding an enemy hidden inside a fog made of solid mana was impossible.

While I was still working out what to do, countless arrows tore through the mist toward me.

"Are you out of your mind? At least tell me who you are first! What kind of nonsense is attacking without a word!"

Seeing mana arrows fly at me told me this wasn't a monster.

I set my stance and swung my sword toward the arrows.

Thanks to Wind Fang, the wind-based slash technique, every arrow's trajectory got knocked off course.

I swung again, clearing away some of the fog nearby.

"Bring it on, then."

Just as I was about to engage, a hooded man dropped down from a tree.

A middle-aged man with a white beard pulled back his hood.

"Randolph Carter."

"Whatever, wait... Randolph Carter?"

"Been a lot of people wandering into the Mist Forest without permission lately. My apologies for not announcing myself sooner."

The sudden name-drop threw me for a second.

I sheathed my sword and showed Carter the guild's request slip and the personal nameplate.

The gate guards had been more startled by the nameplate than the slip, but this guy barely gave the nameplate a glance.

Carter folded the request slip and looked me up and down.

"Too young to be deciding to kill yourself. Go home."

Carter handed the nameplate back and turned away.

Calling a young man with his whole future ahead of him suicidal, what nonsense was that.

Chasing after Carter as he vanished into the fog seemed impossible.

My body moved toward Carter before my head caught up.

My hand passed straight through his arm.

Carter froze, apparently not expecting me to actually follow.

A ghost? Wait, but he touched the request slip and nameplate I gave him earlier.

Carter was dressed like a hunter.

No part of his body looked transparent, and he wasn't floating in midair either.

Wondering if it was just my imagination, I reached for his arm again. My hand brushed past it and came out the other side.

I waved my hand around, back and forth. Carter, apparently unable to just watch, grabbed my arm.

"What are you doing?"

I looked down at the arm Carter had just grabbed.

This one had substance.

With Carter holding my hand, things clicked into place.

I can't touch him, but he can touch me.

This was basically a total cheat code.

The surprise lasted only a moment before I opened my mouth, determined not to lose Carter now.

"I didn't come here to die."

I looked past Randolph Carter, toward the fog beyond.

"You asked someone to investigate the house in the mist. I'll do it."

A request that supposedly hadn't been cleared in a hundred years.

A hundred-year unsolved request was one thing, but whoever kept that thing posted for a century straight wasn't exactly ordinary either.

"Nothing to lose either way. Why not?"

"Fine."

Carter let go of my hand.

"In exchange, I'll ask you one thing. You don't have to answer."

"So if I don't answer, the request's off, is that it?"

"That's not for me to decide. You know about taboos, don't you?"

This world had a special race called Muel.

Muel meant the divine spark, the descendants of god.

The god in question wasn't like the latecomer gods, like me.

It was the first of everything.

Even I didn't know exactly what that meant.

Muel who carried the divine spark could use mana.

Abilities varied from person to person, but with mana they could use skills, fly, build powerful bodies, live for long stretches, pretty much anything was possible.

Hearing all that, you might think, that sounds pretty great, but the problem was the variance between individuals.

Some lived for hundreds, even thousands of years.

Others died before they even turned ten. The amount of mana varied the same way.

In the end, Muel was just a collection of mutants with basically nothing in common.

And every single Muel carried something called a taboo without exception. Just like their abilities varied, so did their taboos.

This world had no concept of faith at all.

There was only the story of the Muel race, who'd inherited the divine spark, and tales about the very first being.

I was fairly convinced this era had to predate the modern age I knew.

"What's your taboo?"

The moment he asked, I understood exactly why he'd said the answer was optional.

A taboo was something you must never break, and it was deeply personal. For some, it could be a fatal weakness.

Unlike me, tense as I was, Carter looked completely relaxed.

"You got any friends?"

"You haven't answered the question yet."

"I asked if you have friends. Not great if you go around blabbing this stuff, you know."

Carter's expression twisted at my pushback.

His face practically said, why would I even bother doing something that pointless.

"You've heard of the Covenant Oath, haven't you?"

"Isn't this being needlessly cautious?"

"This much is fair, considering it's someone else's secret."

"Fine."

I had no intention of backing down. Carter reluctantly agreed.

[Beginning the Covenant Oath.]

[Subject: Cha Seongjin]

A name I hadn't heard in a long while. I thought it'd be a good while longer before I heard it again.

"In the name of Randolph Carter, I will not speak of Cha Seongjin's taboo to anyone. Do you agree?"

"I agree."

[The Covenant Oath has been executed.]

A red thread wound between my fingers and Carter's.

With this, if he ever told anyone my taboo, I'd know.

Conditions could be added depending on the situation, but I didn't bother with that.

The red thread wrapped around our fingers vanished. Just invisible now, not gone.

Now that the Covenant Oath was in place, a promise had to be kept.

I told Randolph Carter my taboo.

And got laughed at for it.

What a jerk.

Footnotes:

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