WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 52: The Eerie Tall House in the Fog (4)
──────
Jihan walked into the classroom and looked around.
Looked like he was searching for something suspicious.
This little punk can't see me at all.
In front of my eyes, Jihan's exact appearance from the moment he cleared Layer 3 kept playing out, clear as day.
He'd failed to assassinate Lia, and everyone inside had turned into infected.
I didn't need to watch anything after that.
The person at the center of it all was standing right in front of me.
Whatever the process looked like, the guy was alive.
I could just hear the rest from his own mouth.
The moment I stopped the video, Jihan had already come right up close.
"No matter how I look at it, something's off around here."
Guessed he'd picked up a talking-to-himself habit, since he muttered while sticking his face right in.
[Get your face out of here.]
I was back in Kang Hangyeol's body now.
My missing body had sorted itself out once I cleared Layer 4 and messed with the system.
Still, no matter how much I dug through the admin permissions, I couldn't find a single piece of information about Noden or the hundred-year request.
"Waaugh!"
Jihan hadn't expected me to actually be there, apparently, and he jumped back in shock.
Even with me back in my original body, he still couldn't see me.
Jihan sat down on top of the classroom desk.
Why does this kid always sit on the desk instead of using the perfectly good chair right there?
Then again, I wasn't exactly one to talk, sitting on the podium myself.
Jihan glanced at the podium and grumbled.
"Hey, if you were there, you should've said so from the start."
[Who's the one who shoved their face right in without warning?]
"How was I supposed to know you were even there!"
Felt like it'd been about two weeks since I last saw this kid.
Why'd he change so much in that time?
Wait, was it even two weeks?
Just because two weeks passed for me didn't mean the same two weeks passed for him.
No telling how much time had actually gone by for Yu Jihan.
[What happened while I was gone?]
"Just...."
Sure enough, Jihan hesitated and looked away.
While I waited for an answer, I checked his status window.
Strength: A- (78%)
Vitality: B- (21%)
Mana: C+ (11%)
Recovery: B+ (6%)
Merit points: 69,690
Items held <Shower bomb x32> <Water ball (500mL) x20> <Hard bread x5>
Whatever he'd been up to, his recovery had gone up from B to B+.
I remembered giving him a decent stash of items, but no clue where any of that had gone.
The shower bomb count had dropped, so he'd managed to sell some, at least.
Without waiting for his answer, I asked about what happened on Layer 3.
Instead of spilling everything the way I'd expected, he did the opposite and started watching my reaction.
[If you don't want to talk, don't. I can find out what you did either way.]
That caught him off guard.
[You think I'm a god for nothing? Just spill it while I'm still asking nicely.]
Figured I'd throw in a little flex here.
Giving him the first chance to explain himself counted as being generous enough.
Jihan sighed and told me everything that happened.
I already knew he'd failed to assassinate Lia.
I'd told him that if the assassination failed, he should kill everyone left on the train.
Jihan really had killed every single person left on that train without exception.
And the train, empty after Jihan vanished from it, had slammed straight into the platform and caused the crash.
[Good work.]
"Thought you'd be mad. Kind of surprising."
[Why would I be?]
It had already happened, hadn't it?
If he'd killed Lia like I told him to, none of that would've happened, but either way, Jihan survived.
Didn't matter how it went down, only the result mattered.
Getting mad over something already in the past would've cost more than it was worth, too.
Jihan seemed to run out of things to say against that logic and shut his mouth.
[So where'd the potions go, anyway?]
I'd only given him ten mana potions, so fine, he drank those. But I had no idea where that whole stash of potions had disappeared to.
"Drank them."
[You drank all of it?]
"Obviously! Hey, if you're gonna give me something, huh? Give me the good stuff! What kind of potion looks like a knockoff candy bar! At least give me one that actually fills up my vitality bar. Elixir! Legendary potion! You got anything like that?"
Sounded like he'd been sitting on a whole lot of complaints about the potions, because the moment the topic came up he started grumbling nonstop.
Made me wonder for a second if he'd just gotten too comfortable with me.
While listening to Jihan's complaints, I opened the gift list.
Gift-eligible items: Small healing potion (12), Small mana potion (30), Painkiller (5), Shower bomb (2)
Special item: Chocolate bar (1000)
[Huh? Chocolate bar?]
[No, wait a second...]
I trailed off and quickly checked the gift window.
Just in case, I dug through my pocket.
A chocolate bar came out of my pocket.
It suddenly hit me. Right before entering the tower, I'd bought a lunchbox at the convenience store and grabbed an extra chocolate bar at the register.
I'd meant to eat it on the way home, then forgot all about it stuffed in my pocket.
"Hey, what is it? Why're you acting like that? What about the chocolate bar?"
The silence dragged on long enough that Jihan snapped, sounding annoyed.
Something I'd noticed after seeing him a few times, this kid had a short fuse for someone his age. Hot-tempered, I guess you'd call it. Not exactly the picture of great social skills.
Not really my place to say, given he was only nineteen, but there's a saying about how the signs show early for a reason.
[You like chocolate bars?]
"You're seriously so random. I hate sweet stuff."
[Oh yeah? Guess that settles it then.]
No point forcing something on a kid who said he hated it.
Jihan's expression shifted, subtle but unmistakable, at my answer.
"Wait, hold on. You actually have a chocolate bar?"
[Why else would I ask? Was gonna give it to you, but you said you hate it.]
"You only asked if I liked it, not if I hated it!"
[You said you hate sweet stuff. What're you gonna do with something you hate?]
Jihan clearly hadn't expected me to actually be holding a chocolate bar.
He stretched his hand out toward the podium where I was sitting.
Did this kid leave something with me or what?
Why's he acting so shameless about it?
"Hand it over."
[You said you hate it.]
"Hating something and it being in your hand are two different things."
[How's that different. Also, it's just a regular chocolate ba...]
I cut myself off mid-sentence, fast.
It hit me all at once that my situation and Jihan's situation weren't the same at all.
Right now, everyone in the lobby, Jihan included, was living off items handed down from their gods, more or less the same way I was giving him this.
And that difference turned out to matter way more than I'd expected.
[Fine, I'll give it to you.]
Jihan's eyes lit up at my answer.
Seeing that, there was still a kid in there somewhere, hidden under all the attitude.
[Consumed 1,000 merit points to gift 'Yu Jihan' a 'Chocolate bar (Special)'.]
[Obtained 1,000 merit points.]
Jihan accepted the gift like he'd been waiting for exactly this.
The chocolate bar from my item window landed in his hand.
The wrapper, originally printed in Korean, lost all its color, leaving nothing but bare foil.
I'd been worried it might be a problem if someone noticed it was a product from a convenience store nearby, but that concern seemed unnecessary now.
Jihan still looked suspicious of the plain foil wrapper, though.
"You're not scamming me, are you?"
[Why would I scam you over something like this? You'll suspect literally anything at this point.]
"You just seem kind of shady for a god."
[Nothing you won't say, huh. If you're that suspicious, just open it up and check.]
The moment I finished talking, Jihan tore the wrapper open.
Inside, it was just an ordinary chocolate bar, nothing more.
Jihan unwrapped it and took a bite.
For someone who claimed he hated sweets, he ate it pretty calmly.
Watching him eat, I found myself curious about how things worked in the lobby.
[Come to think of it, how do you even eat down there? Please tell me you're not just surviving on potions.]
"What kind of nonsense is that? I told you I finished all of those on Layer 3! Food's... well. I could get jerky before, at least. Only in the lobby, though."
Jihan's face twisted the moment jerky came up.
Lia's taboo had been cannibalism.
She'd offered me jerky too, once.
I turned it down for a simple reason.
I knew exactly what it was made from.
Should've told him, maybe.
Then again, even a little kid knows better than to eat whatever a stranger hands them without asking questions.
I wanted to nag him about it, but seeing how disgusted he looked killed that urge fast.
Looked like it had left a serious mark on him.
The default food supply down there was jerky, and here he was, traumatized by jerky of all things. Kind of pitiful, honestly.
[You good?]
"Ah, whatever."
Jihan snapped, clearly not wanting to think about it anymore.
Since his item window had bread in it, sounded like there were other food sources besides jerky.
As long as he wasn't stuck eating jerky for the rest of his life, a trauma like that would probably fade fast enough.
"Forget that, let's talk about Layer 4."
Jihan finished off the chocolate bar and changed the subject.
This whole thing had made it clear to me, too, that Jihan's clear conditions carried over and affected the next floor.
Seemed like Jihan had more to say than I did.
He started talking without me even having to ask.
"Heard from some other guys that Layer 4 onward has a lot more freedom. What's that supposed to mean?"
I understood exactly what he meant the second he said it.
Meant that, same as this floor, some floors let the player act freely without affecting the story, and some don't.
Guess it makes sense that request didn't really matter what I cleared it with.
Even bringing back a neighborhood stray cat would've cleared Layer 4.
For someone who wasn't cut out for fighting, there was no sweeter floor than this one.
If someone wanted to just take it easy, there was nothing stopping them.
[That's exactly what it means. As long as you get results, the process doesn't matter. End result, Lia's dead, right?]
"Not just Lia. Innocent people died too."
[I know.]
Jihan's expression fell.
He was probably sitting there right now, regretting that he should've killed Lia from the start, weighed down by guilt.
Having more freedom, put another way, meant there was no guarantee about the process.
"So there's no guarantee this kind of thing won't happen again?"
[Right. So even my advice isn't guaranteed to be the right answer.]
"Some god you are. Not even all-knowing."
[There's no such thing as omnipotence in this world.]
"Kind of a weird thing for a god to say."
Jihan muttered, tilting his head to the side.
He clammed up for a while after that.
Brought up wanting to talk about Layer 4, then went and got lost in his own thoughts.
[What're you thinking about so hard, anyway?]
Jihan scratched his head and let out a deep sigh.
[What's wrong?]
"It's nothing, keep going."
[Your face is practically screaming that you can't focus, and you call that nothing? Sounds like you picked up some info in the lobby. Did people say anything about Layer 4?]
"Say what?"
Jihan's expression was genuinely blank, like he had no idea what I meant.
Ah, I see.
Watching his confusion, it clicked. The others were hiding something from him.
Layer 4 could go easy depending on how you approached it, but for some people, it was also a chance to turn the tables on their situation.
Guess they're not that close after all.
Not that it mattered much.
[Layer 4's not that hard. So first, tell me why you can't focus.]
"I said it's fine..."
Jihan started to raise his voice, then looked at me and shut his mouth.
Looked like his emotions had gotten the better of him without meaning to.
"It's fine... no... "
Jihan seemed to lose his words and scratched his head irritably.
Then he muttered to himself, sounding hollow.
"Ha, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore."
He let out a bitter laugh, like he found himself absurd.
"I'll just say it, fine. I'll say it."
Honestly, I'd already guessed roughly what the problem was before he even said anything.
Outside the tower, there was only one place that could cause this kind of trouble.
Just as I expected, it was a lobby problem.
I already knew Jihan didn't get along with the people down there.
The whole reason Jihan ended up entering Floor 1 and being alone in the first place was because he'd refused the group ruling the lobby, the so-called Central Guild.
Jihan let it all out.
Everything Central Guild had done.
"No matter how messed up this whole situation is, there's no way people can just... just... damn it. Not like I'm exactly in a position to judge anyone else anymore."
Jihan clammed up again mid-rant about Central Guild's wrongdoings.
Not everyone wanted to enter the tower the way Jihan or the Central Guild guys did.
Sounded like Jihan thought killing people that way was no different from what happened on the train.
[What happened on the train was...]
"I'm not talking about the train."
[Then what are you talking about?]
"After they got out of Layer 3, those guys came to me and said they'd act like everything before never happened if I just joined up with them. I don't get what kind of nerve it takes to say something like that."
[And?]
"I killed them. They deserved to die, sure, but."
[They deserved to die, but what?]
"I don't know if what I did was right."
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
