WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 55: One Misunderstanding Breeds Another (3)

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I rolled across the floor, dodging Jihan's sword.

The inside of the house turned into a wreck in seconds.

The reason he was attacking was simple.

I'd told him I wasn't giving up the god Soter.

Absolutely ridiculous reason, honestly.

"Could you at least try one thing first? Huh? Like, I don't know, try to talk me around, ask me to reconsider, something like that!"

"I'll know by watching."

"Yeah, whatever you say."

Are you some kind of mind reader now? How exactly would you know that?

Jihan turned his body and gripped his sword tight.

That's a feint.

Sure enough, a fist came flying instead of the blade.

"Oh, nice try."

Nice try my ass.

A crack spread through the wall where Jihan's fist landed.

A civilian lived right above this rental unit.

But this psycho didn't seem to care one bit.

At this point I was starting to feel genuinely wronged.

The Yu Jihan I knew grumbled here and there, sure, but he never hated me anywhere near as much as the guy in front of me right now.

And hey, how much did I do for that kid back then!

"Hey! What exactly did I ever do to you!"

"Serving the god Soter."

Somewhere along the way, our fight had stopped being about swords and turned into a straight-up brawl.

Jihan had no idea I was Soter himself.

Thank god neither of us could see the other's face back in the tower.

Jihan fought well. No joke, every single punch carried real weight behind it.

He never let his guard down while attacking, either.

Which meant there wasn't a single opening to exploit.

Different from the fight in the ant cavern, too.

I'm not exaggerating, just keeping up with him left me out of breath.

The inside of the house looked like a burglar had ransacked the place.

I caught my breath, leaned against the wall, and glared at Yu Jihan.

"What exactly did the god Soter ever do to you?"

Changing the question made Jihan's eyebrow twitch.

There was clearly something there.

The instant I caught that reaction, I bolted for the door.

"Hey, you..."

The second I threw the door open and stepped outside, Jihan came charging in with his sword already drawn.

I spun around and drew my own blade to block.

"That guy is dangerous."

What is he even talking about?

Treating a perfectly decent god like some final boss villain!

Yu Jihan, apparently done talking, swung his sword in a wide arc.

A single slash whipped up a fierce gust of wind around us.

Drawn by the noise, the landlord came outside.

"Wh, what in the world is going on here?"

"Police. No, call the Association! There's a lunatic out here!"

Even if I wanted to make that call myself, there was no way Jihan would let me.

The landlord scrambled for their phone.

Not wanting to drag anyone else into this, I ran up onto the roof of the building.

Since I was his whole target, Jihan followed in an instant.

I kept my sword raised and put some distance between us.

Dangerous, huh.

Come to think of it, there had been others who'd warned me off, called me dangerous, before.

I'd thought I was keeping a pretty low profile too.

"Once all your followers are gone, he'll probably quiet down."

"All of them?"

"As far as I know, Soter has one other follower besides you. Song Eunyoung, was it?"

"You're seriously planning to go after her too?"

"After I kill you first."

The guy looked way too confident about it.

Me, fine, whatever. But if he was planning to lay a hand on Eunyoung-noona too, that changed everything.

"You think I'm easy pickings or something?"

Jihan lunged at me.

The guy was already strong as hell, and now he had an actual sword in hand. It was enough to drive a person out of their mind.

His movements had the crisp discipline of a well-trained soldier.

Which meant.

"Guess I just need to read the pattern."

I faked a stumble and kicked a stone off the ground toward him.

This type of fighter tends to be weak against a surprise strike.

"You think I'm stupid?"

Jihan didn't even flinch, just swung his sword sideways. Light poured out from the mana-charged blade.

The skill he unleashed shattered every window in the building across from us.

Screams rang out as broken glass scattered down onto the street and in every direction.

A few shards caught in the wind and drifted.

"No way."

I already knew a trick that old wasn't going to work on someone like him.

I'd only pulled it because I'd factored in his counterattack from the start.

Without a shred of hesitation, I used Wind Fang.

Razor-sharp gusts tore toward Jihan alongside my sword.

Our blades met.

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, like he hadn't expected me to read him that carefully.

I only had one shot to use that kind of read.

They always say it's easiest to catch an opponent off guard when they're underestimating you.

Would've been nice if that earlier attack had actually landed clean.

All it managed was a shallow cut on his cheek.

Same story as the fight in the ant cavern, and the same story here too.

Skill aside, every one of his movements looked familiar to me.

The Yu Jihan I knew was an ordinary high schooler who trembled after accidentally killing one goblin.

I was the one who'd taught Jihan how to fight in the first place.

I had no idea what had happened to change things.

But put simply, there probably wasn't another person alive who understood Yu Jihan's movements better than I did.

Bet you didn't see that coming.

Once I adjusted to his rhythm, Jihan's expression twisted hard.

Whatever I lacked in stats, I made up for by improvising on the fly.

The longer the fight dragged on, the more injuries piled up on my side, but Jihan's confusion kept growing right alongside them.

He'd clearly noticed my injuries were coming from a straightforward stat gap, nothing more.

"What are you? How are you..... damn it."

Jihan gritted his teeth and lunged again.

I'd made all this noise on purpose, so why weren't any Association staff showing up yet?

No matter how well I read his movements, understanding something in your head and having your body actually keep up were two completely different problems.

Jihan seemed to realize that too, because he started moving even more recklessly.

"Tch."

Mid-attack, Jihan suddenly clicked his tongue.

I drove my sword straight toward his face.

Just like his movements had become familiar to me, my movements were now plain as day to him too.

My strike failed, but calling it a total failure wouldn't be quite right either.

Something dropped from near Jihan's feet.

The design looked like one of those trendy wireless Bluetooth earbuds everyone had these days.

Whatever it was, there was a good chance it belonged to him, and was an item.

I hadn't spotted it.

No matter how tiny earbuds got these days, having one stuck in his ear should've been obvious to me. And it hadn't been.

That's an item I've never seen before either.

Jihan bent down, picked it up, and shoved it into his pocket.

"I don't know what he told you."

Jihan closed the gap between us in an instant.

Unlike me, stuck doing my best just to block, he still looked like he had plenty of room to spare.

"You'd be smart not to believe it. Well, you'll be dead by my hand before that matters anyway."

How badly does this guy want to paint me as some legendary liar?

Jihan's movements kept picking up speed, bit by bit.

Keeping pace with him was already pushing my limits.

Before I knew it, we'd reached the very edge of the rooftop.

Jihan leaped, and the tip of his sword flashed.

"Wait, this is..."

"Die!"

Jihan's blade drove in close to my body.

Panicking, I used Moonlight Slash and threw myself off the rooftop.

Jihan didn't let up.

If anything, he seemed to treat the fall as an opportunity.

I ended up slamming into the ground below.

Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, along with the murmur of a gathering crowd.

Sun-Felling Sword Technique.

A ferocious blade technique with the force to knock the sun clean out of the sky.

One of the secret arts of the Jeomjang Sect, and I had never once taught him a skill like that.

He'd only touched on part of the form, but there was no mistaking it, this was a fragment of the Sun-Felling Sword Technique.

Are you kidding me, how does he even know how to use that?

None of it made any sense no matter how I turned it over.

A hundred wild theories and half-formed thoughts flickered through my head, but none of them stuck around long.

This guy genuinely meant to kill me.

"Lucky, that was. Or is it skill, not luck?"

Jihan swung his sword through the empty air and stepped closer.

His whole posture said there wouldn't be a next time.

My arm ached.

Blocking that last attack had probably broken it.

I'd delegated Soter's authority within whatever limits this body allowed.

That was the whole reason I could send invitations, or peek at Eunyoung-noona's status window.

If this guy really was a Yu Jihan from the future.

I figured I'd try it and see, and opened up Yu Jihan's status window.

And there it was.

[Yu Jihan (???)]

Rank: Unknown

Strength: Transcendent C+ (51%)

Vitality: ?

Mana: ?

Recovery: ?

Merit points: ?

Skills: ?

Talent: ?

The status window appeared.

Most of it read Unknown or a plain question mark, but the Strength stat was the one thing I could actually read.

His Strength stat was Transcendent C.

People whose stats broke past SS rank were called Transcendents.

Even accounting for the fact that the Yu Jihan I first met had been at the peak of his college-prep grind, the sharpest high school senior in all of Korea, this was on another level entirely. Some kind of super-absorbent sponge.

Looking at that status window just left me feeling pathetic about my own.

While Jihan settled back into a stance, something familiar caught my eye underneath the status window.

- Currently bound by [Covenant Oath].

What the hell is this now?

I had no memory of ever forming something like this with Yu Jihan.

The terms of the oath were simple.

'??? Yu Jihan' obeys the commands of the god Soter.

There was more written below that, but this was hardly the moment to sit around reading it.

And why the hell would this bastard swear to some ridiculous oath like this while running around saying he's going to kill the god Soter?

Has he lost his damn mind?

Jihan closed the last of the distance between us.

Screw it, I don't even care anymore!

[Sit.]

Jihan's movement broke apart, and he dropped straight down onto the ground.

Every motion in his body scrambled at once, and realizing how dangerous that was, he scrambled back up and retreated a few steps.

"That was just..."

The most confused expression I'd seen on his face this whole time, by far.

Part of me wanted to lose it and kill him back the exact same way he'd tried to kill me, but I kept thinking about the other Yu Jihan still up in the tower, and that held me back.

"You should count yourself lucky."

"Wh, what did you just do?"

His confusion lasted only a moment before he settled back into a stance and came at me again, calm as ever.

This body couldn't handle a long divine command right now, but a short word or two was manageable.

[Stop.]

Jihan froze mid-swing, sword still raised overhead.

Only then did he seem to piece together what was happening, and his face twisted openly.

"What the actual hell! This is cheating! Hey!! You son of a bitch! I told you I'd grind you into fish paste if I ever found you!"

I never expected him to go quiet and take it, but his mouth was way filthier than I'd braced for.

Also, who exactly are you talking to right now with me standing right here?

The Covenant Oath Yu Jihan had sworn was to the god Soter, not to Kang Hangyeol.

Since he had no idea I was Soter, it occurred to me he probably didn't even realize this was my doing.

Yu Jihan thrashed like an insect caught in a spider's web.

Even so, he kept managing small twitches of movement.

No matter how much of a Transcendent he was, resisting a Covenant Oath was never going to be easy.

I quietly sheathed my sword and stepped closer.

The line underneath the Covenant Oath I'd apparently formed with Yu Jihan read as follows.

[However, the god Soter cannot kill Yu Jihan.]

Since the divine command had actually worked, this Covenant Oath was real.

And as long as that oath existed, I couldn't kill him.

I raised the sheathed sword and switched to a flat, deadpan mock-innocent tone.

"Huh. Movement just stopped out of nowhere. Wonder why that could be."

"Hey, don't you dare. This is your god's...! I swear I will end you!"

"I'll let you live, though."

"But you're getting hit back exactly as much as I got hurt."

"You son of a...!! Hey!! Wait a second...!!"

Thwack.

The sheath landed square on the exact same spot where my arm had broken.

Had to hurt like hell, but he didn't let out so much as a single grunt.

Not your average tough guy.

I already knew this wasn't the kind of guy who'd die from one broken arm or one broken leg.

Once I got a good hit in on Yu Jihan, my head cleared right up.

Come to think of it, the house was trashed, and I was definitely going to be late for the meeting.

Pretty sure a couple of buildings took damage during the fight too.

Park Siyu was going to have a field day lecturing me, and there was no way this whole mess wouldn't reach Choi Suhyun's ears.

Just picturing everything that was about to unfold gave me a headache already.

"Guess I have no choice. Your crimes are just too severe."

"Hey, hey!! Ow! Did you just hit me? Once this wears off, you're dead. I'm gonna kill you! You think I'm joking? God damn it, quit hitting me!"

"Screw it, just die already!"

I beat Yu Jihan like a dog right up until the Association staff arrived.

God, my life.

The evening sun cut a bright line between the buildings.

Association staff in their jackets gathered around the scene.

Every one of their eyes landed on the young man collapsed in a battered heap in the corner between the two buildings.

A Hunter with a healing skill was already working to treat him.

And every gaze, including the healer's, drifted to the sheet of A4 paper taped messily all over the young man's body, covered in handwritten scrawl.

[Officer, this is the guy.]

Footnotes:

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