WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 60: Three in the Morning, Four at Night (3)
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Jihan was currently on hostile terms with the dominant faction in the lobby, a bunch calling themselves the Central Guild.
At first it had just been simple dislike. Lately it had crossed over into something closer to loathing.
[The caravan escort's fine, then?]
Jihan propped his chin on his hand, elbow on the desk, and answered like he couldn't care less.
"Whatever. When I first heard about it I was pissed off, but I cooled down and thought it over, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway. It's a mission that shows up on the status window, right? Then I've got to do it whether I like it or not. Sorry, but I don't feel like dying."
Jihan clenched his teeth.
His survival instinct was overflowing to the point it got uncomfortable to watch.
[What? Why'd you suddenly get so responsible?]
"Don't know. And it's not 'responsible.'"
[Nothing else happening in the lobby?]
"Not really, except some psycho came looking for me."
A psycho came looking for him and that wasn't a big deal?
I was starting to lose track of how this kid's brain even worked.
All because of the Transcendent Yu Jihan I'd seen outside the tower.
[Central Guild people?]
"Who cares."
Jihan turned his head away like he had zero interest in the subject.
I could picture it clearly. Get lost, or something like I don't listen to people weaker than me, and he'd chased them off with lines exactly like that.
"Said I'd just think about it, that's all."
Not that bad, then.
I felt a little embarrassed for jumping to the wrong conclusion.
He just never knew which way this kid was going to bounce. Fundamentally, though, he wasn't a bad kid.
Was this what it felt like to raise a child?
Maybe I could still turn him around before he went full villain?
Hm. Probably worth thinking over at some point.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to have any particular opinion about the Layer 5 escort mission.
Jihan turning down the offer from those mystery people hadn't been pure wariness, either.
"What you told me and what they were saying didn't line up. Not sure how to explain it."
[Are you doubting me right now?]
Jihan turned his head toward the podium.
His eyes said, why wouldn't I?
Doubting the guy who saved your life, that's a little much, don't you thi... never mind. Forget it.
The Transcendent Yu Jihan had genuinely tried to kill me.
Compared to that, a little doubt was nothing.
[You said you like games, right?]
"So what?"
[Do you actually pay attention to the story?]
Something about my question hit a nerve, and Jihan looked away, avoiding my eyes.
Wrong direction to look, buddy.
If you're Korean, nine times out of ten you hit the skip button the second the game starts. That's just the national law.[1]
You do everything else there is to do, and only when you've genuinely run out of things to do do you bother with the story.
The story starting to catch your eye was proof you'd started settling into vet territory.
Hearing that, Jihan's shoulders relaxed, the tension draining out of them.
"I don't really watch the story, but... what I mean is, the intel those guys gave me had way too many holes in it. Sloppy."
Most of the players in the lobby seemed to think all they had to do was follow orders.
That was exactly the part Jihan couldn't stand.
There were currently about eight thousand people in the lobby.
Jihan was a latecomer, and around two-thirds of that number were users below Floor 10.
Central Guild players seemed to funnel resources toward whichever new arrivals looked promising, and shuffle the rest off toward production or support roles.
"Support, sure, like they call it that. Those guys don't even see the rest of us as people, but hey, they've got their justifications ready."
Not everyone was going to want to risk their life fighting.
There were definitely people who genuinely believed the ones climbing the tower would save everyone else eventually.
Jihan clearly didn't sympathize, but he wasn't rushing to a conclusion either.
[What do you want to do about the Central Guild people?]
"Don't know. But... there's one guy I want to kill."
Jihan had mentioned the Central Guild a few times before this, but this was the first time he'd flat out said there was someone he wanted dead.
[Someone you want to kill?]
"Yeah. Park Seunghwan. The old-timer bastard I mentioned before, cleared Floor 29 and never graduated."
Players who cleared Floor 30 could move from the lower lobby to the middle lobby.
Once someone entered the middle lobby after clearing Floor 30, there was no going back down to the lower lobby.
Nobody knew what happened up in the middle section, higher up in the tower.
"Ever since that bastard started grabbing power in the Central Guild, not one single person outside the Central Guild's own members has graduated in years."
Lobby users called clearing Floor 29 and entering Floor 30 "graduating."
[Want some help?]
"Help how, exactly?"
[Two heads are better than one, they say. Not that this is exactly an easy job, or that either of our heads is worth much. But have you ever lost anything listening to me so far?]
I started laying the groundwork, slow and steady.
Yu Jihan had already killed a few Central Guild players.
Even so, they'd offered to bring him in.
That alone said how much of a threat Yu Jihan was as a piece on the board.
Once you realize you're holding a sharp blade, you've got two choices.
Break the edge off.
Or keep a grip on the handle.
Making the offer at all probably meant they'd judged there was still some benefit to keeping him in hand, at least for now.
Yu Jihan would never join hands with the Central Guild.
The clash between Jihan and the Central Guild wasn't a matter of if, only when.
Jihan had the makings of a Transcendent.
And those people who'd approached Jihan.
He didn't seem to care much, but there was a good chance they belonged to some faction opposing the Central Guild the same way he did.
Controlling close to eight thousand people through force alone was impossible.
Those people could end up being useful firepower.
"I guess that's true."
Jihan nodded after a long pause, like he finally got it.
"But dealing with the Central Guild has nothing to do with you, does it?"
[If you die in the lobby, that's a loss for me.]
"Still..."
Jihan didn't look thrilled about it.
[Use whatever you can use. What's wrong with that?]
"You're telling me to use you?"
[Yeah. Well, I'm not saying I'll just help out of the goodness of my heart either. I plan on charging a consulting fee.]
"Merit points? How much do you want?"
[Not that. Not like you've got anywhere else to spend them anyway.]
"Then what do you want?"
[A promise. Ever heard of a Covenant Oath?]
"What's that? Never heard of it."
Of course he hadn't.
I gave him a short rundown of the Covenant Oath.
"So you want to make a promise with me? What's the content of it?"
Figuring it'd land a lot better if he saw it with his own eyes instead of just hearing about it, I pulled up the Covenant Oath like I'd been waiting for the chance.
Jihan took one look at the contents and freaked out.
"You shameless bastard."
Ah, maybe that had been a bit much.
"Even a slave contract would be better than this! Are you a god or garbage?"
Garbage? That's harsh!
I'd gotten burned by the Transcendent Yu Jihan, so maybe I'd overcorrected a little too hard.
"You didn't seriously think I'd accept this, did you?"
[Alright, alright! Let's revise it!]
"Can I even touch this thing?"
Before I could even answer, Jihan reached out and touched the status window floating in front of him.
A moment later, the revised text came flying my way.
'Guardian Yu Jihan' obeys the commands of the god Soter. However, the god Soter cannot kill Yu Jihan.
Seeing that line gave me a slight chill.
It was word for word what I'd seen from the Transcendent Yu Jihan.
So he wrote that himself, huh.
That ??? I'd seen back then had meant Guardian.
While I was fighting off the urge to laugh, Yu Jihan wore an expression like he was doing me some huge favor, shameless as ever.
"Honestly, I don't love the word 'obeys,' but you're a god, so I'll let it slide. Well, you don't really seem like one, but still."
What is this kid even saying.
[No regrets, right?]
"Not like I could find another god at this point, and you going this far means you need me too, don't you?"
Direct hit.
Truth was, I'd tried more than once to track down other players who'd entered the tower, and failed every time.
The dimensional damage was just too severe.
Why it had to be Yu Jihan of all people, I still didn't know.
At first I really hadn't expected this kid to survive this long.
And I definitely hadn't expected him to become a Transcendent and come after my life.
But I meant to bring him along as far as I could take him.
[So you're really, definitely sure you won't regret this?]
"I said no! You're driving me insane!"
At the repeated question, Jihan slammed his fist down on the desk.
The desk split clean in half under the blow.
Even he looked startled, like he hadn't expected the desk to actually break.
Unless a player was still on Floor 1 or Layer 2, they weren't running around with an ordinary person's body anymore.
And Jihan's Strength stat right now was a solid A-.
Strong enough that if he really put his mind to it, he could probably punch straight through a building's outer wall.
I understood all over again just how much restraint the Transcendent Yu Jihan must have been exercising.
Jihan stared down at the desk, looking helplessly at the wreckage.
"This is, ah... whatever! Just do it before I change my mind!"
[Subject: Soter]
I'd worried it might come out under my real name, but thankfully that didn't happen.
"The status window's up. So what do I do?"
[Just say the words "I agree."]
"Oh, that's it? I agree to the Covenant Oath."
The moment Jihan finished speaking, a red thread wrapped around each of our fingers.
My second Oath, right after Randolph Carter.
[Received a sponsorship of 200,000 merit points from 'Guardian Yu Jihan'.]
A sponsorship of 200,000 points had come in from Yu Jihan.
The mission I'd told Jihan about had been worth 130,000 merit points.
I still hadn't checked what exactly happened on Layer 4, too scattered to look into it.
Why's this kid's point total so ridiculous?
When I went quiet, taken aback, Jihan spoke up first and explained the situation.
"I was trying to do the dungeon mission like you told me, but things got a little tangled. So, I guess you could say I killed two birds with one stone."
[Two birds with one stone?]
"Turns out you can clear two at once, apparently?"
The system had said to finish the mission, not to finish one mission.
Since he'd finished two almost at the same time, he'd gotten the merit points for both.
Same thing I'd noticed back on the train. Show this kid the textbook way to do something and somehow he'd still find the roughest, most brutal path available instead.
They say anyone who does something weird even after seeing the walkthrough has to be some kind of freak.
[Can't you just clear things quietly for once?]
"Those bastards started it firs... ah."
Jihan flinched, fist half raised again.
Going for the desk again, weren't you? Huh?
That kid's got some seriously bad hand habits.
[The god Soter's Lv has increased.]
[Trait 'Executioner's Sword' acquired.]
Between Yu Jihan's existing sponsorships, Kang Hangyeol's own 60,000 merit points, and Eunyoung noona's contribution, the total shot past 300,000 easily.
Level 2 at 300,000 points. Leveling up was a nightmare.
Divine name: ＊＊＊＊＊
Level: 2
Ranking: #15,400
Dimension: Tower of Trials
Total merit points: 375,540P
Followers: 2
Traits <Blessing of Soter> <Executioner's Sword>
It'd been a good while since I'd last checked my status window.
I could see one new trait had been added.
"Huh? What's this?"
The same notification had gone out to Jihan, affiliated under me.
Good chance the same notification had reached Eunyoung noona too.
[You know how to use traits, right? Talents?]
"No? I've wondered about that for a while, what is it?"
[Didn't I tell you?]
"No."
[So you've never used it, not even once, this whole time?]
"Thought it was a passive skill."
In other words, he'd figured it just worked on its own if he left it alone.
[It's passive, sure, but it's the kind of passive with an on and off switch.]
"That."
"You're telling me this now? You want to die?"
Sure enough, Jihan shot up from his seat and let loose a round of complaining.
He stormed up to the podium, grumbling the whole way.
If he could actually see my face, he'd probably grab me by the collar.
Sorry, but I saw that coming and dodged out of the way beforehand.
Jihan spun around and pointed toward the back of the classroom.
"Hey! I know you're back there, I know it! Get out here!"
Wrong side. It's the right, not the left.
Wrong direction or not, I couldn't help noticing his sense for pinpointing my location was getting sharper by the day.
Jihan plopped himself down on the podium without asking.
Hey, that's my spot!
Jihan demanded I explain the trait thing already, hurrying me along.
He muttered to himself, staring at the new trait.
"What's Executioner's Sword supposed to be? Not like it's some fancy ceremonial blade."
What is this kid even talking about.
[1] A wry nod to the stereotype of Korean gamers rushing straight past dialogue/cutscenes to get to the gameplay, treated here as an unwritten cultural rule.
Footnotes:
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