WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 62: Three in the Morning, Four at Night (5)

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I answered Kim Gangwoo's question with a light laugh, dodging it.

Sharp as always, Kim Gangwoo waved a hand at me, telling me not to worry about it.

"Nothing unusual besides finding the oasis and killing the sandworm?"[1]

"Not really."

Normally, clearing a dungeon meant a mountain of leftover work, writing reports and the like, but Kim Gangwoo handled most of that for me.

He wasn't just writing simple dungeon reports either. He also handled dungeon sourcing.

People like Kim Gangwoo were called dungeon supporters.

Most dungeon supporters were unawakened, but every once in a while, a Hunter took the job instead.

Kim Gangwoo, sitting right in front of me, was a prime example.

He'd awakened at twenty, then announced his retirement five years later and became a dungeon supporter, an unusual case if there ever was one.

These days he worked as the youngest supporter attached to Park Siyu's Protocol Secretariat.

If he'd stayed a plain B-Rank Hunter, standing shoulder to shoulder with Park Siyu would've been out of the question, so call it a promotion if you want, because in its own way it was one.

"Why'd I quit being a Hunter? Wow, you don't hold back, do you. Nothing special, really. People always say they quit their jobs because they can already see their whole future laid out in front of them. Not everyone gets to end up like Representative Park. I was never going to make it past B-Rank."

Kim Gangwoo had a scary amount of clarity about himself.

Do people with "woo" in their names all end up with the same kind of personality?[2]

Or maybe working under Park Siyu had rubbed off on him over time.

Kim Gangwoo snapped his fingers lightly.

"Okay, I'll take care of the report."

Dozens of holographic pages appeared in front of him.

The god Kim Gangwoo served was tied to information.

The skill he was using now, Shape Memory, let him recall things he'd seen and project them in front of him as holograms.

Since the shape had no fixed limits, imagination mattered more than anything else.

Guess you really can't judge people by looks alone.

Kim Gangwoo skimmed through my reports and records.

"All that's left is clearing a B-Rank dungeon with five people or fewer. Obviously the Ogre's..."

"Trollwood."

"Right, Troll, wait, what?"

Kim Gangwoo looked genuinely startled by what I'd said.

Most Hunters going for B-Rank promotion picked the Ogre's Cave.

Not only were there plenty of strategies floating around for it, it was also the easiest of the B-Rank five-person-or-fewer dungeons.

Supply wasn't exactly abundant, but with Park Siyu backing me, getting one wouldn't be hard.

"Representative Park said to give you whatever you wanted, but... why Trollwood, of all places?"

The requirement for B-Rank qualification was clearing a B- Rank or higher dungeon with five or fewer people.

The Ogre's Cave was called B-Rank in name, but the actual felt difficulty was closer to C+.

"It just says clear a B- Rank or higher dungeon, doesn't it."

Nowhere in the B-Rank qualification rules did it say the dungeon had to be exactly B-Rank.

"Trollwood's pretty tough even for a B-Rank dungeon. Party cap's ten people. And on top of that, supply's absolute garbage."

Kim Gangwoo couldn't wrap his head around why I'd take the harder road when the easy one was right there.

"Since I'll already be in the dungeon, I'll pull some troll blood while I'm at it."

Kim Gangwoo frowned at my answer, since my mind already seemed set on Trollwood.

Troll blood was the main ingredient in vitality potions.

Technically it wasn't blood but spinal fluid, but calling it spinal fluid felt weird, so people just started calling it blood and the name stuck.

Potions made from troll blood counted as mid-tier at best, strictly speaking.

You didn't drink it, you applied it, and it did nothing for internal damage like organ trauma or critical wounds.

Still, it wasn't bad as an emergency backup, so among Hunters it kept selling under the nickname Neosporin rather than being called a proper potion.

Either way, it always sold once made, to the point there were teams that worked Trollwood exclusively and nothing else.

"I'll report it to the boss. He did say to let you do whatever you want within reason, but I don't think this counts as within reason."

"Do whatever you want."

"Knowing your personality, you're not backing down, so let's hear a real reason. Something I can actually use to convince the boss. You're not seriously doing this just to make Neosporin, are you?"

"I want to find out my limits. I just figured Trollwood was the best fit for that."

I'd been growing a lot faster than I expected.

I'd reached a point where C-Rank dungeons barely registered anymore.

At this rate, becoming an A-Rank Hunter within a few months was a real possibility.

The Cockatrice Farm I was about to enter wasn't a simple A-Rank dungeon.

Too many things were tangled together in it, so I needed to know exactly what I could and couldn't do before going in.

Kim Gangwoo seemed to understand what I meant.

Or more accurately, he seemed to be trying to.

Kim Gangwoo picked up his phone.

"Five minutes."

"I'll go wash up in the meantime, then."

I got up and headed for the shower in the back.

By the time I finished a quick shower and came back out, the living room was already tidied up.

Kim Gangwoo sat with nothing but a laptop on the high-end marble table.

I toweled off my hair as I walked over.

"What'd he say?"

"The guild's got a dungeon of its own, so he'll hand that one over. Just two conditions."

I sat down across from Kim Gangwoo and listened to the two conditions Park Siyu had set.

Troll blood was money.

There was no way a large guild would pass up a business that profitable.

Most of the troll specialist teams belonged to big guilds.

Regular Hunters had a hard time even finding a listing, and getting into Trollwood itself was brutally competitive.

Gangwoo counted off on his fingers one at a time.

"First, all the troll blood goes to the guild. Second, you go in with Jeong Choa. P.S., if you need Neosporin, just ask for it."

"I get the first one, but why the second?"

"Timing issue."

The A-Rank dungeon expedition was next Sunday.

Normally a B-Rank dungeon clear took about a week to account for.

"That's only true for a normal party. You're going solo."

"I can be out within a week, you know."

Kim Gangwoo shrugged lightly.

Track record, that was the problem, as always.

There was no record of me clearing a B-Rank dungeon solo, so no matter how loudly I insisted I could, there was nothing to back it up.

"Any room to negotiate?"

"Not really. You know how our boss operates. And on top of that, if you skip this one, finding another Trollwood dungeon would take at least a week, best case."

By then I'd already be inside Cockatrice Farm. What good would a dungeon do me at that point.

There'd never really been a choice to begin with.

"Fine, we'll do it that way."

"Tomorrow, 3 PM, a dungeon on Yeongjongdo Island in Incheon. This is my last job before I take a month off."

"Where to?"

"Mauritius. Already booked the resort."

"That's gonna cost a fortune."

Before dungeons showed up, resort trips were something you could take anytime as long as you had a bit of cash saved up, but after dungeons appeared, a single trip to a resort town burned through a lot more money than before.

Between the dungeons popping up at resort areas and the monsters spilling over from neighboring countries with shaky security, costs went up fast.

Most resorts hired international mercenaries for protection, and that didn't come cheap.

Kim Gangwoo puffed his shoulders up like he was bragging.

"Obviously not my money, so why not. You think I'd blow my own cash going there?"

"Guess I'm not the only one with a straw stuck in Park Siyu."

"Doesn't even make a dent either way. And compared to you, I'm basically a mosquito bite on his budget."

Exaggerating only slightly, Park Siyu's track record was genuinely impressive.

Most other countries ran on a god-centered guild model, basically.

Say I served some god.

And say more than half that god's followers happened to be European Hunters.

In that case, you either give up your Hunter career in Korea and transfer to a European guild, or you just keep grinding it out in Korea as best you can.

If the god had a big enough name, you'd get treated decently. If not, you ended up in a real awkward spot.

Even if you belonged to a Korean guild, if that guild had a dominant god running the show, then any Hunter serving a minor god was bound to catch the short end of the stick.

The disgruntled minority would band together, which only made the Hunters serving the dominant god close ranks even tighter out of wariness, feeding a vicious cycle that just kept repeating.

That's the mess Park Siyu figured out how to fix.

Aria Guild's first principle wasn't god, it was guild.

Sure, there were cliques inside the guild built around specific gods, but as long as Park Siyu stayed standing, none of them could ever become the dominant faction.

As a result, Aria Guild now held the largest number of Hunters in Korea and had climbed high enough to compete with Raon Guild for a spot in the TOP4.

Given how most gods loved flaunting their influence, this made for a genuinely unusual case.

On top of all that, Park Siyu's god was strangely, almost suspiciously, friendly toward me.

Can't quite figure that one out.

I quietly got up from the couch and headed into the bedroom.

I hadn't slept a wink in the dungeon, so I passed out almost instantly.

The next morning.

Kim Gangwoo, who'd been living out of this place for a month, packed up all his things.

He already looked thrilled about the resort trip.

Kim Gangwoo pointed downstairs.

"Going down for breakfast. Want to come?"

"Sure, why not."

I washed up quickly, changed, and headed down to the breakfast restaurant with Kim Gangwoo.

Kim Gangwoo scanned the room, looking for someone.

The moment I spotted Jeong Choa sitting alone by the window, I knew exactly who he was looking for.

The two of us walked over to her table.

"Good morning."

Choa yawned and chewed the salad still in her mouth.

Soft classical music drifted through the restaurant.

Choa stood up, saying she needed to grab more food.

"If there's anything you want, I can just..."

"It's fine."

Since Kim Gangwoo had already stood up, Jeong Choa turned her back and walked over to the food herself.

Looking awkward, Kim Gangwoo sat back down.

"Hyung, what's the deal with her?"

I asked Kim Gangwoo about Choa the moment she stepped away.

Between his behavior and the way Jeong Choa was clearly treated differently from other Hunters in the guild, I'd already picked up on something.

"Code Zero."

"That's the office's nickname for her. Boss lets her do whatever she wants, no questions asked. I've seen her around a few times, but this is the first time I've actually sat down and eaten with her like this."

Kim Gangwoo seemed more surprised that I already knew her than anything else.

"I heard she's been around since Representative Park was running his old guild, but there's a ton of rumors."

"Rumors?"

"I mean, come on, she's cute, right? Some people say she's his girlfriend, some say they're already married on paper and just picking a wedding date, all kinds of stuff floating around."

"That sounds pretty off, honestly."

"Dude, you don't get it! At his age, does it even matter... ahem."

Startled by Jeong Choa, who'd approached without a sound, Kim Gangwoo shot up from his seat.

Reading the room, Gangwoo made an excuse about grabbing food and cleared out.

My eyes met Choa's as I drank my water.

"We'll leave right after breakfast."

She'd probably heard the whole conversation just now.

I couldn't tell if she genuinely didn't care, or if she was just pretending not to.

I'd met plenty of different types of people over the years, but she ranked among the strangest, no question.

After breakfast, Jeong Choa and I headed for Yeongjongdo Island in Incheon.

"Car! Slow down!! Please!!"

[1] A reference to the previous chapter's dungeon clear, not a new event in this one.

[2] A tongue-in-cheek jab at how common the syllable "woo" is in Korean male given names, implying they might share some trait by virtue of sharing that syllable.

Footnotes:

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