WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 64: Zero-Sum Game (2)

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"Seems like you've got good luck with monsters, Hangyeol-ssi. Weren't you saying you found an oasis not too long ago too?"

I couldn't decide if that counted as good luck or bad luck.

The ground shook, and Choa jumped up onto a tree.

She finished off the rest of her calorie bar and popped a water candy into her mouth.

"I could help out, if you want."

"I'll pass."

"Really?"

"Just handle the trolls around the boss for me."

"You know what? A Twin-Headed Troll's spinal fluid is a little different from regular trolls. Actually, spinal fluid isn't even what troll expeditions are usually after."

People being what they were, everyone wanted the one big score.

Given the choice between earning money over ten years or making ten years' worth of salary in one shot, most people would take the shot.

That's exactly why gambling and lotteries never went out of business.

The spinal fluid of a Twin-Headed Troll was the core ingredient for elixirs.

Among Hunters, there were exactly two consumable items treated with real respect.

One was the elixir, and the other was cheongsimhwan.

The elixir restored vitality, and cheongsimhwan, despite the name, wasn't the herbal calming pill people knew from folk medicine. It restored mana.

"You can usually pull about 300mL of spinal fluid from a Twin-Headed Troll. But with my skills, I can get up to 500mL."

Nowhere in my agreement with Park Siyu had a Twin-Headed Troll's spinal fluid ever come up.

The spawn rate for a Twin-Headed Troll sat at a pretty low 5%.

Even Park Siyu probably never expected one to actually show up.

Which meant whatever spinal fluid came out of killing that thing was entirely mine.

"Thirty percent. That's a pretty fair deal, don't you think?"

"What are you even doing here?"

Perched on a branch, Choa swung her legs back and forth.

She looked at me and smiled.

Smiling like that?

You think I'll just let it slide?

She seemed to treat this whole dungeon like some kind of walk in the park.

Damn it, she's cute enough that I'll let it go!

Once the Twin-Headed Troll fully woke, the trolls scattered around gathered toward it.

Usually four or five Guardian Trolls hung around a Giant Troll, but since this was a rare boss, the number of Guardian Trolls here was noticeably higher.

"Fine, do what you want."

Choa grabbed the branch, spun her body once around it, and dropped down.

Leaving the Guardian Trolls to her, I turned my eyes toward the Twin-Headed Troll.

Fully awake now, it slammed a fist down into the ground.

Several massive trees toppled sideways, trunks and all, from one single punch.

I stepped onto a leaning trunk and climbed up.

Four eyes met mine.

Giant Trolls tended to be slower in their attacks compared to other large-scale monsters of similar size.

Matching its height, I moved in to attack the Twin-Headed Troll.

I failed to cut its arm clean off, but I did manage to open a wound.

The torn flesh knit itself back together almost instantly.

The Twin-Headed Troll's regeneration ran about twice as fast as a regular Giant Troll's.

"Not even funny."

Whatever pace I managed to cut off its limbs, its regeneration outpaced me by a wide margin.

The Twin-Headed Troll let out a scream, and the ground nearby shook.

Dozens of tree roots tore up through the earth.

It flicked a finger, and every root turned toward me at once.

The roots converging on a single point collided with a sound like a bomb going off.

"Hangyeol-ssi? You alive?"

Choa's voice reached me through the gaps in the tangled roots.

The roots were part of the same body as the Twin-Headed Troll.

Which meant the roots carried regeneration close to the troll's own.

Cutting them down would be pointless, so I judged it smarter to dodge through the gaps instead. That call turned out right.

My body got wedged between the roots for a moment, but not badly enough that I couldn't pull free.

I used Angervadir to slice through a root and slipped out before it could regenerate.

"What about the Guardians?"

"They're going to die."

Killed, sure, but going to die? What was that supposed to mean?

I cut down a root lunging at Choa from behind.

Part of the severed root regenerated and went for her again.

Choa reached out and grabbed the root with her hand.

The instant she did, the root heading for her throat suddenly stopped moving.

It twitched, seized up, and dropped limp to the ground.

"Oh my, guess that hurt."

Don't act so calm about it! You're the one who did that!

I got clear of the root-tangled space along with Choa.

The blast from a moment ago had left the surrounding area half flattened.

"Did I ever tell you which god I follow?"

"No."

"The god Moros."[1]

According to myth, one of the children born to Nyx, the goddess of night, was known as the "god of ruin."

Whether it was actually the god of ruin was something that still needed verifying.

It was a fake name anyway, wasn't it.

Nothing about the name Choa gave carried any real weight I could sense.

I gave a noncommittal nod and headed down to the ground with her.

"So what are you going to do about that?"

Choa pointed at the Twin-Headed Troll.

I'd already landed a few hits, but my attack speed couldn't keep up with its recovery.

With Choa's help, maybe I could kill the boss without much trouble.

Not that I had any intention of doing that.

All I'd asked of Choa was to handle the Guardian Trolls around it.

"I've got this."

The roots hovering overhead dropped toward Choa and me.

Choa was nowhere in sight, but I figured she'd dodged just fine on her own.

I cut through the regenerating roots and climbed higher.

[Tier 4 Protection activates.]

When I'd fought Transcendent Yu Jihan, he'd been stronger than I was right now.

He'd been serious that time, and if the Covenant Oath hadn't been in place, I might genuinely have died.

No matter how close I'd come to killing him, I knew better than anyone that he wasn't the kind to give up over that.

I climbed up near the Twin-Headed Troll's neck and set my stance.

"What you can do is."

Every troll carried something close to a heart in its chest, called the Essence of Life.

No matter how special this boss was, it was still a troll, and that fact didn't change.

The Sky Sword, mana coursing through it, glowed blue and left afterimages with every swing.

I cut through every one of the troll's fingers, aiming for the chest where the essence sat.

"I can do plenty too!!"

The Sky Sword drove into the troll's chest and pierced through the Essence of Life in an instant.

Feeling the essence shatter, the Twin-Headed Troll thrashed in one last desperate struggle.

Four bloodshot eyes turned toward me.

The remaining roots and the troll's fist came at me together.

I used the falling debris as footing and reset my stance.

"Not over yet!"

I swung the sword, and the roots came down along with the troll's arm and one of its two heads.

Silence spread across the whole forest.

A moment later, the Twin-Headed Troll's body, arm and head both severed, toppled backward and collapsed.

"Haah, haah, ugh..."

The instant my feet touched the ground, my stomach lurched.

I grabbed onto a tree that hadn't fallen and forced my breathing steady.

Are you out of your mind!!

My heart felt like it was about to burst.

Without the Tier 4 buff from the Blessing of Soter, I wouldn't have even dared to try that.

When Transcendent Yu Jihan fought me, he'd used a technique from the Sun-Felling Sword Technique like it was nothing.

Back then, he hadn't even looked winded after doing that.

Damn it! Just how much of a monster is that guy!

No, wait, maybe I had it backward.

Just how much of a monster had I made him into.

"Impressive."

Choa poked her head out from where she'd been hiding between the trees.

My head was spinning too much to really catch what she said next.

She walked over, wrapped both arms around me, and held me close.

"You did well."

That was the last thing I remembered.

I fought through a throbbing headache and opened my eyes.

"Awake now?"

The first thing I saw was Choa looking down at me.

Looked like I'd passed out right after that.

"You said you wanted to test your skills, but were you secretly trying to kill yourself?"

Taking down the Twin-Headed Troll didn't mean the rest of the trolls just disappeared.

If I'd been alone, the nearby trolls could easily have finished me off.

While I was out cold for a while, Choa had cleared out the trolls around us.

Hidden behind trees so I wouldn't see, sure, but I could still put that much together.

Felt like the polite thing to do here was pretend I hadn't noticed.

I sat up with an awkward laugh.

Even after coming to, lying there with my head on her lap felt too much, so I got up fast.

"A glass vial?"

Unlike the other vials, this one held a pool of black liquid.

"That's the Twin-Headed Troll's spinal fluid."

A regular Giant Troll just gave more spinal fluid than an ordinary troll, nothing special beyond that.

The Twin-Headed Troll was different even in color.

"You did well. But don't push yourself so hard next time."

At Choa's smile, I found myself smiling back quietly.

Cockatrice Farm was a dungeon near Donghaksa Valley in South Chungcheong Province.

Civilians were currently barred from entering anywhere near the valley.

After some negotiation, the two guilds had set up a condo near the valley as their base camp.

Inside the condo, the air had gone past quiet straight into cold.

Everyone had gathered in the first-floor event hall for the final briefing.

The trouble started not long after the meeting began.

"What? You want to pick a team leader?"

"This is a three-strikes dungeon. And on top of that, two guilds are running this expedition jointly. It'd be a real problem if infighting broke out and the dungeon failed, wouldn't it?"

At Raon Guild Hunter Jeong Hoil's remark, Ju Seohye's face twisted into a scowl.

"It's just a formality, that's all. Our guild's not going to cause your side any trouble inside the dungeon."

"Ha. Are you out of your damn mind?"

Ju Seohye crossed her arms and let her annoyance show.

Compared to Aria Guild's relatively loose structure, Raon Guild's Hunters clearly ran on a tighter chain of command.

Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I honestly couldn't say.

Thanks to that, though, it wasn't hard to figure out who was steering this whole situation.

The man standing quietly at the very back, saying nothing.

Han Jongho, was it?

He was Raon Guild's head for this expedition.

On our side, there wasn't really anyone you could call a head.

Put simply, this was a power play.

Petty, sure, but for both sides, it was something neither could afford to back down on.

"You want to start a power struggle before we've even gone in? I say no!"

"Oh? So you're saying it's fine if our Team Leader Han takes the lead on this expedition instead?"

"What the hell, are you insane? Raon Guild and Aria Guild are cooperating here, that's it. Nobody's above anybody else. I'm not taking orders from your side, not in this lifetime!"

Whatever personality had made her stand up to Park Siyu clearly hadn't gone anywhere, because Ju Seohye kept firing off everything she had to say without backing down once.

A few Aria Guild Hunters voiced their agreement with her, and the argument dragged on.

"Let me be clear, we have no reason to listen to anyone but Team Leader Han."

"Argh, and you're telling us this now? Do you people not even know what advance notice is? If that's how it's gonna be, coordinate ahead of time!"

"We decided we needed a leader today."

At Jeong Hoil's shameless attitude, Ju Seohye let out a sigh like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Decided today, my ass. This was obviously planned, and they'd deliberately held off on reporting it.

"Hey! You two idiots over there. Quit just standing around, say something to this blockhead too!"

Idiots, seriously?

Ju Seohye's arrow landed squarely on me and Han Seongcheol.

Han Seongcheol, early thirties, was a Hunter who'd joined the expedition on Seo Jihoon's recommendation.

Come to think of it, I hadn't really gotten to talk to him properly at the last meeting either.

Park Siyu had told me a bit about what kind of person he was, but hearing about someone and actually seeing them in person were two different things.

Everyone's eyes flicked briefly toward Han Seongcheol.

"So if we're picking this leader, who exactly is supposed to take it?"

"Uh, well, that'd be..."

Unlike Raon Guild, which already had someone calling themselves team leader, our side had three Hunters of roughly the same standing.

At Han Seongcheol's words, Ju Seohye's eyes flickered for a second.

"O, obviously, it's me."

"I'll do it."

I cut Ju Seohye off and raised my hand.

Han Seongcheol turned his head to look at me and spoke.

"I'm interested in being leader too."

One thing was crystal clear.

What a mess.

[1] Moros — In Greek myth, Moros ("Doom") is one of the primordial children of Nyx, goddess of Night, and personifies impending fate/ruin.

Footnotes:

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