WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 66: Zero-Sum Game (4)

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"Let's hear the reason."

I didn't care about anything else. What I wanted to know was why Min Seongtaek and Kang Hyeonseung's attitude had changed so fast.

The two of them exchanged a glance.

Kang Hyeonseung was the one who spoke first.

The pair had sat down with Park Siyu over the whole Kim Yuhan business, and joining this expedition had been part of the deal.

"Bringing the proposal to Representative Park was our call... but anyway."

Among the other hunters, word had spread that I'd caught Park Siyu's eye after the Mosman incident.

"Realistically, there's no reason Representative Park would take interest in some random dungeon expedition. And that dungeon was weird as hell to begin with."

The two of them had been unconscious, so they'd never seen me fight Yu Jihan.

Because of that, they'd guessed some kind of connection between Park Siyu and me had existed even before Mosman.

Fine, sure, I could see how they got there.

But that still didn't explain why they'd come chasing after me.

"Representative Park knows this dungeon better than anyone."

Clearing an A-Rank dungeon that had failed four times with only three people was no small feat.

The failure rate of a dungeon and its difficulty climbed together.

Four failed attempts on an A-Rank dungeon put it practically on par with an S-Rank one.

That track record was exactly why Park Siyu had personally handled the briefing inside Aria Guild.

"I don't think Representative Park told us everything that day. The second you went off on your own, I was sure of it."

"Let's say I did get some kind of intel from Park Siyu. Doesn't mean I owe you two a cut of it."

Sorry to say it, but this wasn't the Giant Ant Cavern anymore. Things were different now.

Old ties, sentiment, none of that meant a damn thing here.

"Once a monster's population crosses a certain threshold, one quest inevitably shows up."

"What kind of quest?"

"Monster Raid. Whoever kills the most monsters wins."

The points riding on the Monster Raid and the Zero-sum game alone ran into the hundreds of thousands.

"You know something, don't you?"

I shrugged lightly and gave an awkward laugh.

"Twenty thousand points. After the entry fee, that's ten thousand net. Guarantee me that much and I'll do whatever you want. Not a bad offer, right?"

Unlike Raon Guild, less than half of Aria Guild's people had even entered the Zero-sum game.

Putting up ten thousand points to join carried too much risk of loss.

But siding with me and walking away with double their original stake, twenty thousand points instead of ten, that was no loss at all from their end.

Cockatrice Farm turned out to be way bigger than I'd expected.

Weighing hiring the two of them against not hiring them, the math came out clearly in favor of the former.

I held out my hand without thinking twice.

Min Seongtaek grabbed it and shook.

"So what do we do now?"

"Scout."

Cockatrice Farm was laid out in a ring, twelve massive standing stones surrounding the center.

The reach of those dolmen-like stones marked the boundary of the A-Rank dungeon's field.

Inside the ring sat the farms.

Every other hunter would head straight for a farm.

Normal or not, they'd read the farm's condition and use it to predict what came next.

I could just ask Ju Seohye and the others about the farms later.

"You want us to scout?"

"Yeah. Don't do anything, just report back. Oh, and while you're at it, keep an eye out for any fire-light rats."

Fire-light rats were the ordinary monster type that spawned in Cockatrice Farm.

Confused as they were by the request, Min Seongtaek and Kang Hyeonseung agreed to do exactly as told without further complaint.

I sent Min Seongtaek north and Kang Hyeonseung west.

I moved fast myself, covering the rest of the ground.

Buoyed by their growing confidence, parties were roaming everywhere, hunting down Hopji left and right.

I ran back through what Park Siyu had told me on the phone the night before.

"Say someone turned a cockatrice into an incursion entity during the second expedition. Then how do you explain the third expedition failing?"

If a cockatrice had turned into an incursion entity during the second dungeon run, the third expedition should have logically become a bossless dungeon.

A dungeon without a boss dropped in difficulty by a wide margin, obviously.

"Probably the Lintbrum. I brought it up briefly during the meeting too."

"Lintbrum?"

Lintbrum was a wyvern-type monster similar to Hopji, but far more vicious.

"There are a lot of streams and wells around Cockatrice Farm. Hopji normally wouldn't even dare to nest there."

Under normal circumstances, Hopji stuck to the outer edges of the dungeon, staying well clear of the cockatrice's home turf.

When a dungeon failed, the usual Hopji population spike was confined to the outer regions, never the central area.

This dungeon had two predators in it.

The cockatrice preyed on fire-light rats, while Lintbrum preyed on Hopji.

Fire-light rats, in turn, preyed on Hopji.

"One catch is that fire-light rats breed a lot slower than Hopji. Assuming their numbers had ballooned, it'd actually be a fight worth taking from the Hopji's side."

If not a single fire-light rat turned up anywhere in the dungeon, that basically meant Hopji had taken over the place completely.

A chicken coop with no chickens left in it. That's basically what this is.

I couldn't help wondering what kind of dungeon this even was anymore, but expecting a dungeon that had already failed three times to be in decent shape was pointless from the start.

I moved fast, circling the standing stones.

Just as expected, I checked a handful of them and didn't spot a single fire-light rat.

Lintbrum mainly hunted Hopji.

It had no reason to go all the way to where the cockatrice lived.

With the cockatrice gone and the Hopji population booming, this whole region was practically a buffet laid out for Lintbrum.

Park Siyu had repeated during the meeting that cutting down the Hopji numbers had to come first.

And to me, he'd said something a little different.

"There's a limit to just killing them blindly. Raid the house."

"House?"

"Yeah. Ugh, situations don't usually get left this far gone, but if there's not a single fire-light rat left, odds are good they've built themselves a nest."

Ordinary Hopji nested in the valleys and scattered wells around the mountain.

Both guilds, well aware of that, were focusing their culling efforts on those same valleys and wells.

"Water doesn't have to be sitting out in the open, you know."

Dusk was settling in by the time I headed for the meeting point I'd agreed on with the two of them.

[The 'Zero-sum Game' is currently in progress.]

[Rankings]

- Time remaining: 2:43:12

- 1st place. Han Jongho, 243 kills

- 2nd place. Ju Seohye, 171 kills

- 3rd place. Jeong Hoil, 123 kills

- 42nd place. Kang Hangyeol, 22 kills

Since I'd only bothered clearing out Hopji that got in my way, my ranking sat lower than I'd expected.

Min Seongtaek, checking the same ranking board, spoke up with an anxious edge.

"Man, phew... I did what you asked, but this is actually fine, right?"

"Told you already, even if it flops I'll make sure you two get your cut. So, how'd it go?"

Every region I'd personally scoped out had come up empty.

Min Seongtaek shook his head.

"Just like you said, not a single fire-light rat. But nothing else out of the ordinary either."

I hadn't come across any fire-light rats while sweeping through the dungeon myself either.

That left Kang Hyeonseung.

"Uh, actually, there was one weird spot. It's kind of far though."

"Good, let's head there now."

"Huh? Wait, now?"

It wasn't like I'd been having fun wandering the dungeon in circles while everyone else got to hunt.

I grabbed the bag I'd stashed up in a tree.

The spot Kang Hyeonseung mentioned really did turn out to be quite a distance away.

I cracked open a Choco Emong I'd brought in from outside the dungeon and scanned the area while I drank it.

"There's no stream or well anywhere close by, but the Hopji count out here is way too high."

The spots I'd sent Min Seongtaek and Kang Hyeonseung to scout were all locations completely unsuited for Hopji habitats.

Hidden up in a tree, looking down at the ground below, I crumpled up the empty Choco Emong.

"Bingo."

Sooner or later, if hunters kept combing the dungeon methodically, the nest was bound to get found.

Right now, though, most hunters had their eyes glued to the Zero-sum game, so they were sticking to the valleys and wells for their search.

I drew Sky Sword and leaped onto one of the massive standing stones.

Channeling mana, I unleashed Meteoric Slash straight at the stone.

A beam of light shot out in a straight line, shattering the giant rock into fragments.

Water surged up through the broken pieces of stone.

"Wait, no way. Groundwater?"

Kang Hyeonseung, watching from the side, looked shocked.

Wells and streams cluster the thickest near the cockatrice's home turf. If Hopji need water and they're stuck out on the fringes, that doesn't add up. So the answer's simple.

That meant there had to be plenty of water out on the fringes too, enough to support a Hopji population.

Not that any of it was drinkable.

Water where Hopji nested tended to be heavily toxic, almost without exception.

In seconds, the spot where the stone had stood turned into a massive pit.

Groundwater kept gushing up nonstop, and Hopji poured out of it without pause.

It looked exactly like fish flopping around after getting tossed onto dry land.

Guess I get why Park Siyu called them worm bastards.

Watching from a bit of distance, the sight really was disgusting beyond words.

"So we just kill all of these?"

"Even so, there's way too many. Can we really clear all of them in under two hours...?"

I'd caused enough of a racket by now.

Word was bound to reach the others in no time.

"Honestly, watching that bastard Choi Suhyun smash a rock and unleash an endless stream of Hopji, all I could do was sigh."

You know what's great about being a latecomer?

Not having to repeat the dumb mistakes the front-runners already made.

I'd brought two bags into the dungeon with me.

Aside from the one holding basic preserved rations, the other held something a lot more special.

Park Siyu was the one who'd prepared it for me.

"Mana grenades. Small, but the blast rating's on par with an anti-tank grenade."

Ever since dungeons appeared, modern weapons hadn't exactly been sitting idle either.

Weapons that ran on mana had drawn a lot of attention in particular.

I pulled the pin, pumped mana into the grenade, and hurled it without hesitation.

A massive explosion tore Hopji apart in every direction.

"Hey, hey! What the hell are you doing?"

"Good lord."

Kang Hyeonseung and Min Seongtaek, watching from the side, each got a comment in.

Grinning, I threw another grenade at the Hopji.

"Not done yet."

Boom.

"Still plenty left!"

Every time a grenade went off, Hopji dropped in droves without a break.

A beam of light swept over another cluster of Hopji.

Raon Guild had been funneling most of its kills straight to Han Jongho.

From the start, this game had never been a fair one for Aria Guild.

Ten minutes before the Zero-sum game ended.

The gap has widened.

Han Jongho, having secured his merit points, was already buzzing with excitement over taking control of the dungeon next.

Kwaaang.

An explosion boomed out of nowhere.

"What was that?"

"Not sure. Something just went off on the west side of the dungeon, some massive blast..."

"Wait a second! The rankings look off!"

"Rankings? What are you talking about?"

At one hunter's words, everyone scrambled to pull up the game's live ranking window.

- 7th place. Kang Hangyeol, 61 kills

Another explosion tore through the west side.

- 4th place. Kang Hangyeol, 214 kills

Every time an explosion went off, Hangyeol's count closed the gap at a terrifying pace.

The direction the explosions came from had no valley, not even a well, nothing anywhere close to a fit habitat for Hopji.

"What in the world is going on?"

Kwaang. Kwaang.

Explosion after explosion, and with them, the pile of Hopji corpses kept growing helplessly, leaving everyone standing there with their mouths hanging open.

Hunters, snapping out of it far too late, came rushing toward the source of the blasts.

Groundwater surging up from below combined with the explosions had turned the whole area into a wreck.

Buried in the mud, an uncountable heap of Hopji corpses lay scattered, torn apart with brutal, gruesome force.

"Oh. You made it? Bad timing though, game's already over."

Kang Hangyeol tossed the last grenade behind his back without even turning around.

The grenade went off, and a pillar of water shot into the air.

['Zero-sum Game' has concluded.]

[Winner: Kang Hangyeol]

Footnotes:

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