WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 69: The Boy Dreams (3)

──────

Eunyoung took a bite of the ramyeon Hyeonseong had brought.

"Ah, ramyeon really calls for soju."

"What are you even hoping for in a dungeon."

"You're not exactly right in the head either, bringing ramyeon into a dungeon."

"We're leaving soon enough anyway."

"Still! Huh? Back in my day, it wasn't like that! Even if it was a D-Rank dungeon, I gave it my all!"

"Your day?"

"No, I mean... damn it, Choi Suhyun."

While Hangyeol had been too swamped with the A-Rank dungeon expedition to keep up, Eunyoung had mostly been trading messages with Choi Suhyun.

Eunyoung scratched her head, realizing Choi Suhyun's speech patterns had slipped out of her without her noticing.

Jung Hyeonseong looked even more baffled at Choi Suhyun's name popping up out of nowhere.

Embarrassed for no reason, Eunyoung played it shameless.

"Anyway! I'm just saying ramyeon's a no!"

Even as she said that, Eunyoung had already polished off the broth to the last drop in record time.

"So? What's up? You didn't sit next to me just to eat ramyeon and leave, I'm guessing. If you've got something to say, I'll listen."

"That... th-this might be a really rude thing to ask... but Eunyoung-ssi, were you an u-unaffiliated Hunter?"

Eunyoung spat out the wax coating of a drained water candy.

She'd never mentioned being unaffiliated to any of the hunters here, Chae Seolha included.

Hyeonseong flinched at the sudden chill in Eunyoung's eyes.

"That's, it's not weird or anything. It's just, Manager Choi told me."

"Choi Suhyun again?"

Between the Association staff and now this, Eunyoung was sick to death of Choi Suhyun's name coming up over and over.

"During theory class. The regular instructor couldn't make it because of gastritis, so he filled in for a session. We bumped into each other in the hallway that time."

Choi Suhyun had remembered not just Jung Hyeonseong's name but also that he was an unaffiliated hunter.

Even though Choi Suhyun was technically part of the Education Division, every trainee hunter knew his actual work had nothing to do with it.

The Hunter Education Division was, to begin with, basically a cushy do-nothing post within the Association for anyone above entry level.

"Names? Only an idiot bothers memorizing that stuff. You see someone once and you just know."

"I-Is that so?"

"You, though, I've been paying you a bit of attention. Never met a decent one among the unaffiliated hunters I've known."

"You're unaffiliated too, then..."

"What? You want to die? Ugh, forget it, I'm out."

"Wait! I heard that even unaffiliated hunters sometimes get ch-chosen by a god... Is that something I could hope for?"

"Obviously."

"But I've never heard of an unaffiliated hunter becoming another god's follower."

"Yeah? Well, I have. Some battle-crazy, self-centered dungeon junkie."

Hearing Jung Hyeonseong's account, Eunyoung snapped.

"Who's a dungeon junkie! That bastard, when he gets out of that dungeon I'm gonna... oh. Ha, ha, ha. Right, right, that's fair."

Eunyoung quickly clapped a hand over her mouth.

She'd basically just confessed to having been an unaffiliated hunter herself with that little outburst.

"When I heard Chae Seolha say she saw you with Manager Choi, I kind of figured that hunter he mentioned was probably you."

"Wait, that Mana Bullet girl saw me with Choi Suhyun? I have to ask just in case, is that why she hates me..."

"She's apparently been in Choi Suhyun's fan club since high school."

"Fan what? Club? Fan, my ass! That's giving him way too much credit! And there's nothing going on between me and Choi Suhyun anyway!"

"I never said there was anything going on between you two..."

"I-I'm just saying, that's all!"

Eunyoung crossed her arms and turned her head to the side.

Sure, that was an age where the imagination ran wild, but even so, lumping her together with that lunatic was going way too far.

"So Eunyoung-ssi, you really went from unaffiliated to becoming a follower?"

"Yep. That's right."

Eunyoung told Hyeonseong her story, feeling surprisingly at ease about it.

Talking it through, she realized there was no reason to hide having been unaffiliated.

Hangyeol had been right about that.

Because that version of herself back then had existed, the person she was now existed too.

"That's amazing. Six years... I don't think I could've done that."

"No need to call it amazing. It was just stubbornness, that's all. Looking back now, I got lucky."

"Could I end up like that too? If I just wait around for six years..."

"Idiot, why would you do something that foolish! You'll definitely meet a decent god. Probably..."

A shadow crossed Eunyoung's face for a moment.

She wondered if she'd said something she shouldn't have.

She herself had lived every single day telling herself the exact same thing.

She worried whether her own words had just handed this young hunter a false hope to torture himself with.

Eunyoung watched Jung Hyeonseong and the other hunters fighting.

Even after leading the monsters back with the drive, Hyeonseong had kept fighting without complaint.

The sight reminded her of herself, back then.

Just a little, she thought she understood why Choi Suhyun had said what he said to her that day.

"Hey. Why do you want to be a hunter, anyway?"

"It's not really that impressive a reason... please don't laugh."

"Please. I won't laugh at something like that."

"When I was a kid, a hunter saved me from nearly dying to a monster. So I wanted to become a hunter and save other people too."

"That's sweet."

"Is it okay to become a hunter for a reason like that?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay? Compared to your reason, mine's way more selfish. Yours is better than mine."

Sensing the group was about to move on to the basement, Eunyoung brushed the dust off and got up from the floor.

Whatever a person chose to do, that was entirely their own business.

Even if the reason behind it was some ridiculous, impossible ideal.

"So do what you want to do. Ah, and maybe once this dungeon's over, I could help you out somehow. This counts as fate too, right?"

"How?"

"Not sure yet. I'll look into it."

The god Soter didn't have many followers, but Hangyeol seemed to be on pretty good terms with him.

If it was Hangyeol, she felt hopeful he could help Jung Hyeonseong, someone in the exact same position she'd once been in.

"So hang in there."

"Yes!"

Eunyoung grabbed Hyeonseong's hand and pulled herself up.

She fitted the key into the firmly shut basement door.

The old basement door creaked open, revealing a long staircase.

"This is... less basement, more like some secret passage."

Beneath the mansion lay an enormous underground tunnel.

Since there was only one path leading toward the destination, there was no risk of getting lost.

"They're coming!"

At Chae Seolha's signal, the hunters moved in perfect coordination.

The group pushed forward, clearing out the kobolds scattered through the underground passage.

"There it is."

At the end of the tunnel stood the door to a massive storage room.

They broke down the door and stepped inside, and a dozen or so kobolds appeared, waiting as if they'd known this was coming.

The kobolds surrounded Chae Seolha and the others.

A few kobolds glanced toward Eunyoung, standing further back.

She had no intention of striking first, but if one came at her, she wouldn't mind taking down one or two.

Eunyoung clenched a fist toward the approaching kobold.

A whistle?

The kobolds that had been about to attack Eunyoung suddenly changed course toward Chae Seolha and the hunters.

Hmm, so that's how it is.

Not all dungeons of the same type followed identical patterns, not by a long shot.

If every dungeon behaved exactly the same, guilds wouldn't need to keep collecting reports on dungeons already cleared to gather information.

The monsters' behavior varied a little depending on approach, circumstances, and mood.

The boss of Old Residence was the Red Kobold.

More than three times the size of a normal kobold, but surprisingly agile in its movements.

Pretty clever for a monster.

Not that it mattered. It was still entirely within Eunyoung's grasp.

The real problem was Chae Seolha and the rest of the group.

Damn it! Why isn't it landing!

The key to clearing the storage room was taking down the Red Kobold.

Kill it, and the rest of the kobolds would lose their nerve fast.

The problem was that the thing was moving far faster than Seolha had expected.

The downside of magitech engineering firearms was that mastering them was a lot harder than normal weapons.

It took more talent and finesse than just using a regular gun.

But the biggest problem with this team was something else entirely.

Way too dependent on Chae Seolha.

Chae Seolha's attacks packed real power, but that didn't make her some kind of miracle solution either.

Sure enough, the moment Seolha's composure cracked, the formation collapsed in an instant.

Eunyoung had a sharp instinct for combat.

Being unaffiliated had held her back, sure, but nobody could say she lacked talent.

Might not be a bad idea to let them get shaken up a little here.

Absolutely not.

It had nothing to do with being petty over some suspicion about her and Choi Suhyun.

Eunyoung stood with her arms crossed, quietly watching the fight play out.

"What are you doing! Move, you're in the way!"

Chae Seolha's voice was rising.

Unlike the open first-floor hall, the cramped indoor storage room was one more thing keeping her nerves on edge.

A decoration on the wall shattered, and a glass shard bit into her forehead.

Seolha spun around, hastily redirecting her gun barrel.

"Hmph, planning to go for an opening, were you? Something like that's not going to..."

Seolha's hand trembled as she went to pull the trigger.

Damn it, my mana...!

For hunters using mana bullets, mana was obviously the single most important thing.

Because the mana was the bullet itself.

Running out of mana was fatal for a mana-round user.

Seolha barely dodged the kobold's attack and drew the dagger at her hip.

Laughing? Why...

Seolha glanced around the storage room a beat too late.

The Red Kobold she'd marked was nowhere to be seen.

The other hunters were too busy fighting to notice.

A black shadow rippled beneath Chae Seolha's feet.

The Red Kobold burst out of the shadow and slammed into her in an instant.

For one moment, silence fell over the entire storage room.

"Kekeke, hehehe."

The instant the Red Kobold seized Chae Seolha, the whole formation fell apart.

"F-fall back!"

A hunter snapped out of it and shouted, and everyone stumbled backward as if on cue.

But the kobolds weren't about to just let that happen.

At the Red Kobold's signal, the rest of the kobolds charged in all at once.

At the same time, the Red Kobold's sharp claws sank into Chae Seolha's shoulder.

"Aaaagh!"

The hunters flinched at Chae Seolha's scream.

The Red Kobold had grabbed her on purpose.

It knew that touching Chae Seolha would rattle the rest of the hunters.

The kobolds nearby grinned as Seolha writhed in pain.

Chae Seolha called out to Eunyoung in a panic.

"S-save me! Save me!! What are you doing! You're the one who came here to handle exactly this kind of situation!! Why are you just standing there watching! Aaaagh!"

"Oh my, wasn't it someone, from some household, who flat out told me she didn't need my help?"

"I-if I die, y-you think you'll be fine? You're only C-Rank!"

"What was that? Little Miss Nothing over here."

Eunyoung looked down at Chae Seolha with a cold stare.

The other hunters nearby begged Eunyoung for help, but she didn't so much as glance their way.

"You keep going on about C-Rank, C-Rank. So what are you, then?"

"That's not the point right now... kyaaaah! It hurts, it hurts! Help me! I'm sorry! Aaaagh! I'll, I'll do anything!"

"If you're willing to redo the Association's entire training program, I'll help. Ah, or is a Straggler title worse than dying to you?"

"Y-you... psychopath..."

Chae Seolha ground her teeth.

The other hunters were injured too.

Their shoulders and thighs, pierced by the kobolds, had gone completely numb.

Judging the fight already decided, the Red Kobold raised a crude iron club overhead.

"F-fine!! I'll redo it, Straggler, whatever, just, save me!"

The Red Kobold's iron club rose above Chae Seolha's head.

Thud.

Eunyoung appeared in front of the kobold in an instant.

"Keep that promise."

Blocking the club with one hand, Eunyoung looked down.

Chae Seolha, her face a mess of tears and snot, buried her face against the ground and nodded.

Through the gap of the raised club, Eunyoung's eyes met the Red Kobold's.

Eunyoung vanished from the Red Kobold's field of view.

The whole storage room shook violently.

Circling behind the Red Kobold, Eunyoung swung her leg toward its neck in a wide arc.

The Red Kobold's head dropped to the ground with a thud.

The startled kobolds spun around.

Eunyoung's foot flashed past over their heads.

"Kyaaaaaaah!!"

Screams rang out as the gyro drop plummeted down.[1]

It was a weekday, so the park wasn't too crowded, but there were still plenty of guests around.

Suhyun tipped his sunglasses down slightly and raised a hand in greeting.

"Oh, what a coincidence, running into my friend in a place like this."

"Drop dead. Choi Suhyun."

"Suhyun! Are you here to hang out too?"

[1] Gyro Drop — a free-fall amusement park ride (e.g. at Lotte World); the scene abruptly cuts from the dungeon battle to an unrelated real-world outing.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried