WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 71: The Boy Dreams (5)

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Eunyoung reached for Jihan's neck, fully intending to break it.

There was no way Jihan hadn't noticed that killing intent.

Eunyoung followed Jihan's gaze and turned her head.

Jung Hyeonseong stood there, holding her wallet.

"Oh, Eunyoung-ssi?"

"If you were going to kill me, you shouldn't have hesitated even for a second."

Jihan hooked a foot between Eunyoung's thighs and spun his body in an instant.

Eunyoung protected her neck on pure instinct.

Jihan's hand caught her wrist, right beside her throat.

Crack.

Jihan snapped Eunyoung's wrist without the slightest hesitation.

Pain tore through her, maddening enough to make her clench her teeth and scream.

"Aaugh! Somebody, anybody, get help, fast!"

"But Eunyoung-ssi, you're......"

"Forget about me!"

"Okay! I'll, I'll go get someone right now!"

Hyeonseong turned and rushed downstairs.

Everywhere Jihan had struck her throbbed, wrist and ankle both.

He hadn't hesitated for even a moment before snapping her wrist.

This bastard was a monster wearing a human face.

An unfathomable fear radiated off him.

Jihan lifted Eunyoung's broken wrist up.

"What are you even saying."

Did she know how to torture someone?

How the hell would she know that! And she didn't want to know, either.

"You psycho."

"Well, wouldn't be so bad to see how long you can keep saying that."

"I told you, Hangyeol's in the Dungeon!"

"I know."

Eunyoung was speechless at his response.

He'd asked first, and now he's saying he already knows? What kind of self-centered bastard was this.

Eunyoung tried to lift her leg, and Jihan caught one of her fingers.

"Go ahead, if you don't mind losing the use of one hand for the rest of your life."

Eunyoung quickly put her foot back down.

Jihan handled her like a child.

The more she resisted, the harder he pressed down in response.

She couldn't tell how much of it was real, but one thing was clear, this bastard was seriously ruthless.

When Eunyoung gave up, mostly, the pressure Jihan had on her eased slightly.

Stalling for time like this might not be a bad move after all.

As if reading her mind, Jihan spoke unprompted.

"Calling Choi Suhyun over won't change anything."

"What did I ever do to you to deserve this?"

"That's exactly what Kang Hangyeol said, word for word. Guess I shouldn't be surprised a follower of the god Soter would make the same excuses."

Jihan scoffed, looking down at her.

Eunyoung's mind raced.

She hadn't chased Hyeonseong off with any plan to call Choi Suhyun.

But Jihan had brought up Choi Suhyun's name.

With no way to know whether Choi Suhyun was even somewhere in the amusement park, Jihan had just handed her a piece of information without meaning to.

Whether or not Choi Suhyun's arrival would actually change anything, that was a call she could make later.

"You want me to quit being a follower of the god Soter, right?"

"Yeah. Do that, and I'll spare your life. There's plenty of gods out there. Doesn't have to be him, pick whichever."

Easy for him to say.

For someone who'd been Unaffiliated for six years, the option of serving some other god had never even existed.

"Fine. I'll quit."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm serious! I'll quit, that solves it, doesn't it! I value my own life too, you know! I've got no intention of dying just to stay a follower of the god Soter!"

"I already told you not to lie to me."

"How would you even, ugh, know if I'm lying or not? Huh?"

"You're lying right now."

"Hey! What are you, some kind of Maitreya? Huh! You got some mind-reading technique or something?"[1]

Frustrated at the sense of talking to a wall, Eunyoung raised her voice.

Jihan's hand landed on her throat.

He'd only rested it there, nothing more, but even that alone brought a fear she couldn't put into words.

Jihan looked down at her face, unashamed and direct.

If she'd wanted to lie to him, she should've made it more convincing.

Even as Eunyoung said she'd quit being a follower of the god Soter, her eyes had never shone brighter.

"That's not the look of someone giving up. Didn't even need to use my mind-reading technique for something this obvious."

Huh?

For a second, Eunyoung genuinely doubted her own ears.

There wasn't a hint of a joke in his tone, no matter how she looked at it.

She didn't know what to say and just opened and closed her mouth.

"You asked if I had a mind-reading technique, so I answered. What are you gonna do if I actually have one? Not that I'm some Maitreya or Gungye."[2]

He actually has one?!

No wonder it had seemed suspicious, him asking a question and then not even waiting for an answer before doing whatever he wanted.

Eunyoung burst out laughing.

Every laugh made the pain in her chest flare up, stealing her breath.

It wasn't real laughter, more like the laugh of someone losing their mind.

"Kill you, and Kang Hangyeol will come running too."

"Oh my, what was that?"

"You can't beat him."

"I'll leave that as your last words, then."

Jihan tightened his grip on Eunyoung's throat.

A sword came flying at Jihan.

Clang.

Jihan blocked Hyeonseong's sword with a dagger.

"A... a dagger?"

Startled by the weapon that had appeared out of nowhere, Hyeonseong flinched slightly.

"I'm sorry! Team leader's not picking up, and I don't know where Director Choi is either. I, I got worried!"

"Get lost. This has nothing to do with you."

"Might not have anything to do with you, but it's got everything to do with me. Get, get away from Eunyoung-ssi!"

"Then you die too."

Jihan knocked Hyeonseong's sword away with the dagger and kicked him.

Jung Hyeonseong's body flew back and slammed into the wall.

"Guhk."

Hyeonseong dropped to his knees and coughed up blood.

His hands and legs trembled, his face drained white.

Hyeonseong gripped his sword tight and charged at Jihan.

"AAAAAH!"

Jihan set his stance, aiming to throw the dagger straight at Hyeonseong's charging chest.

"This one too. And that one too."

Why the hell was everything going wrong like this?

Eunyoung caught on to what Jihan was about to do and tried to stop him, but it was already too late.

"Don't......!"

The dagger left Jihan's hand and passed straight through Hyeonseong.

Sensing something graze past him, Hyeonseong froze, his whole body trembling.

The dagger Jihan had thrown hung suspended in midair in a strange state.

Embedded in empty space would've been the more accurate way to put it.

A massive eyeball slowly emerged, tearing through the space itself.

It wasn't just the one behind Hyeonseong.

More eyes watched the three of them from within the darkness.

"That's......"

"And what the hell are you supposed to be?"

Jihan glared calmly at the eyeball.

The dagger embedded in the eyeball dropped to the ground.

"Gah!"

Jihan planted a foot on Eunyoung's back the moment she tried to get up and run.

"You, ugh... you've got no consideration for women, do you?"

"Shut up."

"You piece of garbage."

Eunyoung spat the blood pooling in her mouth toward Jihan's feet.

[Finally. Found. It. Why? Two? Which? One? Who?]

The whole amusement park shook as an alarm blared.

The eyes multiplied like they were undergoing cell division, all of them moving without rest.

Outside, space split open all at once, and monsters began dropping through the gaps.

Beyond the railing, a winged monster with a sharp beak lunged at Jihan.

Jihan twisted his body slightly to dodge, then grabbed the monster's head and slammed it into the ground.

Crack.

Jihan shook the blood off his bare hand after crushing the monster's skull with it.

"Hey, eyeball. What do you mean by 'two'?"

[Searching. One. You. Interference?]

Jihan's face twisted at the chalkboard-scraping voice of the Eyeball entity.

There were three Hunters here right now.

Searching for one.

But there were two.

An interference.

"Hey, girl! Weren't you a follower of the god Soter? What the hell is that eyeball thing?"

Eunyoung grabbed Jihan's ankle.

"How should I know! You, you clearly look young enough...... and you've been calling me girl, girl this whole time, hey, and to me you......"

Jihan's attention split between the eyeballs and the monsters spilling out of the torn space.

"Don't talk down to me!!"

Eunyoung pushed herself up, grabbed Jihan's leg, and hurled him toward the eyeball.

The eyeball's brows, sent flying through the air, sharpened into points and lunged at Jihan.

Jihan pulled another dagger from his item window, sliced through the elongated brows aiming for his throat, and landed on the ground.

"Damn woman! You dare throw me? Guess I'll kill you too then......"

Jihan realized the eyeballs around him had vanished.

It wasn't just the eyeballs that had disappeared.

"Damn it!"

Sheathing the dagger, Jihan summoned his sword and ran in the direction Eunyoung and Hyeonseong had disappeared.

Carrying Hyeonseong on her back, Eunyoung made it down to the first floor.

"Hey! Your phone works, right? Hurry, call Choi Suhyun...... what the hell is this......"

Eunyoung froze at the sight of the grotesquely distorted space and the monsters roaming through it.

Hyeonseong, still on her back, fumbled for his phone.

"My phone's, it's not, not working!"

An unpleasant weight pressed into every breath she drew. Lotte World, warped into something grotesque.

There was no calling this a normal space, not by any stretch.

Similar to a Dungeon, but the feel was distinctly different.

"Is this a Dungeon?"

She'd never even passed through a Gate. Could you even enter a Dungeon like that?

"It's a Personal Barrier. Charging in here without even knowing that, what an idiot."

"What's that supposed to mea...... AAAH!"

Eunyoung startled hard at Jihan suddenly appearing beside her and picked up her pace.

Jihan caught up to her speed in an instant.

"You can run pretty fast, huh?"

"Get lost!"

Setting Hyeonseong down, Eunyoung lunged at Jihan.

She looked ready to strike him at any second, then backed off instead.

"I don't hate quick thinkers."

"This guy's a total psycho, isn't he?"

"Not really something I'd take from you, of all people."

When he'd blocked Hyeonseong's sword with the dagger, Jihan's hand had been empty a second before.

The dagger had simply appeared, out of nowhere, no warning at all.

If he could pull a dagger out of thin air like that, there was no guarantee other weapons wouldn't show up the same way.

Eunyoung's specialty was hand-to-hand combat.

Most Hunters had a hard time beating her bare-handed.

But Jihan had martial arts that outclassed hers, and that wasn't even his main weapon.

In place of a sheath, Jihan's sword was wrapped in bandages, its shape nearly impossible to make out.

"Hey! What are you, huh? Some kind of grim reaper stand-in? You chuunibyou freak!"[3]

Jihan swung the bandage-wrapped sword once, and the ground beneath them collapsed.

It didn't look like a sword swing at all, more like someone had swung a hammer.

BOOOM.

A massive explosion erupted somewhere else, sending up a pillar of fire.

Jihan clicked his tongue, looking toward the direction of the fire.

Seemed like he wasn't the only interference around here.

Static in his ear crackled: I, so, today... don't... sleep... you said, right!

Jihan touched his ear, and the earpiece he'd been wearing vanished.

"You're planning to kill me even in a situation like this?"

"What about the situation?"

Even without drawing his sword, his attack came in razor sharp.

Jihan spun his body once and kicked Eunyoung.

She slammed into the wall of a building, barely managing to stop herself, and scrambled into a stance.

"Nothing's changed."

Eunyoung activated Blessing of Wings and flew upward.

"If you can't fly."

"You're insane!"

"Just use the terrain around you. Did you really think a guy who can fly would be dumb enough not to use all these buildings?"

Jihan, who'd climbed up at some point using the debris of broken buildings and a floating black mass as footholds, rose above Eunyoung.

Too late, Eunyoung realized her choice had been a mistake.

Flying was one thing, but she wasn't used to aerial combat, and dodging properly in midair was nearly impossible.

The bandage-wrapped tip of Jihan's sword flashed purple.

Hyeonseong looked up at the two of them above.

"Why......"

He had no idea what was happening or how any of it fit together.

Jihan, the Hunter who'd appeared out of nowhere, was trying to kill Eunyoung.

Eunyoung wasn't a weak Hunter by any measure, but even Hyeonseong could tell Jihan's skill, the one trying to kill her, was on a level that made no sense.

He'd wanted to become a Hunter.

But all he'd gotten back was the label of Unaffiliated Straggler.

While everyone else pointed fingers, she'd been the first person to tell him things would work out.

He didn't want her to die.

Right now, Jung Hyeonseong had no power at all.

A massive eyeball emerged behind Hyeonseong.

Red lips formed beneath the eyeball.

The lips began to speak.

[Power? Need? Me. Help possible? You. Found?]

Hyeonseong turned his back to it.

The brows above the eyeball shot out long and skewered straight through his body.

"What...... guhk!"

Another eyeball opened beneath Hyeonseong.

Dozens of black whips bound his body.

Hyeonseong reached a hand out toward Eunyoung as she descended.

"Hey! Girl! What are you doing...... damn it!"

Whatever it was, it was after either Jung Hyeonseong or Song Eunyoung, one of the two.

Jihan didn't care what happened to Jung Hyeonseong.

If the Eyeball entity was after Song Eunyoung, all he had to do was kill her before they dragged her off.

But what those things wanted wasn't Eunyoung. It was Jung Hyeonseong.

And yet Eunyoung had just thrown herself right into it!

Eunyoung grabbed hold of the unconscious Jung Hyeonseong.

Sword in hand, Jihan moved to kill her.

Half her body already pulled inside, Eunyoung turned her head.

That was when.

"Hey, Song Eunyoung!!"

"You're late. Idiot."

If she could've, Eunyoung would've flipped Suhyun off right there.

Choi Suhyun reached his hand toward the dome swallowing Eunyoung and tried to run for it, but Choa grabbed him and held him back.

"Suhyun-ah! You can't go in there!"

A massive dome formed around the eyeball, swallowing all three of them whole.

[1] Mireuk is Maitreya, the future Buddha of Korean Buddhist tradition; invoked here as shorthand for supernatural foresight.

[2] The historical warlord-king Gungye claimed a "mind-reading technique" to expose traitors among his subjects, a legend Koreans invoke sarcastically for anyone who claims to just "know" things.

[3] Chuunibyou, literally "eighth-grade syndrome," is Japanese-derived slang for someone acting out edgy, delusions-of-grandeur fantasies, often applied mockingly to overly dramatic behavior.

Mireuk (미륵) refers to Maitreya, the future Buddha in Korean Buddhist tradition, and Gungye (궁예) was a historical warlord-king who claimed to possess a supernatural "mind-reading technique" (관심법) to identify traitors. Eunyoung's jab and Jihan's deadpan response play on this shared cultural reference.

Footnotes:

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