WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 83: Why Me! Why! (4)
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"A man doesn't say one thing and mean another."
"Didn't expect a loss this clean, I'll admit."
"That's your problem, not mine."
Kang Moonkook scratched his head.
His expression said he couldn't quite believe there was a guy like me out there.
Did he figure being a guild representative earned him special treatment or something?
Our guild and Raon Guild were practically enemies as far as the public knew.
"Can't be helped. A match's a match. I'll back off this time. But! Don't go thinking you can beat Jaebyung again next time."
"Would you stop with the villain lines already? You got what you wanted, so you can spare 500,000 points."
I glanced at Park Siyu, who was leaning against the wall, scrolling his phone.
He didn't seem the least bit interested in my conversation with Kang Moonkook.
Not like this was the first time he'd acted like this.
Wasn't even surprising anymore.
I stepped back, putting distance between myself and Kang Moonkook.
Choi Jaebyung, who'd been hiding behind me, ended up facing Kang Moonkook head on instead.
Some place to hide, buddy!
"Ha, ha, ha, Representative."
"It's fine. Offering to lend you points was my own call, so it's fine. If it gave you a good experience, I can consider this an investment, plenty worth it."
"R-right?"
"Just clear dungeons hard until the raid. Nothing to worry about."
In other words, he planned to work Choi Jaebyung to the bone.
"No... um... never mind. Sorry."
Choi Jaebyung's head dropped.
Should've picked his opponent more carefully.
After what I'd been through at his hands for the past few hours, I didn't feel a shred of sympathy.
"Well then, I'll take my leave."
"You! Next time you're not getting off easy!"
Choi Jaebyung clenched his fist like he had something to prove and left with Kang Moonkook.
Once the two of them were gone, the practice room fell into silence.
Felt like a typhoon had just blown through and left.
I trudged over to Choi Suhyun and Park Siyu.
"Good work."
"Not much work to speak of... well, it was rough, I guess."
The cut on my neck from Choi Jaebyung's sword throbbed.
I'd slapped ointment on it right away, but the sting wasn't going anywhere.
I rubbed at my bloodied neck and muttered.
"Surprising."
"What is?"
"Aren't you on bad terms with Raon Guild?"
"Not exactly good terms."
"That guy's different, though. Different from what I expected."
Like Park Siyu said, publicly, Raon Guild and Aria Guild weren't exactly friendly.
"So it was all just for show, in the end."
"I just figured some amount of theater was necessary."
Park Siyu didn't deny that he'd deliberately manufactured the bad blood between his guild and Raon Guild.
"Sometimes you need to redirect outside attention to deal with internal problems."
"So every time that happens, you and Raon set it up together, that it?"
Like today.
For Park Siyu, the real power behind Aria Guild, to meet with Kang Moonkook, Raon Guild's representative, they needed a plausible excuse.
A way to dodge prying eyes and meet urgently with some convincing reason attached.
Simple. Get the underlings to fight.
The two guilds bickered constantly anyway.
If word got out that a Raon Guild hunter and an Aria Guild hunter had fought, most hunters would just shrug and say, there they go again.
And the Association was a space anyone could wander in and out of, regardless of guild affiliation.
Hiding in plain sight, I guess.
Choi Suhyun calling me in for the aptitude test, Choi Jaebyung picking a fight and starting the whole thing, all of it had been planned from the start.
Jaebyung didn't seem to know any of that, though.
Not that it mattered.
Park Siyu and Kang Moonkook had met under the pretext of my fight with Choi Jaebyung.
Choi Suhyun's job had been to set the stage.
"Han Jongho's on Jin Sangbyeok's side."
"Jin Sangbyeok?"
"Vice-master of Raon Guild. Basically the second-in-command. Seems like he'd been backing Han Jongho for a while now."
"How's he get along with Representative Kang?"
"Worst possible terms. Going by Raon Guild alone, the representative should've been Jin Sangbyeok, not Kang Moonkook."
"But the guild representative is Kang Moonkook."
"Because of the god Lux."
Raon Guild was a guild built primarily around followers of the god Lux.
Raon Guild's rank, meaning the rose pinned to the chest, was determined by sponsorship.
Since the ranking system built on sponsorship was so strictly enforced, the guild representative was decided by the same method.
Jin Sangbyeok had used every trick available to climb the sponsorship ranks, but even then, he couldn't beat Kang Moonkook.
"Still, that's odd. Kang Moonkook's in a power struggle with a younger vice-master? Why?"
Kang Moonkook came across like a battle-hardened veteran.
There was also a faint air of the dictator about him.
Choi Suhyun, who'd been listening quietly, cut in.
"That old man only became a follower of Lux three years ago. From Jin Sangbyeok's perspective, someone who'd served Lux the whole time, that makes him a rock that rolled in from outside."
That put the family dynamics on the other side into perspective.
For Kang Moonkook, Han Jongho, the man Jin Sangbyeok had been backing, dying in a dungeon had made things a lot easier.
Which side Park Siyu planned to align with wasn't hard to guess without even asking.
"Jin Sangbyeok, is he going to be okay?"
"Jin Sangbyeok can't beat Kang Moonkook. Come to think of it, I never mentioned. Han Jongho's family has a lot of money."
"Money?"
"To compete with Kang Moonkook's merit points, Jin Sangbyeok has to pull in a massive amount of his own. Not that I want to talk down Jin Sangbyeok, but his opponent was just too much. How much money do you think Jin Sangbyeok bled dry backing that troublemaker? He's got funding sources besides Han Jongho, but he's in for a rough stretch either way."
"Feels like I just did someone else a huge favor."
"Not likely. I'll be getting something in return."
Park Siyu cut me off flat, telling me not to worry about that part.
Getting something in return meant there was something else he wanted.
Up to this point, none of it sounded like a real problem. Except the target here was Raon Guild, which snagged at me a little.
"You sure about this?"
Raon Guild had a history, trapping and killing Yu Chaeyoung, Park Siyu's fiancée, once upon a time.
Whatever the state of things between them, that didn't change.
"Noona... no, if you're talking about the Yu Chaeyoung thing, Kang Moonkook wasn't the guild representative back then. The representative at the time died in a dungeon too, three years ago."
After he died, the one who took over as representative was Kang Moonkook.
Park Siyu told the story flatly, like he was talking about someone else's business entirely.
He didn't seem to be dwelling much on the fact that I knew about Yu Chaeyoung and what happened back then.
"But it was still Raon Guild that did it, right? Even if it was individual people who did it, there's no way you wouldn't hate them. There could still be people left in Raon Guild connected to what happened."
"Getting revenge on them wouldn't change anything. If anything, someone who hates me for it would just come after me again. That's the real hassle."
"I'm not asking if you get it in your head, idiot."
If every person actually acted the way Park Siyu described, the world would be crawling with saints.
The whole time we talked, I couldn't sense a shred of personal feeling from him anywhere.
There are a lot of right answers in this world.
Knowing this is the way to go doesn't mean you can just go there without thinking twice.
The closer something gets to the right answer, the more it ends up being an agonizing choice for the person living it.
"If you're planning to lecture me..."
"You think lecturing works on someone like you?"
Choi Suhyun, who'd been sitting quietly, burst out laughing.
If even I felt this way after knowing Park Siyu for such a short time, I could only imagine how Choi Suhyun, his old classmate, felt.
"Someone's got to do it, is that it?"
Park Siyu's eyes went wide.
I sighed at the look on his face, like he couldn't figure out how I'd known.
How do you think I knew.
I've thought the exact same thing before, myself.
I had no intention of blaming Park Siyu for it or nagging him about it.
"I'm just saying, don't make choices you'll regret."
"When that time comes, I suppose I'll just ask you for help then."
"What? No way! How'd it turn into that?"
Figure it out yourself!
Somewhere along the way, it had passed 10 PM.
My stomach growled, empty since I hadn't eaten dinner.
I held out a hand to Park Siyu.
"What?"
"What do you think? Your card! Money! Anything outside dungeon work counts as overtime!"
I'd played along with Park Siyu's little game, which basically counted as work.
Park Siyu blinked at me blankly, and Choi Suhyun burst out laughing again.
Choi Suhyun and I ate top-grade Korean beef on Park Siyu's card.
"...Wake up."
"Hey, you. Woman!"
"...Ugh."
"If you're conscious, at least open your eyes."
The heavy voice ringing through her head snapped Eunyoung back to awareness.
Drip. Drip.
Water pooling on the ceiling fell into the puddle below and spread outward.
Eunyoung opened her eyes cautiously.
Jihan stood in front of her, wearing a sullen expression.
She pressed a hand to her throbbing forehead and pushed herself up from the floor she'd been slumped on.
Bracing herself against the ground, Eunyoung realized the floor and wall weren't quite what she'd assumed them to be.
Soft, springy, like the skin of a living creature.
Jihan held out a hand toward Eunyoung as she stumbled, unable to keep her balance.
What is this guy's deal?
Eunyoung finally managed to stand and stared at Jihan, bewildered.
The wall and floor rippled and shuddered.
This clearly wasn't just an ordinary wall.
Jihan quickly caught Eunyoung's wrist as she started to fall.
"Are you out of your... let go!"
"You can't even stand straight."
Eunyoung's captured arm throbbed with pain.
From the injury she'd already been carrying.
Jihan, a beat late in noticing the state of her arm, lifted the hand gripping her wrist slightly upward.
How long had she been unconscious?
Eunyoung traced back through her memories, trying to piece together what happened before she'd arrived in this unidentifiable space.
The dungeon project had ended.
Yu Jihan had attacked her.
Then that strange eyeball thing had cut in, and she and Jung Hyeonseong had gotten dragged into something.
Eunyoung looked down at her captured arm.
Could she run?
She'd already realized, some time ago, that she was no match for Yu Jihan.
With her arm caught like this, at such close range, she had no means of taking him on.
Jihan clicked his tongue at the killing intent radiating off her and muttered.
"Real bloodthirsty, aren't you."
"I'm not planning to just take a hit quietly, so don't bother."
Eunyoung, who'd been looking down, quickly turned her head away to avoid his gaze.
Her wrist, still caught in Jihan's grip, ached.
A small light hovered above Jihan's shoulder.
In this pitch black space with not a single point of light, the mysterious ball of light floating over Jihan's shoulder was the only thing serving as a guide.
"Not going to kill me?"
"Want me to?"
Jihan and Eunyoung's eyes met.
Before arriving here, Jihan had been trying to kill her.
If Jihan genuinely meant to kill her, there was nothing stopping him from doing it right now.
She was already injured, on top of everything else.
This guy's the real thing.
If she recklessly told him to just kill her already, out of pride, he'd do it without a second thought. That much was certain.
After a long pause, Eunyoung's trembling lips finally moved.
"Spare me."
Her stomach turned.
This wasn't just anyone. This was the person who'd tried to kill her.
Better to die than beg someone like that for her life.
She knew that, and still she said it anyway.
A contradiction.
The gap between her and Jihan standing in front of her felt like a vast canyon separating them.
An overwhelming difference.
Beyond strength, she felt something closer to an unidentifiable fear.
The hand gripping hers felt chillingly ominous.
Like her arm could be torn off at any moment.
"I'll let it slide."
At those words from Jihan, Eunyoung's legs gave out and she sank to the ground.
Still gripping her arm, Jihan held something out to her.
The light on his shoulder illuminated the bottle in his hand.
A glass vial slightly bigger than her palm, filled with red liquid.
Wait, I thought he said he wasn't going to kill me.
"You want me to kill myself?"
"It's not poison!"
Jihan snapped, raising his voice.
What is with this woman?
Footnotes:
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