WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 9: Master of the Tower (1)

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Kim Taewoon glanced over at how I gripped the sword.

"Since we're already asking weird questions, one more. You ever learned sword fighting somewhere?"

Kim Taewoon said he'd been Awakened for a year now.

Most Awakened went through their own guild's training after Awakening.

It varied by guild, but I'd heard the average ran somewhere between six months and a year.

Awakened were, put simply, ordinary people who one day suddenly gained a status window and earned the right to enter dungeons and become hunters.

Let's be realistic about this.

If someone told you to kill a person out of nowhere, could you actually do it?

Unless you were a psychopath or some lunatic with a murder fantasy, most people would hesitate to kill even a living creature, let alone a person, even with a blade put right in their hand.

The people of this world weren't all that different.

Completing the formal training let you operate as a hunter officially. But being able to work as a hunter and actually being useful in a dungeon where your life was on the line were two entirely different problems.

Reality wasn't a game.

Betting your life meant exactly that.

The reason the other four, unlike me, had moved through Goblin Village like it was straight out of a textbook was that they'd already received plenty of preliminary knowledge and training from their guilds before ever finishing the Association's course.

Each of them had drilled it dozens of times over, so even as a first-time team, even with strangers, their coordination naturally clicked.

Kim Taewoon was no different.

Once he'd joined a guild, Kim Taewoon had clearly spent months training with a blade.

Watching him move, it was obvious he'd been trained far more thoroughly than the others.

Keeping an eye on the approaching goblins, I answered flatly.

"Who knows. Call it a survival skill. More importantly, is that seriously your last question?"

"It's my last question because it might actually be my last."

"For the record, I have no intention of dying."

"Same here."

"Then I guess we'd better live."

The goblins rushed in. I caught a goblin's sword with one hand, smooth as anything.

I twisted my body slightly and jumped sideways and back.

A goblin swinging an axe to get at my back lost its balance and ended up hitting the goblin in front of it instead.

The axe-wielder ignored the sword-wielder and snarled, furious. Looked like the axe goblin outranked it.

Seriously, this is such garbage.

I'd barely managed to run from the gods, only to end up dropped into a dimension that looked like the reality I remembered but wasn't quite the same.

Just when I thought I was starting to adjust, I got dumped into this glitch-riddled Tower of Trials instead.

All right, how do I deal with this.

I gave up on attacking and focused only on dodging.

I dodged as best I could, but my body wasn't keeping up, and the wounds kept piling up little by little.

Suddenly the goblins fell back. Looking toward the goblin platoon, I quickly retreated at a run.

A dozen or so arrows rained down over me and Kim Taewoon's heads.

The tips of the incoming arrowheads glinted.

Poisoned arrows.

Thankfully, it seemed my body and my dynamic vision were two separate things.

I gave up on knocking the arrows away and pulled back as far as I could.

"Guhk!"

Unlike me, Kim Taewoon had pushed himself to block the arrows and dropped to his knees.

Three or four goblins rushed him.

I tried to go help, but my own situation wasn't any better.

Kim Taewoon, whose specialty was body enhancement, used what mana he had left to fend off the goblins' attacks.

A relatively small goblin drove a dagger into Kim Taewoon's side.

When it pulled the dagger out, a huge amount of blood poured from the wound. The goblin didn't stop, and drove the dagger back in.

The instant I saw a massive axe rise overhead, I dodged the goblin's attack and closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

"Help... me..."

He'd torn his own clothes to bind his sword hand, trying somehow to keep fighting, and the sight of it was pitiful beyond words.

Even after Kim Taewoon died, the goblins kept hacking at his corpse for a long while.

Between the two of us, Kim Taewoon and I had survived the longest and killed the most goblins.

Goblins blind with vengeance weren't about to let me die easy. I swung my sword. Every part of my body screamed.

I knew I was pushing past my limits, but I kept moving without rest. It had been a long time since a fight like this.

More than fear, I felt like laughing.

One goblin, two goblins, corpses piled up around me. The goblins grew wary.

Everything around me was smeared with blood and torn flesh.

I couldn't even tell anymore whose blood it was, human or monster.

A goblin threw a crudely severed arm at my feet. Kim Taewoon's arm.

Guess that means I'm next, huh.

No? Fine then.

The goblins closed in around me.

I spotted one drawing back a bowstring behind the others.

I'd gotten lucky and dodged every poisoned arrow so far, but there was no guarantee I'd manage it again.

The goblin that had thrown Kim Taewoon's severed arm at me charged first.

I hurled the sword in my hand at it like a spear.

The blade I threw struck the goblin square in the eye.

Never expecting me to throw the sword, the goblin flinched and screamed.

Seeing the weapon gone from my hands, the goblins lunged. They probably thought I was making some last desperate stand.

"This is insane!"

That sword was done for anyway. It hadn't been a great blade to begin with, and it had been on the verge of breaking.

Ignoring the goblins, I ran blindly deeper inside.

Everyone else in my group was dead. There wasn't even a reason to check.

Run for the door!

I had no idea if that thing was actually a door, but I felt certain it was at least the entrance into the tower.

There was a reason I ran toward the tower like my life depended on it.

It was because of the message I'd seen back when the goblins first spawned.

Master of the tower? Me?

At the time I'd been too overwhelmed to think much of it, but now that things had gotten desperate, my head started working fast.

I'll say it plainly, I had never owned anything like a tower in my life.

So where in the world had this tower and this space of unknown origin come from?

Question: of the four people who entered this dungeon, choose the one that stands out as the anomaly.

It's obviously me! I thought I'd finally escaped those damn gods, and now I'm stuck in this mess!

Cursing my rotten luck a hundred different ways in my head, I barely dodged the goblins and reached the door.

I pressed my hand to the door and channeled mana into it, just like when the goblins had first appeared.

Part of the massive door lit up, flashing.

[The Tower of Trials recognizes the master of the tower.]

[This dimension has been left unattended for too long and requires restoration.]

The sudden flash of light made the goblins back off. Notifications kept ringing without pause the whole time.

Among all the frantic alerts, the one that stood out most was a skill called [Descent].

['Descent' is now available.]

Descent, huh?

Who on earth was I supposed to call down?

I had no idea what was happening, but nothing else came to mind either.

Doing something and dying beat dying while doing nothing.

[Summoning ???.]

[This body recognizes the owner of the soul.]

[You are... ...]

"Huh? What?"

I stared at the flickering text and doubted my own eyes.

I glanced up at the tower that stretched out of sight. At the same instant, dozens of arrows rained down over my head.

"What now!"

Dodge first, think later.

[You are currently in a state of 'Descent'.]

[You may temporarily use the power of a god.]

[The connection is unstable.]

[Your power is limited.]

The moment the arrows came down, I leaped high and swept aside the status window blocking my view.

Never thought I'd end up performing a Descent on myself.

My own soul had once ascended to godhood. But since the body wasn't my own, I hadn't been able to use the full power of a god.

The dust cleared, and a goblin, apparently noticing me high in the air, looked up. Confusion showed on the goblins' faces.

I landed on one foot and picked up the sword lying on the ground. My body's condition felt frighteningly good. Good condition didn't mean the body itself was in a normal state, though.

Figuring out what the tower behind me was could wait.

"First, let's deal with this."

My head cleared, sharp and bright, and my field of view seemed to widen.

As I settled into a stance, the goblins snorted, sneering, like this was nothing.

* * *

After cutting down the last remaining goblin's neck, I flung the sword to the ground.

['Descent' effect has ended.]

I dropped to the ground, telling myself I couldn't do any more. Not joking, that had been razor thin.

Lying in the entrance surrounded by piles of goblin corpses, I stared up at the sky.

A black sky, and a tower rising endlessly into it. Of all things, the dream I'd had right before entering the dungeon came back to me.

I passed out.

Losing consciousness in a situation like that seemed almost impossible, and yet, that just showed how hard I'd pushed myself.

The sky was still pitch black.

Even after losing consciousness and waking up again, there was no sign that any time had passed at all.

I felt like I'd been dropped in the middle of outer space.

Not dying was a relief, but surviving didn't mean everything was over. Not even close.

The massive door still glowed.

When I placed my hand on it, text appeared before my eyes.

[You are currently the master of the tower.]

"So, when exactly did that happen?"

I crossed my arms and tilted my head.

I swore up and down, I had never owned a tower.

There was a nagging sense that I'd forgotten something, but that was all there was to it.

There was no way to know what I'd forgotten when I couldn't even remember forgetting it.

I felt like I needed to look into this tower a bit more.

At that moment, another notification rang out.

[You have obtained the qualification to challenge for Dimensional Ruler.]

"And what's this now?"

[Secure as many merit points as possible before the Day of Final Battle.

The 'Dimensional Ruler' becomes master of all gods.

Location: R-1354 Dimension]

Pressing the (View) button showed part of that dimension, like a CCTV feed.

A familiar Hangul sign, the interior of a bar in some downtown district.

In a bar packed with people, a group was drinking together.

Among the drunk crowd, I spotted Choi Suhyun. Not sure what it was, but it looked like some kind of team dinner.

"What's that guy doing there?"

I muttered without meaning to, too dumbfounded to hold it in.

Footnotes:

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