WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Returned Zenith Wants to Rest ◈
Episode 1:
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Yoo Kangmin.
He had competed in kendo until high school. After he stopped competing, he helped his father run their dojo.
For a while, business had been good.
Every evening, the children’s battle cries had nearly shaken the building, and they had even offered weekend classes for working adults.
That was before the gates opened.
Everything changed when awakeners appeared and hunters began killing monsters with swords and magic.
People stopped coming to the kendo dojo.
It wasn’t just kendo.
Taekwondo, boxing, and judo were no different.
A newly awakened hunter was far stronger than someone who had trained in martial arts for ten years.
Naturally, the neighborhood gyms began closing one by one.
Awakening academies took their place, claiming they could develop awakeners’ abilities.
A large awakening academy had recently opened across from the kendo dojo, too.
Double your strength within three months of signing up. Discover your hidden skills.
Ads like those covered the outside of the building.
While students flocked there, his father’s dojo grew emptier until it could no longer stay afloat.
His father had tried everything to revive the failing dojo, but he failed. In the end, his chronic illness worsened, and he passed away.
Kangmin had held on for a while after his father’s death, but eventually, he had to close the dojo.
That day was its last.
After finishing up, Yoo Kangmin stopped at a convenience store near the dojo and bought a bottle of water and a can of his father’s favorite coffee.
“Would you like a bag?”
“No, I’ll just carry them.”
“Okay.”
He had just paid and turned around when it happened.
Vwooom.
He heard a strange sound.
Kangmin looked up.
In the middle of the convenience store, a black line was forming in empty air.
At first, it was as thin as a hair.
But it quickly grew longer and wider, turning into a rift large enough for a person to pass through.
“A g-gate?”
The clerk behind the counter screamed.
It wasn’t a gate.
At least, it was nothing like the gates Kangmin knew.
Ordinary gates were blue ovals.
But the gate before him looked ominous, as though space itself had been torn apart.
A crack in space seemed a better description.
As proof, he could see unfamiliar mountains and a dense forest beyond the rift.
Yoo Kangmin backed away, trying to escape, but a force pouring from the rift seized his body.
“Huh?”
The can of coffee fell from his hand.
Yoo Kangmin grabbed the edge of the counter.
“Wait, just wait!”
His palm slipped.
The clerk hurriedly reached out, but it was already too late.
Yoo Kangmin was sucked into the rift.
The last thing he saw was the can of coffee on the floor.
That was the last scene Yoo Kangmin remembered.
Then sixty years passed in the martial world.
* * *
And when he returned, he was back in the moment before he had fallen into the rift.
“Would you like a bag?”
“...”
Yoo Kangmin couldn’t answer.
He had heard those exact words sixty years ago, just before the rift dragged him away.
“What on earth...?”
Everything was the same.
From the bored expression on the clerk’s face to the earphone cord sticking out beneath the name tag, it all matched his memory.
Yoo Kangmin slowly examined himself.
His bloodstained hands were clean.
He wasn’t wearing the long robes of the martial world, either.
He was in the black tracksuit he had worn when he left the dojo.
“Sir?”
The clerk gave him a puzzled look.
Instead of answering, Yoo Kangmin checked the digital clock beside the counter.
It was just before he had been caught in the rift.
Before he could feel certain that he had returned, doubt crept in.
‘An illusion?’
Unable to rule out that possibility, Yoo Kangmin carefully scanned his surroundings.
But it wasn’t an illusion.
Even the being known as the Illusion Demon had been unable to deceive his mind.
‘It’s not an illusion. Then was I dreaming?’
There was another possibility.
Perhaps the sixty years he had spent in the martial world had all been a dream.
“...”
Fortunately, the qi of the Limitless Heavenly Origin Art remained intact. He had perfected it by combining the internal cultivation methods of the orthodox factions, the unorthodox factions, and the Demonic Cult.
Although his body had returned to the way it was before he fell into the rift, his martial arts had not disappeared.
His sixty years of memories, the countless battles to the death, even the feeling of killing 127 people in the Valley of No Return, all of it remained.
It hadn’t been a dream, either.
“I really...”
That meant he really had returned.
To the very day he had disappeared.
Then his mother and younger sister would be at home, too.
He had seen them that morning but hadn’t even said a proper goodbye.
He had simply walked out, saying he would return after finishing up at the dojo.
‘How I’d regretted ignoring her when she told me to eat before I left.’
He wanted to go home right away.
He wanted to open the door and see his mother’s face.
He even wanted to hear his immature younger sister nag him again.
Yoo Kangmin placed a bill on the counter.
“I don’t need a bag.”
“Oh, okay.”
He picked up the water and coffee.
This time, he gripped the can firmly, as if determined not to lose it.
It was his father’s favorite coffee.
His father was already gone.
Returning didn’t mean he could undo everything, but this alone was enough.
Yoo Kangmin turned toward the convenience store’s door.
Vwooom.
A familiar sound reached his ears.
He stopped.
In the middle of the convenience store, a blue, oval rift appeared in what had been empty space.
“A rift?”
For a moment, Yoo Kangmin thought it might be the rift that had sent him to the martial world.
But it wasn’t.
A fairly ordinary gate was opening where the rift that would have taken him to another world should have appeared.
“Now I see. Whatever dragged me away definitely wasn’t a gate.”
Yoo Kangmin’s expression hardened.
As the gate widened, he saw something burst out.
Crrrack!
A green hand tore through the black membrane.
Then a small monster, about waist-high on a person, tumbled onto the convenience store floor.
Pointed ears.
Rotten yellow teeth.
A rusty dagger in its bony hand.
It was a goblin.
“A monster!”
The clerk screamed and ducked beneath the counter.
The goblin slowly got to its feet.
Krrk.
Its dull eyes scanned the store.
Its gaze settled on Yoo Kangmin, the closest person.
Kieeek!
It charged with a shriek.
Yoo Kangmin didn’t move.
The rusty dagger came flying toward his neck.
Slow.
There was no need even to compare it to the people he had fought in the Valley of No Return.
It looked like a child swinging a toy sword.
Just as Yoo Kangmin was about to raise his hand, a sharp voice rang out.
“Get out of the way!”
Something swept past his side.
Clang!
A sword clashed with the dagger.
The person who had blocked the goblin’s attack was a young woman.
She had been sitting by the window, eating a triangle rice ball.
With her black hair tied high, she held a longsword in one hand.
Apparently, she had kept it in the long bag propped beside her seat.
“Step back.”
The woman spoke without taking her eyes off the goblin.
“I’ll handle this.”
A hunter registration card was now hanging around her neck.
Yoon Seoha.
F-rank.
‘F-rank?’
Yoo Kangmin narrowed his eyes.
Even before he had been dragged into the martial world, he had known the basics of hunter ranks.
F-rank was the lowest among awakeners.
They were considered unfit for combat, with physical abilities only slightly better than an ordinary person’s.
Yet Yoon Seoha had stepped in to stop the goblin without hesitation.
“You there, behind the counter.”
“Y-yes?”
“Take the other customers into the storeroom. Lock the door and report this to the Association.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll try to buy some time. An alert has probably gone out by now.”
Weeeooo!
A loud alarm blared.
The phones of everyone in the convenience store rang at once.
- Emergency disaster alert.
- Today at 9:42 p.m., abnormal mana fluctuations from a gate were detected near the Sinyeong-dong intersection.
- Residents nearby should evacuate to a safe location immediately.
A gate that only produced goblins wouldn’t trigger an emergency disaster alert.
‘Then that means...’
Another gate had opened nearby.
‘That’s not good.’
The gate over there was probably a much more urgent threat.
In other words, it would take longer for nearby hunters to arrive after receiving the alert.
‘Can she hold them off alone?’
It didn’t look like something an F-rank hunter could handle alone, so Yoo Kangmin stood there, rubbing his nose.
When he lingered, Yoon Seoha shouted urgently.
“What are you doing? Hurry up and get somewhere safe!”
Even as she spoke, she was doing everything she could to stop the goblins rushing at Yoo Kangmin.
‘She uses a sword.’
Yoon Seoha fought with a sword.
Instinctively, Yoo Kangmin’s gaze settled on her stance.
His eyebrows twitched.
‘What is that?’
Even her grip was wrong.
Her wrists were stiff, and her shoulders were needlessly tense. Her weight was so far forward that she looked ready to fall at any moment.
It was embarrassing to even call that swordsmanship.
With a stance like that, she couldn’t follow up after dodging an attack.
‘Where did she learn to use a sword? No, wait. That’s not a trained stance.’
A goblin charged again.
Yoon Seoha swung her sword.
“Power Strike!”
At her shout, a faint light burst from the blade.
Boosted by the skill, the sword moved at least twice as fast and slashed the goblin across the chest.
“Hah, hah!”
But Yoon Seoha had more than one goblin to face.
As long as the gate remained open, their numbers kept growing.
In no time, they surrounded her and forced her onto the defensive.
A goblin swung its rusty blade.
Yoon Seoha blocked it with her sword.
Clang!
Sparks flew as metal struck metal.
Unable to withstand the impact, she was driven back two full steps.
The goblin lunged again.
Yoon Seoha gritted her teeth and swung.
Whoosh!
The blade passed over the goblin’s head.
She had put so much force into the swing that she was slow to recover her sword.
The goblin’s blade came toward her side.
“...!”
Yoon Seoha braced herself for the pain.
Then she heard Yoo Kangmin’s voice.
“Your left foot.”
Without thinking, Yoon Seoha pulled her left foot back.
The goblin’s blade brushed past her clothes.
“You’re too tense.”
“What?”
“Your wrists and your shoulders. Your sword won’t move properly if you tense up like that.”
“Is this really the time for a lesson?”
“I’m telling you because you look like you’re about to die.”
The goblins charged again.
Yoon Seoha gritted her teeth and raised her sword.
“Left foot half a step back.”
Yoo Kangmin kept speaking.
“Lower your shoulders.”
“...”
“Don’t try to swing the sword. Think of letting it drop from top to bottom.”
Yoon Seoha didn’t fully understand what he meant.
Even so, she adjusted her stance as Kangmin instructed.
She moved her left foot back.
Lowered her raised shoulders.
Relaxed her grip on the sword.
The sword, which had felt so heavy, suddenly felt a little lighter.
The goblin in front of her raised its dagger.
“Now,” Yoo Kangmin said.
Yoon Seoha brought her sword down.
She didn’t swing with all her strength.
She simply let it fall naturally, following its weight.
Slice!
The blade cut deep from the goblin’s shoulder into its chest.
Krrrk...!
The goblin crumpled.
Yoon Seoha stared blankly down at her sword.
She hadn’t used a skill.
Yet the blow had been nearly as powerful as her Power Strike.
“How...?”
“It’s not over yet.”
The remaining goblin lunged at Yoon Seoha’s back.
“If you want to live, listen to me.”
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