Chapter 28

[Translator – DualDarkElu]

Chapter 28 – Personal Circumstances (4)

[That’s to be expected.]

I didn’t ask because I thought Yoo Ji-han had already done it at least once.

Though, I suppose killing monsters and killing people were two completely different problems.

Yoo Ji-han turned his eyes towards the outside of the window.

I followed suit and looked towards the window.

The weather on the other side of the glass was great.

The sky with no clouds and the radiant beams of sunlight shining down on the sports field was beautiful.

‘Now that I think about it…’

I had no memory of ever taking a proper look outside the window while I was in school.

There were only memories of me studying with a wooden desk as a background.

That didn’t mean I was a loner or anything.

I had friends too, you know?

Though, I don’t remember their names.

If I hadn’t been summoned, I might’ve had an enjoyable and happy college life.

Who would study like that if they knew that things would end up like this?

Whether it was due to Yoo Ji-han or not, I fell into a momentary flashback.

Yoo Ji-han turned his head away from the window and towards the blackboard I was sitting by.

“What do I need to do?”

[Killing monsters and killing people are completely different. You need to be prepared for that.]

“And is there a method to go up without committing murder?”

[Probably none.]

“Then it’s fine. I’m already prepared.”

Yoo Ji-han clenched his fist.

You could read in his shaking eyes that the thing he had been dreading had finally arrived.

[Are you really okay?]

Hearing my voice, Yoo Ji-han, who had had his arms crossed on the desk, looked down and scrambled his hair.

“And what are you going to do if I’m not okay?”

[Why are you so irritated again?]

“It’s not that I’m irritated… Damn it, I’m not okay. I’m not okay, but just think that I am and move on.”

He seemed to be uncertain about what he was saying.

Yoo Ji-han clenched his fist and brought it down on the desk.

“I knew this was something that I would eventually need to do. It’s just that I’m panicking because it came earlier than I thought.”

It seemed that Ji-han had realized that there was a good reason why everyone in the lobby was familiar with killing people.

[Don’t think too deeply about the people who died.]

“……”

[Just think about surviving. You said you want to live, right?]

“I said I got it. Enough with all the nagging, so hurry up and tell me about it.”

Yoo Ji-han wrinkled his brows while saying he didn’t want to hear any more from me.

I took hold of the now-calm Ji-han and started talking about the 3rd floor.

This is my, Yoo Ji-han’s, story.

[Moving to the 3rd floor.]

[Assassination]

Floor: 3rd floor

You, who were planning to take a trip to the capital, received another request from the mercenary guild. The region master says you need to board the train and order a ‘Blue Racoon’ from the bar in the second compartment.

While grumbling about not knowing how long you’ve been getting requests like this, you drag yourself onto the train.

Rewards: 5,000 merit points

I read the entirety of the status window in front of my eyes.

I could hear the murmurs of people from the darkness.

I opened my eyes as I recovered my senses.

Sunlight poured in through the circular ceiling.

I stood in the middle of an outdoor train station.

A train that looked close to a lump of iron made a loud whistling noise due to the steam coming out of it.

‘You never told me that it was this type of train’

I had heard about the 3rd floor from Soter.

Since I was unable to get any information from the lobby, the fact I could at least get information like this was a blessing.

Though, I couldn’t say that the information that he gave and the actual contents of the floor were the exact same.

Although I had heard about it, seeing it with my own two eyes felt completely different.

Whether it was because he got lazy while talking, there were a few things he left out, saying that I would know when I saw it.

I had no idea why the god I was under was like this.

Maybe the gods that the other guys are under are also abnormal?

At the words ‘train’, I thought of something like the Seoul Station and KTX, or something like an average passenger train.

‘I feel like a time traveler.’

Maybe I need to say it felt like being in a museum?

Do steam trains like that even operate anymore?

The train, and the station’s design, gave off a 19th-century feel.

Even the clothes I was wearing gave off a different mood from modern clothing.

My clothes had been swapped. 

I was wearing a brown coat with a beret, and in my hand was a bag that wasn’t mine.

I didn’t know whether these were clothes the popular style at the time, but thanks to them, I was able to blend into the middle of the station that was crowded with people.

Then I noticed… I had no weapon.

‘Where did it go?’

I quickly opened the item window.

It seemed that all the equipment and belongings I had were automatically moved to the item window.

There seemed to be something that looked like a bundle in the corner of the item window.

[Clothing]

It looked like the clothes I was originally wearing.

To be honest, the clothes didn’t matter at all. The important thing was the weapon.

[????’s Sword]

Rank: Unknown

????’s Sword didn’t have the mandatory one-line description that other items did.

It was a very unfriendly sword that even showed the rank as unknown.

Though, the sword cut well, so I never bothered changing gear.

I felt relieved after confirming that the sword was there.

I put the sword in a slot where I could quickly retrieve it when in a pinch and closed my item window.

I checked my surroundings to see if anyone was suspicious of my previous actions.

Thankfully that didn’t seem to be the case.

I realized that something was in my hand other than the bag.

It was a slip of paper that seemed to have been folded multiple times.

It was full of letters I had never seen before.

As soon as I blinked, the text on the paper changed to the oh-so-familiar Korean.

Bardir line K808, on the 18th at 10 in the afternoon. Seat J17.

[Speaking to all the passengers on the platform. Bardir line K808 train is about to depart. Passengers who have not boarded the train yet, please board right now.]

It’s this one!

I quickly got on the train.

The cabin attendant asked me a question.

“Sir, could you please show me your identification?”

“That’s… Please wait one second.”

I slightly panicked upon hearing the word ‘identification’, and quickly rummaged through the bag I had been holding.

The bag contained clothing and personal belongings.

A black notebook fell out of the front pocket and onto the floor.

The attendant picked up the fallen notebook.

“Here it is.”

“Ah… Haha, yeah.”

I awkwardly laughed while hugging the bag.

The attendant signed one side of the notepad and returned it to me.

“You know your seat, right?”

“Of course.”

She waved at the other employees, signaling to them that I was allowed to be on the train.

The train shook scarily, making it hard to go towards my seat.

As soon as I turned my head, I could see the train station slowly getting further away.

‘There are a lot of people.’

As I had only seen monsters inside the tower, I wasn’t used to all the people inside the train.

The people truly looked like normal passengers.

Although there were many things I wanted to find out, I decided to focus on the task at hand.

– Don’t get distracted. Don’t try to dig deeper either.

I momentarily thought of Soter’s words.

Although I didn’t know what the other gods were like, I knew Soter was a bit unique.

How should I put this?

After talking to him for a while, he didn’t feel like a god, but like a human instead.

Kind of like having a phone call?

Although it was a weird comparison, in general, it felt like that.

[Translator – DualDarkElu]

Either way, I was thankful to him.

If Soter hadn’t been there, I really would’ve ended up as a corpse on the 1st floor.

The J row was in the third compartment.

After walking through the long corridor, I finally found the J row.

The third compartment was packed with people to the point where you couldn’t even move your feet around.

I barely managed to get to seat J17 and sat down.

The train slowly gained speed.

A large grassland appeared.

I was slightly disappointed that I couldn’t see the moment we left the city due to being so busy.

Two men were sitting next to me.

‘Something’s…’

My clothes, which seemed normal while passing through the second compartment, stuck out in the third compartment.

The people’s clothes in the third compartment were ragged to that extent.

Let’s focus.

That’s not what’s important right now.

As time passed, the atmosphere within the train calmed down.

I quietly stood up from my seat while holding my bag.

I slipped out of the cabin compartment while looking at my surroundings.

After a while, I was able to find the restaurant compartment.

At the entrance of the restaurant compartment stood a man with a slightly different aura from the attendants.

There was a gun along with a suppression cudgel strapped to the man’s waist.

Anyone could tell that he was something like a guard or policeman.

Looking at how he was standing, it seemed more likely that he was a soldier rather than a policeman.

I took a peek at the gun strapped to the man’s waist.

There were even trains, so there was nothing saying that there couldn’t also be guns.

As a precaution, I kept the item window open and entered the restaurant compartment.

The man didn’t pay much attention to me.

At that moment I heard a voice from behind me.

“You’re not allowed to go in.”

I turned my head, thinking he was maybe talking about me.

“What? Why not? That man just went in.”

“The third compartment’s distribution starts two hours from now. Please return to your seat.”

“Damn it.”

The man reluctantly turned around.

“Tsk, this is why savages…”

He clicked his tongue at the man who was returning to the third compartment.

My eyes met with the man

He waved his hand at me as if telling me not to pay any attention to what had happened and to move along.

‘What was that?’

I wondered whether it was because of the clothing, but there wasn’t much of a difference between mine and the man’s clothing.

Rather, the man who had been sent back had much better clothes than I did.

‘I don’t get the criteria at all.’

And what is a savage?

I had no idea how the gears turned in this world.

There were quite a few people in the restaurant compartment.

It wasn’t as crowded or uncomfortable as the third compartment.

I sat down at the bar in the center. The bartender asked me a question.

“What would you like to have?”

“Blue Racoon.”

As I replied, the bartender nodded and began mixing a cocktail.

“Here’s your Blue Racoon.”

The cocktail that he made was blue… As the name of the drink implied.

Its color looked similar to a carbonated drink I had tried in the past.

At the edge of the champagne glass was an orange, lemon, and cherry impaled on a toothpick.

Is toothpick maybe too vague?

There’s probably a name for it.

I looked around while holding the cocktail in one hand.

The restaurant was in full swing as it was lunchtime.

I decided it might be too suspicious if I kept looking around the area.

I carefully put the cocktail to my lips.

There was a clear taste of alcohol.

“Isn’t it tasty? Whenever I drink some, I always get that feeling as though I’m at the beach. I feel like it’s the best cocktail. Ah, can I have the same one here too?”

I put down the glass and turned my head towards the direction the voice was coming from.

It was a man who was sitting in the opposite corner.

I had thought he was just an ordinary customer.

A middle-aged man who was dressed nicely naturally walked towards where I was sitting.

“I’m Major Dechant. You can comfortably call me Dead.”

The name Dead.

It was a name that seemed arrogant in many ways.

Though I didn’t know whether dead had a different definition here, so I didn’t think too much about it. 

Dead laughed and drank his Blue Racoon.

“I heard you grumble at the master, I’m sorry about this. It’s something I couldn’t tell you until I met you face to face.”

The man checked my reaction and quieted down.

I never really grumbled, but since he said I did, I just went with it.

“So what’s the request?”

I had no intention of happily sitting around drinking with a man whose name sounded like he was about to die at any moment.

At my words, he passed me a slip of paper.

I turned over the palm-sized slip of paper.

On the thick slip of paper was a drawing of a young girl.

Dead snapped his fingers under the table.

As soon as he did that, not only the sound of the train, but the sound of the people around us disappeared.

‘Skill?’

While trying to keep a poker face and hide the fact that I was panicking, Dead spoke up.

“Her name is Ria Angelina. The person in the image is the person you need to kill.”

No matter how I looked at it, the person in the image was just a little girl.