Leveling with the Gods

Chapter 141

“You know me, right?”

Hearing this, YuWon put his all into controlling his facial expression.

Of course he knew him. Very well at that.

When Zeus’s [Lighting Bolt] fell, his conclusion that Son OhGong’s clone would help out was also drawn from that knowledge. However…

‘At this point in time…’

He couldn’t have known him. That was normal.

“Of course I know. ‘The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal.’ The High-Ranker currently fighting with the Heavenly Realm.”

So YuWon answered with Son OhGong’s story that everyone know.

“But I heard that you stopped your activities a long time ago?”

It was a standard reply. Son OhGong’s title of “The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal” and his situation of fighting the Heavenly Realm. And even the fact that he had stopped his activities long ago was widely known by everyone. However…

“No, not that.” Son OhGong wasn’t asking a question like that. “You… Are we acquaintances?”

It was a weird phrase. ‘Acquaintances’? Unless one was suffering from memory loss, there was no way someone would ask that question.

YuWon had a baffled reaction. Son OhGong’s response was too weird.

‘So he’s not here just because of Cinder Eyes.’

At first, YuWon had thought that OhGong had come to look for him because of this skill. [Cinder Eyes] could only be obtained with the [Monkey’s Eyes] with a hidden piece. This meant that YuWon had the [Monkey’s Eyes] as a skill from the start.

The [Monkey’s Eyes] was a skill that Son OhGong’s family, the monkeys of Mount Huaguo, possessed. However, only Son OhGong currently had this skill.

The conclusion that Son OhGong wouldn’t just watch as the [Lighting Bolt] fell was drawn from this reason.

‘I thought it was because… he wouldn’t let a player who had Cinder Eyes die…’

He had already thought about how he would explain himself in that situation.

There was not a single player who had purchased [Monkey’s Eyes] from the Tutorial up to this point. From the beginning, [Monkey’s Eyes] was far too expensive for its mediocre effect to buy in the Tutorial.

But in any case, it was true that one could buy this skill from the Tutorial. And YuWon had thought that he would be able to use that to smooth out the conversation…

“Explain clearly what you mean by that.”

“Can’t you read between the lines? Are you an idiot? What can’t you understand?”

“‘An idiot,’ huh… I never expected to hear that from you.”

“Look at this.” Son OhGong’s lips curled upwards with an expression that said he expected this. “As I thought, you really do know me, don’t you?”

“…”

YuWon furrowed his brows without saying anything.

He had uncharacteristically made a mistake. He needed to act like this was the first time he was meeting him, but he had reverted to his old speech patterns because of what Son OhGong said.

‘It really is hard to act in front of this guy.’

YuWon looked into Son OhGong’s eyes.

His gaze was full of intent. He had definitely said, “As I thought.”

YuWon didn’t know why he came looking for him, but it was certain he knew something before coming here.

“You… What do you know?”

“I can see what your half of the eyes can’t see.”

Fwooosh—

Vwwwwing—

Arcane Power flowed out from both his [Golden Cinder Eyes] and enveloped YuWon’s body.

“Even more so if we have the same eyes.”

It was a familiar feeling. The feeling of being completely found out and seen through. The feeling of being naked in front of someone else didn’t feel too good.

‘Then…’

Fwooosh—

YuWon’s eyes turned red.

In that moment…

[Cinder Eyes resists Golden Cinder Eyes.]

[Resistance failed.]

He hadn’t expected too much, but as he thought…

‘It doesn’t work.’

[Cinder Eyes] was a skill at a lower tier than [Golden Cinder Eyes.] From the start, it was impossible for an unevolved skill to resist the evolved skill.

In this moment, Son OhGong was looking at something through YuWon’s eyes. Although he didn’t know what that was…

“So? What do you see in that fancy eye of yours?”

“The me that you know.”

Inside Son OhGong’s golden iris, another world was reflected through it.

“I can see my main body standing next to you.”

[Golden Cinder Eyes.] The unique skill that can peer through the truth, only possessed by Son OhGong in the entire Tower.

That skill had allowed him to look into YuWon’s eyes into a different world.

“You definitely know my main body. And very well at that. No?”

YuWon shut his eyes for a moment. It really didn’t feel good to have his everything seen through by someone else.

How could he put this?

But Son OhGong wasn’t someone you could trick by making excuses.

“…You’re right.” In the end, YuWon nodded. “In the world I was in, you and I knew each other.”

“The world you were in?”

It wasn’t an easy sentence to fully understand. Especially for someone like Son OhGong who wasn’t that smart in the first place.

Maybe that was why Son OhGong just ignored it and continued asking, “So? How did we know each other?”

It seemed that not even the [Golden Cinder Eyes] were able to see the whole truth.

After contemplating for a second, YuWon gave an answer.

“We were friends.”

His [Cinder Eyes] that were looking into Son OhGong’s lit up.

[Cinder Eyes resonates.]

It was a feeling he hadn’t felt for a long time.

“An antagonistic friendship.”

Resonance.

Son OhGong looked at YuWon’s slightly opened eyes.

He wasn’t looking through YuWon’s eyes anymore. YuWon was showing OhGong himself through the two similar eyes.

* * *

Translator - Jreaming

Proofreader - BringTheRayn

* * *

The distant skies and the view of the training grounds disappeared.

The scene that started to play in the two people’s eyes was that of YuWon laying down on top of a rock and Son OhGong standing in front of him.

“What are you?”

“…”

“Are you sleeping?”

Son OhGong questioned YuWon, who had laid down in his spot.

OhGong had gone for a quick bathroom break, but someone had come in and started sleeping with a sleeping mask on.

“I’m not asleep yet.”

“Then get up and get out of here. This is my spot.”

“The sun shines the best here,” YuWon, who had just found a good spot to take a nap, replied with an annoyed tone.

Seeing this, Son OhGong asked, baffled, “I didn’t kill you after acting like that?”

“Yeah. I wonder.”

Rumble—!

Suddenly, a lighting bolt fell from the sky.

It couldn’t compare to Zeus’s [Lighting Bolt,] but after it hit the ground, it split the rock YuWon had been laying on.

The rock instantly disappeared.

“Get up.”

Pang—

Son OhGong hit his palm with his fist.

“I know you aren’t dead.”

Bzzt, bzzzt—

Inside the deep pit that was just created, surrounded by the electricity that hadn’t faded yet, YuWon stood up.

And right after that, a battle started.

Rumble—!

Their fight lasted for quite a while.

And this scene seemed to be enjoyable for Son OhGong.

“Oh, you fight well.”

As Son OhGong spectated the fight with an excited expression, he asked, “But is that really you? It’s quite different from the you right now.”

“That’s when I had been a Ranker for a few decades.”

“A few decades? You’re not even a Ranker now, though?”

Bang—!

YuWon and Son OhGong’s fists collided.

The mountain crumbled underneath them, and lighting bolts fell like rain from 「Flying Nimbus.」

“That’s really you?”

Son OhGong had also become a Ranker pretty quickly. He was the one who took the shortest time to become both a Ranker and then a High-Ranker.

But even then, seeing YuWon’s growth rate was enough to surprise Son OhGong.

“So, who won?”

“I lost.”

No matter how fast one’s growth was, the opponent was “The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal.”

YuWon lost to Son OhGong in their first fight. After the fight ended, Son OhGong didn’t kill him, and they were able to fight again after a few years.

“Around this time…”

The fights repeated multiple times. On about the tenth time, YuWon was able to get his first victory.

“Maybe you got a little attached to me, so you started to follow me at some point.”

“My main body? Why?”

“How would I know? Only you know why you did it.”

After some time, it had become natural. Not friends but not enemies either. YuWon, who had never built a team before, started to move alongside someone else.

“I was annoyed at the start. That someone was next to me. I wasn’t used to it.”

YuWon had never stayed together with someone else. Not even back in his youth at the orphanage. Everyone treated him with discomfort, which led to either neglect or violence, and he felt uncomfortable having people around him.

That was probably why he climbed the Tower alone.

“Then why did you move around with me? Did you open up your heart to me?”

“How could I get rid of someone who couldn’t even die? We went around together because there was nothing I could do.”

Shwooo—

The vision Son OhGong was seeing through YuWon’s eyes changed. He saw the figure of YuWon trying to get rid of Son OhGong, who had just been following him around like it was a normal thing to do. And the repeated fights.

It really was difficult to see if they were friends or enemies.

“But while we were doing this, the wall broke.”

Rumble—

When the calm sky had started to shake, YuWon and Son OhGong both felt the disgusting feeling nearly simultaneously.

The wall that never wavered broke for the first time, and entities no one could have ever imagined poured in from the outside.

“After that, we simply fought, and fought again. It really was easier for us to get closer when we fought together rather than fought each other.”

The monsters beyond comprehension that were eating up both the world and its Rankers. Looking at them, Son OhGong narrowed his eyes.

“What… are those?”

The monsters he could see weren’t the real Outer Gods but an image created through YuWon’s vision.

“Outer Gods. Gods from outside the Tower… They were called a lot of things.”

“So they’re all gods, in any case.”

“They were existences that deserved to be called as such.”

There definitely were a lot of beings inside the tower that called themselves gods. The “Big Three” gods of Olympus, Odin and Thor of Asgard, The “Three Precious Children.” They all called themselves gods and showed off abilities worthy of that title.

However…

Not one of them could truly be called a god.

“Just how… can something like that exist?”

Son OhGong’s face went white.

The twelfth clone was different than the true Son OhGong, the main body of “The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal.” That was why he became afraid of the Outer Gods shared with him through YuWon’s eyes. Because rather than being explained to him through words, he was directly feeling what they were.

“Did you fight against those things?”

“It wasn’t just me.”

The people that sat around each other. Odin, Hercules, Chronos, Asura, Son OhGong… And YuWon. They sat together and started to talk.

“Everyone here fought together, and we lost.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

They were all High-Rankers. And a few of them were beings that Son OhGong, who had no interest in the world, knew as well. In particular, there was probably no Ranker who didn’t know Odin’s face.

“Really? You lost even though everyone gathered like this?”

“We lost horribly as well.”

Most of the Rankers that fought against the Outer Gods died, and only a minority were able to survive.

It wasn’t a fight they could win.

That was the conclusion everyone came to.

That was why this gathering happened.

“Let’s decide now…”

The one who asked for the gathering was Odin.

He began to speak while looking at two of the people, YuWon and Son OhGong, “…On the one who will be sent back to the past.”