I'm a Young God, so Please Raise Me - Chapter 9

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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Chapter 9
Beep—beep—beep—.
The alarm signaling an error repeated relentlessly.
Researchers clad entirely in protective suits and gear reported in tense voices.
“Third attempt failed. Classified as an error—forced measurement has been deemed impossible.”
An unfamiliar waveform traced itself across the monitor on one side of the room. Fear rippled through the researchers.
Ham Ji-wol, the head of the Research Analysis Division reviewing the readings, quickly glanced toward Gwak Han-muk.
Gwak Han-muk waved his hand to signal that he was maintaining the restraints properly.
Ham Ji-wol cautiously approached ‘it’ and replaced the attached patch.
She moved as though handling radioactive material.
‘It would’ve been easier if it were radioactive material.’
Gwak Han-muk thought this to himself as he gazed beyond the glass window.
A murderous atmosphere hung thick in the air, yet the central figure remained serene.
The man sleeping quietly, bound tightly with prayer beads, seemed to exist a step removed from the chaos surrounding him.
Gwak Han-muk habitually rolled the prayer bead beads on his wrist.
His prayer beads were a defensive item.
Crafted from Byeokjo wood and imbued with the essence of lightning, the beads could extend their length freely and could be separated and used independently within a certain range.
They were best suited for restraining and subduing targets, but Gwak Han-muk had employed them offensively through all manner of ingenious methods.
The fundamental use of the Byeokjo wood prayer beads—restraint and suppression—he rarely employed.
The reason was simple. It wasn’t fun.
But what about just now?
“Han-muk, restrain.”
The moment Mo Hae-in’s words fell, I moved without hesitation, immediately applying the restraint.
It was an instinctive movement. The sensation of that moment—moving by pure intuition without passing through reason—remained vivid even now.
“Hae-in. What exactly did you pick up?”
As Gwak Han-muk shook his head in disbelief, Mo Hae-in immediately countered.
“I didn’t pick it up. It appeared in front of me.”
Mo Hae-in, who hadn’t even rested before reporting to her superiors, looked haggard. Yet her eyes gleamed with intensity.
Only the elation of having permanently closed the Trial with a true ending sustained her now.
“Is it human?”
“…I don’t know.”
The moment Park Sung-gyeon’s head burst into golden fragments, Mo Hae-in witnessed it clearly.
The change that occurred in ‘its’ pupils.
It was something that couldn’t happen if it were human.
Currently, every operative in the Sidaecheong had mobilized to investigate the entity known as Han Go-yo.
Samra would begin the investigation soon, so it could be analyzed as well.
Whether it was an infected host contaminated by the Trial’s virus, or something that wasn’t human at all.
In truth, what Han Go-yo was didn’t matter to Mo Hae-in.
Whether it could be used or not.
If it helped close the Trial with a true ending, Mo Hae-in was prepared to accept it, whatever it was.
“You’ve worked hard, Captain.”
Suddenly, I recalled the moment she’d greeted me.
Her slightly smiling face had been that of an ordinary college student.
But Mo Hae-in pushed the memory away from her mind.
The emotion in that moment had been genuine, but now it would only interfere with her judgment.
While Mo Hae-in stared at the sleeping Han Go-yo without blinking once, Gwak Han-muk, who had been rolling prayer beads in his hand, suddenly spoke up.
“You said the Trial’s NPC showed a favorable disposition toward Han Go-yo.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you maybe try attacking Han Go-yo with the Black Moon Blade?”
Mo Hae-in frowned at the sudden nonsense, but Gwak Han-muk was serious.
“No, I know it’s crazy talk, but I keep… feeling it. Our prayer beads.”
Even as I spoke, finding the whole thing absurd, Gwak Han-muk let out a hollow laugh.
“It wants to release the restraint.”
Mo Hae-in parted her lips.
Gwak Han-muk pressed the prayer beads firmly with his hand while gazing at Han Go-yo.
Since earlier, Gwak Han-muk’s prayer beads had kept making his skin tingle, expressing their discontent.
Gwak Han-muk voiced the impossible hypothesis that had been weighing on his mind.
“Not just the Trial’s NPC… but items could also be favorable toward Han Go-yo.”

***
“Ugh…”
I swallowed a groan and opened my eyes.
I saw a white ceiling. It seemed to be a hospital room.
I wanted to wake up thinking that, but the scenery before my eyes was completely different.
I had opened my eyes in an Interrogation Room. Moreover, I was dressed in a restraint suit and bound to a chair.
‘This is really bad.’
Since Sidaecheong belonged to the Ministry of Defense, trials proceeded in a military court, but it was a trial in name only.
Due to its special nature, it operated a separate military court with an independent trial process.
In other words, if they just said “this guy’s a bad guy!” the military judge at Sidaecheong would immediately hand down detention or punishment.
The one silver lining was that my injuries had been fully treated.
Confirming that the pain I felt in my thigh had lessened considerably, I suddenly became curious.
‘Come to think of it, why isn’t Gwak Han-muk registered?’
Captain Gwak should be an important character with excellent abilities, so I should have seen a system window saying he was available for registration, but I hadn’t.
You believe you should proceed with character registration carefully.
This is because you currently have only ‘3 slots’ available for registration.
You judge that it is too early to fill a slot with ‘Gwak Han-muk’. He may fall outside your ■■.
I find myself wanting to raise my abilities as a system as soon as possible.
I think it would be good to try registering ‘Mo Hae-in’.
A rigid answer came back to a casual question. Having roughly satisfied my curiosity, I habitually ignored the system window.
Then the closed door opened, and a man in a Sidaecheong uniform entered.
“Hello, Han Go-yo.”
The man greeted me with a friendly smile and introduced himself.
“I’m with the Trial Response Agency ■■■.”
I’d heard his name, but he was a character I knew nothing about.
But what did he say his name was?
Even when I tried to recall it, the name I’d just heard slipped away from my memory.
The man looked at me bound like a cocoon, his expression full of sympathy.
“This must be quite uncomfortable, isn’t it? If you cooperate well, I’ll release you right away.”
I was brimming with willingness to cooperate. That was because I had nowhere else to go.
‘This is where I get food, clothing, and shelter.’
Since I’d become homeless if I left here, I tried my best to look as well-behaved as possible and answered.
“Yes. Thank you for your help.”
The man sitting across from me glanced at a tablet for a moment, then smiled slightly.
“First… what does ‘roasted chestnut’ mean?”
I, who had been ready to answer immediately, ended up asking back with a confused expression.
“Pardon?”
“Roasted chestnut, I mean.”
“Ah, roasted chestnut….”
I was flustered.
‘How am I supposed to explain roasted chestnut?’
I wondered if this was also some interrogation technique.
Not knowing what to do, I just blinked and hesitantly opened my mouth.
“It’s just roasted chestnut. You know, a roasted chestnut.”
The atmosphere turned cold.
To show even a bit more cooperative attitude, I dragged out everything I could think of and explained.
“My name is Han Go-yo, so you know the carol, right? The one that starts with ‘Silent Night’? At first, I was called ‘Silent Chestnut.’ Then while eating roasted chestnuts with friends, it changed from ‘Silent Chestnut’ to ‘Roasted Chestnut’….”
Wow, how pathetic.
The more I explain this, the worse it gets.
But if I stopped here, it would seem even stranger.
“…my nickname changed. Since it’s a familiar word, I used the nickname ‘Roasted Chestnut’ frequently on places like the internet.”
When playing games from Akasha World, I always set my player name to Roasted Chestnut.
“So you’re saying the name ‘Roasted Chestnut’ is a nickname you chose yourself?”
“Yes.”
“….”
The man fell silent.
But now there’s nothing more I can explain. I wanted to stop talking about roasted chestnuts.
‘Let’s move on to the next question.’
I was waiting quietly.
“The name of a Trial typically represents the characteristics of the suitable candidate or carries some symbolic meaning.”
The man stared at me intently.
Her gaze was searching for lies.
“And the Trial assigns all those names.”
I was learning this for the first time.
I’d assumed everyone chose their own names like you would at the start of a game, but apparently that wasn’t how it worked.
I’d played Akasha World’s game quite seriously, but the worldbuilding explanations only came as a bonus after the game’s ending.
As a player, there were inevitably things I didn’t know.
“There has never been a single case where a suitable candidate like Han Go-yo—someone with no particular traits or significance, and especially someone who chose their own nickname—had that name used by the Trial.”
The man slid a tablet toward me.
“In this Happy Smile Factory, there’s another suitable candidate besides Han Go-yo whose name underwent a change.”
Park Sung-gyeon’s photograph was displayed on the tablet.
“Park Sung-gyeon was assigned a completely different name instead of the one the Trial normally gives him.”
At Haspack, Park Sung-gyeon’s name tag had read “Sample.”
A system window came to mind immediately.
[‘Park Sung-gyeon’ is a registrable sample character. Would you like to register?]
Sample. And sample.
It was naming so blatant it practically begged to be noticed.
From the moment Park Sung-gyeon entered Haspack, he’d been branded as a sample for me.
It was actually a decent choice.
Because the target was Park Sung-gyeon, I could choose execution without any particular guilt or hesitation.
But the situation didn’t sit right with me.
I could sense the will of some entity wanting me to develop my abilities as a system.
In any case, the interrogation seemed to be falling apart.
‘I can’t exactly say my characteristic and symbolism is roasted chestnuts….’
The man continued his questioning, leaving me in this murky state.
“Han Go-yo, you knew how to clear Happy Smile Factory with the true ending, didn’t you?”
“It was coincidence.”
“Han Go-yo was extremely skilled at boss battles and possessed a new strategy method unknown even to the Trial Response Agency. Through this, you achieved the true ending.”
The man let out a small laugh and finished his statement.
“…according to Captain Mo Hae-in’s report.”
“It really was coincidence. It seemed similar to a game I usually liked, so I just tried it once and it worked out….”
“Why did you blow Park Sung-gyeon’s head off?”
The man cut me off and asked. It was a question asked as if he’d already confirmed I was the one who did it.
I denied it again.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
The man let out a long sigh.
“Han Go-yo.”
“Yes.”
“Since you don’t seem to understand right now, I’ll tell you—torture is legal in the Trial Response Agency.”
I know that too…. I know it really well….
But that didn’t mean I could just admit it, did it?
To confess properly, I’d have to say something absurd—that I’d entered into a game, into Akasha World.
‘Can’t that person be registered?’
I was just briefly imagining registering them and threatening them with execution.
Entities that are not ■■ cannot be registered yet.
A system window suddenly appeared.
To avoid being caught handling my gaze awkwardly at the rectangle obscuring my vision, I lowered my eyes fearfully.
‘That damned pixelated block.’
I couldn’t understand why it was hiding things from me. Then, as if it had been waiting, an additional system message appeared.
Insufficient.
Now it seemed too lazy to even type out the full six characters saying my abilities were lacking, sending just a single word. Soon it would probably just send initial consonants.
I was about to close the system window.
I found myself staring anew at the pixelated block.
■■….
Could it be… human?
The moment the word came to mind, a sharp realization struck me like a blow to the head.
One of the major characters of the Trial Response Agency.
An entity created by South Korea to respond to Trials, made using items from the Trials themselves.
Not human, but an AI system android.
I called out the man’s name.
“Samra.”
In that instant, the man’s face—which I’d thought was perfectly normal just moments before—became clearly visible.
The man’s face was painted black as if someone had scribbled over it.
The moment I recognized the incongruity, the deep-colored Sidaecheong uniform transformed into white.
The paint obscuring his face peeled away smoothly, revealing the man’s true visage.
Hair and eyes that shimmered in holographic colors that shifted in real time with the light.
A being with colors no human could ever possess laughed aloud.
The space that had been a dim interrogation room moments before transformed.
A colossal wall of indeterminate height materialized.
A wall constructed haphazardly from countless monitor panels, smartphones, tablets, and the like.
Before it, where every image in the world played simultaneously on different screens, sat a chair without a backrest on an abnormally elevated platform.
Samra, seated in the chair, looked down at me.
“How did you know, Han Go-yo?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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