WeTried Translations

Translator: Joy

Editor: Joy

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Damned Transmigration

Chapter 60

──────

Geppo

Haryeong’s sudden collapse could wait. The immediate concern was the shrieking hag hovering in the sky.

Yuri’s eyes narrowed, tracking the Bishop of this wretched territory. He could tell she was a 6th-Circle mage, and by the feel of it, a specialist in something deeply unpleasant.

‘So this is her school of magic.’

A psychic wail tore through the air, accompanied by an aura of decay that seemed to corrode the very space around her.

The sight alone was a physical assault; a headache bloomed behind Yuri’s eyes and a nauseous dread coiled in his gut. It was a textbook mental debuff, the kind designed to cripple a target with anxiety and fear before the first real spell was even cast.

Mages who dabbled in this kind of filth were rare.

“Arise,” the Withered Crone shrieked.

The rubble shifted. From beneath the shattered masonry, crushed corpses began to squirm.

Blood bubbled and dead flesh twitched.

Whoom.

A grey light pulsed from the Crone, pouring into the bodies below. They didn’t rise as zombies. Instead, they burst apart, their components reassembling into new horrors. Broken bones fused into malformed beasts, viscous pools of blood swilled into slimes, and chunks of flesh writhed together, forming pulsating, meaty abominations.

“Kyaaaaaaaah!”

A chorus of ghostly wails erupted, the screams of countless souls bound to the Crone’s will. From a few dozen corpses, a hundred monsters were born.

‘This is…’

Mental attacks, soul-binding necromancy, and a vile form of corpse manipulation. There was only one institution that taught this specific brand of magical depravity.

‘The Rudella Mage Tower.’

He remembered the rage-filled forum posts.

In a poll to determine the game’s most bullshit mage, Herein Rudella, the Corpse Immortal and master of that tower, had won by a landslide. She’d beaten out Polar Point Arsen, a top-tier boss with insane difficulty spikes, and even Heavenly Thunder Orca, who had the audacity to declare herself immune to all physical damage.

The reason was simple.

The Corpse Immortal was the gatekeeper, the unskippable mid-boss you had to kill just to get a crack at the Heavenly Demon.

Reaching the final boss was a trial in itself; the Demonic Cult’s territory was a high-level zone swarming with elite NPCs and monsters. But the true nightmare were the mages from Rudella who fought alongside them. They’d shower you with debuffs while buffing the cultists.

If you didn’t burst them down, they’d heal. If you did manage to kill them, they’d explode in a cloud of poison and curses. And their master, Herein Rudella, was the culmination of all that frustration.

She camped the entrance to the Heavenly Demon’s throne room, and no amount of glitching or clever pathing could get you past her. You had to fight.

First, she’d resurrect every single NPC you’d killed on your way through the zone, using them as an endless wall of meat shields. Then she’d rip out their souls and bombard you with defence-ignoring magic.

If her health or mana dipped, she’d just devour a soul to instantly restore herself to full, while your own stats steadily withered under a constant barrage of mental attacks.

The moment she died, you were instantly teleported into the final boss room with the Heavenly Demon, leaving you no time to rest or regroup.

She forced you to build your character specifically to counter her, which inevitably left you at a disadvantage against the Heavenly Demon himself. It was only because the final boss began his fight by healing the player that the encounter was even possible.

‘So why is a Rudella mage a Bishop for the heretics?’

The Rudella Mage Tower was allied with the Demonic Cult. Did this mean the cult had thrown in with these fanatics? It certainly looked that way.

“The Rudella Mage Tower!” the Sword Dragon roared.

He wasn’t a fool. His eyes darted between the advancing abominations and the Crone, teeth grinding.

“Have the Demonic Cult and the heretics conspired to defile the Orsia domain?!”

“That’s not it,” a sharp voice cut in.

Biyeon stood poised, her masked gaze fixed on the Crone.

“That old woman was once part of Rudella, true. But that was ten years ago.”

“What?”

“She deserted. The hag has nothing to do with the tower, and she certainly has nothing to do with the Divine Cult.”

‘Divine Cult?’

The Sword Dragon’s eyebrow twitched.

The only people who called the Demonic Cult the ‘Divine Cult’ were its own fanatical members and their allies in Rudella.

“You are…”

Before he could finish, a pitch-black Ganggi, the signature of the Heavenly Demon’s Divine Art, flared to life around Biyeon’s body. No further questions were necessary.

Biyeon ignored his reaction.

The situation was messy, but her objective was clear: kill the Withered Crone.

The Sword Dragon swallowed the challenge he’d been about to roar at her back, understanding the greater threat.

Rumble!

A golden sword aura erupted from his blade. He spun, unleashing a sweeping arc of light that bisected a score of the misshapen corpse-monsters.

“Are you alright?” Yuri asked Haryeong.

She had been rigid ever since the Crone’s first psychic wail, and now she pressed close to his side.

“Perfectly fine,” she replied.

She probably thought her voice was as steady as ever. It wasn’t.

“What, an assassin who’s afraid of ghosts?”

“When did I say I was afraid?”

Haryeong whipped her head around to glare at him, but her hand never stopped moving. A flick of her wrist sent a hidden blade flying and a grotesque mass of flesh slithering towards them was pierced and burst with a wet pop.

“You seem scared.”

“An assassin’s job is to kill the living, not the dead,” she said, a little too quickly.

“That is all. I am not afraid of ghosts.”

The woman who’d lectured him about being ‘once an assassin, always an assassin’ couldn’t handle a few spirits? He found it absurd, but not entirely unreasonable. Even he felt a primal unease looking at the Crone’s creations.

His attention drifted back to Biyeon.

‘She’s from the Demonic Cult.’

The use of ‘Divine Cult’ and the oppressive demonic energy made it obvious. However, it was the martial art itself that held his gaze.

A Ganggi as dark as starless space enveloped her, a presence as absolute as a black hole. He could see it commanding the very ki in the air around it, subjugating and dominating the flow of all other energy.

‘The Heavenly Demon’s Divine Art?’

It was impossible to acquire that technique in the game. It didn’t exist as a skill book or a quest reward.

Yuri knew its terrifying effects all too well.

No attack, magical or martial, ever had a type advantage against the Heavenly Demon. Worse, any damage you managed to land during his brief vulnerability windows had a chance of being reflected straight back at you.

After a set time, he’d unleash an instant-kill ultimate that was impossible to block, dodge or endure. Even invincibility skills were useless; the pattern just looped until you were dead.

It was hard to draw a direct line between this woman’s ki-dominating art and the game boss’s mechanics, but if that ‘domination’ was perfected… couldn’t it hijack another’s ki, even spells or another person’s Ganggi, and turn them to its own purpose?

It was only a theory, yet her allegiance, combined with that unbelievable art, pointed to one conclusion: she might be the Heavenly Demon’s legendary veiled disciple, the Young Leader of the Demonic Cult.

‘It’s different from the Heavenly Art of Annihilating Evil.’

The Blood Fiend, before being incinerated by the Sacred Flame Release, had mistaken Yuri’s art for the Heavenly Demon’s. Seeing the real thing, Yuri saw the fundamental difference.

‘Is she a transmigrator?’

Nothing was known for sure about the Young Leader. Not their gender, not their age.

Rumours claimed they were a noble from a rival house, a poison-bred prodigy raised by the cult or even a transmigrator.

He couldn’t know for sure, but her mere connection to the Demonic Cult made her his worst possible enemy. Probing her with a telepathic message, as he had with the Pointing Flame, was out of the question.

According to the forums, the Demonic Cult practiced a horrifying form of alchemy where they captured transmigrators and ground them into elixirs.

‘I can’t use Sacred Flame Release, then.’

He watched the sky, where black and gold Ganggi clashed in a chaotic dance.

The Sword Dragon was lauded as the strongest of the new generation of 5th-Circle masters. If this woman truly was the Young Leader, she was his equal, at the very least.

Yet even with the two of them, the Withered Crone wasn't losing ground.

A Rudella mage’s power was directly proportional to the quality and quantity of corpses and souls they commanded.

This one had lived long enough to be called a crone, had wandered the world for a decade collecting specimens since leaving her tower, and had committed enough atrocities in the Sect of Chaos to earn the rank of Bishop. And as a Bishop, she could wield the power of her vile god.

“Kyaaaak!”

The shriek of tormented souls echoed the chaos she had wrought in her long life. Her snow-white hair whipped around her face as she let out a cackle that harmonised with their wails.

“I see it! You! That martial art!”

The Withered Crone’s eyes locked onto Biyeon.

“So you are the Heavenly Demon’s rumoured disciple! Kahaha! I was never more than a minor talent in Rudella. Why would you come for me yourself?!”

‘The Heavenly Demon’s disciple!’

The Sword Dragon shot a horrified look at Biyeon, but now was not the time.

Rumble!

The frenzied souls swarmed him.

“Could it be?” the Crone shrieked, a manic glee in her voice.

“Did the Tower Master send you? Did the Corpse Immortal finally decide I must be killed?!”

Biyeon had hoped to keep her identity quiet.

She scowled beneath her mask.

“The Corpse Immortal said this.”

The ear-splitting wails of the ghosts ceased. The Withered Crone’s eyes shone with a mad anticipation.

“The only reason she didn’t kill you,” Biyeon said, her voice dripping with contempt, “was because it was too much trouble.”

“What…?”

“You didn’t steal anything important, and she couldn’t be bothered to hunt you down.”

The Crone’s eyes trembled.

“The one who ordered your death was-“

“Kyaaaaaaaaaah!”

The Withered Crone screamed, cutting her off. Her robes billowed as if filled with a sudden wind.

Pop, pop, pop!

Countless souls erupted from her body. The corpse-monsters that the Sword Dragon had sliced apart and Haryeong had exploded began to creak and stitch themselves back together.

Haryeong flinched, her shoulders tense.

“Shouldn’t we just run away?” she asked, with genuine sincerity.

Yuri ignored her.

“Two years ago, and now,” she sighed, shaking her head.

“You never listen.”

She took a step back.

“I’ll handle things down here. You go on, young master.”

“Scared?”

“I swear, I will…”

He dodged her glare and pushed off the ground, leaping upwards.

For the likes of the Moonlit Reveller or Orca, flight was second nature. But the Sword Dragon and Biyeon were pure martial artists. They were bound by gravity, leaping from wreckage and kicking off walls to stay in the fight.

True flight, the legendary Sky-walking, was a feat for those who had reached the 7th-Circle, for those who had transcended human limits.

“Huh?!”

The Sword Dragon, in the middle of a controlled fall, gasped.

Biyeon, windmilling her arms to stay airborne a second longer, made a similar noise of shock.

“S-Sky-walking?”

The man who had been on the ground was now simply… rising. He was ascending as if climbing an invisible stair.

“He was a 7th-Circle master?!” the Sword Dragon exclaimed.

“What nonsense are you spouting?” the Withered Crone snarled from above, her gaunt face twisting in contempt.

“Sky-walking? Are your brains made of muscle? That’s just levitation magic!”

It was a 3rd-Circle spell. Of course, proficiency and Soul Power dictated speed and duration, but it was still just magic.

“Ignorant, ground-crawling fools!” she shrieked, raising her staff.

Rumble!

Dozens of souls coalesced into a greyish-white sphere of malevolent energy.

“A martial artist dares imitate a mage? Insolent whelp!”

The sphere plunged downwards.

The Sword Dragon and Biyeon raised their Ganggi in defence but were blasted back to the ground.

“Goodness!” Haryeong cried out from below, dodging the blast radius as she dealt with the reforming monsters.

Yuri didn’t fall. He continued his slow, steady ascent towards the Crone.

He had always found it strange that others struggled to use martial arts and magic simultaneously. To him, the principles felt similar. He could grasp spell formulae just by concentrating on a magic book; maintaining levitation while preparing a martial technique felt perfectly natural.

“You fall too!” the Crone screeched, pointing a bony finger.

Mana fused with a vengeful spirit, turning it into a living bomb.

Screeeech!

As the psychic wail struck him, the spirit shot forward.

Yuri simply lifted his foot. The empty air felt more solid, more freeing than the ground ever could.

After all, a cloud belongs in the sky.

Fwoosh.

A crimson Ganggi flared into existence, tracing the arc of his kick.

‘What?’

A flicker of unease went through the Withered Crone.

A kick was just a kick. And Ganggi? She’d been fighting two of the most powerful 5th-Circle masters in the world. Their energy was potent, disruptive, but it hadn’t felt like this.

‘Fire…?’

From the undulating crimson Ganggi, she felt a raging inferno.

A 6th-Circle mage like herself could touch a flame without harm. Her body was beyond such mundane concerns. But this was different. It evoked an instinct older than reason: fire is hot, fire is dangerous, fire burns you to ash.

That should not be a flame. It felt wrong. Though she knew it wasn’t real, the Crone felt a searing, soul-deep heat from that crimson Ganggi.

“Kyaaaaaaaak!”

The vengeful spirit never exploded. The moment it touched the crimson arc, the very curse that bound it was incinerated. It was like a violent purification.

A chill ran down the Crone’s spine. She scrambled backwards.

‘It burned it away!’

The man’s martial art was arrogant in a way wholly different from the Heavenly Demon’s. Where that art subjugated and dominated, this one simply annihilated ki itself, reducing it to nothing but ash.

“What are you?!” the Withered Crone shrieked.

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried