WeTried Translations
Translator: Joy
Editor: Joy
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Damned Transmigration ◈
Chapter 64: Dumb & dumber
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Priests of the faith work miracles with divine power. They can cure the sick, make the lame walk, restore sight to the blind, and heal wounds.
But even such priests cannot bring the dead back to life. The dismembered corpses trapped and displayed in glass jars were pitiable, but there was no way to save them.
“These must be the countless missing people from this district.”
Surely they had not risked kidnapping innocent citizens from outside the district. The Sword Dragon looked around the room, making no effort to hide his displeasure and disgust.
“There are a lot of them. No wonder that old witch commanded so many souls.”
Grumbling, the Sword Dragon entered the room and began inspecting it.
“I’ll search around too.”
“Tell me if you find any information on the heretics.”
“What about anything else?”
Yuri tested the waters, and the Sword Dragon turned back with a puzzled expression.
“Anything else? What do you mean?”
“Money or jewels. Magic books, too.”
“Ah.”
Only then did the Sword Dragon understand and nod.
“Thunder Cloud, are you studying magic properly as well?”
“Not as much as martial arts, but if I can learn it, I will. Magic is useful.”
The Sword Dragon recalled Yuri flying through the air with martial movement techniques like Celestial Emperor Step and Void Crossing. Magic certainly was convenient if one could use it.
“Are you planning to learn Rudella magic as well?”
“I find this kind of thing disgusting too.”
Yuri began while looking at the rows of displayed containers.
“But magic depends on how it is used.”
“Do you need my permission?”
The Sword Dragon grinned.
“The Withered Crone. I did not kill that old witch alone. You, me, the Young Cult Leader, and Haryeong... nim killed her together.”
Calling her noona was still difficult. When the Sword Dragon cautiously glanced at Haryeong, she raised two fingers in a V with a blank expression.
“I was no help at all in killing that old witch.”
“Is that something to be proud of?” Yuri muttered.
The Sword Dragon and Haryeong ignored him.
“You have the right to the spoils as well.”
The Sword Dragon, born with too much to begin with to covet things like this, spoke plainly.
“The only things I want from this unpleasant estate are a list of the heretics in this district and information about the Sect of Chaos. Of course, if you want it, I will share it with you.”
“Is that alright?”
“I have not heard the full details, but you are hostile to the heretics too, are you not?”
“There are few people in this world who are not.”
“Right. Every last one of those bastards needs to be killed.”
The Sword Dragon answered with a twisted smile.
“So, Thunder Cloud, if you want it, I will share the information on the heretics. If someone with your ability wishes to eradicate them, it would be good for the world. If the Young Cult Leader had come with us, we would have needed to split the spoils with her, but she did not. So, Thunder Cloud, take whatever you want from this estate.”
Yuri grinned at the refreshingly straightforward answer.
“Thanks.”
He left the room with Haryeong.
“He is quite a good kid. The real deal.”
“For the young master of a prestigious family, he does seem to have an innocent side.”
After that, Yuri and Haryeong searched the building together. The other rooms on the ground floor contained many similar display cases.
They did not contain only dismembered corpses. One room was filled with all manner of unknown reagents.
“Poison.”
Haryeong said this after taking out various reagent bottles, shaking them, and smelling them.
“There are quite a few potions as well, but it would be best not to use them. They do not seem to have been made through proper alchemy.”
From then on, Haryeong took the lead in searching the building for Yuri. She ran her hands along the walls and floors, tapped them, and checked behind furniture.
She was looking for hidden rooms. Yuri left that task to Haryeong and searched rooms on different floors.
Finding the library out in the open was easy. Yuri shut himself inside and pulled out the books one by one to read.
Most were books on magical research. Research into the immortality pursued by the Rudella Mage Tower and desired by the Withered Crone. In particular, they concerned methods of achieving magical rejuvenation at the sixth tier, not merely suppressing aging.
They sought to surpass extending a mortal’s lifespan and abolish lifespan itself, rejecting not only aging but every form of death.
An obsession with immortality that made one impossible to kill.
‘This is no help.’
It was a wish close to impossible. The Withered Crone’s level was far too low to accurately pursue and research such a goal. In the end, the research books filling the library were merely the delusions of the Withered Crone, incapable of even becoming magic.
That was why the Withered Crone became a heretic. She had tried to add miracles to magic that was impossible for her. Her deeds over ten years had been enough to earn the Sect’s recognition, and she became a bishop.
‘There is nothing about her connection to the Sect itself.’
Yuri had hoped to find magic books from the Rudella Mage Tower, but there were none.
‘Well, they said she was already sixth-tier when she fled. She would not have needed to bring basic magic books with her.’
The spells were already in her head, so there would have been no reason to keep physical magic books. Yuri let out a disappointed sigh and looked around the library.
In the end, there was nothing to take from this vast library.
“Ahem.”
As Yuri left the room with a sigh, he found Haryeong standing there with both hands on her waist.
“What is it?”
It was not really a question he needed to ask. The faint upward curve on her usual blank expression. Her hands planted on her waist as if showing off. Her chest and shoulders proudly thrust out. Her chin subtly raised.
“Ahem.”
Haryeong made the sound again. Yuri looked at her face for a moment, then clapped his hands together.
“As expected of Haryeong-nim. You are amazing.”
“It is not enough.”
“What is not?”
“Praise me more.”
“As expected of Haryeong-nim. You are a cruel, merciless, terrifying assassin, yet one who sometimes has a warm heart.”
“More.”
“You are skilled with daggers and all kinds of hidden weapons. Despite being an assassin, your martial arts in open combat are excellent as well.”
“And?”
“You are beautiful too.”
“Pass.”
Haryeong nodded and turned around, crooking a finger at Yuri.
“Follow me.”
Haryeong led him to the ground-floor stairs.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
After tapping the stairs in sequence, she pulled the handrail.
Click.
Creeeak.
The floor beneath the stairs opened, revealing a staircase leading underground.
“How did you know?”
“A great assassin must know how to kill someone hiding in a secret room as well.”
Haryeong said this proudly.
At the bottom of the stairs was a small room.
“What is this?”
A large crystal orb sat on a desk in the center of the room. Yuri picked it up and turned it around in his hands, and small red dots appeared and vanished inside it.
“Hmm...”
After thinking for a moment, Yuri turned while holding the crystal orb. He pointed it roughly toward the place where the heretics had gathered and the Withered Crone had died, and gray dots appeared.
“I think it is a tool for tracking heretics in this area.”
The dead seemed to appear as gray dots, while the living appeared as red dots. It was precisely the item the Sword Dragon, who wanted to capture and kill every escaped heretic, desperately needed.
“Now, what else...”
Was there a way to contact bishops in other regions, or the headquarters of the Sect of Chaos?
Yuri did not have high hopes. They operated in isolated cells. If capturing one bishop could lead to the complete destruction of the other bishops and the headquarters, they would have been hunted down long ago.
“...”
He found a sheet of paper.
It appeared to be a directive sent down from the Sect’s headquarters.
How to manage this region and parish. How many followers to recruit, and what they were to accomplish after expanding their power.
‘A riot?’
It was not unexpected, but the directive openly ordered them to cause a riot. After recruiting enough followers, they were to move into other districts and ultimately incite a riot against Panteleon.
Naturally, the riot could never succeed. No matter how united the residents of this parish were, it would only be a one-sided massacre if the Orsia knights and the Selvis Mage Tower acted in earnest.
Whether the riot succeeded did not matter to the Sect. This kind of chaos itself would throw the continent’s situation into disorder.
‘These bastards are truly insane.’
They were the sort to carry out suicide attacks for the Evil God. Yuri gave a hollow laugh and turned the directive over.
“...”
There was a passage about transmigrators. Recruit transmigrators into the Sect whenever possible. If a transmigrator refused, force them to join. If they still refused, capture and torture them for information.
The final page stated that information concerning the Sect’s saint, UrMumSpammer, was to be given priority.
‘Really?’
The Pointing Flame had told him that UrMumSpammer was treated as a saint by the Sect, but was the Sect’s headquarters truly sending such open directives?
‘Do these bastards really think I am the Evil God’s apostle?’
One question came to mind. The Goddess of Order was in a long sleep and could not communicate with her priests, but was the Evil God not perfectly active? His followers called the innocent UrMumSpammer an apostle and saint, so why did the Evil God not clear up that unfair misunderstanding?
‘...Because there is no reason to?’
The Evil God was insane. His divine name was Chaos. True to that name, the Evil God had caused all kinds of chaos in the world for decades, and his followers caused all kinds of chaos as well.
The misunderstanding surrounding UrMumSpammer? Why would the Evil God step in to clear it up? Everything tied to that misunderstanding was chaos.
‘Maybe that bastard Evil God is after me too.’
It sounded like he was praising himself, but Yuri seriously considered the possibility. If superiority of talent was determined by Hall clear times, Yuri, formerly Lee Su-hyeok, possessed the greatest talent among all the transmigrators who had crossed over so far.
That was probably why Lorelia had gone to such lengths to take charge of Lee Su-hyeok and teach him the Heavenly Art of Annihilating Evil and Sacred Flame Release. The Evil God was the one who brought transmigrators into this world, so perhaps he was after the exceptional Lee Su-hyeok among them.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing important.”
“Your expression says otherwise.”
“I will tell you later.”
For now, Yuri could not show the Sword Dragon the entire directive. He generated aura in his hand and destroyed the final page that mentioned UrMumSpammer.
“Gasp...”
While searching the room again, Yuri found a book.
<Art of Corpse Dissolution>
It was a name he had never heard before. No skill with that name existed in the game either.
<Eternal Thirst>
The moment Yuri saw the name of the magic written after flipping through the opening pages, he muttered without realizing it.
“Insane.”
He did not know the magic formula called Art of Corpse Dissolution, but he knew Eternal Thirst.
[Herein Rudella, the Corpse Immortal, uses the curse of Eternal Thirst.]
It was the debuff the Corpse Immortal, the mid-boss before meeting the Heavenly Demon, unleashed the instant battle began. It reduced HP and MP regeneration to negative values. If one failed to evade Eternal Thirst, health and mana would steadily drop even while standing still.
The book was fairly thick, but Eternal Thirst was the only spell written in it. The understanding and formulas required to deploy a single spell exceeded Yuri’s imagination. Even when he read it with focus, no “understanding” came to him as it did with common magic.
It was magic of an absurdly high level. Yuri swallowed and read the book again.
Eternal Thirst. This magic gathered the life force from a designated area. It extracted not only natural energy, but the very vital energy held by living beings. Those with a high enough tier could resist, but trees and grass without such resistance would wither and die the moment the area was designated.
The life force gathered that way became the caster’s.
‘This magic is insane.’
The highest-level magic Yuri had learned so far was Elena’s Heinderga Magic Formula. It was said to be magic that could aim beyond the sixth tier, but it could not even be compared to the Eternal Thirst of the Art of Corpse Dissolution.
This was truly the magic of an archmage. It was not magic learned in order to become an archmage, but magic newly created by an archmage after reaching that realm.
‘The Withered Crone could not use Eternal Thirst.’
Of course. No matter how hard a sixth-tier mage like the Withered Crone tried, directly casting Eternal Thirst was impossible. The magic the Withered Crone had used in battle began with Rudella magic and amounted only to imitations of the spells in the Art of Corpse Dissolution. Not one spell the Withered Crone used surpassed the Art of Corpse Dissolution.
No matter how much of a genius Yuri was, understanding the Art of Corpse Dissolution and using Eternal Thirst at his current level was impossible. But once he had the required tier, he would be able to use it someday.
‘To think I obtained one of the Corpse Immortal’s spells.’
Corpse manipulation was too grotesque for him to want to learn, but he had coveted necromancy. Commanding and using souls disgusted him on an instinctive level, but he wanted it because he could consume commanded souls to restore his health.
Now that he had become a martial artist who fought with his bare hands, he needed to secure every means of improving his durability that he could.
It also aligned with UrMumSpammer’s character concept.
A build completed around a penalty skill that abandoned armor.
Stacked additional stats. Blessings granted according to the flow of battle. An evasion rate beyond the system’s limits. High-powered skills that consumed health.
To maintain that build, he needed the health regeneration and life steal that burst forth under the berserk state granted when he was near death. If he acquired Rudella necromancy that restored health by consuming souls, it could replace that health regeneration and life steal.
He no longer needed necromancy. Eternal Thirst from the Art of Corpse Dissolution, created by the Corpse Immortal, was an upgraded version of necromancy. He could not use it yet, but once he could, he would be able to extract life force itself over a wide area.
In other words, he would become much harder to kill.
“Yuri-nim, your expression is creepy.”
Haryeong suddenly spoke as Yuri grinned at the book on the Art of Corpse Dissolution. Yuri quickly composed his expression and began memorizing its contents.
The book was thick, and there was much to memorize. But he had to memorize it. The Sword Dragon had said Yuri could take the spoils, but he might change his mind over a magic book of this value. Yuri needed to memorize everything perfectly in case the Art of Corpse Dissolution was taken from him in the worst-case scenario.
Fortunately, though Yuri could not understand the magic, he could memorize it. Feeling dizzy, Yuri grinned. The sensation of the formulas themselves melting into his mind. Yuri was grateful for a transmigrator’s talent as he closed the Art of Corpse Dissolution.
“Are you that happy?”
Yuri had only just composed himself, but a grin spread across his face again. Seeing him smile like that, Haryeong put both hands on her waist again.
“Who is it thanks to?”
“I love you.”
He was so happy that the words came out on their own. Haryeong’s eyes widened at those words. She looked at Yuri with her lips parted for a moment, then gave a brief cough and took a step back.
“This is troubling.”
“What?”
“I have loyalty to the young lady as well. Forbidden love. Immoral love. The forbidden fruit that would leave me unable to call the young lady ‘young lady.’ If I entered such a relationship with Yuri-nim, the young lady would become not Mad Thunder, but a crazy bitch. Hmm... That is rather interesting and appealing too.”
“Th-that is not the kind of love I meant.”
“Love is love. Is there another kind of love? Are you a bastard who tosses the word love around lightly, Yuri-nim?”
“No...”
“Of course, I am not a foolish woman who gets swept up by a single word, falls head over heels, gives away everything she has, then suffers alone after being left behind, never brushes her hair, never opens the curtains, does not eat properly, and cannot sleep properly. Therefore, I will reject Yuri-nim’s confession, which has no sincerity behind it.”
“I am sorry.”
Yuri apologized again.
“I understand that you like it enough to confess so suddenly. So, who is it thanks to?”
“It is thanks to Haryeong-nim.”
“Be grateful.”
Haryeong nodded and lowered her hands from her waist.
They searched the room further. Yuri had obtained an epic skill that had not even been implemented in the game, so he wondered whether there might be something else.
‘Could there be an elixir?’
He had never heard anything good about being called the 3.5 Billion Man or having luck, but after obtaining the Art of Corpse Dissolution, Yuri wondered whether luck might truly be on his side.
But no matter how thoroughly they searched, they found no elixir. Instead, they found the jewels and money the Withered Crone had gathered.
“This appears to be everything.”
Yuri swallowed his disappointment, stuffed the jewels and money into his bag, and held the crystal orb and directive in his hands. The Sword Dragon would be thrilled even if Yuri gave him only those two items.
‘But where is he?’
Surely he was not searching through the display cases one by one? Having found everything there was to find, Yuri left the basement and returned to the ground floor.
“Sword Dragon?”
There was no answer. Yuri tilted his head and searched the rooms.
The room filled with reagent bottles containing unknown potions and poison.
The Sword Dragon had collapsed in the middle of it.
“Is he an idiot...”
Haryeong, who normally kept such words to herself, muttered without realizing it.
Several reagent bottles lay scattered near the collapsed Sword Dragon.
Footnotes:
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