WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Got a Gallery in the Wild ◈
Chapter 163: The World Is Wide (2)
──────
A successor was important to any faction.
People weren't immortal. One day, they would return to nature's embrace.
Everyone knew that fate awaited them, so they all tried to leave something behind.
A successor was part of that. A successor with strong legitimacy was vital to any organization.
If that legitimacy was lacking, they would often face opposition from retainers or subordinates, making it difficult to inherit the position.
In that sense, Geumjang had originally been designated as the successor to the Blood Demon, Wi Hochang.
Not only had Geumjang been the first subordinate Wi Hochang accepted, but Geumjang was loyal as well.
Geumjang also had more than enough leadership to guide others, so the remnants of the Blood Cult had intended to follow without complaint.
That was before the Heavenly Demon suddenly appeared and snapped Geumjang's neck.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
An aged voice echoed through the room.
They faced one another, relying on a single lantern.
When the elder seated in the place of honor spoke, all they received was heavy silence.
“Elder Geumjang was defeated by the Heavenly Demon. Who are we supposed to follow now?”
The others said nothing, even in the face of that question, which was nearly a lament. They couldn't answer.
The Blood Cult's long-awaited revival was on the verge of crumbling before it even began.
They had only managed to gather here because of the post Geumjang had uploaded to the Gallery.
It had been an ambitious post, declaring they would gather at the sacred site and announce the Blood Cult's return.
Not long after it went up, though, a video was posted of the Heavenly Demon toying with Geumjang.
“...Before deciding who to follow, we need to worry about whether we'll even survive as a group.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“As Elder Taejung said, we have no suitable successor. We've even lost the person holding us together.”
The words of a relatively young middle-aged member drew groans from the others.
Nothing they said was wrong. Far from achieving its revival, the Blood Cult’s continued existence was in danger.
“More importantly, we have almost no new initiates. There's barely any young blood left.”
The Blood Cult currently had almost no initiates.
The Blood Demon might have been famous on the Gallery, but only as a Gallery meme.
In the past, those who joined the Blood Cult had mostly been people captivated by Wi Hochang's martial prowess.
The War of Righteousness and Evil had taken place fifty years ago. Ten years would have been one thing, but half a century had passed.
Even people who had been in their twenties at the time had become gray-haired elders. Those who had already been adults back then would be even older.
More than half the elders had died during the War of Righteousness and Evil, and half of those who remained had later died from their injuries or old age.
Even the cult members considered young were at least in their fifties. That said everything.
“That's... a serious problem. Without new faces, the Blood Cult will naturally disappear. Do you know why this happened?”
“Hmph. Isn't it because those green little brats don't understand the Blood Cult's majesty?”
“Back in our day, there were as many people wanting to join as there were fish in the sea...”
“It's all that damned Martial Arts Alliance's fault.”
No, it was because of them. The middle-aged member secretly curled their lips in a sneer.
They were drunk on past glory and couldn't see reality for what it was.
When the Blood Demon had still been around, all they had to do was follow. Now the Blood Demon had undergone Feathered Ascension to Immortality.
The Martial Arts Alliance, victor of the War of Righteousness and Evil, had also exposed every ugly truth about the Blood Cult.
The Martial Arts Alliance had plenty of filth hidden behind it too, but the winner took everything while the loser got trampled. That was how things worked.
The Blood Demon had massacred civilians, after all. The Blood Cult was an unsavory organization that would never earn much goodwill.
That was reality, and even the Gallery had gotten out of control. Information of every kind had spread around, while self-proclaimed Blood Cultists, real or fake, had become the Gallery's poster children for lunacy and kept stirring up trouble.
By now, bringing up the Blood Cult at all would get people mocking them with comments about cockroaches showing up.
“Quiet, all of you! You know complaining like this won't accomplish anything! Come up with a solution!”
“If we show them our martial might, just as the Blood Demon did...”
“Elder Geumjang was toyed with by the Heavenly Demon, and you think we can do it? We'd only make the Heavenly Demon look more impressive.”
Arguments flew back and forth, but no proper solution emerged.
They were elders who had lost most of their strength and wits.
In Gallery terms, they were old farts trapped in a bygone age.
“Isn't there something more important than that?”
“What is it?”
“Who are we choosing as the successor? Whatever else happens, we need someone to lead us.”
“...”
“Let's decide on the successor first.”
Silence settled over the room at those words.
They all knew that no matter how much they argued, they would never reach a unified opinion.
So they would choose a successor and move according to that person's will. That was the idea.
“Ahem. With even Elder Geumjang gone...”
“Why not have Elder Taejung take the position?”
“I'm already too old. This frail body will return to the earth before long.”
“Then who would you name as the successor?”
“Why don't we do it the Blood Cult way?”
The Blood Cult way was simple. Fight until one side died.
It had been a fairly reasonable method when the Blood Cult was at the height of its power, but not anymore.
Their numbers were so small now that every single member was precious.
“We should refrain from that. Fighting among ourselves would be a problem, and it would leave a huge stain on the successor's legitimacy.”
“Still, nobody had legitimacy as strong as Geumjang's...”
The Blood Cult's legitimacy was simple. It depended on how much teaching someone had received from the Blood Demon, Wi Hochang.
Geumjang had even exchanged martial arts with the Blood Demon, making Geumjang the best candidate.
Of course, that was meaningless now.
In that sense, the one with the strongest legitimacy was...
“Come to think of it, wasn't there an ape the Blood Demon personally taught?”
“Not a monkey, an ape. More specifically, a gorilla.”
“You can't possibly be suggesting we make that lowly creature our successor?”
No matter how far they had fallen, they were still human.
They couldn't help feeling repulsed by the idea of making a mere ape their successor.
It was an issue beyond pride, so the Blood Cultists were half-convinced, but...
“Is there even one person here who inherited the Blood Demon's martial arts?”
“...”
“We received a little instruction...”
“But nobody inherited them as completely as those gorillas did. If anything, their martial arts would be superior. They certainly would not be lacking.”
“Even so, gorillas...”
“We would only be naming one our successor. Do we have to worship it?”
The elder's meaning was clear. Naming a successor and revering one were two separate things.
They could take everything useful from the ape, then secretly kill it.
Once they obtained its martial arts, that would be the end of it.
It could even speak, so learning from it wouldn't be difficult.
“That is true...”
“It's not a bad option.”
“At most, it's an ape.”
With something that barely counted as persuasion, they began leaning toward making a gorilla their successor.
After all, no matter how smart a gorilla was, it couldn't be smarter than a human.
“Shouldn't we make the Chief Gorilla the successor? It's the strongest one.”
“What nonsense! Didn't you hear? That gorilla exiled its white gorilla sibling! The Blood Demon was expelled for looking different too. We can never accept it!”
“Where did you hear that? I've never heard anything about it.”
“There was a post about it on the Gallery.”
“You believe that?”
Even the Blood Cult itself no longer had reliable information about the Blood Demon.
And so, the Moron Olympics began.
The Chief Gorilla or Kkobong.
Martial might or legitimacy(?), and so on.
It should have been a worthless debate, but...
‘What kind of fucking nonsense is this?’
To the middle-aged member, it was an absurd farce.
The Blood Cult's shortcomings had been obscured by the Blood Demon's accomplishments. The organization itself had always been somewhat lacking.
There had been intelligent people in the past, but even they had disappeared in the War of Righteousness and Evil.
There was nobody left who could be called the brains of the operation.
More accurately, there was nobody who could grasp reality.
Where had the smart people gone? They had all joined the Martial Arts Alliance or the Demonic Cult.
The only difference was whether someone accepted the system or was dissatisfied with it.
Nobody in their right mind would join the Blood Cult.
‘What do they think the Forest of Four Seasons is?’
The middle-aged member had too much to say, so they couldn't say any of it.
They couldn't even tell where things had first gone wrong.
Fine, naming a gorilla as successor was one thing. But how were they supposed to bring it back?
Were they really planning to enter the Forest of Four Seasons themselves, an inescapable hell and purgatory?
A great deal had become known about the Forest of Four Seasons recently because of Grylls, but it was only the tip of the iceberg.
Nobody knew what dangers lurked inside, or more importantly, whether it was even possible to escape.
“Um... There's something we need to consider first.”
“Ah, right. What do you think?”
“Not that. The gorillas are in the Forest of Four Seasons. Forget finding them, could we even make it back out?”
“Getting back out alone would be difficult.”
Getting back out alone would be difficult. In other words...
“Then why don't we all enter the Forest of Four Seasons?”
“All together...?”
“Yes. Our Blood Cult becomes stronger the more of us gather. The Forest of Four Seasons should be no different.”
“...”
“Besides, there's already a survivor inside. We can get support from that person.”
There was no plan.
The middle-aged member could tell that going in with a pack of idiots who had no plan would be little different from suicide.
Why not just say they should all hold hands and go die together?
Did they not know the Forest of Four Seasons' reputation, or did they think this was some noble pilgrimage?
The world was wide and full of lunatics, sure, but this went far beyond that.
‘No. The Blood Cult itself is a den of lunatics, isn't it?’
And they were inside that den themselves. The middle-aged member parted their lips slightly.
They looked as though a crushing wave of reality had hit them. It was as if a pale soul were drifting out of their mouth.
The elder must have mistaken it for admiration, because they smiled with satisfaction and addressed the cult members.
“Then we've narrowed our opinions down to one. Still, the Forest of Four Seasons is known as a hellscape beyond human bounds. We should prepare thoroughly.”
“Let's do that. We should gather as many cult members as possible before we go.”
“I don't like the idea of accepting a gorilla as our successor, but... it can't be helped.”
“What do you intend to do when you meet that survivor?”
“The one who made our successor into a servant naturally deserves heavenly punishment.”
Whether their minds had grown rigid, whether they truly believed they could return alive from the Forest of Four Seasons, or whether they were simply empty-headed idiots who didn't think at all...
“So what will you do?”
“Ah... I think I should return to my hometown for a while.”
“What for?”
“I heard there's someone who wants to join.”
“Oh. That's good news. Very well.”
On the day the Blood Cult began preparing for its journey to the Forest of Four Seasons, the middle-aged member ran away from the Blood Cult.
* * *
[Post title] Title) It Was Awful Being Together
[Post] (Photo of gray-haired elders chatting and laughing)
[Post] Let's never meet again, you fucking old fossils.
└ Who are they? Your superior?
└ Yeah, they're my superiors, but there really was nothing but old farts there. It was fucking miserable, so I left.
└ You had it rough. People from the Central Plains are especially full of old farts.
└ So what are you going to do now?
└ I'm thinking of going home and farming. I used to be pretty strong in my day, so it shouldn't be too hard.
└ Why do those people look so evil? They have some seriously vicious faces.
└ Now you see how hard my life was, right?
Apparently, somebody had quit today. I found out while browsing the Gallery.
There was occasional talk about the Blood Cult entering the Forest of Four Seasons, but I set that aside.
“Come on. Repeat after me. Park.”
“Park.”
“Jong.”
“Jong.”
“Hyeok.”
“Hyeok.”
“And all together?”
“Moron.”
“Fuck. Where'd you hear that word?”
“Park Jong-hyeok.”
“Why, you...”
How was I supposed to make this gorilla bastard listen to me?
The world was wide and full of lunatics, but I never thought I'd be verbally taunted by a gorilla.
‘It's definitely smart if it's messing with me like this.’
If I showed people even this, wouldn't the Blood Cult make a huge fuss about wanting to serve it as their successor?
‘Nah. No way.’
That would be beyond lunacy. They would be worse than gorillas.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
