WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 112: Bible Camp (4)
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“Didn't you hear the two comrades over the radio, Lieutenant Colonel?”
“...I radioed them, but there was no response.”
“Is that so.”
Ri Gicheol answered Park Cheol, but his eyes kept darting toward Park Cheol's feet.
Was it just his imagination?
Nothing was clear in the dark grass.
To get a better look, he lured Park Cheol toward a streetlight. At the same time, he kept talking to avoid arousing Park Cheol's suspicion.
“What did you run into? I thought you said it was a tiger. Don't tell me it was the Mountain Lord?”
“My apologies. It was a mountain tiger.”
“A tiger?”
“Yes. I'm sorry for causing concern.”
“...”
One more step.
With Park Cheol behind him, Ri Gicheol didn't let down his guard.
Just a little farther.
The streetlight at the campgrounds was right ahead.
Step. Step.
As Ri Gicheol passed beneath the streetlight, a shadow naturally formed beneath him.
He took a few more steps, coaxing Park Cheol to come closer.
But then.
The footsteps behind him stopped.
“Comrade Park Cheol?”
“Lieutenant Colonel.”
He wasn't following.
Ri Gicheol slowly turned his head.
“Why aren't you coming?”
“Lieutenant Colonel. Why would someone infiltrating a place walk into the open?”
“...There aren't even any guards. Come on, follow me.”
“...”
“...”
Silence fell between them.
Park Cheol remained in the grass. Staring straight at Ri Gicheol, he grinned.
【You caught on?】
“You bastard. Even if you've become a Chang-gwi, you should've kept your loyalty to the Fatherland!”
Ri Gicheol raised his gun at Park Cheol.
Pop!
The short, distinctive crack of a silenced gunshot rang out, and the bullet tore through Park Cheol.
【Urk!】
The bullet that pierced Park Cheol was no ordinary round.
It was a spirit bullet, capable of killing ghosts.
Made by grinding up the blood and bones of people with spiritual abilities, it was effective even against a Chang-gwi's spirit body.
【Ri Gicheol, you bastard! Saving yourself alone...!】
“Of course I'm not like disposable trash such as you. Blame yourself for betraying the Fatherland.”
Having executed a traitor, Ri Gicheol quickly entered the campgrounds.
If Park Cheol had fallen to the Mountain Lord, Ri Myeonghui and Kim Jinhyeok were likely in the same state.
Only he remained now.
Should he retreat? No, it was already too late.
There was only one way for him to survive.
He had to subdue Gari Bodhisattva according to plan and abduct him to the North.
Once he had him under control, even those powerful familiars would no longer be a threat.
Ri Gicheol hurried deeper into the campgrounds.
Noisy sounds came from inside.
They said they had brought children, but the little brats were singing and dancing like crazy.
Should he take hostages?
No, that was impossible.
Looking closer, an Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost stood in the middle of the campgrounds, watching the area.
That mouth monster was surely protecting the children too.
“Doesn't matter. That's not what I'm after.”
He had already figured out where the lodgings were while observing the camp.
Gari Bodhisattva... He had learned that man's name was Baek Yohan, so all he needed was an object carrying his energy.
He had to find one.
“Phew...!”
Ri Gicheol looked toward a large hall-like space being used as lodging.
They said it was group lodging, and it seemed everyone had left their belongings there.
Fortunately for Ri Gicheol, the bags were organized by group.
[Yohan Group.]
“Is this it?”
Ri Gicheol found the group label matching Gari Bodhisattva's name and rummaged through the belongings.
He even found the backpack Yohan had been carrying while he observed the camp.
He needed to find the clearest conduit for sending a killing curse...
“Hmm...”
Toothbrushes, toothpaste, clothes... There was nothing remarkable among the items brought for an overnight stay.
The deeper an object's connection to the target, the more perfect a conduit it became.
Everyday necessities went without saying, and clothes wouldn't work well if they were too new.
It had to be something the target was attached to...
Or something they had used for a long time.
“...”
Ri Gicheol froze as he looked at what he held.
It was clearly old and worn, so it had to have been used for a long time.
More importantly, its owner had worn it close to the body for ages, building up a connection...
Yes, nothing could be more certain than this.
Ri Gicheol pocketed it and was about to leave the lodging when a voice called out.
“Huh? Who are you?”
“...!”
It was a child.
The child stood at the entrance with a young man who seemed to be one of the supervising teachers.
This was bad.
If he was caught here, he wouldn't have time to prepare the ritual!
Ri Gicheol spotted a window.
Without hesitation, he threw himself toward it.
Crash!
“Underwear thief!!”
* * *
Ri Gicheol gripped the satellite phone and waited for the other party to answer.
After a wait that made one second feel like ten years, the call connected.
[Are you ready?]
“B-Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva!”
The presence on the other end was Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.
There was even a saying that while the Kim family was the supreme authority of the Republic, the Cho family was the supreme authority of the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau.
A monster the Republic had raised by any means necessary after an unprecedented humiliation.
A being who ground up the people to perform sinister, powerful sorcery.
The strength of those spells could not be compared to the crude Black Knot sorcerers of South Korea.
After all, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva received the full support of the people and the Party.
Which meant she was the only way to turn this situation around.
“I've made the preparations. Can you... do it?”
[Are you questioning whether I can?]
“N-no. I wasn't doubting your abilities, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.”
Ri Gicheol immediately backed down, and Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva seemed pleased as she explained the method she had prepared.
[My sixty disciples and I are preparing a killing-curse ritual. As long as you've properly secured the object, there will be no problem.]
“You're going that far...!”
Yes, a killing-curse ritual performed by Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva and her sixty disciples.
This would kill even the granddaddy of all Black Knots.
“B-but, is this all right? The target isn't supposed to die...”
[Don't worry. Like Lieutenant Colonel Ri Gicheol said, isn't he an extraordinary sorcerer? He will make a very powerful medium. We can't afford to kill him carelessly.]
Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva's words gave Ri Gicheol hope.
Yes. He would make up for the mission failure by abducting Gari Bodhisattva to the North.
Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva would secure Gari Bodhisattva, who could become an exceptionally powerful medium.
It was a deal founded on clear mutual benefit.
[The killing-curse ritual will tear through his mind. He must possess powerful spiritual power, so he won't die.]
“You can control it that precisely?”
[Since I'm not personally conducting the ritual while holding the conduit, all the more so. You could say this complicated method is better suited to achieving our goal.]
Perhaps this situation was a blessing in disguise.
At that moment.
Deep in some mountain in North Korea, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva lowered the phone in the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau’s underground sadang, a traditional shrine classified as top secret even within North Korea.
“It is time.”
Inside the shrine, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva and her sixty disciples knelt.
The candles lined around them flickered with sinister red light.
“Ri Gicheol. Begin the killing-curse ritual with us now.”
[U-understood.]
At the same time, Ri Gicheol built an altar and shared their sorcery.
Ri Gicheol would perform the actual spell, but Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva and sixty sorcerers would support him in a joint killing-curse ritual.
Whoosh!
The prepared candles flared up.
What fueled them was sinister sorcery and the spiritual power of sixty-one people.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The sound of wooden percussion blocks echoed.
It was no ordinary sound.
Whenever it rang out, the talismans stuck to the shrine walls wriggled, and the red ink letters written on the yellow demon paper moved like living insects.
Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva dipped her brush in red blood.
Sticky ink made from human flesh soaked the brush, and she wrote a three-character name across the yellow demon paper.
Baek Yohan.
Since he was a Jesus freak, there was no need to know the Chinese characters of his name.
His family registry would have included the characters, but for Christians, the name Yohan mattered because it carried on the name of one of Christ's twelve disciples.
The moment that name was written on the yellow demon paper, a tremendous tremor ran through the talisman.
[Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva! The underwear, no! The conduit is shaking!]
“It is the same here.”
The talisman bearing Baek Yohan's name shook violently.
The fact that it connected with the conduit through sorcery proved they had properly captured Baek Yohan's name, and it also proved that his power was extraordinary.
“He really isn't ordinary. We need to hurry.”
Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva rushed to complete the spell.
No matter how powerful he was, this side had sixty-one sorcerers forged by grinding up the flesh of the people.
The moment Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva held the talisman to the red flame of a burning candle, it went up in flames, and all sixty-one sorcerers launched the killing-curse ritual at once.
* * *
The instant Ri Gicheol unleashed the killing-curse ritual with Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva, he felt the world turn black.
It was a space dark as pitch.
Like a city-wide blackout beneath storm clouds during a lunar eclipse.
“W-what is this?”
“Ri Gicheol?”
“Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva?!”
Ri Gicheol panicked at the familiar voice in that world of darkness.
Why was Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva here?
It wasn't just Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.
“M-master!”
“W-where are we?!”
Her disciples, who should have been in the underground shrine of the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau, had been dragged into this black space as well.
“What the hell is going on? Is a killing-curse ritual supposed to be like this?”
“No, no... This can't be... This can't be happening...”
Something was wrong.
He felt anxious.
A chill ran down his spine.
Was the feeling of an unknown gaze just his imagination?
No, anyone would feel the same in a space filled with nothing but darkness.
Slither!
“What was that?! What was that just now?!”
Something.
Something wriggled in the darkness.
Panicking, Ri Gicheol demanded an answer from Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.
“Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva! Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva! Explain what the hell is going on...!”
Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva, standing across from him in the black space, looked as if she had lost her mind.
She was the sorcerer with the strongest spiritual sense present.
The greatest sorcerer North Korea had raised with all its resources.
If even she was this shaken, then what could...
“O-oh! Great One! Great God! Mercy...! Please, have mercy...!”
Something had gone wrong.
That much, he knew.
More than that, what were these gazes he had felt from the beginning?
One by one.
Then three or four at a time.
They began to notice something and tremble.
Ri Gicheol realized that all their gazes were fixed on the sky.
He followed their eyes and looked up.
He felt the stares of the eyeballs.
“Ah.”
It itched.
It itched, it itched, it itched.
Wherever those gazes touched his skin, it itched so maddeningly that he couldn't endure it.
They scratched their bloodless cheeks raw as blood poured from every opening in their bodies, and Ri Gicheol and Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva saw a huge mouth open.
【Truly, truly, I say to you.】
Be afraid.
* * *
The moonlight was beautiful.
Free from the city's pollution, I sat in a mountain valley with good water and clean air, looking up at the sky.
Unlike the dull sky of daily life, this place, where I could wander among countless stars, felt like another world.
“This vibe's so good~”
I opened a can of cola and raised it toward the moon.
“Cheers~”
Glug, glug. Ahhh, nice!
“Teacher Yohan! The kids are done with prayer time! Hurry over!”
“Ah, yes~”
Whew, my brief break was over.
The first day of Holy Spirit Camp was already pretty intense.
“Gari, you can have the rest.”
Clack, clack!
I poured the fizzy drink into Gari's open mouth.
Gari liked chicken and beer too, but there'd be no alcohol today. We had to look after the kids.
“Teacher Yohan! Hurry on over!”
“There it is, the dialect again, Ms. Cha Hyeran.”
I turned my head and looked beyond the campgrounds.
After confirming the large figures there, I nodded and went back into the hall.
“Oh Lord! To You! I give my thanksssss!!”
“Siloam! For giving it to meeeee!!!!”
A dark night.
A pitch-black night.
Even if they were caught by an Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost or carried off by a tiger.
For the Lord's children, it was just night.
An ordinary night.
Footnotes:
Closing camp-song passage: A parody of “Siloam,” a Korean gospel song.
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