I Got an Omnipotent Angel - Chapter 113

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 113: Cha Hyeran

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(Recommended BGM: Siloam)

A dark~ night.

A pitch-black~ night.

A day at Holy Spirit Camp ended with recreation, meals, and an evening service.

Cha Hyeran sat in a chair at the very back.

“...”

Her hands rested neatly on her lap, but her fingertips trembled faintly.

The chapel at Holy Spirit Camp was packed with around two hundred people.

And all of them were elementary school students.

Aside from the supervising teachers and the church pastor, this many elementary school students had gathered in one place.

So many children, all singing a familiar hymn.

The verses she had only ever read silently in a hymnal she had happened upon were now being sung aloud in a grand chorus.

In North Korea, it would have been a counterrevolutionary act too unthinkable to even imagine.

There, they could not sing praises, read the Bible, or even own a cross.

The sight before her was something Cha Hyeran had dreamed of as a child... perhaps something she had not even dared to dream of.

“Whew. Teacher Cha Hyeran, have some water.”

“Teacher Baek Yohan...”

Cha Hyeran awkwardly drank the bottled water Yohan offered her.

“How is it? Looking after the kids is tiring, right?”

“N-no... I’m f-fine.”

The children could not learn that she was from North Korea.

As Cha Hyeran tried to conceal where she came from, Yohan shrugged.

“You don’t have to try so hard to hide it.”

“I’m simply from another region.”

“Well, saying you’re from North Korea would get you attention. They’d probably ask if you’ve seen Kim Jong Un.”

“You dare speak the Supreme Dignity’s name so casually! How rude!”

“Uh, you can do that here.”

It was not just his name. There were memes everywhere using all kinds of humiliating images of him.

“In a web novel that got adapted into a webtoon, he got trapped in a wall of flesh and subjected to tentacle play alongside all of Pyongyang.”

“What kind of grotesque erotic picture book is that?!”

“Anyway, it exists. It’s on Naver Webtoon. It should show up around episode eighty.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Anyway. Just loosen up a little.”

Cha Hyeran found Yohan’s words absurd, but she also wondered if she had really looked that tense.

Despite being trained as a soldier, was she still that clumsy?

Was that why Lieutenant Colonel Ri Gicheol and the others in her unit had always scolded her for being pathetic?

“How’s the camp?”

“Uh... I-it’s nice.”

“Oh, really? Aren’t you tired, looking after the kids?”

“...Well, I am, but.”

Cha Hyeran was simply moved by this moment.

For a believer who had been persecuted, moments were unfolding that could not have happened even if heaven and earth had been remade.

“People in South Korea can believe freely from such a young age?”

“Uh... I think most of them are forced to come.”

“Forced?”

“What do kids know? They come because their parents tell them to go to church.”

Cha Hyeran looked uneasy.

She had heard of people being forced not to believe, but being forced to believe was an idea she had never considered.

“Were you forced to believe too, Teacher Yohan?”

“I was the poster child for being forced to go to church. I thought the world would end if I skipped church.”

Well, the world would not end, but I might have.

“Still, it’s a good experience for them when they’re young. They make friends, go out together, sleep over. There aren’t many chances to do things like this in South Korean society these days.”

“I see...”

Faith here was light.

Not in a negative sense.

Free would be a better word than light.

It was a faith with no real interference beyond children complaining that their parents made them attend.

“Have you thought about staying here?”

“...!”

Cha Hyeran’s eyes widened at the sudden offer, but her expression quickly sank.

“You know I cannot.”

“Why not?”

“I... have to go back.”

There were many reasons, but the greatest was the safety of her parents.

“My parents were Jesus freaks... Christians. They were arrested by the State Security Department ten years ago and taken to a coal mine.”

Cha Hyeran had been sent to a reeducation camp, where her innate spiritual abilities had been discovered. That was how she had enlisted in the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau.

“Wait, how old were you then?”

“I was twelve.”

“Man, I thought you were young, but you’re only twenty-two? You’re a baby. A real baby.”

“...You’re not that old yourself, Teacher Yohan.”

“Compared to Comrade Teacher Cha Hyeran, I’m practically an old-timer, aren’t I?”

Cha Hyeran let out a small laugh at Yohan’s terrible imitation of a North Korean accent.

“We’re talking about something serious. Why are you making jokes?”

“It was getting too serious.”

Cha Hyeran sighed softly, then continued.

“If I don’t return, the Party will dispose of my parents.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“...Because of you.”

“Huh? Because of me?”

Yohan knew that North Korean sorcerers were after him, but he had not guessed that she had stayed behind because of him.

“Why are you pretending not to know? Didn’t you take the fire snake that the Republic had bled its people and resources dry to raise, and snatch the Mountain Lord away while we were trying to capture it?”

“Is that my fault?”

“...It is not.”

Yohan had done nothing wrong.

The people who picked a fight with him, the people with ulterior motives, had simply been hit by Yohan’s counterattack.

“We must produce results under the Party’s orders. Not only did we fail to do that, we also lost the Party’s property...”

Cha Hyeran could not finish the sentence.

They needed an achievement to replace it. That achievement would be abducting Gari Bodhisattva... in other words, Baek Yohan, to North Korea.

Looking at Yohan, Cha Hyeran asked once more.

“Could you... return the fire snake?”

“Why? Do you think getting that back would let you convince them to let you return?”

“...I will try.”

“Will it work?”

“...”

Cha Hyeran fell silent at Yohan’s question.

No, it would not work. Ri Gicheol would oppose it to the end.

At the very least, she would be punished.

The promise she had received from the Party, that if she served faithfully for twenty years, the director of the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau would get her parents out of the coal mine, would slip further away as well.

“Want to hear a better offer?”

“A better... offer?”

Cha Hyeran stared at him with a puzzled expression.

* * *

At that very moment, the North Korean Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau was in uproar.

“W-what is this?! What the hell is this?! How did this happen?!”

Director Oh Man-gi of the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau personally rushed to the scene of the unexpected disaster.

The site was already utter chaos.

The bureau’s sorcerers had come pouring in, but they were turning their eyes away from the carnage before them.

The stench of blood was thick.

The Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau was where every sorcerer in North Korea was forcibly gathered.

Those dragged in against their will.

Those whose spiritual abilities had been awakened from childhood.

Among them, the Underground was something else entirely.

It was a battleground where every vile art was permitted.

If Director Oh Man-gi represented ordinary spiritual ability users, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva, who oversaw the Underground, was the kind of wicked being they should have fought.

It was a shadowy place where blood sorcery and human sacrifice were as commonplace as eating, where even the barest lines of decency could be crossed with the state’s full support.

Who could even permit human sacrifice in this day and age?

Only North Korea could raise blood sorcerers like these.

The Underground, controlled by Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva and her blood sorcerers, always reeked of rotten blood and decaying organs.

But today’s smell of blood was different.

“W-what is this...?! What is this?!”

They were all dead.

Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva and around sixty of her disciples in the underground shrine of the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau were all dead.

If they had simply been murdered, he might have suspected an internal power struggle within the bureau.

But the bodies were too clean.

Their throats had not been cut, nor had they been shot.

Every one of them had died after violently spewing blood from every opening in the human body, their eyes, noses, mouths, and ears.

“C-comrade Director...”

“Explain! Now!”

A field of corpses, all their blood vessels burst, every one bleeding from the seven orifices without exception.

The sorcerers investigating the scene struggled to explain.

“I-it appears they attempted a killing-curse ritual.”

“A killing-curse ritual?”

“Yes. Judging by the traces of the ritual, they tried to send a killing curse at a distant target.”

Oh Man-gi’s eyes narrowed.

“Who could Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva have targeted to make such a huge mess?!”

As Oh Man-gi roared, the sorcerer swallowed and answered.

“T-that is... we cannot find them.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“The killing curse... was definitely sent out, but... it returned.”

A killing curse was the most wicked and ominous art a shaman could perform.

Using the target’s name and a conduit, one sent forth killing intent.

But the risk was clear.

If the killing curse did not strike its target, it returned to its caster.

They said that if you sought revenge, you should dig two graves.

A killing-curse ritual was that kind of high-risk, high-reward art.

But this was different if Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva, North Korea’s greatest blood sorcerer, had sent the curse.

She had gone beyond equivalent exchange, offering excessive sacrifices while dozens of disciples sent out one killing curse together.

Even if the target possessed an enchanted artifact that could block a killing curse, or was an exceptionally powerful spiritual ability user, how could anyone turn back a killing-curse ritual on this scale?

Impossible.

Even if Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva had sent a killing-curse ritual at a shaman serving a mighty god, a human being could not withstand it.

How could one person possibly endure a killing-curse ritual on such an absurd scale?

It would be more believable if they had sent it at a demon, only to be mocked and counterattacked.

A human killing curse would not work on a supernatural being like a demon.

“But it failed. The killing curse returned.”

“Yes... The killing-curse ritual of sixty-one people returned... and killed every disciple bound together through the same blood and life force.”

When a killing curse failed, it returned with twice the power.

Even so, this scene of mass death could not be explained by a killing curse simply returning.

“Even if they were counterattacked... they died this horribly without being able to resist at all?”

It was not a question asked in expectation of an answer.

The corpses in front of him had already answered.

Oh Man-gi slowly approached Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.

Far more blood had spilled from her body than from the other disciples.

As the one who had led the killing-curse ritual, she must have received the greatest backlash.

It appeared that the Republic’s greatest spiritual ability user had been given at least a fleeting moment to resist.

But her choice had not been resistance.

“What... did you see?”

She had gouged out her own eyes.

As if she had seen something she was never meant to see.

Oh Man-gi turned around.

“If they sent a killing-curse ritual, there must have been a conduit for the target! Was there no conduit on the altar?!”

“...There was none.”

Then had they sent a killing-curse ritual while keeping even the conduit somewhere else?

Your arrogance went too far, Blood-Spirit Bodhisattva.

Now he had to clean up this foolish mess.

Oh Man-gi and the Paranormal Military Force Management Bureau declared a state of emergency and hurried to deal with the returned killing-curse ritual.

Not long after, though, they faced an incident that threw not only the bureau, but the North Korean authorities into complete turmoil.

* * *

A small city in northeastern China.

Despite the night rain, an old noodle shop remained open.

At an hour when hardly anyone came by, two men sat at the noodle stall.

“Anchovy noodles, please.”

“I was about to close... Pastor Go?”

The noodle shop owner’s eyes widened at the familiar Korean.

“Hello, Pastor Jo.”

At those words, the owner beamed and ushered the two inside.

“Come in first. Looks like I’ll have to close up for the day.”

There was nothing complicated about signaling that the shop was closed.