WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 118: Malevolent Site - 2
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KABOOOOOM!!
The lead vehicle flipped over, and a pillar of fire shot into the air.
Its fuel tank seemed to have exploded too. The vehicle was lifted into the air by a chain of explosions.
Windows shattered. Metal plating tore apart.
Before we could react, a second wave of attacks rained down on us.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions erupted one after another all across the road.
The convoy turned into chaos in an instant.
"Attack!"
"RPGs!!"
When the lead vehicle stopped, the SUV behind it sharply turned, its tires screaming.
That split-second decision saved us.
An RPG flew through the stopped lead vehicle and the spot we had just been.
"Get off the road! Get out and check our positions!"
"Damn it! How did they know to ambush us?!"
After the RPGs struck one after another, bullets poured through the thick cloud of dust.
At least we were riding in military vehicles, so they offered some basic bulletproof protection.
"Uh... Can these things stop machine guns too?"
"They can stop rifle rounds because they're armored vehicles, but machine guns and anti-tank rockets are another story."
The Serbian armored vehicle at the front must have been their top priority. It was burning fiercely.
We had to counterattack too, but there was one problem.
We had no weapons.
"Damn it! All the cargo is still at the airport!"
"Don't we at least have rifles?!"
Nobody had weapons. We had planned to travel in the vehicles, so we had arranged for the equipment to be delivered separately.
But I was different.
"Gari, pour them out!"
Clack!
Gari began pouring weapons out of its mouth.
There were all kinds of them, from rifles and machine guns to anti-tank weapons.
Why had Gari swallowed so many weapons? Because I had brought weapons for Pastor Go, the deaconesses, and the deacons too.
"Give the spare weapons to those people too!"
Clack! Clack!
Gari poured weapons out for the foreign exorcists hiding behind the armored vehicles.
"What? Rifles suddenly appearing out of thin air..."
"A familiar?"
Some could see Gari, while others could not. What mattered was that weapons were now in their hands.
"Sisters! Show those damned whores of Satan Jesus's firebolts!"
The exorcists began their counterattack.
I had worried because they specialized in exorcism rituals, but from priests to monks to nuns, everyone knew how to handle a gun.
I picked up a K2C rifle and returned fire too, but it was my first time using a K2 with a scope mounted on the rail, so it felt awkward.
"Ah, my aim sucks."
I fired a few shots, then quickly gave up.
Besides, we already had enough firepower...
【Pooooooo!!】
Eight-Foot Sister was doing the work of a hundred people...
"Gari, bite them!"
Clack!
Gari ran out. Soon, Mountain Lord transformed into a tiger as large as a house and charged out too.
I considered following them, but Kohaku grabbed me.
"My lord, let's just watch."
"Should we?"
Going into the middle of flying RPGs and rifle rounds was way too risky.
* * *
"We got them good, Master."
Beyond the wreckage of the burning vehicles, people dressed in tactical gear wore vicious smiles.
"That guy's intel was right. We hit the jackpot."
Ivan Petrovich, the wizard behind the ambush, did not let down their guard as they watched through night-vision goggles.
"So many of them came. The Cyril Exorcist Society and the Cappadocian Saints Society... Well, they got fried in the firestorm."
"Even exorcists are still human. Humans are best at making things that kill humans."
Exorcism rituals and banishing arts were methods for dealing with monsters, ghosts, and evil foes.
They were powers that only worked under specific conditions, when affinities, compatibility, preparation time, and spiritual combinations all lined up.
Human weapons were different.
With pure destructive force alone, they surpassed every kind of spell and magic.
That was why it was common for modern exorcists to carry firearms.
Still, they could not have expected an ambush on this scale.
Modern exorcists had a network so tight-knit that they might as well have shared the same fate.
Even now, demons constantly sought to destroy the human world and descend among innocent sheep. Their field of operation was the entire planet.
That tight network cooperated with governments and military facilities worldwide, allowing them to gather quickly in emergencies like this.
That was their weak point.
They had used the nearest military airfield to gather as quickly as possible, which made them easy to ambush.
"Keep pressing them with firepower. Once we unload every rocket we brought, those bastards will...?!"
Boom!
That was when a massive presence passed over the heads of the demon worshippers lying in ambush.
KABOOOOOM!!
It struck the ground right afterward with a deafening blast.
An armor-piercing explosive round?
And one on the level of an autocannon shell.
How could anyone possibly fire a shell meant for an aircraft-mounted autocannon?
"A-Autocannon! It's an autocannon!"
"What?! We took out every armored vehicle at the front! They were supposed to be unarmed!"
Autocannon rounds came pouring down.
The sheer weight of the firepower was obvious even as they passed by.
This was not something an individual could handle.
A heavy weapon with this much firepower would need to be mounted on an armored vehicle just to fire it.
Among the Serbian ground vehicles, there was no fire-support vehicle with this much firepower...
【Pooooooo!!】
The Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost?!
Why was a yokai from the Far East here?
"A familiar?!"
A familiar that huge was carrying a heavy weapon.
It was an unimaginable combination. Even if a familiar moved around in a spirit body, the weapon itself was not a spirit body. Where the hell had it come from?
"M-Master! They're returning fire!"
"What?! Where did they get weapons?!"
They had launched the surprise attack because the others lacked equipment, but now the priests and nuns had begun returning fire.
Where had they pulled all those weapons from?
Ivan was too rattled to even stick their head out past the barricade when...
Clackclackclack!
Aaargh!
Crunch! Crack!
It sounded like teeth grinding against one another.
Then came a brief death cry from the darkness.
"Dmitri?"
Ivan raised their head, calling one of their disciples by name.
Drip!
Blood poured down.
A limp human torso was swallowed into empty air.
It was like watching a Komodo dragon chew and swallow its prey, a savage, grisly scene straight out of the wild.
The smiles vanished from the demon worshippers' faces.
"W-What the hell is that..."
"Master! Something is! Something is...!"
Splat!
It was the sound of a person bursting apart.
Flesh crushed beneath a heavy mass. Bones shattered. Then, in the end, the body burst like a watermelon.
Grrrrr...
A distinct low-frequency rumble that made the whole body tingle.
When Ivan stiffly turned around, one of their disciples came into view.
【Masteeer...】
"Viktor..."
The disciple, looking like a corpse with their body grotesquely twisted, staggered closer.
Not just Viktor, but the other disciples too.
And behind them stood a tiger looking down with a stern gaze.
"C-Chang-gwi! Did you turn my disciples into Chang-gwi?!"
The tiger did not react at all to Ivan's furious cry.
Ignoring Ivan's very existence, Mountain Lord asked permission from someone beyond them.
【Lord Gari, that one looks like they have plenty of information to extract. It would benefit my lord if I killed them.】
Clack! Clack!
Once permission was granted, Mountain Lord's enormous claw rose.
Slash!
* * *
After the battle ended, we transported the bodies and gathered in the outskirts of Belgrade.
"The casualties... are severe."
"Those damn bastards had been hiding there in advance."
Pastor Park was among the high-ranking figures who seemed to have issued this summons.
"Pastor Go, Yohan! Is everyone all right?"
"Yes, we were lucky. Yohan also did a lot."
"What did I do? The kids did everything."
Looking at the gloomy exorcists, I was not sure whether I should feel relieved that our team had suffered almost no losses.
"So many precious brothers and sisters have gone to the Lord. They were not meant to leave us like this..."
A priest? Or someone who looked like one, standing beside Pastor Park, closed his eyes and prayed for them.
"I have met Pastor Go and the team members before... And who is that young brother?"
"My name is Baek Yohan."
His Korean was fluent. I had been wondering if I would have to speak Latin, so that was a relief.
"So you are Brother Baek Yohan... Pastor Park has told me much about you."
"Really?"
"My name is Rozinald. I serve as the Grand Master of the Vatican's Templar Order. I was the one who authorized firing Dragon in the last battle."
"Ah!"
I had wondered what kind of group made blessed bunker busters to hunt yokai. So these guys had made them?
Just looking at Pastor Go in our own group, Christian exorcists were clearly a group that had modernized really well.
"Ah, before that, there is something I would like to show you."
I called Mountain Lord over from among the people who had come with me.
A sultry white-haired beauty approached while smoking a long pipe, and he immediately recognized that she was not an ordinary human.
"A yokai?"
"That's right. Is there a problem?"
"There is no problem if you are Brother Yohan's familiar."
"And if I'm not?"
Why was she suddenly acting like this?
A huge man who had been waiting behind him responded to her confrontational tone.
Since when had he been there?
He looked even bigger than Pastor Park.
"If you are a monster hostile to humans, I will simply kill you. The Lord's love and mercy are directed only toward His sons and daughters."
"Oh? Does a Catholic priest have what it takes to defeat a tiger from the East?"
As the two faced each other in a strange standoff, Kohaku grabbed my pant leg.
"Kohaku?"
"...I smell blood. A very strong smell of animal blood."
At that, I looked at the priest who was even bigger than Pastor Park.
Sure enough... there was a scent.
Judging by the spiritual scent, it was not the scent of an evil being. It was more like death had soaked into his skin.
Only then did I understand why Mountain Lord and Kohaku were reacting like that.
Like dogs trembling before a dogcatcher, their noses found the scent coming from the priest utterly threatening.
"You're on the same team, so don't fight."
I gave Mountain Lord's shoulder a little thump, then pulled her back. She obediently stepped away.
The priest smiled brightly at that.
"You certainly have her under control. She is an extraordinary great yokai. That is impressive for someone so young."
"Your Korean is good."
"Haha, one of my teachers was Korean, so I studied hard."
With a build that massive and such a friendly attitude, it was hard to believe he was the same person who had just been squaring off with Mountain Lord.
"I am Gabriele Santoro. I serve as a Paladin in the Templar Order."
"Oh, like Pastor Kim?"
"You know Pastor Kim? Well, if you belong to Holy Temple Church, of course you would."
It seemed Pastor Kim was famous even in Europe.
"By the way, this is serious. I never expected there to be an ambush."
"Ah, there is something I need to tell you about that."
That was why I had called Mountain Lord over.
Mountain Lord soon summoned the Chang-gwi under her command.
【Gasp! H-How did you do this?!】
【Master!】
They were Ivan, the wizard who had attacked us, and Ivan's disciples.
Mountain Lord had killed them and reduced them to Chang-gwi. They were now nothing more than slave ghosts I could summon at will.
【W-What have you done?! I gave my soul to Him! My soul cannot be controlled by some mere yokai!】
"Ah, I have converted and received the great king's anointing. That means my soul is of a higher rank than before. Hehehe~"
"What? You kept asking me to baptize you because of that?"
Mountain Lord had said that since she was converting anyway, she wanted to make it official, so Pastor Go and I had conducted a baptismal rite with holy water and holy oil.
It seemed that was why she had grown powerful enough to seize a demon's slaves, souls she normally could not control.
Then what was Mountain Lord now... a Holy Tiger?
"Anyway, these Chang-gwi obey my commands, so ask them whatever you want. For example... about a traitor?"
"A traitor?"
"Are you saying there is a traitor among us?"
The gathered exorcists had been attacked at precisely the right point.
Their route using the military airport had been kept secret.
There was a traitor.
That was Mountain Lord's conclusion.
And right now, I could smell the traitor's stench.
Footnotes:
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