I Got an Omnipotent Angel - Chapter 119

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 119: Malevolent Site - 3

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Our route had been exposed beforehand, and we'd walked into an ambush.

This place was packed with nothing but exorcists, yet it reeked.

There was a traitor here.

That was my conclusion.

"A traitor... Can you prove that?"

Father Gabriele's question made me shrug.

"Let's hear what the Chang-gwi have to say first."

Mountain Lord soon commanded the Chang-gwi.

A faint halo of light connected Mountain Lord and the Chang-gwi without wavering. That seemed to be why the Chang-gwi were bound to Mountain Lord.

【Grrrgh! Stop! Don't... Don't control me!】

"Your resistance is futile. The moment I killed you, you were reduced to a Chang-gwi."

Ivan was apparently a wizard, a fairly high-ranking position among the devil's followers.

I'd wondered what wizards even did, but they were the ones I'd seen slicing things apart nonstop when I first met Gari.

Most devil followers could only use simple spells. It seemed you had to become a wizard before you could really do anything.

【Grrrgh! I can't betray Him!】

"Vermin. Your connection to the devil you worship has been severed. Who do you think you'll be spending more of your ghost life with from now on?"

【Urk!】

Oh, I'd heard that one a lot in the army.

"Who do you think you'll serve longer with, Sergeant Park, who's about to be discharged, or me, a corporal?"

Mountain Lord had thrown that familiar absurdity at Ivan, and Ivan's mind seemed to start working quickly.

【T-The truth is... I don't know the details either. I was only told to lie in wait here and inflict as much damage as possible...】

"I can hear your brain turning from here. Spill every last thing you know! Who did it? How? Where did you get the information? That's what I'm asking!"

When Mountain Lord roared, Ivan dropped flat to the ground and pleaded.

【I-I really don't know much! I heard there was a traitor among the clergy!】

Uneasy looks spread among the exorcists.

They seemed unable to believe there could be a traitor among their own.

"How are we supposed to find them? Without evidence, those are meaningless words."

"Why not interrogate that devil's lackey?"

"I thought we might run into Satan's servants, so I brought some torture... No, interrogation tools."

I couldn't understand every word, but I could tell that some pretty grim things were being said.

Then Pastor Park spoke in Latin.

"This won't take long. Someone here was born with spiritual scent."

"Spiritual scent? There are several people here with innate spiritual abilities. But that alone... Don't tell me he's the type who can see the colors of souls, like Pastor Kim?"

Pastor Park shook his head.

"Spiritual scent is the ability to discern spiritual smells. Yohan, do you sense anything?"

Everyone's eyes turned toward me.

I'd been thinking it was about time to say something. Nice one, Pastor Park.

"It smells really rotten."

"...I don't understand. Has this ability been proven?"

"Bishop Nicola."

The clergyperson Pastor Park had called Nicola stepped forward.

Pastor Go quietly told me they were a bishop from the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church.

"There's a language barrier, so let us speak in Latin."

"Ahem! Spiritual scent is an extremely rare psychic ability. And spiritual abilities on the same level as Pastor Kim's are even rarer. If we identify a traitor based on something so uncertain, I believe it would lack reliability."

"That's true. You're not wrong."

Pastor Park nodded, but still walked toward Bishop Nicola.

Naturally... but eventually, forcibly, he dragged them over and brought them in front of me.

"W-What are you doing?!"

"Yohan, what do you think?"

"It smells really rotten."

"If you betrayed us, you shouldn't have acted so cocky, you fucking bastard."

"P-Pastor Park! What do you think you're doing?! His Holiness the Patriarch will not let this slide..."

Splash!

I immediately threw holy water over Bishop Nikolai.

Then...

"Grrrgh! Aaaaaaagh!"

Bishop Nikolai's skin began to sizzle, burn, and melt.

"...What?!"

"Hydrochloric acid? No, even sulfuric acid wouldn't melt someone like that!"

"It's holy water!"

Cardinal Rosinald got it right immediately.

"That's right. It's holy water Yohan made himself."

"How is that possible? I've never seen holy water this powerful."

"It's not ordinary holy water. More importantly, someone claiming to be a Christian is melting from holy water."

Holy water originally had the power to reveal evil beings for what they were.

It normally wouldn't melt raw flesh like my holy water did, but anything connected to demons felt intense rejection toward it.

"Bishop Nicola! What is the meaning of this?!"

"Grrrgh... S-Save me... Save me..."

Father Gabriele approached Bishop Nicola as they writhed in pain.

Father Gabriele thoroughly searched the helpless bishop and soon found a phone.

"It needs a fingerprint. Let me borrow a finger for a moment."

"Aaagh! It's bent! My finger's bent!"

After roughly forcing the fingerprint scan through, Father Gabriele found the phone's recent calls and text history.

[Batajnica Air Base. A large group is expected to arrive at 2 a.m.]

Once the evidence of betrayal appeared, Bishop Nicola's face turned pale.

Father Gabriele gave them a kindly smile.

"It seems we have much to discuss."

"W-Wait. This is a misunderstanding. I never betrayed..."

"Brothers and sisters, I'd like to have a long talk with Nicola. Would anyone care to join me?"

"We'll join you."

"Talking is our specialty."

Bishop Nicola was dragged away.

After spending enough time talking with exorcists who had lost their comrades and were filled with rage, they would probably spill everything.

* * *

"Ill-Omened Site transformation has occurred at four locations."

On the map, red dots marked the areas where dragon nodes had transformed into Ill-Omened Sites.

"What has the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church been doing while things reached this point?"

When one exorcist demanded an answer, Cardinal Rosinald sighed.

"Bishop Nicola's betrayal may have contributed to it, but they were probably too busy carrying out exorcism rites."

Serbia was a small country.

Its population was only 6.5 million, so it had relatively few exorcists as well.

Between the traitor's deception and the exorcism rite for a girl possessed by a demon, they had probably been overwhelmed.

"Besides, if they had the strength to transform four dragon nodes into Ill-Omened Sites at the same time, they must have infiltrated with serious preparation."

"Four Ill-Omened Sites... Wait, could this be?"

Murmuring spread among the priests and nuns as if they'd realized something.

Apparently, I was the only one who hadn't figured it out.

"Malevolent Site."

Pastor Go spoke as he began drawing lines between the transformed dragon nodes.

"A hexagram."

A hexagram?

In Christian culture, a hexagram represented the Star of David.

It was a symbol of the Kingdom of Israel, and a hexagram was also displayed on the modern Israeli flag.

"A hexagram originally represents a sacred star. But when the Ghost Vein vertices are joined, the region outlined by the transformed star takes on the meaning of inversion."

Turning a triangle upside down made it an inverted triangle, but that depended on how you looked at it.

In other words, the transformed hexagram was interpreted as an inverted hexagram.

The dragon nodes forming its foundation had taken on the exact opposite of their original attributes.

"Their goal is to transform two more dragon nodes into Ill-Omened Sites and complete the Malevolent Site. And completing the Malevolent Site means..."

"Turning the human world into hell. They're creating a passage linking demons and their legion to the human world."

It seemed to be a ritual meant to summon demons and their army.

"Then where are the last two points? Shouldn't we stop them quickly?"

"We were searching for them, but it appears Bishop Nicola gave us false reports."

"After contacting the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church, we learned that the dragon node locations Bishop Nicola gave us were false. They were stalling for time."

Once the real locations of the dragon nodes were revealed, the conclusion came quickly.

"We'll move with two objectives. First, restoring the dragon nodes that have become Ghost Veins."

"Second, reclaiming the dragon nodes that haven't yet become Ghost Veins."

To do that, we had to split our forces. There was a problem, though.

"Too many brothers and sisters have died... We don't have enough people."

"Even if we request reinforcements now..."

"Sigh... We'll fill the gaps with mercenaries who were on standby. They'll make up for it in firepower."

Exorcists were specialized personnel, but sometimes straightforward firepower worked better than special abilities.

Since the Vatican actively used modern weapons, it seemed they had quite a few mercenary connections too.

"Let's leave immediately. We don't have time."

The Templar Order hurriedly set out to prevent the Malevolent Site from appearing.

* * *

"Yohan, how is it?"

"No problem. They all smell clean."

Because of Bishop Nicola's betrayal, the mercenaries needed to be checked too.

The enemy knew all about our plans and route, so there was no guarantee a traitor wasn't hiding among the mercenaries.

I could smell the stench of souls.

That didn't mean I could identify traitors with perfect accuracy.

People who betrayed others for money, or murderers who simply enjoyed killing, had different kinds of stench.

The mercenaries gave off faint odors because of the sins they'd accumulated through killing, but it was different from the smell connected to demons.

People who made deals with demons began to rot from the soul outward. If there was a traitor among the mercenaries, I'd notice immediately.

In that sense, the mercenaries hired by the Vatican didn't have that kind of stench.

"Should we still make absolutely sure?"

I pulled out a bottle of holy water and dumped it over them.

"Hey! W-What are you doing?!"

"Come on, it's good for you. Go on, let your skin have some."

We spread holy water over the mercenaries' faces, but nobody's skin began to melt.

"...What was that?"

"Uh... It's a thing. Ahem!"

After that little verification, we headed straight for Timok Valley in northeastern Serbia.

The dragon nodes that would become the last two points of the hexagram were located in the northeast and east.

They weren't very far apart, so either side could quickly support the other if necessary.

Holy Temple Church would take the Zaječar dragon node in Timok Valley to the northeast.

The Templar Order would take the dragon node in the hills of Bor District to the east.

The surviving exorcists would be dispatched to the remaining Ghost Veins.

We even traveled by helicopter, so we arrived quickly.

"There's nothing here?"

"If it's a dragon node, you'd think someone might have developed the area. It seems to be a little-known place."

There was an owner.

Some wealthy European had bought private land right in the middle of the valley, but hadn't developed it at all.

If someone had pinpointed and bought the exact land where a dragon node was located across this huge property, they must have known something. So why had they left it alone?

Now that I thought about it, it was suspicious as hell.

On the map, it showed nothing but a valley and a river. We worked our way upstream through that natural terrain, searching for traces.

But we found nothing unusual.

It was just an empty valley.

"There's nothing here. Are we sure there's really a dragon node here?"

While the mercenaries tilted their heads in confusion, Gari and I were different.

The smell.

There was a truly rotten, disgusting smell.

The place had a pleasant natural environment, flowing water, and lush mountains and trees, yet it smelled like someone had gathered and compressed a whole mountain of shit here.

"It's here. I'm one hundred percent sure."

"Yohan?"

Gari seemed to have noticed something too.

Gari moved faster than I did.

Crack!

Gari suddenly slammed into the mountainside.

When something as large as Gari rammed into it at full speed, the mountainside cracked and shook.

"W-What was that?!"

"An earthquake?!"

As the mercenaries panicked, the Holy Temple Church members, including Pastor Park, stared at the mountainside Gari had struck.

Dirt and rocks crumbled down.

Then a stone wall was revealed beneath them.