WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 143: Shock and Awe
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Demon worshippers dissolve in holy water.
Their souls are tainted by demonic contracts and take on the nature of evil.
The corpses that looked unnatural to anyone.
The fog concealing a demonic plot.
Then a villager appeared.
This had to be a demon's lackey.
It didn't matter if she looked kindly or was an elderly person.
The first strike wins.
So I sprinkled holy water first...
"It doesn't dissolve?"
"W-what are you doing?!"
The grandmother, suddenly drenched with water, didn't seem able to get angry.
Korean People's Army uniforms and rank insignia were that frightening.
"Ahem! You looked thirsty, so I sprinkled some water on you."
"No, you... you..."
"Comrade. Where are the other villagers?"
"There's fog, so they're probably wandering around nearby."
I kept my words to a minimum.
The grandmother had given me a strange look at my clumsy North Korean dialect.
Fortunately, she didn't seem too concerned. As she shook off the water and tasted it, she frowned.
"Salt water?"
"Comrade, go take care of your business. I have a very important mission entrusted to me by the Fatherland."
"Y-yes, do that."
I didn't get caught, right? Cha Hyeran had given me a crash course in the Pyongyang standard dialect.
Anyway, I passed the grandmother and looked around the fog-shrouded village.
Where had all my companions gone?
The moment we entered the foggy village, I felt as if I were making a Spatial Leap.
Just like when Martim, the demon of space, had forcibly dragged Pastor Go and me into their own space.
There were supposedly many demons with similar abilities. Could this be a demon with powers related to space?
"Are there more besides the demons of prophecy?"
There were five major prophecy-related demons Pastor Park had predicted.
Vassago, Amon, Gusion, Botis, and Orobas.
None of them possessed the power of space.
Which meant at least two demons might be involved in this incident.
"Hmm..."
I tried using Spatial Leap.
I wanted to get outside the village and take another look.
Vwoooom!
But I didn't move.
I couldn't make a Spatial Leap.
It felt as if some force were negating it.
"Tsk."
It was inconvenient.
Spatial Leap had become as natural to me as using my hands and feet, so suddenly being unable to use it was incredibly inconvenient.
Wait, then what about my other magic?
Fwoosh!
Thankfully, Auns's flames worked normally.
I'd need a suitable target to check whether my other magic worked too.
For now, I needed to find the others.
They had probably been dragged into this space too, and they should be easy to spot.
Maybe not the others, but Gari, the Eight-Foot Sisters, and the Mountain Lord couldn't possibly go unnoticed.
Yet even after walking for quite a while, I couldn't sense my companions, or even another presence.
I felt like someone should have caused a huge commotion by now. Were they all keeping quiet?
Should I make a scene myself?
No. It would be troublesome if a military unit came running. Without Spatial Leap, even a rifle platoon could easily hit me with a stray bullet.
At least until I joined up with Gari, the Eight-Foot Sister, or the Mountain Lord, I had to be careful...
Grrk!
"Hm?"
It was a strange sound.
Like an animal choking on its breath.
I thought it might be livestock the grandmother had lost, but its form slowly emerged from the fog.
"Dear God..."
A monster.
A beast with a bizarre form, like the monster we'd found in a private home's kimchi cellar.
Its upper body was human, while its lower body was mixed with that of a beast.
A grotesque creature that seemed to mock the life God had created.
The corpse-like thing, unpleasant just to look at, was alive and approaching me.
"Ugh."
An ordinary person would have run away screaming at the sight of that thing, but not me.
Frankly, it didn't even measure up to our houseguests' teeth.
Shing!
I deployed the Gutenberg holy sword.
The Bible was heavy, so it was inside Gari's mouth.
I currently had twenty-two sheets of holy paper in my coat.
Four bottles of holy water, five bottles of holy oil.
And three bottles of vampire elixir.
I'd save the holy water and holy oil.
Instead, I gulped down a vampire elixir.
"Whew...!"
The instant I drank it, I felt my physical senses surge exponentially.
My blood heated up, and adrenaline flooded through me.
It felt like getting hit with a Stimpack in a famous RTS game.
With my enhanced senses, I seized the holy sword with spiritual power and fired it in one shot.
Slash!
"Keek?!"
Damn, I missed.
Still, the thing with the slashed shoulder let out a vicious cry and charged at me.
I considered firing several more swords, but the sword launched with my spiritual power shattered the moment it hit.
Having too much spiritual power was something I needed to think about.
I decided to save my consumables and charged at the thing with my holy sword.
It jumped, and I slipped past it to the side before slashing across its flank.
Shnk!
"Keek! Keek! Kyaaaak!"
The thing hit the ground with its side cut open, flailing in pain.
It worked.
Were these things really demonic creations?
And perhaps because of their inefficient bodies, they were neither especially fast nor threatening.
A predator or even a herbivore would have been much faster and more dangerous.
As long as I didn't get caught, I wasn't so weak that I couldn't handle them after Pastor Park's training.
I'd also gained quite a bit of confidence in close combat from sparring with vampires lately.
"Kyaak!"
This time, I swung my sword head-on at the charging thing and split it apart.
Shrrk!
The grotesque creature split in half.
After checking its corpse, I took out a bottle of holy water and poured a little on it.
"..."
It didn't dissolve?
That was strange. If it was a demonic creation, it should have melted away.
As I examined the monster's corpse, I noticed its feet differed from the one I'd seen before.
Not hooves, but feet. There were paw pads like a dog's or cat's on the soles.
Different creatures?
I hadn't sorted out my thoughts when...
Grrrk!
Kyaak!
Maybe they had heard the commotion, because more grotesque creatures gathered.
There seemed to be more than several dozen of them.
"Okay."
Time to run.
I took off in the direction without monsters.
"Kyaaaaaak!"
The monsters chased after me.
With dozens of monsters on my tail, I shouted.
"Gari! Sister! Mountain Lord!"
If I shouted at the top of my lungs like this, would someone hear and come?
But no matter how loudly I yelled, nobody came to help.
The village was somewhat large, but surely someone should have heard me?
I had no choice.
I ran through the village, intercepting the monsters with more than a dozen Gutenberg holy swords as I fled.
Why did their numbers seem to keep increasing?
Then I spotted a building.
It looked like a community hall, and I saw someone inside.
The moment our eyes met, the person tried to close the door.
"Open the door, you bastard!"
I rushed over, kicked the closing door open, and went inside.
"Close it!"
"Y-yes?"
Even after I barked at him, the man froze.
No, even if he was panicking, why wasn't he closing the door with monsters coming from outside?
"Ugh!"
I had no choice. I hurriedly poured holy oil at the entrance to form a barrier.
At the same time, I stuck Gutenberg holy paper to the door and shut it.
Bang! Bang bang!
The door shook under the repeated impacts.
But perhaps the holy oil barrier and the sealing effect of the Gutenberg holy paper were working, because the entrance held firm.
"Whew..."
Just as I was about to catch my breath, the man's movements seemed strange.
This bastard was trying to open the door.
"What are you doing?!"
"Urgh!"
When I grabbed the man trying to open the door and pulled him back, he fell over.
The place was crawling with monsters outside, so why was he trying to open the door?
Something felt wrong, and the man pulled a hand axe from his waist.
"Aaaaaah! Die!"
"What?!"
The man swung the axe wildly.
As I dodged his attacks, I shouted.
"You bastard! I'm Korean People's Army, Korean People's Army! Snap out of it!"
"Diiiiie!"
This bastard had lost it.
I had no choice but to kick him in the stomach. Perhaps because I was enhanced by the vampire elixir, he went flying with a Thump!
"Ugh... Hey, are you alive?"
He might be under a demon's control, but I didn't want to kill a person.
But the man exceeded my expectations.
Shrrk! Shrrrrk!
The fallen man wriggled.
That wasn't all. Something burst through his stomach, and legs extended from it like a spider's!
"Good Lord..."
What was that now?
"Kyaaaaak!"
Startled by the charging spider, I formed a flaming whip and swung it.
Shlash!
Auns's flames struck the spider monster.
The burning spider thrashed in agony before going limp.
"...What the hell is this village?"
"Korean People's Army comrade, are you in there?"
"...!!"
It was a familiar voice.
The grandmother's voice. The one I'd just left behind.
I cautiously peered over the wall, and she really was there.
Together with the monsters milling around the entrance.
"You... what are you?"
"Korean People's Army comrade. Wouldn't you care for some meat? I heard you came from Pyongyang, and I felt our hospitality had been lacking."
The meat the grandmother had brought was unidentified, dripping with bright red blood.
I remembered the corpses tied up in the kimchi cellar.
The corpses that had been chopped apart into chunks.
"What are these monsters?"
"Monsters? They are the vast grace that He bestowed upon our village. Meat dishes that even Comrade Leader never gave us."
Meat dishes?
Had they eaten those things?
"Did you know what kind of meat you were eating?"
"It's ordinary meat. Dogs, cats, deer... There are some bugs too."
So... every household had shared and eaten meat bestowed by a demon?
Meat that had undergone some horribly wrong transformation?
The man's mutation might have been caused by that.
And perhaps the reason they had neither dissolved in holy water nor smelled foul was that, though their appearances and aggression had changed, their essence remained that of animals.
"Open the door and eat the meat. In the end, you are alone. All of us... receive His grace."
The monsters crowded in.
The villagers came one by one as well.
Some held axes, some hoes, and some even carried torches.
Inside, there was only me and the monster's corpse.
I was completely surrounded.
* * *
【You've fallen into the trap.】
The demon with a crow's head and dozens of ominous golden pupils spoke.
The demon's eyes, watching the testing grounds, closely observed the exorcists caught in the trap.
The Deceiver, Malphas.
The thirty-ninth demon was a demon that built fortresses and trapped opponents with deceitful tricks.
Malphas had devised this scheme with the one who broke vows of silence, brought forth prophecies through prophecy, and neither held their tongue nor stayed silent.
They intended to build dozens of fortresses, divide up the people drawn into each fortress, and starve them to death.
The rest would be dealt with by the corpse monsters created by Bune, the twenty-sixth demon.
But among them...
【The Paladin of this era is strong.】
Falkenstein, the Paladin from the Vatican, had already realized the village's true nature and was breaking through.
He displayed the skill of an expert who had hunted demon worshippers alongside Pastor Kim more than twenty years ago.
But he was only human.
At this point, he wasn't much of a threat.
The problem was Set 17.
【That monster bastard. It has already eaten half the village.】
The guardian angel attached to the Solomon of this era.
Considerable resources had been expended to separate it from Solomon's descendant.
They must have deployed several times more monsters there than anywhere else, yet it had already come to this.
It absolutely couldn't be allowed to join Solomon's descendant. Even if they had to pull forces from the other sets.
【Die, Solomon. You who would make slaves of us. Once you die, everything will be resolved.】
Malphas's pupils now turned toward the set where Yohan was.
Without his guardian angel and familiar, he was only human.
Within the special space known as the other-space set, even Martim's authority was negated.
He had no way out but to be devoured by hundreds, thousands of monsters...
【────!!】
For a moment, Malphas doubted their own eyes.
【That bastard Bune... When did he make something like that?!】
Bune was a monstrous demon with the heads of a human, griffin, and dog.
His sorcery and necromancy could fuse beasts and raise the dead.
It made sense that such a monster had appeared...
【No! Bune did not make it!】
Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!
[This is shock and awe! You little beggars!]
The hideous thing was devouring everything around it.
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