WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 146: Helena's Holy Nail (2)
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I had torn the entire base apart, yet I had found neither the nuclear missiles nor a way out.
This was a problem.
It felt like clearing every inch of a game map but failing to find the way to the next floor.
Had I missed something?
Maybe there had been something I passed by that could break this deadlock.
"Search it again! Check anything that seems even remotely suspicious!!"
I sent a telepathic order to all my familiars.
Would that take time? Should I look for another way?
Just as I was considering it...
Vwoooom!
My vision flickered with the familiar sensation of moving through space.
"Hey... damn! What the hell, all of a sudden?"
When I came to my senses, I saw monstrous creatures and Father Falkenstein.
"Father?"
At a glance, Father Falkenstein was in terrible shape.
He was drenched in blood, with numerous cuts and broken bones.
"Ah, don't worry about me. It'll heal as I fight."
"...I don't think healing means everything is fine."
It looked like he had drunk a vampire elixir, but that did not erase the pain.
This went beyond being tough. It was frightening.
Just then, I threw my head back to avoid a charging creature.
"Wait, where are my Judges?!"
It seemed only I had been summoned, while the Judges had not.
I had no time to think about how they had done it.
I fired a Gutenberg holy sword at the charging creatures.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
The creatures were skewered one after another by the holy sword I fired carelessly.
One sword was not enough. I needed to deploy as many holy swords as possible and increase the number of attacks.
Gack!
Urk!
I sent the holy swords flying to intercept as many as I could, but there were simply too many.
Was close combat without Spatial Leap really my weakness?
Screeeech!
The instant one monster broke through the holy swords and charged at me...
Crack!
A hammer came down and crushed its skull.
It was Father Falkenstein.
"Leave the ones that get close to me. Brother, focus on killing as many as possible."
"...I'm counting on you."
Once Father Falkenstein joined the fight, things became much more stable.
He had only drunk one vampire elixir in an ordinary human body, yet his underlying strength was incredible.
He ignored his wounds and pain as he protected me thoroughly.
After dealing with exorcists, I had come to one conclusion. Pastors and priests alike had a berserker streak that did not fit the modern age.
"You're amazing."
"What do you mean?"
"You're so tough. I couldn't do that."
"You underestimate yourself."
"I'm serious."
How could he keep hammering away while taking hits like that?
How could he face so many monsters without giving a single inch?
Father Falkenstein had been fighting like that even before I arrived.
"I know you saved people in Serbia until just before the Dragon fell."
"..."
"Those chosen by God are never chosen carelessly. They are those who love."
"Love?"
"Those who stake their lives to save people, to save the world, and for their friends."
Just one more person.
Lord, please let me save just one more person.
That memory suddenly came back to me.
I thought I had been thinking something like that while fighting desperately.
"No one has greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. Whoever does what I command is my friend."
Words spoken by Christ.
We call that Agape.
"Do not forget that you have been chosen. You have proven yourself, Brother. As an anointed saint, you are one who saves the world."
My face grew hot.
I knew I had been chosen to do something important, but hearing it said so directly felt... weird.
As we dealt with the endlessly approaching creatures, I occasionally looked at their souls.
Should I turn them into familiars?
But I had already made too many familiars before.
I had stopped making more midway through and saved my spiritual power for emergencies.
I did not want to waste more spiritual power making familiars here.
"They won't stop coming. Father, want to grab a sword and hang on?"
"What are you thinking?"
Father Falkenstein did not wait for my answer.
The moment he grabbed the holy sword I brought him, I grabbed one myself and finally spoke.
"Sword Flight?"
Baaang!
The holy swords we were holding shot forward at insane speed.
Screech?
Screech?!
We passed through the crowd of monsters in an instant.
They could not react to that speed.
The moment we landed in an empty area, I shouted to Father Falkenstein.
"Run through that passage!"
At the same time, I took out a bottle of holy oil.
When I reached the passage, I immediately scattered holy oil across the floor, drawing a line.
Screeeech!
Maybe because they were beasts, they gave chase quickly. But they did not cross into the passage after us.
"Ho... a barrier that prevents the unholy from entering, formed with holy oil."
"They can't come in here now."
"A barrier of that strength should not be possible with holy oil alone... As expected, Brother Yohan, you are special."
"This isn't the time to flatter me! Run!"
For now, we ran.
This was not the only passage, and the monsters would circle around to chase us.
"Follow me. I have grasped the structure of this base. The important people will likely be there."
"Huh? You did that in the middle of all this?!"
I had swept through everything with the Judges and checked every corner, but I had not mapped the place.
Had this priest really managed all that in the middle of this chaos?
"Take the right at the next fork!"
While running after Father Falkenstein, we encountered both monsters and Korean People's Army soldiers.
Father Falkenstein handled those nearby, while I shot the Korean People's Army soldiers trying to fire from a distance.
"Ghk!"
"Urk!"
The soldiers pierced by holy swords flew away as if they had been hit by cannon fire.
Controlling the strength was really difficult.
But killing the Korean People's Army soldiers was not the end of it.
They immediately turned into monsters and came after us again.
"They turned every last person into monsters."
"There will be few real humans here. And those few will be wizards who sold their souls to demons."
"What kind of fucking assholes would give up being human?"
"It would not have been difficult. The high-ranking officials in this country's military are probably all that kind of being."
This country's military?
Could it be...?
"The missile base commander... that guy is a wizard who made a contract with a demon?"
"Yes. And he will be in the command room."
As proof, I gradually began to smell it.
Unlike the victims who had unfairly become monsters, there was the stale, foul smell of evil spawn.
"Here...!"
"Fire!"
Just before we reached the command room, a Korean People's Army squad blocking the passage opened fire all at once.
We hurriedly took cover as the barrage of bullets passed right in front of us.
"Tch, looks like they know exactly where we're headed."
"Evil spawn are wicked, but they are not stupid."
How were we supposed to get through that wall of fire?
Just then, something shaped like a club came rolling toward us.
"A grenade...!"
"Don't flinch. These things get you if you flinch."
At that moment, Father Falkenstein flicked the grenade upward with his boot like a soccer ball.
When the stick grenade rose to chest height, he caught it by the handle and threw it down the corridor.
Booom!
The sound of the grenade exploding was followed by dying screams.
"Now!"
"You're really going all out!"
I fired holy swords at the Korean People's Army squad thrown into disarray by the grenade blast, taking out the machine gunner first.
After that, Father Falkenstein charged into their position.
"Argh!"
"Ugh!"
"S-stop them...!"
In an instant, we wiped out the squad and kicked open the door they had been guarding.
"D-don't move...!"
The commander and staff officers aimed pistols at us, but we were not about to be scared by pea shooters like those.
"Ghk!"
"My hand! My hand!"
"Screeeech! It burns!!"
Auns's whip, holy swords, axe swings, and hammer blows swept through the command room in an instant.
"W-w-wait! Spare me!"
"Hey, do you think I'd spare you?"
At my words, the commander's face turned pale.
"If I die, you won't be able to stop the nuclear rocket from launching! The nuclear fuel has already been loaded, and it is about to launch!"
"So? How are you going to stop it?"
"Only I, the commander, can give the launch order..."
"No, you bastard, that makes no sense. If you're the only one who can stop it, but you're also the only one who can launch it, then getting rid of you solves the problem."
"Huh?"
The instant the commander finally realized the contradiction in his own words...
Grab!
Father Falkenstein seized the commander and casually threw him out the window.
"Aaaaaaaaaaagh!"
His dying scream was followed by a sickening Crunch!
When I turned toward Father Falkenstein, he wore the gentlest smile in the world.
"Does that not solve the problem?"
"Yeah, well... I guess it does?"
Just then...
Wheeeeeee!
The red warning lights on the ceiling began to spin, and a mechanical voice rang throughout the base amid static.
It sounded like a missile launch countdown.
"That sounds like a launch countdown, right?"
"This proves once again that evil spawn are liars by nature and cannot be taken at their word."
"Right? Then the part about only him being able to stop it was bullshit too."
"Indeed. Still, the world is cleaner now."
All right, now we had to stop the missile launch.
Fortunately, the missile's location was visible from the command room.
The silo opened as a sharp thing that looked exactly like an intercontinental ballistic missile moved.
"Let's fly over there first!"
"How do you intend to stop it?"
"We'll just smash the whole missile somehow!"
Holding onto a holy sword in the command room, I launched myself again.
Booom!
I flew straight toward the missile.
If I fired all the other holy swords at once, I should be able to stop the launch.
But then I smelled something ominous.
"...!"
The sudden stench made me turn my head without thinking.
There was a dragon.
"What the hell is that?!"
At that moment, the dragon opened its mouth wide toward us.
I hastily changed the holy sword's direction and dropped toward the ground as if crashing.
Only after rolling across the floor did I get a proper look at what had attacked us.
"A dragon?!"
No, more precisely, it had only a dragon's head. Its body resembled a horse's, but it had wings.
It soon transformed into a human shape and dusted itself off.
"Tch. You still haven't dealt with them? What are you doing, Malphas?"
A fluttering sound came from above, and a human with a crow's head landed.
It watched us with black pupils, then spoke in a low voice with the crow's peculiar shrillness.
【Merely restraining him has consumed great power, Bune. I never expected Solomon's descendant to be such an eccentric bastard.】
【Enough excuses.】
Terrible malice emanated from the black stench.
There was a creature with a snake's unsettling movements, an owl's head rather than a snake's, and massive wolf forepaws.
The gigantic monster was so huge that the nearly twenty-five-meter missile looked small beside it. It stared at me from behind the two demons.
【Solomon's descendant. You have appeared here to fulfill a new prophecy against mine.】
"Uh... you're the prophet? You really don't look the part."
Not that we had room to talk.
It was not like Gari looked like a prophet either.
"Judging by your appearance... you must be Amon. The seventh-ranked demon."
【Correct. Being known for too long is not always a good thing.】
The one who did not keep silent about the future, a prophecy originally granted only to those chosen by God.
The one who muddled the world with words and made people fight each other.
The demon who governed malice and selfishness.
That was how Pastor Park had described Amon while introducing demons connected to prophecy.
【But your prophecy will fail. Fulfilling prophecy is ultimately the work of people. You were not enough.】
That thing was really getting under my skin.
But I could not see a good move.
I could not use Spatial Leap right now.
One of those demons was probably blocking Martim's authority.
If Amon was the prophet, then the remaining one had to be the demon that created those monstrous creatures.
So was that crow-headed human blocking my Spatial Leap?
Not only that, it seemed likely that the crow had constructed the other space where we had been trapped.
"What should we do? Should we run for now?"
"Brother, how can you speak of retreat with demons before us?"
"I'm not the type to charge headlong into a fight I can't win. We're outmatched too."
Our goal was to stop the nuclear launch.
While escaping, we just had to find some way to damage the missile...
"Who says we are outmatched?"
"Father?"
Just then, I sensed something glowing from Father Falkenstein's chest.
The one who reacted to it was the crow demon, Malphas.
【Stop him! That will break my power!】
"Too late, demon!!"
At that moment, Father Falkenstein took out a large nail.
It looked very much like Helena's Holy Nail.
No, the one I had used was a replica. Did that mean this was the original?
"Lord! Send Your second messenger!!"
The moment he brought down the Holy Nail, something fell with the sound of space breaking apart.
Malphas was the first to realize the anomaly, and the instant it looked upward...
【Uh...?】
Craaaack!
A huge mouth fell and swallowed Malphas whole.
Claaaaaack!!
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