WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 149: Prophecy in a Dream
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There were three demons we had acquired this time.
The seventh-ranked Amon.
The twenty-sixth-ranked Bune.
The thirty-ninth-ranked Malphas.
Of them, Bune had abilities quite similar to Marchosias, the thirty-fifth-ranked demon.
Beast fusion or resurrection.
Since both used necromancy, their powers could be considered nearly identical.
Next was Malphas.
Malphas's power was the ability to create a separate space and construct a fortress.
More precisely, creating a separate space felt like an extra feature attached to Fortress Construction.
"Should I try it?"
Malphas's power had been the most threatening ability during the nuclear missile incident.
An ability that could create a separate space and fortify it.
I was curious what it could do, so I tried it.
Thud!
My vision went dark. When I came to, only Gari and I were there.
"Whoa..."
Was this the separate space?
Looking closely, it was not all that different from the place we had just been.
Still, something about it felt subtly off.
It did not feel real.
Yeah. The buildings that made up this space felt like graphical objects in a game.
It was a sort of virtual space made from spiritual power instead of data.
"Ah!"
Only then did I think I understood how Malphas's power worked.
As I poured spiritual power into the space and fiddled with my surroundings, a wall suddenly shot up.
Once I thought of myself as an administrator on a test server, I could think of ways to use it.
Screeeech!
When I opened part of the space, another area appeared.
A passage connected to reality had formed.
"My lord?! Oh, my lord!"
Kohaku rushed through the opening. She looked around and spoke in surprise.
"What is this? Ah! Is this like the layered separate spaces we saw in North Korea?"
"Looks like it. I think I can make all sorts of things if I do it right."
When I touched the wall, its shape changed into something like a small warehouse.
It was empty inside when I opened the door, but the basic framework seemed complete.
"Ooh, I could even make a giant slide!"
It seemed I could make all kinds of things by using the power of fortress construction in this separate space.
I could even clear out an entire housing lot and make a broad hill.
"Still, this is way too much of a grind."
I had never liked housing systems in games.
They took too much effort and time.
Seeing how obviously annoyed I was, Gari spun the brass ring furiously.
"Gari?"
Then intense energy flowed from Gari's brass ring and split off into a black shape.
It took on a form I had seen somewhere before.
"Malphas?"
【......】
It looked remarkably like Malphas in that crow-man form.
It was not just Malphas.
One by one, Gari spat out the forms of demons, and their number and shapes exactly matched the demons Gari had absorbed.
"Wait, Gari. You could do this too?"
Had Gari gained this ability after absorbing three demons this time?
I thought I knew why Gari had summoned them.
"Hey, slaves. Time to work, right? Make this place look sharp."
【......!】
【......!】
The slaves seemed furious and unwilling.
Then the brass ring flashed, and the demons began to suffer.
"Ooh..."
I knew the brass ring was the source of Gari's control over demons, but I had not realized it could hurt them like this.
Now I understood why they had been so grief-stricken and enraged when they were absorbed.
"Senior, you left behind a fine culture."
So this was how Solomon had forced demons to build the Temple.
"Heh heh. Doesn't that mean you can do anything within your sanctuary, my lord?"
"Right? What should I make?"
"How about expanding the amusement park in Jamsil into a theme park that puts UniXversal to shame? A theme park just for you, my lord, where you can go play for free anytime!"
"How did you come up with such a freaking awesome idea?"
"While we're at it, we could make a DiXneyland too. It is a separate space, so there wouldn't be any legal trouble, right?"
"Kohaku! You are my Zhang Liang, my Zhuge Liang!"
I never would have thought of something like that.
At most, I had considered building a church. Maybe some European-style old castle or the Great Wall.
How would we make it?
I was not the one building it, so why did I need to worry about that?
"Gari, spit out some other stuff too!"
At my words, Gari gagged and soon began to vomit up what was inside.
Clatterrrrr!
Treasures poured out, including precious swords and spears. But that was not what I had meant.
Screeeeech!
Woof! Woof!
Souls poured out all at once.
They were the souls of the animals we had brought from North Korea.
"Welcome to South Korea."
These were the animal souls we had brought along when we escaped North Korea.
We had originally planned to sneak them onto a plane, but they were so noisy that I had told Gari to swallow them all.
Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!
"Come on, guys. You were only inside Gari's mouth for a few hours. Why are you squawking so much?"
Anyway, we had secured a pretty decent space.
The Beasts of Judgment needed somewhere to run around freely, so I could let them live here.
"Make the ranch nice and big too. The kids need room to run around."
【......!】
【......!】
The demons were clearly resentful, but defiance was not an option.
Had demons ever defied King Solomon while he was building the Temple?
They just did everything they were told.
Later, they supposedly built or fortified not only the Temple, but cities such as Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.
"Malphas must have had it rough back then too. All right, Foreman Malphas. Keep up the good work!"
After tossing the demons and beasts into the separate space, I returned to reality with a grin on my face over this unexpected windfall.
Still, there was a problem.
"I can't really use this outside the sanctuary."
It created a separate space that was exactly like reality.
It was so large that if I started fiddling with this and that, it seemed like it could become more trouble than it was worth.
But...
Rummmmble!
Based on my experience in the separate space, I manipulated spiritual power and formed a fairly convincing block.
Malphas's power of fortress construction worked perfectly well in reality too.
That meant I could use this power outside the sanctuary whenever I wanted.
This could be pretty useful.
"That leaves Amon's power."
Amon was one who peered in and did not stay silent.
In other words, Amon could sneak a look at the future.
But that ability seemed to overlap with Gari's prophecies through After-Kings.
"Maybe it isn't something I can use whenever I want?"
I tried to use Amon's Prophecy, but as with Beleth, the method was not clear.
Just as it had activated reflexively when I countered the vampires' Charm, perhaps it needed some kind of trigger.
And that trigger came sooner than I expected.
"......"
It was night.
More specifically, the night when I had collapsed into sleep after a bath.
I was walking through some ruins.
[XXXX! XXXXXX!]
I was not alone there.
Some white men bustled around, barking orders at each other.
German, maybe? Who were they?
Foreigners had gotten so naturally good at Korean these days that hearing actual foreign languages from foreigners felt strange.
They were looking for something among the ruins.
Eventually, they found it, and I recoiled when I saw the chest.
It was stamped with a Nazi symbol.
And inside that chest was a spear...
"What the hell is this?"
This was the prophecy I had dreamed.
* * *
When I told Pastor Park about the prophecy, he seemed to recognize something.
"Nazis... It's been a while."
"Wait, Nazis still exist today?"
"Why wouldn't they? Neo-Nazis are active in Europe, America, and Russia."
That was true.
It was amazing that people this stupid even existed, but they said that if five people gathered, one of them would be trash.
The world was wide, and there were plenty of idiots.
"A chest marked with a Nazi symbol and a spear. Could it be Longinus' Spear?"
"Come to think of it, Father Falkenstein mentioned that spear too."
Pastor Park closed his eyes briefly, as if recalling an old memory.
"Was it twenty-two years ago? Pastor Kim once spoke of having fought Nazis in Austria."
Wait, it was real?
"Near the end of World War II, the Nazis had hidden funds away, and Longinus' Spear was found during the confrontation twenty-two years ago."
"Then why is it gone now?"
"How many treasures disappeared after Pastor Kim died? I heard some had been deliberately hidden so they wouldn't be revealed to the world... This is probably one of them."
So we couldn't find it now?
"Uh, but in my dream, the Nazis found it."
"That's the problem. How did those bastards find a way to uncover Longinus' Spear?"
I didn't know what the Nazis planned to do with it, but I had seen the power held by holy relics more than once.
It was obvious that it could not fall into Nazi hands.
"We need to find those Nazi bastards first. There may be more than one or two, but if they're looking for treasures Hitler left behind... someone else would know more about them than I do."
"Someone else?"
"This is the jurisdiction of government agencies."
Luckily, we knew someone important in a government agency very well.
* * *
It seemed ordinary practitioners could not even submit visit requests to high-ranking Mystic Association officials.
But meeting Park Bokrye, the head of the Special Task Division, was not difficult for me.
"Nazis? Why bring that up all of a sudden?"
While chewing the traditional sweets Mrs. Park had served, I considered how much I should tell her.
"I am looking for a treasure, and I think Nazis know something about it."
"The source of that information is... No, forget it. You've been spending time with Vatican people, so you must have heard something."
"Uh... Yes."
I didn't want to say I had seen the future, so I let her think that.
"If they're among the Nazi groups still active and somewhat influential, we can narrow them down. But we'll need to coordinate with the intelligence services."
Ooh. A government bigwig really was different.
I had only brought it up, and connections were already being made.
"It will take some time."
"Could I ask you to do that?"
"If you handle one job for us, doing that much is no trouble."
Mrs. Park proposed a deal.
In exchange for finding information about the Nazis seeking the treasure, she wanted me to handle something for the Mystic Association.
That suited me too.
Clean and simple.
"What kind of job?"
"As you know, much of Seoul has been designated a sanctuary, limiting the entry of wicked beings. Malicious anomalies and urban legends have effectively been driven out."
But that had created another problem.
"Anomalies and urban legends have begun spreading across the country. Instead of places packed with people, they've been causing harm in remote rural places where no one notices."
"Weren't they like that before?"
"Cities are easier to live in when there's plenty of prey. People come to Seoul looking for jobs, don't they? Anomalies are much the same."
Wasn't it a little too brutal to put them in the same category as people looking for work in Seoul?
Anyway, it seemed the anomalies that had lost their "jobs" because of the sanctuary had started moving to the countryside to farm.
The problem was that the government did not have nearly enough personnel to send across the country.
It was an unexpected side effect, so I felt a little bad.
"On top of that, several urban legends appear to have crossed over. I can't understand why the ones from the Kansai region crossed the water all the way to the southern coast."
I flinched.
The Kansai region had a massive sanctuary that Seoul could not compare to.
"It seems a few Napolitan urban legends and Western-style liminal spaces have crossed over too. That type is especially vicious and difficult to understand, so we're barred from responding unless at least a Black Knot-level expert is involved."
A Black Knot-level expert.
In other words, she wanted me to handle them.
"All right. Give me the list, and I'll take care of them."
"Be careful. These supernatural phenomena can sometimes be a match for disasters."
After looking over the mission list Mrs. Park handed me, I headed to Busan, my first target.
* * *
Urban legends, or ghost stories.
In modern times, their definitions and development had branched in many directions, but they had never stopped being stories.
Sometimes they were conspiracy theories, sometimes bizarre works of fiction, but when people passed such stories around, they manifested as phenomena.
Red Mask.
Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost.
Taxi Driver.
They were a different kind of anomaly from demons or yokai.
They spewed stories to gain power, and manifested through stories.
They were often dismissed as superstition in the modern age, but if a story was discussed worldwide, even a made-up story could become real.
"Damn internet. Why not just cut it all off?"
"Ooh, and how would you explain that to the public?"
The Mystic Association's specialist department for urban legends was commonly called the Urban Legend Division.
It was created to deal with urban legends that had become more prominent with the growth of the internet.
Still, it was not considered a promising department because of budget and staffing shortages.
"Team Leader Shin. I heard they're sending a practitioner from Seoul. Who is it?"
"They say it's a Black Knot-level expert, and Seoul has been making quite a show of it. Should we be grateful that those Seoul slickers are sparing a thought for the provinces?"
Shin Sanghyeon, leader of Urban Legend Division Team 4, complained with a cigarette clamped between their lips, frustrated by the lack of personnel and excess of work.
Japan and the United States were greatly expanding their specialist personnel for dealing with urban legends, while Korea was...
"Urban legends are fought by digging into their rules and stories. It isn't something any practitioner can solve just by being strong. What are the higher-ups thinking...?"
Shin had been complaining about Seoul when it happened.
Cawwwww!
A deafening cry rang out.
A crow? No, it was too large for that.
By the time Team Leader Shin and the Urban Legend Division's Team 4 realized it, its shadow was already falling over them.
"W-What is that?"
"A pterosaur?!"
A pterosaur with enormous wings was descending at the meeting point.
Footnotes:
Napolitan horror is a Korean online-fiction genre built around unsettling, often incomplete sets of rules.
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