WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 45: Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva Bang Seoryeong (2)

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Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva looked rather young for the Society Head of the Black Lotus Society, one of the Five Great Lineages.

At first glance, she looked a few years younger than me.

Maybe she was a young adult who had only just started college.

No, but that wasn't the important thing right now.

"Dinosaur... Dinosaur..."

It was a dinosaur. A real, honest-to-God dinosaur.

Then had the thing that attacked Gari earlier been a dinosaur too?

Judging by its long tail and shape, was it an Ankylosaurus?

Kyoryong Bodhisattva had Velociraptors under her command, so there might be all kinds of dinosaurs here.

Thump, thump!

My heart pounded.

Any man would understand how I felt.

A dinosaur.

A king dinosaur!

"Kyoryong Bodhisattva. What exactly do you think you're doing to guests at this meeting?!"

"...Society Head."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva and Kyoryong Bodhisattva locked eyes in a fierce staring contest.

The ones who broke that deadlock were Kyoryong Bodhisattva's followers.

"Society Head! You're hurting the dragons for the sake of outsiders who brought monsters here!"

"That's right! Do you have any awareness of your duties as Society Head?!"

Anyone watching would think I was the one who attacked them.

"Look at that hideous monster! Anyone who commands something like that must be a Western sorcerer, a pawn of the devil..."

Click.

Gari walked up to the male shaman who had been spouting nonsense.

Click.

Its teeth clacked together.

Click.

It came right up to his face.

Tremble, tremble!

The male shaman was shaking so hard I could see it.

The shamans and the male shamans beside him had frozen stiff too.

"H-help..."

The male shaman looked toward the Velociraptors around him.

The Velociraptors didn't look like they had any intention of helping.

They were only keeping a wary eye on Gari and testing the waters.

When he realized the raptors weren't coming to his rescue, he turned to me.

"Y-you! D-do something about this!"

"Me? Why?"

He'd thrown the first punch, and now he had the nerve to ask me for help.

Besides, Gari listened to me, but we weren't exactly master and servant.

He'd gone on about pawns of the devil and all that. It'd be strange if an angel wasn't pissed off by it.

Fallen angels were a touchy subject for angels, weren't they?

Craaack!

"Eek!"

The moment Gari opened its mouth, the male shaman rolled his eyes back and fainted.

A harsh ammonia stink spread through the air.

"Oh..."

Click!

* * *

On the way back up in Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva's limousine, she gave me a small bow.

"I'm sorry you were put through such needless trouble. I will certainly punish them, so please calm your anger, young master."

The male shamans and other shamans who had attacked us had tucked their tails and retreated, but I was curious why they'd pulled something like that.

"Why'd they do it? They were clearly looking for a fight."

"Whew... It seems they believed I was trying to join hands with Gangnam Holy Temple Church."

Gangnam Holy Temple Church?

Ah, maybe it was because I'd come here through Pastor Go's introduction.

"I heard there were internal problems."

"Has the rumor spread that far already? I'm too ashamed to show my face."

Wolryeong Bodhisattva had told me, though. She was an insider herself.

"Kyoryong Bodhisattva, who just caused that disturbance, is my aunt. She's been scheming to remove me from the position of Society Head."

Oh... The kind of thing I only saw in dramas.

An intrigue to steal the throne. It was exciting, like a historical epic.

I'd somehow ended up as collateral damage in that intrigue, though.

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

Seeing Gari chewing through huge slabs of meat with blood dripping from its mouth, I figured I was at least saving a fortune on food.

Anyway, all familiars were spirit bodies, but after Gari swallowed them, they apparently couldn't disperse anymore.

What kind of principle was that?

Instead of their souls scattering, did they become subservient to Gari? Like Decarabia's necromancy?

Just then, Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva lightly waved her fan and spoke.

"I had heard about it, but... You keep an unusual familiar... no, a god, don't you?"

"Oh, you could tell?"

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva continued while staring directly at Gari, who was following the limousine.

"I serve gods myself. Of course I can tell the difference between an ordinary familiar and a god."

"Those people earlier called it a demon."

"They made a grave mistake. To utter such reckless nonsense before one so certain of their own nobility. This is why the tongue is the source of calamity."

Oh, so this wasn't for nothing. She really was the leader of a faction.

Strictly speaking, Gari wasn't a god, though...

"Did you say Dragon God?"

"That's correct. The Dragon Maiden Bodhisattvas of the Black Lotus Society are shamans who have served the Dragon God for generations."

"Dinosaurs count as gods too?"

"Ah, as a Christian, you seem to have a misunderstanding."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva smiled and explained.

"The gods religious people speak of and the gods shamans speak of are different. Ours are closer to spirits. Spirits appear in Buddhist scriptures and the Bible as well, but you don't serve them as divine beings, do you?"

"That's true."

"To shamans, a god is any being with a soul. There are truly divine beings such as Mahavairocana and Shakyamuni, but those are less common. It's like how some people serve Guan Yu as a war god, or revere General MacArthur as a god."

Guan Yu, sure, but General MacArthur? That suddenly made it feel very real.

"Not just anyone can be served as a god. Serving a god received through spirit descent, that is what spirit descent is."

"So the Dragon God... I can think of it as serving the spirits of dinosaurs?"

"Exactly so."

Dragon God. I hadn't expected that dragon to mean dinosaurs, but it was exciting all the same.

"Oh! A Velociraptor!"

It was one of the dinosaurs that had been running along the road. A small, quick dinosaur nicknamed the swift thief. It saw the limousine, stopped, then quickly went on its way.

"That's insane..."

A Velociraptor. Wasn't that a Jurassic Park regular?

"Hehe, it's still too soon to be surprised."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva wore a satisfied smile as she said that.

The fog cleared in an instant, revealing a new world.

(Recommended BGM: Welcome to Jurassic Park)

"..."

My breath caught.

The world before me was unlike anywhere in the world I knew.

A vast, landscaped hill like a park.

It was another world where hundreds... no, thousands of dinosaurs roamed.

* * *

I thought it was a mountain.

But it wasn't.

The mountain raised its long neck toward the sky.

"Brachiosaurus..."

Nearby, dinosaurs with huge bony plates rising from their backs lazily chewed grass, their spikes swaying.

"Stegosaurus..."

A herd with three enormous horns raised high was drinking from an artificial stream.

"Triceratops!!"

This was incredible! So fucking incredible! I'd never been as excited as I was at this very moment in my life!

"You seem quite knowledgeable about dinosaurs, young master."

"When I was little, I used to have nightmares about the People's Army kidnapping me."

"???"

"I was the only kid my age who had memorized all 280 Cretaceous dinosaur species. I thought Kim Jong-il would find me and put me to work on dinosaur research."

"Hehe, what an innocent childhood fantasy."

She wasn't wrong. When you're a kid, you imagine all kinds of things, right?

Anyway, dinosaurs were part of my childhood memories, and they were still a dream of mine even now.

I still treasured the dinosaur toys I bought back then.

There was something about the word dinosaur that set a man's heart on fire.

"Oh... Deinonychus. Parasaurolophus..."

It was too moving.

I felt like I was going to hyperventilate.

Before long, we passed through that wonderful, mysterious world and climbed all the way to the ridge.

The Black Lotus Society's headquarters was a large traditional Korean house, and attendants in hanbok welcomed us inside.

"Society Head, you've returned."

"Kyoryong Bodhisattva and her group will come up too. Close the doors and don't let them in."

"...Yes, understood."

We soon headed deeper into the hanok estate.

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva stopped before what seemed to be her office at the very back.

"Let's talk inside."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva opened the sliding door, then immediately shut it again.

Bang!

"Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva?"

"I think I need to tidy up a little first. I rushed out when I saw you being attacked and couldn't clean up."

"It's fine..."

"Please wait."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva opened the sliding door, darted inside, then shut it again.

Crash, bang, clatter!

I could tell she was desperately cleaning just from the sounds.

How long had it been?

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva soon opened the door and came out.

"Huff... Hah... I-it's done."

"Are you okay? You're drenched in sweat."

"It's because I didn't turn on the air conditioner."

Her face was flushed, with sweat streaming down it, but she said she was fine.

When I entered Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva's office, it was messier than I'd expected.

Still, countless decorations overwhelmed that messiness.

"Wow... Are these all dinosaur bones?"

"They're my research specimens."

The most noticeable ones were Pachycephalosaurus skulls.

There were various other bones too, and I could recognize several just by looking at them.

There were also old books and talismans, while the furniture all had the antique feel of Joseon-era pieces.

Then suddenly.

"Huh? This..."

Whoosh!

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva moved quickly and snatched up what I'd found.

She hid it behind her waist, but I'd already seen it.

"Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva, that..."

"I-it's research material. I forgot to put it away. Honestly, leaving such a precious specimen just anywhere. Ha ha, really."

"The Dino Lecton from Invincible King Dinosaur Cretaceous Saurus?"

"...!"

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva's eyes went round.

"How... did you know?"

"Because only Dino Lecton has that distinctive lightning pattern on the Tyrannosaurus's skin."

"...You too?"

"...Me too."

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva realized I was a kindred spirit and let down her guard.

Sure enough, the thing she was holding so awkwardly was a Dino Lecton figure from Invincible King Dinosaur Cretaceous Saurus.

"No way, that's the limited edition, isn't it? The Season 1 broadcast commemorative limited edition!"

"Well... Isn't it only natural for a fan?"

"If it hadn't come out while I was in the army!"

When Season 1 first aired, I was in the army of all places. That had been five years ago...

"But how old are you, Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva?"

"...I'm in the bloom of youth."

"How old is that supposed to be..."

"I'm twenty."

She was six years younger than me. Then had she been a fan of Cretaceous Saurus when she was in middle school?

"It must've been expensive. Didn't that cost around five hundred thousand won?"

"I've been a child bodhisattva since I was seven. The Mayor of Seoul and presidential candidates have come to receive my divinations. Can you imagine how much they paid?"

Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva held up all five fingers.

"O-oh, five million?"

"Your imagination is lacking."

"Fifty million?!"

"Politicians may not care about ordinary people's livelihoods, but they're always deeply interested in their own fate."

"...Five hundred million won."

At last, Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva nodded.

"Fuck. I should've become a male shaman sooner."

Click! Click, claaack!

"The god you serve seems to be angered, young master."

"Ah, it's a joke, a joke. Gari, don't you trust me?"

Anyway, Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva's hidden collection was impressive.

It had everything from children's toy lines to toys from famous dinosaur movie franchises released overseas.

She was the real deal.

A woman who liked dinosaurs was rare.

"Being Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva really is your calling."

"I was born for it."

Seated in her chair, Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva sprayed figure-care solution with a hiss, then wiped it down with a microfiber cloth.

Apparently, she'd touched it with her bare hands while hurriedly cleaning up.

"But did Pastor Go not give you any other hint?"

"He said I'd understand when I got here. I think he kept it secret so I'd be surprised by the dinosaurs."

Anyone would be overwhelmed seeing these dinosaurs.

Well, only if they could see spirit bodies, of course.

"Pastor Go told me you possess an exceptional art for calling forth souls."

He seemed to mean Decarabia's necromancy.

"Only birds, though."

"Hmm... A specialized art can have such restrictions. If Pastor Go sent you to me, there can be only one reason."

Why had Pastor Go sent me to Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva?

Then I saw the dinosaur bones in her office and realized.

"Don't tell me?"

"It seems you've caught on."

The Dragon Maiden Bodhisattvas of the Black Lotus Society, shamans who served the Dragon God, called forth the souls of ancient dinosaurs through spirit possession.

Which meant...

They had remnants from that distant past.

"Your necromancy is limited to birds, but if we interpret that concept broadly, it can include species closely related to birds, species capable of flight, or species that can be considered birds' ancestors or descendants."

"Uh... Then..."

"In theory, both groups that existed before the Cretaceous should qualify."

Dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

This could work?

Footnotes:

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