WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 6: Mounting Misunderstandings

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The man had become a gelatinous lump, with only his neck left, right in front of me.

There was no chance of resurrection.

He was dead beyond any doubt.

"I-I killed someone..."

I killed someone.

But this was so unfair.

All I did was sprinkle him with some holy water. Why had his body melted?

Even if you poured an entire drum of hydrochloric acid on someone, they probably wouldn't melt this badly.

You'd have to leave them soaking for days to turn them into a gelatinous porridge like this.

More importantly, I sprinkled him with holy water, and his body melted.

"Was it really my fault?"

Wasn't it the fault of the person whose body melted from holy water?

Maybe he was a seriously bad person, or an evil spirit pretending to be human.

Like a jiangshi or a vampire.

He could've been something like that.

Something no different from an evil spirit.

All right. Not my fault.

As I shoved what remained of the man into the hole where he had been inspecting the Possession Stake, I checked his belongings.

A black hoodie, pants, and underwear.

Other than that, there was only a phone, but it was locked with fingerprint recognition, so there was no way to open it.

Might as well burn it with him.

I pushed everything into the hole where the stake had been and sprinkled holy oil over it before lighting it.

The flames roared up.

For some reason, it burned much better than normal.

"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray... May you go to heaven... Amen."

Whoosh!

Shit, that scared me.

Did he have some kind of flammable substance inside him?

I was about to push the remaining gelatinous mess into the hole when I spotted something metallic inside.

A necklace?

It was a metal necklace with an inverted pentagram hanging from it.

I was about to throw it in too, but when I looked closer...

"That's gold?"

If it wasn't gold-plated, then this was solid gold. How much was it worth?

"..."

This was strange.

For some reason, the inverted pentagram necklace gave off an ominous feeling.

Was this what people called a hunch?

So I threw it into the hole, but at that moment...

Snap!

Gari swallowed the inverted pentagram necklace I had thrown.

"Gari?"

Snap! Crunch!

"Gari, that's yucky!"

Crunch, crunch!

I tried to stop Gari, but the necklace was crushed to pieces in Gari's jaws and swallowed.

Then...

Light leaked out from Gari's body.

Huh? What was going on with Gari?

* * *

"Y-yes, the Fourth Priest isn't answering his calls..."

At the words of his chief disciple, the mage Kim Mun-ryong swallowed a groan.

Just moments ago, he had sensed the destruction of the disciple whose contract with Decarabia, one of the seventy-two demons, he had mediated.

At the moment of his death, the disciple's soul should have become an offering to Decarabia.

Instead, it had vanished.

Decarabia had cried foul over the broken deal and flown into a rage.

"Who the hell..."

"To steal a soul bound to a demon... Who could possibly do such a thing?"

A contract between a human and a demon was fair, but absolute.

Mages whose souls were bound in exchange for magic could never escape the demon's grasp.

Even a practitioner who controlled souls could not overcome a demon's contract, because it existed as a superior contract.

Unless someone had twisted causality itself, there was no being that could steal a soul from a demon.

Yet the soul that should have fallen into the demon's grasp had disappeared.

"We need to find out what happened, now! Where was the Fourth Priest headed last?"

"He said he was going to check the Possession Stakes by the river!"

"Follow me!"

Kim Mun-ryong and his disciples headed for the stake-ridden spot along Tancheon Stream where the Fourth Priest had vanished.

But another group was already prowling around there.

"Hide yourselves!"

At Kim Mun-ryong's command, the disciples quickly concealed themselves.

He hid with them behind roadside trees and in the grass, watching the group.

"Those people..."

"The Mystic Association!"

They were sorcerers from the Mystic Association.

* * *

The Mystic Association.

It was a Korean government agency made up of people with spiritual abilities who dealt with supernatural entities such as monsters, yōkai, and ghosts.

It all began when an unusual number of traffic accidents occurred in one neighborhood in Songpa District.

The Mystic Association worked with the government to receive data on incidents and accidents taking place across the country.

They noticed an area where traffic accidents and murders had increased at an abnormal rate, so they even dispatched field investigators. Yet nothing particularly unusual had turned up.

"There seem to be a few ghosts, but this still looks within the normal range."

"My familiar says it can see a few, but that's all."

Investigating the supernatural was troublesome and labor-intensive.

Unlike creatures with physical forms, such as yōkai and other races, few people could see spiritual bodies.

Only those born with spiritual sight, or powerful sorcerers of at least Rank Two, could see them.

Most people born with these abilities became targets of evil spirits from childhood and ended up getting eaten.

Ordinary sorcerers could only sense their presence through vague intuition, so tracking down evil spirits was never easy.

But spells cast by people with spiritual abilities were a completely different matter.

"Did you feel that?"

"Yes! Someone cast a spell!"

Spells used through contracts with spiritual beings were far easier to notice and detect than the spiritual beings themselves.

That was why any sorcerer planning something usually restrained their use of spells to remain hidden...

"This way, I think!"

"Damn it! We didn't come here expecting to fight a mage!"

They had thought it was only an area with a few ghosts.

They never expected a mage to reveal themselves so quickly.

This might not be an ordinary case after all.

When the Mystic Association's sorcerers arrived along Tancheon Stream, they searched the area where they had sensed the spell and found something.

"Senior! Over here!"

"You found it? The mage isn't here... What the hell?"

What the junior had found was smoke rising near Tancheon Stream.

Something was burning.

The sorcerers quickly put out the fire, then froze when they saw what was inside.

"My God... What is this?"

"Teeth, hair... clothes. Don't tell me... was this a person?"

It was what had once been a person.

Someone whose entire body had melted into a limp gelatinous mass.

Who had used such a cruel method?

"Senior, isn't this... holy water?"

"...Yes. It looks like it."

Yet the gelatinous mass gave off a holy aura.

It was the sort of aura they often encountered when working with exorcists, experts in this field.

The distinctive aura of holy water or holy oil blessed through a sacrament.

But holy water was not hydrochloric acid or a chemical agent.

The only living beings affected by it were wicked entities, or people contracted to wicked entities.

In other words, mages.

"Don't tell me... did someone melt a mage's body with holy water?"

"Mages contracted to demons are vulnerable to holy objects, but not enough for their bodies to melt. To create something like this, you'd need at least a cardinal... no, someone of Paladin class."

"But Korea's last Paladin died seventeen years ago, didn't they?"

That was right. It had been quite some time since the exorcist who had stood at the top of the field in Korea died.

"Could it be the Elder?"

"Pastor Park? No. He's in the Vatican right now. Besides, hasn't he mostly retired from active work?"

"Right... Of course."

The Korean Paladin had died seventeen years ago, and their teacher, the revered elder of the field, was absent.

"Even so, it's hard to believe a clergyman would murder someone so cruelly. It doesn't fit their style."

"It could. They're people too."

The doctrines of clergy capable of making holy water generally spoke of love and mercy.

Their core beliefs came from Jesus's love and Buddha's compassion, so murder was an instinctively abhorrent act to them.

Yet someone had melted a person with holy water.

Just imagining the pain of melting alive made their necks go cold.

"The practitioner is probably a fanatic. A completely insane one."

"Yes. Someone capable of this... Let's pray they're not our enemy."

Hoping sincerely, the Association's sorcerers got to work.

"Contact Gangnam Holy Temple Church. We need to go there ourselves."

Every Christian exorcist in Korea currently went through that church.

Which meant it was the most suspicious group.

* * *

After spotting the Association's sorcerers near the stake, Kim Mun-ryong and his disciples quickly withdrew.

"Damn it! The Association bastards figured it out already!"

"M-master, what do we do? If they killed the Fourth Priest... Doesn't that mean they found out about our plan?"

Kim Mun-ryong shared his disciples' concerns.

In just a few days, the evil spirits scattered throughout the area and the Possession Stakes that formed the barrier had vanished.

If the Association's sorcerers had launched a large-scale search, it wasn't impossible.

With enough people, a search could uncover anything eventually.

Still, thinking the Association was behind it finally made things clear.

The Association had noticed their plan, gathered sorcerers, and was cleansing the surrounding area through sheer numbers.

There was no other explanation.

It made no sense that a powerful sorcerer had happened by, destroyed the evil spirits, and even caught and killed one of his disciples.

"Master! We need to abandon the plan and retreat!"

"And if we retreat? Where will we find an offering for Decarabia? Should we raid a local orphanage?"

That would be pointless.

What the demon wanted was a high-quality soul cultivated to maturity.

That was why they had been cultivating a gu vessel, raising evil spirits so they would devour one another...

"I invested a year in this plan. If it fails, it'll take another year. Do you think the demon will wait that long?"

"..."

"It'll try to harvest my soul, or yours! You idiots!"

"T-then what do we do...?"

Seeing the anxiety in his disciples' eyes, Kim Mun-ryong gritted his teeth and made his decision.

"We'll send the Ghost Vein into a frenzy."

"What? The Ghost Vein?"

"Yes. The land's transformation into an Ill-Omened Site is almost complete. We've gathered enough yin energy. If we send the Ghost Vein into a frenzy, it'll sweep up every ghost nearby. Then we'll make them devour each other."

For an ordinary ghost to become an evil spirit, it had to accumulate resentment over a long time or harm people and build up karmic sin.

The same applied when ghosts preyed on one another.

Fortunately, Kim Mun-ryong's schemes had filled the area with ghosts.

"As soon as we get a usable evil spirit, we'll capture it and offer it as a sacrifice. That should buy us a reprieve!"

"B-but what about the Association? They won't just stand by!"

"Heh heh heh... That would be even better."

Even better?

The disciples looked confused.

If the Association had found and destroyed every evil spirit and stake at once, there had to be more than one or two sorcerers involved.

Perhaps a powerful Rank One sorcerer had even intervened.

Either way, it was the worst possible situation for them.

How could that be a good thing?

"You idiots. What are we trying to do here?"

"W-we're offering sacrifices to the demon..."

Wasn't all this effort meant to please the demon they had contracted with?

Mages offered sacrifices to obtain spells and grow their power, but even they found the demon's temper and greed hard to endure.

"What do you think a demon will do when someone tries to interrupt its meal?"

"Ah! It'll get rid of the people interrupting its meal?"

"Exactly. There is no natural counter to a demon. No supernatural entity can stand against one. Even clergymen are no exception."

It was an age when supernatural powers lurked in the shadows.

Every supernatural entity had a weakness.

Werewolves had silver bullets. Vampires had garlic.

Earthbound Spirits and evil spirits also had weaknesses, such as holy water and Buddhist sutras.

Demons had weaknesses too.

But among countless practitioners, how many could exploit a demon's weakness?

"Heh heh heh! We can just sit back and reap the rewards."

Demons were transcendent beings humans could not oppose.

Kim Mun-ryong knew his hastily made plan was bound to succeed, and he smiled coldly.

Footnotes:

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