WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 60: Spatial Magic

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After the Declaration of the Holy Realm, I looked over the locations where the sanctuaries had appeared.

First was my house in the Munjeong-dong villa district, where the bathroom remodeling had just been finished.

Then there was the abandoned factory in Junggok-dong, Gwangjin District.

Finally, Yurim Hotel in Bangbae-dong, Seocho District.

I marked the spots and connected them.

They formed a perfect triangle.

What a ridiculous picture.

“So... does this mean this is my ‘kingdom’?”

The Kingdom of God declared through the Declaration of the Holy Realm. Since I was something like the king of that kingdom, this place was basically my territory.

Only in a spiritual sense, of course. It wasn’t like I could claim ownership of the actual land.

Anyway, there wasn’t much else to do after the Declaration of the Holy Realm.

Other than new lines appearing in Second Kings.

「A demon called Martim attached itself to a man at Yurim Hotel, defiling that land and corrupting its earth veins. But Baek Yohan, the anointed of Jehovah, went there with Go Jincheol, proclaimed it a sanctuary of Jehovah, and rebuked it.」

「Martim could not endure and was driven from the man. The man recovered his sound mind, and Martim was subdued and bound beneath Jehovah’s authority, never again able to act as it pleased.」

Hmm. So this was how what I did got recorded.

It was kind of embarrassing.

If you thought about it, this was basically being added to the Bible.

I had no intention of showing it to anyone, but God, Gari, and I knew.

Was this how kings felt when their deeds were recorded in the royal annals?

Whatever. No one was going to see it, so that was beside the point.

“Martim...”

The eighteenth of the seventy-two demons. This demon, also known as Bathin, possessed several powers, but the most notable was spatial movement.

“So forcing us into the bathhouse and dropping me into that weird scalding bath were both part of that power.”

Did that mean I could use spatial movement magic too?

“Hey, hey. How do I use magic?”

【······.】

I asked the eye inside the ring. I needed to know how magic worked before I could use it.

“Oh, you’re Decarabia. Your eyes all look so similar that I got confused. The one that looks more devious must be Martim, right?”

【······!】

Martim’s eye looked rebellious, but it belonged to me now.

One thing I’d learned while handling Decarabia was that demons apparently couldn’t disobey my commands.

Soon, Martim’s eye glowed ominously, and a bluish haze lingered in the space before me.

It looked like incense smoke drifting through the air, only dyed blue.

When I cautiously reached out and touched the blue smoke, a familiar floating sensation washed over me.

“Huh?!”

When I came to my senses, I was inside the house.

What? What had changed?

It was still my house.

But that floating sensation had definitely been what I felt when crossing through space.

My spiritual energy had also dropped a little.

“Huh? I moved!”

Looking closely, I realized I’d shifted slightly forward from where I had been standing.

About half a meter?

It was a subtle change, but the important part was that I’d crossed space.

I hadn’t moved quickly. I had jumped through space itself.

“Ooh... Can I go farther?”

Would it take more spiritual energy to travel farther?

I lightly focused on the garden.

I spread out my spiritual energy, formed that blue cloud of smoke again, and grabbed hold of it.

“Oh!”

I was in the garden.

My garden, which had been cleaned up nice and neat after I asked one of the church members who worked as a gardener to take care of it.

I’d jumped straight to the garden where Jjaekjjaeki and Gugu were chirping.

“Oh, Gari came with me too. Do we move together?”

Gari had moved to the garden with me, but not everyone had come along.

【Devour? Devour?】

Eight-Foot Sister had been looking around the room for me after I suddenly vanished, then finally spotted me in the garden.

“Hmm, does that mean we can’t all move together? Or do I need to use more spiritual energy? Sister, give me your arm.”

【Devour?】

Eight-Foot Sister gently took my outstretched hand. Her grip had to be insanely strong, but she was controlling her strength really well.

“Okay, this time we’re all moving together. Wingardio Rediotssa!”

When I tried jumping through space while holding Eight-Foot Sister’s hand, it worked properly this time.

“Yaaah! Yaaahh!”

Necromancy had already seemed magical enough, but spatial movement?

A question suddenly came to mind.

Just how far could I take this?

* * *

「Jincheol! Why do you think you were never declared Park Taejin’s successor? A mediocre man who falls so far short, could you truly lead Holy Temple Church──」

Whenever he closed his eyes, he could hear the demon’s whisper.

Pastor Go Jincheol believed it was pure luck that he had not fallen for the demon’s words back then.

He had driven a dagger into the back of the hand that had been trying to strangle Taoist Cheongmyeong, but the fact that he had tried to do it at all was the problem.

If he were truly God’s shepherd, if he had faithfully followed everything he had been trained to do, he should not have fallen for the temptation in the first place.

「You? Jincheol, you are a mediocre man who cannot compare to even a hair on Pastor Kim Gwang-o’s head. He drove twelve demons that tried to descend upon this land away. Have you ever truly faced evil and defeated it?」

The demon was right.

The first demon he had faced had been truly terrifying.

When he stood before it, he had felt as though its tongue were licking every corner of his body. It had been a sickening feeling, as if all the thoughts he had hidden away, even those he had never realized he held, were being stripped bare.

“Pastor Kim Gwang-o drove away twelve demons like that...”

Korea did not have much history with exorcising demons.

Demons rarely came to this land, and the few attempts had been driven away by powerful guardians.

The foremost of those guardians were Pastor Park Tae-jin, the head of Gangnam Holy Temple Church, and Pastor Kim Gwang-o, his successor.

He had thought he had been crushed beneath the shadows of those two legends, but what was the truth?

He had not even managed to properly argue against or resist a demon.

Their abilities had been fundamentally different.

“Haah... What an ambition beyond my station.”

There was himself, endlessly lacking.

Then there was Pastor Park Tae-jin, now growing old.

Who could possibly succeed him──

Whoosh!

“Whoa!!”

“What?!”

When someone suddenly appeared in his office, Pastor Go nearly jumped out of his skin and reached beneath his desk.

Just before he could pull out the Glock 17 with its twenty-five-round extended magazine, Pastor Go realized the person before him was a familiar face.

“Y-Yohan?”

“Oh, Pastor Go. You were at church?”

It was Yohan.

“What on earth... Ah, don’t tell me it’s demon magic?”

“You got it right away.”

The explanation was simple.

After subduing the demon Martim, Yohan had used its magic, and that magic was spatial movement.

The rules of spatial movement were as follows.

First, Yohan and Gari always moved together.

Second, he could jump through space with anyone he wanted.

Third, the more people he moved and the farther he traveled, the more spiritual energy it consumed.

“You jumped from your house in Munjeong-dong... all the way to the church in Gangnam?”

“Yes. I actually tried to see if I could jump all the way to Everland, but it didn’t work. Maybe I don’t have enough spiritual energy?”

“Hmm... It seems that spatial movement is only possible within your own territory.”

Pastor Go used what had happened at Yurim Hotel as an example.

“If the demon could move through space anywhere it wanted, there would have been no need to use it only inside Yurim Hotel. It could have simply dropped us into the middle of the ocean.”

“In Martim’s case, the hotel was its territory...”

“You are Solomon’s successor, the one who made the Declaration of the Holy Realm. In other words, the entire declared sanctuary can be seen as your territory.”

“Ooh...”

The range was limited, but even that was an incredible ability.

“I guess I don’t need a car anymore. Ah, no, maybe I do?”

“If you keep expanding the sanctuary, you might be able to think that way. And there’s one more thing.”

Pastor Go recalled Martim using its power.

“There’s no rule saying you can only move yourself, is there? Martim forced us to move too.”

“Right! It did!”

Martim had dragged Yohan, Pastor Go, and Taoist Cheongmyeong into the bathhouse, then thrown Yohan into the subspace of the scalding bath.

That meant the target of spatial movement did not have to be himself.

“Would you try moving me once? The distance... the other end of the office should be enough.”

“Yes, I’ll give it a try.”

Following Pastor Go’s instructions, Yohan applied spatial movement magic to him.

Yohan had more or less figured out how to use it by beating Martim up. He sent the blue smoke formed from spiritual energy toward Pastor Go and made it touch him.

Whoosh!

“······!”

Pastor Go suddenly felt his body float, then realized he had jumped to the other end of the office.

It had been his own guess, but he had not expected it to actually work.

“Amazing... You really can use the magic of all seventy-two demons.”

“I’ll have to catch a whole lot of demons first.”

“You can do it. You are the new king recorded in Second Kings, acknowledged by God and by the Throne.”

“It feels a little embarrassing when you call me a king.”

Yohan scratched his head.

Pastor Go let out a small chuckle.

A man chosen by God and protected by an angel was this humble.

If Pastor Go had been in that position, he would have jumped for joy.

Feeling a little wistful, Pastor Go heard Yohan say goodbye.

“Then I’ll head back. I want to keep testing how far this can go.”

“All right. Just don’t run around too recklessly.”

Yohan vanished from the office.

The office became quiet again. Pastor Go sat at his desk and sank into thought.

“This must be the difference.”

A humble and pure shepherd, simply beloved in God’s eyes.

He simply did not belong in that category.

Pastor Go remembered feeling the angel’s gaze where Yohan had passed.

Gari was only a fragment, an avatar.

Its true body watched over the sanctuary from Heaven.

Had the angel watched his choice back then?

If it had, what had it thought?

Had it been disappointed in him for wavering, even for a moment?

Or had it been satisfied that he drove off the demon’s temptation by stabbing the back of his own hand?

“······.”

He remembered the gaze he had felt from Gari.

From Gari, whom he had faced directly... he had felt a rather favorable gaze.

Yes. I am still the Father’s son.

For now, that seemed enough.

* * *

My spiritual energy had increased enormously after absorbing Martim.

How enormous?

More than Decarabia and a hundred dream demons combined.

At this rate, I could command more bird souls with necromancy, and I could use spatial movement pretty freely too.

“I’ve gone and become an infinite-blink mage~”

It wasn’t truly unlimited, but if I moved short distances by myself, I could probably do it more times than I expected.

Still, I should avoid long-distance jumps whenever possible.

I never knew when my spiritual energy might run dry in a real fight.

“Whew, I’ve got a lot to do.”

I had to pay the rest of the hotel’s purchase price in addition to the deposit, and that meant reopening the hotel.

I could find interior contractors through the church, but it would still cost a pretty penny.

I also needed to build something on the abandoned factory site I bought and run it for tax-laundering purposes...

“This is when Association requests come in handy.”

If I handled a few Black Knot requests, I’d make money in no time.

If that didn’t work, I could always sell a bunch of holy water and holy oil.

“Gari, Sister. Let’s go to the Association!”

Click, clack!

【Devour~!】

The Association was outside the triangle. I had already decided to avoid long-distance jumps, so I should just take a taxi──

Murmur, murmur!

What was with all the people in front of my house?

“Is there a drama shoot or something?”

I stepped out through the gate and tried to weave through the crowd, but their gazes suddenly turned toward me.

【T-That’s him!】

【Is that really him?】

Huh? Why did their voices echo like ghosts?

Sure enough, everyone in front of me was a ghost.

“Why are you all gathered outside someone else’s house──”

Then the ghosts suddenly bowed all at once and cried out!

【Your Majesty! Please resolve this injustice!】

【Your Majesty! I have been wronged even more!】

“······.”

Uh?

Footnotes:

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