WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 65: Senior Pastor Park (3)

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When the body was weak, the brain had to work overtime.

That was the thought that came to mind as I watched the two old-timers.

"You used birds controlled through spirit magic to block their view, then added falling force with Spatial Magic. Clever."

While I’d barely managed to catch one using magic and gravity, those two had subdued werewolves by beating them senseless with their bare fists.

What kind of physical stats did these old-timers have...

"So you’ve got spirit magic and Spatial Magic besides the angel and the prayer. Looks like you gain more magic every time you seal a demon."

"That’s ridiculous..."

From where I stood, Mrs. Park beating a werewolf to death with her bare fists and dragging it over by the hair was more ridiculous.

"You’ll be able to do even more ridiculous things from now on. Bokrye, keep that in mind."

"...So that’s why you brought me here?"

It seemed Pastor Park had called Mrs. Park over partly to show her this.

"And don’t report this to the Association. You know they aren’t exactly spotless themselves. We’ll keep this hidden from them for the time being."

"Tch."

【An angel with a face like that. The world really is ending.】

Sir, Gari will eat you if you keep saying things like that.

He probably wouldn’t eat him, but he might get three days in jail.

"Anyway, Yohan needs some training. Spatial movement is convenient, but you can’t rely on it alone. How many times can you use it?"

"Um... around ten times."

"Ten evasions should be enough."

Pastor Park wrote something down as he organized my abilities.

"A few rounds of endurance training should fix your physical condition. If hunting demons gives you more magic, we should start looking for weaker ones first..."

"Hey, Park. The bastards are coming."

Awooooooooo!!

Howls rang beneath the moonlight.

I swallowed at the sound unique to wolves when...

"Yaaaaaaaah!!"

Someone screamed from somewhere nearby.

"Make those damn dogs shut up already!!"

Hmm.

They were being a nuisance.

"Looks like this neighborhood has suffered quite a bit. Bokrye, why aren’t the public officials handling the complaints?"

"No reports came in."

"The people’s voices are the reports."

Not long after the howling began, werewolves started pouring in.

"Is this neighborhood really okay?"

"It doesn’t get this bad unless there’s a full moon, but the problem is that man-eaters are gathering in packs."

There were more than twelve werewolves.

"Pastor, do I keep wearing these sandbags?"

"No, you’re fine without them now."

"You heard him, Gari. Eight-Foot Sister."

Clack! Clack!

【Devour...!】

Eight-Foot Sister excitedly tried to pull a gatling gun from Gari’s mouth.

"Eight-Foot Sister, stop!"

【Devour?】

"Gatling rounds in a residential area? No guns!"

【Devour...】

Eight-Foot Sister’s shoulders drooped.

She eventually pulled out Benkei’s Iron Staff instead.

"Oh, isn’t that Musashibo Benkei’s Iron Staff that Pastor Kim had? I heard he sold it."

"It was offered as a prize in a shell game, so I won it."

"Wow, it’s been a while. It was so heavy that we only used it as a totem."

"Hey, you relic thieves. Focus."

I wasn’t a thief...

The fight had started, but there wasn’t much for me to do.

Gari and Eight-Foot Sister would take care of everything themselves.

I was also a little tired from using Spatial Magic so much.

As for Pastor Park and Mrs. Park...

"That’s insane..."

The battle was completely one-sided.

Pastor Park, wearing knuckle dusters, knocked down charging werewolves with one-two punches. Every time Mrs. Park’s blade flashed, a werewolf split in half.

This was closer to a massacre than a fight.

Even Pastor Go or other exorcists probably couldn’t make it this one-sided.

The only person I could think of who could fight this overwhelmingly was Dragon Maiden Bodhisattva, now that she had Holy Tyranno.

"So many. Why haven’t you dealt with them until now?"

"I was waiting for the right time to clean them all up at once. If we caught them half-heartedly and they scattered across the country, we’d be even more screwed."

The two old-timers’ combat power was overwhelming.

They cut through werewolves like trash mobs. I couldn’t tell whether this was urban fantasy or hunter fantasy anymore.

"You two seem like you’re in a different genre."

"Yohan, I don’t think you have any room to say that."

Crunch!

Munch, munch!

Devouuur!

"..."

Why?

I felt like I’d lived a very steady, ordinary life.

Still, it was reassuring.

"They’re weaker than I thought. Smaller than the ones we caught in Florence, too."

"How can you compare the ones chased out of Europe with true purebloods? Didn’t you and Pastor Kim wipe out the real ones already?"

"True. We exterminated all the vampires and werewolves twenty years ago."

By the time we had dealt with most of the werewolves that charged us, Association employees came over and began cleaning up.

There were a lot of werewolf corpses piled up, but this was how they handled the aftermath.

"Well, we were going to deal with them soon anyway. It just happened a little earlier."

"They’re thin-blooded, right? Seeing how they lose control just because there’s a full moon."

"Are purebloods different?"

Pastor Park grinned at my question.

"Want to take a trip to Florence with me sometime soon? There are lots of purebloods there."

"...I’ll pass."

"Still, come with me to Japan or China at least once. I hear foxes have been causing trouble lately."

"How long has it been since the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons happened?"

"Over twenty years, wasn’t it? It’s been nearly thirty."

Anyway, thanks to those two people from a different genre, we reached our destination without any trouble.

"Siloam Storage Facility? What did you bury here?"

"Pastor Kim buried something here."

Pastor Park entered the storage building and stopped in front of Storage Unit 13 at the end of the hallway.

When he opened the door...

* * *

Jangsan, Busan Metropolitan City.

This was from the time Pastor Park had gone on a business trip to subjugate the local cryptid known as the Jangsan Tiger.

"Pastor Park, you’ve worked hard."

"Venerable Unjeong."

Pastor Park looked at Venerable Unjeong, the head of the Diamond Sect, who had come to subjugate the Jangsan Tiger with him.

The monk still walked lightly, like an immortal, but Pastor Park remembered him in his prime.

"You’re not what you used to be."

"What can we do? Young people these days don’t want to work as exorcists. Old people like us have to suffer instead."

He really had gotten old.

It had taken quite some effort just to strangle a tiger monster to death. It wasn’t even the Mountain Lord.

"Kids these days can’t even do this much, so I worry."

"Pastor Park... Anyone who hears you will curse you."

Gangnam Holy Temple Church’s exorcists were a small elite group.

Part of the reason was that few people wanted to do the work, but even more people couldn’t endure Pastor Park’s harsh training.

Venerable Unjeong had once told him to change that, but Pastor Park had been firm.

「If they train half-heartedly, they’ll die in the field. I don’t intend to push them in there to die.」

This work depended on individual ability.

Perhaps handing people guns and throwing them in like the Great Unification Church did was also one way.

If they were willing to accept half of them dying every year.

Pastor Park didn’t raise his disciples that way.

They weren’t expendable tools. They were people, and he wanted them to live as long as possible.

At times like this, Pastor Park often thought of Pastor Kim.

His successor and most gifted disciple.

The one who had persevered through countless hardships and fought for the world.

The one who killed that disciple had been his own child.

His son had believed that Pastor Kim was the reason he couldn’t inherit the church. Driven by jealousy and resentment, he hired a sorcerer to weaken Pastor Kim, then hired a killer to run him over with a truck.

That had always remained a burden on Pastor Park’s heart.

"You’re getting a call, Pastor Park."

"Hm?"

Pastor Park pulled out his phone, puzzled.

He had several means of contact, but among them was a satellite phone number shared only with a select few as an emergency line.

The people who knew that number included the director of a Pentagon Bureau of Paranormal Management black site, Cardinal Rosinald of the Vatican Special Task Force for Large Monsters, and Chief Priest Tsuchimikado of Kyoto.

It was an emergency contact line shared by the administrators overseeing each country’s exorcists.

Yet none of their names appeared on the caller ID.

The only one besides them who knew this number was...

‘That’s impossible.’

Pastor Park shook his head, denying the person who came to mind.

How could someone who had died seventeen years ago be calling him?

He must have missed them so much that he was imagining absurd things.

"...Who is this?"

[There’s only one minute, so I’ll get straight to the point, Pastor Park.]

It was the voice of a young boy.

Before Pastor Park could even react to how different it was from the people on that contact list...

[There’s a key inside the emergency tire in the trunk of a 2016 Mohave beside Pillar 21 on the second floor of the public parking lot at Namsan Station Exit 4. It opens Storage Unit 13 at Siloam Storage Facility in Singye-dong, Yongsan, so Pastor Park, retrieve the ‘My Collection’ stored there!]

"W-What?"

What was this supposed to mean all of a sudden?

A public parking lot? Siloam Storage Facility?

As Pastor Park protested at the random, disconnected nonsense, he caught one strange phrase.

My Collection?

「How many holy relics are in Pastor Kim’s house?」

「...I haven’t counted, so I don’t know.」

「Lord! I’ll kill this relic thief and go to hell!!」

「Agh...! A pastor is beating someone up!!」

"Who are you? Who the hell..."

[I’m glad I got to hear your voice again! And Pastor! The ‘other world’ really exists! Bye-bye!]

Click.

That was it.

Pastor Park pressed the call button again, but the other side was busy.

Come to think of it, this number...

"Isn’t this Senior Jonah’s satellite phone?"

That was why he had gone to meet Davy Jones in the Bermuda Triangle.

* * *

The storage unit was packed with things.

Wooden crates filled the roughly 165-square-meter space so tightly that it looked cramped despite not being a small storage unit.

Every crate had a nameplate. Those seemed to identify what was inside.

「Korean History Series No. 2, Seven-Branched Sword.」

「Korean History Series No. 17, Sainchamsageom.」

「Korean History Series No. 31, King Jinpyeong’s Celestial Map.」

「Japanese History Series No. 3, Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi.」

「Japanese History Series No. 8, Yata no Kagami.」

「Chinese History Series No. 1, Xuanyuan Sword.」

「European History Series No. 27, Cross of Saint Peter.」

「Northern European History Series No. 3, Gungnir.」

「Middle Eastern History Series No. 4, Ten Commandments.」

「Middle Eastern History Series No. 33, Eye of Horus.」

...

...

...

"...That insane relic thief."

I agreed with Mrs. Park’s stunned curse.

What was this?

I gave the crates a quick look, but why were these things in Korea, and why were they part of a pastor’s “My Collection”?

While we stood there blankly staring at the crates, Pastor Park rummaged through something and took a familiar relic from a box.

"Here it is. Bokrye, catch."

Pastor Park tossed it over.

Mrs. Park snatched it out of the air, then stared in shock.

"You lunatic! Do you even know what this is?"

"The Baekje Gilt-bronze Incense Burner..."

The one in the museum...

No, if this was the genuine article, then the one in the museum was a fake.

"You’ve worked hard. You can go now."

"Go? You’re telling me to go?! Old man, there’s a scene full of stolen cultural artifacts right in front of me, and you’re telling a public official to leave?"

"I only promised you the Baekje Gilt-bronze Incense Burner. I gave it to you, didn’t I?"

"Y-You...!"

Mrs. Park trembled as she looked over the piles of relics before her.

"I could call the police and have them take all of this."

"If you were going to do that, you would’ve done it back when Pastor Kim was alive. The government people all turned a blind eye to it anyway, so don’t start making an issue of it now. It’s tiring."

"What are you going to do with all these relics..."

"Some will be returned, and some... will be given away."

"Given away? To whom?"

Pastor Park suddenly turned to look at me.

"Yohan, wouldn’t this be decent starting capital for the Kingdom of God?"

"..."

Was this really okay?

I was speechless.

Footnotes:

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