WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 71: Kyoto Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (5)

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Fwoooooooooosh!

Platinum-colored holy flames several meters wide poured forth like a dragon's breath.

The webs vaporized the instant they touched it.

The spider yokai burned away without even having time to scream.

Kieeeeeeeeee──!

As the inferno swept over them, their unfinished cries were buried beneath the roar of the flames.

It crawled along the walls and ceiling.

Following the webs spread throughout the cave, hidden by illusions and laid out like guides, the fire spread everywhere.

Satomaru and the ninjas couldn't close their gaping mouths.

"Jorogumo's webs... shouldn't catch fire from ordinary flames."

"Didn't we give up from the start because anything short of napalm wouldn't work?"

That would've been true if it were ordinary oil.

But the oil Yohan had filled the Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost's fuel tank with wasn't ordinary oil.

It was blessed holy oil mixed with an olive-oil blend, an expanded and improved version of the holy firebombs he threw by hand.

The flames ignited by that holy oil were practically holy fire itself.

"Hot!"

"Don't get close! Your skin will cook just from standing nearby!"

The pouring flames reached a full 1,700 degrees.

Even ten meters away, the heat was unbearable without protective equipment.

The tremendous heat distorted the air around the nozzle, and the rocks struck by the flames cracked with sharp pops.

It was a weapon never meant for human hands. And then...

【Devouuuuuuuur!!】

Eight-Foot Sister sprayed it around like a fish that had found water.

Pastor Go's nearly insane overpowered weapon and the large, sturdy urban legend wielding it made for perfect synergy.

"Pastor Go, what were the specs on that flamethrower again?"

"It sprays ten liters of holy oil per second. The fuel tank holds 260 liters, so it'll all be gone in twenty-six seconds."

"And how much does it cost per liter?"

"I reduced the cost by mixing your consecrated holy oil with kerosene. Add silver powder and silver crosses to act as catalysts, and it comes out to roughly fifty thousand won per liter."

Ten liters equaled 500,000 won.

Two hundred sixty liters equaled 13 million won.

"Eight-Foot Sister, stop shooting and save some! You're having way too much fun burning money!"

【Devour?】

Maybe his words were drowned out by the flamethrower, because the Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost didn't hear him.

In the end, she kept spraying until the fuel tank was empty, and Yohan carefully asked Satomaru a question.

"...Can we expense this?"

* * *

Click. Click.

When no flames came out of the fuel tank despite her pulling the trigger, the Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost let go of the trigger.

Hissssss!

Steam rose from the glowing red nozzle.

The cave was silent.

All that remained where the flames had passed were blackened rock walls and countless spider corpses.

"The path is clear... Let's proceed."

Satomaru, who had only just recovered from the sight before him, suggested they move in.

"Yes, but let's rearm the Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost first, then proceed."

"There's... more? Things like that?"

"Haha. I made something called Magdalene's Chainsaw with great care..."

"Right, anyway, please equip it quickly."

The Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost put down the empty flamethrower and equipped two Magdalene's Chainsaws.

Armed with those devastating weapons of war capable of pouring out 20 mm autocannon rounds, she smiled faintly at their weighty, chilling feel.

"Eight-Foot Sister! They said it can be expensed! Don't worry about the money, just shoot to your heart's content!"

【Devour~!】

Watching the excited Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost, one of the ninjas muttered,

"...What kind of ghost could that urban legend possibly have been in life?"

"Who knows. Maybe she was the ghost of a high school girl who loved FPS games."

The ninjas soon finished reorganizing and began their advance.

Yohan and Pastor Go followed behind them.

"This is incredible. Just how many offspring did she have...?"

"If the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons had gone ahead as planned, it would've been truly horrific."

The deeper they went into the cave, the more frightening the piles of spider yokai corpses became.

Without the flamethrower, and without using the Yata no Kagami to break the illusion...

Gulp.

Satomaru swallowed as he imagined what might have happened.

"Um, Yohan."

"Yes?"

"That mirror... What exactly is it?"

"Uh, well..."

Yohan was flustered by Satomaru's question, then gave a vague answer.

"It was excavated in... Gaya, I think? It's a bronze mirror. Really old."

"I see. To own such a treasure, you must be no ordinary person."

"Well... yeah. I inherited some things."

They wouldn't figure it out, right?

No, it only looked like an old bronze mirror.

Japan wasn't the only place that had gone through the Bronze Age, so there was no way they could identify it as one of Japan's Three Sacred Treasures from this alone.

"Ugh..."

"What's wrong?"

"As the smell of burned yokai fades, the stench is becoming overwhelming. Whatever's inside doesn't seem like an ordinary evil bastard."

He was right.

Once they passed the corpses of the young spiders, they began to see skeletons carelessly discarded throughout the cave.

"Those monstrous bastards... How many people did they eat?"

All of these had once been people.

The signs of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons had only appeared recently, so the yokai had devoured all these people in that short period.

"Wouldn't the police notice? Missing people and all?"

"Y, yokai know transformation magic."

Kohaku answered Yohan's muttered question.

Yokai could use transformation magic to disguise themselves perfectly as humans.

Young yokai couldn't do it, but yokai with enough years under their belts would eat people and take their places.

"That's why there are fewer reports than the actual number of missing people."

"...Then, Kohaku, you too?"

Kohaku wildly shook her hands at Yohan's suspicious look.

"I've never killed a person! And the form I transform into is just what I look like after growing up!"

"I wasn't accusing you."

If Kohaku were an evil yokai who had killed people, she would've smelled bad.

Yohan's spiritual scent was an absolute standard, so there was no doubt that Kohaku was far removed from anything "evil."

How long had they gone on like that?

Yohan saw the ninjas at the front stop and signal them.

"Stop!"

An unbelievably wide cavern stretched out in the depths of the cave.

It was nearly the size of a football field, with spiderwebs spread everywhere.

A gigantic human-faced spider was glaring down at them from atop those webs.

【How dare you...】

Her voice boomed through the cavern.

Yet that voice trembling with rage carried a chilling terror that made their limbs tingle.

It was the instinctive fear stirred by the low growl of a predatory beast.

【You mere humans... My children!】

The enraged spider yokai leaped up to the ceiling of the cave.

Boom!

Dozens of legs clung to the ceiling as she raced upside down across the cavern.

The impact cracked the ceiling, sending stalactites raining down like an air raid.

"Open fire!"

The ninjas, along with the Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost, turned their muzzles toward Jorogumo.

The storm of bullets struck Jorogumo, but she charged forward unharmed.

"What? She's completely fine?!"

"Jorogumo's shell is armor forged over four hundred years!"

As Kohaku said, the body of a great yokai that had lived for four hundred years was no ordinary thing.

There was no way human popguns could harm it.

"She can withstand 20 mm autocannon rounds too?"

"The higher-ranking the monster, the less effective modern weapons become! You need attacks empowered by magic!"

As they spoke, Jorogumo darted forward and landed in the middle of the ninjas.

The ninjas stopped firing as her legs swung at them, then scattered in flawless coordination.

"Guns don't work! Respond with anti-yokai equipment!"

What they pulled out were chain sickles. They were abandoning firearms for melee weapons?

It seemed absurd, but on the hidden side of the world, this was the main weapon.

If the blades were inscribed with the Big Dipper and the mantras of the Diamond Sutra, forged seven times from silver, meteoric iron, and bronze made by melting temple bells, then consecrated by 108 monks chanting scripture for three days and nights, they became sealing chains that bound yokai.

"Bind her!"

The chain sickles thrown from all directions wrapped around Jorogumo.

Jorogumo tried to drag the ninjas toward her with brute strength, but the Diamond Sutra mantras engraved into the chain sickles weakened her power.

【Devour!】

The Eight-Foot-Tall Ghost charged in wielding Benkei's Iron Staff.

Sensing the threat of her approach, Jorogumo thrashed her legs wildly.

"Urgh!"

"Such strength even against the Vajra mantras!"

Just as the ninjas, flung about by Jorogumo's immense strength, were about to be thrown in every direction...

Clatterrrrrr!

A rope that had shot out from somewhere instantly sealed Jorogumo's body.

"What?"

Jorogumo had even broken free from the chain sickles bearing Vajra mantras thrown by dozens of ninjas.

Yet a rope had stopped her movements?

No, looking closer, the rope that had shot out was made of metal.

It was a steel rope made by twisting thin strands of wire together.

"Namaḥ samanta vajranāṃ caṇḍa mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ... I read it exactly like the manual said, and it worked."

The steel rope had shot out from inside Gari's mouth.

At Yohan's command, the chain inside Gari's mouth extended and bound Jorogumo according to his will.

The Vajra Lasso of Fudo Myoo, No. 7 in the Indian History Series.

The demon-binding rope held in the left hand of Acalanatha, Mahavairocana's messenger and the Esoteric Buddhist guardian who drove away delusions and demons.

Even a great yokai that had lived four hundred years couldn't escape that rope.

No, precisely because she was a great yokai, she couldn't escape it.

【Y, you bastard! Let me go!】

"Why would I let you go?"

Yohan snapped his fingers and pulled new weapons out of Gari's mouth.

The ninjas stared in disbelief.

"M, magical artifacts! No, treasures?"

"Don't tell me every single one of those is a treasure?"

Just how many treasures did he have?

And then, those treasures...

Ptooey!

Gari spat toward Jorogumo.

"Urk!"

Jorogumo let out a choked scream as a treasure pierced her heart.

But that wasn't the end.

Ptooey! Ptooey, ptooey! Ptooey!

Treasures shot out one after another, tearing Jorogumo apart.

The ninjas, unable to see Gari, thought they were flying through the air at high speed.

"Good heavens..."

Yohan, on the other hand, could see what was happening.

"This looks kind of stupid."

Still, as long as they killed the yokai properly, that was what mattered.

* * *

"Jorogumo is dead..."

"Jorogumo? She was a great yokai that had lived for four hundred years!"

Ayame stared at Tsukiyo in shock, unable to believe her.

"It isn't just Jorogumo. Yuki-onna, Kamaitachi... The great yokai gathered for the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons are being hunted down one by one."

"...Did Pastor Park and the Tsuchimikado Clan make their move?"

"That too, but..."

Tsukiyo had heard reports from the subordinates she had dispatched to each great yokai.

Among them was a report that a young man named Baek Yohan, a newcomer brought by Pastor Park, had overwhelmingly crushed Jorogumo.

"To find Jorogumo's lair so easily when she had hidden it with illusions..."

And the spectacle of treasures that had overwhelmed Jorogumo. Tsukiyo knew those items well.

Once, she had sought out that man to avenge the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, who had been sealed away.

"Pastor Kim's successor. I thought all those treasures had been lost..."

He already commanded familiars that were far from ordinary, and now he had treasures like those too.

At this rate, they might not even hold out until their mother's seal was broken.

"W, what do we do? Three great yokai have already been taken down."

"That idiot bitch Kohaku..."

Surely she was the one who had revealed information about the great yokai.

A weak, stupid bitch.

Tsukiyo had sent Kohaku away to die honorably, and the wretch had dared betray her?

"Ayame. Do you still have the contact information he left behind?"

"What? Y, you can't mean it, Sis... You're going to accept that man's offer?!"

At this rate, the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox would be sealed again the moment she revived.

Then they might have to wait decades all over again.

"If necessary, I'll join hands with even a demon."

Footnotes:

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