WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 76: Kyoto Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (10)
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The main hall of Heian Shrine, where the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox was sealed.
Though it was called a seal, it did not take the form of some enormous tomb.
Surprisingly, the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox was sealed inside nothing more than a somewhat large boulder.
It was covered in talismans and protective straw rope, but at a glance, it looked like one of the inscribed stones commonly found at Kyoto tourist spots.
Its inscription, however, was anything but ordinary.
When White Face appears in the world, all under heaven shall fall into chaos.
When Nine Tails reveals itself, the whole country shall wail.
Never release it for ten thousand generations.
Do not open it, nor dare touch it.
There were over a hundred such stones.
It was a kind of trap. The moment someone touched the wrong Killing Stone, a devastating explosion would swallow the grave robber.
【Is this the place?】
【Yes. The one with its most precious treasure pinned in place by a Possession Stake. That is the fox's seal.】
Auns, the fifty-eighth of the seventy-two demons. A demon of flame who breathed fire and stirred greed, leading people to treasure.
Among Auns's powers was magic that saw through falsehood and searched for valuable things.
Finding the real one among the countless replica Killing Stones set up as decoys was not difficult for Auns.
【Here it is, Marchosias.】
Marchosias, the thirty-fifth demon, was a beast with hawk wings, a wolf's body, and a serpent's tail. The hybrid creature headed toward the Killing Stone Auns had located.
【The smell of a beast... No, a fox.】
【The seal has weakened. It will be released soon.】
What was embedded within the Killing Stone was an inferior replica of Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi.
Compared to the national treasure of a country with a history stretching back to ancient times, it was far beneath the real thing.
The seal would soon break.
The demons could likely hasten that moment.
"Stop!"
At the end of the demons' gaze stood an old man drenched in blood.
【Park Taejin...】
The head of Gangnam Holy Temple Church glared at the demons with icy eyes.
【Old man... We left three great yōkai on you, yet you killed them and followed us here.】
"No wonder those animal bastards charged in without thinking."
Pastor Park Tae-jin caught his breath and wiped away the blood.
Just before arriving, he had torn off four pairs of arms from the great yōkai Tsuchigumo.
It had seemed like they were trying to stall him. He never imagined they had joined hands with demons.
"You're that bastard who possessed someone in Hokkaido, aren't you? I heard there have been cases lately where they can't stop demon possession over there."
【The rumor has spread that far already?】
"Seriously, the Japanese can't even stop one demon. If they don't have priests, those bald monks should at least do their jobs."
Japan had traditionally been a land where Christianity was weak.
Without the traditional exorcist priests needed to drive out demons, it was inevitably vulnerable to demons from the western lands.
"So what? Now you're joining hands with yōkai too? Didn't you hate them for being lowly beasts?"
【Oh, Pastor Park. Times have changed. We need to get a little smarter too.】
"Tch."
Cunning bastards.
Then again, demons adapted easily to new things and new ideas.
If they had only been monsters that rampaged while relying on brute strength, they would not have been this troublesome.
They debased mystery into occultism, religion into something like opium, and hid in the shadows of crime and the hidden world.
In a world crowded with people and ever more cunning sins, they had adapted far too well.
【Auns. Break the seal.】
"You bastards! Stop...!"
Pastor Park rushed toward the two demons to stop them.
At that moment, the Killing Stone sealing the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox shattered completely, and it awoke.
【Has it been twenty years? This one was even shorter.】
A fox... a gigantic fox.
It was nearly ten meters tall, and even that was far smaller than its original form.
Despite being weakened to the limit by its long seal, it was still this large.
Pastor Park gritted his teeth.
"That fox bitch gets bigger every time I see her."
When he first saw the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox fifty years ago, she had been smaller than this.
Even twenty years ago, she had been smaller than she was now.
Yet now she was approaching several dozen meters in size.
She must have gradually grown accustomed to the seals suppressing her power with each repeated imprisonment.
"Can you catch that thing?"
"Somehow, for now?"
Good. That meant they could catch her, at least.
The fact that the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest, who had been holding back the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, had come here meant the battle situation was somewhat under control.
Something also seemed to have happened at the yōkai bastards' main camp.
"The problem is those demons..."
Pastor Park moved slowly, watching the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox and the two demons.
【Fox. Your children have sent you a message. Accept our help.】
At the words of Marchosias, the demon, the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox turned her narrow gaze toward the wolf with a serpent's tail.
【Demons? Helping me now?】
【You do not have a choice. Can you, weakened by your seal, fight those two who have sealed you twice already?】
It was not wrong.
The Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox was facing the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest of this era and Pastor Park of Gangnam Holy Temple Church for the third time.
She had met them fifty years ago, when they were novices.
She had met them twenty years ago, when they had matured.
【I think it's worth trying. It appears that young upstart with spiritual sight is not here.】
Twenty years ago, there had been a person with innate spiritual power whose spiritual sight could see colors, allowing them to discern all her sorcery and every yōkai's transformation.
She had expected that person to appear by now as a seasoned veteran, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox had a keen sense of smell.
She clearly remembered the scent of that spiritual sight user, but she could not smell it anywhere nearby.
【Shouldn't you be helping me instead? I understand now. You arrogant bastards, who acted as if only you were noble beings, came looking for me? Hehehe. Onmyōji... no, it seems there is someone among those church bastards you need to kill.】
【...】
Marchosias and Auns remained silent.
Just as expected of a fox that had lived for over a thousand years.
Her cunning and cleverness rivaled that of demons.
Still, they had expected this much.
【It is Gamigin's proposal. Let us help each other.】
Gamigin, the fourth of the seventy-two demons.
At the mention of that name, the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox smiled cunningly.
【You must be desperate. Fine. I accept.】
"Ah, damn it! Blow them up!"
At that moment, the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest began chanting an incantation.
"Urgent as law commands!"
Thousands of Explosive Thunder Talismans descended upon the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox and the demons. At the same time, Pastor Park activated the detonator.
Boom! Boom-boom-boom-boom!
There was not even time to disguise it as fireworks.
Thousands of Explosive Thunder Talismans and hundreds of Vatican Claymores exploded at once.
They were not ordinary talismans and Claymores.
They were explosives Yohan had consecrated and transformed into sacred relics.
But...
【Gahahahahaha!】
The enormous nine-tailed fox rose from the smoke of the explosion, her deeply colored fur gleaming.
Her fur, which had once shone like gold, had turned black. A red heat shimmered around the bristling strands.
Both Marchosias, the beast demon, and Auns, the flame demon, had formed contracts with the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox and possessed her.
"This is insane... Demons can possess yōkai?!"
"They're doing things they never used to do!"
The two, shocked, attacked alongside their subordinates.
They set off sacred relic fireworks to suppress the yōkai's aura and threw holy swords, holy spears, and holy kunai without holding back.
Everything was relative, though.
Sacred relics might be highly effective against wicked beings, but against a fox yōkai nearly several dozen meters tall, they simply lacked the scale.
"I lived long enough to see a gumiho and demons Synchro Fusion!"
"This isn't the time to be surprised!"
【Night shall come. Eternal night shall come.】
Her tails spread wide and began to glow eerily.
The world turned red, and dark clouds gathered in the sky.
【I am calamity! A natural disaster with nine tails!】
Rumble...
Low thunder rolled.
It became lightning crashing down in an instant.
"Lightning rods!"
The onmyōji and ninjas responded to the lightning, each driving sharp spears and similar weapons into the ground.
They had already prepared for dark clouds and lightning.
But the calamity brought about by the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox did not end there.
Rumble!
The ground shook.
Everyone in the city felt the tremors of the sudden earthquake.
"Damn it, she recovered that much power already?!"
"She has the power of two demons possessing her! Nothing would be surprising now!"
Tamamo-no-Mae, the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox.
This great evil spirit, said to have been sealed in Japan, had operated as China's Daji and Bao Si, and as Lady Hwayang of the Kingdom of Magadha in India, taking part in the fall of countless nations.
Then, transformed into a girl named Wakamo who had crossed over from Tang China, she even approached the Japanese emperor. If not for Abe no Yasuchika, a descendant of Abe no Seimei, she would have destroyed the Japanese archipelago itself.
The fox that ruined nations.
An entity that threw countries into disaster, caused every kind of strange phenomenon, and drove people to kill one another through discord.
The Golden-Furred Jade-Faced Nine-Tailed Fox of the Three Kingdoms.
She was truly an evil spirit with the power to destroy a nation.
【You who trampled and humiliated me! I have returned! Birds shall fall, beasts shall run wild, and the earth shall shake!】
The dark clouds began to swirl.
A massive vortex dozens of kilometers wide formed overhead.
The low pressure was enough to make their ears ache. Trees bent to one side, utility poles creaked in the fierce wind, and even Heian Shrine looked ready to be uprooted.
"Th-that crazy fox bitch!"
Japan was an archipelago where people had regarded natural disasters as the work of yōkai, creating all manner of powerful yōkai.
How powerful, then, was a yōkai that had destroyed a nation among them?
And the fox yōkai's power was no longer limited to the power to ruin nations.
Wings unfolded from the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox's back.
Wings as enormous as her massive body.
The power of Marchosias, the hybrid beast, manifested through her.
Flap!
As the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox flapped her wings, her massive body slowly rose into the sky.
Having ascended to heights no individual could reach, she looked down at the humans on the ground with a proud smile.
The city was bright.
The human cities she had seen twenty years ago and over fifty years ago had already been very different from the past, but now they were brighter still.
The great yōkai who had lived for over a thousand years knew that this meant there were more humans.
Which meant she could take countless human lives and become an even greater evil.
【I shall drown you beneath water! Try and stop me!】
A torrential downpour fell as if an ocean had opened in the sky.
Sudden rain during the summer monsoon season was common, but this rain was different.
In an instant, riverbanks would burst, and overflowing rivers would swallow the city.
"Tsuchimikado Chief Priest! What about Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi?!"
"We were preparing it for the seal, but her resurrection came sooner than expected...!"
"Give it to me! I'll swing it myself and take her down!"
"Give you what?! How are you going to catch something floating in the sky?!"
"Pastor Go!"
When Pastor Park called for Pastor Go, Pastor Go hurried over.
"Yes, Pastor!"
"Can we use that thing you've been hiding?"
"Th-that? I finished repairing it so it can fire, but... we can't use that, can we?"
"If we don't use something we stashed away at a time like this, when are we going to use it? If you keep saving it, it'll turn to shit!"
"W-what is it? What did you stash away?"
The Tsuchimikado Chief Priest asked uneasily, and Pastor Park answered.
"It misfired and fell into the sea during the operation to drown the Kraken in Bermuda, but Pastor Kim recovered one."
"Pastor Kim?! That name alone makes me nervous! What is it, exactly?!"
"Dragon."
"...!"
Dragon.
It was a word that could refer to a serpent dragon or a Western dragon, but the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest understood what Pastor Park meant after taking part in the operation to drown the Kraken.
The three dragons that the Vatican City Holy Knights had brought as their final weapons during that operation.
Great Monster Annihilation Warhead.
Also known as Dragon Spear.
Their true form was twenty-ton consecrated bunker busters.
They were ten-million-times enlarged versions of the Catholic secret technique, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
"That thing... You can't even fire it without the special detonator. Why do you have it, Pastor Park?"
"We recovered the box with the hidden detonator a while ago... Anyway, that isn't what's important right now! Let's fire it! One dragon should at least knock that thing out of the sky!"
It would probably deal considerable damage as well.
"N-no! Are you insane?! What if it falls onto people's homes?"
"Then we'll hit it properly! Properly!"
"How is that okay?! A missile is going to fall into the city!"
"I'll aim so it doesn't hit anyone's homes! I can set it to airburst!"
The Tsuchimikado Chief Priest and Pastor Park were arguing in shock when it happened.
"I bowed myself down upon the earth, and put my face between my knees! And when I prayed earnestly, the heaven gave rain and the earth brought forth its fruit! There is a great sound of rain! This rain was sent by Jehovah, the Lord of life!"
A prayer rang out from somewhere.
At the same time, the rain that had been pouring down with enough force to flood Kyoto became somehow refreshing.
【What?! What is this...?!】
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox cried out in pain and panic.
The falling rain had become acid rain that melted her entire body.
At the same time.
Snap!
An enormous maw plunged down from the sky.
It tore off the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox's wings and sent her crashing to the ground.
Footnotes:
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