WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 258: Valley of Death (4)
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By the time Sunday afternoon was sliding toward dusk, clumsy, tinkling music was playing in the lounge for soldiers with troubled minds. It was the background music from a children’s program on the large TV. Beneath the rays of a brightly smiling baby sun, four differently colored dolls with antennas on their heads ran around without a care on a peaceful, pale-green hill. No one had put it on deliberately. The enlisted soldiers flipping through channels had chosen it. Apparently, they found it better than news packed with reality or movies about slaughtering zombies.
「Friends, it’s time to say goodbye now.」
“No, I don’t wanna! Don’t wanna!”
The soldiers who had timed it together clutched their stomachs and laughed. Then they flinched at the faint sound of gunfire in the distance. In the sudden silence that followed, the soldier holding the remote turned up the volume until it was just a little too loud.
The members sitting in a circle around Gyeoul, men and women alike, were busy trading dirty jokes. Originally, it had been a place where each person shared their worries, but at some point it had turned into this.
“In my experience, women named Megan have a high chance of being amazing in bed.”
“What the hell are you saying, dumbass? How many Megans have you even had in your life?”
“Four... no, five.”
“Insane.”
It was bluster, meant to suggest he had enough experience to know that many women with the same name. The enlisted soldier who jeered at him pointed at a mirror.
“Go look at your face. That’ll bring you back to your senses, little Max.”
“Little? I’m a whole hand taller than you.”
“Yeah. You’re tall.”
Max thought about it for a moment, then bristled when the laughter broke out. The few female enlisted soldiers laughed especially loudly. One of them clapped and said, “That’s right. It really is little.” Max’s face flushed red.
“It’s not little! And I’m a technician!”
“Oh, sure. If you say so, it must be true. Would’ve been nice if you’d let me feel that too, though.”
The female soldier’s added comment set off another sharp burst of laughter. It was not exactly a conversation they could have had proudly in front of officers, but officers were already mixed in with them, and this was a group that almost certainly would never fight again, whether on active duty or as reservists. People who would soon become civilians.
Gyeoul thought conversations like this were inevitable. Just like the audience outside did. It felt like watching the blank eyes and frantic masturbation of monkeys in a zoo.
“Major Han. Do you have a moment?”
It was a chaplain priest calling him. His rank was the same as Gyeoul’s, Major. Gyeoul asked the reluctant enlisted soldiers and the few officers to excuse him and stood. The priest led the way and brought Gyeoul into the chaplains’ quarters. A Hindu chaplain passed by with a salute. Since there had been Hindu believers among the scattered two million, the chaplain had been dispatched just in case. Unfortunately, there had been no believers among the rescued, so Gyeoul had heard that this chaplain had the most free time among them. Naturally, it was a gloomy sort of freedom.
Once inside the room, the priest opened a supply cabinet and asked, “Tea? Or coffee?”
“Tea, please.”
The chaplain priest, dark circles under his eyes, nodded. There was alcohol on the shelf too, but he did not offer any to Gyeoul. Which meant this was not a matter alcohol would help.
The tea the priest brewed tasted astringent and bitter. Even the leaves were poor quality. But this tea was a tool for conversation. When one’s throat tightened while searching for words, or when one needed to give the other person a little consideration, the time it took to drink was enough.
“Thank you for making time whenever you could, even with how busy you’ve been.”
“Not at all. It was to help the people we’d gone to the trouble of rescuing live properly.”
It had not been anything particularly grand or difficult. At Gyeoul’s words, the priest gave a tired smile. His bearing was closer to a clergyman than a soldier. Gyeoul decided to treat him with the courtesy due a clergyman rather than a soldier, because the priest seemed to want that.
“Major Han. I know this question is rude, but I’ll ask. Have you ever considered taking the Catholic faith?”
Gyeoul set down his teacup and tilted his head.
“I haven’t, not yet. And I’m curious why you’re asking when you know it’s rude.”
After hesitating, the chaplain priest sighed.
“In truth, it was not a personal question.”
“When you say it isn’t personal...”
“It is the will of the New York Vatican.”
New York Vatican? Reading Gyeoul’s expression, the priest slowly nodded.
“This has not been officially announced yet, so please keep it to yourself for the time being. Though east of the blockade line, it is already an open secret... His Holiness the previous Pope passed away on April 27. The day Rome was swept away by the tidal wave of death.”
“...”
“That day, the Italian government declared that it was completely abandoning the entire mainland, including the capital of Rome, except for Sicily and Sardinia. A rescue team was sent to the Vatican, but His Holiness refused to escape. If everyone could not be saved, he said he would remain with the faithful who would be left behind until the final moment... So the helicopter prepared for His Holiness returned carrying laypeople. They were all children.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It was a sorrowful thing, but I believe he made the right decision.”
“Then what happens to the next Pope?”
“He has already been elected.”
“Already?”
“We had been preparing for the worst from the moment the plague crossed the Alps. Even considering that, it was the fastest election in the history of the conclave. The designation of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral as the center of the Papacy in exile had also been decided beforehand.”
It made sense. New York was close to America’s political center. The U.S. government would have welcomed it too, as a way to stabilize the region and public morale. But there was still a gap between that and the recommendation being offered to Gyeoul.
The priest drank his tea, grimaced slightly, and filled that gap.
“The question is whether the New York Vatican can function properly now, when distrust and skepticism are rampant among believers and priests. It is hard to predict what effect the previous His Holiness’s death will have as well... Have you perhaps heard of the American Order of Crusaders or Christ’s Posse Comitatus?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of either.”
But he could tell what they were like from the names alone.
“I expect so. They are unauthorized groups that have recently been expanding their influence in southern church circles, regardless of Protestant or Catholic denomination. They claim the flood of judgment has begun because the world is overflowing with sinners, and that those sinners must be brought before the Lord’s court... but in reality, they are hotbeds of hate crimes. Homosexuals, believers of other religions, and above all, Chinese immigrants and their descendants are suffering great harm.”
“Heretics, then.”
“Yes. His Holiness wishes to stop the sins being committed in God’s name, but at the same time, he fears that large-scale designations of heresy and excommunications in a time like this may bring about an irreversible split. Even among priests, the authority and legitimacy of the Papacy are being questioned... and they are also putting forward groundless prophecies...”
Prophecies?
“When you say prophecies, are you perhaps referring to the Prophecy of Saint Malachy?”
Gyeoul’s question flustered the chaplain priest.
“You know about that?”
“Yes.”
“That is surprising. It’s rare for someone who isn’t a believer to know it.”
“I happened to come across it once.”
Gyeoul glossed over it. While experiencing the end of the world several times, he had seen all kinds of prophecies and religious madness. The prophecy said to have been left by a saint was among the more famous ones. That prophecy mentioned the final Pope. Gyeoul remembered the passage.
「In the final persecution, Peter the Roman will govern the Holy Roman Church. He will feed his flock amid many tribulations, and after that, the city of seven hills will collapse, and the people will face a terrible judgment.」
The city of seven hills referred to Rome. It was the sort of thing shaken people would want to believe.
By coincidence, the previous Pope was of Italian blood, and the full name of the saint he had taken as his model included Pietro. Pietro was a variation of Peter. In other words, it was enough to force him into the role of Peter the Roman.
“Those people must think the former Pope who passed away was the last Pope.”
When Gyeoul asked, the chaplain officer smiled bitterly.
“It is pathetic. In the end, I see it as a tool to deny the Papacy’s authority. They simply want to run wild however they please, don’t they?”
He had said the Papacy’s exile was an open secret, so it seemed everyone who needed to know already knew.
“I understand what you mean. But I wonder if I’d be any help.”
“They must feel as if they are grasping at straws. Of course, I do not mean that Major Han is a straw. You are on neither side right now, but if you became a brother in faith, most people would hesitate to stand opposite you.”
Gyeoul thought for a while, then shook his head.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll decline.”
As if he had not expected much, the priest showed only mild regret.
“I see. I thought there might be a possibility...”
“It feels unnecessary.”
“Why is that?”
“If this operation succeeds, people like that will calm down a lot. If it fails, I don’t think anything I do will have much meaning. At that point, I might already be dead too.”
In the end, the key was whether they could reclaim the mainland. If anxiety and fear swelled beyond their current level, even the competence of the current administration would not be enough to handle it.
“How serious is the harm being done to Chinese-American citizens?”
Broadcasts were filtered before they went out. Joanna had not settled into position yet. Asking the Intelligence Agency felt awkward. A chaplain priest who was both a soldier and a clergyman might have a separate communication network. Had he not just sounded out the Papacy’s will?
At Gyeoul’s new question, the chaplain priest wore a sorrowful expression.
“No one knows the exact damage.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Yes. Excessive police suppression can no longer even be called the problem. There are signs that local communities have systematically plotted and concealed racial crimes.”
Signs meant they had not fully uncovered it. There was a high chance there was no evidence, or that even if there was, it had run into political barriers. Gyeoul had probably decided it was better to ask.
“I hear Chinese-American citizens these days make sure to learn a phrase or two of Korean for their personal safety. On the other hand, they say many Korean-American citizens are actively joining militias. In their words, it is for identifying friend from foe.”
The priest sighed with the weight of 1.6 million.
“We lost too many soldiers.”
Four times the human losses of World War II. More than two and a half times the Civil War. America had never experienced losses of this scale before. Nothing could be done about the increase in people losing their reason. No, perhaps it should be called a miracle that it was still only this much.
This operation would be the final watershed.
‘Even if it fails, they won’t collapse right away...’
But while one might hope for a miraculous victory, it would become hard to find human decency in this world.
The chaplain priest saw Gyeoul off. The horizon where the sun had gone down was a band of sunset being swallowed by night. Before getting into the Humvee, Gyeoul left him with a word of comfort.
“Don’t worry too much. This operation will succeed.”
The priest smiled like twilight.
“It must. We have helped ourselves enough.”
Those words touched Gyeoul too.
========== Author’s Note ==========
#Heaven helps those who help themselves
Actually, they say this phrase is a mistranslation, and that it also goes against Catholic doctrine. Because God helps all people regardless of whether they make an effort or not...
Please take the closing line of the main chapter as dramatic license, and as a sign of how severe the situation is for a priest to say something like that.
#Views
Recently, the view count has been rising strangely high. It’s a share I’ve never seen since starting serialization... so I wondered what on earth was going on, and why it had suddenly increased...
There was a kiss scene right around when it started rising.
...
Readers... =_=
#Q&A
Q. NoYouIdiot: @All hail Skarlochen!!! Glory to Tunguska!!!
A. I don’t need any glory, so Skarlochen is not happening.
Q. OneChance: @Tunguska, don’t roast the bean T_T Tunguska, don’t roast the bean T_T
A. I was merely hoping for the blessing of the Yellow God. Really.
Q. Eloar l Lu l Krantz: @Is today the day Tunguska, the new god of chaos, was born... Ominous. The moonlight is dark, and the dead roam at night. Today I must hide inside my house and pray for the mercy of the gods.
A. If you are reading this answer, it means you made it safely through that ominous day.
Disappointing...
Q. qgegegqe: @If gays prosper, then women will be left over. My friend said something like that too, but I told him women would just play with women and not with us.
A. Wise. I can feel how much you care about your friend.
Q. PlumConcentrate2: @Happy birthday! I heard that when it comes to text files, a place called T-Cafe is the home base... But that place is seriously closed off, and these days they’ve even blocked new sign-ups while carefully using their own league to spread things all over the place, so I doubt it’ll be easy to catch them.
A. Noblesse is easy to target not only because of security issues, but also because of the nature of its flat-rate subscription model.
I saw what an uploader on an illegal site said. They said that because you have to purchase first if you want to scrape, Noblesse is better than Premium.
Q. BulgomKeuwang: @Text dumps are a problem with Joara’s web system. It’s such a mess that even I, a total web newbie, can copy the text. Joara hides code that identifies the reader inside the novel, but even that can be removed;; If your losses from text files are large, I cautiously recommend moving to another platform.
A. I know that if you use a phone, you can scrape it very easily without any separate tool. Joara is the only one where this works. It’s a truly basic problem, but they haven’t even thought of solving it for years... haha.
Even so, I don’t plan to stop serializing on Noblesse. It’s not exactly a new problem. In any case, thank you for worrying.
Q. thinksome: @Author, you seemed hurt by the text files, so I prepared a coupon to help bring back your childlike innocence. So when are the fingers... going to the 12th dan...?
A. 12th dan?... I’m not sure what you mean. It’s probably something related to romance... T_T
Footnotes:
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