WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 342: Sunlit Shade (9)
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The number of people with raised hands kept growing. Their expressions varied wildly. Some looked as if they were dreaming, some terrified, some entranced, some confused...
The fanatics blocking the church revealed who they were. Gyeoul had thought the hymn sounded strangely ragged, and then the singing stopped. Someone behind him shouted.
“Th-that! Heresy! Those heretic bastards cursed by Heaven are coming!”
What?
While Gyeoul was still startled, the front reacted too. A man who looked as if he had woken from a dream twisted his plague-eaten face into terrible rage at the shout.
“Who are you calling heretics! You goddamn cultists! How is Park Tae-sun the Second Coming of Jesus? He’s a fraud!”
“What did you say?”
The enraged fanatics hurled curses back.
“Unbelievers who see miracles and still refuse to believe! Ungrateful bastards who receive grace and don’t even know to be thankful!”
“Repent before it’s too late! The Millennial Kingdom! By the Lord’s will, Pastor’s kingdom is coming!”
“One who sells the Son of Man with honeyed words shall clutch thirty pieces of silver and fall into hell!”
The accusations on both sides grew harsher. The air was boiling in an ugly way, and the security team tensed. If the group with raised hands was not a mutant horde, they could not use force recklessly. Controlling them was their job, and in any case, those people were speaking human language.
Tatatang!
Gyeoul fired a three-round burst into the sky.
“Shut up! Both sides, shut your mouths!”
Even shouting that hard did not buy a long silence. Religious fury did not fear death. Martyrdom was a shortcut to Heaven. What threat could mere gunfire pose? The fanatics guarding the church were the first to grow noisy again.
That was when it happened.
“Hahaha! Hahahahaha!”
One of the people with raised hands laughed sharply. A strange ecstasy drew every eye. The woman’s eyes were unfocused. Holding her head with one hand, she steadied her swaying body and breathed hard.
“Now I understand...! This voice is the angel’s revelation!”
“You crazy bitch! What bullshit are you talking about?”
As the fanatics snapped at her, the woman gave them a trembling sneer.
“Can’t you hear it?... Can’t you hear it? Aha. People with false faith can’t hear it, can they... Hahaha! To think you can’t hear such a pretty voice... Park Tae-sun is the Antichrist! Only by killing him! Only then can we be saved!”
Agreement spread around her. I hear it too. I can hear that voice too. They looked like people standing on the border between dream and reality. Gyeoul could guess what was going on, but to anyone who did not know the truth, this was madness in its purest form. To the fanatics, it was an even worse sign.
“Devils! The devil is whispering to them!”
Fingers pointed, full of shock, rage, and fear.
“How dare you say you’ll kill anyone!”
“Satan’s spirit has entered them! Stop them! Stop them no matter what! Protect Pastor!”
“This is spiritual warfare! The power of the air cannot invade God’s house!”
At the moment before everything exploded, gunfire rang out again. Sergeant Doyle, who had spent enough time in charge of this place to sense an angry crowd reaching its breaking point even without understanding the words, had ordered warning shots. Three-round bursts from several firing lines tore into dirt and walls, forcing people back. Someone was left with a long scrape from a ricochet that had barely glanced off them.
“Damn it! They almost all lost their heads at once.”
A pale-faced Sergeant Doyle threw Gyeoul a loudspeaker.
“Sir! Please do something to keep those people down! If this keeps up, we’ll have no choice but to shoot them all! For our own survival too!”
“I know, so don’t break formation! Something might crawl in while things are chaotic!”
After that warning, Gyeoul decided to calm the fanatics first.
“Everyone! You should know who I am! Our mission is to protect P... to protect the church! Leave this place to us and go inside! If you stay here, you’ll only make it harder to stop them!”
He forced himself to swallow Pastor Park Tae-sun’s name, but even so, the rage of the people with raised hands, possessed by Esther, surged. Gyeoul felt their murderous intent sharply. A greater 「Threat Level」 was approaching too. Schreiber, who had been handling communications, had been going pale by the second.
A third round of warning fire broke out. This time only in one direction. Its effect would be weaker than before. With the gunfire at his back, Gyeoul raised his voice.
“Go inside! Hurry! Lock the doors from the inside if you have to!”
If the fanatics and the people with raised hands charged from front and back, the defensive line would cease to matter. And what about the additional reinfections that would begin in the middle of it? They would become extremely vulnerable to other attacks as well.
The seemingly reasonable suggestion, together with Gyeoul’s reputation, pushed the fanatics back.
The people with raised hands advanced by that same amount. They flinched at the gunfire and ricochets, but grew bolder little by little. The fanatics stopped as well. Perhaps they did not like retreating before 「Satan’s power」.
Amid tension that felt ready to snap, Schreiber’s report came in.
“This place isn’t the only mess.”
The control room operator looked around and reported quickly in a low voice.
“Two teams were breached in a similar fashion, and the target that escaped the encirclement has no confirmed position. They say the jamming strength is above a Beta Trickster, so drone support is impossible too.”
“What about aerial reconnaissance or surveillance satellites?”
“Aircraft can’t communicate directly, so there’s a time lag. The satellite has about two minutes before it passes overhead. The smoke is a problem too. Troops are being wasted tracking scattered juvenile forms.”
Two minutes was long in this situation. Gyeoul looked at the black smoke thickening by the moment. Flamethrowers did not seem to be the only cause. Looking back, when Fort Roberts had still been a camp, the Trickster that attacked the base had set fires in the surrounding area to secure a safe withdrawal. Since then, there had been several more attempts to neutralize surveillance from the sky. If Esther had accumulated the experience of multiple Tricksters, of course she would think of it.
‘There may be individuals among the juvenile forms that carry Acrid traits.’
Phosphorus compounds were well suited to arson too. Acrid had been a special mutant that was weeded out from the front line almost immediately, but for someone in Campbell’s position, obtaining research samples would not have been hard. Judging from the acid baby confirmed over the radio and the premature infant that had located Gyeoul without eyes, Esther was likely the crystallization of Morgellons created by human technology and mad genius.
It was almost fortunate that revenge was the only thing on her mind.
If the juvenile forms had shown any sign of trying to escape outside, neither Director West nor the president would have hesitated over an extreme decision. Who could say there was no second Esther among the juvenile forms?
Maybe Esther had guessed that far too, and that was why she was not sending the juvenile forms out.
The gap with the people with raised hands shrank. The mental limit was about ten meters. Even against ordinary people, from twenty-one feet, about 6.4 meters, hand-to-hand combat began to overtake a firefight. Distance was defense. The closer they came, the faster the line would be breached once a clash broke out. All the more so against an infected crowd. Without heavy weapons and Claymores, this would already have been fatal.
Sergeant Doyle kept glancing toward the Heavy Infantry held as reserves. Lingering hope. Trying to push them back with force before killing them would only buy time.
“Has nobody suggested burning down the whole settlement?”
Schreiber denied that idea at Gyeoul’s question.
“Thankfully, the juvenile forms’ movement is concentrated inward. There’s also one regiment deployed around the settlement’s perimeter. At least biological contamination leaking out doesn’t seem to be a concern. Looks like they really want to kill the pastor.”
That was enough confirmation. There was no room to ask anything else.
“Keep handling communications.”
Gyeoul stood and pressed the loudspeaker switch.
“Esther! Esther!”
She was definitely nearby. The circumstances said so, and his senses were certain.
“I know you’re listening! Stop! Are you planning to kill all these people?!”
How much influence did a Trickster exert over other mutants? Gyeoul recalled the morning he had greeted on the shore of Santa Margarita. The ghoul had made mutants jump into the rapids. They wanted to cross the rough current, even if they had to step on living debris, so they could tear into this side.
Even a mere ghoul had that much control.
Based on later experience, it was obvious a Trickster would have more.
Was Esther the same? Even though the incompletely infected victims still kept their reason?
“Please! Stop here! Don’t commit an even greater wrong!”
The wave of footsteps creeping forward came to a halt. Among the fanatics, whispers spread about who Esther was. They no longer seemed inclined to go inside.
The security team’s eyes moved uneasily. Even to them, who had cut through darkness across the world as blades of the Intelligence Agency, this thick swamp of fanaticism and plague must have been a new kind of fear.
A moment later, a small child walked out from the line of people with raised hands.
“Don’t shoot!”
At Gyeoul’s words, Sergeant Doyle nodded. The face barely visible behind the gas mask lenses was wet with sweat. Esther’s young messenger stopped a short distance from the tense defensive line. Since the child stared straight at him, Gyeoul lowered his muzzle slightly and slowly walked out.
The child who would speak for the miserable girl looked just as eaten away by pain.
“I told you... not to... come out.”
At least the pronunciation was clearer than Esther’s. The child tilted their head, as if not even knowing Esther’s true thoughts. They were only relaying the words that surfaced in their head as instructed.
“Esther. This can’t go on. All those people are going to die. We’ll be the ones pulling the trigger in the end, but you’ll still be responsible for driving the victims into the line of fire. Don’t you understand?”
“Lieutenant Colonel, are you stupid?”
The speaking child imitated laughter with a blank face. Ha, ha, ha.
“I have... already... killed... many people.”
She was not talking about military casualties. So far, no security personnel had died because of Esther. Serious injuries were rare, and even light injuries were strangely rare.
“Just how many... people... do you think... I preached to?”
“...”
“How many... people... do you think... I spread... the plague to?”
The absence of emotion in those words felt especially vast.
“They just... haven’t died... yet. The result... that they’ll die... because of me... won’t change. People... who originally... didn’t have to die... are going to die... because of me. I am... a terrible... sinner.”
“No. You were deceived too. When you gave me that note with the Bible verse on it, did you have even the smallest desire to hurt me? Didn’t you want to save me?”
“Ha, ha...”
It was obvious mockery, but Gyeoul did not mind.
“It must have been the same with other people. It could be called negligent homicide, but it can’t be called intentional murder. But if you make those people die here, then you really will become a murderer. So withdraw now. Unless you want to regret this until the final moment.”
“Ha, ha, ha.”
Esther laughed again.
“Lieutenant Colonel. Those people... are already... as good as dead. I’m not... killing them. I’m... giving them... a chance... to take revenge too. If... right now... I sent... every truth... I know... into those people’s... heads... how do you think... they would react? Hm?”
A commotion rose from the church side.
“Has this brother gone mad? Why is he biting people?”
There was no need to look back. The situation was obvious.
Ha, ha, ha. Esther’s mouth spoke.
“Thank you... for pitying me. Thanks to you... the same trick... worked twice. Lieutenant Colonel... you really are... a good person.”
“Esther...”
“This is... my final... warning.”
The mood of the people with raised hands ahead changed too. Many of them held their heads.
“Stay still. Then... I won’t touch... the people... who don’t need... to die. But... if you try... to stop me... until the end... then I will... pass through... even if I have to... kill you... Lieutenant Colonel.”
Esther was outside Gyeoul’s limits.
Footnotes:
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