I Got an Omnipotent Angel - Chapter 26

Chapter 26: The Itaewon Club

TL/ED – Miso

I got turned away at the entrance.

Why, though?

“Wait, why?”

“We’re at capacity for tonight.”

At capacity?

Then how come everyone else is strolling right in?

“What about them?”

“Those are reservation guests.”

All of them have reservations? Yeah, right!

What makes me any different from them!

The guard gave me a quick once-over, then flapped his hand as if to say move along.

He heaved a heavy sigh and dragged his eyes down and back up.

As if appraising me.

It was a look blatant enough to be insulting.

In the end, I had no choice but to step out of the line like someone being chased off.

What on earth was the problem?

Standing in front of the club, I sank into thought.

Even if I try again, the odds of getting cut look high.

Is another club any different?

There’s a good chance the problem lies with me.

“Don’t tell me they figured out I’m an exorcist!”

Because that guard’s some wicked demon’s lackey?

But if that were it, I hadn’t caught any smell off him.

“So what was the problem? Gari, Eight-Foot Noona, either of you got a read on it?”

Clack clack?

【Po~?】

Neither of them seemed to have any idea.

What do I do about this.

Judging by the stench I could feel from inside the club, there was definitely an incubus in there.

And yet here I was, bounced at the entrance.

Should I climb into Gari’s mouth and slip in through the rooftop?

No, setting aside whether I could even get in from the roof, bringing Gari along would draw way too much attention.

I have to find another way.

What are my options?

No, wracking my brain by myself wasn’t going to turn up any clear answer.

I should probably ask someone for advice.

Friends?

I did have friends my own age, but they were guys who’d never set foot in a club, just like me.

They were so wholesome not one of them even drank or smoked, so there was no way any of them had ever been clubbing.

Just then, my phone suddenly rang.

“Huh?”

It was Shaman Wollyeong.

***

[I see. I do believe I can be of some help. I shall come right over.]

It had started as simple small talk, but somehow the subject of the club had come up.

And Shaman Wollyeong’s reaction was completely unexpected.

“Huh? You’re coming here?”

[Yes. I’ll need a little time to prepare, but I shall arrive within the hour.]

Shaman Wollyeong was coming in person.

I hadn’t expected her to be this proactive, but either way, she was someone I was grateful for.

She’d introduced me to the Association’s commission, and helped me form the familiar contract with Eight-Foot Noona, too.

She’d taught me all sorts of foundational knowledge, and now here she was offering to help with something like this herself.

I should have some herbal medicine made up as a gift for her later.

“She says she’s coming, but it’ll take a while, so should we take a breather?”

I stepped into a nearby café.

It was past dinnertime, but the café was bustling.

Maybe because it was Itaewon. Probably all the night crowd.

I ordered a coffee and a few slices of cake and shared them out among Gari, Eight-Foot Noona, and Chirpy.

I slipped the pieces to them on the sly so no one would notice, and all three ate contentedly.

“Where does the food they eat even go?”

They were all spirit bodies, so it wasn’t as if they had stomachs, and yet they ate so eagerly it genuinely made me wonder where it all went.

Anyway, while I was waiting, a motorcycle pulled up near the café.

“Whoa~”

The bike’s owner was dressed in riding leathers that hugged a knockout figure.

Guess a hot Itaewon club really does draw people like that.

Even with the helmet off, she was a stunning beauty.

Just then, my phone rang.

“Yes, Shaman-nim. How close are you?”

[I’ve reached the spot you said you’d be, Shaman-nim. Where are you?]

“The café across the street. It’s the one called XX Café–”

Just then, the beauty in riding leathers walked toward the café with her phone still in hand, spotted me, and bobbed her head in a little bow.

Hm? Why is she nodding at me?

Must be my imagination.

She’s greeting someone else in the café… no, she’s heading straight for me?

Ding~!

The café door opened and the woman in riding leathers strode right up to me.

She stopped in front of me and–

“So this is where you were, Shaman-nim.”

“???”

When I tilted my head in confusion, the beauty in riding leathers gave a fresh, radiant smile.

“It’s me. Shaman Wollyeong.”

“…….”

What?

***

“The Face-Changing Technique?”

The beauty’s true identity was Shaman Wollyeong.

This astonishing transformation, she said, was a technique called the Face-Changing Technique.

“Yes. It’s a technique used fairly often for disguise. It consumes a great deal of spiritual power, though, so it’s reserved for infiltration and the like.”

“My goodness…….”

Is this really that old shaman granny?

She didn’t just bring her granddaughter along and tell her to play herself, did she?

“But… why did you come all this way?”

Why come to help, going so far as to use the Face-Changing Technique?

When I asked, Shaman Wollyeong answered with that fresh, radiant smile.

“Heh heh. Since you told me you’d be infiltrating a club, Shaman-nim, I came to lend a hand in every way I could.”

“Uh… how, exactly?”

“First, change into these.”

Shaman Wollyeong held out a shopping bag she’d brought.

“This is… whoa, this is all designer stuff?”

It was a shopping bag stamped boldly with the logos of brands famous enough that even I recognized them.

Inside there were clothes, and even a watch.

“You said you couldn’t even get into the club. Your appearance is the first problem. No matter how one looks at it, you don’t look like someone out to enjoy a club.”

“Uh… what’s wrong with what I’ve got on?”

My outfit was the Holy Armor Coat I’d bought at the Ghost Market, with my usual casual clothes underneath.

The Holy Armor Coat didn’t look much different from everyday wear, and the casual stuff beneath it was just what I always put on.

The Rowan Rosary stood out too much, so I’d tucked it into my pocket… it’s not an outfit worth making that big a fuss over, is it?

“Let’s start by changing all of it.”

“All of it?”

“Judging by the line out front, that club only admits the wealthy or women with decent looks. The cutoff there is quite high.”

Never having been to a club, I could only listen quietly to Shaman Wollyeong.

“Now, your attire, Shaman-nim, is a far cry from wealth. At an ordinary club, perhaps, but at a place like that you look as if you wouldn’t spend a dime, so they turned you away before you’d even started.”

“Ah…….”

“So the first thing is, you need to look like you have money.”

I went and changed into the clothes Shaman Wollyeong had given me.

They ran a touch large, but not so much that it looked unnatural.

“But why do you have stuff like this on hand, Shaman-nim?”

“I’d bought it as a birthday present for my grandchild and simply brought it along.”

“…….”

Just what I’m wearing right now has to run into the tens of millions of won, and this is a birthday present for a grandkid? [TL Note: ~$20,000 USD]

Ah, right, Shaman Wollyeong was the shaman our whole neighborhood knew about.

I guess once someone’s the neighborhood’s star shaman, top of her field, designer clothes and a watch are the sort of thing they can just hand over as a present.

“But…….”

I got back in line at the club. And beside me stood Shaman Wollyeong, wearing the Face-Changing Technique.

“Why are you coming with me?”

“To be of help, of course.”

“…….”

“Don’t you worry. I may not look it, but I’ve been to the Gukbin-gwan with Kim Du-han in my day, I’ll have you know.” [TL Note: Kim Du-han (1918–1972) was a legendary Korean gangster-turned-politician; the line is a joke about how old she is.]

“Kim Du-han…….”

Shaman, just how old are you?

At any rate, I got back in the club line.

It was a tense moment.

The first attempt, they’d bounced me without a second look; this time, how would it go?

“Welcome~”

Would you listen to the lilt in the guard’s voice now.

Compared to the first attempt, I sailed through with an ease that was worlds apart.

“See? At a place like this, the guest who looks rich is king.”

To think I was learning about clubs from a granny who’d gone to the Gukbin-gwan with Kim Du-han.

Anyway, once I’d made it in, what greeted me was the music.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

A bass that hammered at my breastbone.

The farther down the corridor I went, the louder the sound grew.

Pitch-black walls.

A faint fragrance, and gorgeous lights pouring down from the ceiling.

The vast space overflowed with people.

People swaying their bodies to the music, and laughter over the clink of glasses.

And music loud enough to bury even that.

This isn’t going to be easy.

Just looking at it, I feel like the place is draining the energy right out of me.

Just then, a staff member who looked like a waiter came over from the entrance and asked with a smile.

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No.”

The staffer checked his tablet for a moment.

Most of the seats were full.

But his eyes flicked back and forth between me and Shaman Wollyeong.

By this point the scan had crossed into flat-out blatant.

A wealthy young man plastered head to toe in designer wear, an expensive watch on his wrist, with a stunning beauty on his arm to boot.

“There is one table left, but…….”

The staffer trailed off, smooth as could be.

This was where money did the talking.

“Bring the champagne right over. Enough to load up the table.”

At that, the staffer bowed his head at once.

“Welcome, sir. I’ll show you to your table right away.”

“I’ll pay with this.”

I pulled a card from my wallet and handed it over. It was the Black Knot exclusive card issued by the Mystic Association.

The one with no limit.

The spot I was led to was, of all things, a private room table on the second floor with a clear view down over the dance floor.

It’s practically an opera box.

“Ahh~ Lovely. Up here, we could get up to anything without fear of being caught.”

“You seem… awfully at home here.”

“In the years right after Liberation, if you wanted to frequent the clubs, that little slice of Yankee culture, you had to be positively ahead of your time.” [TL Note: Korea’s Liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.]

Shaman, forgive me for asking, but the year of your… nativity?

It was a question I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask.

“In any case, you said an incubus has infiltrated this place.”

“Yes. I’m certain it’s here, so I mean to track it down.”

“Leaving ‘the Great One’ and the Eight-Foot Ghost on standby was well done. Had you brought those two, you’d have drawn a great deal of attention.”

Shaman Wollyeong looked at Chirpy, whom I’d brought along instead.

“Try using this sparrow spirit for the search.”

“I brought Chirpy because he’s small, but how do I put him to use?”

Ever since I’d raised Chirpy with Decarabia’s Necromancy, I hadn’t found much use for him.

I’d only thought of it as having gained a cute little pet, but Shaman Wollyeong seemed to think otherwise.

“Familiars, familiar spirits, shikigami… these are commonly used techniques, but what they can do differs like heaven and earth depending on the sorcerer’s ability.”

Shaman Wollyeong said that to handle a familiar well, one had to be skilled at both communing with it and commanding it.

Since familiars were usually of lower intelligence than humans, she said, to issue truly precise instructions one had to be at nearly a link-level connection.

“First, let’s have you master how to command a familiar. Not with your voice, but with your will.”

“With my will?”

“You’re bound by contract, so it shouldn’t be difficult. Of course, being your first time, it won’t come easily, but–”

‘Chirpy, come here.’

Chirp chirp?

Chirpy came scampering straight over to me at once.

“Did you… just give it a command?”

“Yes, in my head.”

“You have a gift. Then let’s try a more complicated command. A sparrow’s intelligence limits how complex an order it can follow, but flight, at least, should–”

Chirpy. Jump straight up where you are and do a full flip.

Chirp chirp!

“……This actually works?”

“Huh? Was it not supposed to?”

“……How on earth would a sparrow know how to do a backflip? This is on the level of realizing the sorcerer’s mental image exactly as it is.”

The sparrow did a backflip and stuck the landing. Which was, admittedly, exactly what I’d just pictured.

“A synchronization rate like this… if you raised a skeleton, you could go blow-for-blow with Mike Tyson in a slugfest.”

“Raising a person is a little…….”

Isn’t that desecrating the dead?

No matter how bad a person they’d been, raising something that had once been human with Necromancy left me uneasy.

“If the synchronization rate is this high, sharing its field of vision might even be possible. Would you care to try? Picture synchronizing your own sight with the sparrow’s, and–”

“Whoa! My vision just changed?”

“……This works right away, too?”

Shaman Wollyeong had every reason to be astonished.

Because right then, I was sharing one side of Chirpy’s field of vision.

It was as if Chirpy’s view was showing up in my left eye?

Perhaps Decarabia’s Necromancy was ‘magic’ of an entirely different order from human familiar techniques.

“Heh… you never cease to surprise me, Shaman-nim.”

“What do we do next?”

“Send the sparrow up and have it search every corner of the club. It should let you find anything suspicious without being noticed.”

Just as Shaman Wollyeong said, I set Chirpy to roaming the club.

Flying out in the open would draw eyes, so I kept him mostly to the ventilation ducts.

“So, what do we do now?”

“We put our own bodies to work, of course. Let’s start with the dance floor.”

Shaman Wollyeong popped open the champagne that had come with the basic package, drank it down with gusto, and headed for the dance floor.

I needed to find whoever stood out from the crowd here, but everyone had come dressed to the nines, which made it hard to tell anyone apart.

And then, at that very moment, I ran into someone I’d never expected.

“Shaman Gari?”

“Ga Ga-ram?”

I’d run into Ga Ga-ram on the dance floor.

He did have the look for a place like this… huh? Ga Ga-ram’s gaze was aimed somewhere other than at me.

“Is the lovely lady there your girlfriend, by any chance?”

“No.”

I was so flustered I answered on the spot.

At that, relief and anticipation flickered across Ga Ga-ram’s face.

“What a remarkable beauty. Hello there, my name is Ga Ga-ram.”

Ga Ga-ram curled the corner of his mouth into a brisk, breezy smile.

Hey.

Don’t.

She’s not the kind of person you think she is.

She’s someone who went to the Gukbin-gwan with Kim Du-han, I’m telling you.