I Got an Omnipotent Angel - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Itaewon Club (2)

TL/ED – Miso

I’d ended up teaming with Ga Ga-ram, half by accident.

More precisely, it was Ga Ga-ram who had set his sights on Shaman Wollyeong.

“I see. An incubus… We nearly walked right into that one blind.”

Having talked it over in the room, Ga Ga-ram snapped his fingers and declared boldly.

“All right. I’ll help.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Of course. I owe Shaman Gari a debt. And thanks to you, I even collected the reward for subjugating the Eight-Foot Ghost.”

That Eight-Foot Ghost is still alive, though. Should I say something?

“Besides, aiding a lady in distress is a knight’s duty, isn’t it?”

“Ho ho.”

“……”

Ga Ga-ram seemed far more interested in Shaman Wollyeong than in me.

For Ga Ga-ram’s sake, let’s leave the truth buried.

“Anyway, an incubus. Have you thought about how to lure it out?”

“I’ve got my familiar scouting right now. Ah, Chirpy, you can’t go in there.”

“What is it?”

“Chirpy just looked down through the ventilation shaft over the women’s changing room.”

Chirpy, whose field of vision I was sharing through one eye, was busily flitting around the club.

Apparently he’d wandered into the women’s changing room at some point, because half-dressed women appeared in Chirpy’s view, and I told him to look away at once.

But then.

“Huh? A tail?”

“A tail?”

“Did you find something?”

It was literally a tail.

But something about it was unnatural; only the detail of the tail itself showed faintly, as if blurred.

When I described this, Shaman Wollyeong stroked her chin and speculated.

“It would appear she has undone her shapeshifting.”

“Shapeshifting?”

“Yes. It is a common technique among other species that bear physical traits unlike a human’s. To blend into the human world, after all, they must conceal what they truly are.”

But she’d undone her shapeshifting in the changing room?

There were other people right beside her. They’d see it, wouldn’t they?

“It looks like… there’s more than one incubus.”

“More than one demon? This is maddening.”

Two or so were visible inside the changing room. Which meant there were at least two of them.

In any case, I’d found the incubus, so I had to track it–

“Huh, it’s gone.”

The incubus vanished from view.

Watching from atop the vent, the field of view was narrow, and a single slight movement was enough to lose her.

“Chirpy! Go after her! No, don’t leave the vent! It’s dangerous for you!”

Chirpy started to descend into the vent, then heard my order and quickly moved to another passage.

But she was already gone.

“I lost her.”

“A shame.”

“Did you see what she looked like?”

I described the incubus’s appearance as I’d seen it through Chirpy’s eyes.

“Her back was turned, so all I saw was that she had long black hair.”

“What about her clothing?”

“She was half-undressed, so I couldn’t tell.”

“Sounds like she works here.”

I’d thought the same thing.

What reason would anyone have to come all the way to a club just to change clothes?

They’d have worn it in to begin with. And the dress check here seemed tight, too.

In other words, the incubus I’d just seen was a staff member disguised as a hostess at the club.

“A hostess… It’s a bit late to bring it up, but isn’t that illegal?”

“Well, it’s not something people like us should be talking about. Especially not in a place like this.”

Ga Ga-ram discreetly pointed at a corner of the dance floor.

Over there, some men were receiving something from a waiter, an envelope holding what looked like a white powder.

“Drugs?”

“A club’s a hotbed for every kind of crime. In a place like this, hostesses are practically a required product.”

Dealing drugs in the heart of South Korea.

Well, it seems it’s been this way for a while now, but how did a country that was once drug-free ever end up like this?

“That incubus is probably a hostess who works here full-time. Being an incubus, playing that game would make it easier to find prey.”

Ga Ga-ram examined the price list on the room’s table.

“The prices are brutal, fitting for a top club in Itaewon. To book a VVIP room like this… Shaman Gari, you really are an enormous tycoon.”

Ga Ga-ram was starting to get the wrong idea.

Wait, where did that conclusion suddenly come from?

“Well, a talent on Shaman Gari’s level would naturally be rolling in money, I figured. You took down that Eight-Foot Ghost in a single shot, after all.”

Should I tell him even now?

That it isn’t dead.

But Ga Ga-ram just kept raising his expectations of me all on his own.

“Hold on.”

Speaking of money, that reminds me……

“This club, it’s a place where money can get you anything, right?”

“It’s basically the final boss of capitalism.”

The incubus is a hostess at this club.

And who does a hostess entertain?

I had my answer.

***

“Manager! An order just came in from Room 3!”

“Already? It’s barely been any time since we set up the champagne.”

The club’s VVIP rooms… or more precisely, the rooms for the filthy rich, could be called the club’s cash cow.

The money spent there was on an entirely different scale from the ordinary tables. And among those–

“What did they order?”

“The Emperor Set! The hundred-million-won one!” [TL Note: ~$72,000 USD]

“……!”

The manager’s pupils quivered as he headed for Room 3.

There, a distinguished-looking chairman was leisurely gazing down at the dance floor.

“What are you standing around for?! Get the order ready, now! Seonmi! Where are those two, Seonmi and Jessica?”

“They’re on break right now, so they’re resting–”

The manager sprinted to the break room fast enough to wear the soles off his feet.

He soon found the two beautiful hostesses resting in the break room.

“Seonmi! Jessica! On standby, now!”

“What is it, Manager?”

“We’re on our break, though.”

For all his supposed authority as manager, the two hostesses’ response was indifferent.

Insolent little bitches.

But he couldn’t press them on it. Just how much did these two, the club’s aces, rake in from the VIP rooms?

There was no shortage of high-and-mighty VIPs they’d worked over so completely that the men would have handed over the shirts off their backs.

“This is no time for that! It’s an Emperor Set! Get ready to move, quick!”

“The Emperor Set? What, did one of our boys come in?”

“If they did, they should’ve called us right away!”

Assuming it was one of the VIPs they managed, the two of them pressed the manager.

“No! It’s a new face! A total newbie!”

A new face. In other words, a fresh pushover, and at that word the eyes of the two of them gleamed wickedly.

Moments later, fireworks burst spectacularly over the dance floor as the DJ shouted.

“A hundred-million-won Dom Pérignon Emperor Set! Dom Pérignon Emperor Set, incoming!”

BOOOOM!

“Holy shit! What’s that?”

“Somebody must’ve ordered the Emperor Set!”

“They’re seriously loaded……”

The guests on the floor buzzed, all eyes drawn to it.

Moments later, beautiful women entered the center of the dance floor bearing champagne and fruit, along with a huge sign reading ‘100 MILLION’.

Announcing to every corner that a hundred-million-won order had come in, they cast the spotlight toward VIP Room 3.

“Wow, they must be seriously rich……”

“So jealous……”

“Must be nice, being born into a rich family.”

Yes. This was the reaction.

A rush of dopamine, people’s envy and jealousy laid bare.

These were the very stares that those who ordered enormous champagne sets so relished.

Stoke that tangle of desire to the fullest, and the rich would spend hand over fist.

And the real hustle didn’t end there.

“Come on, come on! Move it to the room!”

Having announced the Emperor Set order far and wide, the club’s hostesses headed for Room 3.

“Emperor Set, coming through~”

Seonmi and Jessica.

The two of them, the club’s aces and kin of the demon Asmodeus, wore bewitching smiles as they looked the pushover up and down.

‘Decked out in bling, this one.’

‘The guy next to him looks kind of shabby… an employee, maybe?’

The two of them soon noticed Shaman Wollyeong beside them.

A considerable beauty.

Parading a beauty like this around and ordering the Emperor Set at a club?

They had a pretty good idea.

No doubt a lover he keeps around with his money.

‘Though that seat belongs to us now.’

Among the club’s hostesses, the two of them kept their eyes fixed on the target.

A decadent place awash with carnal lust was the very stage of incubi and succubi.

Seduce that pushover well and drag him out to an after-party, and victory would soon be theirs.

For once a human was bewitched by an incubus, he would flail about in the incubus’s little fishpond and sink into a pushover offering up everything without end!

“Hello. I’m Seonmi, ace of XX Club.”

“I’m Jessica~”

Not just the two of them, but the whole crowd of club aces who’d swarmed in each introduced themselves, vying to catch the pushover’s eye.

About six of them would be kept. The two of them were naturally confident they’d be chosen.

But then the pushover, who’d been eyeing the club’s aces this way, suddenly pinched his nose shut.

“Ugh……”

What, what’s with him all of a sudden?

The beauty beside him asked cautiously.

“What’s wrong?”

“Big Bro, what’s going on?”

“……It reeks of shit.”

It was a reason none of them could ever have imagined.

***

First, place the most expensive order to draw the club’s attention.

Once that happened, the club’s hostesses would naturally swarm over, and then all I had to do was find the incubus among them.

It was a plan I’d thought up on the spot, but it had worked.

“Phew~ A hundred million. First time I’ve ever seen someone drop a hundred million at a club.”

“Indeed. Shaman, are you truly all right?”

Ga Ga-ram and Shaman Wollyeong asked, their gazes half awe and half worry.

A hundred million.

Yes, the money I’d spent to order that Emperor Set was a hundred million won.

Honestly, it was a sum the old me wouldn’t have dared even contemplate.

The idea of spending a hundred million just for some drinks and hostess service is impossible for me to grasp even now.

“Figured it was worth it.”

The reward for subjugating an incubus was two hundred million won per head. With at least two of them, that came to a minimum of four hundred million won. [TL Note: ~$145,000 USD per incubus, ~$290,000 USD total]

There was also the subsidy to collect, so it was an investment worth making.

Above all.

“Money, I can always earn again later. With demons running wild, dealing with them comes first.”

“……Shaman Gari.”

Ga Ga-ram abruptly grabbed my shoulder.

“Shaman Gari, you… I knew you were no ordinary man, but to think your caliber was on such a different level entirely!”

What’s this guy getting wrong now?

“How old are you, Shaman Gari? No, that doesn’t matter. To honor you as my Big Bro, nothing but respect is required.”

“No, I’m actually younger than yo–”

“I’ll serve you as my Big Bro! Big Bro!”

I don’t need this……

In the meantime, celebratory fireworks went off marking the Emperor Set order.

Go right ahead, broadcast it to the whole neighborhood. That there’s a pushover here who blew a hundred million on booze.

“Good heavens……”

There’s no bigger farce than this.

Lord God, Lord Jesus. If this depraved place isn’t Sodom and Gomorrah, then what on earth is it?

“The Emperor Set really is something. I’d love to splurge like that myself.”

“Heh heh, it reminds me of that dear Duhan, who used to rent out the entire State Guest House.”

“Huh? Kim Du-han?”

At any rate, this depraved, funky parade of lewdness finally arrived at the very room where I sat.

The lights converged on Room 3, and stares crowded in from beyond the mirrored glass, making this face-flushing situation hard to bear, but the job had to be done.

“Whew……”

Chirpy hadn’t made it back.

He seemed to have gotten lost, but he’d carried out his scouting splendidly, so it was fine.

“All right! Go ahead and pick whichever girls you like from these!”

The waiter lined the beautiful women up in a row and told me to choose as I pleased.

People aren’t merchandise; what on earth kind of nonsense is this?

In any case, I had to find the incubus among them, but there was a problem.

It reeks.

An absolutely insane stench of shit.

The stench had been overpowering even from outside the club, so I’d figured it wouldn’t be easy, but now that an incubus was right in front of me, the smell was something else entirely.

It was now certain that an incubus was among them.

But the stench was so overwhelming that I couldn’t tell whose it was at all.

‘Of all things, why do they all have to have black hair.’

Fine, they’re Asian, so that’s to be expected, but even that woman who looks foreign has black hair.

“Anyone… want to stay?”

At that, the hostesses raised their hands all at once.

Maybe because it was a chance to earn big money, every one of them blazed with desire, and I couldn’t tell which was the incubus.

Just then, I spotted the sound system inside the room.

These VIP private rooms blocked out the noise and eyes of the outside world and allowed guests to enjoy their own separate sound system.

Meaning that in this private space, one could enjoy it like a karaoke room with women in tow… though this was the first I’d even known such places existed.

“All right then, sing something! I’ll decide who stays based on that!”

“Huh? Sir, that’s……”

“Handle the payment however you like.”

When I handed over my card, the staffer beamed and bobbed her head.

“Then I’ll go first!”

One hostess shot her hand up.

She apparently had confidence in her singing.

“I’m going to do ‘My Girl’, the one that’s hot on the Billboard charts these days–”

“No, I’ll be the one choosing the song.”

“Huh?”

Hard to believe, but this is a test to identify the incubus.

And so, the song to be chosen was–

New Hymnal No. 225, Siloam.

………

………

………

“Oh Lord~! Unto Thee! I shall give thaa~nks! Siloa~m, that Thou hast given meee~!!”

How sweet a sound it is.

Come on, you demons, hurry up and sing the hymn!

Loyalty screening, here we goooo~!