Surviving as a Sorcerer in Seoul - Chapter 44
Chapter 44. Chronicle of the Sea’s Gloom and Erosion (3)
TL: DDTL
“So you don’t know for sure who it is?”
“No. Not that far. It’s just a hunch, that’s all.”
Having said his piece, Kahutoa wriggled back down into the Lucky Pouch.
Why did I have this uneasy feeling?
The vague, indefinable sensation made my face scrunch up on its own.
But there was no point standing here alone in the bathroom, wracking my brain over it.
For now, I’d better just get on with the job I’d been given.
I steadied myself with that thought and headed back the way I’d come.
“……”
Bakumon was nowhere in sight, and only Yūda stood alone, guarding the entrance.
He still had those thin, narrow eyes open. And he was clicking away at his abacus.
I planted myself in the same spot where I’d been standing earlier. I crossed my arms and, just as I was trying to feel out the presences around me,
out of nowhere, Yūda spoke up.
“Bakumon stepped away. Kang Yuto called him off.”
“……I didn’t actually ask.”
“I figured you’d be curious.”
Yūda gave an unreadable smile.
He slipped the abacus he’d been fiddling with into his trouser pocket.
Bakumon had said he was a man of few words. Guess that wasn’t quite the whole story.
Letting my sour reaction slide right off him, he went on.
“I happen to have a keen interest in the affairs of the Korean sorcery world myself.”
“……”
“Bakumon. Rather than sparring like that brute, dripping sweat all over the place, I’d much prefer to sit down over a quiet drink sometime and trade some deeper thoughts about sorcery.”
“Is there a point you’re getting to?”
“Haha. You’re quite highly strung, aren’t you. We’re in the same boat on a big job now, so I was just making a bit of small talk, trying to get friendly.”
Yūda abruptly thrust out one hand toward me.
I stared down at his hand where it hung in the air.
To anyone it would have looked like a friendly gesture, just an offer of a light handshake.
But that uneasy feeling still lingered.
So I ignored his hand. And, gazing off into the distance, I gave him my answer.
“Some other time. If I get the chance.”
“Is that so?”
Yūda awkwardly withdrew his hand and tucked it back into his pocket.
Then he gave me a slight bow of the head. He strolled leisurely toward the front of the corridor.
Click, clack.
The sound of his dress shoes faded away.
He rounded the corner and vanished completely.
Hold on.
However self-directed this whole thing was supposed to be, was it really okay to abandon a guard post this carelessly?
‘No. Everyone signed up to stand guard on their own in the first place.’
I wasn’t in the position of some employer who could order them around. I should just quietly do my own job right, and that would be that.
Reasoning it out that way, I eased open the door behind me.
Through the narrow gap I carefully peeked into the auditorium.
The heat inside the auditorium still hadn’t cooled.
Geumgang and Yu-a were still fiercely carrying out the Grafting Ritual.
“Amitabha Buddha! Yu-a Bodhisattva! The demonic energy keeps leaking out! Clamp down hard on the right-hand Barrier!”
“I, I’m trying too……!”
“The things bursting out, sever them with your scissors without mercy! Hesitate and the Spiritual Meridians will twist something awful!”
“O, okay, I get it. Stop yapping. It’s just breaking my concentration….”
Yu-a’s face crumpled like she was about to cry, but she swung the scissors in both hands like a woman possessed.
Geumgang’s Sutra Recitation pressed down on the trembling spiritual framework.
Astonishingly, the ‘Chronicle of the Sea’s Gloom and Erosion’ was starting to knit itself back together, little by little.
The two vertically split sheets of Rice Paper writhed and flapped.
From the raggedly torn edges, jet-black ink stretched out like veins.
And they began to tangle and coil grotesquely toward one another.
‘So that’s how the two halves get grafted together.’
For some reason the Profound Principle of Grafting was clicking into place intuitively.
Even just watching through the open crack of the door with my own eyes, I could see the flow of Spiritual Power.
Just like the way I’d gleaned a hint about the Self-Nature System from looking at Kahutoa’s tattoos.
I wanted to try this one out for myself too, next time I got the opportunity.
Harboring that scholarly greed of mine.
I was drinking in every delicate step of the Grafting, determined not to miss a thing.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Hurried footsteps drew closer.
Someone was rushing over from the opposite direction, out of breath.
It was the Intermediary, Kang Yuto.
His earlier easygoing expression was nowhere to be found. Panting roughly, he asked me,
“…Wh, where did Yūda go?”
“Looked like he headed off toward the bathroom.”
“Damn it. Not answering his Communication Talisman either. Of all the times to pull this, right when we’re slammed…”
Kang Yuto glanced around anxiously.
He shot a look through the corridor window at the sea off Gijang.
He fretted, wringing his brows this way and that.
Then at last he managed to spit it out.
“It looks like our information’s been leaked.”
“What?”
“The Chairman on the Japanese side just got in touch. Said our internal info leaked. Looks like some nasty characters have set their sights, hard, on our merchandise.”
“Which means….”
“Yeah. It means this villa isn’t such a safe place right now.”
Kang Yuto craned his neck out long like a turtle.
He glanced for a moment through the cracked auditorium door at the Grafting in progress. Then he turned his gaze back to me and went on.
“If the Grafting gets suddenly cut off halfway through, there’s no telling what’ll blow up. It’s exactly like leaving a surgery patient lying there with their belly cut open.”
“That’d be a disaster.”
“Yeah. The biggest problem is, when a person dies in surgery, that’s just the end of it, but a cursed object goes berserk, spraying a horrific curse in every direction…. One slip and this whole villa grounds becomes a wasteland.”
Kang Yuto nervously rubbed his bone-dry lips.
My own head was filling with thoughts too.
So the mission intel got leaked.
Which meant the ones who’d set their sights on that pricey ‘Chronicle of the Sea’s Gloom and Erosion’ could storm this place by force at any moment.
In other words, we had to brace hard for a surprise intrusion.
‘On an exorcism mission, has there ever been a large-scale raid like this?’
There hadn’t.
Up to now I’d mostly been running missions against demons lodged inside cursed objects.
But it wasn’t as if I’d never fought human sorcerers before. Hadn’t I given Kahutoa a good thrashing just a little while ago?
I finished running the combat math in my head and opened my mouth.
“Where’s Bakumon?”
“He went to inspect the Barrier Stones for the Wide-area Protective Formation that guards the villa.”
“And me?”
“Good thing you’re quick to size up a situation. Yes, Baek-gi, please head to the villa’s front gate first. That’s the only entrance those bastards could come bulldozing straight through.”
At the end his tongue tripped a little, and even the distinctive accent he’d been suppressing slipped out.
Yeah, from the standpoint of the on-site coordinator this was a nerve-fraying situation, so I could well understand it.
‘The villa’s front gate, huh.’
It was the one entrance people came and went through, after all.
Which made it the weak point where the Wide-area Sorcery’s protective influence was at its loosest.
In that case, it made sense for me, strong in close combat and in a short fight, to go plug that hole.
“Got it.”
“Yes. Then I’ll hurry and go find Yūda. Just in case, so we can guard the most important thing, the Grafting site, from right beside it.”
He hastily spun on his heel.
I, too, wasted no time, sending the hem of my coat flaring as I made straight for the front gate.
*
Ju Gi-baek stood stock-still in the middle of the broad garden.
He closed his eyes and sharpened his senses, trying to detect any presences nearby.
But thanks to the Wide-area Sorcery formation, there was no discernible demonic energy from outside. Since he couldn’t feel the outside from within,
the reverse was surely true as well.
It was a thoroughly sealed-off space.
Suddenly, bang! bang! the sound of small charges going off rang out in quick succession overhead.
It was Bakumon.
He landed lightly on the ground, the hem of his Tokko-fuku fluttering.
Where his feet touched down, a jet-black scorch mark smeared across the ground.
“Oi, Baek-gi. You got the rundown from Kang Yuto, right?”
“I did. Heard you went to inspect the Barrier Stones.”
“Yeah. Just finished checking all four of the external cutoff Barrier Stones. You never know when or how you’ll get stabbed in the back, this being human business and all. Never hurts to prepare thoroughly.”
Bakumon fixed his fierce eyes on the closed gate beyond.
For a guy who looked like some punk, his actions were remarkably sharp and meticulous.
Either way, it was a relief he was on the same team.
Zzzzzzt…
Suddenly a noise burst out from above.
At the same time the translucent protective dome that had been wrapped around the villa crackled, then began to thin out in an instant.
Ju Gi-baek and Bakumon looked up at once.
The Wide-area Barrier Stone had been forcibly shut down.
Before Ju Gi-baek realized it, a chilling voice came out of him.
“Didn’t you just say, with your own mouth, that you’d inspected the Barrier Stones?”
“……I saw with my own eyes that they were working perfectly fine! There’s no way that’d happen unless somebody tampered with them deliberately from the inside.”
“In that case.”
Neither one first, Ju Gi-baek and Bakumon sprang apart, putting distance between them.
The two of them glared at each other with suspicion.
Ju Gi-baek laid a hand on the hilt of the Yogwang Sword inside his coat, and from Bakumon’s tightly clenched fist, tiny explosions burst out intermittently, bang! bang!, like fireworks.
It was Bakumon who spoke first.
“Chikushou! You, don’t tell me you’re the traitor on the inside?”
“…I was about to ask you that first.”
The two of them looked each other over in the taut tension.
If that was acting, this was a reaction good enough for Hollywood, never mind sorcery.
Both of them sensing that the other was genuinely angry.
They awkwardly cleared their throats and quietly eased out of their about-to-fight stances.
Bakumon, thinking for a moment, stroked his jaw and went on.
“Come to think of it. You would’ve come straight here to the front gate the moment Kang Yuto told you. And the Barrier Stones are on the opposite side.”
“That’s true, but what about you? Weren’t you the one who was handling the Barrier Stones right up to the end?”
“If I were the mole, the traitor, I’d have just blown the Barrier Stones sky-high and gotten rid of them completely while I was alone in the first place! Not have them fail this late and this clumsily, after I’d already left.”
Which meant there was some other rat hiding on the inside.
Kang Yuto, or Yūda, or some third figure.
Ju Gi-baek’s and Bakumon’s faces hardened.
And it wasn’t just because of that shocking realization.
The moment the protective formation went down.
A whole cluster of ominous human presences was picked up from outside. Murky energies, ravenously starved for something.
Bakumon ground his teeth and muttered under his breath.
“They’re coming.”
“I felt it too.”
Ju Gi-baek scanned the gate through narrowed eyes.
The unease became reality soon enough.
From outside came a great tearing boom along with a flash of light.
The thick iron gate crumpled and was ripped away, sweeping across the garden.
A few pine trees planted nearby were wrenched right out of the earth by the blast, roots and all.
Dust billowed up thick, then settled.
And through the gaping hole in the gate poured a horde of humans like a pack of beasts.
Every last one of them clad in ghostly white Sobok that ran against the times, veins bulging in their eyes, charging in a frenzy.
“Baekbaek Cheonha (白白天下)! Baekbaek Cheonha!”
“Baekbaek Cheonha! Baekbaek Cheonha!”
“Kyaaaaahhh-hoooooooo!”
Every one of them had blown pupils, their eyes clean out of their minds.
Like the whole lot of them had huffed drugs together somewhere.
Their sheer manic energy was disorienting.
And on top of that, from old folks to young women.
The fact that it was a motley crowd of all ages and both sexes was skin-crawling too. There had to be dozens of them, easily.
The one small comfort was that they were low-grade riffraff, Unranked level.
Bakumon spat on the ground and snapped irritably.
“It’s the Baekbaek Cult (白白敎). Why the hell did those crazy Cult Lunatics crawl all the way out here?”
Bakumon’s griping lasted only a moment.
One Follower charging madly at the front let out a shriek and flung open the front of his white Sobok with both hands.
What lay revealed was a sight of Talismans plastered thick across bare skin.
In that brief instant Ju Gi-baek sensed the murderous intent behind it. He reflexively spread his arms. And he jammed his head down into the spread of his coat.
“Baekbaek Cheonha! Kyaaa-ha-ha-ha!”
KABOOOOM!
With a crimson explosion the Follower’s body was blown to pieces.
Along with horrific shrapnel, a massive firestorm swept over the center of the garden.
The well-tended Japanese garden trees turned to black cinders in an instant, and the stone paving was gouged out as if struck by a bomb.
Bakumon rode out the blast wave, grinding his teeth.
“Kuso ga! This is exactly why you don’t deal with these Baekbaek Cult bastards!”
Ju Gi-baek agreed intensely.
There was a reason Hassan had reacted so violently, so revolted by them in the past.
Why?
Because several of the ones charging in behind were grabbing at the fronts of their robes the same way, lunging in to repeat the Self-Detonation.
“Baekbaek Cheonha! Kyaaa-ha-ha-ha!”
“Hrrryaaa-ha-ha-ha! For the great cause!”
Right after, another crazy bastard went off.
A ferocious firestorm bore down to right in front of Ju Gi-baek and Bakumon.
At that moment Bakumon stepped forward and thrust out both hands wide.
The violently surging flames rode along his touch and, instead, condensed and shot back the other way.
FWOOOOM!
Several Followers about to detonate were swept up and hurled away by the backflowing firestorm.
Shhhhaaaaa…….
And so they toppled to the ground as black cinders.
The impact of the fall left their charred bodies crackling apart.
Bakumon curled both fists tight.
Explosions burst sporadically around his body. Veins bulging, he bellowed.
“Come at me, all of you! How dare you! Shoving bombs in the face of the Sorcerer of Detonation?”
But Bakumon’s fierce momentum lasted only a moment.
Dozens more people came pouring in through the gate.
Watching the Sobok-clad humans surge in en masse like a horde of zombies, unafraid of death, even the swaggering Bakumon muttered with a face gone pale.
“Crazy bastards… There’s no end to them.”
The Baekbaek Cult’s Fanatic Followers swarmed and filled the garden.
They came leaping and bounding from all directions like frogs, and every last one of them clawed open the fronts of their robes, trying to trigger Self-Detonation.
Even for Bakumon.
Controlling the total volume of explosions those dozens of people would set off all at once was more than he could manage.
Sadly, just before the chain of explosions could go off on every side.
Step.
Ju Gi-baek walked forward.
‘An artificial explosion wrought from Spiritual Power. In other words, not the physical flame, but only that fundamental wave of Spiritual Power, if I control just that in reverse?’
It was do-or-die at this point anyway.
Having the coat take the full brunt of dozens of Self-Detonations was impossible. And the Spell Formula seemed to be beyond the ordinary level too.
So Ju Gi-baek stepped to the front.
‘Should I use the Self-Nature System?’
The mark Kahutoa had etched onto his back.
His own Absolute Domain, the Self-Nature System, that he’d newly wrought this time.
But using it openly here would be a problem.
The rat on the inside might well be watching his strength from somewhere, taking advantage of this chaos.
If he pulled out a hidden card for these low-tier Mooks, there was no ruling out the possibility of being seen through early in the real Boss Battle.
So Ju Gi-baek worked his brain and searched for another efficient approach.
He roughly mimicked, by eye, the explosion-control sorcery Bakumon had shown just moments before, and onto it he deftly layered the wave-based Profound Principle of the Waveform Fist that he’d mastered.
Press (壓).
Waveform Fist Form 4.
Softly receiving the masses of enemy Spiritual Power lashing out mercilessly from every direction, and forcing them into a single point through resonance.
Shhhhhk!
The expanding Spiritual Power and rough flames about to burst out of several Fanatic Followers’ bodies were sucked violently in between Ju Gi-baek’s two hands.
Controlling that enormous volume of Spiritual Power.
Ju Gi-baek’s whole body strained, muscles bulging taut, his posture twisting this way and that.
When at last he seized complete command of the scattering force and aligned his hands facing each other, top and bottom.
That immense mass of crimson flame and Spiritual Power.
Was compressed and condensed down to no bigger than a baseball.
Ju Gi-baek scowled.
He hurled the suppressed orb back at the oncoming crowd of Followers with both hands, like pitching a baseball.
KABOOOOOOM!
A single thunderous roar.
The condensed, enormous explosion burst out in a fan shape.
And a straight line of continuous flame swept away half the charging crowd of Followers in one stroke.
The firepower was so ferocious.
Part of the perimeter wall that had somehow remained intact melted and crumbled.
Where the black smoke lifted.
A charred, blackened ground and sparks crackling and burning.
And dozens of bodies turned to cinders, crumbling in the sea breeze, were all that remained.
“…….”
Bakumon had watched that precise control from right beside him.
He gaped for a moment, slack-jawed.
Then Bakumon’s eyes went wide, as if they’d split open.
“……There was a sorcerer like this on the peninsula?”
****
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