An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 345

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 345
Part 4. The End is Human (2)
Clatter.
A bottomless earthen jar sat in one corner of the Basement.
And Kim San’s Son sprinkled ash upon it.
Ash that reeked of beast.
Snakes and cats—creatures easily procured from these surroundings—were sealed in the jar and starved to death, their desiccated corpses burned to ash in a bonfire.
Whoosh.
As the ash billowed forth in grey smoke, the very air within the Basement transformed.
Malice born of wicked intent, enacted through wicked deeds—this was sorcery.
An acrid spiritual miasma flowed through the space, and the air, now viscous and cloying, prickled against the skin.
Thus was this place completed.
This Building, erected with the faithful’s donations, had finally become an Altar when the time came for Kim San to die.
Clatter! Clang!
Kim San’s Son began hauling scrap materials to conceal the jar.
The location: near what appeared to be a boiler.
Ding.
The Shaman’s Bell rang out.
In that same instant, Kim San and his son’s movements froze with unnatural abruptness, as though a video had reached its end, and I inhaled the damp air through my nostrils, fixing my gaze upon Kim San.
“Why are you smiling?”
Kim San, standing behind his son as he moved the scrap materials, was smiling.
Not a hearty, teeth-baring laugh.
Yet the corners of Kim San’s mouth were twisted upward in a sneer.
While committing acts of murder, only his son possessed genuine conviction—and Kim San was mocking that very sincerity.
Kim San had never truly believed in his own resurrection, and he had exploited his son, the last of his believers, to the very end.
A demonic creature.
That was my sincere thought in the moment I beheld Kim San’s smile.
Ding.
The Shaman’s Bell rang once more.
The surroundings began to shift, and a crisp wind cut like a blade, sweeping over me.
Rustle, rustle.
Kim San’s Son, a blue tarp draped across his shoulders, approached a cart.
As I stepped outside the Rental House and peered back through the doorway, I saw the bedding had been pushed to one side.
He was moving Kim San.
Thud.
As he loaded Kim San’s corpse, wrapped in the tarp, onto the cart, it lurched violently.
Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!
The Guard Dog barked as if asking where Kim San was being taken, but the son paid it no mind.
Instead, he silently pulled the cart, beginning his journey toward the nearby Mountain.
‘Last night, then.’
The moon’s shape matched what I had seen yesterday.
I stared at the direction Kim San’s Son was heading as if trying to carve it into my corneas, and a sobbing voice reached my ears.
“Father, I’m sorry.”
Kim San’s Son turned to look behind him.
It was meant to see Kim San, whom I had loaded in the back, but it was the moment when Kim San’s Son’s face and my gaze met.
His face, caked with tears, didn’t look human.
So filled with deep resentment and hatred that it even felt like the presence of a demon or malevolent spirit.
Crack.
I gripped the Shaman’s Bell tightly, and Kim San’s Son continued pouring out words laced with evil for a while longer before moving his feet again.
And as all the illusions vanished, it pulled me back to reality.
Whirrrrr.
Flying insects swarmed, and the stench of rotting corpses vibrated through the house.
I stared down at the black stains that had formed on the floor of the Sealed Room for a moment before bolting out of the Rental House.
Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!
The Guard Dog barked savagely.
But the moment the dog met my gaze, its mouth shut, and I immediately checked the direction where Kim San’s Son had disappeared with the cart and examined the ground.
There were definitely cart tracks left on the ground.
But there were no return tracks.
“…Damn it.”
It was morning with the sun risen.
A considerable amount of time had passed.
Then he should have returned, but for some reason, there was no trace of Kim San’s Son coming back anywhere.
What on earth had happened?
With only terrible imaginings coming to mind, I immediately began running toward the Mountain, following the cart wheel tracks.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Surely the divine was aiding me.
I felt the wind pushing at my back, and the sun hidden behind dark clouds briefly illuminated the path ahead.
Gasping for breath as if my chest would burst, I crossed through weeds and Fields.
It was the moment I entered an unfamiliar path up the Mountain.
Clang!
The Shaman’s Bell rang out.
As if announcing that I had reached the exact destination.
‘Guide me.’
I gripped the Shaman’s Bell firmly and bounded up the Mountain.
It was an ordinary Mountain, and thus an unfamiliar one.
The point was that there was no path.
Crackle! Crackle! Crackle!
Blocking the attacking branches with my forearms, I pressed deeper and deeper, and after running much further, I stopped in my tracks.
The cart was there.
Thud!
I skidded to a halt as if the cart had crashed into me, breathing heavily as I surveyed my surroundings.
I’d only driven about ten more minutes after entering the mountain.
Yet the sensation of being severed from the world crashed over me with overwhelming force.
Was it the overcast sky, or the scarcity of people?
Or perhaps the dense trees that suffocated the space around me?
I drew breath through my nose, feeling my chest expand, and slowly moved my eyes across the landscape.
The cart was empty.
‘Kim San, Kim San, Kim San.’
A decomposing corpse.
The man had entered this mountain at night, and navigating through such dense forest while carrying a corpse—barely able to see a step ahead—would be no simple task.
Then there had to be something nearby, some trace of him.
It was right after I turned my gaze in a different direction, searching for any clue.
Clang.
The Shaman’s Bell rang out, and my eyes locked onto a single point, unable to move.
“…Insane bastard.”
In all my years, I’d rarely witnessed something so grotesque.
I swore to myself that I truly meant it.
Deep in this mountain, where dark clouds made it feel like dawn despite the daylight, Kim San was there.
Positioned on a tree stump like a Maitreya Bodhisattva in contemplation, his decaying joints bent and broken, fixed in place with branches.
Buzz.
Insects, drawn to the stench, swarmed around Kim San’s corpse as it sat in that Buddha-like pose, and I approached him, Shaman’s Bell in hand.
An overwhelming stench assaulted my nostrils.
Thud.
Something suddenly fell from Kim San’s face and rolled across the ground toward me.
Looking down, I saw it was an acorn.
The man had placed it where the rotted eye socket had been.
“Ugh.”
Right after I swallowed back the nausea brought on by the overwhelming stench and presence.
Clang-clang-clang!
The Shaman’s Bell rang out sharply, as if warning of danger,
Crunch-crunch-crunch!
The sound of footsteps crushing rotted branches and leaves drew closer.
I turned my gaze toward the sound to see a man with a sickle, his eyes raised in a wild glare, lunging at me.
“Die-ie-ie-ie-ie!”
This time, I would end Kang Hyung-seok’s life.
With Kang Hyung-seok’s life, I would resurrect Kim San, who is like my father, the Celestial Master and Maitreya.
The man’s eyes gleamed with madness, his resolve burning deep.
Whoosh!
I dodged the sickle aimed precisely at my temple and grabbed the man’s sleeve.
Then I swept his ankle outward, and as he clutched my clothing, we both tumbled to the ground simultaneously.
“Grraaahhh!”
Kim San’s Son let out a bestial shriek as he tried to crush Kang Hyung-seok beneath him.
Despite his skeletal frame, the man was channeling an uncanny, monstrous strength.
Whoosh!
A sickle embedded itself beside Kang Hyung-seok’s head, and he shoved Kim San’s Son to the side.
“Hack!”
Kim San’s Son collapsed from the blow to his throat, but immediately rose again, sickle in hand.
Kang Hyung-seok pushed himself up, breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Words would not come.
The man’s eyes had already rolled back completely.
No words could reach him now.
“Hnngh! Hnnnngh!”
Kim San’s Son wept, his tears flowing as though the situation itself was unbearably unjust and hopeless.
Then he raised the sickle again and lunged forward with an eerie, inhuman wail.
***
Crash!
It was at that moment Chung-geum brought the ox’s leg crashing down to the floor.
The flesh collided with the hard ground with a sickening wet sound, and the faces of the Executives watching from a distance went rigid.
They were not people blessed with spiritual sight or possessed by gods.
Yet from the atmosphere of the Ritual Ceremony Ground, from Chung-geum’s expression, from the Musicians’ exchanged glances, they could all sense that something had gone wrong.
“What kind of trouble is this now…”
“Shh.”
The Honorary Director silenced the Executive who had spoken softly, and Chung-geum urgently gestured to the Musicians.
One of the Musicians poured soju into a metal bowl and handed it to her.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
Chung-geum drank as though parched, then wiped the liquid dripping from her lips.
“Ugh! Uuugh!”
The sudden retching that erupted made the Musicians and Executives’ faces go taut.
Something had gone wrong.
Something serious.
Drip.
And that unease intensified when dark red blood began pouring from Chung-geum’s nose.
“Wh—what—what?”
“Oh no, oh no.”
Despair deepened the shadows on the Executives’ faces, and one of the Musicians moved to rush forward.
But Chung-geum raised her hand to stop him, pinched one nostril, and expelled the blood.
“Huff! Huuuff!”
As everyone watched, she breathed in ragged gasps and pressed her lips firmly together.
She had been the first to sense that something was unfolding wrongly.
‘Something is about to happen to the young master.’
The stench of a rotting corpse.
The ringing of bells that pierced the ears.
And footsteps.
Not ordinary footsteps, but ones that squelched with a sickening, viscous quality.
“The General demands the Moon Blade!”
Unable to stand idle any longer, Chung-geum cried out loudly, while the Musicians froze, unable to move in either direction.
Then one of the Musicians rushed to the car, retrieved the Moon Blade wrapped in cloth, and handed it to Chung-geum.
The fabric fluttered away.
Chung-geum unwrapped the cloth and drew out the Moon Blade, swallowing blood-tinged saliva before opening her mouth wide.
“I must summon the White Horse General!”
A deity who rides upon a white horse, traversing heaven and earth to protect humanity.
It was not a being that only shamans who had received that particular divine calling could serve, and at the Generals’ Grounds, it was a deity invoked and served alongside many other general spirits.
I needed to seek aid from multiple generals.
Only then would Kang Hyung-seok survive.
Boom, boom, boom, boom!
As if reading Chung-geum’s heart, the Musician began striking the drum rapidly while chanting the sacred verses.
“By the authority of the Nine Heavens, the Jade Emperor, the Eastern Jade God of the Left, the Jade Goddess of the Right, the Thunder and Lightning Generals of the Four Seas and Eight Directions, and the White Horse Supreme General.”
It was then that the breathless drumming echoed through the air.
The blade whistled through the darkness!
The sickle wielded by Kim San’s Son sliced past Kang Hyung-seok’s face.
Kang Hyung-seok struck the man’s jaw hard, and though he staggered greatly, he clung on and dragged himself forward.
Crash and tumble!
Kang Hyung-seok rolled across the ground, desperate to subdue the man.
Kim San’s Son fought viciously to escape, flinging dirt and gripping the sickle.
Then it happened.
Both men’s movements froze as if time itself had stopped.
And both lifted their heads, their gazes shifting toward Kim San’s corpse.
“Huh, huuuuh!”
The man who had just been lunging to kill Kang Hyung-seok stared at Kim San, tears streaming down his face, overwhelmed with emotion.
By contrast, Kang Hyung-seok’s face hardened as he muttered silently.
Impossible.
A twitch.
Kim San’s fingers were moving.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————