Light poured down.
Honed blades flashed, cutting with conviction.
A dance of ceremonial hatchets from both hands and the heavens.
Aaaaaah…!
The ceremonial hatchets rained down into the centipede’s torso, the one shaped like an apostate monk.
These were not the ceremonial hatchets for subduing evildoers, the ones that had been driven into Assistant Manager Jin Nasol at Sparkling Dragon Palace, or into me in the Dream Incubation Room.
These were ceremonial hatchets fitted with ornate pine sprays and intricate bells, easily twice that size.
Ritual implements.
Weapons meant to stand against an evil ‘being.’
Uuugh, uuuugh…!
The wicked thing that had been preaching the truth of the world—or rather, in truth, merely muttering its own horrific realization while imitating the structure of a human mouth to plant madness—writhed.
Each time it did, the human arms that had been squirming dropped to the floor and, turning to ash, found rest.
Part of the requiem rite.
Thud.
The centipede convulsed, and the pillars and rafters of the village shrine collapsed.
It looked as though the debris would come pouring down onto people’s heads at any moment, but…
“There is no need to worry.”
I heard Agent Bronze’s steady voice.
The transparent rounds from the glass hand cannon he fired embedded themselves in the empty air around the shrine, confining the centipede so it could not come out from there.
Thwack.
Like a kind of talisman, the rounds, engraved in their centers with the proper characters, produced their exact intended effect.
“It should be all right now.”
“……”
“The most difficult and troublesome step in ending this kind of shamanic-ritual supernatural disaster is that the hidden identity must be revealed.”
I knew that.
You had to know what it was in order to exorcise it.
And that was also why the Management Agency had not easily realized the identity of that preacher of Nameless Religion, the one buried beneath this village shrine together with a liquor jar, lending it that bizarre power.
The comments Agent Choi had personally…