“We have checked the advanced training centres in the major provinces like Hubei and Guandong. Su Zhen also managed to get a peek in the central administration centre in Shanghai as well.” Lein took out an A4 notebook from his storage ring and showed Jin what he found.
“On the other hand, Rong had a friendly contact from overseas, and they had exchanged a few tips as well from the Mage Exorcists,” Lein added before giving Rong the chance to explain.
“Wait, the Mage Exorcists? Sorry, heard of them but I do not know much about them.” Jin interrupted the conversation. He did hear of their existence, but they were not really well mentioned in public as compared to the Eastern counterparts.
“Figure as much. That is because the Mage Exorcists always used their Church’s name whenever they performed their mission. The western counterparts rather glorify the churches they were in than to use their own names for publicity.” Rong replied.
“But we do have temples as bases too, right?” Jin questioned as he remembered the ‘dream’ where he had to fight the White Tiger of the West.
“Grandma Yuan or Claire should really conduct a crash course for you.” Rong sighed, knowing that Jin was not trained in the Demon Exorcist Academy nor had any prior education. He did not blame him, especially since a number of new administrators and managers did not have any knowledge too. At the very least, Jin was trying to learn, considering he’s now among the ranks of the Demon Exorcists.
“Heh, I have you kids to teach me. That should be sufficient.” Jin answered with a smile, but the rest simultaneously shook their heads.
“Please don’t put that kind of responsibility on us. Teacher Yuan will kill us if we teach the wrong things.” Su Zhen responded bitterly.
“Or too little. Haha…” Lian interrupted.
“Kill? I believe she will think that will be too kind of a punishment. She would probably make us carry those hundred kilogramme weights on our hands and legs while clearing the triathlon obstacle course of hell.” Lian said as if they had been punished that way before.
“I do not dislike that punishment, but I agree its something I would not wish to live through again,” Lein added which let Jin to conclude that Grandma Yuan did put them through a gruesome training period.
“Anyways, JODE does not comprise of those Church goers. -We do not dislike them, barring them from joining or anything. It is mainly because our branding and members mostly came from the eastern counterparts. Some Exorcists hold dual membership too, but it’s rare because of their stringent criteria” Rong explained to Jin about the Mage Exorcists.
“As for the Western Mage Exorcists, they had JOME, the Joint Organisations of Mage Exorcists. Their main headquarters is in the Vatican City where the Pope had reign and power over them.”
“They could be considered as Demon Exorcists too, but I think they want to differentiate themselves away from us,” Lian said while Su Zhen added that the demons they fought usually originated from the mages themselves.
“As the mages harness their magical energies, they tend to be more sensitive to their surroundings, and the alluring calls by the demons are not uncommon.” Su Zhen interjected. “A few capable ones could summons them to do their bidding, but for most of the cases, the mages themselves transformed into demons. It made the exorcism a bitch if we want to save the person and that is why sometimes the Mage Exorcists think they are better than us.”
“Because you guys mainly kill stuff while they kill and save people?” Jin tried to deduce, and Su Zhen nodded in return.
“Thus, it leads to the route where the Mage Exorcists looked down on forbidden magic like blood magic and to some extent, dark magic. Even though Dark Magic users started to have public recognition in the past decade because of their orthodoxical method to treat mental traumas, they have been frowned upon most of the time. The Mage Exorcists also had a long bloody history against the Dark Magic users.” Lein said, but he prompted Rong to return back to the main topic.
“Ah! Yes. My Mage Exorcist contact had graciously provided me with this information. As he had personally gone through the advanced training programme there, his end user experience should prove to be informative.” Rong said as he showed Jin his phone logs with his friend.
“The chat logs looked roughly the same as what you guys had so far gathered. Knowing the basic weakness of your demons and having live demon samples to fight against.” Jin said as he made a quick comparison.
“Yeah, it’s just that each of the centres has a specific set of live demons to fight against especially since the samples are limited. Sometimes, they do not even let us kill the demons since they needed them for training.” Su Zhen recalled seeing some of the senior exorcists had to weaken the said demons so that it could be suitable for training. At times, they stopped the training to keep the demons alive and allowed it to recuperate.
“Unfortunately, these methods poised significant risks for the Demon Exorcists both junior and seniors as the demons could get out of hand or even stronger the process. That is why there is always a Senior Trap Formation Specialist and a high tiered Rank Demon Exorcists to ensure that those demons were banished into the abyss if such an unfortunate situation rises.” She said as she took out a file of all the protocols used in the central JODE headquarters.
They were all photocopied and filed accordingly, but Su Zhen said that the protocols might differ slightly from each training centre since it’s based on their sample set of live demons.
“Now I understand why Grandma Yuan had decided to use my dungeon instances,” Jin said out loud as he briefly flipped through the protocols.
“Yeah, considering how god damn realistic your spider was, I really believe we have a shot of making this happen,” Lian said excitedly as she quietly caressed on her formation badge and pet her digital nine tail fox demon under the table.
“Hmm, I am wondering… Will it be a tall order to ask of you guys to find and hunt those demons you guys saw in the advanced training course? Or are you guys not prepared for that?” Jin questioned with the intention to make his advance training centre to be as authentic as possible.
“Why do that? We have videos of those live demons courtesy of the advanced training centres. We can use them, right?” Rong could not understand Jin’s rationale since he did not know how people contracted under Jin’s system could automatically make those demons into his.
“His question was whether we can kill it, not capturing it, right?” Lein asked for a clarification, and Jin nodded his head.
“If it’s just killing, I see no reason why we cannot do that. Capturing will surely be out of our league.” Lian shrugged her shoulders and agreed to it. She preferred to do something like that instead of sitting here, listening to all the meaningless talk.
“But I do not understand. Why search and destroy? Even we can kill, what good does that do for you?” Rong asked with a series of impending questions in his head. “I also assume you are not coming with us, and that kind of defeat the purpose ?”
“You are not wrong. I will not be there. But someone will be.” Jin said as he took his phone out and pretended to call. Soon, the doors opened, and a gorgeous lady figure sauntered in with much…sleepy elegance.
“You finally called? I was waiting too damn long for my turn.” Milk yawned as she rubbed her bed hair.
