The Dark Serpent
The dark serpent crumpled the shutter like a paper cup and leapt inside. It would probably hunt Sarhyuk down within those walls and rampage about, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. The humans who had briefly slipped free of Tetra Anax’s control earlier now seemed to have fallen back under that mental oppression; even as the building shattered before their eyes, they gave no sign of seeing the one responsible. It was a world in which everyone had become invisible.
“They’re something else,” Se-gun clicked his tongue. To knead the minds of this many people like dough! And the truly astonishing part was that it wasn’t Tetra Anax himself doing it—his subordinates were.
Yet in Juyda, who pursued Sarhyuk alone as if even the vampires’ own laws no longer mattered, almost no light of reason remained.
“Ugh…”
The chill from the wound Juyda had given him spread through Se-gun’s entire body. He shook like an aspen in a gale, the rhythm of the shivers terrifyingly fast. Upper teeth clacked against lower teeth, producing a sound like a wooden fish being struck at midnight mass.
“This is driving me crazy.”
When vampire blood was injected, toxin-based attacks rarely inflicted serious harm. Poisons that broke down on their own inside the body became virtually harmless without conscious effort, and even accumulating toxins could be expelled with only a slight exercise of will.
Despite that ability, the cold Juyda had poured into Se-gun only grew more intense; it refused to fade.
“Grrrrrr… damn it!”
Se-gun forced his violently trembling body forward and crawled across the ground. The rain pouring down felt warmer than his own chilled flesh. Then came the slap-slap of approaching footsteps.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Silvester looked down at Se-gun, who was sprawled on the ground and practically swimming through the water, and frowned in puzzlement. He raked wet silver hair back from his face and kicked Se-gun over onto his back.
“…”
With no strength left to resist, Se-gun flipped over as flat and helpless as a squashed frog. Silvester, having turned him over so casually with one boot, examined the wound and drew a sprig of wood and a water bottle from inside his coat.
“Holy water consecrated at Easter, and juniper used in white magic. I hope it works.”
“Hope…? What do you mean, you hope?”
But right now Silvester was the only one Se-gun could trust. Even a man who had already prepared himself for death still preferred living to dying, so he did exactly as ordered—clutching the juniper branch like a mummy holding herbs inside its coffin and letting Silvester splash the holy water over the wound.
“Go lie on the sidewalk so a dump truck doesn’t run you over.”
“…I look like a homeless guy.”
Silvester felt no need to answer. More accurately, he had no strength left for an answer. With a body already punched through by Beast Double, could he even fight Juyda? Judging by the state of things, the darkness had already reduced the entire building to tatters.
“KRAAAAH!”
At that moment a blood-soaked Sarhyuk burst out of the building. A werebear whose regeneration and raw power surpassed even a vampire’s had dropped his transformation entirely and fled in human form.
“Wh-what the hell is that thing?!”
“…”
Silvester ignored the werebear and walked straight inside. Once the vampires were dead, the lycanthropes would be next. A creature like this werebear was merely future prey that would have to be hunted down someday, but right now Silvester’s entire loadout was optimized for anti-vampire combat. He needed to avoid lycanthrope opponents for as long as possible before he lost this sense of balance and timing.
Besides, the number of vampires Sarhyuk hunted in Korea was far from trivial; eliminating him now would only create problems for Silvester himself. Ah—and come to think of it, Se-gun and this one were business rivals, weren’t they? If Sarhyuk killed Se-gun while the latter was combat-ineffective, that would also be inconvenient. Yet if Silvester so much as hinted at it, he would only make things worse for Se-gun. Word had already spread through the underworld that Se-gun was a vampire hunter raised by a Jinma-slayer; better not to say or do anything that would drive the nail deeper into that rumor.
Compassion? Consideration?
To Silvester those words were as distant as the moon, yet even a being forged into a living anti-monster weapon still possessed a human linguistic structure—and therefore, it seemed, a human mental framework. Or perhaps it was the way Se-gun, once an ordinary upright man, now threw himself into vampire hunting with an iron will that sometimes even startled Silvester, stirring a sense of duty and responsibility in return. Whatever the reason, Silvester held Se-gun in high regard.
“AAAAAAAH! KAAAAAAAH!”
The building was a large arcade formed by roofing the space between two towers—apparently a wholesale clothing market. High on the steel framework stood a man wrapped in darkness, howling.
“…”
Pale skin, the sealed remains of Prester John on his back, an existence that seemed the very embodiment of darkness itself—he was beautiful at a single glance. When most of the Templars had been burned for heresy and sodomy, they had supposedly cried out in protest:
‘After long war and a life of abstinence that has left us desolate, what beauty remains for us to lust after the flesh?’
Yet the Templar who bore the name of Judas was devastatingly beautiful.
“How does it feel… to meet your senior?”
At the arcade’s entrance stood vampires maintaining a judicial barrier. One was a woman who kept her left hand permanently shoved into a pocket, long red hair cascading past her waist to cover her hips as she sneered; opposite her, a male vampire held the barrier with a look of open irritation. One was Hecate, a vampire so aggressive that even among her own kind she was second to none; the other was Venom, leader of the Astate clan. The two of them had woven the barrier that was suppressing Juyda’s power.
“Two vampires joining hands over a handful of blood? On a stormy night, the cups look a little too dangerous for a toast.”
“Turned poet, have we, Silvester? Well, looking at your senior’s sorry state, I suppose it’s only natural!”
Silvester’s brow lifted for a fraction of a second. Besides the two Jinma, another vampire was present. Piercings driven deep into regenerating flesh, and a pair of silver kukris…
Shane—younger brother of Elliot, commander of Tetra Anax’s Korean branch. Estimated VT around 90,000. Once Sepia’s Esquire, now he seemed to be running around quite a bit under Tetra Anax’s wing. His skill, however, was genuine; even Silvester had marked him as someone to watch.
“…”
Words were unnecessary. The wounds Phantom had dealt him were not regenerating. No—Silvester possessed no regenerative ability to begin with. He merely packed and patched the flesh until it held. He looked at Juyda. That former Templar who had once been a Vatican monster-hunter had now reached the absolute limit of his magic.
Two years after the Templars were branded heretics and slaughtered…
The knight who returned from the expedition in search of Prester John had brought back a massive black coffin believed to be a relic of the Eastern Church. A clear cross was carved into something unmistakably Oriental, and even that rigid inquisitor had postponed judgment out of sheer curiosity about the Kingdom of Prester John.
The reliquary of Prester John.
Inside the coffin that would later be called by that name lay records of an extraordinarily powerful vampire—and her corpse. A vampire whose four-letter name, Juda, suited her perfectly. The dimensions of the coffin arranged by numerology… and then, one day in 1467…
The Templar who should have been punished was instead sentenced to absorb the power of the vampire he had brought back and use it to fight other vampires. The dead body, sealed into his flesh, revived and granted him power that overwhelmed any other vampire, yet this was a sin the universal Church could never have permitted.
And so the thirteenth disciple—the cast-out apostle forbidden even to enter the sanctuary—walked the path of the monster-hunter prepared for the sake of others. Strengthening his power, maintaining forbidden magic, rejected by humans and rejected by monsters, he had fought on.
What had he fought for all that time? There was no land of rest anywhere. Yet God loaded humanity with enormous debt and demanded infinite service as the price of that sin. Juyda had gone about spreading sin in search of salvation even while knowing no salvation existed.
Was that not Silvester’s own tomorrow?
“Sentiment doesn’t suit me. Vampire. If you two want to join hands, that’s fine by me.”
The cold air vibrated. Even inside the space bound by the barrier, the roar of the storm outside still pressed in. Silvester moved his hands. No functional impairment. He could manage only about seventy percent of full capacity, but for a through-and-through wound that was still acceptable. The Barrett was gone, but he still had the Desert Eagle and the sabre. Of course those alone would never bring down a Jinma—not in this condition.
“AAAAAAAH!”
At that moment the remains of Prester John screamed in a high, piercing voice. The arcade, already swaying violently in the wind and rain, rang like a struck bell. A manifestation of power that seemed to warp space itself shattered the barrier surrounding him. With raw force he simply crushed the barrier two Jinma had raised. Despite the heavy damage already inflicted, the drop in VT was unbelievably small. Because the vampire’s true body was the woman sealed behind him! And the sheer binding force of that seal…!
“This is—unbelievable!”
With Hecate’s scream as background music, Juyda moved. The barrier was gone. The moment the obstacle before him vanished he charged straight at Hecate. Was killing vampires the only thought left in his mind? If original sin itself were lashing him, driving mission and responsibility into him, then that was truly terrifying. Even after reaching “death” as a human, he had never been able to cast off the contradictory shell of sin.
“AAAAH!”
The Sinsayer had apparently chosen a more reliable method of instruction than words. The black blade moved; darkness carved a great arc through the air and smashed everything around it. Monstrous destruction! Something like that would never stop a Jinma. Silvester muttered the thought inwardly and slipped into the shadows. He would have to leave the field eventually, yet he already knew Juyda would end tonight. The desire to watch this fight through to the finish seized him—an unfamiliar sensation he had not felt in a long time.
“Tch!”
Hecate still did not take her left hand from her pocket. Even if a vampire’s power had nothing to do with the hands, maintaining that posture was dangerous. If she didn’t pull the hand free at once she was finished—especially against another Jinma!
Yet Hecate vanished outside the building at an unbelievable speed. She barely avoided the black blade of Noctis D. Spatha, but the half-collapsed barrier was completely destroyed as a result.
KRAAAAAASH!
Darkness became jet-black chains and coiled around Juyda. The black pupils that stood out so clearly against his pale face drank in the surrounding life force like black holes. Magic that had reached its limit screamed; the ends of the black chains transformed into serpents of darkness.
It was a wonder.
Even to Silvester, who had mastered hundreds of white-magic mysteries…
Even to the Jinma who had mastered still more black arts…
The feast of darkness unfolding before their eyes was the very aorta of the heart that beat inside the word despair. Language lived and breathed; meaning took on life. Pure magic utterly different from white magic that borrowed the power of angels or black magic that summoned demons! So this was what frustration truly looked like!
“AAAAAAAH!”
The reliquary of Prester John howled! With Hecate gone, Venom became the next target and poured every scrap of power into defense. The black chains smashed through that defense and ravaged him without mercy.
Clank-clank-clank-clank!
The black chains wrapped around Noctis D. Spatha uncoiled with every sweeping arc and lashed out in all directions. Both Silvester and Shane had to pour every ounce of concentration into evasion. They could dodge only because the chains were not targeting them primarily—they were focused on Venom.
“Grrrk!”
Venom’s barrier tore; the chains swarmed him. Though they were only images made real, their weight and force exceeded any actual chain.
The chains devoured Venom’s flesh. The sight of mineral matter assaulting and destroying organic matter was grotesque beyond description, yet no delicate soul that might have looked away was present.
Besides, a few bites would never kill him. Venom seized the chains in his bare hands and ripped them apart.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh!”
Madness seemed to seize him; Venom laughed. Chains raced across the ground to engulf him, but he waved a hand as if annoyed. A green arc flashed and the chains were smashed into the wall.
Sizzle!
Toxic vapor erupted from Venom’s body, melting everything nearby. He was a Jinma, after all. Estimated VT only 320,000—lower than Phantom’s—yet the astonishing ability of his bloodline, the toxin power called Scar, made the Ireland Astate clan impossible to dismiss. Of course the technique’s difficulty was so high that even his own Esquire had never managed to develop it—that was the drawback.
Thanks to that, the chain assault slackened.
Whirrrrr!
In that instant a kukri flew. Silvester had thought a non-Jinma had no business challenging a Jinma, yet astonishingly the kukri pierced both the dark chains and the veil. Noctis D. Spatha struck it down and completely destroyed it, but the blade had clearly been enchanted.
“Scar!”
Venom did not miss that single opening. His prized venomous attack slammed squarely into Juyda’s torso. The green image of toxin struck home!
“AAAAAAAH!”
A circular darkness expanded and swallowed the surroundings. The reliquary of Prester John was screaming—Venom’s attack had landed cleanly. In that same instant Silvester drew the Desert Eagle without hesitation, shot Venom, and lunged at Shane beside him, sabre already swinging. Shane tried to raise a kukri to block, but his arm came apart into eight pieces that spun into the air.
And with the flash of the blade that followed—one stroke, three pieces!
Silvester carved Shane into three segments and kicked the kukri so that it buried itself in the chest of Venom, who had been left completely open by the sudden attack.
“Sca—!”
Venom’s frantic counterattack lanced toward Silvester. Too late to dodge. Then the only choice was to take the bastard’s life.
Sizzle!
The toxin seared his flesh. Yet it could not stop him. The sabre blade spun, tearing the air.
A motion so fast it was purely functional—like a butcher expertly jointing meat. He thrust up under the ribs into the lungs, stabbed the thigh and gouged the femoral artery inside the knee. The blade that split the thigh and emerged burst the dam of blood at the knee; the reversed edge rose and this time severed the right arm. Even as the deadly poison burned through his entire body, the flesh performed the work it remembered. A normal human body would have been incapable of it under the fever, agony, and cascading organ failure the toxin brought—but for a being whose will had already transcended flesh, a being who existed beyond the body, such things held no meaning.