Reverse Scale
Silvester pulled a spool of wire free and cast it into the open air. Forged of iron, tungsten, silicon, and titanium, the wire was heavier than water and ought to have plummeted straight down—yet it hung suspended in the darkness like spider silk caught on a breeze, drifting in a slow, weightless float.
"……."
Without a word he drew the Beast and raised it level with his face. Cold metal kissed his cheek, but colder still were the silver eyes that bored through the dark beyond it.
From the blackness came the scrape of steel. Even a vampire could not silence the sound of a round being chambered. Flesh might be stilled with care, but the friction of metal against metal never could. An ordinary man might miss such a sound in a city this loud—but their enemies were not ordinary men. They were monsters.
Bang!
The first shot roared from the Beast. From the revolver in Silvester's grip leapt a monstrous 666-grain slug—the pure crystallization of violence, a single round enough to drop a vampire where it stood. It tore through undead flesh at blinding speed and stole their lives with it.
"Gaaah!"
The rifle-armed vampires howled and answered with a ragged volley. Silvester simply spun past a patio table; most of the bullets hissed past him. Those that struck found the ceramic bands woven into his coat and died there.
"Die, then."
Unlike Se-gun, he commanded refined magic. Merely seizing the Infy volume left on the table and focusing his will was enough—blue light erupted in the dark. From the Wordstones he had planted beforehand, a celestial force that rejected the impure was summoned forth, and it tore the vampires apart. Startled survivors burst from the shadows—only for Silvester to draw the silver blade at his hip in a single fluid motion and thrust it toward the wires he had strewn.
Shiiing!
A sound soft as fingers plucking a harp, and every vampire that had entered the web was diced into pieces. Silvester slowly lifted the falling wires on the edge of the silver blade as if scooping them free, then closed the book. Behind him, vampire flesh pattered down like a midsummer cloudburst.
"Hah. Was that all? I should have saved the precious magic."
For a Jinma, perhaps……. So thinking, Silvester waited. Inside the space those wires defined, any ordinary vampire that charged would only paint the floor red. Shooting from range would have been wiser—but Arjuna's courtyard was riddled with blind spots, forcing them to move into open ground. And of course, those open points were already trapped. Using one's own body as bait to herd the enemy into the kill zone: the most dangerous tactic, and the most effective.
Bang!
At least…… until that sound.
"Huh?"
Silvester looked back. Beyond Arjuna's show window sat the Corvette Coupe he had parked. And behind it, some wagon had driven its nose straight into the rear—
"……."
Beside the wagon waited a Lamborghini Miura. The creature in the driver's seat raised a middle finger at Silvester, clear as day. Then both vehicles tore off toward the road.
"Ha…… hahahahahaha."
Silvester scooped the Barrett from the floor and put a round into the fleeing wagon. Even a sizable wagon was nothing before a Barrett's power. One shot shredded the axle and left the wreck sprawled obscenely across the asphalt. Vampires scrambled to leap free—Silvester already had the Beast off his hip. Two shots, four vampires cleanly erased. Headless corpses toppled to the pavement without ceremony.
In that same breath the Lamborghini Miura was already vanishing down the street at terrifying speed.
"Damn it!"
Silvester cut through Arjuna's rear door, came around front, and inspected his beloved car. The composite-resin-and-fiber rear end was crumpled. The axles seemed intact, but the entire chassis would have to be replaced—serious damage. Worse, the rear wing he had fitted for grip was gone. In the next heartbeat he wrenched the door open, dropped into the seat, and fired the engine.
"Challenging a 2000 Coupe with some seventies-or-eighties relic…… gutsy. I'll take that challenge!"
The traps he had laid were a waste, but so was burning magic on rabble like this. The humans of Arjuna had already been evacuated; there was no need to stay bound to the site. Silvester floored it, racing after the vampires who had dared ram his pride and joy.
"He's simpler than I expected."
Shane clicked his tongue as he confirmed Silvester was truly burning rubber in pursuit. The Lamborghini Miura was a fine machine, but he had no intention of racing a fresh 2000 Corvette Coupe head-to-head. Of course, he also had no intention of actually losing if it came to that.
For one thing, he had already smashed that car's rear into scrap. For another, Shane himself knew a thing or two about sports cars—and this Miura was fully tuned. An eight-cylinder high-cycle engine with supercharger and turbo, plus Nissan's latest sport computer for chassis balance control. Tires swapped only yesterday. From the outside it looked like any ordinary Miura; inside, it could stand with the newest machines on the market.
……Even so, the other side would have fully tuned his car as well. Taking out the rear wing had been the right call, yet the Corvette was still closing at a terrifying pace. And the man driving it seemed to specialize in drifts—despite the missing wing and the compromised rear chassis that should have gutted his grip, he hurled the car into every corner without hesitation.
Screeeech!
Front wheels pointed out of the turn, the body canted hard as it snapped inward. Impossible skill. Come to think of it, there had been rumors Silvester held an international racing license. Rank might not be high, but he clearly did not drive a sports car for fashion alone.
"Now—kill him!"
He ordered the vampires under his control. Roadside ambushers bared their killing intent and lunged. In that same instant—
Bang bang bang bang!
The Corvette's roof opened and the Barrett belched fire. The vampires dropped in ugly heaps. But firing a rifle at a hundred forty kilometers an hour through downtown—the man was insane. Not even the Olympic Expressway; a four-lane city road. At that speed, even on open empty pavement, most drivers could not risk taking a hand off the wheel.
"Shit!"
The lesser vampires were no match. Silvester was genuinely furious.
Shane had the sudden sense he had touched a reverse scale. This was a Jinma hunter, after all—Shane himself had once been carved into pieces by the man. His skill was the kind that worked even on True Vampires.
Still…… for someone with money to burn, to get this worked up over a Corvette Coupe that wasn't even that expensive for a sports car…… Shane would grant that Corvettes were pretty machines, but he could not fathom why a man usually so cold would lose his temper over one.
"A reverse scale."
Once you touched a sanctuary more precious than life itself, the other party would stake that life without hesitation. Shane steeled himself anew. Just then a trailer of the sort the Ireland Astate clan favored slid past his flank.
"Hahaha! Incredible. I've never seen a Jinma hunter this pissed."
The vampire at the trailer's wheel muttered as much and hit the shutter switch. Hydraulics peeled the container open. Inside, a grenade machine gun sat locked to a tripod—a weapon that spat hundreds of grenades a minute, and certainly not something meant for city streets.
With Tetra Anax's oversight reduced to a bare minimum, unleashing unrestricted firepower like this was as good as begging the whole world to notice. Even now the radio kept chattering about the violent incidents erupting across Seoul. Keep this up and the only way to clean up the mess would be to take a crushing share of the blame and become Tetra Anax's dog. Which, of course, was probably exactly what Tetra Anax wanted.
"Our lord's already Tetra Anax's dog anyway!"
They had decided to go all-out. The grenade machine gun swung toward the Corvette Coupe. But that black sports car came on like a living beast with its eyes blazing.
"Die, Jinma hunter!"
Yelling that loud just to pull a trigger—maybe he should look into voice work for super-robot anime later. The vampire squeezed the trigger as if his life depended on it. Almost simultaneously a pillar of fire erupted from the Corvette. The Beast had punched the grenade machine gun dead-center.
"What?"
Ordinarily, grenade-machine-gun rounds did not cook off from a hit. But a gun in a mage's hands was never ordinary.
Boom!
The container detonated and blew apart. In the middle of a Seoul roadway a shipping container tore open in a gout of flame; cars around it slammed their brakes and the street became an instant slaughterhouse of metal. Silvester, however, held the wheel with terrifying focus.
"Ghk!"
He shifted his weight, tilted the car onto its side, and threaded the gap between a taxi and a van that had just locked their brakes. Once clear of the tangle he snapped the Corvette level again, cracked the Beast's cylinder, swapped the spent casings, and fixed his gaze ahead. An interchange loomed; he would have to scrub speed.
"Axles, chassis—I'm replacing all of it anyway. One day of abuse won't kill her!"
So muttering, Silvester canted the body and scraped the guardrail. Composite resin and fiberglass showered sparks as the car rode the rail in a screaming spiral, still moving at a speed that could only be called insane. The missing rear wing and weakened grip were a shame, but this was still more than mad enough.
He punched through the interchange in a corkscrew, then rocketed onto the straight. Vampires kept throwing themselves into his path, but on open road the Lamborghini Miura was simply outclassed!
"Tch!"
Watching the gap close, Shane opened the air intake. It ruined the Miura's elegant lines, but the car had been fitted with a scoop that rose from the hood. Air flooded in and the RPM climbed with terrifying force—the turbo's power coming online. Even so, the Corvette Coupe kept narrowing the distance.
Screeech!
Se-gun braked the bike hard and swept the area with his eyes. He had tried to herd his opponent into the booby traps, but the vampire called Inn seemed gifted with spatial awareness. He slipped past most of the traps without effort and, even slowed, kept coming like a dog that would not let go of a scent.
"Hmm. I could keep dragging him around, but that would cause problems, wouldn't it? I've mostly shaken the cops, and if I don't settle this here and get back to Arjuna, even Silvester could be in danger."
Muttering, Se-gun drew a dose of Psychedelic Moon from his coat. Haunting had left him a body that barely needed the drug anymore—but his opponent was a vampire who had once been an Esquire of Juk-yo's faction. He was afraid of what taking Psychedelic Moon now might do to him…… yet cowering before a vampire for fear of dying was not in his nature.
When life was at risk and the soul was at risk, he still charged forward and kindled his hatred for vampires. If Se-gun had a creed, that was it. Only the enmity of the moment made him feel alive. Before he inhaled the drug he closed his eyes for a beat.
In the end, there was no denying he had thrown himself into this work out of a thirst for revenge—or the performance of one. But memories of the past were growing fainter by the day. Se-gun was addicted to adrenaline and narcotics; only the emotion remained, while the events that had forged that emotion had blurred so badly that someday he might be left with nothing but hate and rage—and become a vampire himself.
It frightened him.
Even now the fear made his hand drift to his chest. Back then he had pressed a wad of cash into that pastor's hands and watched their spirits break with pleasure—yet he had envied people like them. That, too, made him angry.
"Ah…… how much of a piece of trash am I?"
While Se-gun was monologuing to himself, a vampire dropped from the sky. Keratin sheathed its entire body until it no longer resembled anything near human—more like the descendant of a species that had parted ways with mankind several billion years up the evolutionary tree. It landed atop a thick roadside streetlamp. Se-gun looked up from the shoulder and sneered.
"Look at you. A cockroach. Why don't you flip onto your back in the gum on the pavement and thrash at the sky? You'd be a natural for a pest-control commercial."
"If my appearance amuses you, laugh. If you can choose laughter for your final face, you may count yourself lucky."
"You look ready to pull my head out of your pocket any second. Vampire…… aren't you underestimating me a little?"
Se-gun inhaled the Psychedelic Moon. The world went black—like forcing your eyes open in front of a camera and taking a flash full in the face. The darkness lasted only an instant; then every object around him snapped into razor clarity.
Inn stood motionless, waiting for Se-gun's move. Shotguns no longer worked on him. Only two things still posed a threat: the Beast, and the Noctis D. Spatha.
But the Beast was hard for its wielder to endure, and the black sword was no true threat unless it made contact. With no sign of Silvester's interference, this human's life was nothing more than a pebble in a pocket—one flick of the wrist and it would fall free. And yet the moment Inn met those eyes, fear seized him.
In pure force, even a human on Psychedelic Moon should not match a true vampire. So why?
"Let me ask one thing. How can you fight like this?"
Genuine curiosity made Inn ask. Se-gun's mouth twisted into a grin. In the dark, that warped expression looked like a mask crumpling; just looking at it made bile rise.
"Who knows? Why would a vampire care about that? You lot could never understand it, so even if I explained you wouldn't get it. Besides, asking your enemy something like that mid-standoff is……"
Before the sentence finished, Se-gun ripped the Beast from the holster at his back.
Quick & Dead!
Like a gunslinger out of a western, he drew the revolver—heavier than an M16—in one hand, madness glittering in his eyes. But Inn was faster. He had already predicted the mid-speech attack. Dropping low, he charged across the ground and sent a blade flying.
Crack!
Se-gun launched himself off the bike and twisted clear. The blade punched into the YZ-125's frame in a shower of sparks. Another edge pierced the fuel tank, but mercifully the gasoline did not catch. Inn was already lunging into the space Se-gun had vacated.
Bang!
Se-gun gripped the Beast in one hand, braced that wrist with the other, and fired in midair. The recoil was so savage that simply shooting while airborne yanked his whole body backward. Inn slipped the blast and the muzzle-flare with contemptuous ease, leapt horizontally past the bullet, then mutated an arm and swept it wide. Razor blades erupted from the limb and came for Se-gun.
"Ghk!"
Vampire strength launched him like a soccer ball. He tumbled across the pavement, every scrap of air crushed from his lungs until he could not even breathe. He forced himself up through the pain—only to find Inn already there, foot swinging.
Bang!
Another explosion. This time Inn's ankle sheared away. Se-gun had put a Beast round through the leg flying at him. Inn kicked him anyway, on the stump.
"Aaaagh!"
Se-gun screamed as he was sent sprawling again, skidding across the ground. The embankment stairs were right behind him; he tumbled mercilessly down them and finally stopped at the bottom of the bank some ten meters below.
"Ghh!"
Even with Psychedelic Moon in his veins, his whole body felt as if it were being torn apart. Yet it still moved. Se-gun rose and spun in the same motion, ripping the Noctis D. Spatha free and swinging at Inn, who was already dropping on him from above.
Clang!
Sparks and blood sprayed from a body armored in keratin and metal. Startled, Inn formed a blade at his elbow and tried to drive it down—Se-gun landed on his back and swept the black sword up to parry.
"Impressive. For a human……"
"Yeah. Worry less about my humanity and more about that head of yours!"
Se-gun rose and leveled the Beast at Inn's skull. Inn looked straight into the muzzle that could erase him and calmly lifted a finger—then flicked it with a soft snap.
"Hhk—!"
The sound and Se-gun's breath left him together. Something had punched through his pleura and was stabbing the base of his lung. Looking closer, he saw it: one of Inn's blades. The blood left on him when he blew off Inn's ankle had mutated under its own binding force.
"Damn it…… Juk-yo blood is a real pain in the ass!"
Se-gun ripped the blade out of his chest and staggered back. Damage to the pleura and lung would stop even a titan from moving. Without a vampire-blood injection soon he would die—but with this opponent, there was no time-out for a shot. Inn charged like a linebacker at full tilt, and with blades sprouting from every surface he was far worse than any football player.
"Kh!"
Se-gun kicked off a utility pole, triangle-jumped to the embankment wall, then ran the wall up the stairs and cleared Inn's charge. Inhuman athleticism—but against a vampire, pursuit was instant. Sure enough, Inn vaulted after him.
Bang!
Se-gun had been waiting and put a Beast round into him. The cylinder was empty now. If this attack failed, Se-gun was dead.
"Gaaah!"
Luck held; Inn took the bullet and went down. Countless blades shattered into blood and rained across the ground. Se-gun seized the opening, jammed vampire blood into his own vein, and forced himself upright. The hole in his pleura knit; breath returned in ragged gasps.
"Hah…… hah…… damn, you're a tough bastard."
Even after a Beast hit and a ten-meter tumble, the vampire was still alive. The Beast was a weapon that could casually erase six or seven vampires standing in a line. If Inn had not reflexively thrown himself backward, a clean hit would have torn his entire upper body away without surprise.
"Are—are you really human?"
Inn asked as he repaired his wounds. Se-gun would have loved to press the attack, but his own condition was wretched. Even with the lung regenerating, blood had pooled beneath the pleura and lung base; function would stay degraded until it cleared. Both of them needed a moment's rest. Still, the advantage was Se-gun's.
He had blown off Inn's ankle and shoulder with the Beast. Even a vampire's regeneration did not shrug that off easily. The magic rounds the Beast fired left spiritual wounds that healing power could not simply erase. Inn was only still standing because he was of the Juk-yo bloodline, able to mutate the injuries and endure them.
"Who knows? Am I human?"
Se-gun fished a Beast cartridge from his pocket, clamped it between his teeth, flipped the cylinder out, and spun it with a slap of his hand. Casings ejected of their own accord with a clatter of revolving steel. He fed the fresh round straight into the still-spinning cylinder and snapped it shut.
"I don't much care for Russian roulette, but one-in-three odds have a certain charm. Better than a lottery ticket, at least."
"You're insane."
Inn looked up at him while mending flesh. A man who could load a spinning cylinder made Russian roulette meaningless. That hand speed had already left humanity behind and entered a vampire's domain.
Relying on mutation alone against a vampire hunter was harder than expected. He should have brought firearms—but depending on human weapons violated the aesthetic of the Juk-yo bloodline.
Bang!
Se-gun fired from the top of the embankment. Inn threw himself back and dodged—but whether the shot had predicted his path or the Beast's rounds were explosive, blood still sprayed.
"Ghk!"