The Flesh Colossus
Se-gun had braced himself for a little wandering when he rode into Jeongseon. Even if it was only a small provincial city, the place was famous for its casino. Parasitic nightlife districts thrived around it, and the transient population would be thick enough that tracking down one bastard named Sarhyuk was going to eat up time.
He knew that assumption was wrong the instant he neared the town.
Kyaaaaaaa….
The wraiths were thrashing in pure terror. They were not flailing from the gale and the lashing rain; something beyond the storm had them terrified—the violence and malice that the Jinma Sarhyuk was pouring out. A Jinma could not even see creatures like these, yet the spirits recoiled from his mere existence.
Huh. So the way humans fear ghosts, these things fear a Jinma?
While the thought crossed his mind Se-gun flipped open the cylinder of Beast, plucked out an empty casing, and slid a fresh round home. Thanks to the wraiths he knew exactly where Sarhyuk was, and exactly what was happening right now….
“Crazy son of a bitch.”
It was rich coming from him, but what Sarhyuk was doing beggared belief. He had already swallowed every human in three-digit numbers—police included. A Jinma like Agni would vaporize the blood and concentrate it, but how the hell was Sarhyuk drinking that much? Reckon two or three liters per person after losses and the total sailed past three hundred liters without breaking a sweat. Factor in Sarhyuk’s usual table manners—eating humans bones and all—and the mountain of corpses he had just polished off became grotesque.
“Well, the bastard’s already the size of a damn bear.”
Se-gun leaned the bike into a stop. The hotel entrance was already a slaughterhouse of blood and piled corpses.
He slung Noctis D. Spatha and the USAS-12 across his back and sprinted forward. From the lobby he could see every elevator was dead; the stairwell had been sheared clean from B2 all the way to the second floor.
Se-gun vaulted onto the railing, kicked hard off the narrow rail, and caught the upper landing with one hand.
“Hup!”
Brutal arm strength hauled him up. One slip and he would have plummeted straight to the basement, yet he made the climb look easy. No ordinary human possessed that kind of athleticism.
“Tch.”
He chambered an 8 mm short shell into the knuckle-blaster on his left hand and started up the stairs.
The convoy of trailer trucks rolled up to the hotel entrance only minutes after the motorcycle had arrived.
“All right. Time is short. We must protect Zein from Sarhyuk’s grasp at once!”
The man who spoke savored the nuance of his own words, letting a long beat hang in the air. He was a Caucasian in a tailored suit, long blond hair cascading down his back.
“Yes, my lord!”
The vampires who spilled from the trailers were armored in ballistic vests and body bunkers, every rifle loaded with Cellular Bullets capable of hurting even a Jinma. Of course, if Sarhyuk possessed power on the level of Juyda those rounds would never so much as graze him; that was why every soldier carried grenades as standard kit.
“Team One takes the stairs. Teams Two and Three the central elevator shaft. Team Four the outer elevator bank.”
Elliot’s decisions were instantaneous.
“Leave any surviving humans alone. Our lord Tetra Anax has no desire to see this incident expand any further.”
He waved the vampire soldiers inside. Then—
Kuuurrrrrrung!
A thunderous roar shook the night as an entire section of the hotel collapsed. The vampires who had just breached the entrance froze, uncomprehending.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Elliot knew things had already gone sideways. He drew a silvered sawed-off rifle.
Sarhyuk climbed onto the rooftop and came face-to-face with the Zein who had been waiting for him.
Kwaaang!
Lightning slammed into the lightning rod on the hotel roof. An ordinary human would have blacked out from the shock alone, but neither vampire so much as flinched.
“Hey. I won that last hand, remember? Hm?”
“A roulette wheel with no dealer present—how much credibility does that really have?”
Zein muttered the words while raking his hair back. For a Vampire Lord who had been broken and corrupted by terror ever since Juyda swept through, the resolve was almost startling. Or perhaps facing Sarhyuk had simply restored him to himself.
“What a pain. Done playing the shut-in, are we?”
“Who knows.”
Zein offered a bitter smile. Sarhyuk’s power was overwhelming; Zein himself could never hope to stop it. Yet his heart had never felt calmer. Once he accepted the gulf between them, the shame that had tormented him simply evaporated. All that remained was to stake everything on defending his honor. Fortunately, the applications of teleportation were endless.
“Tch.”
Sarhyuk clicked his tongue at the newly composed Zein. A soft target had suddenly recovered his wits—it felt like being scammed. Still, the disparity needed no discussion. Zein was third-rate at best, a nothing compared to the nightmare called Juyda. And then—
Screeeeech!
The scream of brakes cut through the storm as something skidded to a halt at the hotel entrance. Sarhyuk’s gaze flicked that way on pure reflex.
“Haaah!”
In that same heartbeat Zein lunged. The rooftop confrontation spanned roughly fifty meters, yet teleportation placed him at Sarhyuk’s side in an instant.
“You little shit!”
Sarhyuk spun and raked with his claws.
Pang!
A boom like a cannon shot sent water spraying in every direction. The blow was strong enough to bend a steel transmission tower; it sheared one of the tower’s legs clean off. With a grinding crack the tower tore free of its foundation and toppled under its own weight onto the helipad.
Kwaaang!
But neither vampire was still there when the tower hit. Zein had already teleported again, slipping the strike and seizing Sarhyuk from behind. The moment he locked on, he triggered a five-hundred-meter spatial jump and rocketed them both into the sky.
“What the—?!”
Dragged upward, Sarhyuk watched the ground plummet away in sudden panic. Zein did not stop; two more consecutive teleports hauled them to fifteen hundred meters.
“H-holy shit!”
Howling wind clawed at Sarhyuk. Everything on the ground had shrunk to the size of ants.
“Well then—ready for skydiving?!”
Zein sneered and simply let go.
“You bastard!”
Sarhyuk flailed wildly, trying to claw at him, but Zein had already chained teleports back to the rooftop and landed unharmed. Lacking any spatial gift of his own, Sarhyuk fell the full fifteen hundred meters under the pull of gravity.
“Fucking hell!”
The wind was so fierce he could barely keep his eyes open, and the ground was a distant abyss. Juk-yo or Phantom might have transformed their bodies and solved the problem; Sarhyuk had no such option. He yanked free a knife that weighed a full two kilos and gripped it hard. If he hurled it with everything he had—
Whoooooosh.
The gale cooled his head for a moment. Quick as he was with numbers, Sarhyuk’s calculation ended in despair.
“Throwing a knife won’t do a damn thing. Goddammit. Should’ve gone on a diet.”
He was simply too massive; the knife would be meaningless. Diet or no diet would not have helped either. So he started thinking fast. A vampire’s body was several times tougher than a human’s and could absorb impact accordingly. If he could just bleed off some of the terminal velocity…
“Nothing to lose. Zein, you son of a bitch—your last move’s gonna be real scary!”
He dredged skydiving posture from memory and roughly mimicked it. The undercurrent was too vicious; he only spun, but the crude imitation still cut his speed far better than a pure freefall. And then—
Shiiik!
Something streaked toward him. By the time Sarhyuk registered it, the object had already sliced clean through his waist.
Thwack!
The sensation of his spine parting and his guts flying free wrenched a scream even from a creature as venomous as Sarhyuk.
“Gaaaaaagh!”
He shrieked and curled in on himself—what little of himself remained. The thing that had carved him open was a thick steel girder. No typhoon could have lofted a girder this high.
Zein had simply ripped a beam from the fallen tower on the roof, teleported it, and flung it. Sarhyuk, busy trying to slow his fall, had presented himself like a willing target.
“Kraagh… you dog-shit bastard!”
Cursing, Sarhyuk clenched a fist and, the instant he smashed into the hotel, drove that fist straight through the rooftop floor.
Kwaaang!
The detonation was like a demolition charge. Fragments of Sarhyuk’s body punched through the concrete and kept plunging downward. Whether the punch had been meant to cushion the impact or not, it achieved almost nothing.
Kuuurrrrrrung!
The thunderous crash rolled through every floor of the hotel. Zein stood stupidly in the rain on the ruined roof, staring down the hole Sarhyuk had made. Even though he had caused it, he could scarcely believe it.
“Ah… did I just take down Juyda?! I did, right? Ahahahahaha! Kahahahaha! Ahahahahaha!”
Zein laughed until he was breathless, half in disbelief. How had he spent so long cowering from something this simple? Looking back, the past was nothing but humiliation. Before any other vampires could interfere he needed to finish the meal. A fifteen-hundred-meter drop plus a steel beam through the waist—Sarhyuk was already plated and waiting on the table!
“Well then, time to eat!”
Zein dove toward the collapsed floors. And then—
Uuuuuuuuuu!
A sound that shook the entire hotel rose from below. Zein jerked to a halt, catching himself on a broken slab.
“Wh-what is this?!”
Even under the storm the sky still gave light. Inside this vast concrete shell true darkness reigned, yet pillars of that light now poured through the breaches—and beneath them a colossal mass of flesh was writhing.
Not only there.
All around the floor the meat was slowly crawling, flowing like lava, radiating an aura of pure malevolence so intense that even Zein—himself a monster—felt a chill of wrongness.
Uwaaaaaaaah.
A scream leaked from inside the mass. Something still alive thrashed within it. The flesh tore and a unmistakably human arm burst free for a second before the mass reabsorbed it, melting the limb into formless pulp.
“Th-this can’t be…!”
In that instant Zein understood. While slaughtering the humans, Sarhyuk had left fragments of his own flesh inside them. Ordinary vampires were content with a little blood; Sarhyuk, glutton-ridden, had used this abominable method so he could devour them down to the last bone.
Chuuuk!
A slab of living meat dropped from the ceiling toward him. Zein teleported clear and lashed out with a fist at the same time.
“Yaaaaah!”
The concrete he struck shattered and was teleported away; the chunks streaked through the air and punched halfway through the mass. The formless flesh merely undulated, as though such damage barely registered.
“What the hell is this?!”
Zein backpedaled from the advancing meat. It was enormous, and whatever wounds he inflicted regenerated at a grotesque rate. Even a high-VT vampire lost regenerative power after heavy blood loss—yet every single droplet that fell from this thing scuttled back like a living creature and re-fused with the body.
Siiiiiisss!
Something rose, coiling, out of the dark. Sarhyuk’s body—which should have been scattered into pieces—was merging with the flesh masses and reshaping itself. Under normal circumstances he would have reconstituted as a human; instead the greedily swallowed human remains stayed fused, swelling the whole into a single colossal form that was becoming Sarhyuk once more.
“You monstrous bastard!”
Zein cursed himself for bringing no weapon and hurled chunks of concrete. The debris flew with terrifying force, smashing through flesh and walls alike. Water gushed from ruptured pipes and the open ceiling; rain and plumbing turned the hotel interior into a flooded hell. If Sarhyuk finished this rebirth he would become an unstoppable calamity.
It has to be now!
Zein gathered every scrap of power to interrupt the reconstruction. If a fifteen-hundred-meter drop could not kill him, then the only option left was to bury him underground. Using a teleport of that difficulty on a mass this size could fry Zein’s brain—no, brain damage was a guarantee.
Ooooooooh!
But darkness erupted in a chain reaction. Sealed black energy burst from a holy relic hidden inside the flesh and swallowed Zein whole. In the same breath a massive slab of meat crashed down from above!
“Uwaah!”
Panicking, Zein swung an arm and bisected the falling mass. A sharp wet sound split the air; shattered human remains and sticky blood poured out. The meat simply flowed back together and engulfed him instead.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaah!”
A scream that rattled the entire hotel tore through the stairwell. Se-gun flattened himself against the wall and swept his muzzle up and down the shaft. The echo was coming from the first floor.
“What the hell?”
He peered carefully downward. A chunk of broken concrete kicked by his boot tumbled into the black abyss, clattering dryly the whole way.
“This is impossible!”
Elliot could not believe the first wave had been wiped out by something none of them could even name.
Monster! Arrrrrr!
Vampires leaving a radio call like that as their dying words? Elliot was speechless.
“MONSTER? We’re the vampires here—what else could possibly count as a monster?”
He flung the radio aside in irritation and gripped his rifle. The other Jinma were clearly content to watch from a distance. That left him no choice but to go in himself.
“Direct combat isn’t really my style, but when talent is scarce one does what one must.”
Grumbling, he brushed aside the vampires trying to restrain him. And then—
Chwaaaaaaak!
A red sports car came screaming up the hill, whipped its rear sideways into a full spin, and slammed to a stop across the parking lines with terrifying force. A pure-white sports car followed on its tail by a hair’s breadth.
“Whoops~ I win, right?”
The blond, blue-eyed young Caucasian who vaulted from the red car grinned as his boots hit the ground. The silver-haired priest in the white car did not bother getting out; he simply leveled a gun through the open window.
“Always so impatient! Is this really the time for us to fight each other?”
The white man shouted, then sprinted for the wall and—astonishingly—ran straight up its face. With no clean shot that would not wreck the car, the silver-haired priest finally stepped out.
“Oh, damn it all!”
The trailer vampires scrambled for cover behind their vehicles. Of all the people they least wanted to meet, this one had arrived. Silvester pulled a Barrett from the car and fixed the vampires with eyes as cold as winter.
“Shit. I don’t have time to deal with that bastard right now.”
Elliot muttered the words and stepped forward to meet Silvester. The ordinary vampires were no match for the priest; the ideal play was for Elliot to act as a shield, draw attention, and let the others pour firepower into the gap. And then—
Kuuurrrrrrr!
A sound closer than thunder ripped through the air and the hotel’s outer wall exploded outward.
“What?!”
Phantom, still running up the façade, smashed through a guest-room window and rolled inside—only for the wall itself to continue collapsing into the room. Wondering if the place had simply been built like crap, he sprinted the length of the corridor to the far side. Fog form would have been safer, but on a rainy night mist slowed him dangerously; a fatal wound was not out of the question. Mid-sprint he glanced back.
“Wh-what the hell?!”
Shock rooted him in place.
“Krahahahahaha.”
A bear sixteen meters long stood in the wreckage. No ordinary bear ever grew that large. Nor did ordinary bears embed a young woman’s body between their brows like some grotesque modern accessory. Bears could be playful, sure—but this?
“Sarhyuk?!”
Phantom inside the hotel, Se-gun checking the floors through a shattered window, and Silvester and Elliot facing each other at the entrance all shouted the name at the same instant.
The colossal black monster clinging to the hotel’s outer wall threw back its head and roared. The roar became denser than air itself and rolled outward in every direction. The pressure made Se-gun’s skull throb; he pressed a hand to his forehead.
In answer to that wave of power, heat bloomed. Startled, Se-gun looked down at his gun.
Fierce heat radiated from the hammer of the magic revolver Beast. At the same time a subtle pulse of power thrummed through the metal.
Phantom the magician had once melted a single holy relic and forged three guns from it. Those three magic guns, born to slay monsters, had since killed countless vampires. And now, here, vampires and this gigantic abomination stood together. Was the weapon heating itself, preparing to fulfill its purpose?
“It’s howling.”
Phantom felt his own gun cry out. He had forged it, yet at times it still felt utterly alien.
The holy relic split into three was a chain of destiny that bound the three guns together. A cry like this meant all three were close.
He leapt through the broken wall and dropped from the ninth floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the monster standing there—impossibly huge. The design was unmistakably a bear, yet a standing height of sixteen meters equaled roughly five hotel stories.
“Damn it!”
Elliot raised his rifle and fired at Sarhyuk. A black curtain wrapped the monster’s body and the bullets simply vanished. Whether they had even pierced the curtain was doubtful; even if they had, the hide and muscle beneath looked utterly unharmed.
“Tch.”
Silvester abandoned the small vampire in front of him and swung the Barrett toward Sarhyuk instead. The heavy round punched through the black curtain yet failed to breach the thick hide and muscle.
“Hahahaha! Playing cute, are we?!”