The Vanishing Prey
Swish!
That massive body of Sarhyuk suddenly vanished into thin air.
“What!?”
“Oh crap! Teleport!”
Everyone gathered here had already guessed that Sarhyuk had eaten Zein and absorbed his ability, but no one expected he could use it right this second. Thanks to that, the TNT bar flew straight on, slammed into the streetlamp across the way, and then, unluckily enough, dropped into the east parking lot.
There sat Silvester’s Lamborghini Miura and Phantom’s Viper GTS. Se-gun had packed the charge with barely any time to spare, intending to finish Sarhyuk off for good, so there was nothing they could do about it now.
“……”
“Jesus.”
Silvester made the sign of the cross without thinking. And at that very moment—
KWA-AAAANG!
The bomb detonated the instant Silvester finished the gesture. Every car parked nearby was instantly reduced to heaps of scrap. The Lamborghini Miura and the Viper GTS were no exceptions.
“Khuk!”
“Where’s Sarhyuk?”
“H-he’s gone!”
The vampires looked around in frantic confusion. The hotel sat roughly at the waist of the mountain range that formed the Geumgang, Taebaek, and Baekdu-daegan, so the view from the hilltop looked straight down as if from a high overlook. Yet even with that open sightline, the massive bulk of Sarhyuk had completely disappeared the moment he teleported. Even Zein, the original Jinma who possessed the teleport ability, had never been able to jump more than five hundred meters in a single go.
That meant the two Jinma had fused, raising VT itself, and the ability had grown stronger as a result. Once Sarhyuk began developing Zein’s power in earnest, he would reappear even more formidable than he was now.
I should have finished him off right then.
Se-gun stared at the empty spot where Sarhyuk had stood, then looked down at his own hand with quiet regret. He had planned to cut off the holy relic’s head and take it with him, but the moment Sarhyuk teleported, the relic’s neck vanished as well. It must have spatial-jumped right along with him.
Which meant Sarhyuk had definitely left the scene. The problem now was the remaining vampires. The ones at the foot of the hill were all armed with assault rifles, and Phantom—Silvester’s old nemesis—was right here among them. If a real fight broke out, getting out alive would be close to impossible.
“Ha… hahahaha. Well, it wasn’t worth much money, but even so…”
Meanwhile Phantom stared at the smoking wreck of his beloved car with a hollow expression. To a millionaire like him the Viper GTS was a cheap sports car he could buy with pocket money, yet its raw American specs had suited his tastes perfectly.
He was not even given time to mourn.
Swish!
Silvester drew his silver sword and swung for him. Phantom instantly deflected the blow with the heavy barrel of Beast Double. Hunter and vampire locked blades and muzzles, close enough that their breath mingled. Phantom looked at Silvester and gave a crooked little smile.
“Well now. Business finished, so it’s straight back to being enemies—is that it?”
“When were we ever friends?”
Silvester answered with a surprisingly sly tone and drove Phantom back with a flurry of continuous strikes. The other vampires snapped out of their daze, grabbed their rifles, and charged up the hill.
“Come on! This is our chance to take out the Jinma hunter!”
“Yeah! I’ll chew that bastard’s guts to mush!”
They spat violent threats and poured malice into the air. Monty and Rat, however, simply waited at the bottom of the hill with bored expressions.
“What a bunch of idiots…”
Sure enough, through the pouring rain came the sound of something rolling and bouncing. From the top of the hill a drab olive plastic stick—taped to something that looked like a shiny pocket calculator—came tumbling down. It was the very TNT bar Se-gun had used to drive Sarhyuk off.
Normally only TNT was attached, but Se-gun had slipped thin cobalt plates inside for just this kind of occasion, so the blast would throw shrapnel as well. Now the thing was rolling down the slope and forced every vampire who had been about to charge to spin around instead.
“Damn it!”
“Why won’t it stop!?”
They kept running downhill at the same speed they had been climbing. The TNT bar followed behind them, slow but sure, sliding on the water. A rectangular TNT bar was never meant to roll down a hill, but the problem was the torrential rain that had turned the entire slope into a waterslide. The bomb floated on the water and, with spiteful speed, slipped right in among the vampires.
“Tch! If it hasn’t gone off by now, that thing’s a dud!”
One of them spun around and boldly charged the falling bomb. They had already run two hundred meters down the hill without it exploding, so he figured it might just be a diversion. The moment that vampire snatched the floating bomb out of the water, however, a flash of light erupted and the charge detonated.
“……”
Se-gun lifted his finger from the remote strapped to his shoulder with a band. There were timed fuses that went off after a set interval, and remote fuses like this one. He swung onto his bike, kicked the engine to life, and roared up beside Silvester, who was still trading blows with Phantom.
“Let’s go!”
“Right!”
Silvester climbed onto the back of Se-gun’s bike and kept hammering Barrett rounds at Phantom. Phantom immediately ducked behind cover. Asphalt cracked and bullets ricocheted. The fire hydrant Phantom had been using for cover twisted into an ugly shape and vomited a towering column of water. Rain was already hammering down as if the sky itself had been punched full of holes; the hydrant only added a furious upward spray toward the same sky.
“We’re out of here!”
Se-gun raced down the hill and flung a few more TNT bars into the middle of the disoriented vampires. Those who had been about to give chase recoiled in shock at the sight of more bombs sailing toward them. Having already tasted the explosives once, they had no choice but to watch Se-gun and Silvester leave the area.
Shhhhhaaaak!
Se-gun’s bike punched through the rain at a truly terrifying speed. With Phantom’s Viper gone, nothing on that hill could catch them. Was this the exact moment the old saying about the dog chasing the chicken and staring at the roof was made for? Every vampire stood dazed atop the ruined hotel and the piles of corpses, looking for all the world like defeated stragglers.
Then Rat strode over, picked up the last TNT bar Se-gun had thrown, and held it up.
“Eek! Th-that’s dangerous, Rat! What are you doing!?”
Monty peeked out from behind a trailer and shouted a warning. Rat simply tapped the TNT bar against his own forehead and burst out laughing.
“Hahaha. You devilish bastard!”
He crushed the bar in one hand. The olive plastic casing shattered, revealing a completely empty interior. It had been nothing but a dummy that only looked like a TNT bar. Every single vampire had fallen for that one decoy.
Shaaaaaaa!
The storm howled on, hurling lightning and rain as if it meant to last forever.
On the day the storm raged, every guest of the casino and hotel, along with the police officers, had been slaughtered in a single day. It was the largest terrorist incident since the founding of the nation—no, since the days of Dangun himself.
The man named as the prime suspect was a Korean-American named Sarhyuk. The bounty placed on his head reached an all-time high of five billion won—roughly 3.8 million US dollars. That sum was far too large to hang around any ordinary criminal’s neck, yet the reaction from every corner of society toward the worst terrorist in Korean history was equally extreme.
But the man named Sarhyuk never showed even a shadow of himself afterward.
A full month passed and he still did not appear. Unlike previous disasters, however, this incident remained fixed in people’s minds and kept coming up in conversation.
How much easier it was to hate a clear target compared to some faceless accident. Of course, whether the case was truly “easy to understand” was another matter entirely.
The police who had died on the hotel’s outer grounds left corpses behind. Every other victim, however, left no body at all, and there were no witnesses. The entire hotel had collapsed, yet not a single human corpse was recovered. Normally such a case would be treated as a mass disappearance, yet the official conclusion labeled it a TNT bomb terrorist attack, so wild speculation was inevitable.
Inside a summer barracks where cicadas screamed, a single gunshot rang out.
Thud-thud-thud.
The various ledgers stacked on the table spilled onto the hard office floor with a sound like pigeons thrashing into flight. On top of them landed a human head, so thoroughly destroyed it was barely recognizable as such, along with a splash of dark-red blood.
“Jesus!”
The Black major in summer uniform stared down at his own waist in shock. The holster hanging open, the corpse of the man who had snatched the pistol, flipped the safety off, chambered a round, and jammed the muzzle into his own mouth—all of it had happened inside the base.
U.S. Army Master Sergeant Jonathan Weston, under investigation for corruption, had stolen the investigator’s sidearm and killed himself. For soldiers who normally carried empty weapons, it was an extraordinary—truly extraordinary—accident.
And that was how the affair began.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Kenneth Yang burned outdated ledgers while absently rubbing his ear. It was a bright summer day, business was booming as always, and the Black Network’s credit rating stood high. Whenever a peak like this arrived he remembered the old maxim about watching one’s surroundings carefully, so he had risen early and incinerated every ledger.
Warm summer sunlight flooded every corner.
“Never thought cleaning the books would take two whole hours.”
He dusted off his hands and looked around. Illegal open burning of trash carried a fine under the volume-based waste system, but there was no reason anyone would notice a small amount of paper burned in a deserted spot.
“Still… is that Han Se-gun planning to blow all of Seoul sky-high?”
Kenneth Yang clicked his tongue as he thought of the man who had been troubling him more and more lately. The high explosives that had flowed from him to Se-gun alone already exceeded four hundred kilograms. Judging by the signs, Se-gun was gathering more explosives and ammunition through other channels as well, yet Kenneth could not begin to guess why anyone needed that much ordnance.
The guy was so dangerous that it was time to cut ties. Stick around any longer and the tail would get stepped on. Of course, in a country like Korea where weapons were rarely used, customers who bought in such volume were scarce. Cutting him off would shrink income, and in the worst case Se-gun might simply raid Kenneth for the ammo and guns he needed.
Their relationship was not bad, yet if Se-gun needed weapons to kill vampires he would not hesitate to attack Kenneth Yang.
“Hm?”
Just then the emergency light mounted above the factory entrance flickered on. Kenneth, who maintained a warning network of informants, clicked his tongue at the coded blinks.
The Southeast Asian security men watching the warehouse perimeter were sending a signal. A noisy procession of vehicles pulled up out front. The deep diesel rumble suggested trucks.
“Mister! Guests have arrived.”
“Guests…? We’re not street peddlers.”
Kenneth grumbled, but curiosity won out. Who would come all the way out here in person—and with trucks, no less? He checked the pistol inside his jacket, circled around from the rear of the warehouse, and headed for the front gate.
“Huh?”
A young woman wearing sunglasses sat demurely in a chair. Dressed for summer in a sky-blue blouse and a long skirt, she removed the sunglasses and offered a radiant smile.
“Hello.”
“Y-you… what brings you here?”
She was the owner of Arjuna, known in Korea as Kim Seong-hui. She had brought four trailers and parked them at the factory entrance, then snapped her fingers.
Snap.
A man standing behind her stepped forward with a jet-black attaché case. Inside, U.S. Treasury bonds filled it halfway.
“If you’re planning to pull out of Korea, I’d like to take over your entire inventory. What do you say?”
“……It’s certainly an attractive offer, but what exactly do you intend to do with all of it?”
“My, does an arms dealer usually ask about intended use?”
She covered her mouth and pretended to laugh—or perhaps she really was laughing—as she looked at Kenneth. Even under the bright sunlight her skin remained pure white; she was breathtakingly beautiful. Yet no one could tell what she was thinking, or even whether she was truly human.
With the economic blockade imposed by Tetra Anax, how she had raised such a sum was another mystery.
“……Hmm. But why the sudden need to take everything over right now?”
“Oh my, you haven’t heard? Tetra Anax’s reach will arrive here soon enough. Didn’t you hear that Master Sergeant Weston killed himself while under investigation?”
“What did you say?”
Kenneth crushed the can of cola he had just bought from the vending machine and stood up. In a business where trust mattered, Weston had only come under investigation the previous evening. To end his own life within a single day? He was neither a kamikaze pilot nor a spy—how could a man kill himself so easily?
“This is bad. I need to prepare to get out, and fast.”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t it be a shame to simply scrap all that matériel? That’s why I came with this…”
“You’re telling me to dump it all at a fire-sale price?”
“Better than destroying everything, isn’t it?”
Kim Seong-hui kept smiling brightly even in this emergency. Kenneth heaved a long sigh, accepted the case, and checked the amount.
“One-point-five million dollars? You want the entire arsenal for that? The black-market list price is more than ten times higher.”
“I heard you can obtain weapons at normal wholesale rates. Even after distribution costs you’d still clear a profit. And under the present circumstances your only other option is disposal. Once the investigation kicks into high gear those goods will become red-hot potatoes—no one will touch them at this point.”
“I see… did you really expect me to say that? Taking advantage of someone else’s crisis to haggle me down like this. Why on earth should I believe your story about Weston committing suicide? I’d rather smuggle the whole lot into China on a black-market freighter…”
“……What a splendid fantasy.”
Kim Seong-hui spoke the chilling words while still smiling. Moving that much matériel into China on short notice was impossible. Police could raid this place even while they stood talking. The real question was whether the woman was using false information to buy the weapons cheaply. Yet if the story was true, the stockpile would have to be destroyed and buried in the mountains immediately. Even an elementary-school child knew that one-point-five million dollars beat zero.
“The case is only half full of bonds. You held some back for bargaining, didn’t you?”
“My, how sharp you are.”
“Three million dollars and you can have everything.”
In the end Kim Seong-hui filled the rest of the case with bonds and handed it to Kenneth. Once the deal was struck, loading the weapons onto the trailers took almost no time at all.
What the hell is that woman planning to do with all those weapons?
Kenneth was burning with curiosity, but a merchant never asked a customer’s purpose. And he needed to leave Korea at once.
“Tetra Anax is finally making its move. That cocky bastard is going to have a rough time of it.”
Army CID soon opened an investigation and discovered that a considerable quantity of weapons had been diverted by forcibly scrapping regenerable equipment past its disposal date. The total included more than four hundred kilograms of high explosives, fragmentation grenades, and mortar rounds. Guns might at worst lead to robberies, but bombs raised the specter of terrorism.
Yet Master Sergeant Weston, true to form as an arms trafficker, had left behind no ledgers of any kind. Every transaction had been cash only; not even a phone number or scrap of memo remained. In fact, if higher command had not suddenly fingered Weston and launched the probe, his corruption would never have come to light at all. It almost looked as if someone had manufactured a criminal and then deliberately driven the case forward.
Still, whatever the reason, four hundred kilograms of explosives could not simply be ignored. If a terrorist organization were involved, the result would be a major catastrophe.
But the officer appointed to lead the investigation—U.S. Army Major Ben Topp—was himself under inquiry after the suspect had seized his sidearm and used it to commit suicide.
“……”
On a summer day thick with vital energy, sunlight poured onto the asphalt until the very air seemed to melt. The well-built operations building, however, remained cool and pleasant. A man under investigation could hardly enjoy the atmosphere, yet if weather alone were the measure, the day was perfect.
“You may not have pulled the trigger yourself, but didn’t you deliberately allow his suicide in order to silence him? Or perhaps you gave him the signal to do it…”
The sharp-looking white CID officer glared at the Black Major Topp as if he meant to devour him. Stretching the interrogation this way until both suspect and interrogator were drained of stamina was how “investigations” worked in the military. Since torture was forbidden, they replaced it with stress. Yet Topp could not confess to a crime he had not committed.
“I freely admit the incident occurred through my own negligence, but it was a pure accident.”
Major Topp protested to the white captain who looked younger than himself. The captain only glared harder and shouted back.
“Then where did the bullet come from!? That pistol was empty—where did the suspect get a round to blow his own head off!?”
“If the suspect was trafficking weapons, Captain, why wouldn’t he have a spare round? What exactly do you want? A statement that I myself pulled the trigger on Weston!?”
Normally anyone under interrogation—guilty or innocent—shrank like a mouse before a cat, lost their nerve, and sometimes even confessed to crimes they had never committed. But if Topp had cowered before a lower-ranking officer he would never have made major in the first place. The two men were locked in a tense standoff when—
Riiiing.
The telephone suddenly shrilled. The lieutenant acting as clerk answered, then went pale and snapped to attention toward the receiver. He bowed and scraped as if the caller were standing right in front of him, then turned to the captain.
“Uh… Captain?”
“Yes?”
“It’s the Chief of Staff, sir.”
“What!?”
“He… he orders us not to detain Major Ben Topp any further—says it’s interfering with the investigation. Right now locating the explosives is more important… and apparently the suspect has already been narrowed down.”
“……”
Perhaps because the whole affair had turned so absurd, both the interrogating captain and the interrogated major clamped their mouths into thin lines. They had barely begun the inquiry and already a suspect had materialized—handed down from above like a gift. It was impossible to accept. It felt as if someone already knew the culprit and was simply tossing him into the dragnet. Was it an overreaction to think the mafia was solving a troublesome problem by dumping it on the police?
“Damn it. I don’t know what’s going on… but I’ve been dragged into something ridiculous.”
Major Ben Topp rose with a shudder of revulsion and put on his cap. The case reeked, yet he could not stand by while a bomb crime unfolded. The captain who had been grilling him only moments earlier stood as well, face conflicted, and saluted.
“Good luck, sir.”
Ironic that the man who had been trying to devour him now offered a salute, yet both of them felt the same fellow-suffering. Some force they did not understand was forcibly driving the investigation while dumping responsibility onto them. Topp had no intention of becoming a conspiracy theorist, but if a real plot was being woven around them, then two puppets sharing a moment of mutual sympathy was nothing to sneer at.
“Ah… good luck to you as well, Captain.”
The two soldiers exchanged salutes and left the room.