Under the Blood Moon
Crash!
The window exploded into a thousand glittering shards that poured inward. In an instant the narrow beer hall had become a slaughterhouse choked with blood and torn flesh.
“Heh heh heh. I won’t follow Tetra Anax’s way! I’ll kill every last one of you as I please!”
“Eek! P-please spare me!”
The woman screamed for mercy. Sarhyuk seized her long hair and opened his jaws. He would have swallowed her head whole if a familiar voice had not cut through the air.
“Huh!”
He froze mid-bite and turned. There, on the flickering screen, was Han Se-gun. The man was spouting arrogant challenges against Tetra Anax before vanishing from the image.
“Ahahahaha!”
The sight filled Sarhyuk’s chest with a soaring thrill. What a magnificent bastard. He had always thought the boy resembled him, but never imagined he was this incredible. Every hair on his body stood on end; his cock rose rock-hard and throbbing. Hidden by his clothes, the veins must have been swollen to the point of bursting.
“Ahahaha! That guy really makes the blood boil. Hey, missy. You said you wanted to live, right? Then cool this fire in my veins for me.”
He studied her face closely. She shrank, already sensing what was coming. Still, the slim hope of survival kept her from weeping and clinging. Her looks, however, were thoroughly ordinary.
“Cooling me in a different way, I suppose.”
He dipped his head and swept his hand horizontally. Her neck vanished. The severed head sailed high into the night sky and landed with a dull thunk on the hood of a car just entering the alley.
Thunk!
“Hmm?”
Sarhyuk glared at the vehicle blocking the alley mouth. High beams blazed; the sports car was a model he had never seen before, its lights fixed on him like eyes.
“What the hell is that?”
“I call it Brocken.”
The man who stepped out was none other than Phantom. To meet Phantom the very moment he had recovered his strength—Sarhyuk nearly collapsed with joy. True, he had been the one doing the bullying, yet while he had been stalling against Silvester, Phantom, and Elliot, a bomb had hit him from behind and left him a wreck for days. Bearing a grudge against those three was only natural.
“Ah, none of the others around?”
“Sorry, just me. That said, you’re looking awfully glad to see me. Do you have feelings for me or something?”
Phantom drawled the words as he slowly drew the Beast Double. Sarhyuk tensed at once. That revolver had punched straight through Juyda’s darkness with ease. On any other night, fighting him in human form would have been suicidal. But under a full moon a lycanthrope was invincible.
“Absorbing you too should push my VT past 1.5 million. Hahahaha.”
“Who knows.”
Phantom neither confirmed nor denied it. He simply scanned the surroundings. The people inside the beer hall had been cut down so cleanly they had not even managed a proper scream.
“Does doing this amuse you?”
Phantom’s voice was quiet.
“Huh? What?”
Sarhyuk cupped a hand to his ear and played deaf. Phantom let out a long-suffering sigh and covered his face.
“I asked if doing this makes you happy, you piece of trash!”
“Haha. Of course it does. Why don’t you try it yourself?”
Still laughing, Sarhyuk stomped on the woman’s fallen body. Flesh burst; blood welled up and was instantly absorbed into him.
“You lot are pathetic! Unlike us lycanthropes, you have a clear way to strengthen yourselves—why don’t you use it? And with that attitude you think you can overthrow Tetra Anax? Huh?”
Sarhyuk was the one flying into a rage, as if he were the injured party. The opponent was the famous heretic Phantom, yet he was still only a Jinma whose VT barely exceeded 400,000. In ability, in power, in every respect Sarhyuk outclassed him. Yet the Phantom of this moment merely looked up at the sky and gave a soft chuckle.
“To be called pathetic by the likes of you… I must have become a real has-been.”
“What?”
“A seat among the nobility of the night does not suit a creature that cannot see the future and simply follows its own lust. If you’re a pig, go back to the sty where you belong.”
Phantom raised the Beast Double and took aim. His eyes burned with crimson light.
“You’re challenging a full-moon werebear? Admirable courage!”
Sarhyuk roared, leapt backward, and landed on all fours like a beast. In that brief arc he completed the transformation—thick fur, razor claws, massive limbs. Still, without enough human flesh inside him he had not swollen to his previous gigantic size.
“Hah…”
Phantom lowered the muzzle and brushed back his hair.
“The night Plague Lord Guar died was a full moon just like this.”
“What?”
Sarhyuk stared, startled. Come to think of it, this was the same Phantom who had slain Guar, king of the were-rats. Until now everyone believed he had struck when Guar was weakest under the new moon. A full moon instead?
“You’re not the only ones who grow stronger under the full moon, you know. Convenient, isn’t it?”
With those words the red-eyed Phantom kicked off the ground!
“KRAAAAH!”
Sarhyuk screamed and vomited darkness. Before the shockwave even faded he charged through it, raking the air with savage claws that looked ready to shred space itself. Yet nothing met his hands.
“What?”
BOOM!
The Beast Double thundered and Sarhyuk was hurled backward. No matter how potent Juyda’s darkness might be, it could not stop 1,332-grain rounds. Considering a Desert Eagle .50 AE only threw 300-grain bullets, calling the Beast Double a cannon was fair. That single shot reduced Sarhyuk’s entire lower body to flying meat.
“Guh!”
Yet the moment he braced with his forelegs, both legs had already regenerated. Even without gigantification the werebear form stood over three meters long; those two limbs alone held enough meat to feed several people, and he had rebuilt them in the blink of an eye. Phantom had never witnessed regeneration this absurd, even from a VT-million vampire under a full-moon werebear body.
“They say the only way to kill a vampire past a million VT in one blow is to strap him in front of a particle accelerator and collapse his atoms… Looks like that wasn’t a joke.”
It was an overly academic quip for the situation, yet Sarhyuk was living proof of it—still very much alive. Judging by the look of him, rebuilding a pair of legs had not even dented his VT. No wonder he was still bouncing after taking ten rounds from the Beast Double.
What kind of monster is this?
Phantom sighed, sprang onto a streetlamp, and lightly kicked off the top. Sarhyuk, startled, pursued. Phantom had known he would. The instant Sarhyuk rose into the air, he fired.
To ordinary eyes it looked less like a leap and more like a human cannonball. Predicting and hitting a target moving at that velocity… yet the Beast Double’s monstrous bullet punched clean through Sarhyuk’s skull from above.
Thud!
The round exited vertically. The wound began healing the moment the bullet left flesh; by the time he landed not a single drop of blood had touched the ground. It felt as if he had fired into a wet lump of clay.
Even blasting brain and heart simultaneously, he revives… Unless it’s the backlash of a spell, the link between brain and spirit body regenerates instantly?
That a magical revolver like the Beast Double still could not stop the regeneration proved there was, realistically, no way to kill the current Sarhyuk.
“Tch!”
Phantom landed and immediately sidestepped the pursuit. Sarhyuk’s mutated forepaw smashed the ground where he had stood.
Rumble—!
A black wave raced across the asphalt, cracking it open.
Crash!
The road collapsed; sewers reverse-flowed and water mains burst. Sparks leapt from a utility pole and the streetlights flickered. Phantom leapt far back, opening distance from the crumbling street.
“Chaa!”
Sarhyuk lunged, claws sweeping. Phantom ducked low, slipped past, and fired again.
BOOM!
Sarhyuk’s waist was severed; large and small intestines, duodenum and all, tore free like wet rags. It looked as if a cannon had been fired point-blank into his torso. Even so the wound rewound itself, knitting shut at impossible speed.
“Impossible!”
Phantom stared in disbelief, yet his hands never stopped. Spent casings ejected; fresh rounds slid home with practiced ease. Sarhyuk rose with sluggish movements, grinning in satisfaction.
“Kahahaha. Maybe because I ate Zein… control’s getting sloppy.”
“What?”
Only then did Phantom notice black spiritual energy rising from a nearby detached house.
Rumble—!
The building folded like a Styrofoam model. Concrete pillars and beams showed clean cross-sections for a heartbeat before collapsing; the people inside died without even a scream.
“…”
“Hahahahaha! Look! Under the full moon I am invincible!”
Sarhyuk howled with laughter and expanded his binding force, drinking the blood. The blood of the family crushed beneath the rubble rose through the ruins and streamed into him. The sight carried such arrogant majesty that one could almost imagine the dead willingly offering themselves.
Even for a hybrid of lycanthrope and vampire strengths, regeneration this rapid left no countermeasure. He was, for all practical purposes, complete immortality.
“Huh? What’s with that look?”
Sarhyuk’s mood soured when he saw Phantom gazing at him with pure disgust. After fully claiming Zein’s power he was stronger than ever, yet those eyes… He was the most troublesome vampire Sarhyuk had faced, but under the full moon there was simply no way to defeat him. Why keep fighting when his life was so precious?
“Don’t tell me it’s because I killed these things? How strange. Aren’t humans vampire food? What’s wrong with eating food? Or is your hypocrisy endless?”
“I don’t know if it’s hypocrisy, but a creature that keeps stuffing itself when it’s already full is pure ugliness. And showing goodwill toward humans is my policy. I’ll live my life by the principles I like. I have no intention of being lectured by the likes of you.”
Even after witnessing Sarhyuk’s terrifying power, Phantom only looked contemptuous; he was not cowed. Sarhyuk, however, was drunk on his own strength. Full moons always drove lycanthropes into frenzied ecstasy. That madness now pushed him into pure, uncontrolled rampage.
“What the hell is all this noise?”
“Must be an earthquake!”
The sleeping city began to wake. Dogs barked; lights flickered on one after another. Phantom looked around in alarm. Sarhyuk, reading his intent perfectly, charged straight into the residential streets.
“Hahaha! As of tonight Seoul’s population is nine million!”
“No—stop!”
Phantom instantly raised the Beast Double and fired. The arrogant werebear did not even bother to dodge. He took every bullet while raking his claws toward the nearby houses.
Ooooooh—
Accompanied by the holy relic’s keening wail, concrete sliced like tofu; entire buildings and the people inside them were carved apart.
“Die already, you worthless cattle!”
In the end Phantom flung himself after Sarhyuk. If bullets could not stop him, only flesh-and-blood contact remained. For a vampire to challenge a lycanthrope to melee had been taboo for ages, yet preventing further civilian deaths left no other option.
“Enough!”
Phantom vaulted a collapsed building and landed on Sarhyuk’s back in a single bound. Sarhyuk, as if he had expected it, swung an arm behind him.
“Tch!”
Phantom smashed the arm aside with the Beast Double. Bone cracked; the thick limb snapped. Yet the black darkness continued expanding even without the arm and slammed into Phantom’s torso.
“Got you!”
Sarhyuk spun and lashed out with a kick. Even then Phantom counter-fired, blasting the leg clean off at point-blank range—an impossibly fast shot from an impossible distance. Even Sarhyuk could not avoid it; one leg vanished entirely.
“Hmph!”
He simply kept swinging the half-regenerated stump of meat and caught Phantom full-on. The vampire was sent flying into overhead power lines.
Bzzzt—crack!
Live wires that had been spitting sparks on the asphalt writhed like snakes and coiled around him.
“Ahahaha! I know exactly why you’re trying to run, so I’m cleaning house for you. You can’t just leave. Now! That Crimson Glow of yours hurts the surrounding humans, doesn’t it? Fine—I’ll kill all the humans for you! Go ahead and use it!”
Sarhyuk yanked an entire utility pole free and hurled it like a javelin.
“Damn it!”
A police car that had just arrived on the emergency call took the concrete pole full-force and stopped dead.
Whee… whee…
The siren stuttered like the dying gasp of a living thing. Phantom tore the wires from his body.
“You really… are a hopeless piece of shit.”
“My, my. The ever-gentlemanly Phantom using such vulgar language?”
Sarhyuk smirked and drank the blood of the fallen. His form was no longer even a bear; the sheer volume of human blood was mutating his entire body into something far worse. Phantom exhaled, holstered the Beast Double, and raised both empty hands.
“…Shut up. You little brat so thrilled with your new power you don’t know what to do with yourself! I’ll teach you just how ordinary that power of yours really is!”
“What?”
In that instant the world turned red.
“What the—?!”
The moon itself bled crimson; the entire world began to pulse with scarlet light. A Jinma’s vision was extraordinary—almost nothing could cloud it. Whatever Phantom had just unleashed was blotting that vision out.
“This is Crimson Glow? Perfect for nightclub lighting.”
Sarhyuk sneered and strode forward. Phantom smiled faintly and dissolved into mist.
“If I ever get fired, I might consider a career in that field.”
“Only if you walk out of here alive!”
Sarhyuk unleashed Juyda’s power. The holy relic’s darkness damaged every existence more efficiently than any magic. Mist or not, nothing should withstand it! Yet the fog surged in and swallowed him whole.
“What?”
Two crimson lights spiraled out of the mist and smashed through both of Sarhyuk’s shoulders. The attack was so sudden he felt no pain at first.
“You bastard!”
Incredibly fast and lacking solid form, the assault was nearly impossible to block. For the present Sarhyuk, however, losing an arm was nothing. Sure enough the limb reattached itself at once.
“You thought this would take me down?”
“Of course.”
The red flashes blinked like eyes, staring at him. Sarhyuk realized those lights were the true master of the mist. To reveal its core so foolishly… He almost laughed and charged.
Huh?
Something was wrong. He looked down at his right arm. Blood was slowly seeping from the cut Phantom had left moments earlier—like juice from a medium-rare steak pressed with a fork. The blood dissolved into the air little by little. Every hair on Sarhyuk’s body stood on end.
No matter how powerful the regeneration, a vampire had one absolute processing method: being eaten. If the entire body was consumed, regeneration meant nothing.
“What the hell is this Crimson Glow?!”
The drain was gradual, yet left unchecked it would clearly kill him. Startled, Sarhyuk instantly teleported away.
The clock had passed two in the morning. In a deserted park a young man and woman sat on a bench, talking in an awkward atmosphere.
“So… Seong-hyeon hyung…”
“…Yeah. That’s what happened, huh?”
Every time she spoke the young man shook his head. The face of a boy who had just learned that the older brother he deeply respected had been hitting on the girl he liked had gone rigid.
They sat in silence. Then, carefully, he took her hand.
“Ah?”
“…”
He stubbornly looked the other way yet refused to let go. At that exact moment—
“Kyaaaaah!”
Sarhyuk, having teleported a full four hundred meters in a single jump, crashed down onto the park bench and split the couple apart. “Split” was the wrong word. He landed squarely on their clasped hands, pinning both together so thoroughly that “joining them” might have been more accurate.
“Hmph!”
Normally his policy was to eat any human who appeared in front of him, but this was no time for policy. He had heard Crimson Glow was formidable, yet never imagined it was this extreme. The ability operated on a completely different level from other vampires. Sarhyuk’s own power was also on another level, but the natures clashed: defensive regeneration had no answer for aggressive Crimson Glow.
“Urgh!”
Almost the instant he teleported, this place too dyed itself scarlet. Sarhyuk whipped around to stare at the humans. They looked equally shocked by the pulsing red world. Yet it had followed him through teleportation?
“Sorry, but I’ve deployed Crimson Glow across a maximum of ten kilometers before. A short-range teleport like that is useless!”
Phantom’s half-sympathetic shout rang out as the red lights streaked in. Sarhyuk backed away into a defensive stance, yet the lights simply coiled once around his thick arms and slipped free.
Slash!
“Gah!”
Wrist and shoulder were severed in clean circles; blood sprayed outward like mist. That blood was absorbed wholly into Phantom’s fog… At this rate Sarhyuk would be eaten alive. The realization nearly drove him insane. Worse still, Phantom kept speaking in that gentle, worried tone—as if deliberately trying to make him angrier.