A Costly Toll
Say a serial killer with nothing left to lose and no regrets whatsoever went out and murdered hundreds of people. Even then, the ultimate sentence you could hand him is death. Paying for hundreds of lives with a single life—it feels a little off, doesn't it?
What Se-gun was arguing lined up with that exact idea. He would not spare his own life if it meant he could kill that many more vampires and monsters. Nobody arrives at a thought like that without first going mad with hatred.
"Either get out here already or stay buried in there."
With that, Se-gun walked out into the rain. He had not even made contact with the enemy yet, but he already knew their movements as if he held them in his hand.
He had surveyed this whole stretch of ground dozens—hundreds—of times. This was his territory. Even if they had come hunting Seo Rin, anyone who dared challenge his land would pay a steep toll for passage.
"Unbelievable."
Seo Rin stared after Se-gun's back, dumbfounded. From where he stood, Se-gun was clearly enjoying himself. Vampires were about to throw themselves at them and the man looked happy about it—was killing them really that much fun?
The vampire who had appeared on the monitors earlier, and the Spawn under its control, had been considerable in number.
Seo Rin lifted his own gun. He had fired a few practice rounds, but his clumsy aim had barely found the target.
"No choice. If I don't kill them here, Yeong-eun and Father only end up that much more in danger."
He could try to keep his hands clean—but if he clung to that to the end and his family paid the price, he would hate himself for it. Better, then, to dirty his own hands.
Having decided, Seo Rin tucked the submachine gun against his body and ran out into the rain. The moment his foot left the doorway, he felt as though his body itself had been soiled.
"Sorry, Yeong-eun. This big brother of yours got dirty after all."
"Cut the greasy monologue and get over here already! Full speed to Point B!"
Se-gun had somehow caught the muttering and blew up at him. Seo Rin grumbled under his breath and fell in behind him.
In the forest under the driving rain, the trees gathered the water into little waterfalls. Streams poured endlessly down along the branches, forming pillars, and Se-gun ran through them with every sense wide open.
He had already planted surveillance cameras and alarms along every expected infiltration route, so he could read their operation. Reading it, though, did nothing about the overwhelming gap in numbers that stood in their way.
When Se-gun had hit Flex Medical, it had been urban fighting in cramped space—terrain that could close a numbers gap. Even then he had taken wounds bad enough that he had nearly died.
But this was open field. Once those rifles opened up, even Se-gun's best tricks would put him in danger. He showed no sign of worrying about it. He cut through the forest with the fluid ease of a snake sliding through undergrowth, until Seo Rin, racing after him, was gasping for air.
"Good. Here."
Se-gun stopped at the designated point. To Seo Rin's surprise, a trench had been dug there, and inside it sat a locked chest. Seo Rin dropped into the trench and rapped the box; it rang with the sound of metal.
"Th-this is…?"
"Rain exposed it. Field armory."
Se-gun said it, opened the door, and pulled out an RPG-7 launcher. Seo Rin knew exactly what it was from the movies.
"…Oh! Good Lord. Hyung, you're going to fire a bazooka in South Korea? Even out in the middle of nowhere, that thing's going to be insanely loud."
"Calling this a bazooka—your ignorance really is something special. I put real work into this, you know. I'd rather use Claymores, but set those off and you don't just hear it—you can see the blast."
Se-gun gave Seo Rin a look of pure pity, then seated an RPG-7 rocket in the tube. In that same stretch of time, what looked like scouts came into view over the ridge. Se-gun immediately sank into the trench; Seo Rin stood dumbly watching them. At a glance there were dozens of them.
"Hey!"
Se-gun waved him down, but it was already too late. One of the men coming over the crest had spotted Seo Rin.
A moment later their rear rank dropped into a kneeling fire position and opened covering fire.
The front rank sprinted toward them at full speed and vanished. Disappearing into the trees meant contact was only minutes away.
Piiyung…
The sound of bullets splitting the air sang past their ears. By any normal measure they were well beyond a rifle's effective range, and still rounds were pouring into the area—which told him the shooters were no ordinary marksmen. Pouring fire into a forested hillside with that kind of accuracy meant the other side were definitely not human.
"Ah. So I've been spotted."
Seo Rin dove into the trench and asked Se-gun. The question was so irritating that Se-gun had to fight not to cuff him, and the effort left him sweating.
"Of course you have, you idiot! Well—thanks to you, we know their eyes are as good as a vampire's. Even if you were silhouetted against the sky, picking a shape out of this downpour… a whole vampire platoon, huh."
Se-gun exhaled and looked at Seo Rin. For a complete beginner, these enemies were too much. Now that it had come to this, Se-gun would have to clear them himself.
"My luck is just rotten. If something softer had shown up first, I could've put you to work."
Still muttering, Se-gun drew both Glocks and took one in each hand. That was when a metallic click reached his ear—the sound of a grenade pin being pulled free. Seo Rin whipped around to stare at him.
"Hyung!"
"I know!"
Se-gun launched himself out of the trench and raised the Glocks at the same time, firing dual-wielded into the air the way they did in Hong Kong movies. Glock recoil was nothing to him, and the shake from pure reaction speed he had long since trained out by catching rebar with one arm; his handgun work was razor-precise.
Lobbing grenades into a suspicious zone before they even found the trench was a solid choice—but they had badly underestimated Se-gun. He put the Glock 18s on full auto and shot every grenade out of the air.
"What—?!"
The vampire directing the Spawn stared, stunned. Watching Se-gun pull off a trick-shot stunt—not with a hunting rifle, but with pistols—was enough to shake even a vampire.
The hit grenades skewed off course, dropped into the brush, and went off. A few had their fuses jarred free by the impact and failed to detonate; the rest exploded together.
Thunderous blasts tore several Vampire Spawn to pieces. Not that any of them felt loyalty to their own.
"Fire! Fire!"
They unleashed indiscriminate fire on the trench. M16A1s spat flame, and rain-soaked earth leaped into the air. Seo Rin, crouched with his head down in the trench, clapped his hands over his ears and screamed.
"Waaaaaah!"
"…"
The scream from the trench startled the vampire. From everything they had on Han Se-gun, he was not the type to scream. So what was this pathetic noise all of a sudden? Don't tell me the man had finally decided his life was worth clinging to?
And where had Se-gun gone? The Se-gun who had just burst from the trench spraying dual Glocks had, in the space of a breath, vanished from their sight.
Ssshk!
Then it happened. The undergrowth shuddered, and from it a jet-black wire rose like a snake striking for prey. The Vampire Spawn stood there with stupid expressions until the flying wire wrapped them up.
Shaaaaa!
The wire came on so hard that spray exploded upward. In the same instant it yanked taut, and the Spawn's limbs sheared away. Blood flew; severed arms and legs burned themselves into the vampire's retinas in terrible slow motion. The sight was so unreal that the vampire tracked the arcs with a blank stare.
"What the hell?!"
The vampire swung the Spawn's guns toward the direction the wire had come from.
Drrrrrt!
A rain of bullets hammered the innocent scrub. Droplets clinging to the leaves could not take the abuse and leaped up in a kind of waltz. If the sun had been out, it might have made a rainbow. But the man left no shadow.
Sssrrk!
Something—rain or blood—struck the vampire's cheek. Roaring, he ducked on pure instinct.
Chiiiik!
Wire dropping from the trees ran between Spawn and Spawn like a clothesline and went taut. The wire coiled around their throats hauled them in with monstrous force.
KWAANG!
The wire detonated, and Vampire Spawn heads went flying through the forest. Startled, the vampire looked up—and this time something came snaking toward the ground.
"Ah—!"
The vampire jumped sideways on reflex. The razor wire skimmed across a puddle and found an unlucky Spawn's ankle instead.
Hwiriririk!
The wire spun, cinched the ankle, and snapped the bone. Something was controlling this wire with terrifying strength. The vampire understood that and gritted his teeth.
Hwirik!
The wire still wrapped around the Spawn's leg suddenly bucked. Startled, the vampire tried to pull his hand free—but the thrashing wire already had his arm.
Pung!
It exploded at the same moment. The vampire's arm shot into the air.
"KRAAAAAH!"
Stunned, the vampire clutched the stump. What in the world was this? He was a vampire. The only things that had ever frightened him were higher ranks in vampire society; he had never feared or avoided anything that was not a vampire. This was different. This one was wrong.
I am afraid of a hunter? For a vampire of pride, that was unthinkable. Even if the other stood somewhere between vampire and human, even if he had killed Jinma—even if he was the one who had slain the Jinma Messiah—why should a man who had lived more than a hundred years be brought low by a brat barely past twenty?
Shiriririk!
From the forest, from behind trees, from under rocks—the wire sprang out like a snake without care for where, hunting Vampire Spawn.
"Urgh—!"
The one-armed vampire must have changed his mind, because he ran for the mountain. Covering fire was still coming from up there; even Se-gun would not casually chase him. The calculation held—he cleared the killing ground and made for the heights unharmed.
"Damn it. At least he's fast when he's running."
In the forest where the rain came down hard, the man in the black racing suit dropped lightly from an oak to the ground. He had wiped out most of the Vampire Spawn that had pushed this way—but the one that actually mattered, the vampire, had slipped free.
Vampire Spawn were humans mid-vampirization. They had excellent physical power, but they were incomplete, low-grade things that obeyed a parent's orders without question. Depending on the will of the vampire who had made them, they could become full vampires—or, failing that, ghouls, contaminated husks.
Here and now, the young man who had beaten vampires out of this forest—Han Se-gun—had lost his family to vampires. Looking at the Spawn dragged the old memory up, and he clicked his tongue. For a long stretch he had lived on hatred alone without letting the past surface; since Seo Rin had gotten tangled up in his life, the old days had started coming back more often.
"Am I getting old or what?"
Of course that was nonsense. A man barely into his twenties was not about to turn into an old man. Scowling, he headed for the trench.
"Uuuuh…"
"Hey!"
Se-gun looked down at Seo Rin, who was still embarrassingly plastered into the trench. Seo Rin jerked his head up in surprise.
"Yes?"
"Put this on."
Se-gun stripped a ballistic vest off one of the corpses and tossed it to him. The kid was useless in a real fight anyway. Even if he weren't, Se-gun would have kept him out of it.
Throwing someone who had never tasted real combat into a crowd of enemies like this was still too much. If he died by accident, it would be like losing a chariot to an enemy pawn in a game of janggi. There were still too many uses for him to waste him on low-grade Spawn. But sitting there shaking like that was still a sorry sight, wasn't it?
"You planning to keep this up?"
"B-but the bullets were coming down like rain… I don't have tricks like yours, hyung."
He talked back at the end of every sentence and still called him hyung. Se-gun was so floored he reached down, grabbed him, and hauled him bodily out of the trench.
"Follow me anyway. If you head home now, you'll run straight into their main force. Go alone and you're dead."
Se-gun threw Seo Rin out of the trench, dropped in himself, locked the armory, and covered it with dirt. He seemed done with the RPG-7 for now.
"What are you going to do? Going up the mountain is dangerous, isn't it? They're dug in up there."
On the ridge the vampires still held covering-fire positions. They had stopped shooting for the moment, but enough of them remained that walking straight at them would be suicide.
"Ignore the mountain. This time we hit the main body."
"What?"
"The one who just ran back is going to be half-frozen and talking a storm to his buddies. That means the ones on the ridge will move carefully—and while they do, we wipe out the main force. I don't want to drag them all the way to the house. Start a firefight there and the things that get wrecked won't be few."
As an early adopter, Han Se-gun had a long list of things he treasured. Watching him, Seo Rin huffed a quiet laugh.