A Good Vampire Is a Dead Vampire
The fact that this many M16s were floating around in Korea was strange. Han Se-gun always kept a close eye on the flow of weapons and firearms; for a vampire unit this well-armed to appear without his knowledge was simply impossible.
Something new he didn't know about had to be moving. The vampire attack itself meant little to Se-gun, but the idea that some fresh player had shown up and started operating was extremely concerning. So even knowing they wouldn't answer, he asked the vampires just in case.
"If you want to know, why don't you lick my ass!"
The vampires flipped him the middle finger in reply. Of course. Se-gun smirked at them.
"I'm not interested in some malnourished ass. I'll feed you bullets instead. When you're about to die, you'll feel a definite weight gain."
"You crazy bastard!"
Jeoljung bared his fangs and nails and charged at Se-gun. Se-gun sneered at the vampire and threw a punch.
"No!"
Lightning seemed to flash as Se-gun's fist slammed into the vampire's lower jaw. A fast, clean strike that drove precisely into the inside of the jaw—a human fist polished through training, the kind you never saw from vampires or lycanthropes who never needed to hone themselves thanks to their superior physical abilities.
But the one who delivered that technique was a being who had transcended humanity. With a single blow, Jeoljung's jawbone collapsed into his throat and his neck snapped.
"Guhhk!"
Se-gun grabbed the neck-broken vampire's head with one hand and hoisted him high.
"Maybe this is better than bullets?"
In that moment two strands of detonating cord shot out from Se-gun. One raced up above his head, bent ninety degrees in midair, and streaked toward Owen; the other slithered across the ground like a snake and struck Cole.
"Aaaargh!"
Cole panicked and tried to turn and run. But the detonating cord flew at him like a living serpent and pierced straight through his thigh.
This custom detonating cord—a blend of tungsten coil and composition explosives—was unbelievably tough as wire alone; handled at high speed it was no different from a blade. But even so, to pierce rather than slash—the vampire stared in shock and tried to yank the cord free from his body.
Unlike the easily caught Cole, Owen snatched up a spawn standing beside him and hurled it toward the detonating cord Se-gun had launched.
Shriiiik!
The detonating cord wrapped around the spawn's torso and exploded at the same instant. Even a Vampire Spawn was still made of bone and flesh; it could not withstand a composition explosive blast.
Thud-thud-thud!
The spawn shattered into chunks of meat that rained down. Owen snorted and grabbed another spawn, holding it out as a shield the way Se-gun had.
"Th-this is—!"
Cole saw that and froze in shock, clawing at the detonating cord in his thigh. If it went off, most of his lower body would be gone. But the cord moved of its own accord like a living creature and coiled around him.
"N-no! I don't want this! I don't want to die!"
Cole's scream was pitiful. Well, even a vampire wouldn't want to die, would he? But Se-gun paid it no mind and pressed the electric detonator. The detonating cord exploded again, blowing Cole to pieces.
"The only good vampire is a dead vampire. Whether beauty, child, or old man—there's no mercy to spare for vampires."
Of course, no mercy for himself either… Se-gun licked rainwater from his lips and fixed his gaze on the last remaining vampire.
"Just you left now."
Se-gun picked up Jeoljung's body with its broken neck bones and approached Owen. But unlike the other vampires, Owen showed no fear even in this situation.
"You're not the only one who can do this. You seem to throw around quite the mad-dog act, but I'm pretty insane myself, you know?"
Owen said it while chewing the Vampire Spawn meat that had flown into his mouth. The sight was steeped in pure madness. Se-gun, however, drew Beast with a bored expression.
"Not much of a brag."
Se-gun aimed Beast at the torso of the vampire he was holding as a shield.
"You—?"
The moment Owen looked puzzled, a gunshot rang out. As Se-gun's Beast belched fire, Owen's fingers twitched and the gun fell from his hand.
"…Ugh."
Amazingly, the bullet Se-gun fired had punched straight through Jeoljung's torso, the spawn Owen was holding, and Owen himself in a single shot. Even if the rain had reduced the Kevlar's ballistic resistance, to punch through six layers of body armor and three vampires' bodies in one go?
"Guhhhh!"
Owen crumpled forward. Han Se-gun aimed Beast at the fallen Owen once more.
Bang!
This time Owen's entire upper body was blown away. Only then did Se-gun toss aside the vampire corpse he'd been holding, spin Beast around in his grip, and shove it into the holster at the small of his back.
"Go prepare a seat for me in hell first, friends."
Se-gun muttered that and walked off through the rain.
Seo Rin was holding his breath in the underbrush, gripping a gun, watching the whole thing. His original job had been to provide covering fire if Se-gun ever got into danger. But to his shock, Se-gun had charged alone into the vampires and crushed them all—and with a cruelty beyond words…
Seo Rin felt his heart pound as he watched Se-gun. He'd known the man was an unbeatable monster, but this much? And though it was baseless, Seo Rin couldn't believe that was all Se-gun had.
"A bunch of amateurs—they didn't even put recognition-impairment magic on the guns. The gunshots must have the whole neighborhood in an uproar."
Han Se-gun examined the guns the vampires had brought, then tossed one to Seo Rin. Startled, Seo Rin caught it with both hands as Se-gun swept his hair back and pointed at the corpses.
"Clean all those up. Recover every gun and every scrap of body armor… I'll go take care of the rest of them."
"Huh? All that many?"
"Then you go handle the rest. I'll do the cleaning."
When Se-gun narrowed his eyes and glared at Seo Rin, Seo Rin had nothing to say. While Se-gun had been risking his life fighting (sort of), he'd sat there sucking his thumb and watching—refusing the cleanup after that was far too greedy.
"Ah, um, sorry."
"For what?"
Se-gun brushed past Seo Rin and asked flatly. Seo Rin looked down at his own fingers and spoke with difficulty.
"No. For not being any help."
When Seo Rin said that, Se-gun stopped dead. The same Seo Rin who babbled nonsense about wanting to live as a human and how you couldn't just kill every vampire was apologizing—to Se-gun it was a joke that wasn't even funny. That guy was sorry for not being any help?
"You said you didn't want to dirty your hands. Unless you're ready to get them dirty, you'll never be any help in this line of work."
Se-gun said it while staring up at the vampires still dug in on the mountain. But Seo Rin was fundamentally kind-hearted, so he apologized to Se-gun anyway.
"W-well, that's true. But if I had to put it into words, it's like… after-school cleanup time when only I was playing and all my friends did the cleaning. That kind of feeling?"
The analogy was so blunt that Se-gun pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed. Rainwater hit his body and evaporated, white steam rising from him.
"Then how about you go kill the rest of them?"
"No. And if you put it that way again…"
"Hey! Shut your mouth! Before I gut you and hang you on a lightning rod! This bastard, seriously. You looking for a fight? Want to see the limits of my patience?"
In the end, Se-gun exploded. Normally the moment he blew up he would have attacked Seo Rin and beaten him half to death, but right now there were still enemies ahead, so he couldn't. Even though it had always looked like he was casually half-killing Seo Rin, Se-gun had always accounted for the kid's regeneration when he beat him.
"I'll hold back today. Hurry up and move those corpses and clear away the guns and everything else. On the double!"
Se-gun finished threatening Seo Rin and headed for the mountain.
"Wow, wiped out. That was quick. A lot faster than expected?"
Sa Jun, sipping instant coffee at a rest stop by the national highway, held up his phone and muttered with clear amusement. The mages drinking beverages with him twisted their faces.
"…You son of a bitch."
"Huh? What was that?"
"No, is this really the time to be happy? Huh?"
"Well… from my end, I just did the work I was paid for. Looking at this, you could say the process of effort is beautiful and the result doesn't matter, or something."
The broker grinned as he pulled the battery out of his phone and shoved it into his pocket. The mages muttered in unison.
"Fucking bastard."
"Your Korean curses are improving by the day. Truly, daily self-renewal."
They hadn't expected much anyway. Han Se-gun was a Jinma hunter. A hundred-odd half-assed spawns and washed-up vampires who strutted around thinking they were James Dean or River Phoenix, armed to the teeth—there was no way they could take a Jinma hunter. This was more of a greeting, if anything.
"But Han Se-gun—taking out over a hundred vampires in under an hour. As expected, incredible. Better than I anticipated?"
"…"
Hearing that, the mages all started thinking about just going home. No matter how they looked at it, this Han Se-gun was too big a fish. Across the water they'd never felt the threat, so they hadn't grasped it, but now… this guy was no ordinary monster.
Until now the reputation had been that some mad dog had gotten lucky, gotten tangled in conflicts between Jinma, and picked up the title of Jinma hunter. But the actual result of clashing with him was disastrous. Whether this guy had killed Jinma by skill or by luck, he was clearly no opponent for the young mages of the Isaac Faction.
"This isn't working. How about peaceful negotiations after all, like I first suggested?"
"Are you insane, Tito? If it were you, after getting wrecked like that, would you do peaceful negotiations?"
"I would."
Tito said it casually. Anthony snorted.
"Idiot. Pumpkin-head. You got Teletubbies living in that skull of yours?"
"Alright, alright, cut it out."
Sa Jun, unable to watch any longer, stopped them. He grinned as he looked around at the mages.