The Second Option
“At any rate, I can’t hand that young friend of yours over to you personally—not even to Tetra Anax. You’ve got two options. One: resist, take a beating, and it’s game over. Two: withdraw like a gentleman and wait for another day.”
Argon said it with such brazen casualness it was almost impressive. The sheer gall of it was something else. No matter that he was one of the Jinma, there was no reason for a Successor like Giovanni Vantero to be treated like a stray dog at a funeral.
It was exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from the leader of Esprit—someone who acknowledged the need for Tetra Anax’s protection while refusing to accept their dominion.
“How about a third option? I drain every last drop of your blood. The blood of some dusty old Jinma whose only boasts are age and VT—I’ll be happy to drink it for you.”
At Giovanni’s proposal, Argon fixed him with a stare cold enough to frost the air.
“You’re no beauty, yet you want to sink your teeth into my throat? That’s greed talking. For a dog that just falls in line with the system, no less. And besides… the idea of manufacturing Successors to replace Jinma isn’t exactly original. You’re plenty dusty yourselves.”
Finished speaking, Argon blew a bubble of gum and began to walk with a languid gait. He circled Giovanni like a wolf stalking prey, and yet for all the deliberate slowness of his steps, he moved faster than an ordinary man could run.
It was as if he were gliding across the ground; guessing how he even moved was nearly impossible. Worse, a mist began to unfurl slowly from his body, radiating a murderous chill.
“……”
Giovanni watched Argon in silence. The man simply circled him, eyes cutting sideways in a sidelong glare, making no particular move. Was he inviting the first strike?
Click.
Then there was no reason to refuse.
Giovanni loaded his crossbow and trained it on Argon. Argon watched out of the corner of his eye as the weapon was leveled at him, yet nothing like interest crossed his face. He only walked on, expressionless, still working his bubblegum.
Whoosh!
Giovanni loosed the bolt at Argon—a shot aimed straight at the temple. Take that hit and even a Jinma would drop dead.
But in that instant, Argon’s form vanished like a phantom.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Giovanni reflexively swept his katana to meet Argon as the man came rushing in from the side. Argon swung his longsword with mechanical precision, chewing his bubblegum with a vacant expression the whole time, so infuriatingly composed it made Giovanni’s blood boil.
Enraged, Giovanni teleported clear of the attack, seized Argon’s back, and cut horizontally with the katana.
Crack!
A lightning-fast exchange that pierced every feint and counter-feint—yet Argon never even turned around. He simply brought the longsword around behind his back and caught the katana. Blade rang against blade, sparks flying.
To block a stroke that should have taken his head with a posture that careless! On what possible grounds did this bastard have the right to be so relaxed? Giovanni seethed, but he could not overwhelm him. Carefully, he eased back out of blade range.
As if nothing of note had happened, Argon glanced at him again out of the corner of his eye and resumed his slow, sliding walk across the ground.
Those three exchanges had taken no more than a blink. Anyone watching would have seen only a flash of something bright before both men were standing as they had been before.
Damn it…
The bout had looked almost uneventful, but cold sweat ran down Giovanni’s brow. The cheap 420-stainless katana in his grip was already shredded to rags.
In raw strength and weight, the larger Giovanni had the clear edge over Argon—but put swords in their hands and the story changed. In bare-handed fighting, a difference in build was a wall you couldn’t ignore; in a clash of blades and technique, physique barely mattered.
And Argon’s swordsmanship was truly exceptional. Just the defense a moment ago had felt like it shaved a decade off Giovanni’s life. Of course a vampire couldn’t actually suffer shortened years—but close combat with Argon was an absolute disadvantage. As for shooting him with a gun or crossbow, that uncanny way of walking made it strangely hard to commit.
Puhhh…
The sound of him blowing bubblegum grated on Giovanni’s nerves. It was like cooking a feast only for someone else to eat it—but for now, he had no choice but to withdraw. The Bernardo brothers had thrown their lives away to create this opening, and he was going to let it slip so emptily!
Giovanni felt contempt for himself, but if he meant to face the Jinma Argon, he should have prepared far more thoroughly.
“……Then I’ll take the second option.”
Giovanni ground his teeth. To have ash thrown into a meal already cooked, all because of an unexpected interloper. The resentment burned. If you were a Jinma, couldn’t you just stay out of business like this? Why step in personally and make this mess?
Argon tilted his head as if mildly surprised.
“Hm? The second… Ah. So you’re choosing now? Rather slow. With the decision.”
“Won’t you call it prudence?”
Giovanni shot him a glare, then teleported out of the pine grove. To have stripped Seo Rin completely of his defenses only to lose him to Argon—even he had to admit it was pathetic.
Still, aside from Argon himself, Esprit had no one worth watching. Even if Seo Rin fell into their hands, they had no facilities to research Lilith or the secrets of the Lilim.
With that thought, Giovanni chose the humiliation of retreat. Losing the Bernardo brothers still rankled, but fighting Argon here to the death—or winning by some technique Tetra Anax had forbidden—would have been an even greater act of idiocy.
Once Giovanni vanished, Argon stopped walking and drew the mist back in.
“Not bad. A Successor—I’d been ignoring them… Anyway, what do I do with this friend?”
Argon approached Seo Rin, who stood there blankly. The beast form had been released; back in human shape, Seo Rin seemed to have fainted with his eyes still open.
“Weird trick. Hey—if you sleep standing up you’ll catch a cold. How about going inside to sleep?”
Of course a lycanthrope couldn’t catch a cold. But just walking away from a scene like this? That would feel somehow cold-hearted. On the other hand, if he hung around here and ran into Han Se-gun, they’d only end up trying to cave each other’s skulls in again.
“‘If he still keeps a human heart,’ was it…?”
Argon looked down at the blood-soaked corpse collapsed at Seo Rin’s feet. He didn’t know who it was, but Seo Rin had clearly been the one to kill them. Over a long life he had seen plenty of people shatter after their first kill. What would become of Seo Rin?
“Well now.”
Argon, too, had a deep interest in the Lilim. He acknowledged the necessity of Tetra Anax. As a safeguard that protected vampires and humans alike from human desire, and that controlled vampires so humanity could be kept safe, Tetra Anax was excellent. What he could not accept was their dominion over vampires and humans both.
Even that Successor’s reason for existing was obvious. A new generation of Jinma, manufactured to eliminate the true Jinma who resisted Tetra Anax’s rule and take their places. He despised the way Tetra Anax could carry out such a repulsive idea without a second thought.
So what, then? If Tetra Anax’s capacity for control was needed, but their supremacy was intolerable… that capacity for control would have to be given to other vampires as well.
But bloodline abilities, unlike magic or technique, awakened only through the blood of that lineage—and Tetra Anax’s bloodline ability was precisely that power of control.
No wonder, then, that they took such interest in Lilith. The primordial witch said to have given birth to Tetra Anax. With her, it might be possible to create other beings who possessed that control. She might even be able to bestow the ability on someone else.
For that reason, Seo Rin was critically important to him as well. The key that might lead to Lilith—standing there, fainted on his feet… The impulse to simply scoop him up and run almost rose.
“But… no. That won’t do.”
Argon sighed and stepped back from Seo Rin. If he kidnapped him right now and treated him as a tool, he would be no different from Tetra Anax, who saw every vampire as nothing but a limb to command.
He was a vampire doomed to live a disgustingly long life. What need was there to rush? He had waited a thousand years—what were a few more days after all that?
For now he would watch how this friend took his first kill, and only afterward approach him properly. He had seen more than enough of those who shattered under the shock of their first murder. A wreck like that—even if he were Lilith’s husband instead of a Lilim—would not be worth taking as a comrade.
“Well then…”
Argon quietly vanished into the dark.
Zzzt.
Grass insects and moths, drawn to the light, flew into the insect lamp and burned their own bodies against the mesh. Beneath that light, Seo Rin still stood, fists clenched, hands soaked in blood.
“……Hm.”
A man in a priest’s cassock, long silver hair tied back with a cord, sat before a computer with his fingers laced. Behind him, the children of immigrants ran and played.
Most were the sons and daughters of people who had come from places like Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh for work. Their parents held down jobs in Paris as cleaners, waitresses, street vendors, and more, leaving the children unattended.
To prevent the worst of that, the parish had established a free daycare specifically for impoverished immigrant families. At first, the idea of Muslim parents entrusting their children to a daycare run by the Catholic Church had seemed impossible.
But the young priest assigned to it—Silvester—had taken radical measures. He forbade proselytizing on the premises and permitted the wearing of hijabs.
All the daycare did was let the children run free. There was no Christian instruction, no religious events of any kind. He had even stripped every crucifix from the walls.
Moved by that, people gladly left their children in his care. Extreme nationalists, racists, and neo-Nazis were constantly abducting, lynching, and raping people from the Third World; without somewhere trustworthy to leave their kids, parents could not even go to work with peace of mind.
As a result, the daycare was always bursting with children.
“Not bad at all, Han Se-gun. By now… you might even surpass me. No—it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say you already have.”
Father Silvester closed the browser and let out a breath. The young priest was curt and cold, doing only his own work while the children made noise behind him and leaving the real labor entirely to the caregivers. Even so, he was wildly popular with the kids; some of them trailed after him like ducklings just out of the shell. A few were watching him even now.
“……”
Father Silvester looked at the children without a word.
As human civilization advanced, the speed of information had only accelerated. That blessing of progress was no exception for the shadows of civilization—the vampires. Events unfolding in a small nation of the East were already known to them in as much detail as if they had happened next door.
The lycanthrope Seo Rin, regarded as a key that could reach the primordial witch Lilith, and the struggle of vampires and the Beast that had gathered around him. That rumor was becoming the concern of every resident of the night.
“I’d like to go to Korea myself. A war over Lilith’s descendant… But I’ve got work here keeping me busy. Well—Se-gun seems to be managing fine on his own. I can leave him be for a while, can’t I?”
Father Silvester said so into the phone he was holding.
Hunting Lilith’s trail mattered, but so did rooting out hidden Jinma and vampires and keeping order in this world. In that sense, Paris was the front line of the war against the vampires—no exaggeration.
As the saying went that even a beggar lived well in Paris, the city was a world-class tourist and cultural capital, with people from every nation pouring in without end.
Tourists and other floating populations were enormous; the homeless overflowed.
Every one of those conditions made it ideal territory for vampires and lycanthropes. The vampires who seeped into that throng only kept increasing; no matter how many you caught, their numbers never fell.
Honestly, he almost wanted to summon Han Se-gun here. Paris was the true front of the war against the vampires. If Se-gun had become a truly powerful hunter, he would be a precious asset.
Walking out into the daycare’s front yard, he untied the cord holding his long hair. Rare silver-blond spilled over the black cassock. The sun was sinking, teasing and slow, between the buildings.
“Well, Se-gun is always managing somehow. Silvi, though—this time he’s taken a bit of a hit…”
“A hit?”
Puzzled, Silvester asked Kim Seong-hui on the other end of the line for a full explanation.
“Well, you see… that child of Lilith, the one called Seo Rin…”
Seo Rin came to his senses at the fragrant smell of food. Startled, he bolted upright from the bed. It was his room, same as always.
“Wait… what is this?”
Still shaken, he headed for the kitchen and found Se-gun just lifting a pot from the gas range.
“You’re up? Dinner duty was supposed to be yours today, but you were so late I did it. How many days were you planning to sleep, exactly?”
Se-gun grumbled as he set the pot on the table. With practiced ease he cracked eggs into the frying pan. Watching him, Seo Rin suddenly looked at the empty chair. That was Hyuk-jin’s seat—so what kind of nerve did that brat have, making Se-gun hyung cook when it wasn’t even his turn? Had he lost his mind?
Thinking as much, Seo Rin put the question to Han Se-gun.
“Where’s Hyuk-jin? Did he go run some errand?”
“……That kid is dead.”