Oxidative Ignition
Han Se-gun ran through the forest, drawing Argon toward the point he had prepared. Near Yeongjong Island Airport Road there were no real mountains—only low hills—and residential pockets clustered close by. Better than the heart of the city, maybe. Even so, Se-gun had already marked his positions and seeded them with booby traps.
No matter how sharp a vampire’s senses, a booby trap’s effectiveness scaled with the target’s speed. Force a vampire to tear through terrain like this at full tilt and their focus frayed; they walked straight into the kill zone.
Click!
With practiced ease, Han Se-gun ejected the spent casing from Beast and chambered a fresh round. The magic revolver, forged to hunt monsters, could overwhelm even Jinma-class vampires. Yet Argon, staring Beast down, had still peeled his companions out of the line of fire and taken Se-gun’s rear with lazy confidence. His movement was lithe, fast as a lightning stroke. Se-gun had expected that, too.
“Huh?”
Then the back of his skull itched. Startled, Se-gun flung himself forward—and something ripped past him!
CRACK-BOOM!
Something slammed into a thick tree and made the trunk shudder. Sap sprayed as the wood burst open as if someone had poured nitroglycerin into its knotholes. A terrifying bullet—no, something closer to a shell—had been fired at Se-gun’s back!
“Th-this is—?!”
His mentor, Father Silvester, had carried an M82A1 Barrett for vampire hunting. Being something beyond human himself, Silvester could hold that massive, viciously recoiling rifle one-handed and fire it like a pistol. But the power of this round exceeded even a Barrett.
In pure destructive force, it outstripped Beast itself. Spinning around in shock, Se-gun saw Argon charging from the distance, trailing cold air. He was reloading on the run—a breech-loading single-shot rifle, by the look of it. And the casings kicking out of the rear… those weren’t rifle casings so much as artillery shells.
“Thirty millimeters.”
Se-gun identified the specs and nearly laughed in disbelief. Who the hell thought of firing 30mm autocannon shells from a rifle? That was why the last shot had missed. Even a Jinma-class vampire couldn’t properly handle something like that. A 30mm autocannon mounted on a fighter and given forward velocity could shred next-generation main battle tanks. Stationary fire couldn’t compare to rounds launched from a subsonic jet, but 30mm was still not a weapon meant for human hands.
Han Se-gun opened Beast and loaded flechette rounds with superior ballistic characteristics. The moment they left the barrel, the core separated from the sabot; fins like missile vanes improved range and flight. The cores themselves were tungsten and molybdenum—excellent penetration, actually less than ideal against vampires. But for long-range fire from Beast, a weapon designed for short-range riot suppression without a barrel swap, it was the best option available.
The distance between Han Se-gun and Argon was roughly 1.2 kilometers. An absurd range for ordinary men to trade shots—but both of them were beyond human. At this scale, it barely counted as medium range.
BOOM!
Both pulled their triggers at once. Se-gun flung himself backward and lined up one of his signature trick shots on Argon; Argon vaulted into a ditch beside the path and returned fire with a trick shot of his own. Assuming Argon was a novice with firearms had been a costly mistake.
CRACK!
The tree behind Se-gun snapped. If he hadn’t thrown himself into that evasive trick shot, his head would have been cleanly removed.
“Impressive!”
Accuracy had jumped dramatically from the first shot. Given that the first had been aimed properly and the second was a trick shot, today had to be Argon’s first time firing that weapon. Zeroing the ballistics on the first round and attacking for real from the second—Se-gun was floored. And the longer the gun, the heavier the recoil, the worse a trick shot’s precision becomes.
Se-gun’s move had been a backward dive—his sight line rocked vertically without spinning. Argon had rolled sideways. His sight line had spun a full rotation, and the gun in his hands was the most ridiculous monstrosity imaginable.
Trick shooting was normally pure performance. Human ability simply couldn’t apply it past close range in real combat. Only vampires, lycanthropes, and the hunters fanatically obsessed with them could master combat-grade trick shots.
For a vampire—a Jinma, an absolute powerhouse—to have refined that skill meant Argon’s philosophy of combat in the world of the Mad Moon had reached a level equal to Se-gun’s… no, higher.
This one was truly astonishing. Dangerously so.
Se-gun couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been to assume guns would let him win at medium and long range. Argon didn’t carry firearms in the city not because he disliked them or didn’t know how—he simply didn’t need them at urban engagement distances. Objectively, Argon held the overwhelming edge. In a rematch, Se-gun would lose.
But today, Se-gun was going to win. Unlike Argon—a natural-born powerhouse who was also a decent person—Se-gun had spent years installing surveillance cameras and listening devices all over Seoul, gathering intelligence, preparing for the worst even when he didn’t need to. In short: a born champion versus a challenger driven by extreme obsession. The gap in raw ability was clear; next time he might lose—but this time, with every preparation locked in place, he would win.
And when Se-gun won… Argon would not leave with his life.
“Still not used to this thing.”
For a man who’d just fired a 30mm Orycon shell mid-aerial spin, Argon was complaining. Even a vampire couldn’t cancel recoil in midair; the blast had flung him backward. He ejected the casing from the rear of the Orycon Chart and grabbed the next round to reload.
“That was stupid of me.”
The shells were so huge they were a pain to carry. Only three left. Of course, a single hit would end Han Se-gun’s life. The rounds weren’t specialized anti-vampire munitions in themselves, but he’d carved a cross into each projectile with wire—so a hit would kill Se-gun. Seo Rin might survive, but the catastrophic damage would force him to shut down physical function immediately.
“Hoo.”
From Se-gun’s movements, Argon realized the hunter had prepared a battlefield and was drawing him into it. Somewhere he could use booby traps, exploit the terrain, and freely detonate enough explosives to suppress Argon’s overwhelming power.
Follow blindly and a trap was waiting. But what if you already knew it was a trap?
Argon scattered fog-like cold and charged forward.
WHISH!
Wind split as he slid along the hillside. Dense white mist blanketed the low hills, blotting out the light.
BANG!
Se-gun sniped through it. Argon had tried to kill the line of sight with fog—but Se-gun must have infrared laser sights mounted. Argon blocked the round with an ice barrier. This time it wasn’t Beast, so he could stop it.
“Switched guns, have you?”
A reckless gamble—and it had paid off. The sound of the round Se-gun had just fired told Argon it was a high-velocity armor-piercer or flechette. Against the residents of the Moonlit Night, stopping power mattered far more than penetration. Se-gun wouldn’t be carrying many of those rounds. Argon knew Se-gun was aware of the ice shields—and that Beast could shatter them with ordinary ammunition, even buckshot. Se-gun knew that too. He wouldn’t have packed many high-penetration rounds like the one just fired.
“This is getting scary.”
Argon used trees as cover and moved fast. Booby traps should start showing up soon. Pressure-plate mines buried in the ground only mattered if you laid a lot of them. So these would be tripwire traps. Argon snapped a branch and flung it into a likely stretch of space.
BOOM!
Sure enough, an anti-personnel booby trap detonated. Argon had done mercenary work for money himself; thinking through where he would plant traps made the locations easy to spot.
“Is that guy really a Jinma?”
Watching Argon methodically disarm the booby traps, Han Se-gun was dumbfounded. This didn’t feel like fighting a vampire—it felt like facing another vampire hunter.
Maria and the other Jinma made it clear: born with overwhelming physical gifts, they often lacked real combat experience. To them, humans were prey, not equals. Assaulting humans wasn’t battle—it was simple hunting—and hunting didn’t accumulate battlefield experience.
Even Phantom, considered strongest among vampires short of Tetra Anax, had built his experience refining his own magic. Most others had spent their long years managing domains of darkness.
But Argon was a different kind of threat. Spotting booby traps came purely from experience. Vampires sitting on wealth and power never lived through that. This one, vampire or not, had clawed his way up from the bottom. To resist the established order of Tetra Anax, he had lived less like a vampire and more like a vampire hunter.
Honestly, it was impressive.
To Se-gun, he was practically a natural predator. Maybe that was why—no matter how hard Se-gun tried to open the gap, the distance kept closing.
Argon’s gear was probably just the single-shot rifle firing Orycon shells, a Desert Eagle, and the longsword he usually carried. Showing up that heavily armed while trying to leave Korea through the airport meant Argon had expected Se-gun’s ambush as well.
But this time, it’s over.
Those tripwire traps were only misdirection. Se-gun had never believed they could take down a Jinma like Argon. The real trap wasn’t a simple mechanical device—it was an electronic claymore. Flip the switch, and within twenty meters of the charge, a rain of steel bearings would scream out at Mach 2–3. No vampire, no matter how experienced, could do anything about that.
Nothing on this earth could dodge a rain of bearings erupting from a mindless, heartless explosive.
Confirming Argon was inside the blast radius, Se-gun flipped open the remote clipped to his shoulder.
“Goodbye.”
But then—
WHISH!
A strange sound cut the air. And at once, the charges began to burn on their own.
“What—?!”
Startled, Se-gun mashed the remote—nothing. He looked down. What the hell? The dry leaves and twigs at his feet were catching fire on their own!
“Agni?!”
Only one creature could pull this off. A mass ignition on this scale would consume so much mental energy as a spell that it would kill the caster. The only being who could do it was the other Jinma who possessed ignition as a bloodline ability: Agni.
“Hahahahahaha!”
Sure enough, maniacal laughter rolled in from somewhere. A Southeast Asian-looking man with yellow-dyed hair came sprinting toward the burning hillside. Arrogant face, cruelty flickering underneath—a classic assault-type vampire. That was the arsonist himself: Jinma Agni.
“You bastard!”
Se-gun ducked behind cover and leveled his gun at Agni. But Agni only grinned when he spotted him. Go ahead and shoot, if you can?
“Ah—!”
Only then did Se-gun remember the explosives and ammunition he was carrying.
According to the intel, Agni’s ignition ability worked two ways. First: forced ignition. Second: oxidative ignition. Forced ignition struck any object within his line of sight that he focused his will on, binding it instantly with oxygen in a near-conflagration reaction. It could burn metal—steel blades, even tanks and heavily armored helicopters would collapse into ash amid violent blue-white flame.
But in direct combat it wasn’t that dangerous. Focusing will took time, and bullets were faster.
The real problem was the second: oxidative ignition. Apparently developed as his VT steadily rose, this was a wide-area ignition that oxidized and heated the most flammable materials in range first. Once the heat passed the flash point, they caught fire.
That was why the leaves and the explosives had gone up first.
“…Damn it!”
The worst possible combination. Bitter as it was, Se-gun stripped the detonating cord and bombs off his body and flung them away. Sure enough, the detonating cord began to burn slowly. Without a blasting-cap detonation, it didn’t erupt—it just smoldered. The TNT started burning like firewood.
WHOOSH!
The mountain caught fire. Se-gun grabbed his rounds—ripped the casings off Beast’s ammunition and threw the rest into the flames. Propellant inside cartridges contained oxidizers, so they were targets for oxidative ignition too.
And if a round ignited inside its casing? You’d get the rare spectacle of bullets firing without a gun. Of course, anyone wearing a magazine would be killed or maimed when the rounds cooked off—so the only way to avoid that fate was to ditch every weapon yourself.
That was what made oxidative ignition terrifying: it forcibly disarmed the enemy. A mere “ignition ability” might sound simple, but for soloing modern military hardware, Agni was the strongest Jinma alive. His fire could burn through tank armor and render countless modern weapons useless!
POP! POP-POP-POP!
Rounds cooked off with firecracker cracks. Argon was ripping open his Orycon shells and flinging them into the blaze as well. But Argon stayed calm. Close combat was his specialty—this situation was practically a gift.
“This son of a bitch.”
Se-gun gritted his teeth at the car parked by the roadside at the forest’s edge. Sa Jun’s car. Sa Jun must have tipped Agni off to Se-gun’s plan.
Thanks to that, anyone who’d stepped into the oxidative ignition zone—Se-gun, Argon, Agni—had no choice but to settle things in a brawl.
And Sa Jun would be laughing somewhere in the rear.
Se-gun had never liked the guy, and his methods made it worse. Even the email about Seo Rin had been calculated to get Se-gun worked up. Sa Jun meant to finish Se-gun here today. Fair enough—until someone surpassed Se-gun, doing vampire- or magic-related business in this country was impossible.
Hiss!
Se-gun summoned Noctis and gripped the black blade. Argon alone was already more than enough; with Agni joining in, this place might well become his grave. Even so, he felt no regret. He hadn’t valued his life that highly to begin with.
Whoosh.
Being a mountain, the fire spread in moments. Agni plunged fearlessly into the flames and planted himself in front of Se-gun. He held an iron whip from the Thai classical martial art of Krabi-Krabong, grinning as he glanced back at Argon. A gold necklace hung across his open chest—Thai-made as well, by the look of it. Was this guy Thai? No—Agni was an Indian god. Probably not. Either way, he smirked at Argon and bragged about his achievement.
“Well? Pretty helpful, right?”
“…”
Argon looked from the wireless claymores burning in the trees to the remote on Se-gun’s shoulder. One wrong step and he would have taken a Mach-2 rain of bearings with no umbrella. Hell, no umbrella on earth would have helped against that rain.
“Thanks. Agni.”
Argon nodded honestly. He’d nearly left his bones here. The thought alone pulled a sigh of relief from him. And once again, he found himself admiring Han Se-gun.
Mixing hard-wired tripwire traps with wireless charges was a simple idea on paper. But wireless charges were normally used to demolish fixed structures—buildings—not to target a moving opponent like Argon.
It was the same logic as planting Claymores on a trench line and triggering them when the enemy swarmed—except in this case you had to stand in front of your own Claymores and accept the risk of blowing yourself up. Se-gun had accepted that risk and still lured Argon in. What kind of guts was that?
“But…”
Argon drew his longsword and leveled the tip at Han Se-gun.
“Stand down and leave this place.”
“What?”
Se-gun stared at Argon in shock. These two held absolute advantage right now. Moments ago, if Agni hadn’t interfered, Se-gun would certainly have killed Argon. And he was telling him to withdraw? Offering to spare him?
“I hate being someone else’s pawn more than anything!”
Argon said it while pointing at the sedan parked by the national road. He’d seen through Sa Jun’s scheme at a glance. Agni whirled on Argon in surprise. Of course Agni wasn’t stupid—he could tell this was Sa Jun’s game too. But in this case they weren’t the ones being played; they were the ones doing the playing. Wasn’t this the perfect chance to eliminate the hunter who’d been harassing vampires all this time?
“Kh… khkhkh.”