Nothing Left but Life
Even so, there was a way to boost VT by underhanded means: fusing another vampire’s blood into yourself. The catch was that the other vampire would inevitably die, leaving only you behind.
That was precisely why the other vampires were after Maria. As a Jinma, she still possessed a child’s body, so no matter how high her VT climbed, she would always be vulnerable in close combat. If she ever took the field herself, Agni and the rest of the vampires hunting her would never sit idle.
“I know. I know how dangerous this is. But we can’t just keep going on like this forever, can we? If all we’re going to do is waste time like this, I’d rather…”
“Why not just kidnap Seo Rin outright?”
“Huh?”
“Once you’ve got him, given his personality, he won’t be able to say much about it.”
“I—I mean, that’s…”
The suggestion was so appealing that Maria briefly lost herself in the fantasy. Respecting Seo Rin’s free will was all well and good, but if they were going to waste time like this anyway, wouldn’t it be better to just force the issue once and for all? Kidnap him by any means necessary, haul him off to some gorgeous resort on the Pacific or the Mediterranean, let him come to his senses, and explain the situation. Knowing Seo Rin, he would get angry—but he would forgive her soon enough. That much was certain.
“Mmm. Still, though.”
Maria wiped at the corner of her mouth with her hand and shook her head. If that were the end of it, fine—but as long as others knew Seo Rin was alive, they would never leave them alone.
There was no way to escape the eyes of Tetra Anax, after all. In the end, nothing would finish peacefully. Unlike Han Se-gun, she was not prepared to fight off every last one of them who came after Seo Rin.
“Unfortunately, it’s impossible for now.”
That was the conclusion her cold reasoning reached. Even so, she rose from her seat.
“Get ready so we can leave the moment the sun goes down.”
Interrogation and torture exist to force answers out of someone who has no intention of talking. In other words, once the other party is already willing to speak of their own accord, such methods become unnecessary.
The boy soldier seemed to understand that well enough; he told them everything he knew. A kid who could ship out overseas as a mercenary could at least manage a little broken English.
Even so, they learned nothing particularly useful. They discovered that Sa Jun had another hideout, but the boy soldier had merely hitched a ride in the vehicles coming and going—he had no idea of the exact location.
“At this rate, he’s completely useless.”
Han Se-gun used telekinesis to bind the boy soldier’s arms behind his back. Realizing he had no choice, the boy submitted without a fight. Even if he tried to run, he would never escape Se-gun’s hands.
Compliance was the smart move here. Looking at him, he was unmistakably a child—and yet, a mercenary was still a mercenary. His sheer adaptability to circumstance was impressive. He understood that putting on airs or clinging to pride would only get him killed.
Watching the scene, Kim Seong-hui smiled and spoke to Se-gun.
“Don’t be too hard on him. He’s pitiful.”
“A mercenary is pitiful?”
Han Se-gun shot her a look. Master or not, she was far too soft. This was the very one who had fired the mortar that brought Arjuna down.
Murder would have been routine for him, and if the chance presented itself, rape would have been just as casual. Of course, none of that was entirely his fault. When you spend your childhood running through chaos and war, your values and way of life diverge sharply from those of people in peaceful society.
Even so, you could not pin everything this kid did on his environment. No matter how much circumstance had shaped him, the body that pulled the mortar trigger and fired the gun was his. He could not escape responsibility. In practice, no one who had actually been on the receiving end of that violence would generously forgive him with some excuse about a twisted upbringing.
“Still, look at him—he’s terrified. Like a puppy soaked in the rain.”
“More like a rain-soaked wolf.”
Han Se-gun muttered as he examined his hand. Even regenerating it slowly to spare himself the strain, the healing had already reached his wrist. If this pace held, every wound would be gone in about a day. Meaning if Sa Jun still had a chance, it was only tonight.
Unless he launched an all-out assault tonight and eliminated Han Se-gun, there would be no path to victory.
The question was whether Sa Jun could find this safehouse before the day was out. But Se-gun was certain he would. There had been no tracker on the vehicle, yet Sa Jun was a mage—if he used clairvoyance, locating this place would not be difficult.
The one silver lining was that they had buried a considerable number of enemy troops at Arjuna. From what the boy soldier had said, the hideout had held roughly thirty mercenaries, and maybe ten mages give or take. Of those, Se-gun had wiped out about twenty humans at Arjuna. The number of people Sa Jun could still field was not large.
So how would he attack?
“Well then—shall we see how things are unfolding?”
Kim Seong-hui picked up the TV remote. Before the picture even came up, a reporter’s urgent voice filled the room. Se-gun turned toward the screen—and what did he see but his own house, burning fiercely?
“Son of a bitch.”
He had expected it. He would have done the same himself. But seeing it for real still twisted something in his gut. That place was not just a house—it was a base he had built, a fortress. To a vampire, it would have been a domain. To lose something like that so hollowly…
And yet, watching the flames, Se-gun found himself laughing inwardly. He had always been the underdog. A weakling with nothing to his name, who only ever had things to take from vampires. Who would have thought he would end up in a position to mourn a loss?
“I’ve gotten soft. Me.”
Han Se-gun ground his teeth.
“Fine. Thanks to this, I’m back to having nothing left to lose but my life. Good. Better, even. Makes me glad. To think I’d fight that bastard’s little brother with the same heart I had back then. Is this what they call fate?”
As killing intent and malice poured off Han Se-gun, black mist surged upward. No optical illusion, no hallucination—real fog. The boy soldier recoiled in terror. For an instant, shapes like people seemed to move within the mist.
“Hiiieeek!”
On the screen, the reporter turned the microphone toward a police official standing beside him.
“The flames are too intense for us to approach at the moment. What’s your assessment?”
“Given the continuous explosions of ammunition and explosives inside, it appears this location is also connected to the unidentified armed group.”
“I understand the tip that brought you here came from an anonymous informant. Is there any chance that person is involved?”
Sa Jun had almost certainly set the fire and then tipped off the police to clean up after himself. Ownership of the building was deliberately untraceable, so a simple check of the property register would never lead investigators to Se-gun or Seo Rin. The problem would come when they started canvassing the nearby shops.
The people around that village had already found it strange—two young men living in a renovated old church, stuffed with machines no one could identify.
Se-gun was a discarded man already, so that was one thing. But if Seo Rin got caught up in it, that was another matter entirely. The boy dreamed of living as a human. If he became a criminal in the eyes of human society, there would be no going back. Returning to his family would be impossible, too.
Fortunately, the official did not seem to have taken the investigation that far yet.
“We’re currently investigating, but we don’t have a clear picture yet. We can’t rule out a connection, but at present we have nothing definitive, so…”
The official rambled on, hedging to avoid responsibility. That was the state of mind of every police official involved right now, so there was no point singling this one out. The people who had actually committed the crime had already walked straight through the checkpoints the police were watching so carefully—and the cops, oblivious, were still combing the area like they were hunting lice.
“The people’s guardians are working hard, huh.”
Han Se-gun muttered and stood up.
“This is something… I never thought it would come to this.”
He had never imagined it. That he would end up fighting the man this way. Sa Jun let out a long breath. At this rate, it would look exactly as if he had laid a trap to avenge his brother. In truth, his brother had been someone he ultimately did not care about one way or the other—no, someone he had hated so much he wanted to kill him with his own hands.
Not that any of that mattered now. To hate someone that intensely, you first had to love and cherish something just as fiercely.
But Sa Jun had nothing of the kind. Before his eyes, all things were equal trash. Including himself.
Mages, by nature, were a breed faithful to the desire to probe forgotten mysteries. In pre-modern societies they had held a certain vital place, but as humanity grew stronger they had been steadily pushed into the shadows of the world.
And his brother, Sarhyuk, had become a vampire hunter in service to his own desires.
But Sa Jun felt no desire. He needed no women, no money, no fame. He had never been given a chance to truly feel what it meant to be alive. His passionate older brother had stolen every such chance.
So he had hated his brother. There had been times he wanted him dead. But Sarhyuk had been impossibly strong, and that gap in power was not something easily overturned. So Sa Jun trained himself. Praying that one day he might surpass his brother and kill him…
But his brother had fallen to some unexpected bastard instead. The Jinma hunter Han Se-gun. The man who had killed Sarhyuk while still in a human body was a demon driven by endless hatred. Seething with sweeping hatred for all vampires and self-loathing in equal measure, he did not feel like a stranger at all. And yet… he had killed Sarhyuk. He had erased one of the few goals Sa Jun still had.
With that, Sa Jun could return to being who he always was. Trash who simply lived day to day with no goal whatsoever.
He did not resent Han Se-gun for it. What had been impossible for him had simply been possible for Se-gun. Thinking of it that way put his mind at ease.
He simply enjoyed living, and when something caught his interest he followed the impulse pure and clean. Sudden emotions—unease, jealousy, sympathy, pity, mercy—he enacted them all as impulses. That was how he took in stray dogs, and how he blindsided Han Se-gun for walking straight into a trap of his own free will.
With no personal stake regarding Sarhyuk, he had simply laid schemes because he liked laying schemes.
Looking back now, he felt a faint regret—but if the same situation arose again, he would do the exact same thing without a second thought. Impulse was a precious thing. Ignore those fierce feelings in the moment, and life would only grow duller the further you went.
“Still, this is really boring. This whole development.”
Sa Jun pulled on body armor and strapped a knife to his leg. Tonight, he was going out himself. The fire had grown too big to keep sitting back with his arms folded—his ass was getting scorched.
“We’re down to the three of us.”
The three mages who moved like Sa Jun’s own shadows said as much. The remaining humans were useless anyway, so Sa Jun had cut them loose. To catch a monster, you needed a monster.
He had paid an expensive tuition fee to learn that humans, even high on Psychedelic Moon, could not take this man down. Their opponent had killed a Jinma while still human. And now that man had become a walker of the boundary. Dump Psychedelic Moon into a human and all you got was vampire-level performance. Throwing numbers at a monster who could face a hundred vampires alone—how pathetic a thought was that?
“Three is enough.”
Sa Jun said it, finished arming himself, and checked the time. When the sun went down, they would hit Han Se-gun again. He already knew where the man was. All that remained was to wait for nightfall.
And at last, the sun set. In Kim Seong-hui’s safehouse, Han Se-gun drew a slow breath and rose to his feet.
“Night’s here.”
Sa Jun’s people would throw everything they had at them tonight—one final total assault. Se-gun looked at his hand. The regeneration was complete now, all the way to his fingertips.
“What about this kid?”
Seo Rin looked at the boy soldier still bound with rope. Leave him like this and he might die in the attack. But cutting him loose had its own problems.
“Do whatever you want.”
Han Se-gun said it boldly and began checking his gear. They had fled Arjuna in such a rush that he had barely brought anything. Four magazines for the Glock 18. And the Beast rounds, bulky as they were, numbered a mere five. Only a few strands of detonating cord, and not a single bomb.
“Damn it.”
Se-gun ground his teeth and looked at the boy soldier. The kid flinched and hid behind Seo Rin. Honestly—one kid. Who knew how much difference he could make in a battle? Se-gun jerked his chin at Seo Rin, and Seo Rin drew a knife and cut the cord binding the boy’s wrists.
The boy soldier stared at Seo Rin in surprise. Seo Rin only grinned in reply.
“You’re free to go. If you don’t get clear, it’s going to get dangerous here.”
“…”
A mercenary with neither blood nor tears—but maybe this was the exception. The boy soldier suddenly bowed again and again, thanking them, then bolted so hard his tail practically fell off. Stay here too long and you die. If he did not run now, he would not keep his life.
Kim Seong-hui watched him go and chuckled softly.
“Think he’ll come back later with a jewel in his beak like the swallow in the fairy tale?”
She held a Chinese straight sword with a slender blade. When she thrust it lightly into the air, it split the wind with a sharp crack. She also had a revolver—a Colt Python .357 Magnum that looked a bit much for a woman—which she slid into its holster.
“You’re fighting too, Ms. Kim?”
“I’ll just look after myself. So do well, you two.”
“Ah—yes.”
Seo Rin, not knowing what else to do, checked his own equipment. The weapons he had chosen were a pair of iron tonfa, a knife, and a submachine gun. Unfamiliar with swordsmanship, he had been drawn to the tonfa—close to unarmed combat, yet highly effective at blocking an opponent’s bladed attacks. Simple to use, and the defense was as primal as it got.
But the thought of actually hitting a person with them left him conflicted. Swung with his strength, even these blunt weapons would kill. No edge at all, yet mere impact made them lethal instruments against a human body.
Technically speaking, he had already committed his first murder. And the victim had been his closest friend. But could he, of his own free will, kill another being that wore a human form? That was the question.
Unless the opponent was Giovanni Vantero.
Then, in the distance, a line of vehicles was seen moving along the national highway. Se-gun, leaning by the window and watching outside, carefully leveled the Beast—fitted with an extended barrel—out through the frame.
Boom!
The blast sent the curtains flapping though there was no wind. In that same instant, the lead car detonated with a heavy whump. Fire raced from the front of the vehicle through the fuel, and a moment later the tank itself exploded, turning the car into a fireball.
But before the vehicle could fully become a ball of flame, the doors blew off and the shadows inside leapt clear.
“Looks like the real ones this time.”
Han Se-gun muttered and raised his gun again. Enemies spilled from the rear vehicles as well. They scattered at once and charged toward the house.
Shhh-shhh-shhh-shhh!
Cutting through the tall rice plants, they looked like cockroaches—or water striders. Fast and light enough that you almost believed they could run across water. But Se-gun chambered a round into the Beast.
Shrieeeek!
One of them fired an anti-tank weapon as he ran. A Panzerfaust rocket came screaming toward them.
“Oh my God!”
Seo Rin’s scream had barely left his lips when Se-gun pulled the Beast’s trigger. And what happened next? The incoming rocket took a bullet midair—and burst apart on the spot.
Incredibly, Han Se-gun had shot down a rocket with a bullet. Then again, a rocket’s initial velocity was not that high; given enough distance, it was not such a hard target for beings beyond human. And the round Se-gun had loaded this time was the Beast’s signature heavy projectile—an explosive shell.
The deforming, shredding bullet behaved like a highly concentrated shotgun blast. Hitting a rocket with a gunshot was a kind of clay pigeon shooting, in its way.
“Kraaah!”
Then a curtain of darkness wrapped around the house. The enemy meant to blind Se-gun with magic. The open ground left the attackers with no cover—but it also made sniping easy on this side. They were stripping that advantage away.
“Oh my!”
But Kim Seong-hui dispelled the darkness with a swift counter-curse. In that opening Se-gun fired the Beast again, and another enemy dropped. Even so, he had only gotten off about three shots from the Beast before the enemy was already upon them.
The first to appear was Giovanni himself.
Shhk!
He teleported into the room behind Han Se-gun.
Click.
Se-gun did not panic. Having braced himself for every possible situation, he made the wisest choice available. He flung the Beast aside, drew his pistol, and leveled it at Giovanni’s head. Of course, Giovanni had already trained his crossbow on Se-gun in turn.