Machine Gun Heart
KA-KA-KA-KA-BOOM!
As the explosions kept coming, Sa Jun staggered back, drenched in blood. The shockwaves had torn his ears and face into a crimson mess. Yet, astonishingly, the wounds began knitting themselves shut within the space of two or three steps.
"A mage bear? Could anything be more goddamn irritating?"
Han Se-gun clicked his tongue, empty-handed. The last of his detonating cord had gone up in that barrage. If he'd had a proper stockpile of ammo and explosives he could have simply ignored the Charge Barrier and hammered through it—but after the attack on Arjuna he had barely managed to bring any charges at all.
A Charge Barrier wasn't meant to last this long. Sa Jun, however, was operating on an entirely different level.
"Tch… Is that it, then? I'm tired, baby. Wouldn't it be nicer if you just behaved? Then I could love you so much more."
Sa Jun regenerated as he sneered. Se-gun's brow furrowed.
"Is that so? Think whatever you want."
Without warning Han Se-gun turned his back and sprinted. Sa Jun froze in disbelief. The man who had been fighting with murder in his eyes was suddenly showing him his back and running?
"Hey! Where do you think you're going?!"
Sa Jun bellowed and gave chase. A four-legged bear could easily run down a two-legged human—yet Se-gun planted a foot against a wall, spun sideways, and vaulted clean over it. An agile move no bear could hope to copy.
"Hah… hah-hah…"
Seo Rin stood on the paddy ridge, staring at Giovanni. The massive vampire was casually reloading his crossbow. Five bolts had already been fired; five more still sat in the magazine.
"What are you waiting for, Ririm? Don't tell me you're hoping Han Se-gun will finish his friend and come running to save you?"
"…"
That was, in fact, exactly what he was hoping. But even Han Se-gun had taken heavy injuries against Argon and was short on ammunition and explosives; the odds looked grim. Sa Jun only fought this boldly because he had real confidence in his own strength.
"Why not surrender here? Hand yourself over and we can settle this peacefully—no one has to suffer."
"Even if I were crazy I wouldn't do that."
Seo Rin raised his submachine gun as he answered. Ordinary vampires would never risk a gunfight, but Giovanni was another story. Then Se-gun's earlier words flashed through his mind and he hesitated.
"Foolish."
Giovanni looked exasperated at the boy who still froze with a gun in his hands. The weapon fired 9 mm Parabellum rounds—something that, no matter how many he poured out, would never put Giovanni out of the fight. Yet he was hesitating. Living too long among humans, perhaps?
"I heard you were something of a hero down in South America."
Seo Rin suddenly spoke. Giovanni sighed, half amused. Was the boy trying to create an opening so he could shoot? Still, the question had been asked, so he answered.
"Back in the Reagan years the glorious United States did a lot of ugly things in Latin America. Even a vampire gets sick watching that kind of mess. I just tried to make the place livable. A vampire can't live in a garbage dump either, can he?"
"Then why are you doing ugly things here? That makes you no different from the America you hate."
"Boy, it's not unreasonable to wonder. Call it a difference of opinion. I don't consider what I'm doing particularly ugly."
"You don't?"
Seo Rin's voice sharpened. Giovanni remained unruffled.
"Hyuk-jin was, objectively, a bad man… Is killing him such a crime?"
"…"
Seo Rin had nothing to say. Hyuk-jin had been a close friend, yet from Giovanni's perspective he was pure trash. To the people Hyuk-jin had lynched, he was an irredeemable monster. In the end it was just villains looking out for their own—like a mafia movie where the dead thug's brother comes back for revenge. As Seo Rin sank into the thought, Giovanni gave a short laugh.
"There, there, boy. Don't look so gloomy. Good and evil never interested me much anyway. Right now I'm an agent of Tetra Anax trying to take away your freedom. That's reason enough to fight. Surrender if you want, but if your tension drops that low the whole thing gets boring. Life's supposed to be fun. Shall we start again?"
Giovanni fired. Seo Rin jerked backward in shock, but the bolt still punched into his leg.
"Ghk!"
He rolled, spraying the submachine gun. Giovanni teleported past the burst and appeared behind him.
WHAM!
A middle kick like an axe splitting a log slammed into Seo Rin's torso. His body flew and crashed into the flooded paddy.
SPLASH!
Water exploded upward. Seo Rin coughed and pushed himself up out of the mud.
"Damn it!"
"Still, I like you. Seo Rin, was it, boy?"
"You're not going to pretend you don't know my name, are you?"
Seo Rin grumbled as he yanked the bolt from his knee. That was when a new voice cut in.
"What the hell are you doing? Chatting while you fight?"
Han Se-gun was crouching on the path, looking back and forth between Giovanni and Seo Rin. Startled, Giovanni spun around.
"Don't tell me you already finished Sa Jun?"
Instead of answering, Se-gun simply pointed. Behind him Sa Jun came thundering up the road. Seo Rin shot to his feet in a fury.
"What are you doing, hyung?! After all that swagger you should've wiped out a dumb bear like that in seconds!"
"That's why I came here."
Se-gun's eyes locked on the crossbow in Giovanni's hands—a weapon that fired plastic bolts with only the tips metal. Something like that might pierce a Charge Barrier.
"My body's a wreck, but the situation doesn't leave me much choice."
He rolled his shoulders and rose. Giovanni stared, incredulous. Had the bastard come just to steal the crossbow?
"You underestimate me!"
Giovanni leveled the weapon—then Se-gun vanished from sight.
"What—?!"
He looked down. Blue flame was already racing across the ground. Se-gun had dived straight at him like a missile.
CRACK!
Fingers shaped like a dragon's claw sheared Giovanni's arm clean off and snatched the crossbow. As if the vampire no longer mattered, Se-gun spun and body-checked him.
BOOM!
Giovanni's massive frame launched into the air. Unbelievable speed—an entire class above anything he had shown moments earlier.
That thing from before…!
Giovanni clicked his tongue, remembering the strange chant and the unsealing of the heart. For Han Se-gun the seal was something he forced on himself just to keep his body from tearing apart; maintaining it actually cost mana. Releasing it required no special formula or ritual.
The theatrical chant in front of an enemy had been nothing but misinformation. Giovanni had never expected the seal to drop so casually—and that was how he had been caught.
THWIP!
Se-gun wheeled and fired the crossbow at the charging Sa Jun. The bear twisted aside in panic—only to find the flooded paddy waiting for him.
"Kraah!"
Forced to drop the Charge Barrier, Sa Jun righted himself mid-air. Putting his own feet in water while the barrier was active would have electrocuted him with his own magic.
"Hah… The strain's still huge. I need to finish this fast."
Se-gun reloaded, gasping, and fired behind himself without looking. Giovanni teleported on pure instinct, but the shot had carried no killing intent, no warning—by the time he moved the bolt was already buried in his gut.
"Ghk."
Sa Jun watched, trembling with rage. The half-dead man who had been staggering under electric shocks and blunt trauma had suddenly become a monster. Worse, his wounds were regenerating at a speed that rivaled a vampire's. What the hell was going on?
"Not yet…!"
There was still a chance. Sa Jun rose—only for Se-gun to glide in front of him like smoke.
CRACK!
An uppercut exploded under his jaw. Nearly six hundred kilograms of bear lifted clean off the ground.
"W-what?"
Se-gun followed the uppercut by dropping low, then whipping an elbow into the opposite side of the torso. Skin split; ribs caved in with a wet crunch.
In pure reflex Sa Jun swung a forepaw that would have shattered a human skull.
SNAP!
The paw folded backward, dangling uselessly. Se-gun rose and smashed an axe-like elbow into the wrist, pulverizing it.
CRUNCH!
A knee drive punched into the bear's midsection. The giant body soared and crashed into the rice field.
"Guh… kuh…"
"Ah, damn. What a waste. Is it okay to ruin the farmers' hard work like this?"
Se-gun muttered while looking down at him. Sa Jun, the one who had been launched, could only think bitterly that the man had some nerve. He planted a hand on the ground, but the world spun. A lycanthrope reduced to this by pure blunt force? Every one of Han Se-gun's strikes hit with the force of a shotgun blast.
CLICK-CLACK!
Se-gun reloaded and fired without mercy at the rising bear. Sa Jun's bulk rolled sideways, crushing the lush green rice plants. As his head dropped low a circling soccer kick came scything in.
WHAM!
Neck vertebrae twisted; the bear's body jerked upright, then flopped the other way like a puppet with its strings cut. A six-hundred-kilo giant sent tumbling by a human kick.
"Oh my god…"
Seo Rin stared, dumbfounded. The sheer violence of those blows… Han Se-gun had always been formidable, but the man before him now looked invincible.
THUD!
Sa Jun crashed down, flattening an entire stretch of paddy. The impact felt like a minor earthquake.
Perhaps the damage was simply too great. On the ground Sa Jun rapidly shrank back into human form. A lycanthrope's body forced itself into human shape when death was near so that regeneration could focus on healing; returning to human shape while still transformed meant even the energy required for the change itself had become too much to spare.
In other words, he was at death's door. Sa Jun was no match for Han Se-gun. The Charge Barrier—the absolute shield of mages—had given Se-gun trouble, yet even that had been rendered useless by Se-gun's ability to create the perfect situation. It was no accident that this man had walked through the Night unscathed in a human body.
"Seo Rin! You handle this one."
He tossed the crossbow to Seo Rin and turned toward Giovanni. His breathing was ragged, his face flushed and bloodshot from the crushing pressure, yet he still advanced, gulping air. Now that things had come this far, Giovanni had to be finished as well. With his body already ruined and the heart seal released—Machine Gun Heart running wild—he could collapse at any second.
"Hah… hah…"
Giovanni yanked the bolt from his lower abdomen and watched Se-gun approach, eyes bloodshot. That heart-acceleration technique had to be a massive burden; left alone, Se-gun would hit his limit soon enough.
But one wrong move and he would die in the blink of an eye. The more strain Se-gun took on, the more terrifying his offensive power became. Sa Jun—who had seemed to hold the upper hand moments earlier—had been completely sunk in under four seconds. Counting from the moment Machine Gun Heart activated, it had been a mere ten seconds. From previous experience Giovanni judged the enhancement could last at least a full minute. With that calculation he began to retreat.
"I'll stop here."
For a man who claimed to be the new lord of the Night, replacing the old Jinma, the withdrawal was humiliating. Still, there was no need to gamble with his life. Han Se-gun walked the boundary; unless he resolved to become a full vampire, his life would not last another fifty or sixty years. At the rate he abused his body, even ten seemed optimistic.
From a vampire's perspective, getting worked up and dying against a human who would simply be claimed by time was the height of stupidity. Obtaining Seo Rin was an attractive prize, but for now withdrawal was the wiser choice.
Giovanni opened a long-range teleport and put a vast distance between himself and Se-gun. Se-gun, apparently deciding pursuit was pointless, simply watched him go.
"Tch. No guts… Good thing he ran, though."
Han Se-gun suddenly vomited a torrent of blood.
Splash.
Dark crimson spread across the surface of the paddy. Seo Rin rushed to support him at once.
"Hah… hah… hah… Dammit."
"Are you okay, hyung?"
"Ah… What a waste. Letting a vampire like that walk away… Cough, cough."
"D-don't talk!"
Seo Rin went pale watching Se-gun cough blood into the rice field. But Se-gun shoved him aside, raised a fingernail, and slit his own wrist.
SPURT!
Blood pressure was so high that the jet of blood shot up like a fountain. Only after bleeding himself out did Se-gun let out a long breath of relief and clamp a hand over the wound.
"Hoo… A little better. Huh?"
With those words Han Se-gun toppled face-first into the paddy.
Seo Rin carried Se-gun on his back while dragging Sa Jun by one ankle all the way back to the hideout. Even after being hauled across asphalt like a sack of meat, Sa Jun never woke; his condition was clearly critical.
Lycanthropes were supposed to shrug off ordinary beatings thanks to their regeneration, yet Se-gun had given this one a concussion so severe even regeneration struggled to repair it. Someone who could beat a lycanthrope to the brink of death? The idea was so absurd it left them speechless.
Han Se-gun's own condition, by contrast, was simple anemia and internal bleeding. The real problem was that he had unloaded the heart seal after already taxing his body with heavy regeneration.
For Se-gun, regeneration itself was a crushing burden; this fight had been a true life-or-death struggle. Even the intermittent ground shocks Sa Jun had sent through him had made his heart scream. That he had then completely released the seal left everyone appalled. Fortunately his life was not in immediate danger.
Kim Seong-hui laid both men out in the relatively intact basement and wiped away sweat. Just cleaning the space enough to use as a sickroom had been exhausting work.
"Still… we can't stay here much longer either. After that kind of rampage the police will find us. Hopefully Se-gun recovers before then. He's strong, but his body takes a long time to mend."
"Really?"
"Of course. Walking the boundary usually means walking the line between vampire and human, but in Se-gun's case you could say he walks the line between life and death. Back when he was fully human he wrecked his body so badly with drugs that it's basically a rag."
"Hee. So Se-gun-hyung was a rag."
"…"
Even the usually unflappable Kim Seong-hui grimaced at that remark.
In any case Seo Rin looked down at Sa Jun and asked her,
"Se-gun-hyung is in this state… Won't it be a problem if this guy wakes up?"