The Warehouse Confrontation
Silvester recalled what he knew of Agni. Objectively speaking, there were plenty of Jinma stronger than him—Juda, Gordon, Phantom, Hecate, and more. Compared to the others, Jinma Agni’s VT was low and his magical power nothing special, but what made him terrifying was that he would stop at nothing when it came to slaughter.
“I ran into him once in the Netherlands during the Second World War. The bastard had modified a Cal.50, strapped it to one arm, and poured fire into humans with it.”
Silvester shuddered at the memory. A Cal.50 was better known in Korea as the MG50—the Browning machine gun. The rounds were the same .50-caliber ammunition used in Silvester’s own Barrett. The destructive power of a machine gun spitting those out in continuous bursts was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold. Even without a tripod it weighed forty kilos; no ordinary human would even dream of using it that way. Only a vampire could.
“But after that, Jinma Agni could no longer enjoy his slaughter in the West. He came to Korea aiming for the Korean War, then fought in Vietnam as well. These days he’s settled in China, India, and the Indochina Peninsula. He chose Indochina because of the dense population and poor security—perfect for killing people. That tells you exactly what kind of lunatic he is.”
“……”
Just hearing about Jinma Agni made it clear the guy was steeped in pure, unadulterated madness. Se-gun’s jaw dropped in disbelief.
“Caliber .50? You’re saying he’d open fire with that in Korea—inside a city?”
“He’s already swallowed an entire general hospital’s worth of humans right in the middle of Seoul. You think he wouldn’t go further? And since he’s a Jinma, he’s outside Tetra Anax’s control. A real headache of an opponent.”
By then the car had arrived in front of Kenneth Yang’s warehouse. Silvester parked and got out.
“I’m not sure Kenneth Yang will even be here. It’s morning, and……”
“He keeps a regular weekly schedule. On Tuesdays he’s always in Seongnam.”
Silvester seemed to have already investigated; he strode confidently toward the warehouse. Security cameras were installed, but he kicked off the wall once and vaulted cleanly over them. Moving like that with his hands still in his coat pockets, using only his feet—he clearly possessed physical abilities far beyond a human’s, closer to a vampire’s.
“Follow me.”
“Wouldn’t it be better just to call him from the entrance? Do we really have to climb over?”
Unlike Silvester, Se-gun scrambled up the wall while asking. Silvester pulled gloves from his pocket and put them on.
“I told Kenneth Yang before: if you sell goods to vampires, I’ll treat you like a vampire yourself. Letting ammunition fall into Agni’s hands isn’t something that can be paid for with one or two arms dealers’ lives.”
“Ugh.”
Only then did Se-gun realize Silvester had come with less-than-friendly intentions. Of course Kenneth Yang was a broker who would do anything for money, so it was natural he’d make enemies—but the safehouse Se-gun was currently using belonged to Kenneth Yang. If the man died, Se-gun would be out of a place to live.
“You’re not going to kill him, right?”
“Do I not kill vampires?”
“……”
Se-gun had nothing to say to that. The only edge vampire hunters had over vampires was their weapons. If a vampire with superior physical abilities also got their hands on firearms, fighting them became suicide. That was why Silvester had warned Kenneth Yang: trade with vampires and I’ll kill you……
Rrrrrk!
Silvester lifted the entire shutter and stepped inside. The warehouse held a forklift, a Galloper sedan, and a large truck painted with the Hanjin Express logo. Kenneth Yang was asleep, leaning against a sofa in front of them.
“Mmm? Wh-who’s there?”
The moment someone entered he bolted upright, snatching a Glock from under the sofa and aiming it at Silvester. But the morning sunlight pouring through the open shutter made him squint. From Kenneth’s perspective, two silhouettes had suddenly torn open the shutter and come in.
Gotta shoot!
To protect his life, Kenneth chose to attack first. But before he could, a knife flew from Silvester’s hand and knocked the Glock away.
“Kh!”
The knife, reminiscent of a military bayonet, slammed into the Glock with heavy force and sent it flying. Kenneth Yang stared at Silvester in shock.
“Y-you? Why?”
“Hmm. I thought I made myself perfectly clear before?”
Silvester dashed forward as if flying and kicked Kenneth Yang square in the stomach. The sofa flipped backward and Kenneth tumbled onto the cold concrete floor. Silvester cast a long shadow over Kenneth’s body as he walked slowly forward. His footsteps rang out exaggeratedly loud on the cold cement.
Thud. Thud……
“Guh!”
“I told you selling weapons to vampires would cause some rather troublesome problems.”
“Kh…… I-I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“You don’t know? Then let me make it easy to understand.”
As if words were unnecessary, Silvester shook out his sleeve. Something like a transparent thread shot out from it.
Shiiing!
With a sound like a snake slithering, the transparent wire wrapped around both of Kenneth’s arms. Kenneth realized what it meant and went deathly pale.
“Wait! I really don’t know! Hey!”
“Kh!”
Se-gun knew that if this continued Kenneth’s arms would be severed. He immediately charged Silvester and body-checked him with his full weight.
Thud!
Was this what it felt like to body-check a utility pole? Se-gun clenched his teeth against the pain of his whole body feeling shattered. But Silvester didn’t budge a single step from the spot; instead he glared at Se-gun as if to say, Are you joking?
What kind of monster is this guy?!
Se-gun screamed internally and grabbed Silvester’s hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Silvester threatened Se-gun in a blank tone that still carried plenty of murderous intent. Slightly flustered, Se-gun immediately started making excuses.
“No, think about it…… If the other party is a Jinma, they can walk around under the sun. So Kenneth Yang has no way of knowing whether that person is a vampire or not.”
“……”
Kenneth Yang looked at Se-gun and Silvester in surprise. Silvester, who apparently hadn’t factored that in either, merely scratched his cheek once.
“Is that true?”
“Y-y-yes, of course I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know why you’re doing this, and it’s not like I’m supplying every single weapon in the Republic of Korea.”
“That’s true enough.”
Silvester reeled in the wire and looked awkward. Charging in coldly and beating the man had been fine, but thinking about it, Kenneth Yang wasn’t a vampire hunter—he had no way of identifying Jinma Agni.
“Cough! A-at this hour of the morning, what the hell…… So that was the reason?”
“……”
Kenneth Yang righted the fallen sofa and threw himself back onto it. Silvester stood there looking sheepish, with a hundred mouths and nothing to say.
“Uh, so I have a question.”
To break the awkward atmosphere, Se-gun tossed a question at Kenneth.
“What is it?”
“Have you sold any TNT recently? And ammo for MG50s.”
“Client information isn’t something I leak casually…… That’s the principle……”
But the bold Kenneth fell silent when he saw Silvester’s expression. As a professional it was correct not to leak client info, but a professional needed to stay alive to practice that. He sat up from the sofa.
“MG50, huh. I don’t have much call for something that monstrous, so I only siphoned off about ten boxes of reloaded ammo just in case. Wait. I’ll need to check the ledger.”
Silvester and Se-gun blankly watched the morning sunlight streaming under the shutter stretch their shadows across the warehouse floor.
“How embarrassing.”
“Huh? What did you say?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Silvester cleared his throat once and shut his mouth.
After digging through the ledger for a long while, Kenneth Yang reached a conclusion.
“So. Neither the TNT nor the MG50 stuff left my hands. I only sold some to the Segwang Faction.”
“Segwang Faction?”
“A violent organization that has Daegu under its thumb. Guys like that would sell weapons to anyone, I suppose.”
Kenneth Yang cleared his throat and checked Silvester’s expression. Silvester kept a blank face, but inside he was quite embarrassed.
“Hmm. Anyway, a violent organization buying explosives and that sort of thing…… what would they use it for……”
“Same principle as a guy who doesn’t even practice kendo buying a real sword to hang on the wall.”
“No way?”
“It’s true.”
Kenneth Yang insisted with a straight face. Well, even organized crime types were still men, and men were all just big kids, weren’t they? They could be simple like that. Se-gun saw the water boiling and stood up. On the gas stove fixed to the warehouse wall, a kettle was whistling. Se-gun brought it over and poured into each of their paper cups. Instant coffee mix for Kenneth Yang, black tea for Silvester, green tea for Se-gun.
“Not exactly a fine tea party.”
Silvester grumbled but said nothing more. A brief silence fell. The atmosphere was awkward. Quiet enough that the pressure to say something built up, so Se-gun opened his mouth first.
“The reason vampires started swarming into Korea. Let’s talk about that reincarnation-type vampire.”
“……”
Silvester looked at Se-gun without a word. His calm eyes seemed to have the words Well now? written in them. Had Han Se-gun’s question struck him as bold?
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s pretty well known among ordinary hunters, isn’t it?”
A reincarnation-type vampire—an ancient vampire said to be even older than Tetra Anax.
It kept reincarnating and coming back to life, and due to the shock of the cycle it was weak relative to the purity of the blood it possessed. A being that held a precious treasure but lacked the power to protect it.
If such a reincarnating vampire existed, in the feudal vampire society with its rigid class restrictions it would naturally be regarded as something like a lottery ticket. For status elevation, or to increase their power, many vampires had entered Korea hunting it, and thanks to that the Korean nights had become the time of monsters.
Han Se-gun himself could be called a victim who had lost his family because of it.
“Among vampire hunters they say that around the newly reincarnated Jinya, Juk-yo and Chang-woon clashed, and that your role in the middle of that wasn’t small. So wouldn’t it be fastest to hear it from the person involved?”
When Se-gun expressed his thoughts, Silvester nodded.
“You’re not wrong. I can’t say I have no connection to it.”
“Then tell me.”
When Se-gun pressed like that, Silvester tried to refuse with his usual line.
“I am not here to teach you anything……”
But when Kenneth cleared his throat, Silvester closed his mouth. One mistake had cost him face and completely handed over a weakness.
“Well, it’s not some enormous secret, so shall I tell the story?”
Silvester cleared his throat once and began.
Vampirism is a kind of infectious disease, but because sunlight annihilates the factor it did not spread widely in ancient times. With the introduction of Hittite iron and the development of civilization, however, vampirism also spread.
The first Jinma born at that time was a woman named Jinya. She chose to turn her two brothers—later called Juk-yo and Chang-woon—into vampires in order to increase the tribe’s power.
Juk-yo, who opposed this, cursed Jinya and eventually killed her.
After that, as civilization developed, Jinya reincarnated several times. Wherever in the world she was reborn, Juk-yo found her and killed her, while Chang-woon opposed Juk-yo every time to protect her. Yet he could never defeat Juk-yo, who had gained immense power by drinking Jinya’s blood.
When Juk-yo learned that Jinya had reincarnated in Seoul as a woman named Lee Jeong-ah, he led his subordinates to Seoul once more. Chang-woon came alone to Korea to oppose him. Silvester, who had already captured their movements, not only protected the woman believed to be Jinya’s reincarnation from their hands, but also dealt a fatal blow to Juk-yo’s faction in place of the underpowered Chang-woon.
As a result a three-way battle between Juk-yo, Chang-woon, and Silvester broke out, and Silvester became the final victor.
But Jeong-ah was already suffering from spontaneously occurring vampirism. While Silvester was injured she inherited the blood of both Juk-yo and Chang-woon and disappeared.
Whether it was her own will or something the gossipy residents of the moonlit night slapped on her of their own accord, after that day she came to be called Jeong-ya.
“I was far too soft.”
Silvester reflected on his own actions. That was why he had set up residence at Arjuna while searching for her trail and was living in Korea.
“……So Jeong-ya is the reincarnation of Jinya?”
“I have no desire to prove or verify that. No interest either……”
“But still, neither Juk-yo nor Chang-woon nor you would have been digging holes in empty air, right?”
Se-gun, growing interested, continued his barrage of questions. Silvester frowned as if he didn’t like the expression “digging holes in empty air,” but the others just kept talking as they pleased.
“Quite something. Just because she might have been a big-shot vampire in a past life, she gulped down the blood of two Jinma? Nice for her.”
Kenneth Yang evaluated it with his characteristically twisted perspective. Simply becoming a vampire might not be desirable, but if you could become a Jinma-class vampire on the spot, there was no choice. No temptation was as sweet as glory obtained for free.
“Whether or not she’s a vampire, if she’s a being that reincarnates there are definitely one, or rather several more. Reincarnation isn’t an impossible story. It’s a separate issue from whether there’s an afterlife where souls cycle the way ordinary people think. Tch…… To think I’d say something like this.”
A being who wore the clothes of God’s apostle while mocking God’s teachings—that was the word that explained Silvester. And yet it seemed Silvester still retained reverence toward God. That was why he wanted to avoid mentioning or asserting anything about the afterlife or the next world.
“Well, I think that’s enough of the story.”
“Want me to tell you the Segwang Faction’s location?”
Kenneth asked, but Silvester shook his head.
“Ten boxes of .50-caliber rounds is more than enough for Agni. If he uses all of that and then has to resupply from someone else, it’ll already be after Seoul’s population has dropped considerably.”
“……”
Kenneth Yang had nothing to say and closed his mouth. Even the weapons he’d sold to the Segwang Faction had originally been military goods; if he hadn’t siphoned them off and sold them, none of this would have happened.