The King's Dignity
“Urgh!”
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!
He knew instinctively that he had been caught. He had fallen for the ruse. The opponent’s trick was so shallow it was almost embarrassing to use against a Jinma, which was precisely why he had fallen for it so easily. If he had possessed eyes that could pierce through techniques the way the Jinma Phantom did, he never would have been taken in by such a simple illusion. But Agni’s specialty leaned toward ignition abilities rather than techniques or magic.
“Damn it.”
He prepared to reload. Unlike ordinary guns where swapping a magazine and chambering a round finished the job, the Caliber was originally a weapon that required a gunner and an assistant to handle its maintenance. Naturally, reloading was done by a two-man team—or solely by the assistant—except in true emergencies. Agni, who had fashioned machine-type parts to hang the weapon from his arm and fire it, needed even more time. Without telekinesis…
“Don’t look down on me by using such childish tricks!”
Coordinating with telekinesis, he loaded the rounds in a single breath and charged forward. Trying to keep distance from a human had been the real mistake. A vampire’s advantage lay in superior physical power; settling things with guns was no different from the stupid fights humans had among themselves. Failing to use one’s strengths was pure idiocy.
The problem was that his opponent also possessed superhuman strength on par with a powerful vampire. The Jinma hunter Father Silvester—also called a dog raised by the Vatican—had been excommunicated by that same Vatican. A being who transcended humanity yet was no longer protected by the name of God; in the end, he was little different from a monster himself.
“But there’s no doubt he’s a monster hunter who gathers the secret rites of Gnosis.”
If they kept hiding and exchanging gunfire like this, there would be no end. More importantly, Silvester was already wounded. That was why Agni hung the ammo belt on the Caliber and simply hosed the area. He only had one belt left on his body anyway.
“He’s gone mad.”
Silvester muttered as if lamenting. Unexpectedly, the voice came from behind him; Agni blanked for a moment.
“Impressive. To deceive a Jinma’s senses.”
“It’s simple. You’ve always been that straightforward—then and now.”
Silvester moved while tugging on transparent threads. Indeed… the reeds in the undergrowth swayed each time he pulled. How he had set them up in that brief span was hard to imagine, yet Agni was facing someone whose abilities already transcended the human. He should have expected as much.
“Fine. Then shall we have a go? Let’s see how much stronger you’ve become.”
“Shall we? You don’t strike me as the sort of vampire who sheds tears anyway.”
Silvester set down the empty Barrett and drew his claymore. He looked drained and listless after countless battles with other vampires and the fight against Jinma Agni. Yet Silvester’s black cassock and the claymore flashing its keen edge still projected an image that was at once gloomy and beautiful.
A cold wind scraped between the two men. Agni drew the katars from his waist and gripped one in each hand. He had a pistol ready just in case, but the current distance was not one for settling matters with guns.
Damn. Once things start going sideways there’s no end to it.
Agni clicked his tongue inwardly. Even if he fought Silvester now, there was nothing to gain. Only damage. Killing the man who needed to slaughter plenty of Tetra Anax would itself be a loss; dying to him would be an even greater catastrophe.
Swish!
Agni used his ignition ability to spark flames against the right side of Silvester’s neck first. Silvester immediately dashed left at high speed. The deliberately biased attack had been meant to dictate the direction of the dodge; in that same instant Agni closed in and crossed the katars.
Clang!
Metal rang against metal. Both possessed strength capable of tearing steel; blades should have chipped or bent, yet neither edge showed so much as a nick.
“Tch! Failed, huh!”
It had been a surprise attack he had quietly enjoyed using before; seeing it foiled made his appetite vanish in an instant. He had already drunk a tremendous volume of blood that day, so he no longer felt any lingering attachment.
“Then I’ll be going! Do your best!”
With those words he broke into a run. Silvester, of course, had no intention of simply letting a vampire walk away.
Whoosh!
Hearing the silver dagger cut the air, Agni leapt forward. After watching the blade skim beneath his feet he landed—only to find a large human shadow already descending on him.
“Hn!”
He spun and fired pyrokinesis in rapid succession. Flames streaked toward Father Silvester as the priest soared through the air, forming spears of fire that enveloped him. Silvester simply raised a hand, traced a diagram, and thrust it forward.
“Ha!”
Bursting through the flames unharmed, Silvester landed, instantly changed direction, and lunged for Agni. Having already decided to flee, Agni intended to keep running.
“What a nuisance!”
Boom!
A wall of scorching heat erupted between them. Jinma Agni used the opening to vault onto a supermarket truck.
“Shit… first time I’ve ever run since my fangs came in.”
He had grown stronger by accumulating vast quantities of blood, but he had no desire to waste that hard-won power on a fruitless fight with Silvester. Against another Jinma he could kill and feed, making the battle worthwhile; a Gnosis monster whose blood he could not even drink was simply a troublesome opponent.
“Ugh!”
Silvester scanned the surroundings, searching for a way to pursue. Aside from one vehicle, nothing resembling a car was in sight.
“Ah!”
It was a red Viper GTS. The elegant yet powerful body gleaming under the moonlight shared the unmistakable lines of every Dodge Viper—and was far more familiar than that alone.
Click!
Beside Silvester came the sound of a hammer being cocked.
Se-geon poured stabilizer—meant to temporarily calm vampire blood—into an empty PET bottle, then filled it with the blood itself. All ten collection packs in the extractor were already full, so he had resorted to bottles as a stopgap. The spoils taken from the vampires wounded in the fight with Silvester had far exceeded his expectations. He transferred the blood packs into the bottles, added a little more stabilizer, and slotted them into the extractor. The roadside was littered with trash; gathering empty bottles had been easy.
“Hmm…”
Se-geon was not entirely sure what he was doing. When grief over his family’s deaths had driven him to become a vampire hunter, he had even handed his parents’ inheritance to relatives and walked away. So what was he doing now? Acting like a hyena circling a corpse? If Sarhyuk ever saw this scene he would have crowed that his eyes had never been wrong—that Se-geon was practically his successor—and never shut up about it.
“Tch.”
At some point the logic of capitalism had taken root in him as well. More money meant better gear, which meant hunting more vampires, which meant even more money for even better gear—an endless level-up loop from some online RPG. But Se-geon had never become a hunter for something like that… had he?
Even so, I can’t just dump this precious vampire blood on the roadside and leave!
He shouted the justification inwardly. That was probably why Silvester never collected vampire blood. Of course the man was already filthy rich, but that still set him apart from the Se-geon of today.
“Damn it.”
Once the blood was packed away he stuffed the bottles into his backpack and swung back onto the bike. A vehicle was racing toward him from ahead.
“What now?”
Se-geon gunned the bike forward. There were always scavengers who looted valuables from accident scenes. When Sampoong Department Store collapsed, how many people had stolen cash and goods while others died around them? Se-geon was no better. The vampires might have deserved death even if they had been healthy, yet sticking extractors into their bodies and fleeing with their blood was still theft. He did not want anyone catching him in the act.
“Huh?”
The supermarket truck shot past without headlights. Its complete indifference to the bodies lying by the road proved the driver was a vampire. Neither vampire nor hunter would drive dark under a full moon, and any hunter who saw collapsed vampires would treat them like gold bars rather than ignore them.
“Could it be…?”
Sudden worry seized him. The fact that someone had simply driven past after the vampires were already dead pointed to Silvester—yet a vampire had escaped him unharmed. Something had gone wrong.
“Shit. I got too greedy!”
Se-geon twisted the throttle wide open and tore after the truck.
“Didn’t you once say a king should maintain his dignity?”
Silvester regarded Phantom, who had the massive custom revolver—Beast Double—trained on him. Phantom wore a pure-white coat and suit that stood in stark contrast to Silvester’s black, the enormous weapon held with casual ease.
Silvester was needling him for the earlier occasion when Phantom had refused a challenge by invoking a king’s dignity. Phantom merely smiled, unbothered.
“Isn’t democracy the fashion these days? What outdated nonsense is this about kings?”
“……”
For a moment Silvester wanted to punch him squarely in the face, vampire or not.
“In any case… I ought to be going. Agni has a filthy temper; if he runs into the police he’ll probably kill them.”
“……”
“You won’t follow, I take it?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because respecting another’s will is the foundation of democracy.”
Phantom delivered the line with shameless ease. Silvester was so dumbfounded he could only laugh—heh, heh, heh.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
“I tried once before. You didn’t die.”
“With that gun it seems possible.”
“I only brought a hundred rounds. I have countless battles ahead; wasting them on something useless would be foolish, wouldn’t it?”