Entangled
I walked all the way out to the Rabbit's Foot branch Su-hyeok had told me about—partly to top up my blood supply, partly to thin out the numbers of those freaks who had no particular reason to keep living, and partly to test whether a freak could even be turned into a vampire.
The reason I went on foot, looking undignified instead of flying, was mostly that I couldn't be bothered inventing an excuse if Radiant White spotted me blazing across the sky on starlight. I had told her myself that I belonged to Rabbit's Foot. If she then caught me slaughtering Rabbit's Foot freaks, what exactly was that supposed to look like?
I still planned to trade on the Rabbit's Foot name a little longer, so getting caught by Radiant White or Su-hyeok would make the whole picture go sideways. Which meant, inconvenient as it was, I had to do the cleanup the hard way—on my own two feet.
If you wanted entertainment, there were times you simply had to endure a little boredom and hassle.
As I followed the deserted roads toward the scrapyard where the branch was hidden, a question surfaced.
What exactly were my powers as a freak?
As a vampire, I had blood manipulation and absorption through blood. As a dragon, I hadn't mapped everything yet, but for now it boiled down to absurd physical ability and a body that wasn't entirely human. So what power did I have as a magical girl who'd fallen into becoming a freak?
Surely it couldn't just be flight.
If a former magical girl and current special-class freak could do nothing more with starlight than float around, that would just be degeneration. …Actually, turning from magical girl into freak was half degeneration already. Downgrade was probably the cleaner word.
The lore was that magical-girl conversion had been reverse-engineered from freak conversion, then modified and stabilized so anyone could use it safely. Digging into the origins and history got messy fast, so the short version: both freaks and magical girls drew on the same underlying technology. Even shorter: magical girls were freaks 2.0. And freak conversion was the losing side's tech, while magical-girl conversion belonged to the winners.
That was enough of a story that wasn't particularly fun. The point was, I ought to have some ridiculous ability of my own. If pure power ceiling favored freaks even a little, then something like that rabbit bastard's luck manipulation ought to be in there somewhere.
…I had absolutely no idea what it was.
Even when I tried to use starlight, I couldn't get a feel for how it worked at all. I briefly considered handing the body over to Shining White for a bit just to learn the applications. Not that I was desperate for power right now, so I had no real intention of learning yet.
I fretted my way along the night road until I finally reached the place where their base entrance was concealed.
It reeked of garbage and the casually abandoned stench of rotting corpses—a place whose very air was filthy. Which made it perfect for freaks for whom dying would have been the greater kindness.
I casually disposed of the two freaks that charged the moment they saw me, drained their blood, then ripped the steel door off its hinges and flung it aside. The instant the sirens screamed, something about the sound felt strangely nostalgic.
Back then I'd been the one crawling out. Now I was the one breaking in.
The moment I pushed into the base's red-flashing interior, freaks came wriggling out of every corner—personal soldiers the Rabbit had raised for himself, no question. Not that it made them my match.
Fighting them one by one sounded tedious, and I was curious whether something would work. I designated one as an enemy, triggered Time Acceleration, and laced every last freak on a web of blood-threads and needles of my own making.
Then, through those same threads, I drank their blood.
"Gaaah…"
"Wh…what…?"
It worked.
The ones strung together like a chain of sausages withered in seconds into something closer to dried jerky or fish, and I felt their blood flooding into me. Taking blood felt… good. Not quite as good as drinking it straight from the source, but still.
…No. What the hell was I thinking. Get back in there, you bastard. Don't you dare try to crawl out.
I shoved the Elder back down as he tried to surface through the crack, then finished sweeping the rest of the freaks. I experimented with mass draining the way I just had; I also drove blood shards into their bodies and, with blood manipulation, made them fight the corpses of their own comrades. Rather than simply killing, I pushed my creativity as far as it would go, testing exactly how far I could take blood. I even fluidized my body the way Ilie once had, letting attacks pass through me before devouring the attacker whole—though a freak's memories only came with them from the moment of their conversion onward. That sort of thing.
In the end, aside from the few I'd set aside to try turning into vampires, I methodically cleared every freak in the facility.
Behind that vault door were the intelligentsia who'd been running the complicated equipment for this place. I left them alone; I didn't particularly want the Rabbit paying a personal visit just because I'd wiped them out too. Freaks you could restock. Talent like that didn't grow on a farm you could just copy-paste from.
I approached the freaks I'd pinned to the floor with countless blood nails, drove a fingernail into each one, sucked them dry, then fed in a tiny measure of my own blood. Luckily, because that vampire Elder had once used my body, the basic knowledge of vampirism had settled into my head. Among those things was how to make more of your own kind.
Apparently you drained them completely, then put back a mouse-tear of your own blood, and that was enough to make a vampire.
I waited for the freaks to thrash and gurgle and twist and wake up as something new…
…Nothing happened.
Huh.
Too little? I put in a bit more. Still nothing.
…Hmm. Some humans simply didn't take to vampire blood, so maybe these had been that kind of person to begin with. It was too early to assume the worst, so I tried the next freak the same way.
Nothing.
Next.
Nothing.
……
You couldn't turn a freak into a vampire?
I… hadn't known that.
Looking at the freaks' corpses sprawled uselessly across the floor, the road ahead suddenly felt very long. At the same time, an almost inexpressible relief hit me. If I'd tried this on Su-hyeok later without knowing, he would have just… died.
…Right. Thinking about that could wait. It still felt a little too early.
Haa. How the hell was I supposed to sell this lie convincingly? Honestly, I wasn't confident. Telling myself future-me would handle it somehow only made the void feel bigger.
…Before that, though—maybe it was just that my blood was defective. One more check.
I crumpled the vault door with raw strength, dragged out whoever came to hand, drained them completely, and injected my own blood again.
Nothing happened.
…Wait.
Was my blood just defective? This one was a regular human. Why wasn't it working? Turning into a vampire wasn't supposed to take long.
I nudged the corpse with my foot. Nothing stirred.
Could it be that my blood simply wasn't pure vampire blood? Being thirty-three percent vampire meant the other sixty-seven percent wasn't vampire at all. Was that it…?
In which case I still didn't know whether a freak could become a vampire or not.
…I couldn't decide if that was good news or bad. Either way, the only thing I'd gained was the useless discovery that my blood was defective merchandise.
I was about to leave the terrified intelligentsia where they were and head home empty-handed when—
"These are… freaks. Why would anyone do something like this…?"
"How would I know…? Ugh, can we just wait at the entrance? I'm really not confident about this…"
Sky and Radiant White's voices carried in. I only wondered how they'd found the place for a second before remembering I'd ripped the entrance door completely off its hinges.
…They'd seen that and come to investigate.
I'd avoided fighting White for the past few days, and I would have preferred to keep avoiding her if I could. This time it didn't look possible. Meeting her in a closed space like this made even blowing past her with Time Acceleration a non-trivial proposition. I could do it if I had to—but if I did it again, a White whose murderous intent had fully ripened would chase me to the ends of hell.
Which meant the correct play was to put her down here—or at least knock her out for a moment—and then run.
An ambush would have been the smart approach… but ambushes were for bottom-feeders who didn't trust themselves. Not something a strong person like me did. So I decided to wait until Radiant White arrived.
No matter how strong Radiant White was, I was stronger.
Ambush? Please.
I planted a blood lance in the ground, wore an easy smile, and watched the corridor she would have to come through.
"…Was it you who killed all these freaks?"
And there she was. Before she could even deliver a proper declaration of war upon finding me, the creatively ruined bodies sprawled around us seemed to have shocked her enough that that was the first thing she asked. I said yes.
"Why?"
Something about the question felt off. I thought about it for a second and realized: White had no idea these were Rabbit's Foot. Only Su-hyeok and I knew this was a Rabbit's Foot base. That made things easier. I decided to answer with the filter completely off.
"They kept crawling up into my business. So I cleaned them out. They deserved to die anyway, and they're your enemies too—so what does it matter?"
White seemed to agree that, well, if that was the case, then that was the case—and declared that this time she really would bring me down, light gathering on her magic wand.
"Try entertaining me again this time."
I said it as I drew the lance—
and a gunshot rang out.