Chapter 50: Regret
Chapter 50: Regret
“Bye~ see you tomorrow.”
It was almost 1 a.m.
In front of the last shuttle bus from the self-study reading room, Gahyeon said goodbye to her friends.
“Why, Gahyeon? You’re not getting on?”
“Yeah. I want to walk a bit. I studied so much my head’s throbbing. I want to walk while getting some cool air!”
“Then I’ll walk too!”
“I only have to walk a little, but you’re far! Just get on! See you tomorrow!”
Gahyeon pushed the friend who was trying to walk with her back into the bus.
“I heard there’ve been a lot of missing person cases around here lately! Be careful!”
“Hehe… it’s a bright main road all the way home—what is there to be careful about? You be careful. You said the way up to your place is dark even after you get off the bus!”
Gahyeon watched the bus carrying her friends pull away, then started walking home. Even walking slowly, it was a route that took less than twenty minutes.
She walked along the big road with traffic, turned just once, and her apartment complex—Gahyeon’s home—was right there.
It was a road she took every day, with nothing particularly dangerous or scary.
But the road at 1 a.m. felt different from daytime.
At first, the cool night breeze refreshed her, but after walking a bit, it started to feel eerie.
All the storefronts lined up along the boulevard were closed, and today, even the convenience store up ahead was closed. It used to be brightly lit 24 hours, but it seemed that at some point it started closing late at night.
Once she felt that chill, a faint regret rose—she should’ve taken the bus, why was she walking.
Her friend’s comment about lots of missing person cases also nagged at her.
But this road was a major boulevard in the very center of Daejeon.
It wasn’t a dark alley or a lonely mountain path. In the Republic of Korea, famous for good public safety, a place like this shouldn’t be dangerous.
Gahyeon steadied her shrinking nerves and started walking again.
“Everything depends on mindset. If I think it’s scary, it gets scarier. Still… that van up ahead looks suspicious.”
As she tried to calm down and walk, she noticed a van stopped ahead.
The engine was running, but the headlights were off—like a predator lying in wait for prey.
Two sturdy men were sitting in the driver’s seat and passenger seat, but the tint was so dark she couldn’t see their faces properly.
It felt unsettling.
But to get home, she had to pass by that vehicle.
She tried to keep as close as possible to the wall of the shops as she passed the ominous van parked by the road.
Just as Gahyeon passed the van—
With a clunking sound, the van door opened.
“Kyaa!”
As the door opened, a skinny man with irezumi tattoos up to his neck and a thick gold necklace chewed gum, glared at Gahyeon, and grinned.
“Help me!”
Gahyeon screamed and started running down the main road.
The van door swung wide open.
Three men burst out.
Gahyeon ran, screaming. Her bag tumbled across the ground.
Footsteps pounded right behind her. Her breath climbed into her throat, but she couldn’t stop.
A snickering laugh chased her from behind—so close it felt like it was right at her ear.
“Crunch!”
With the sound of something like bone breaking, the presence of the men who had been about to grab Gahyeon from behind disappeared.
Still running out of her mind, she turned her head back—and a grotesque scene was unfolding.
A man in an old blue tracksuit was bent over the bodies of three men collapsed on the ground, his mouth pressed to them, tearing and eating something.
He had his back turned, so she couldn’t see his face, but he looked less like a person and more like an animal.
Gahyeon was terrified, her legs about to give out, but thinking she couldn’t collapse now, she ran with everything she had.
After running a long way, she looked back again and saw men with wooden clubs getting out of the driver’s seat and passenger seat of the van and charging at that beast.
The crew spotted a schoolgirl walking alone late at night, briefly conferred, and decided to kidnap her.
The Chinese-side organization paid well if you brought in minors.
There were rumors—things like taking them to harvest and sell organs, or using them for human flesh—but they didn’t need to care about that.
They only needed the money.
When public safety was good, serious crimes like human trafficking were too risky, so they avoided that kind of work, but these days, when everything was chaotic and the police were useless, it was like taking candy from a baby.
But the guys who were supposed to catch the girl and come back weren’t returning.
In the rearview mirror from the driver’s seat, an absurd sight appeared.
Three of their men were down on the ground, twitching, and some lunatic-looking bastard was biting and tearing at them.
“This fucking bastard!”
More anger than fear surged up, and he grabbed a tool and got out.
But the closer he got, the stranger it felt.
What he’d thought was a lunatic was closer to a beast. Blood flowing from the bodies of the three men soaked the road.
“Uh… uh.”
He took a few more steps, then stopped.
The thing that had buried its face in their bodies and torn at their insides lifted its head—its eyes were crimson, and its long fangs made it not human.
“Mo… monster.”
“Kkyaaaah!”
The two human traffickers stumbled backward and fell.
At the sound, the blue-tracksuit monster rose and began to approach. Because of its small frame, they’d thought it was scrawny, but its exposed arms and legs were packed with thick muscle.
“Grrrrrr.”
Making a wolf-like sound, the monster advanced, then suddenly—like it heard something—it sniffed the air and looked around.
Then, as if frightened, it fled in a hurry. The direction it ran was the direction the girl had run earlier.
“What the hell… that…”
The two men, slumped on the ground, came to their senses and crawled toward their fallen teammates.
The three comrades were already dead. All of them had their throats nearly severed, as if cut by something sharp.
“Shouldn’t we call the police, boss?”
“What police? Load them into the van. Let’s get out of here first!”
They forced their limp arms and legs to move and loaded the three bodies into the van.
Even now, warm blood was still gurgling and spilling from the corpses.
A long trail of blood led from where they fell to the van.
They wanted to wash it away with water and erase the evidence, but there was nowhere nearby to draw water. In the past, if someone saw bloodstains tomorrow morning, they might’ve found it suspicious and reported it, but these days, no one would stick their nose into something like that.
Just as they finished loading the three bodies—
They realized that at some point, someone was standing beside them.
A woman wearing a coat that reached to mid-thigh and jeans, with something like a wooden sword hanging at her waist. Under the streetlight in the dead of night, she didn’t look human.
“What the hell—who’s this bitch?”
The two surviving members cursed, startled by her silent appearance.
But when they saw her face—beauty beyond what the word “beautiful” could even cover—they couldn’t close their mouths. They looked more shocked than when they’d seen that monster.
Greed soon surfaced in their eyes.
With merchandise like this, they could sell her somewhere else for a huge sum without handing her over to the Chinese.
Without a word, the woman walked toward the pool of blood.
She knelt, dipped one finger into the blood, and closed her eyes.
“Grab her. If we get at least that, today’s a jackpot.”
The two approached Seorin with faces full of greedy desire, like they’d found treasure, but they had no choice but to stop right in front of her.
Because their heads had separated from their bodies and were rolling on the ground.
Seorin read the memories of what had happened moments ago through psychometry.
The man who had torn into three men in the middle of the street was a newborn—one who hadn’t even been a blood fiend for a week. An ignorant child who still couldn’t suppress the madness storming inside his body, and who, every night, wandered in search of prey without caring about time or place.
Anger boiled up at the founder who had irresponsibly increased the bloodline and failed to teach even the most basic survival knowledge.
Seorin herself had once acted the same way.
Because of that blue-eyed dokkaebi who irresponsibly turned her into a blood fiend, Seorin spent several years killing villagers nearby and tearing at their corpses. Remembering that time made nausea rise with self-disgust.
For the body to stabilize and for the mind to adapt to a bloodkin body took a long time.
At shortest, a few months; at longest, a few years.
A founder who creates bloodkin must take responsibility for their child. If not, newly born bloodkin like this will inevitably hunt nearby humans indiscriminately, get exposed, and be killed.
Seorin cut off the necks of the two filthy humans who had approached her.
Then she controlled their blood, stuffed the headless corpses into their vehicle, and began chasing the blood fiend who had fled.
The residual thoughts left behind by the blood fiend extended toward the apartment complex visible ahead.
The blood fiend’s traces led to the very last building.
When alive, he seemed to have had unusually strong mental power for a human.
In this state, most would be unable to overcome madness and instinct and would try to destroy everything in sight, but this one chose his targets.
He hunted on an open boulevard rather than a dark, enclosed place, but he still chose a time when foot traffic had vanished, which meant some reason remained.
Moreover, after sensing her presence and fleeing, he could’ve attacked the girl who was running alone, but he didn’t.
At this rate, he could regain his reason before long.
But an execution mission had already been issued.
The Elders’ Council had classified him as someone who violated the bloodline’s rules.
Once the order was given, there was no way to take it back.
If the one who created him had cared even a little, there wouldn’t be deaths this pointless…
All of this was the irresponsible founder’s fault.
The trail continued to the 20th floor.
He didn’t use the elevator—he went up the stairs.
With no need to hurry, Seorin followed slowly.
Unit 2001.
As if it were his home, he properly opened the front door and went in.
There were bloodstains on the keypad.
Seorin raised her sword and cut the keypad apart.
A small electric crack snapped, and the keypad split.
Seorin pushed a sword infused with blood energy into the keypad and stirred it.
The front door opened.
A 34-pyeong apartment.
The dark house was silent, with no sign of people.
But Seorin knew he was in the master bedroom.
Seorin’s authority, psychometry, showed her the residual thoughts left behind along the path of his escape.
Holding the sword in one hand, she entered the master bedroom and saw him crouched inside the bathroom.
The man in the blue tracksuit had returned to normal in his gaze, and his fangs were retracted.
He was trembling, clutching a small child tightly in his arms.
The child looked about ten years old.
“Sp… spare me.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it either.”
The child was a vampire too.
But the child was the man’s founder.
Chains bound the child’s limbs, and his eyes blazed with bloodlight as he shrieked. From the look of it, the child became a blood fiend first, and the man got bitten while trying to protect the child.
If you’re bitten by a blood fiend and survive, you become a blood fiend.
Now Seorin understood why, after the man became a blood fiend, there was no founder to care for his initial madness.
“Then… please, at least spare this child. He’s my nephew. He’s a pitiful kid. Please—just let him live.”
Seorin thought for a moment.
But the child was also a target for execution. As the man’s founder, the child had responsibility to manage his madness.
There was room for interpretation, but execution was still correct.
Seorin raised her sword and swung.
The man’s head was cut off, and moments later, the man’s body—still hugging the child—turned to ash and scattered. Then the child, screaming, crying blood tears, tried to rush Seorin. Looking at him, Seorin remembered herself from four hundred years ago.
That child and she were in exactly the same position.
An enemy.
She wondered if, back then, that blue-eyed dokkaebi had felt something similar to what she felt now.
Seorin swung her sword and cut the chains binding the child’s limbs.
But when Seorin put forward her blood energy, the child—still so young—was crushed by the pressure. He could only glare at her with killing intent, unable to move.
At that moment, a message arrived on Seorin’s phone from the Elders’ Council.
“As of this time, all rules of the bloodline within Korea are lifted.”
“The Daejeon Station mission is canceled. Discipline Knights are to stand by.”
Seorin stared down at the phone, then closed her eyes briefly.
If this message had arrived just a few minutes earlier… would the man and the child have lived.
A bitter smile spread at the corner of her lips.
But the throat was already cut, and the black ash had scattered on the wind.
The 1000th mission.
At last, Discipline Knight Seorin was freed.
Was it at least fortunate that she didn’t have to kill the child?
“If you want to repay your grudge, build your strength and come find me!”
Those were the words spoken by Seorin’s enemy, the blue-eyed dokkaebi.
After leaving those words to the child, Seorin left the apartment.