Chapter 51: Attacker
Chapter 51: Attacker
After completing her final mission, Seorin left the apartment complex.
She saw the girl who had almost been kidnapped by vicious criminals running in a daze into the complex.
To that girl, the newborn blood fiend Seorin had just killed was her lifesaver, but she would never know it.
The time was 1:14 a.m.
There were still five hours until sunrise.
Once it got light, Seorin planned to go to Daejeon’s famous bakery, buy bread, and return to the motel.
Now that she could stand under sunlight and eat human food, it felt like the world had suddenly become abundant.
For four hundred years as a blood fiend, she had lived numb in a black-and-white world, but overnight the world began shining in brilliant color.
Seorin, who had almost no desires, developed an appetite.
Human food had evolved into far greater variety compared to the Joseon era.
She had fallen completely into the fun of tasting different flavors.
Seorin lifted her phone and sent a text to the Elders’ Council.
[1000th mission complete. I request release from my post as a Discipline Knight, Seorin. In return, provide the whereabouts of the blue-eyed dokkaebi we discussed before!]
Then, by searching, she learned that Daejeon’s famous bakery opened at 8 a.m.
With no real need to sleep, she leapt up to the rooftop above the apartment complex and launched an OTT app on her phone.
A hobby she picked up because of Bella next door was binge-watching dramas.
Before, she’d had no interest or curiosity, but now that she could eat human food and see sunlight, she felt like she was gradually regaining her humanity.
She put on episode four of a drama depicting what happens after a large number of guns suddenly get released across the Republic of Korea. Seorin liked the male lead in this drama.
Sitting on the rooftop railing and watching for a long time, she noticed something strange.
Daejeon, already swallowed by darkness, was growing even darker.
Even at midnight, a big city’s night was usually bright with streetlights, signs lit here and there, and light spilling from homes where people were still awake.
But darkness surging in from far away was swallowing the light and drawing closer and closer to Seorin.
Seorin knew who it was.
Abe Yago.
In midair directly in front of Seorin, the male lead from the drama she’d been watching stood there, smiling brightly.
Abe Yago’s abilities were shadow control and bewitchment.
The fact that he appeared not as his bald, fat true body but as a celebrity meant his bewitchment was already affecting Seorin.
She drew the blade at her waist and made blood spray from the tips of her five fingers. The drama’s male lead floating in the air wavered under Seorin’s attack, then vanished.
Then, amid a buzzing sound from all directions, a gloomy voice rang out.
“To attack before even exchanging greetings… still as ill-mannered as ever!”
Seorin didn’t respond to the opponent who had launched a mental attack first and was now acting righteous. She searched for his presence.
Seorin’s ability—thought-trace detection—was the natural enemy of Yago, whose specialty was ambush through concealment.
When Seorin found the enemy’s trace behind the rooftop water tank, she swung: a real sword in one hand, and in the other, a blood sword forged by drawing out the blood inside her body.
The huge water tank split open without a sound, and the water inside poured down like a waterfall.
A bald man drenched in water revealed himself, laughing gloomily.
“So you finally threw off being a Discipline Knight. I’ve been waiting for today.”
She hadn’t expected him to attack her the moment she left the Elders’ Council—someone who had been a colleague.
But with Abe Yago, who had always shown hostility toward her, Seorin had long thought that once she stepped down as a Discipline Knight, something like this would happen someday.
Now Discipline Knights and Chae Seorin were no longer comrades.
From this point on, this battle was purely personal.
Even if one of them died—or both died—the Elders’ Council wouldn’t care.
Seorin, too, had always found Yago irritating.
With the identity of a Joseon person, Seorin remembered the Imjin War and the era of Japanese colonial rule.
And she had seen with her own two eyes how brutally the Japanese abused Joseon people.
She had long told herself it wasn’t her concern anymore, since she wasn’t human, but her feelings toward Japan were still not good.
And at some point, she realized the Japanese Discipline Knight Abe Yago hated her. She’d never cared about him before, but now that they faced each other with blades drawn, she couldn’t help asking.
“Baldy. Why do you hate me?”
At Seorin’s indifferent question, Yago’s face turned red with rage.
“You insolent Joseon bitch! The reason I hate you is exactly that insolent attitude! You’re the only one in this world who treats this great me as something trivial!”
That answer wasn’t enough for Seorin.
She couldn’t understand Abe’s emotions at all.
Seorin gave up trying to understand him and prepared to fight.
Yago was an extremely troublesome opponent.
Yago, the founder of the trainee knight Saroki—who had once tried to take over Korea as Seorin’s successor—was a manipulator of darkness beyond comparison to Saroki.
But even more frightening was his bewitchment.
Yago’s bewitchment seeped in like drizzle soaking clothing, and the longer it went on, the harder it became to distinguish reality from illusion.
Deciding she had to end this fight as quickly as possible, Seorin hurled herself forward.
As expected, the “true body” of Yago that had just been shouting with a reddened face was also an illusion—vanishing like a mirage. The surrounding shadows morphed into beast-like shapes and lunged at Seorin.
With a blood sword and a real sword in both hands, Seorin used dual-wield strikes to cut through the shadow beasts while sweeping for Yago’s true body through residual thoughts.
His true body had already shifted into an apartment several buildings away.
Shaking off the swarming beasts of darkness, Seorin launched herself toward the apartment where Yago was hiding.
“Crash!”
Seorin shattered a 17th-floor balcony window and leapt inside.
But Yago had already moved again.
Shadow movement.
A technique that let him freely traverse shadows within a hundred-meter radius.
As an enemy, it was exceptionally annoying.
Seorin sprang again toward the home Yago had moved into.
Just as she tried to smash through the balcony window, a violent impact slammed her onto the asphalt below.
Because of Yago’s bewitchment, she had mistaken the apartment’s exterior wall for a balcony window.
Falling through the air, Seorin kicked off the apartment wall, surged upward, and charged again into the home where Yago hid.
This time, she extended her blood sword long first to check whether it was an illusion.
It was an illusion again.
Seorin carved a hole into the apartment exterior with her blade and entered.
A normal home’s master bedroom.
A couple, jolted awake and attacked out of nowhere, clung to each other in terror.
From the darkness under the couple’s bed, Yago’s shadow beasts rose, red eyes gleaming as they lunged.
When Seorin snapped her blood sword like a whip, the beasts were torn to shreds—then instantly reformed. With her left hand she held the shadow beasts back, while with her right she slashed her real sword toward Yago hiding under the couple’s bed.
But Yago used a shadow leap again and attacked from behind Seorin. His arms had turned into beasts, gaping their huge mouths as they rasped.
Seorin’s blood sword split into dozens of blood cords.
They shot out like whips and strangled the shadow beasts’ throats.
“Kkhk!”
Yago looked as if his own throat were being choked.
Seorin swung the real sword in her other hand dozens of times, cutting through Yago’s entire body.
Darkness all around became beasts and threw themselves in to protect Yago. Yago tore his neck free from Seorin’s blood cords and moved into the apartment living room.
When Seorin chased him out, Yago had a girl by the throat in the living room.
It was the same girl who had barely escaped death earlier, after almost being kidnapped by human traffickers in front of the apartment complex.
Seorin felt a flicker of doubt at the coincidence that the house she entered at random was that girl’s home.
“Kekeke… even if you pretend to be cold, I know you’re soft when it comes to compassion! If you don’t throw away your sword, I’ll tear this girl’s throat to shreds!”
Seorin found it absurd.
She knew she retained more humanity than most bloodkin. But did he really think she was soft enough to risk herself for a girl she’d met for the first time today?
Ignoring Yago’s ridiculous threat, Seorin swung the blood cords with one hand while her real sword stabbed toward Yago behind the girl.
The blade was aimed to pierce through the girl and take Yago’s throat.
“Heartless bitch!”
When things didn’t go his way, Yago shoved the girl toward Seorin and fled into nearby darkness again.
Seorin pulled back the sword she’d thrust and caught the girl in her arms.
The girl, pale and unable to make a sound, fell into Seorin’s embrace.
And then Seorin felt a sharp pain in her abdomen.
Seorin looked down at the “girl” in her arms.
“Hi! Chae Seorin?”
The girl’s face began changing into a sturdy black man with dreadlocks.
“Mark!”
It was Mark Jacob, the Discipline Knight responsible for America.
If Seorin had been struck by someone whose specialties were poison and hypnosis, then from the start everything had been bewitchment and hypnosis.
Seorin closed her eyes, built a barrier in her mind, opened them again while maintaining calm.
When she opened her eyes again, she was back on the apartment rooftop where she had first met Yago.
There was a large hole in her abdomen, and in front of her stood a fat bald Japanese man and a black man with dreadlocks.
As she regenerated the wound, Seorin asked expressionlessly.
“I knew Baldy hated me, but Mark has no reason to attack me. Don’t tell me the Elders’ Council gave the order?”
“Ooh! Don’t misunderstand. You know it too, Seorin—how the Elders’ Council doesn’t work like that! I was simply intrigued by Yago’s proposal, that’s all!”
“You’re far too strong to be a third-generation descendant! You have to be second-generation! You know it too—second-generation blood is basically a tonic for our bloodline! If we kill you and eat you, we can become stronger!”
Only now did Seorin understand.
When Mark first appeared, she thought that since she had completed all missions and escaped the organization’s restraints, the Elders’ Council had sent an execution squad.
But that wasn’t it.
They had mistaken her for a second-generation descendant and were trying to seize her power.
While she belonged to the Discipline Knights, they couldn’t touch her. But now that Seorin was free, attacking her had no consequences.
They had been waiting for today.
“What nonsense? Among the Discipline Knights, who wouldn’t know my founder is the blue-eyed dokkaebi—a second-generation monster?”
Seorin demanded the point she couldn’t understand.
“Kekeke… you stupid bitch! The true identity of the blue-eyed dokkaebi is obviously the Eighth Elder—one of the Twelve Elders—who hid himself seven hundred years ago. You’ve never even looked at the elders’ portraits in the ceremonial hall, have you? In those portraits, the Eighth Elder is the silver-haired blue-eyed one you keep talking about. Everyone’s been laughing at you for ages—always shouting about vengeance, yet you never even checked the portrait of the enemy right under your nose!”
Yago snickered and mocked Seorin, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
During her life as a Discipline Knight, Seorin had little contact with the other elders.
The only one she ever communicated with was the Grand Elder.
She hadn’t held any particular feelings toward the Grand Elder, but realizing she’d been deceived in such a petty way made anger surge.
It was betrayal.
Fury boiled up inside Seorin’s chest, and the blood throughout her body roared and churned. And Mark’s poison, which had seeped in through the wound to her abdomen, began spreading through her entire body via her bloodstream.