Chapter 31 :

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That place was between the shrub forest of Seonyudo National Park, and in the darkness a hunter wearing a ghillie suit was aiming his gun. The vampire hunter, clad in a ghillie suit and holding an M40A1 sniper rifle, possessed unbelievable marksmanship—lens-equipped weapon or not. Unless the vampires had firearms themselves, they had no way of dealing with an enemy at that distance.

But at that range, even if he killed all the vampires, he wouldn’t be able to retrieve their blood to make money. That meant another group was surely lying in wait somewhere nearby.

“Shh!”

The skinhead vampire lifted a police car and hurled it in front of him as a shield against the bullets, hiding behind it. The spider vampire who had been hit by gunfire also slipped behind the vehicle.

“Careful! More are coming!”

Sure enough, vampire hunters began emerging one after another from beneath the overpass.

“Yahoo!”

“Hunting vampires and Corrupted too—killing two birds with one stone!”

They were riding boards fitted with engines, charging forward, armed with MP5Ks that looked more like plastic model kits than real weapons. However, perhaps because they had taken Psychedelic Moon, a dangerous gleam shimmered in their eyes. It was the unmistakable look of addicts. There were quite a few of them—around ten. Judging by the identical weapons they carried, they seemed to be one team.

“Greed-crazed bastards!”

Red-eyed Echelon spat the words as he charged at the hunters. But the vampire hunter at the front gripped the board’s controller in one hand, the MP5K strapped around his neck by a sling, and opened fire.

“Better than being crazy for blood!”

Drrrrrrr!

Firing a submachine gun one-handed would lower accuracy, but when spraying like that, even a vampire had little chance of avoiding it. Echelon transformed part of his body into a bat to evade the bullets, but even bats were not completely immune to gunfire. Silver rounds shattered the bat-transformed flesh and tore a massive, irreparable hole through his torso.

But Echelon was a berserker. If silver bullets were enough to make him retreat, he would never have charged at the hunters so recklessly.

“Gotta hell!”

He swung his arm widely at the vampire hunter charging in front. But the hunter ducked low, evading the swing, and continued spraying silver bullets with the submachine gun secured by only one arm and the sling. Echelon did not even look back and simply kept walking forward.

Crack!

The neck of the man who had just successfully slipped past Echelon snapped backward. A single strike! A blow so fast it was invisible to the eye had sliced through the vampire hunter’s throat.

Dududududu!

But immediately afterward, with the burst of gunfire, Echelon’s body was torn to pieces. These vampire hunters did not hesitate to fire even in chaotic close combat where friend and foe were mixed together. Echelon collapsed backward in a bloody heap and did not rise again.

“Krrgh!”

The vampire who had been crouched on the ground hurled himself into the river. Underwater, bullets were far less effective, while vampires did not lose their strength. If humans entered the water, he could simply tear them apart with his powerful grip.

“Hahaha! We caught ourselves a high-grade vampire!”

However, the hunters riding motorboards paid no attention to the vampire who had jumped into the water and instead began collecting Echelon’s blood. One of them, seemingly less accustomed to such work, kept an eye on the blood-soaked Corrupted and asked his comrades:

“What about the one who jumped into the river?”

“Like this.”

They pulled the pins on grenades and threw them toward the river. The vampire watching the surface from underwater heard the metallic sound of the pins releasing and screamed inwardly. Corrupted might be reckless bodies that rushed headlong into danger, but how could these vampire hunters even consider throwing grenades in the middle of Seoul? Even if it was dawn and traffic was light, no one who wasn’t blind and deaf could fail to hear the gunfire and explosions.

Ghk!

The vampire swam frantically to avoid the grenades—kicking off the riverbed and thrashing desperately toward deeper water. A grenade exploding underwater was far more lethal than one detonating in air. Unlike bullets, which lost power, water was a far superior medium for transmitting explosive force.

Boom!

With a thunderous blast, a column of water shot skyward.

The river surged upward into a towering white pillar. Past midnight, the only vehicles on Seoul’s streets were taxis speeding at 150 kilometers per hour. Even so, throwing grenades in the middle of the city was not something a sane person would do.

“Well then… it’ll float up soon enough. Should we toss a few more?”

“What about that one?”

A hunter who looked like a rookie pointed at the blood-soaked Corrupted. The others grinned.

“That guy’s a premium lure. Just let him loose and he’ll draw in high-grade vampires by the dozen. His bounty’s nice, sure—but collecting vampires is even better, isn’t it?”

A bearded middle-aged hunter spoke with glazed eyes as he pulled out a transmitter.

“We’ll stick this into him.”

The Corrupted lashed out in resistance, but those who had taken Psychedelic Moon dodged the attack with inhuman reflexes.

“Looks like we need to wear him down a bit more.”

Drrrrrr!

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the MP5K spat fire. The Corrupted Jeong Jun—who only days ago had been a human just like them, a fellow vampire hunter—was treated as worse than livestock.

After beating the Corrupted into a bloody mess, the hunters immediately implanted the transmitter into his body. Without any need for sutures, the wound regenerated instantly, embedding the device within him.

“He still hasn’t floated up?”

“Hmm. Maybe we should’ve thrown more grenades? Looks like he already got away.”

“That’s fine. If he brings his pack back for revenge, that works for us too, doesn’t it?”

“True enough.”

The vampire hunters muttered as they checked their magazines.

“Kraaaah!”

The Corrupted finally staggered to his feet and ran forward. He scrambled madly up the riverbank, leapt over the city expressway, and kept running.

“Puhahaha!”

“Let’s chase him.”

Mocking the fleeing Corrupted, the vampire hunters slowly pressed the accelerator switches of their motorboards.

But just as they entered the tunnel, they saw a trailer truck parked at its entrance. The exterior was flamboyantly painted like some kind of event vehicle, plastered with the faces of a trendy dance group.

Whiiing!

As befitting an event truck, its side panel lifted and opened. It appeared to be a kind of mobile stage vehicle. But a vehicle for that purpose would not be blocking the entrance to a public park at this hour.

Indeed, as the heavy trailer door opened, the first to emerge were fully armed vampires equipped with various firearms and Kevlar body armor. The two in front formed cover using body bunkers like those used by bomb disposal units, while the rest extended their weapons from behind. Among them was an RPG-7 launcher.

“Damn it!”

Drrrrrr!

The vampire hunters returned fire, but the MP5Ks were blocked by the body bunkers and dealt no damage. Instead, as the vampires began firing back, the hunters packed tightly into the narrow tunnel were instantly blown backward, blood and flesh spraying as they were hurled away.

Fweeeesh!

Then the RPG-7 roared to life. Firing it from inside a truck could cause dangerous backblast reflecting off the walls—but that was a concern limited to humans. The rocket flew through the tunnel, struck near the entrance, and exploded. Fragments from the anti-personnel OG5 rocket scattered in all directions, and thick dust filled the tunnel with choking smoke.

“Uaaagh!”

The vampire hunters, who until moments ago had been enjoying quite a bit of success against traditional vampires who fought only with their bodies and special abilities, were completely shattered in the face of such overwhelming firepower. The only advantage vampire hunters had over vampires lay in their weapons and equipment—but now these vampires had brought arms that surpassed the hunters’.

“Hehehehe!”

The vampires leapt down from the truck and rushed into the tunnel that resembled a battlefield.

“Uuugh!”

Any human still alive and groaning was struck without mercy. The sound was like kicking a soccer ball. The man who was kicked flew straight into the wall with a wet smack, his head splitting open. The vampires were so fast that it did not take long to finish the suppression. Once no more groans were heard, they began searching the bodies of the vampire hunters.

“There should be a transmitter. Found it?”

“This is it. FM format.”

“Good. Then how about a late-night snack?”

The leader of the vampires glanced around, then took out a blood pack recovered from the hunters’ bodies. The blood pack containing Echelon’s blood had been torn by bullets, but a considerable amount still remained. Like a nomad carefully squeezing the last few drops from a water skin, he cautiously drank the remaining blood, careful not to spill even a single drop.

The blood of a powerful vampire was an invaluable nourishment to their own kind. Killing and consuming a living vampire was condemned, and this too was condemnable—but if they were rational enough to fear criticism, they would not have fired an RPG-7 in the middle of the city.

Even so, perhaps even such an irrational vampire group had some hierarchy, as the others were busy tearing into the bullet-riddled bodies of the hunters.

Under the dim sodium lights inside the tunnel, the sight of modern-equipped vampires devouring humans could not be seen clearly. It almost felt like watching an old archival war film. Their meal scene went beyond grotesque—it was almost epic. Something that could be recorded as a documentary in its own right.

* * *

“Damn it. That fucking finder!”

Song Deok-yeon pounded on an innocent car. When he accidentally hit the horn and it blared, Se-gun beside him muttered with a pale face,

“Um… it’s not something we can find that easily, is it?”

“That’s exactly the problem!”

Muttering, they drove toward the Han River. At that moment, Sylvester signaled them to be quiet.

“Stay still. I smell blood!”

“What?”

Se-gun sniffed the air, but he could not smell anything. However, Song Deok-yeon, who absolutely trusted the True Vampire Hunter Sylvester, immediately took out an ampoule from his pocket.

It was a liquefied Psychedelic Moon stack prepared in advance for easy injection.

“……”

Se-gun silently watched Song Deok-yeon handling the syringe with trembling hands. Song Deok-yeon looked like someone shaking either from overwhelming gratitude—or overwhelming joy.

That expression where joy and fear coexisted. Seeing that reverent look, Han Se-gun frowned.

The drug they had to inject to confront vampires had, for some, ceased to be a means and had become the end itself.

Only ruined and broken souls became vampire hunters.

For such people, the exaltation and sense of liberation the drug gave was like sweet rain on parched land.

Even knowing it would lead them deeper into ruin—even fearing it—they revered it and rejoiced in it. It was not someone else’s story.

Han Se-gun himself had to inject it as well.

‘Let’s try the stack Bill Murray recommended.’

When he had previously used only Psychedelic Moon, the outlines of objects blurred and colors seemed to melt and run—literally psychedelic visuals. But with this stack, those effects were noticeably reduced.

“Fuck!”

As Se-gun felt his inner self turning violent under the drug’s influence, he spat out a curse. The moment the word left his mouth, a rush of heat flooded his body as if he had downed strong liquor. Startled by the surge, his body trembled violently. At that moment, Sylvester pointed into the darkness.

“There!”

Se-gun gasped when he saw what Sylvester indicated. A monster was climbing a small six-story building. Looking at it, it was impossible to believe it had once been human. Its enlarged forelimbs and the broad shoulders they were attached to, along with its melted, sagging outer skin—there was no trace of humanity left.

Its jaw jutted forward grotesquely, evolved into a shape perfect for biting people apart. What more needed to be said? Song Deok-yeon immediately turned the steering wheel to change direction—but at that moment, a massive truck brushed past their Pride first.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!”

Even by the standards of Song Deok-yeon, who could hardly claim to obey traffic laws, the truck was recklessly driving against traffic. But then Sylvester muttered in shock,

“They’re Hecate’s offspring?!”

“How can you tell?”

Se-gun asked reflexively, but quickly shut his mouth. A True Vampire Hunter would never bother explaining something like that.

“Should we pursue?”

Song Deok-yeon asked urgently, but Sylvester shook his head.

“They were wearing Kevlar. If they had bulletproof vests, they’d be carrying guns too… Fighting a city street battle against those types in the middle of town isn’t ideal.”

However, as they headed toward the ring road to turn the car around, Sylvester’s face hardened the moment he saw the remnants of urban combat still lingering at the tunnel entrance.

“Looks like they already fought a city battle ahead of us.”

“Tch, it’s been a long time since we pretended to be civilized modern citizens.”

Sylvester covered his face with one hand as he listened to Se-gun’s sarcastic remark.