Chapter 32 :

<32>

"Hmm."

The driver of the truck couldn’t help but feel intrigued by the car that had just passed him. It had sped by too quickly to observe closely, but the luggage crammed into the back seat and the faces of the three passengers lingered in his mind. At least two of them looked oddly relaxed, as if they had taken drugs, and in the front seat sat a silver-haired man in black clothes.

“Looks like a True Vampire Hunter?”

Sure enough, the Pride sedan made a U-turn at the turnaround where the tunnel came into view and immediately began following the truck. Chasing a vehicle even by driving against traffic meant it had an excessive interest in this truck—unless they simply enjoyed reckless driving in a Pride.

“Hey, we’ve got a tail. Take care of it.”

He issued orders to the vampires riding in the back through the radio. But before he even finished speaking, the rear tires burst all at once and the vehicle swerved sideways. The massive truck began to jackknife.

A jackknife refers to the phenomenon where the trailer swings sideways and folds at the coupling like a hinge. In Korea, trailer trucks are uncommon and the roads are not wide, so it is a rare occurrence that is difficult to cause deliberately. It was only possible because this was a wide road with little traffic at dawn.

“Damn it!”

When he turned around, a silver-haired priest in black clothes was standing atop the white Pride. It was astonishing enough that he stood on a moving vehicle, but somehow he had ripped off the car’s roof and was aiming a gun at the truck.

“True Vampire Hunter!”

The vampires shouted urgently as they opened the rear doors and thrust out their rifles. They raised body bunkers to block the counterattack, but the True Vampire Hunter absurdly hurled the circular chunk of torn-off car roof, piercing straight through the body bunker.

KWA-KWAK!

The vampire holding the body bunker was sent flying backward and impaled against the wall like a blade.

“You bastard!”

The vampires immediately tried to return fire, but at that moment the truck lurched forward and the jackknife straightened, preventing them from shooting. Firing inside the trailer—even with 5.56mm NATO rounds—would risk ricochet. But Sylvester gave an order to Se-gun.

“My Barrett!”

“Yes!”

As Se-gun handed up the rifle, Sylvester fired indiscriminately with the Barrett. The bullets tore through the trailer and struck the vampires. Lying prone inside, the vampires could only scream.

“Damn it!”

The truck with its blown tires continued spinning with a screech of friction. Sylvester set down the Barrett, grabbed his Claymore, and shouted to Deok-yeon.

“Hit the brakes for a moment!”

“What?”

Before the words even finished, Sylvester kicked off the Pride and leapt onto the truck. The force of the kick was so strong that the small Pride tilted dangerously, nearly overturning. In a single bound he landed atop the truck’s cab and thrust the Claymore downward.

Sskuk!

“Kraaaagh!”

Though thin, the Claymore was far from weak. It tore through the truck’s roof as if it were paper and pierced straight through the head of the vampire in the driver’s seat. The vampire standing in the passenger seat immediately tried to raise his rifle to counterattack, but Sylvester yanked the Claymore sideways from where it was embedded in the roof. With a horrific sound like fingernails scraping a chalkboard, the vampire’s arm was severed and the rifle fell from his hand.

Not merely stabbing the blade in, but dragging it to cut off an arm—it was an act beyond imagination.

“Die!”

Sylvester drew his Desert Eagle and rained bullets down from above. By the time the heads of the vampires in the cab burst grotesquely, the vampires in the trailer began to move. But the equipment seen beyond the body bunker earlier had all been standard-issue rifle grade.

“Go and catch the Corrupted already!”

Sylvester shouted at Deok-yeon, who was still hesitating. Of course Deok-yeon had thought the same, but when Sylvester had kicked off the Pride, the engine had stalled.

“Damn it! This junk car!”

As Se-gun irritably checked the firearms, Deok-yeon finally managed to restart the engine.

“Shut up! I’ll knock your teeth out!”

“Let’s hurry.”

“I’m going without you saying it!”

Deok-yeon swiftly drove off, avoiding the vampires. Leaving that many vampires to Sylvester was frightening, but against vampires equipped with bulletproof vests and body bunkers, the two of them—poorly armed—would not be much help.

Vroooom!

The Pride roared forward like a colt with its tail on fire. Confirming it, Sylvester immediately leapt down from the vehicle and headed toward the trailer’s exit. Though the truck was a special event vehicle with sides that opened, it could likely only be opened from the rear inside. But the rear doors were already open, and the vampires stood ready with their body bunkers.

“Well then, shall we see the skill of the much-rumored True Vampire Hunter?”

The vampires sneered, unable to suppress their anger after taking such losses. Sylvester merely shrugged at them.

Drrrrrrrk!

The vampires began pouring out gunfire. As if expecting it, Sylvester dropped flat, rolled beside the trailer, and slipped to the side in an instant. He moved to the blind spot on the opposite side of the vehicle—impossible to target from the ‘seated firing’ position of the vampires at the rear.

“Son of a bitch. Fast as hell!”

The vampires cursed and shifted to a prone firing stance. But Sylvester’s feet were already nowhere in sight.

“…….”

Skak!

In that moment, the priest in black leapt down over their heads. Simultaneously with the descent, his sharp blade swept through the neck of the vampire holding the body bunker.

“Khak!”

The prone vampire bounced up into a firing stance, but before he could act, Sylvester’s Ingram spat fire. Against vampires wearing Kevlar, using nothing but an Ingram seemed absurd.

Drrr-r-r-rk!

But the vampires were startled the moment they were hit. The bullets precisely targeted areas not protected by body armor—primarily arms and legs—causing immediate functional impairment. Vampires with regenerative abilities were not easily stopped even by silver bullets, yet a single hit left their arms immobile.

“It’s Cellular!”

One vampire screamed. While “cellular phone” might be the precise English term for what is commonly called a ‘handphone’, here “Cellular” referred to the nickname of synthetic celluloid rounds—special resin bullets wrapped in Teflon. Once lodged inside the body, they absorb thousands of times their own weight in water and transform into a gel. Because they are purely synthetic, they tend to rupture upon leaving the barrel and lose proper trajectory, so they are triple-coated with Teflon (commonly used by DuPont in frying pans) to prevent that.

When this material hardens inside the body, it blocks blood flow and causes necrosis of cellular tissue, demonstrating far greater power than silver bullets.

Skak!

Sylvester swung his claymore at the immobilized vampires. One vampire managed to raise his rifle to return fire, but Sylvester pushed the gun aside with his claymore.

Clack!

The ejection port struck another vampire’s body, forcibly causing a failure to eject. Despite the small trick he had just performed, Sylvester charged at the vampire with a strangely stiff—no, almost courteous—expression on his face.

“Ah!”

Even the vampires couldn’t help but admire that moment. In the sea of sodium lamps twisted like jaundiced light, before the swarm of neon glowworms, a silver-haired monster carried out a one-sided slaughter against this many vampires! To vampires so accustomed to death that their daily lives had become dry and desolate, was he not the most magnificent reaper?

Slash!

A head was severed and rolled across the asphalt.

* * *

Se-gun and Deok-yeon Song stood at the entrance of the building the Corrupted had climbed. Though it was dawn, the building had a PC café, so the doors were wide open and the noise fairly loud. Occasionally, someone leaned their upper body out the PC café window. Even if the main road wasn’t clearly visible from here, there had been gunfire and blades hacking things apart—not to mention the truck’s tires blown out and left in the street. It would be stranger if no one looked.

“Damn it. Instead of worrying about that, we’re the ones who stand out.”

“I said shut up.”

Shouting that, Deok-yeon sprinted up the stairs. A man who had stepped out briefly to smoke froze in shock at the sight of two armed men suddenly rushing up. Any average adult male in South Korea could distinguish a bulletproof vest as long as his eyes weren’t buttonholes.

Even if he didn’t know what a bulletproof vest was, the one Deok-yeon wore—with a Spectra whisker plate—was camouflaged in urban gray, clearly not ordinary clothing.

“W-what? Counter-Strike?”

As if to prove he was a gaming addict, the man muttered the name of a game. Se-gun and Deok-yeon pushed past him and went upstairs. In front of the rooftop access door, Deok-yeon took out a lock pick. A fire door wouldn’t open easily by shooting the handle with a handgun, and firing at a metal door could result in a ricochet that can kill you in a ridiculous way.

“Damn it, this won’t open.”

“Your hands are clumsy.”

“Shut up. If your hands work perfectly after shooting up, are you even human?”

“…….”

Se-gun thought briefly about Deok-yeon. A man with trembling hands trying to pick a lock—now that was absurd. So Se-gun shoved him aside and opened the door himself. As expected, the fire door opened relatively easily.

“Huh?”

“That was simple. You should’ve done it earlier.”

Though joking, Se-gun gripped his Tokarev tightly. When even vampires were using standard-issue firearms, stepping in front of a Corrupted with just two Tokarevs felt insane. Still, having Deok-yeon beside him was somewhat reassuring.

“It’d be nice if they gave us a secondary weapon. Or at least a shotgun…”

“Shut up.”

Deok-yeon spat the words coldly and leapt onto the rooftop. But the Corrupted was nowhere to be seen. It seemed to have climbed up and moved elsewhere.

“You fucking bastard.”

Cursing harshly, Deok-yeon scanned the surroundings. With his former comrade Jeong Jun turned into a Corrupted and now prey, nothing but curses came out.

From the low building, the late-night city resembled a flood of concrete. Modest buildings lined the main road, residential houses hidden behind them, distant car lights passing by—ominous night scenery crashing in like waves.

“…….”

Se-gun adjusted his grip on the Tokarev and surveyed the area. Then—

“There!”

Deok-yeon shouted, spotting a shadow leaping between buildings. Se-gun turned his head and saw the creature clinging to a building sign. Hanging from it like a gibbon, arms dangling long, the monster flexibly swung up to grab a terrace. As it climbed onto the roof of a small villa, a dog barked furiously.

“Damn. That’s pretty far.”

“I’ll stop its feet!”

“What?”

Se-gun looked at Deok-yeon's equipment with confusion. All he had was a shotgun and a handgun—how could he stop that vampire from fifty meters away? If it were an uninhabited area, he might risk firing a handgun, but this was a residential neighborhood. Yet before Se-gun finished thinking, Deok-yeon’s Colt .45 spat fire.

Bang!

Though it was a considerable distance for a handgun, the bullet pierced the vampire’s hand precisely. Taking Psychedelic Moon granted terrifying focus and eyesight—and Deok-yeon was intimately familiar with his weapon.

“Kraa!”

The Corrupted let out a pitiful scream and fell. Its body bore marks of gunfire from how much it had been harassed by other vampire hunters. As it crashed down, it painted the building wall red with blood. Startled by the sudden fall into the alley, stray cats wailed noisily.

“Haah!”

Deok-yeon leapt, grabbed a gas pipe, and slid rapidly down the building. Se-gun provided cover while scanning the area. In Se-gun’s view, no matter how strong Sylvester was, he couldn’t hold off that many vampires forever. He couldn’t afford to relax.

The moment he hit the ground, Deok-yeon switched to his shotgun and approached the Corrupted. The creature—once called Jeong Jun when human—immediately tore into the flesh of its leg and pulled out a Glock 18.

Boom!

But Deok-yeon reacted mercilessly. The instant the Corrupted drew the gun, he fired the shotgun at its arm. Flesh blasted away at once, exposing bone, and the Corrupted dropped the Glock.

“Kuaagh!”

“Tch!”

Deok-yeon picked up the fallen Glock and pulled the shotgun trigger once more. The Corrupted’s other hand, raised in a frantic attempt to strike him, was blown off and sent flying into the air.

Waaeeeee-ooo!

The police had arrived. At this hour of the night, sounding sirens didn’t so much clear the way to catch criminals as serve as a warning to the criminals that the police were coming.