Ch.135Chapter 135 – Vampire (6)

Beneath the clouds, Zeus hummed a tune as she slipped her phone into her pocket.

“Great, so it’s my time to shine now, huh?”

Below her feet, about four kilometers down on the ground, soldiers were moving busily. Soon, fog covered the ground like smoke, obscuring the soldiers from view, but Zeus calmly watched the gate—the farthest point from the source of the fog, where it was thinnest.

With her sharp S-class senses, she could vaguely feel the presences on the ground intertwining and tangling. Though the commotion might have distracted others, Zeus kept her focus entirely on the gate, like an experienced angler waiting for fish to take the bait.

After patient waiting, there was a bite. Seeing a presence approaching the gate unnoticed by anyone else, Zeus’s lips curled upward. Dark clouds gathered around her right index finger, rumbling with thunder.

“Finally found you.”

Zeus lowered her finger. Lightning struck.

***

“ARGH!”

The vampire screamed as ultra-high voltage electricity pierced his thigh. The shock would have instantly incinerated the vital organs of an ordinary demon, but the vampire, being an experienced fiend, made a split-second decision.

Just before losing consciousness from the shock, the vampire’s body barely managed to split into a swarm of bats. Before another attack could come from that undetectable position, the bats hurriedly flew toward the gate.

‘Urgh, if even just one can pass through the gate…!’

But the vampire’s hopes weren’t so easily fulfilled. The lightning bent at impossible angles and wrapped around the gate like iron bars. The bats screeched and quickly changed direction, but about a dozen couldn’t overcome their momentum. They crashed into the electric fly swatter like mosquitoes, burning to ash.

“So crossing the gate was your objective after all?”

As the vampire’s consciousness wavered from the critical damage, a chilling voice pierced through. The vampire recognized the voice.

‘That lightning wielder who persistently chased me in England! That woman followed me all the way here…!’

Having infiltrated among humans to complete his investigation, he knew she was one of the superhumans called S-class. There was no chance of winning a direct confrontation. He had to escape first. The clustered bats dispersed and hid in the fog.

“Think you’ll escape this time too?”

Zeus landed on the ground with a brilliant flash of lightning and deployed her skill. Electric currents gathered in the air, forming lightning streams that tightly surrounded the checkpoint area. The chain-like lightning rippled like a net, scorching any flying insects trying to pass through. It was a cage of lightning from which no one could escape.

‘The escape route!’

The vampire felt his option to retreat had vanished. He couldn’t return to the underground passage either. The holy knight would still be blocking the way there.

He needed to pretend to fight Zeus while somehow creating an opening to pass through the gate. But first, he needed to recover his body.

“Huh? Something on my neck… Gah, gack!”

“Huurgh…”

The bats flying through the fog each landed on human necks and began sucking blood. Just as mosquitoes inject anesthetic before biting humans, the vampire’s blood-sucking was preceded by the injection of hypnotic substances, leaving the victims unable to resist.

After recovering magical energy through blood-sucking, the bats regrouped and returned to human form. The vampire immediately used his recharged magical energy to cast blood magic. The fog condensed sharply into needle shapes and targeted Zeus’s blind spot.

“Hmph! Such sloppy magic manipulation!”

Zeus snorted and wiggled her fingers. The magical energy flowing from her fingertips enveloped the fog needles and cut off the vampire’s magical control. The needles lost their cohesion and dispersed back into fog.

Zeus didn’t stop there and attempted a counterattack. She couldn’t use large techniques because of the people around. Although Zeus’s skills were exceptional among S-class for their destructive and wide-area attacks, they easily involved bystanders. Lightning naturally liked to jump in unwanted directions.

‘And the Association Director told me to capture him alive if possible… Control, control!’

Zeus’s slender body crackled and then blurred instantaneously. Before the second hand could tick once, she had already reached the vampire’s face. To the vampire, it looked as if she had used teleportation. Just before the palm crackling with high-voltage electricity covered his face, the vampire panicked and dispersed his body into bats.

“Running away again…! How annoying!”

Dodging the light beams spreading in all directions, the vampire realized he could never defeat Zeus. Not only could he not win, but he couldn’t even establish a proper fight with her.

“Huh? What?”

Just then, the vampire spotted a soldier. One confused soldier who hadn’t yet grasped the situation due to the sudden appearance of superhumans and the incomprehensible battle. He was blinking his eyes and pinching his cheek as if unsure whether this was a dream or reality.

The vampire appeared behind that slow-witted soldier. Before Zeus could respond, the vampire had already returned to human form with his sharp nails piercing the soldier’s artery.

“You…”

Zeus glared at the vampire who had taken a hostage. Zeus was weak against hostage situations. It wasn’t just because of her skill’s characteristics. Despite having powerful skills, she was still a minor, and her mind wasn’t cold enough to risk a hostage’s life in such a situation.

‘If I use lightning, that soldier will be in danger too. But if this guy crosses over to Eden from here, I’ll never be able to catch him…’

Zeus hesitated at the crossroads of decision. The vampire, having finally succeeded in stopping Zeus, made a gesture with a vile, victorious smile. The meaning was obvious. He was telling her to let him pass through the gate.

“Tch…”

“AAAGH! Hnngh! P-please!”

When Zeus hesitated, the nails pressed harder into the soldier’s neck. Faced with the soldier’s plea of pain, Zeus’s will to resist crumbled like a sand castle. She let out a frustrated groan and stepped aside.

Hiding behind his meat shield and wary of Zeus’s movements, the vampire backed toward the gate. Zeus shot him a hate-filled glare but couldn’t stop him. Just as the vampire’s lips bloomed into a vile smile, certain of his victory—

“Where are you rushing off to?”

“—!”

A hand suddenly emerged from beyond perception and firmly grabbed the vampire’s arm. When? The vampire flinched in surprise and quickly turned to face the being who had approached by deceiving his senses.

There stood the holy knight. Shin Jaehyuk, who had approached using Sabah’s stealth technique.

“If I hold you like this, you can’t transform into bats, right?”

Ignoring the faint headache that still throbbed, Shin Jaehyuk smiled fiercely. Then he chanted a spell.

“Heal with the light of mercy.”

Sensing danger, the vampire’s nails instinctively dug into the hostage’s neck. But the catastrophe the vampire hoped for didn’t happen. The healing light repaired the wounds faster than the vampire’s nails could penetrate. Instead, the vampire’s fingers burned away in the holy power.

The vampire struggled to break free from Shin Jaehyuk’s grip, but Shin Jaehyuk wouldn’t let go of his arm. Soon, holy power gathered in Shin Jaehyuk’s other palm.

“Mosquitoes are weak against clapping hands.”

“W-wait!”

Seeing the swirling holy power, the vampire’s already pale face grew even paler. Despite the vampire’s desperate protest, the palm strike infused with holy power was driven into the vampire’s abdomen.

“GUHACK-!!”

The penetrating strike, once used to finish off Ryu Chang-geun, the former leader of the Black Death Faction, was now unleashed with even more powerful holy energy. The sacred current, rippling like waves, churned through the vampire’s insides, which were stained with demonic energy. The vampire vomited a quantity of blood that would have killed an ordinary person instantly, then went limp.

The situation ended in an instant. Zeus, with eyes as round as a rabbit’s, asked in bewilderment:

“Is he dead?”

“I controlled my strength. We need to capture and interrogate him, right? I avoided vital spots, so he’ll recover soon.”

Shin Jaehyuk answered while burning the blood on his hands with holy power.

“By the way, sorry. I was late joining you because of an unexpected injury in the underground passage.”

“…No, thanks to you, we were able to catch him off guard. I almost put us in danger by underestimating him. I knew he wasn’t an ordinary monster, but a hostage situation… Isn’t slaughter a monster’s instinct?”

Zeus was belatedly flustered by this unfamiliar type of monster. According to her experience, monsters typically went berserk at the sight of humans, and while boss monsters maintained their reason, they still rampaged with the goal of killing humans.

But the vampire acted cunningly, as if his goal wasn’t to kill as many humans as possible but to cross through the gate. He even used unexpected tactics like taking a hostage.

“He’s a fiend called a vampire. A being who made a contract with a high-ranking demon and transcended humanity. That’s why his fixation on killing is weaker than a demon’s.”

“Vampire… sounds like a monster from a fantasy novel.”

“Y…yeah.”

Shin Jaehyuk pressed his fingers between his eyebrows. The occasional headache that kept returning was bothering him.

‘What is this? This headache…’

While Shin Jaehyuk was confused by the mysterious headache, Yu Jin, who had been hiding in a corner as the commotion subsided, came running over.

“Senior… is it over?”

“Yes. He’s been neutralized.”

“Th-thank goodness…”

Yu Jin staggered as if her legs had given out along with the tension. Shin Jaehyuk caught and supported her.

As the vampire lost consciousness, the fog disappeared, and soldiers who had awakened from hypnosis were guiding confused civilians. Zeus put awakener handcuffs on the vampire and slapped his cheeks repeatedly.

“Hey! Wake up.”

“I-isn’t it dangerous to wake him up?”

Yu Jin startled as Zeus tried to wake the vampire they had just knocked unconscious. Zeus reassured her with a confident smile.

“Earlier I couldn’t use my power because of the hostage, but in a place with two S-class, a mere A-class can’t do anything.”

“Two…”

Yu Jin glanced at Shin Jaehyuk with a newfound expression. Then, as if belatedly embarrassed, her face reddened, and she timidly grabbed Shin Jaehyuk’s sleeve.

“S-senior… about what happened at the Eiffel Tower…”

“Ah! He’s responding to the electricity. Should I try a bit harder? Yap, yap!”

Just then, Zeus, who had been poking the vampire with crackling electricity on her fingers, signaled that the vampire had regained consciousness. Under the continuous electrical torture, the vampire’s body had instinctively drawn up magical energy to recover.

“Urgh… Where…”

As the vampire groggily regained consciousness and discovered himself bound in handcuffs with two superhumans looking down at him, he instinctively tried to transform his body. But Zeus wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice.

“Hya!”

Zeus released electricity with a playful tone. A delicate streak of lightning from her fingertips scorched various parts of the vampire’s body—the locations of key cells responsible for splitting his body and transforming into bats.

“Heheh, I’ve already figured out how it works. It won’t work anymore.”

With the key cells for body transformation scorched, the vampire’s transformation naturally failed. Despite groaning in pain from the electrocution, the vampire didn’t stop glaring at Shin Jaehyuk.

“You dog of Eloah… You keep interfering with me until the end. Without even knowing our cause!”

“Hmm, just as our Association Director predicted, he can speak. But what’s he babbling about… Is this demon language?”

Zeus curiously observed the vampire cursing in an unfamiliar language. Shin Jaehyuk, who knew Eden’s common language, translated the vampire’s words.

“It’s Eden’s common language. He’s angry about why we’re interfering with him.”

“Wow, you know Eden’s language?”

“I’ve visited Eden before. A little.”

Leaving Zeus impressed behind him, Shin Jaehyuk continued to press the vampire.

“You mentioned a ’cause,’ so you clearly have some scheme. Explain in detail.”

“…Heheh. You won’t get anything out of me, holy knight.”

When Shin Jaehyuk asked, the vampire firmly closed his mouth, refusing to answer further. Shin Jaehyuk sighed. In his past life as an inquisitor, he had often encountered such types. And he was familiar with how to deal with them.

Just as Shin Jaehyuk was about to draw upon his holy power, Zeus intervened.

“Wait, let me do it. I have an effective technique.”

Zeus placed her hand on the vampire’s skin and closed her eyes. Simultaneously, her energy perception began to narrow. As her perception area narrowed, it became as precise as a microscope. So detailed that she could examine individual cells. With extraordinary concentration, Zeus could distinguish the capillaries, muscle fibers, and lymphatic vessels beneath the vampire’s skin.

“Found it.”

Zeus murmured quietly. A bundle of nerves caught her consciousness—the sensory organs governing pain. In the microscopic world invisible to the naked eye, a spark flashed.

“———!!!!”

The vampire opened his mouth wide and drooled as transcendent pain shot up his spine. The electrical signal precisely striking the pain nerves. The signal, far exceeding the threshold of normal pain that humans could endure, rushed to the cerebrum, making his mind feel like it was being bleached white.

When the vampire finally remembered how to breathe and speak again, the first words that spasmodically burst from his mouth were pleas that bordered on screams.

“I-I’ll cooperate. P-please…”