The sun had set, shrouding a storage yard stacked high with shipping containers in darkness. It was one of Chairman Kim's hideouts, and a secret workshop supplying human flesh, just like the weekend ranch.

"Hah... hah... Goddammit...!"

Chairman Kim stood there panting. His face twisted, and his fists clenched tightly. A massive attack he could neither understand nor explain had stripped him of his forces in an instant, reducing him to a fugitive.

The ghouls he had gathered in the building's basement in preparation for a Special Response Section raid. His private soldiers, armed with guns. The collaborators he had lured in over the years with the promise of youth. Even his own flesh and blood, whom he had given grimoire copies and raised into magicians, lowly though they were.

... All of them were gone.

All he had left were a few subordinates who hadn't been in the building yesterday, a mistress who lived elsewhere and her child, and this little hideout.

"..."

Chairman Kim squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.

No... no! All that mattered was that he had survived!

He looked down at the dark-red-covered grimoire in his hand, <Cultes des Goules>.

Magic was what mattered. His losses were painful, but... he could rebuild his forces with magic. As for the Special Response Section hunting him, he could obtain <Mysteries of the Worm> later, switch bodies with forbidden magic, and assume a clean identity.

As that train of thought continued, Chairman Kim suddenly paused.

"...?"

Thinking of the Special Response Section had raised a question.

A subordinate beside him spoke.

"Those Special Response Section bastards have raided quite a few of our secret workshops lately. Good thing they haven't found this place."

Chairman Kim's face stiffened. He realized what had been troubling him.

Starting with the discovery of Weekend Farm, which Kim Miryeo had managed, all the other secret workshops had been raided. ... So why hadn't they discovered a few hideouts like this one? They weren't any harder to find or any less suspicious than the other workshops.

A chill ran through him.

That was it. They were traps meant to lure him in when he fled. He had walked straight into a cage.

The smell of gunpowder he had assumed came from his own men's weapons. The muffled footsteps steadily surrounding him.

Chairman Kim bared his teeth and clenched them hard.

"Fuck...!"

He immediately stretched out both arms, seizing the two subordinates on either side of him by their necks.

"Huh?"

He held them up in front of his body as meat shields.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!

Muzzle flashes erupted ahead, and gunfire rained down on Chairman Kim. Automatic rifles fired in continuous bursts, reducing the men he held before him to ragged chunks of flesh in an instant.

They saved him from fatal wounds, but couldn't stop everything. The hail of bullets battered through the fleshy punching bags.

"Graaagh!"

Several rounds, weakened but still moving, lodged in Chairman Kim's body.

Flashes poured out of the darkness.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!

Then the magazines ran empty. Faint smoke drifted from the muzzles during the brief lull.

As he reloaded, Team Leader Park of Special Response Section Team Five assessed the situation.

"...?"

Beastlike pupils gleamed between the mangled corpses in the dark.

"Shit! Open fire agai—"

THUD.

The two bullet-riddled corpses toppled forward. The operatives' eyes widened.

"...!?"

Like a stage magician hiding behind a sheet, only to vanish when it slipped down, Chairman Kim was nowhere to be seen.

But unlike a stage trick, this was no deception. It was the power of real magic.

"...!?"

One of the operatives, scanning frantically for the vanished Chairman Kim, looked up and flinched. Clouds obscured the moonlight on this dark night, and now another shadow fell over them.

Chairman Kim, who had leaped into the air, landed.

CRUNCH!

His massive, bestial arm smashed an operative's head, killing him.

Swollen muscles had torn through his clothes. His arms and legs had lengthened, with protruding, beastlike teeth and hard claws. He looked like an enormous hairless bear.

"Haaah..."

Yet the features of an old man remained on his face, lending him a grotesque appearance. A man-eating monster with a human face. Something like a manticore.

The smell of flowing blood excited him, forcing a surge of adrenaline. His body, enhanced by the power of <Cultes des Goules>, moved.

Both arms swept out simultaneously, slashing deep across the torsos of two startled operatives nearby.

"Urgh!"

SPLASH!

Their armor split, and blood spurted out.

At the sight, another operative aimed at Chairman Kim's back.

CRUNCH!

"Aaargh!"

Chairman Kim immediately bit into the shoulder of the operative before him and spun around, thrusting the man's colleague at him.

"...!?"

Then he closed in swiftly and slashed with his claws.

Seeing him burrow into their formation to avoid gunfire and use the operatives as shields, Team Leader Park shouted orders.

"Spread out! Scatter!"

He grimaced at the situation unfolding before him.

"Aaaaaargh!"

Chairman Kim wasn't simply killing them. He was creating wounded men, forcing the other operatives to worry about them. ... He intended to create an opening and escape.

'Shit! This is why you have to kill high-level magicians by surprise!'

The problem was that magicians at that level naturally took precautions against surprise attacks, whether by casting protective spells or transforming their bodies into monsters.

Just then, a calm voice came over Park's and the operatives' radios.

["Shin Sion, Team Three. Engaging with my sword."]

A low shadow raced past the operatives.

"Hoo..."

Exhaling, she gripped her sword with her enhanced body.

"...!"

Sensing danger behind him, Chairman Kim swung his arm swiftly, but Sion was faster. She leaped and flipped forward, her blade slicing smoothly through the air.

The markings on the Four-Tiger Sword, a blade for slaying evil, flashed. It severed Chairman Kim's enormous, transformed left arm.

THUD!

The arm, thick as a log, fell, and blood gushed from the stump.

"G-Graaagh..."

The instant Chairman Kim screamed at the pain spreading through him, Sion landed, twisted around, and fired a pistol in her left hand.

A pistol couldn't inflict much damage on his transformed body. That was why she aimed for his eyes.

BANG! BANG!

One of the bullets pierced his left eye. His ongoing scream grew louder.

"AAAAAARGH!"

Chairman Kim hurriedly shielded his face and body with his right arm and staggered backward. Park quickly took the opportunity to rally his operatives.

"Get the wounded to the rear! Prepare to fire!"

Panting harshly, Chairman Kim clutched his bleeding left-arm stump with his right hand.

"Hah... hah...!?"

He looked at the person who had done this to him through his remaining eye, and recoiled in surprise.

A little black-haired girl.

'What the hell...!'

Was she some master who had regained her youth, like those in the martial arts novels Ioannis had been reading lately? It was utterly ridiculous!

And yet... he really had lost his left arm and left eye in an instant.

"..."

The Four-Tiger Sword gleamed in the darkness. There were no openings.

Sion's composed face filled Chairman Kim with fear. No emotion showed. She simply watched him, sword and gun in hand, ready to finish him.

The operatives, having moved their wounded to the rear, aimed their rifles at him again.

Chairman Kim's face contorted.

"Shit... shit... shit...!"

If only he had his ghouls and private soldiers! If only his building hadn't been attacked!

He ground his teeth in frustration, then finally clutched his severed arm.

"Graaagh—Ioannis!"

He screamed his teacher's name.

"Ioannis! Ioannis! Ioannis!"

As the operatives puzzled over his sudden cries, a voice spoke.

"Hehe~ You could have asked for help from the start."

Sion hastily retreated.

"...!?"

Green flames blossomed beneath her feet.

WHOOSH.

The clouds obscuring the moon drifted past, revealing a blond vampire in the darkness with a massive sword strapped to his back. His blue eyes curved into crescents.

Hearing the name Ioannis that Chairman Kim had just shouted and seeing the face now revealed, Sion and Park widened their eyes. They had seen that name and face in their records.

The head of a vampire clan. The former commander of a Nazi vampire unit.

'Ioannis.'

Park stared at Ioannis's face and cried out in shock.

"The Nazi vampire...!?"

"T-Team Leader Park!"

One of the operatives spoke as he spotted the vampires who had surrounded them before anyone noticed.

Ioannis shrugged lightly at Park's cry.

"Why does everyone always call me the Nazi vampire?"

Looking at an operative aiming at him, he snapped his fingers.

"If you're going to use an old title—"

Green flames blossomed at his fingertips, and a fiery arrow shot forward.

"AAAAARGH!"

It burned the operative to death in an instant.

A product of Greek alchemy. Green flames rose like a boundary between the Special Response Section personnel: Greek fire.

Ioannis's blue eyes flashed.

"Call me the Alchemist of Constantinople."

Sensing the dire turn things had taken, Park reached for his radio. But a subordinate vampire swiftly approached, seized his arm, and twisted it while pressing down on his back.

"Stay still."

"Urgh!"

And so Park, too, shouted at the top of his lungs.

"D-Director! Director! You fucker! You said you were coming! Save me! Director!"

"... What are you talking about?"

Just as the vampire frowned:

VROOM! CRASH!

A motorcycle raced off the top of a container and dropped, its front wheel slamming into the vampire's face and sending him flying.

SCREEECH.

The motorcycle stopped, leaving tire marks on the ground.

"Whew... sir."

Shin Doryong, director of the Bureau of Anomalous Phenomena Countermeasures and Sion's father, frowned at Park.

"Director, sir. Show some respect, you little shit."

Park had been reaching for his radio to check where he was. With the situation already looking grim, he had requested the director's support beforehand.

Shin Doryong dismounted and faced the vampires. And beside him, a book floated in the air.

Sion narrowed her eyes at the sight.

Alongside <Donguibogam>, it was the other grimoire in the Bureau's possession. But it was classified as a grimoire only because it held supernatural power and was a book. It wasn't an object related to magic.

After all... even its title was...

<Muyedobotongji>

One vampire blinked at the grimoire suspended in the air and spoke.

<Muyedobotongji>

The moment a vampire looked at the floating grimoire:

"... Is that?"

SLASH!

Blood dripped from the tip of the crescent-bladed polearm in Shin Doryong's hands, and a nearby vampire's head immediately fell.

THUD.

The vampires' eyes widened. They hadn't seen the stroke that severed his neck. But... a crescent-bladed polearm? Where had it come from?

"Get in close!"

Despite their shock, the vampires used their numbers to surround Shin Doryong and close in. But he discarded the polearm and simply murmured:

"Twin swords."

SWISH!

The pages of <Muyedobotongji> fluttered, launching two identical swords. Shin Doryong caught them and turned his wrists.

"...?!"

The blades moved in a dazzling flurry, slicing off the vampires' limbs and heads.

<Muyedobotongji> could store and release weapons. As a martial arts manual, it also explained how to use them, but its owner had to study and master the techniques personally.

That was the extent of its abilities. It had no others. Weapon storage was useful, of course, but it didn't make its owner stronger in its own right.

For Shin Doryong, however, that was enough.

He cut down the approaching vampires in an instant.

"..."

Shin Doryong and Ioannis faced each other in a standoff.