Chapter 7 — An Audience With The Vampires (4)

They had been sealed off whole inside a pocket-space that had completed its shift into the Other Realm, cut clean away from the present world.
That much could be read from the sky overhead, where the evening glow was gone, darkness drawn across it, the heavens now a dim blood-red.

“It’s gone full night out here.”
“Don’t be ignorant. It’s not night, it’s only that the light’s being blocked. The vampires’ barrier sorcery.”
“Either way… you’re saying those things are going to be even stronger now than they were a moment ago?”

The examinees, faces taut with tension, kept stealing glances at Lt. General Yun and the sorcerer detachment he led.
The pack of vampires that had been hurling itself at the party to the death had vanished from sight the instant the group fully entered the Other Realm, and the examinees had no idea what they were supposed to do next.

The feel of this is rather different from what I experienced in the Specter Realm.

Shin Hweein narrowed his brow and looked about, but all he could confirm was that every feature of reality had been wrung and warped into a piece of the Other Realm.
The wide-open warehouse yard had vanished without a trace.
The shipping containers that had stood in neat rows along one side were collapsed and heaped at random now, blocking the line of sight and craftily carving out several forking paths, forcing everyone present to divide and move.

The handiwork, of course, of the vampire who ruled this Other Realm.

To refuse the opponent’s play and try to smash the containers down only left their side the worse for it.
The vampires could raise such a thing at a cost of one; for the party to break it would cost ten.
The textbook response was to husband one’s strength as far as possible, advancing and searching until they found the heart of the Other Realm, which was to say the vampire chieftain.
Trying to break the environment itself could wait until everything else had been tried and failed.

It would seem the operation has taken hold cleanly enough. I can sense that the one they call the deputy is inside this Other Realm. And he… is most likely sensing my presence as well.

The fellow would not flee. Never.
Together with the great heap of presents that had arrived alongside Shin Hweein, the deputy would set about unwrapping them one by one, searching for where Hweein might be.
When exactly he was found out would, of course, depend on how formidable the transformation art he had learned from Geum Moa proved to be.
Or perhaps it would run the other way, and Lt. General Yun would track the deputy down and kill him first.

“Right, then. From here we split the unit.”

By the time Shin Hweein came back from his thoughts, the General had finished working sorcery on a captured vampire to wring information out of it, and was issuing precisely that order.

“S-, split, sir? But you said we’d use the vampires to scout the route…”
“There are not many sorceries that work like a precision radar. You can only get a rough heading at best. So we search every path that runs in that heading and close in on him by encirclement.”
“And we…?”
“The examinee group splits in two, and I’ll assign one of my men to each. The branching paths are only going to multiply, so you move in exact accordance with their instructions.”

It was more or less what they had expected, but the examinees seemed unmistakably frightened by the fact that they would have to move apart from Lt. General Yun, the one indisputable powerhouse on the field.
And yet there was no opposing it.
Once you were inside an Other Realm, you couldn’t even escape back to the present world without first resolving its cause.
With more than half the examinees dead from the opening explosion and the fighting just past, banding together to refuse would have been meaningless anyhow.
Anyone whose head still turned at all had long since given up on distinguishing himself and was focused only on getting out alive.

Did the deaths of these people truly hold any worth, in the end…?

The thought no sooner surfaced than Shin Hweein scoffed at it himself.
How could there possibly be worth in dying and being gone.
Worth lay in surviving.
In surviving, and clutching something, anything, and carrying it home, one could at last lay hold of worth.
For these people that thing would be money, a stable job, perhaps fame.
For Shin Hweein it was life itself.

From here on, I had best assume that fellow could appear at any moment and prepare accordingly.

Splitting the company to make it easier to deal with: that, surely, was the deputy’s gambit.
Shin Hweein remained confident, of course, that he himself had not yet been found out, but the vampire side was no fool either, and would be rating high the chance that he was among the examinees.
And yet the examinee group was being split in two, with a single sorcerer from the detachment assigned to watch and escort each half?
Even setting aside Shin Hweein’s existence, weren’t they the first group anyone would clean up?

…

Once the examinees had been split into two groups, Shin Hweein watched the bespectacled officer pick out two members of the detachment and dispatch them, trading a rather candid look with each.
They understood that their role was to be the net that carried the bait and moved.

“We’ll be going with that group.”
“Hm?”

Unable to bear what he saw any longer, Father Lucas finally opened his mouth.
Lt. General Yun did not so much as glance back at him, but the bespectacled officer, who had been gauging Shin Myeongin’s reactions for some time now, was internally on guard against the tall, handsome priest, and reacted at once to his voice.

“Ah, you lot can move along with us, that’s fine.”
“No. For the sake of balancing the strength even a little, this is the right call.”

The priest strode over and stopped close to Shin Hweein, at which Sister Barbara, naturally, gave a sigh and joined him.
Meanwhile Do Yumi, who to this very moment still couldn’t understand why she was even here, sent over an incredulous look as if to ask whether she too was supposed to go with that group, and at last, wearing the expression of a sinner being dragged down to hell, fell in behind them.

“Oh, then us too!”
“You can’t! …Ahem. Myeongin, you’ll move with your big bro. This is presumed to be an Other Realm made by a high-rank vampire. Wandering off on your own here would be dangerous.”

He hadn’t dared restrain the priest’s party, but the moment Shin Myeongin tried to follow the priest as well, the bespectacled officer hastily cut in to stop her.
Shin Myeongin only recoiled at his words and shot back.

“What’re you on about. I’m not here to be escorted, I’m here to help with the operation, okay? And besides, Father Lucas is someone I brought along. There’s no way I’m moving separately from him.”
“All the same, your standing is different from theirs—!”

The bespectacled officer caught himself just barely before raising his voice, and shot Lt. General Yun a look that begged for rescue.
The General eyed him with an expression of utter exasperation, then let out a low sigh and said,

“Shin Myeongin. You agreed to follow my orders, did you not? You’ll move with the main body. You haven’t been granted the authority to act on your own yet.”
“Then Father Lucas too should come with us—!”
“No, that I have no intention of stopping. These are practitioners recognized by the State. Though if they break from our control and get themselves killed, that’s no concern of mine.”

Lt. General Yun glanced toward the priest as if giving him one last chance to reconsider, but the priest, without so much as a look back at him, declared,

“Of course, should I die here, it would only be in accordance with the Lord’s will. The Vatican will raise no complaint either.”
“That’s just your take on it, Lucas, you damned fool…!”

Sister Barbara was cursing the priest under her breath, but mercifully her voice was drowned out by the dismayed Shin Myeongin’s, and never reached the main body.

“Aaah, Father…”
“Um. Uncle Jinseong. Then would it be all right if I supported the other side? I just earned my second-rank mu-gyeok license a little while back.”
“Already? Quick work.”

At Ham Seoyeon’s cautious question, Lt. General Yun put on a startled look, then nodded.

“At that level, you ought to be able to look after yourself anywhere. Even so, take care. If you get hurt, it’s me who gets a tongue-lashing from old Lord Hwiho.”
“It’s fine, I’m super strong. Then… Myeongin, I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Whaaat? If even Big Sis goes, I’ll be completely alone.”

As Shin Myeongin pulled a sulky face, Ham Seoyeon whispered to her on the shaman’s gift, pitched so that only she should hear, and yet that voice somehow carried as far as Shin Hweein’s ear too.

— I’m sorry. But you can’t keep dodging him forever, can you? Show that man with your attitude what you mean.

“Ugh… fine.”

Once Shin Myeongin was left alone in the group, the bespectacled officer began turning a notably more open gaze on her.
He was no doubt a Yun House man.
To Shin Myeongin, whose face had set itself in resolve at the sight of him, Ham Seoyeon flashed the smallest possible smile and made her way off to support the other examinee group.

The examinees, who had naturally been wearing dying-man expressions, were on the verge of cheering at the news that a competent, and pretty, second-rank ability-user was coming to their aid.
Watching, Shin Hweein sighed inwardly.

— Ham Seoyeon, are you in your right mind? You know perfectly well this operation is a fine chance to get on good terms with the Yun House, not to mention my own. Have you not noticed that Yun Jinseong means to use the examinees as consumables?

No. Sighing inwardly would have been quite enough, but unable to leave it there, he ended up meddling in her business after all.

— What, is that you, Shin Hae? Since when do you have that kind of high-grade mind-speech…

Ham Seoyeon turned her face Shin Hweein’s way, and seeing him refuse to so much as look at her, replied in a voice gone slack with resignation.

— Of course I noticed. That’s why I’m doing this. There’ll be plenty of chances to build goodwill with the Yun and Shin Houses later, but if those examinees die here, that’s the end of it.
— They are adults, and they offered themselves for the qualification trial of their own accord. They came in fully aware of the chance of death. You, on the other hand, surely your hands are full enough looking after yourself?
— Aah, I don’t care. The General supports me too, you know! …And besides, the Shin House I don’t know about, but won’t the Yun House like this all the better? Look, over there that man is taking his chance to crowd in on Myeongin while he can.

Ah well. Athena was the goddess of justice too, after all, so naturally it would come to that…

Having gathered from the answer that came back that Ham Seoyeon hadn’t a trace of real regret in her, Shin Hweein wondered briefly whether she had not made her choice in order to get away from Shin Myeongin for a little while at least, but decided not to bother asking.

— And while you started it, let me say this: weren’t you originally going to just blend in and ride it out yourself? You stood out enormously back there, you know?
— …I did?
— Yes! Firing flame-shots that big in rapid succession like rifle volleys was already astonishing, but then that barrier of fire? That was unique sorcery itself, in pure form. No one among the examinees was putting on a performance like yours.
— Hardly. That was not exactly unique sorcery, and… it should not have stood out that greatly.
— Hmph, Uncle Jinseong was watching you with a face like he wanted to just sweep you up and give you a kiss, you know? Once this operation’s over, you’re absolutely getting offered a military post.

Surely not.
If the man had been that taken with him, there was no way he would have sent him out with the other examinees who were being treated as consumables.
He wanted to believe Yun was still only mildly interested.

— Anyway, you watch yourself. Things here are seriously not normal. You’ve already piled up more than enough points to pass at Rank Three, never mind Rank Four, so from here on out keep your head as low as possible.
— On this side there is no problem. It is you who should mind yourself.
— Yeah right, I’m super strong.

With a snort for an answer, Ham Seoyeon led the way as her examinee group chose one of the forking paths and advanced.
Shin Hweein’s group set off at almost the same instant.

Once they were on the move, Father Lucas tried to drift over toward Shin Hweein, moving with such unsubtle conspicuousness that he seemed to believe nobody around could possibly notice, and was promptly restrained by Sister Barbara.
Shin Hweein turned a look of pure exasperation on him, decided it would be best not to address the man at all for the duration of this operation, and planted his staff.

A voice that belonged to no one in his line of sight reached his ear.

— I’m tagging along too, of course, young master.
— Good. So long as it doesn’t go against the Three-Year Pact, I leave it in your hands.

Geum Moa, even from what she had revealed within the Shin House alone, was being assessed as a First-Rank sorcerer in her own right, though one had to account for the fact that part of that high evaluation owed to her remarkable stealth.
The only time Shin Hweein had actually seen her use offensive sorcery was, in effect, in the Specter Realm, when she had worn Hoa’s face and handled flame, and almost never besides.
For that reason he had no real sense of where she drew her own line of restraint, but that she was a reliable asset, of that there was no doubt.

— By the way, young master, you and that Ham girl were having a fairly pleasant chat, weren’t you?
— Eavesdropping again? Before long I’ll have to refine my mind-speech. …Though, hearing such nonsense from you, I am reassured to find you didn’t manage to overhear it properly after all.
— Truly, young master! It felt to me like a young man and woman whose relations are progressing along quite smoothly!
— Drivel. As I’ve thought before, Moa, you have a tendency to overestimate me in strange directions.

Trading idle nothings with Geum Moa as they walked, the company had at some point passed fully into the inner depths of the path.
The shipping containers stacked themselves higher and higher in real time, cutting off any chance of crossing to a side passage and even sealing off the rear, so that retreat became impossible.

A few of the examinees noticed it and went pale with fear, but Father Lucas, quietly making his prayer, said,

“I have followed steadfastly the way of Your decrees, and on Your path my foot has not wavered. O Lord, I cry out to You, for I know You will answer me. …Everyone. The Lord will look after us. So too will Saint Joseph of Cupertino.”

There was no one in that place who could ask him who Saint Joseph of Cupertino was.
That he was the patron saint of examinees, Shin Hweein would only learn somewhat later.

“They’re coming!”

The one who cried the warning was Sister Barbara.
Even as the party was hemmed in on all sides by containers stacked impossibly tight to keep it from moving, those things came on brazenly, smashing straight through the containers to fall upon the company.

“Respond!”

The detachment sorcerer leading the company shouted that much without a single concrete order, and then, first thing, threw up a sorcery to protect his own person.
His offensive sorcery was the bare minimum; instead he had his spirit-eye opened as wide as it would go to inspect the vampires for any sign of a higher-rank specimen, plain as the sky.
Watching this display of utter shamelessness, the examinees had already given up on the man and were clustering together among themselves, or more precisely, around the priest.

“O Lord, contend with those who contend with me; fight with those who fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and rise up to my aid. Draw spear and javelin against those who pursue me; bar their way.”

Shin Hweein remembered Father Lucas saying before that, given the room to recite a prayer, he could put down low spirits and the like in any number.
The last time, the man had failed even to manage that, toppled over by mere goblins, and Shin Hweein had decided not to bank on the priest personally; but watching him now, things weren’t quite that way after all.

“They shall be as chaff before the wind, and the angel of the Lord shall drive them on. Their way shall be dark and slippery, and the angel of the Lord shall pursue them…”

— Kyieeeeeeek!

— S-, somebody stop that! He’s trying to kill every last one of us!

The priest’s loud voice did not end as loudness alone.
Each time he chanted a verse of prayer in that ringing voice, a coolness and freshness palpable even to Shin Hweein swept across the area, breathing life into their own side and inflicting tremendous harm on the vampires.
So much so that even the detachment sorcerer scanning for high-rank vampires faltered and turned to look at him.

“If you want to carry that devil around inside you and still stay in one piece, you have to know how to handle at least that much holy power, you see.”

At the woman’s voice that came from right beside him, Shin Hweein turned his head to find that at some point Sister Barbara had drawn close to his side.
Worrying about whether someone else’s eye might fall on them, Shin Hweein replied,

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay by the priest’s side?”
“Of course I’m keeping watch. But more than that, it feels like I ought to be keeping an eye on you.”

Without the slightest intention of hiding her wariness toward Shin Hweein, she went on,

“Our Lucas has a rather soft heart, but his eye for people is better than most. For a man like that to have let his guard down completely with you, of all people, that, right there, is suspicious.”
“And what’s the connection between finding me suspicious and putting a cigarette in your mouth?”
“Yup.”

Drawing the electronic vape that hung at her neck up to her lips and exhaling smoke with a peeeeeeee sound, she answered,

“This vape liquid? It’s actually made from special-grade consecrated water that reveals the true nature of evil things and weakens them. Couldn’t be bought for ten thousand pieces of gold.”
“How does a mere nun come by such a thing?”
“It means I’m rather well-regarded back in the Vatican, despite appearances. Also why I’m paired with that idiot Lucas. And right now, it means I can see your true colors too. Quite something, isn’t it.”
“Hah. To think I was being denied even the courtesy of human treatment.”

When Sister Barbara, on purpose, blew a long fwoo of vapor in his direction, Shin Hweein let out a soft laugh and waved it off with his hand.
A woman whose rudeness and impertinence beggared belief that she was a nun.
That said, what she’d had to say was at least worth hearing.

“You heard that too, did you?”

— Kyuing.

“Eh? Where’s that coming from just now—?”
“It said it would be taking its due for the rudeness.”

The moment Shin Hweein’s eyes settled into a chill, her electronic vape was crushed flat with a sharp krack.

“Aa——?!”

The liquid that started to leak from the smashed cartridge was sucked clean into the empty air, every last drop, and Sister Barbara, struck down before she could so much as move, glared at Shin Hweein with a face full of helpless fury.
Then she met his utterly ordinary-looking face and, for reasons she herself could not say, stopped her motion mid-action.

Shin Hweein said,

“I’ll let this pass, just this once. From now on, do not blow cigarette smoke into the face of a person.”
“…Right. I overreached, that’s the long and short of it. Awfully sorry about that, young master!”

Sister Barbara ground her teeth and moved away from him.
Having driven off this manners-less smoker, Shin Hweein watched her go, and could not for the life of him keep a smile from rising at the corner of his mouth.

“How was it?”

— Kyuing! Kyu-iing!

“Good. Tasty, was it. Excellent.”

Special-grade consecrated water, water powerful enough to suppress even the aura of one as mighty as Zer.
What a splendid performance Arong would put on after swallowing that; already he could hardly bear the anticipation.