Chapter 7 — An Audience With The Vampires (8)

When Shin Hweein came back to himself, a sofa and a table had been laid out before his eyes, and passably elegant ones at that.

“Why don’t you sit. Neither of us has time.”

A handsome man sat on the sofa opposite, legs crossed, somehow giving off an air of grace even with blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.
It was the very same man who had spoken to him once before, the first time he had ever curse-absolved a suggestion-curse.

“This is a surprise, truly.”

Bleeding heavily from his own chest and abdomen, Shin Hweein nonetheless arranged a forced composure, took his seat, and faced the man.

“So this much, too, your authority can manage?”
“Naturally. Since I drew on my own true blood for it, this much is well within range. Ya, but more to the point, you really had me astonished, my friend. Where on earth did you get hold of such a fearsome power? That, yes. That one.”

The man pointed at the Indulgence that had appeared at some point upon Shin Hweein’s hand, and laughed with a put-upon look.

“I never imagined you’d tear so much out of my power, and so cleanly. I swear it, a first in all my vampire days! Hahaha!”

The Indulgence had drunk down every drop of blood that Shin Hweein and Leon Blade had spilled, and at some point it was back to its pristine state.
It was no trick of the imagination but plainly so: the aura it gave off was mightier now than before.
It was as though the more the Indulgence was used, the more Shin Hweein was set free from his curses, the talisman itself grew stronger right along with him.

“Would you believe me if I told you I do not know the provenance of this charm? More than that… that I do not remember you?”
“Ah, the first I’ll grant you, but the latter, you. Of course you can’t remember. Offered up every last thing as a sacrifice, and now you stand here asking what?”
“…Sacrifice?”
“Whoops. My mouth.”

The man had been tapping at his own lips with the look of one who’d slipped up.
Then he met Shin Hweein’s eyes and winked with one of his own.

This fellow, sleazing it up like that as a grown man…, Shin Hweein had been about to think, when a thought struck him and he opened his mouth.

“Don’t tell me. A sealing-ban…?”
“Shhh. Even within this space ruled by my own authority, that is the limit. You understand me?”
“Ha.”

That he had been bound up with extraordinary connections in his past life he had certainly suspected, on the strength of how remarkable they were.
But to think there was a sealing-ban forbidding even the mention of what had taken place back then.
And one that not even the chief of the vampires, who had reached past the wall of a single nation to grip the entire shadow of Gurapa (Europe), had been able to overcome.

“So. Thank you. …Though I would have been still more thankful had you not tried to kill me.”
“Me? Why would I kill a dear friend? That whole business was an act, naturally. I did it because, short of going quite that far, that fox-of-flame hiding in your shadow wasn’t going to come bursting out.”
“That much… is exactly so.”

The man recognized Geum Moa’s existence, and more than that, he plainly held no small loathing for her; his expression twisted.
What pierced Shin Hweein afresh was the sense of a great yokai’s caliber.
The man had genuinely been after his life for nothing more than that, and emptiness and anger surged up in him so that managing his own face grew briefly difficult.
But since the man had imparted important news to him, he resolved to set his grudge aside for now.

While he was suppressing the rising hostility on the back of such thoughts, the man let slip a piece of his true mind.

“And, well, that I went a touch overboard out of jealousy is also the truth. I only just learned you’d even awoken, and that fox already… honestly, the cheek of it.”
“My apologies for that. As I said, I have no memory.”
“Enough. We’ve each landed a blow, haven’t we? Hah, to think you’d not only strip my power away but beat my deputy single-handed. I lose count of how many times you’ve startled me today.”

The man shrugged his shoulders, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and went on.

“The wager’s your victory, my friend. But since things have come off rather differently from what I expected, how about this.”
“Mm?”
“I, of course, will not aim for your life from this day on. But the part where I promised you my full aid, that part we’ll have come due the day my friend finds my whereabouts on his own and arrives before my eyes. How’s that? Sounds fair enough, I think.”

It was a refreshingly clean proposal, considering he’d been worrying don’t tell me it’s a rematch he means to demand.
If anything, he found himself wondering whether the man hadn’t been hoping from the start that Shin Hweein would come seeking him out himself.
And since Shin Hweein had no intention of leaving Aeshin just yet, his answer was already set.

“I had no intention of demanding aid from the start. There is no occasion to head to Gurapa at once either, so let us set that meeting for later, when I have leisure to spare.”
“Splendid. And come what may, this means I’ll be able to find you now, too. Honestly, you turn down my offer to make you my thrall again and again, and yet… if we could have made a connection in this fashion, there’d have been no need to lay a curse on you at all.”

At those words, Shin Hweein narrowed his eyes.
The two of them, who until now had been linked only by curse, now possessed a blood-tie as well; the cord of fate between them was deeper by one fold than before.
Of course, neither had Shin Hweein become the vampire’s thrall, nor the reverse.
But as the one who had loosed the curse and stripped away a piece of that authority, and the one who had been stripped, the two of them had been bound by a strange, unbreakable connection.

For one who had piled up power across so long a life as that ancient ogre, it would have been quite natural to be incensed at having his own taken.
And yet the vampire was only rejoicing that a connection had arisen to replace the curse.

“Ah, but let’s leave off untying the curse altogether. It would become troublesome in any number of ways. The same goes for that fox-of-flame, doesn’t it?”
“…That is so.”

Come to think of it, Geum Moa too had wiped away nearly every harmful effect the curse imposed, yet had never, in the end, untied the curse in full.
Shin Hweein had taken that for a test of her own design.
But hearing the vampire speak now, it seemed there was some separate reason for it as well.

“Now then, I’ve said nearly all I came to say. Last of all, shall we exchange present-day names? Our true names are a touch dangerous, so let us leave them aside… right, I’d like you to call me by the name of the great king Attila (Attila)¹.”

Attila was the name of the sovereign at the height of the Huns, famed for invading Rome.
And in the celebrated novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, it is also the name of one whom Count Dracula counts among his own ancestors.

Shin Hweein, having laughed at the audacity of the pseudonym, gave his reply.

“As you like, Attila. You may call me Shin Hae.”
“Good, Shin Hae. Then, not in a space such as this one but on the day we actually meet face to face, I shall be looking forward to it. Ah, this is on the house.”

The man, Attila, flicked the droplet of blood he had wiped away earlier toward Shin Hweein.
He flinched and tried to block it, but against one whose caliber was so far above his own, there was no question of putting up any real resistance.
In an instant the droplet touched his wounds and dissolved softly into them, and the wounds at his abdomen and chest were healed as though wiped clean.

“Frightened, are we, when you’ve already got a piece of my blood inside you. From this day on you’ll never be made into anyone’s thrall, mine included. So wield that blood-power without anxiety. Apply yourself to it. You’ll grow stronger if you study.”
“My thanks.”
“Last of all, two more words.”

The space began, by slow degrees, to crumble.
Together with it, feeling his consciousness fade, Shin Hweein was about to close his eyes, when a voice he could not ignore reached his ear.

“On account of that strange relic of yours, Leon has become your thrall now. Kill him or keep him, do as you please. As a result, the Other Realm will collapse and you’ll have vampires rampaging out of control, so see to that as well.”
“What was that?!”
“And, since you curse-absolved my curse, the fellow who laid that other curse on you may have caught wind of your existence. The fellow who laid the curse that gives you strange dreams.”
“That was a separate matter?! Wait, that sort of thing, sooner—!”

The curse that gave him dreams of his past life, and the curse that altered his temperament by suggestion. Separate?
Just as he was about to demand an answer to that preposterous piece of news, he regained consciousness in reality and opened his eyes.

“…Ha.”

His body was sound and unbroken, without a single wound, and it carried easily twice as much spiritual power circling through it as before.
All around him, in the process of the Other Realm being unbound, the containers were falling chaotically out of place.
And before his eyes, a handsome vampire wearing an expression of despair was kneeling on his knees.
Beyond him, prowling the sky and bursting into ghastly laughter, an appalling number of vampires could be seen as well.

“Leon.”

“…Yes.”

The vampire whose name had been called raised his head quietly and looked at him.
For a moment, Shin Hweein deliberated how he ought to handle Leon, who wore an expression of resignation.

Had Leon not become his own thrall, he would have driven a stake through the man’s heart without hesitation.
But now, looking upon him with his own eyes, just as Attila had said, he could plainly see that a thread of fate which could not be cut had been bound between the two of them.
This was the result, of no other’s doing but his own choice, of having stripped Leon’s true blood to invoke the Indulgence.
That was why he hesitated to take the man’s life.

Although Leon bore the sins of having turned many into vampires and of having tried to kill him, if Shin Hweein, having led the way in tying that bond, were now to sever it unilaterally and kill him, it would all in turn become Shin Hweein’s own sin-karma.
Of course, if keeping Leon alive should bring any later trouble, he would put him down by whatever means came to hand.
But Leon, now, stood in a position from which he could not even go against him.

‘In that case, let me have him pay back his karmic debt slowly, by my side.’

His resolution settled, Shin Hweein cleanly withdrew his hostility toward Leon.
A relationship reestablished by his own choice; it followed that the feelings accumulated, and the past as well, ought to be brushed away and built up anew.

“Can nothing be done with those, just now?”
“…Nothing can. I myself have already had too much of my true blood drained, to the point that even my qualification as an Elder hangs by a thread; and on top of that, having been made half by force into your thrall, I’ve lost my command over the underlings.”

The man who, only when fighting against Shin Hweein, had kept up all those polite acting-tones was now producing a voice drained of every hope in life.
The figure he cut was passably comic, save that the present situation was not at all comic.

“For now, then, hide yourself.”
“Even if I were to slip into Master’s shadow?”
“As much as you like, so long as you can keep from being detected.”
“Haha. I haven’t fallen quite that far. …My thanks for accepting an unsightly loser. Then I’ll see you again once the situation is settled in a little while.”

Receiving his master’s order to fight an enemy to the death, then through a vicious trap suddenly becoming that very enemy’s underling, and on top of it being cast aside by his original master without a second thought.
If it had been Shin Hweein himself, the rage alone would have stopped his breath; yet Leon was, surprisingly, accepting it all without resistance.

Truly, the world of yokai is profound and hard to understand….

Letting out a sigh even as he rose from his seat, Shin Hweein first set about confirming that all of his shikigami were safe.

— Kyuing!

“You’ve grown stronger, Arong.”

— Kyu-iing!

Neuldam, whom he had been keeping hidden as a last-of-the-last resort, was still asleep within his mind, untouched.
Arong, who had drawn near in the form of formless mist, had drunk down the true blood of the higher-rank vampires and of Leon himself, and so had not only escaped any injury but grown to an absurd degree.

And Flame-tail, whom he had not even been able to summon earlier….

— You’re all right! …Argh!

Flame-tail appeared before him with a start, before he had even called, and the next instant, head lowered, came charging into his leg.

— That’s what you get for vanishing and leaving me alone! Are you trying to make me into a dishonored flame-hound that couldn’t even properly protect his master?!

“What was I to do, when I called and you could not come?”

— You should have set my abilities back to rights, quick-quick! Just to half of what I had before, and that piddling sub-space, eh?

Flame-tail, who had been carrying on in a thorough huff, abruptly looked himself over and let out a startled voice.
Come to think of it, the fellow’s bulk too had grown beyond what it was before, to the point that one might now call him a large-breed dog.

— My power’s come back a bit. Of course, still a long way to go… but enough to be called, what, Rank Five? Course, holding this much power for any length of time will be a stretch.

“As one might expect of a great flame-hound at his root, your pace of recovering power is swift.”

— Still nowhere near enough! Only when you grow stronger faster will I become strong enough to protect you! …Eh?

The flame-hound, even as he was saying it himself, seemed to notice that something about that was strange, and tilted his head.
The sight drew a laugh out of Shin Hweein, who was just on the point of soothing the fellow a little further.

“Kyaaaaaaaaaak!”
“This, too. Truly a textbook scream.”

— Leave it to me! I’ll show you the abilities of the ever-more-gallant Lord Flame-tail!

Trailing flame-afterimages, Flame-tail leapt.
For him to be invoking himself by the very name he had at first detested, it seemed he was uncommonly pleased at having regained his power.

“Wait, Flame-tail… oh.”

Shin Hweein, on the verge of moving after the fellow, recalled that his own staff had been broken earlier and found himself caught in a difficulty, only to have a perfectly whole staff held out before his eyes.

“Here you are, young master.”
“…So it’s you, Moa.”

Shin Hweein received the staff from Geum Moa, who somehow wore a rather sulky expression, examined it, and could not contain his astonishment.
He had clearly seen Leon snap it in two earlier, and yet without any trace of that, it had been knit back together; what was more, the entire staff had been transformed in still more splendid fashion, with countless red flower-patterns bursting open all across it.

“The Pagoda-Tree God’s blessing has settled into the staff. As a bonus, the power of that annoying vampire too. In the course of the young master taking that wretched man’s blood into himself, the staff likely changed in step with the young master.”
“It has changed together with its owner. What a joyful thing that is.”
“I’m not particularly joyful about it. It was a staff I arranged for the young master, and now somebody else’s traces are smeared all over it….”

Geum Moa, who though she herself had been the one to hand it over was gazing at it as though she’d like to snap it in half this very instant, puffed out both cheeks like a child.

“The ornamentation, I am absolutely going to procure and fit myself. And it’ll be one carved with a cute little fox.”
“Bird-finial standards (an ornamentation in the shape of a bird) and dragon-finial standards (an ornamentation in the shape of a dragon) I know of, but a fox is the first I’ve heard. Well then, what sorcerous meaning does it carry?”
“It carries the meaning of ‘the man I’ve laid claim to.’”
“…I think a bird-finial standard, which is said to connect the heavens to the men upon the earth, would suit me best.”
“Out of the question. Since nothing at all ever goes the way I’d like it to, the young master must at least concede this much.”
“Then let us think on it when the time comes.”

Shaking his head and answering so, Shin Hweein planted the staff before him on the ground.
In that instant the information of every quarter was inscribed into his mind as vividly as though he had read it from print.

“Ah, young master, before that, your face—!”

Just then, having spotted Flame-tail and the woman who had hidden behind the fellow, and wishing to go to them, he stepped forward; and astonishingly, a tree extended up from beneath his feet, bore him up, and carried him there at a passably swift pace.

“What’s that?! Right, you…!”

“Flame-shot, scatter.”

First, the rabble of vampires crowding his way: he split a great flame-shot into dozens of shots, like shrapnel, and burned them to ash.
Now that his spiritual power had increased, even the applied-sorcery variants of the flame-shot he could deploy without strain.
The thought that he’d no longer be able to claim, anywhere he went, to be a fourth-rank examinee drew a wry smile from him, and he turned to look back.

“…Whaa.”
“Gek.”

The person who had been crouching on her knees and being protected by Flame-tail was, though he had hoped above all that it would not be her, his younger sister, Shin Myeongin.

“You… what became of your great host of bodyguards, that you’re here? And besides, this much you ought to be able to handle by yourself.”
“Wow, t-total hottie….”

It seemed that, this being her first real combat, she had been so tense that her consciousness had flown off somewhere; Shin Myeongin was spouting nonsense that made no sense at all.
Just as he was about to examine her, in case she’d been hit by some sort of mind-affecting ability, the Yun House man who could not stop fancying her came running up from behind her.

“Myeongin!”
“I, evidently, am not destined for the gentlemanly path. Then, with that—”
“Ah! Wait! Just wait, at least your name…!”

Worried he might get entangled with that man on some unpleasant business, Shin Hweein turned smartly on his heel, ignored the call of the addled Shin Myeongin, and walked on.
A step late in arriving beside him, Geum Moa swiftly fitted a mask over his face and cried out by mind-speech.

— Young master, your face! Your transformation has come undone!

— Curse it.

Likely because his spiritual power had bottomed out once already during the fight with Leon.

Hurriedly Shin Hweein applied the disguise-art again, then lifted the mask away to show his face and asked Geum Moa whether it was properly done this time.
Geum Moa nodded with an expression more serious than the one she had worn even when Shin Hweein had been in his most lethal peril.

“Now it’s perfect. But that bitch….”
“Shin Myeongin? Have no worry. Brother though I am to her in name, she did not even seem to recognize me. She was spouting some daydreamer’s nonsense I couldn’t make sense of.”
“…That’s seriously bad.”
“Are you, too, daydreaming?”

— Hey, don’t leave me behind!

Flame-tail, his task accomplished, came barreling back into his leg once more, yet there was not the slightest bit of force behind it.
Even as he meant to apologize to the fellow and was raising his head, he weighed whether to handle the remaining vampires by using his other shikigami.
And then he saw Lt. General Yun soar into mid-air, stretch out both hands, and call into being a horrifically vast sorcery-pattern in the sky above.
At the colossal force pouring off it, Shin Hweein clicked his tongue and muttered.

“It is over now.”
“Indeed it is.”

Every vampire that had been about to break out through the unbinding Other Realm into the present world.
No, every vampire save the one hidden in Shin Hweein’s shadow was, by the light that burst forth from the sorcery-pattern, run through.

And with that, this operation reached its perfect close.