The amplified shout hit the club like a physical shock wave, drowning out the awful music and carrying into every corner of the underground complex.
The Taunt Horn immediately went to work.
“GRAAAH!” Bestial snarls erupted throughout the crowd.
Among the drugged men and women packed onto the dance floor, figures suddenly straightened with glowing red eyes and exposed fangs.
Heavy impacts sounded from deeper inside the club as more vampires emerged from wherever they had been hiding, every one of them caught by the Taunt Horn’s effect.
The moment they looked at Calvin, their expressions twisted with irrational hatred, as though he had personally murdered everyone they had ever cared about.
Then they charged.
Their enhanced strength made them almost completely indifferent to anything standing in their way.
People on the dance floor were struck and hurled aside simply because the vampires ran through them, bones breaking beneath the impacts.
Some of the clubgoers were so deep in their drug-induced haze that they died before they even understood what was happening.
Ordinary humans had no chance against creatures this strong.
Within moments, screams and terrified sobs replaced the music.
The dance floor became a slaughterhouse.
Bodies lay scattered across the room, and blood spread in thick pools beneath the flashing lights, reflecting a sickly crimson glow through the darkness.
The metallic stench quickly overwhelmed the smell of alcohol and sweat.
Yet beneath all that blood, something else was happening.
In an unnoticed corner of the room, the floor itself seemed almost alive.
It slowly absorbed the blood pooling across its surface.
Twisted symbols began appearing beneath the grime, pulsing faintly with black light.
Wisps of strange crimson vapor followed the patterns and seeped downward into the earth.
As the vampires closed in, Matt stepped forward.
One enormous arm swept backward, placing Frank behind him almost instinctively.
With his newly enhanced physique, Daredevil’s broad back looked more like a wall than a man.
“Frank, these vampires aren’t something an ordinary human should be fighting,” Matt said calmly.
“Leave them to us.
Stay behind me and protect yourself.” “Go fuck yourself,” Frank replied.
It was an impressively concise summary of his feelings.
“Oh, knock it off.” Calvin stepped forward and casually pushed Matt aside with one arm.
“You two can stand in the back and cheer for me.
I want to test my new weapon.” Before either man could respond, an orange-yellow chainsaw appeared in Calvin’s hands.
VRRRRROOOOM!
He yanked the starter cord.
The engine roared to life, its mechanical snarl cutting sharply through the pounding club music.
By then, the first vampires were almost on top of him.
Calvin could clearly see the savage expressions on their faces and smell the rotten stink coming from between their exposed fangs.
He remained completely relaxed.
Calvin simply raised the Sunstone Chainsaw.
Its orange chain spun into a blur.
The first vampire threw itself at him.
It never even managed to scream.
The moment its body touched the chainsaw, the Sunstone-infused chain tore straight through it.
The creature was shredded apart so completely that the remains turned to ash before they could even hit the floor.
The next vampire suffered the same fate.
Then the next.
In seconds, more than a dozen vampires had been reduced to drifting ash.
Apparently, the sight was terrifying enough to overpower the Taunt Horn.
The vampires behind them slammed to a halt.
Every trace of blind aggression vanished from their faces.
Their eyes suddenly became very clear.
And very afraid.
They stared at the masked man standing near the entrance with that strange orange chainsaw.
Calvin’s plain black mask had not looked particularly intimidating when he walked in.
Now, with the chainsaw growling in his hands and piles of vampire ash surrounding his feet, he might as well have been Death himself.
Eventually, one vampire farther back managed to shout, “Everyone rush him at once!
It’s just a chainsaw!
He can’t kill all of us before it runs out of fuel!” It was a reasonable observation.
Unfortunately, not one of the vampires seemed willing to volunteer as the first person to test the theory.
Their enhanced senses were telling them something even more frightening.
The blood flowing through the man holding that chainsaw felt impossibly powerful.
Hot.
Almost unnaturally so.
Everything about their instincts warned them that getting close to him meant death.
RUMBLE!
Before the frightened vampires could decide what to do, more of their kind finally poured out of the underground passages connected to the club.
Unlike the vampires already in the room, these newcomers had not witnessed Calvin turn their companions into ash.
The Taunt Horn still had them completely enraged.
They emerged with blood-red eyes and immediately rushed Calvin.
The result was exactly what anyone else in the room could have predicted.
The vampires at the front vanished into ash the instant they reached the Sunstone Chainsaw.
They never touched Calvin.
The ones behind them stopped.
Apparently, extreme terror was an excellent cure for magically induced aggression.
Calvin stared at the now-hesitant crowd in disbelief.
“Oh, come on.” Since they refused to attack, he decided to help motivate them.
“You call yourselves vampires?
No wonder humans hunt you like pests.
You spend your whole lives hiding in sewers because you’re too pathetic to show your faces.” He rested the roaring chainsaw against one shoulder.
“Honestly, you might as well save everyone the trouble and hang yourselves.
Using silver bullets on you would just be a waste of money.” Veins stood out on several vampires’ foreheads.
Their expressions twisted between fury and humiliation.
Still, no one moved.
Their attention remained fixed on the bizarre chainsaw in Calvin’s hands.
Vampire hunters were supposed to use silver.
Silver blades.
Silver bullets.
Maybe holy water or crosses if they were particularly old-fashioned.
Why did this lunatic have a chainsaw that felt like standing in direct sunlight?
Modern vampire hunters were getting entirely too barbaric.
Calvin stood there facing several dozen vampires.
Several dozen vampires stared back.
The room settled into a strange silence.
Matt and Frank were both confused.
They had no idea why Calvin had stopped.
The vampires were equally uncertain, caught between the desire to flee and the fear that whatever had hijacked their minds before might happen again.
Calvin had a reason for waiting.
He wanted to see whether the system would produce something else.
An elite enemy.
A boss.
Anything similar to the special encounter beneath the Hand’s laboratory.
He waited several seconds.
Nothing happened.
‘Guess not.’ Before Calvin could start cutting through them himself, one vampire suddenly screamed from the back.
“RUN!” That was all the encouragement the others needed.
Their bodies reacted before their minds did.
The entire group turned and sprinted toward the underground tunnels like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Calvin smirked.
The Taunt Horn appeared in his free hand again.
He raised it toward the fleeing vampires.
“C’mere, c’mere, c’mere.” The silly coaxing noises echoed through the club.
Every fleeing vampire immediately stiffened.
Their expressions twisted.
Then, as if someone had yanked invisible leashes around their necks, they turned around and charged Calvin again.
VRRRRROOOOM!
Calvin held the Sunstone Chainsaw out in front of him.
The first wave ran straight into the spinning chain and disappeared into ash.
The horror of watching their companions die immediately snapped the survivors back to their senses.
They turned to flee again.
Calvin lifted the horn.
“C’mere, c’mere, c’mere.” They turned around.
Charged.
And died.
The survivors regained their senses and ran.
“C’mere, c’mere, c’mere.” Back they came.
At this point, it no longer resembled a battle.
It looked like Calvin was training an exceptionally stupid pack of dogs to feed themselves into a wood chipper.
Matt and Frank could only stare.
Calvin was showing these vampires absolutely no respect as living beings.
Then again…
They technically were not living beings.
After several rounds of this absurd cycle, only a handful of vampires remained.
They were trembling violently.
Fear had distorted their faces beyond recognition.
Then, almost simultaneously, they dropped to their knees and began begging.
Whatever pride they had possessed was gone.
In all their long years of existence, none of them had ever experienced anything like this.
They were supposed to be the predators.
Their strength and speed allowed them to kill ordinary humans as casually as humans crushed insects.
Tonight, they had discovered exactly what it felt like to be the insect.
“Oh?” Calvin lowered the horn.
“So you do know when to surrender.” He found the whole thing almost funny.
These vampires were complete cowards.
Without the Taunt Horn forcing them to fight, Calvin doubted even one of them would have willingly confronted him.
No wonder they had remained hidden for so long.
And yet creatures this cautious had still chosen to maintain a crowded underground club in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen.
If all they needed was blood, there were countless safer ways to obtain it.
Which meant the club almost certainly existed for another reason.
Calvin pointed toward a middle-aged-looking vampire.
“What are you doing here?” The vampire had already lost any desire to resist.
He immediately pointed toward the floor, apparently too terrified to notice the faint crimson light beginning to pulse beneath him.
“There are dragon bones under this place.
We’re using the black—” SHNK!
He never finished.
Countless spikes suddenly erupted from the floor.
They looked almost like bones cast from solid blood.
The spikes pierced every remaining vampire from below, impaling them from one end to the other.
Their bodies shriveled with terrifying speed as the spikes drained them dry.
Seconds later, the corpses collapsed into ash.
The attack was not limited to the vampires.
The blood-red spikes erupted indiscriminately beneath everything still standing on the floor.
Fortunately, Calvin reacted instantly.
Before the spikes reached them, he grabbed Matt and Frank and dragged both men clear of the killing zone.
At the same moment, a new system notification sounded in his mind.
[Wild Boss Encounter Triggered!]