A cave lined with the corpses of countless ordinary hunters and of low-ranking Saryeon Society hunters as well.
From the corpses piled up like a mountain came a stench of rot strong enough to knock a nose crooked.
A subtle wrongness that had come into the gate.
The monsters stationed at the gate's entrance were being killed off.
"Well now, a little rat's gotten into the gate."
He could only feel that the monsters were dying.
'But there's no presence to sense at all.'
Something that even Pyo Dae-rim, a veteran hunter with a fair amount of experience behind him, couldn't identify was killing the monsters.
Two figures draped in black robes appeared before Pyo Dae-rim, who had been digging at his ear.
"Our apologies, Master Pyo Dae-rim. It seems an intruder has entered."
"They came in while we were away, so we were late noticing."
Their appearance was difficult to call human.
A man with arms as large as his own body, and a woman whose lower half was shaped like an earthworm.
"This has gotten a bit troublesome. The project's near completion now. I can't have it disturbed."
"Our apologies."
"Hmm. How about testing out the power I gave you, just this once?"
At his words, the man with the enormous arms, Yang Jin-hak, smiled thinly beneath his robe.
"Yes! The power you granted me, Master Pyo Dae-rim. I'll show it to you myself."
"Right. Go on and give it a try."
A chilling voice, like a beast growling.
Pyo Dae-rim looked down at his own body.
Skin giving off a green glow and a body grown massive; it could hardly be seen as a human's.
'At last our grand plan sees the light!'
Even so, Yang Jin-hak didn't seem to mind in the least.
If anything, he was looking at Pyo Dae-rim's body with envy.
"Illiana. You go with him."
"Me too?"
The woman whose lower body resembled a giant earthworm looked at Pyo Dae-rim as if bothered.
"We can't have our youngest croaking in the middle of a fight, can we."
"Haah. Fine."
Illiana headed out of the cave together with Yang Jin-hak.
Watching the two of them go, Pyo Dae-rim soon turned his gaze deeper into the cave.
"Heh heh heh. A little more and I can complete it."
With just a little more time he could complete it.
"The Chimera Project!"
The Chimera Project was the one and only project that Lord Rumania, who had no interest whatsoever in the Worshippers, had taken an interest in.
A Vampir himself had come in person and said he had expectations, so if it succeeded, becoming a kindred of Lord Rumania was no mere dream.
"So long as I have this."
A silver pen enshrined with care deep in the cave.
An object that had suddenly appeared out of thin air only days ago.
At first he hadn't known what it was, but the more he felt the power the pen held, the more the smile refused to leave his lips.
'An object that lets an ordinary human handle blood, no less.'
A divine artifact potent enough to push the Chimera Project, stalled at about halfway, past eighty percent in a matter of days.
That was this pen.
'It has the drawback of shortening one's lifespan with each use, but.......'
It didn't matter.
Humans were lying around in abundance here anyway.
Meaning there were plenty of humans to spend their lifespans in his place.
"If I can just show this to Him, becoming a kindred is no dream."
A kindred, which could be called a true member of Lord Rumania.
A once-in-a-lifetime chance to become a Vampir like Him and live out eternity.
"I'd have to get out of this ordinary Executor post as well."
If that happened, he wouldn't have to stay bound by a useless yoke like the Saryeon Society.
"Heh heh heh."
Pyo Dae-rim laughed, picturing himself as a kindred.
"Well, there are the failures at the entrance. Whatever it is, there's no worry of it getting this far."
Pyo Dae-rim cut off his interest in the intruder outside the cave and focused on his research.
***
"Nothing much."
Garam looked at the goblins that had been reduced to ash and steadied his breathing.
Individually they weren't a threat.
"There were just too many of them."
The goblins charging at him like refuse in a garbage dump were endless in number.
Later on there were even goblins sporting not Kobold arms but Bat-Man wings, and things like scorpion tails.
"They were all much of a muchness, though."
If anything, most of them were as feeble as sick chickens the whole time they fought.
So in the end, what were these twisted netherworld goblins?
"What are they, chimeras?"
Or were they?
Could they actually be chimeras?
"In a world that has Vampir in it, a chimera showing up wouldn't be particularly......."
Strange. It wouldn't.
In fact, finding a word other than "chimera" to name these bizarre goblins would be the harder task.
"Tsk. What are those Worshipper bastards plotting here?"
Garam hurried deeper into the gate.
[Don't tell me these bastards are using the Blood Script?]
Carmilla's irritated muttering put the brakes on his stride.
"What? Ordinary people can use that?"
Then it wouldn't be an Arrangement of Nosferatu.
[Rather than using it, the accurate way to put it would be that they're recycling part of the power the Blood Script leaks out.]
"And what does that mean?"
[It isn't called an object holding Nosferatu's ability for nothing. Even power that's a mere byproduct, just leaking out, is unimaginable to an ordinary human.]
Just how powerful was it, to warrant such a fuss?
The moment he left the goblins behind with a strange anticipation.
"So you're the intruder."
Someone blocked his path.
"What the— and what's that?"
Enormous arms and a black robe.
And a woman with an earthworm-like lower body.
They were faces familiar to Garam as well.
"Yang Jin-hak? And Illiana, was it?"
"What? You know me?"
"You know me?"
At the words he had let slip, Yang Jin-hak and Illiana tilted their heads.
How could he not know them?
One was the bastard who picked fights day in and day out and got stomped like a dog for it.
The other was the bastard who had swallowed him whole.
Because of the mask, they apparently hadn't realized he was Garam.
'Yang Jin-hak, that lunatic. He said he'd gotten a chance to grow stronger. So that was the Worshippers.'
The claim that he had actually grown stronger didn't appear to be a lie; there had been a great change in Yang Jin-hak.
'His stats have gone up across the board, but those arms. They aren't human.'
Beast arms that called a monkey to mind.
At the tips of the fur, faint embers crackled and burned.
"No, it doesn't matter. Whoever you are, you die here."
Yang Jin-hak charged, swinging his monkey arms boldly.
"Die!"
"Wait a moment!"
Ignoring Illiana's shout from behind, Yang Jin-hak's arm swung.
A speed that didn't suit that huge frame.
'Take that head-on and my bones will break.'
Enough force that even his reinforced self would hurt badly if it landed wrong.
"Then I just won't get hit."
Dodging the fast-charging monkey arm, Garam swung his axe.
CRUNCH!
The axe, which by rights should have torn through flesh and sunk in, didn't even get a third of the way before the attack was stopped.
"This is......."
"Gwahahaha! Did you think I would fight relying on these arms alone?!"
Yang Jin-hak roared with laughter, the axe still lodged in his arm.
He had grown one and a half times larger than when Garam first saw him.
"Body Reinforcement Art!"
The Body Reinforcement Art, a skill that injects mana into the body to strengthen it.
As simple as it was, its effect was equally simple.
And for that very reason it was all the more threatening a skill.
Because it meant that the more mana you had, the more limitlessly you could grow stronger, so long as your body could bear it.
"That's tempting. The Body Reinforcement Art."
Behind the mask, Garam licked his lips and looked at the giant Yang Jin-hak had become.
Skin flushed red as his metabolism sped up from the enlarged body.
And in his monkey arms Yang Jin-hak held a hammer the size of two grown men.
"Die!"
BOOOOM!
A blast like a bomb going off slammed against his ears.
And when Garam looked to the side, the sight was more than the blast had suggested.
From a single light swing of the hammer, a small crater had formed in the plateau that had been intact moments before.
'So this is why they call B-Grade and up superhuman.'
Even when the total mana and the strength of the body were similar.
How far you could draw it out.
That was the measure dividing C-Grade from B-Grade.
'In that sense, I'm still C-Grade.'
Between a bastard who makes a crater with one blow of a hammer.
and himself, who could control blood and yet could still only manage to make spears, there was a wide gap.
'That doesn't mean I can't win, though.'
CRACKLE—!
[Lower Skill: Hardening is used.]
Four spears formed behind Garam's back.
They were far shorter and blunter than the spears he had made fighting the Bat-Man.
"Hah, what are those sticks? You call those spears?"
Yang Jin-hak sneered at the sight at once, but Garam paid it no mind.
'These weren't made to attack Yang Jin-hak anyway.'
SHOOM!
The four crystals that flew toward Yang Jin-hak buried themselves in the ground around him.
"Come to think of it, I hear using the Body Reinforcement Art sharpens the senses. Shall we see how your hearing holds up?"
"......What?"
[Normal Skill: Sound Wave: Vibration is used.]
HMMMMMMM!
A chilling low frequency battered his ears.
Sound waves similar to the ones the Bat-Man had used were pouring from the crystals lodged around Yang Jin-hak.
Back when he worked as a porter, Garam had once been in a party with a hunter who used the Body Reinforcement Art.
This was the very method a monster had used on that hunter.
'Using the Body Reinforcement Art doubles the body's senses.'
The Art's strength and its weakness.
A single sound wave was enough to paralyze the body.
Take four of them, and while using an Art that raised bodily senses dozens of times over?
"GAAAAAAAH! What, is this?!"
Yang Jin-hak clutched his ears and collapsed.
"I can't, move my body."
For now the pain kept Yang Jin-hak from moving properly.
But holding him like this would last only a moment.
'If this much broke the Body Reinforcement Art, he wouldn't have made B-Grade.'
He was flustered only because he had never had the Art's weakness attacked this way; before long he would clearly adapt.
"Ngh—!"
See?
He was already trying to get up.
[It doesn't look like he's just getting up, though.]
FWOOSH.
Flames began to burn on the monkey arms of Yang Jin-hak, who was struggling desperately to rise.
FWOOOOOSH!
"Damn it, those things shoot fire too?"
"GWAAAAH!"
Fire-spewing monkey arms.
What kind of insane monster was that?
CRACK—!
Yang Jin-hak's violent movement shook the sound waves, and the crystals driven into the ground began to crack along with them.
At the same time his body grew freer bit by bit.
As if he had lost his reason, Yang Jin-hak charged, swinging his fists wildly.
Just before his enormous fist reached Garam's axe.
"Are you an idiot?"
FWOOOOSH!
Crimson Flame burned on Garam's axe just the same.
"I use flame too."
Garam's axe and Yang Jin-hak's fist met.
In raw strength Garam would naturally be pushed back.
"Absorb."
He absorbed the flames Yang Jin-hak spewed.
By rights Absorb was a technique for taking blood.
'I recall the memory of absorbing the spirit medicine.'
When he absorbed Hae-rang's energy steeped in the spirit medicine.
That had clearly not been blood either, and yet Absorb had activated.
'If I take in Yang Jin-hak's flame the same way.'
HMMMMM-
As though drawn by gravity, Yang Jin-hak's enormous flame began pouring into Garam's far smaller axe.
"Impossible. My total mana should be far greater!"
"If having a lot were all it took, why would they have bothered dividing people into Grades?"
Quantity was quantity, but the quality mattered more.
As Yang Jin-hak's tremendous volume of flame was absorbed into the axe, a power reminiscent of the sun blazed out of it.
"Hup!"
Garam swung the axe at Yang Jin-hak.
CRASH—!
"GUHAAACK!"
Yang Jin-hak collapsed on the spot.
"Whew. Stronger or not, the result's the same."
So why did he bother strapping on those monkey arms?