The first thing Garam saw when he opened his eyes, his breath coming in ragged bursts, was an unfamiliar ceiling.
The medicinal smell stinging his nose and the patient gown he was wearing let him work out that this was a hospital.
"A hospital? I was definitely in the gate..."
He had struck Gallos down, fled to escape the horde of skeletons that appeared, met Hae-rang...
and then been swept up in Hae-rang's attack.
"Am I actually in one piece?"
He hurriedly patted himself down, but fortunately there were no wounds worth mentioning.
SWISH!
Just then, the screen that had been surrounding his bed was pulled open.
The one who stepped inside was Hae-rang.
"You're Mr. Garam, right?"
She sat down in the chair with a paper file in one hand.
Perhaps it was that distinctive air she gave off.
She was clearly smiling brightly, yet the moment she sat down in the chair he felt a pressure like something choking off his breath.
"That's right."
"No need to be so tense."
She snorted a laugh and waved a hand as if it were all a bother.
"Mr. Garam. You know that entering an unregistered gate is illegal, right?"
NOD.
"I know."
"Then you also know that carrying spoils out of one is illegal?"
"Yes."
Hae-rang drew a mana stone out from inside her coat.
A mana stone the size of a palm. It was without question the C-Grade mana stone he had killed a Silver Wolf for and quietly skimmed.
"There's plenty more besides this. Let's see, I left it over there."
Hae-rang stepped outside the screen for a moment.
Garam hurriedly checked his surroundings in the meantime.
The mana stones were one thing.
But Carmilla, who had been at his side the whole time, was nowhere to be seen.
Was she still inside that gate, or had she been annihilated in Hae-rang's attack.......
[Heh heh, did I scare you?]
Just before his thoughts could reach that far, Carmilla appeared beside Garam.
Unlike before, her voice rang directly inside his head.
[Right now I'm in a concealment state where only you can see me. That's why I'm talking by telepathy too.]
'Telepathy? So if I talk like this, you can hear me too?'
[Ahahaha. Why are you so spooked? Yes, I can hear you like that. And I told you, that one is Holy Knights. You absolutely cannot let her find out you're a Vampir.]
He had been planning on exactly that anyway.
Holy Knights or not, there was nothing good about anyone finding out he had become a being that absorbed blood.
[Right, right. You've got to stay alive and milk this True Progenitor gig for a good long while.]
Carmilla clutched her stomach and giggled in midair as though she were teasing him.
The sight of it was infuriating enough that he wanted to smack her once,
but Hae-rang, standing beside him, was watching Garam with a strange look, so he couldn't put it into action.
"Alley-oop, here it is."
A bag that looked almost exactly like the one he had been using.
Inside it were the mana stones Garam had harvested in the gate.
"Is there something over there? Am I the only one who can't see it?"
"Hoo... no. There was a mosquito... flying around."
A lie forced out with a strained smile.
It was a clumsy lie, but perhaps because there was a much bigger problem at hand, Hae-rang didn't particularly make an issue of it.
"Anyway, this matter is fairly serious. If it were just an unregistered gate you might have paid a fine and been done with it, but that gate was a National Security Gate."
"A National Security Gate?"
A National Security Gate.
A gate so dangerous that the state banned entry not only to individuals but to guilds as well.
"The illegal gate broker has actually been arrested."
"Is that... so."
So Kim Deok-su had ended up arrested after all.
"But why was that gate a National Security Gate?"
"I'd think you know the reason better than I do, Mr. Garam."
"Because of the monster inside?"
It was probably Gallos. Because of the Vampir, a race that handled blood, one he had never seen before in his life.
There was one thing he wondered about, though.
'Why they were this wary of Vampirs.'
Blood-wielding or not, in the end it was a monster.
It wasn't as if there were no other humanoid monsters, so why go to such troublesome lengths over a single gate because of Vampirs?
"That's the face of someone who doesn't quite follow."
"Honestly, I don't."
"The monster called a Vampir isn't like other monsters, which exist only inside gates."
"What?"
"When the first gate opened, Vampirs suddenly appeared and slipped into human society."
A hackneyed premise you'd expect out of a third-rate tokusatsu series.
But when the one saying it was an S-Grade hunter, no less, the weight of the words changed.
"Don't tell me... they're working in the shadows?"
"That's right. And not just Vampirs. Countless demi-human races are hiding themselves in human society, watching for their chance like tigers eyeing prey."
And then came Hae-rang's shocking words.
"Recently we've been desperate for manpower because of a prophecy that the king of those Vampirs, the monster who will destroy the world, the True Progenitor, is going to appear."
'Huh? Me?'
For a moment, the serious look on Garam's listening face collapsed.
Him, the monster who would destroy the world?
What kind of bullshit was that?
Garam felt cold sweat run down his spine.
"Then what happens to me?"
"Think about it. Why would I be telling you all this classified whatever-whatever, Mr. Garam?"
"Uh... to shut me up?"
That was honestly the only thing that came to mind.
She was an S-Grade hunter of the National Hunter Association, no less.
An orphan middle-school-graduate porter was surely nothing to her.
"Do I look that much like a psychopath?"
Hae-rang fiddled with her own face and pulled a woeful expression.
Even with a display like that, remembering the way she had swept away the skeletons earlier, she looked worse than a psychopath.
Garam did not go out of his way to say it aloud.
"Anyway, want to take a look at this?"
Hae-rang handed him a photograph out of the file.
The Full Moon Temple, skeletons washed away, blood pooled here and there.
"Traces of a top-secret monster, a Vampir, were found in the gate you entered today. Two of them, in fact."
He knew.
He had fought that Vampir himself, and on top of that, he had become one of them.
'But why is she showing me this?'
Was it silent pressure to turn himself in, since she already knew what he was?
[No, that won't be it. She said it herself, didn't she? That Vampirs have slipped into human society. Why do you think they can't catch them even with S-Grade hunters around?]
'That's... because they can't tell them apart?'
[Exactly. Unless we reveal our abilities or our craving for blood, humans and Vampirs can never be told apart.]
Indeed, he might have become a Vampir, but apart from gaining the ability to absorb and handle blood, there wasn't the slightest outward change.
Without those abilities he would have doubted whether he really had become one.
Even so, looking at Hae-rang holding that air of authority right in front of him, he was intimidated all the same.
"By the book you'd face punishment and go through memory erasure procedures as well, but..."
"GULP."
"we're short-handed right now. So I'm scouting you. I can't let a hunter who fought two Vampirs and survived slip away!"
Scouting?
No, more importantly, I fought two of them and survived?
[Seems like she thinks it wasn't two Vampirs fighting each other, but one human fighting two Vampirs.]
It did seem that way.
Then again, a human turning into a Vampir overnight would be strange too.
"Since there are no bodies, the two of them must have escaped, right?"
No. One had popped like a balloon and one was sitting right in front of her.
But he could hardly say that truthfully.
"That's... right. Haha. They were truly incredible. Running away was about all I could manage."
"Mm-hm! And?"
"Uh... they must have sensed you arriving, Miss Hae-rang, because they summoned skeletons and vanished."
Garam's life-or-death lie must have worked, because Hae-rang's eyes sparkled as she edged closer.
Whether she knew it or not, Hae-rang sprang up out of her seat, thoroughly excited.
"See, I really do have an eye for people."
No. I don't think you do.
You are currently scouting a Vampir into the Holy Knights.
"We are the Holy Knights. God's hunters, who hunt the enemies of humanity in the dark. I saw potential in you, Mr. Garam."
Just as Carmilla had in the Full Moon Temple, Hae-rang held out her hand toward Garam.
"Want to sign a contract with us?"
Hae-rang said it with a smile. Join the Holy Knights.
[Don't you dare pull that bullshit. Hey. You cannot join that. You're the True Progenitor and that bastard is a knight order! They're the bastards who say they'll hunt you.]
Carmilla's words as she hovered around aside, he'd had no intention of joining in the first place.
Whether or not he had any intention of destroying the world was a separate matter.
Who knew what disaster he'd suffer from joining an organization that moved on a national scale to kill him?
Now that the Awakening had given him a way to make a living, he could just get by as a hunter.
"I'm sorry, but I...."
"Oh, by the way, our benefits are incredible. The four major insurances as standard, a salary that slaps the big corporations in the face, tax exemptions, scholarships for any student within cousin range, and on top of that, we can leave today's incident unmentioned."
Hae-rang's employee benefits came pouring out rat-a-tat.
Garam listened quietly and almost nodded on instinct, but,
"Ahem, even so, that's a bit..."
he held out with superhuman patience.
No matter how important money was, continuing to con an S-Grade hunter was practically suicide...
[Right, right. That's all bullshit. Join that and benefits won't be the problem, you'll just croak—]
"Double the salary."
"I'll do it. Please let me do it!"
[......?]
...or so he'd thought, but the benefits were far too generous for that.
[Hey! You money-crazed bastard!]
Carmilla's furious shout came from beside him, but,
'Well, you said I wouldn't get caught.'
He fought D-Grade magic beasts with his bare body; surely he could con an S-Grade hunter once.
He just had to not get caught. Just not get caught.
'Right, it's not like I'm working in the shadows of human society the way other Vampirs are.'
As long as he didn't openly drink blood, there would be nothing to catch.
"Good. I like a spirited answer."
Having heard Garam's answer, Hae-rang nodded with a satisfied look.
"What a relief."
"Sorry?"
"That I won't have to use this."
Hae-rang ripped an ominous-looking piece of parchment clean in two.
"What is that...?"
"Hm? Ah. It's nothing. Just a curse that kills you if you mention what you heard anywhere else, I suppose."
At the sight of Hae-rang smiling placidly as though it were nothing at all, all Garam could do was smile stiffly along with her.
***
After the conversation, Hae-rang handed him a business card and disappeared.
Unlike an ordinary business card, the one she gave him was pitch black.
'She said to show this at the Hunter Association counter, right?'
Garam tucked the black card into his pocket and looked to the side.
Hae-rang had gathered up the mana stones that Gallos' attack had scattered in every direction and brought them in another bag.
And she had left that bag behind.
Saying she would leave today's business unmentioned.
He was extremely grateful for that, but.......
"S-Grade really is S-Grade, huh."
One thing Hae-rang had asked as she was leaving.
-Oh, and did you bleed in the gate by any chance? I thought I caught a bit of a blood smell off you, Mr. Garam.
At those words he thought his heart had lurched to a stop.
Afraid she had noticed that he'd used blood.
Luckily it had passed over smoothly.
"I can't use my abilities carelessly in front of Hae-rang."
Garam let out a sigh and buried himself in the bed.
So much had happened in this one day that his eyes closed on their own.
Abducted at one in the morning, then playing hide-and-seek with monsters in a gate.
He had even received a scouting offer from an S-Grade hunter, the kind you might see once in a lifetime.
"It was a scouting offer with your life on the line. And you went and gleefully snapped it up."
She wasn't wrong. When he forced his closing eyes open, Carmilla was right above him.
Carmilla stretched and looked down at him, checking him over.
The red feather ornament on her shoulder swayed with her movements.
"Ah, right, good that you brought it up."
Vampir, and True Progenitor.
Words that both Hae-rang and Carmilla had repeated over and over.
He needed to get to the bottom of the Vampirs, which had now become his own race as well.
"What in the world are Vampirs, and what are these Holy Knights?"
Carmilla was the one who had made him a Vampir, and the one who had named Hae-rang as Holy Knights the instant she saw her.
She was bound to know far more than he did, knowing nothing at all.
"Are you that curious?"
Carmilla circled round and round above Garam, giggling.
Of course he was curious.
He had to know what a Vampir was, or he'd slip up in front of Hae-rang.
One careless slip of the tongue and...
He didn't even want to imagine it.
"I don't know what you're expecting, but what I can tell you is simple."
Vampir.
A monster that craves blood and moves only at night.
"That's what ordinary people believe, I'd guess. It isn't all that far off, actually. Touch sunlight and you burn, the craving for blood comes around on a cycle. About that much?"
About that much, she says.
If you burn in sunlight and get cravings for blood, that's a monster.
If he really were like that, the Holy Knights would be a certainty and he wouldn't be able to lead a normal life either.
"Don't worry. You're not like that. You're the True Progenitor. For the sun you just put on sunscreen, and the urges probably won't be that bad."
As if it were nothing much, Carmilla crossed her legs in midair and started filing her nails.
"A so-called good Vampir, that's you."
He didn't need that crap.
Being a Vampir at all was the problem.
"Hoo. So setting the side effects aside, there really are Vampirs who burn in sunlight and feel a craving for blood?"
Hae-rang had said they were working in the shadows of human society, after all.
"That's right. And they've probably all noticed that a True Progenitor has appeared. The True Progenitor is king of all Vampirs and the revolutionary of the prophecy."
"A prophecy, huh."
It was a word that had come up during his conversation with Hae-rang at the hospital, too.
Carmilla called it the savior of the prophecy, but...
'What Hae-rang meant was absolutely nothing like that.'
Hadn't she said the opposite of Carmilla, that the True Progenitor was a monster who would destroy the world?
"To humans, a monster who will destroy the world; to Vampirs, the savior of the prophecy."
Human and Vampir perceptions of the True Progenitor were complete opposite poles.
"No, the revolutionary part is strange to begin with. What exactly is this revolution you keep talking about?"
She had definitely said something about the time of revolution in the gate as well.
"Hm? I've been telling you all along. The revolutionary who will destroy the human world and open the age of the Vampirs. That's the True Progenitor."
Well, fuck.
Then the monster who would destroy the world that Hae-rang had described really was him.
"Ah, though you don't actually have to destroy the world yourself."
"What?"
"The seals on the beings the first True Progenitor arranged for the Vampir revolution are going to come undone."
They range widely, from beings that would simply bring chaos to society to monsters that would bring about annihilation.
"In a way, the humans' prophecy might be roughly right?"
"Ha, hahahaha."
At this point it was so absurd that nothing but laughter came out.
Beings that would destroy the world, appearing simply because a later True Progenitor had been born.
Perhaps the humans' prophecy pointed to this whole situation.
Then there was one conclusion. Just as the first True Progenitor had, he would have to seal or eliminate them himself.
"Cheer up. At least the Vampirs welcome you. They'll be out looking for you with fire lit in their eyes."
"I'd really rather they didn't."
And if they came searching for him like that and he was exposed?
He'd have a one-on-one interview with Hae-rang and be buried underground, plain as day.
"Then what about the Holy Knights?"
"That side is even simpler."
According to Carmilla's explanation, the Holy Knights were a trans-dimensional organization that slew the enemies of humanity, such as demi-human races and Vampirs, across countless dimensions.
They were also the ones who had killed the previous True Progenitor, apparently.
"I never expected them to have reached all the way to Earth, though."
Monster who would destroy the world, savior of the prophecy, he wanted none of it, so couldn't he just go back to being human?
"Status window."
When Garam murmured it quietly, a system window appeared before his eyes.
Name: Kim Garam
Race: True Progenitor
Title: King of All Vampirs
Skills: True Progenitor (EX) Lv???, Crimson Flame (C) 1Lv,
A simple status window.
But at the race written there, Garam could do nothing but sigh.
"Haah, whatever. Let's just sleep."
Tomorrow he had to meet Hae-rang again, of all things.
An ordinary person would have lost sleep over the anticipation.
"Ugh, my stomach's turning."
Branded a potential destroyer of humanity by Hae-rang, Garam was set to lose sleep from stress instead.