Chapter 81 - Battle City (1)

A church operated alongside an orphanage under the Vatican.

Though called a church, it wasn't as grand as the great cathedrals of Europe. It was a Western-style building divided into a Mass hall and an orphanage building.

Originally managed by Ellie's adoptive mother, the nun Sophia, she was currently away in Rome on personal matters.

At present, Ellie was managing the place, though she was not an official nun.

Namgung Soo-ah, a cute-looking girl with black hair and sharp eyes, was sprawled comfortably across the sofa in someone else's home as if it were her own. She spoke to Ellie.

"So when are you going to have that meal with Mister?"

"-Huh?"

Ellie, a beautiful woman with black hair and blue eyes, widened her eyes in surprise for a moment.

"Well..."

The 'Mister' Soo-ah was referring to was obviously Yo-han, and it wasn't that she disliked the idea; she was just flustered.

"...Yo-han-ssi is busy, so I keep thinking I'd just be getting in his way, and honestly, I worry he might find it bothersome."

"I watched Mister working from up close. He's basically half-unemployed, so he looked pretty free to me."

"He has free time... Wait, you met him!?"

Ellie had been nodding along, then suddenly looked at Soo-ah in shock. Soo-ah showed her the call logs on her phone.

"I ran into him briefly before because of something. We've been keeping in touch too."

Yo-han had told her that if there was anything confusing in the magic notebook he'd given her, she could call him anytime.

Soo-ah, of course, had just been contacting him casually on her own.

"...When I asked, Mister figured that if he actually took Ellie unnie up on what was probably just a polite offer to grab a meal, it'd put you in an awkward spot."

Soo-ah looked at Ellie, then deliberately turned her head away and said in a nonchalant voice,

"Just reach out and ask him to eat. He won't say no."

"R-Really?"

It might have been none of her business.

But she owed both Yo-han and Ellie, so she couldn't just pretend not to notice.

Still, for some reason, it felt a little... something.

Not that she disliked it. Not annoyance, either... she wasn't sure what it was.

In any case, prompted by Soo-ah's words, Ellie looked at Yo-han's number displayed on her phone screen.

".........."

She gazed at it with a gentle, closed-lipped expression.

It was really nothing grand, just setting up a meal together, yet for some reason she felt nervous.

***

After Chairman Kim's entire faction had crumbled.

The head of Clan Madas, now the largest magical power in Korea.

A blue-eyed, golden-haired vampire.

Yoannis smiled as he read through the information that had been gathered.

The intel he'd been wanting was finally compiled.

Looking into the Namgung side, he confirmed that Namgung Soo-ah was alive.

According to his disciple, Chairman Kim, Namgung Soo-ah had been kidnapped and brought to the building where the dinner gathering was held. This was true.

And while every person in that building had died,

only the girl called Soo-ah had escaped alive.

'...What was the difference?'

Yoannis reached out and tapped the photo of a calm-looking, black-haired man in a white coat, pictured alongside Namgung Soo-ah.

It obviously wasn't because the man was his type. This kind wasn't his type to begin with.

He preferred pretty boys who stirred the urge to protect. Anyway, that wasn't what mattered.

It was the man called 'Kim Yo-han'.

Looking at the recent incidents...

The Namgung Soo-ah kidnapping, the campground incident that Edward must have caused.

The secret Workshop disguised as a Weekend Ranch, where Chairman Kim's downfall began.

All of them were connected to Kim Yo-han.

Well, those were supporting evidence. The conclusive evidence was something else entirely.

Alphons, the heir of the Paracelsus School.

He'd thought of him as a decent hunting dog, but hadn't expected him to bring back such valuable information.

As expected of an heir to a prestigious school? His skill at detecting magical energy, in particular, surpassed Yoannis's own.

He'd rank among the top even among European wizards.

And thanks to that, on a day when rain poured down completely contrary to the weather forecast,

they'd caught Yo-han's trail.

A run-down commercial strip, a deserted street. It looked like some cleanup had been done, but...

traces of battle remained everywhere.

Yoannis's blue eyes gleamed as he held Yo-han's photo in his hand and stared at it.

"Found you, owner of <De Vermis Mysteriis>."

At last, the real fight was about to begin.

***

Yo-han's secret Workshop.

I checked on the condition of the Hand of Glory I'd been curing in salt, then leaned back in my chair and let out a weary breath.

"Haah...."

I'd been worn out lately from practicing Breathing Techniques and throwing myself into shooting drills.

...Still.

I pulled my Glock automatic pistol out from inside my coat.

I only had the seventeen rounds loaded in the current magazine, but

I'd obtained the firearm legally through Si-on.

I did have the Walther I'd taken off Ga-eun after killing her when she broke into my studio apartment, but wasn't it better to have a legally sanctioned firearm approved by a government agency?

Si-on had said that if the police ever caught me carrying, I just needed to show them the "Special Operations Division Civilian Collaborator" ID she'd given me along with the gun safe, and they'd let it slide. So this one was far more practical to use.

...Well, obviously, just because I had a firearms permit didn't mean I could go running around the streets gleefully going 'bang bang!' though.

".........."

In any case, with everything that had been going on recently, I decided to take it easy for today.

If I were a Saiyan from a warrior race, I could just go 'Meat! Training! Meat! Training! Meat!' with no problem.

But unfortunately, I was not a warrior race, so every now and then I needed to manage my stress like this.

Thud-clack! Thud-clack! Thud-clack!

And Grizzly was going to town on the fridge after a long while too.

"Gyagya! Gyagyaa~!"

Following Grizzly's arm movements, the door of the empty refrigerator swung open and shut, rattling back and forth.

"Gyaaaaa~!"

It had been a whole ordeal just to buy a fridge and bring it into the secret Workshop, so I'd appreciate it if the thing lasted as long as possible.

Thud-clack! Thud-clack! Thud-clack!

I turned on the computer to the sound of the fridge door slamming open and shut.

For the first time in a while, I went on Steam and scrolled through to see what new games had come out.

Click~ click~.

I wasn't much of a gamer, but I did enjoy it quite a bit. It was fun, after all.

Back in the days when I lived at the orphanage,

someone who'd grown up there had apparently done pretty well for themselves after leaving.

They'd said that as a kid, they'd always wanted to play the latest game consoles to their heart's content but never could, so they donated a huge batch of PlayStations and Nintendos.

All the kids had flocked to those.

Unable to squeeze in, I'd ended up playing old games that had been secretly installed on the orphanage's beat-up computer, like Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms or strip Tetris.

They were pretty fun, so I'd liked them.

A faint smile escaped me.

Thinking about it now, that Tetris game was surprisingly challenging for an elementary schooler. Was it the shoes? Starting by taking off the socks first was just shameless.

Clothes came off so fast there was no time to even look.

Click~ click~.

I browsed through the latest games displayed on the gaming site.

Though being so busy, I usually just browsed like this and turned it off rather than actually buying and playing anything.

"...Hm?"

Then I noticed that a game from before... meaning before I'd picked up the grimoire,

back when I was just an ordinary philosophy major who'd picked the wrong department,

a game I'd thought looked fun was about to be released.

"...Two weeks from now? It's available for pre-order."

The price was 49,000 won. Pricey, but that was the going rate for big games these days.

Back when I was a college student, I would have just skipped it or waited about a year to snag it during a Christmas sale, but...

now it wasn't really an amount I couldn't afford.

It felt a bit much to be having these kinds of thoughts over a single game, but the fact that I had money to spend on hobbies...

It felt like I'd made it, in a way. So I muttered without thinking.

"Should I buy it?"

That's when a cute little laugh came from beside me.

"Pfftkipfftki~."

"Pfftkekeke~."

I turned my head slightly, and two Gnomes were toddling over, looking at me and giggling.

"Master is stoopid!"

"Kekeke! Stupid Gnome!"

My eyes blinked on their own. I was just curious.

"Gnomes, why am I stupid?"

A Gnome spoke in a supremely confident voice.

"If you pre-order, you gotta wait two weeks~ But if you buy it in two weeks, you can play right away, Gnome!"

Another Gnome chimed in.

"That's right~ Yep yep~ Gnomes are smarty! Master is stoopid!"

"Huhh...."

I got up from my chair and petted both Gnomes on the head.

"Gnomes, that's impressive."

"Gnoooome~!"

Seeing that, the other Gnomes came rushing over too, arms stretched up.

"Me too! Do me too, Gnome!"

After a few more pets, the Gnomes went back to playing amongst themselves or doing chores around the place.

I sat back down in my chair and closed the game site.

An absurd smile hung on my lips.

Now that I thought about it, I didn't have time to play games. Even if I did, I probably couldn't focus properly.

Click- click-.

I moved the mouse and opened [Mephisto Market].

If I was going to rest by surfing the internet anyway, I might as well pick up bits of information.

My eyes narrowed.

'ILovePrettyBoys.'

Mostly a wizard who posted meaningless garbage, but the advice had actually been helpful this time.

There might be other useful tips too, so let me look through what they'd written.

[Author: ILovePrettyBoys]

There was a most recent post.

[Shall we debate one of the greatest unresolved questions in all of Greece?]

'An unresolved question? What is it?'

And I immediately regretted clicking on the post.

[Between the heroes of the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroclus, who do you think was the top and who was the bottom? I can't sleep every time I think about this.

Some people say Achilles was the top because he was the famous one and the more skilled fighter. But I disagree.

First of all, Patroclus was older than Achilles, and in Greece, the tradition was for the older man to guide the younger, pretty boy.

Also, Achilles was cold to everyone else, but he was endlessly sweet and affectionate toward Patroclus.

To borrow Plato's words, in Homer's depiction, Achilles' fury after Patroclus's death was the rage of a woman, a boy, who had lost the man he loved. And most importantly!

Achilles was such a beautiful boy that he could hide among princesses without his disguise being discovered, so that pairing just makes a prettier picture.]

".........."

Why on earth did I have to read something like this? Did this place not have any moderators?

I quietly checked the comments.

[Dress: Weren't the two of them just friends?]

[AlchemistofGunpowder – This guy's writing weird stuff again]

[TyrantKaiser - I want to say I told you I wouldn't let it slide if you wrote this kind of crap again... but there's nothing I can do. I'm a loser. Please, I'm begging you, stop posting stuff like this!]

There were also wizards debating the topic in dead seriousness, but I didn't particularly want to read any more.

I left the post, and since I'd already gone this far,

I looked through other posts written by 'ILovePrettyBoys.'

".........."

And while reading through the posts, my eyes went wide and I focused intently.

[Author: ILovePrettyBoys]

[Smol baby disciple collection complete!

The prideful smol disciple who was all hissy and throwing tantrums!

Got beaten up by the little kiddos of the Special Ops Division!

Pink jelly beans on its paw pads, squish squish squish, waaahhing and crying as it ran away~

Rescued it and brought it home, stuck a treat in its mouth, and now~

Must've been tired, 'cause it's belly-up, snoozing away~]

It was nothing but one of those typical garbage-post templates, but...

'Special Ops Division.'

One phrase set my mind spinning.

The date of the post was the day after I'd summoned Paimon at Chairman Kim's building.

The same day Si-on had told me she'd lost Chairman Kim because of a collaborator who showed up out of nowhere.

'...Could this be a coincidence?'

A wizard skilled enough to shake off the Special Operations Division.

And [Mephisto Market] was a place only verified wizards were invited to.

Unless, like me, they'd stolen an invitation.

".........."

Right, it wasn't certain yet, still at the speculation stage, but...

If this person really was Chairman Kim's collaborator, there was only one thing to do.

Calm, smoldering black eyes narrowed as they fixed on the post. A resolute voice rang out.

"I'll kill you, ILovePrettyBoys."

The moment the words left my mouth, the absurdity of it hit me. My expression slackened and a sigh escaped.

"...At least pick a decent username."

Anyway, just as I was about to dig through more of 'ILovePrettyBoys' posts,

"...Gya?"

the banging on the refrigerator suddenly stopped.

As if a cat bristling its fur, Grizzly's form spiked outward, and then,

"Gyaa-!"

it reached out, grabbed me, and stuffed me straight into the empty refrigerator.

WHAM!

The door slammed shut.

"Wha-!?"

Was today's meat not to its liking? Was it because I hadn't been playing with it enough lately?

'Gyagya~ Gyagyagyagya~!'

Was this 'Starting today, Master's home is the fridge~!'?

It had all happened so fast that I couldn't make sense of the situation, crammed inside the fridge with my body folded up.

Then the refrigerator, no, the entire building shook.

KABOOOOOOM-!

An explosion detonated, rocking everything.

Winter was nice. The sun set early, so on a fast day, one could be active as early as five o'clock.

On the rooftop of the building across from Yo-han's secret Workshop.

Fweeesh-.

A vampire who had fired a portable anti-tank rocket, an RPG-7, set the launcher down.

Beside him, Yoannis's blue eyes gleamed as he watched the burning Workshop.

"The fight already started, Yo-han."

And from the burning building, a refrigerator leapt up and landed on the ground.

THOOM-!

A twisted smile spread across Yoannis's lips, fangs bared.

"...This fight is going to drag on."

It seemed the other side had no intention of going down easily.

"Contact the standby units."

‧

‧

‧

I opened the refrigerator door, coughing with my body dizzy and disoriented.

Thud-.

"Kgh! Haack-!"

Through the outside air came the acrid smell of smoke.

Whoosh-.

And immediately before my eyes, vampires baring their fangs and aiming guns came into view.

Having long fangs didn't necessarily make someone a vampire, but they certainly looked like vampires.

I barely fought down the urge to crawl back into the fridge and shut the door.

".........!"

I ran forward. My head was spinning, but I ran.

One thing was certain: I'd been attacked.

And if that was the case, what I needed now wasn't defense...

It was offense.

"Gaaaah-!"

"Huh?"

Heads of vampires went flying through the air, severed by Grizzly's sweeping arm.

Kill the enemy, find a way out.

"Grizzly, eat on the move! Recover!"

"Gya!"

Grizzly scooped up a headless vampire corpse and followed behind me.

Like a love-comedy heroine running late to school with toast clamped in her mouth, Grizzly moved with a vampire corpse in its grasp and

Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!

devoured the vampire corpse in three bites for its master's sake!

I contacted Lee Mun-ryong. The call connected immediately.

"Get over here right now!"

"Where to?"

Not asking what happened was good for not wasting time, but since I'd be on the move constantly, meeting at a specific location wasn't going to work.

Gunfire from the vampires rained down behind me.

Ratatatatatata-!

So I said while running.

"Wherever it's loudest!"