Vamp! - a chinese web novel
Intros of Vamp! [Chinese Novel, Action Novel]
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| Vamp! |
Original Name
《ヴぁんぷ！》 BY Narita RyohgoSynopsis
A comedic dark fantasy about vampire clans, a vampire princess, and the man who hunts them!>>Go to the chapter list of Vamp! to read more!
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Chapter 1: The Hunters Around the Coffin
May 2004. On a ship on the German seas, in the vicinity of the Island of Growerth."Vampires, you see..."
A large man began. The people around him quietly gulped.
"They're not one, unified race. You've seen them in movies and books all the time. And 'course, some of you here have seen them in the flesh--though I guess even then, most of you haven't looked any of 'em in the eye."
The man took a deep breath, grinned, and continued.
"After all, it's our job to exterminate them before we get a look at their faces. The stronger it is, the more we take care to not look at it. When they're snoring away in their coffins, we drag the whole damned thing into the sunlight, and boom."
The man suddenly opened his fist, making a gesture like something exploding.
Several people among them chuckled and sighed.
"Even the stronger ones have a tendency to dislike daylight. There might be ones that don't even blink under the sun, but even they can't put up much of a fight against us. Am I right?"
The man smiled and presented a conclusion that was in some ways rather illogical.
"Vampires are weak. They don't live up to those things you see in movies and legends."
On this uncharacteristically balmy day on the North Sea, a group numbering at about a dozen was gathered on the deck of a car ferry. Though most of them were dressed like tourists, there was something out of the ordinary in the way they carried themselves.
"Well, I guess they're still one hell of a lot stronger than regular humans, but I'm saying that fighting a vampire's nothing compared to fighting, say, a shark."
The heavily-built man speaking at the centre of the group wore a military-style jacket. The countless scars over his face and arms were a testament to the battlefields he had haunted. His appearance made it seem that even more scars were hiding under his clothing, and his face was no less grizzled than the rest of his body.
"In other words, they are not one unified race. I'm not talking skin colour or anything on that level. Every country and region has a different vampire myth, and that's how things are in reality. Some of 'em can fly through the air, and others are slower than humans. Some can transform into bats, breathe fire, or hypnotize people by making eye contact. But I've never seen a single vampire who could do all of those things, like the ones in movies. I don't understand why, but just think of each vampire as being an entirely different species from another. That goes for their weaknesses, too. Some of 'em can cross running water just fine, and others are immune to crucifixes but scared of garlic, and so on. Staking 'em through the heart usually works, but some vampires are even immune to that."
The scarred man laughed, shook his head, and raised a finger into the air.
"One thing most of them have in common, though. They can't stand daylight. Some of 'em turn to ash before you can blink, and others are just weakened by the sun. But all we have to do is take advantage of that, and boom! The job's done. This is why our strategy is to get 'em in the daytime when they're still in their beds, and gently carry out their little bat-cradles. After that, we drive in about thirty or so stakes into the coffin and let her blow. That's how things work around here. Now, how many newbies have we got today?"
"Two, sir. We've got Val here--" A skinny, bespectacled man answered. A caucasian man who looked to be just over twenty years of age gave the others a light wave.
Cargilla, the scarred leader of the group, glanced at the newcomer and spoke, cutting off the bespectacled man.
"And then we have our Eater here."
"...That's correct." The bespectacled man mumbled, looking aside.
Standing there was a young woman of Asian descent. From her features, she was clearly not yet an adult--probably a teenager, who would not be out of place in a high school. She wore a white leather jacket, and her long hair was loosely tied behind her back.
This girl, whom Cargilla had referred to as an 'Eater', was sitting off to the side on her own, looking out at the sea. The waters were surprisingly gentle for the North Sea today as she stared into it without showing a hint of emotion.
She had been standing in the same position for many minutes now, her eerily pale skin exposed to the salty air. Cargilla snorted.
"Hmph. Striking one hell of a pose, eh? Pretty stuck-up for a freeloader."
It was then that the young man called Val hesitantly spoke up.
"What do you mean by 'freeloader', sir? And, uh... About that girl. What's an 'Eater'?"
Everyone tensed slightly at Val's question.
Cargilla scratched his head in annoyance and quietly spoke to the newcomer.
"Newbie. What's our job?"
"Huh? We're vampire exterminators, aren't we?"
"That's right." Cargilla nodded at Val's outlandish answer. "We're less mercenaries than healthcare workers. We ambush vampires during the day when they can't put up a fight, and take care of them nice and quick. And then we get our pay, whether it's from a relieved city or village council, a millionaire who's scared for his daughter's safety... Or a religious organization that people like them crawl to when they're in trouble. Right?"
"Right, sir."
These people were not part of any officially sanctioned group. They were a team that exterminated vampires for a living--not a secret society that worked in the shadows, but a group that put up ads on magazines and papers, and ran a website on the internet.
These people--the self-proclaimed 'Otherworld Welfare Inc., Branch 666', sold anti-vampire tools such as garlic spray, wooden stakes and hammer kits, and talismans written in chicken blood for Asian customers over the internet. Most people who browsed through their pages took it as a silly joke. But they had a surprisingly large customer base of people who bought their products for amusement. In the end, their sales earned them millions every year.
But from the perspective of these 'exterminators', their work in eliminating vampires was entirely serious. They did business like any other company, but they did not have a set base of operations, constantly moving from one place to another. It was as though they feared some sort of retaliation.
"Nobody in this entire world suspects us. If our ads were even a little bit realistic for 'em, we'd get complaints about fraud or false advertising, but put up a sign that says 'Vampire Extermination', and it actually works. Which is also the reason why we went for that infantile '666' subtitle."
Cargilla laughed, his white teeth showing between his lips.
"The people who come to us are the ones who get threatened by actual vampires. They get pointed to churches or the police or a hospital at best, and in the end they come to us because they have nowhere else to turn. A father saying, 'My daughter's eyes have gone dull, and there are two red spots on her neck', a child claiming to have witnessed his mother doing dirty things with a bat in the dead of night, or someone who finds themselves the only sane person left in their family."
Although they had never actually encountered such exaggerated cases before, Cargilla laughed self-deprecatingly.
"And the most important part of our business is getting as much money out of these poor desperate souls as we can. If the client is still a kid, we have to start by making the parents believe in vampires. If the family's poor, we convince the community. And if that doesn't work, the local church."
"Churches? I thought they already had people of their own for dealing with vampires." Val said. Cargilla wagged his index finger.
"Maybe they do. There's gotta be more people than we'll ever know doing this kind of work. Governments included. I bet Russia and the States might already have a vampire or two in their possession, doing experiments on 'em. But that's none of our business. Same with churches. There might be other groups like us who would rather work for free, but there's no way they'd ever be able to take on all that work. That's how many vampires there are in this world."
"And people still treat vampires like a myth, huh?"
"Not necessarily. There's quite a few people who believe in vampires, even though they're skeptical about UFOs and ghosts. And like I said before, they all have a range of differences. Some don't even drink blood. They're vampires in name only. There're idiots in South America that only drink blood from livestock and end up getting mistaken for aliens."
The newcomer looked slightly confused. Cargilla spoke before the younger man could even ask his question.
"But none of that matters in the end. Do they drink human blood or not? Frankly, doesn't matter if the vampire's actually on the side of humans or if he's a good guy or whatever. What's important is that we kill 'em and get paid."
"But doesn't it bother you, sir?"
"That's why we kill 'em in broad daylight. And why we don't look at their faces. Some vampires look like the hottest women in the world or innocent children. Now imagine if one of those looked you in the eye and said 'I'm not your enemy, please trust me'. Whether they're telling the truth or not, you'll always get a couple of idiots who actually believe that. That's why we blow them to bits before they can tell us if they're good or evil."
"That's pretty brutal."
"And say that it really was a good vampire we're after. The fact that someone reported its hiding hole to us means that it's been doing something already. There might not have been any victims yet, but the moment the locals get scared and call us, it's over."
Cargilla lit a cheap cigar and looked up at the clear blue sky.
There was neither excitement nor sympathy in his eyes. He was speaking as a businessman, nothing more.
"Just like this time." He concluded. But Val spoke up to continue the conversation.
"Uh, I don't know if that answers my question."
"Huh? What question?" Cargilla replied, looking as though he had honestly forgotten. The newcomer repeated himself, embarrassed.
"Sir, that Asian girl! What in the world is she?"
Cargilla's eyes opened at the reminder. He exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke.
"Oh. Of course. Of course. Sorry 'bout that. I completely forgot." He breathed in the cigar smoke, taking in the shaking of the ferry. "Our job is to hunt vampires for pay, but not everyone works for the same purpose. Once in a blue moon you come across someone who's not doing this for their faith or duty or sense of justice. That girl there is one of the best of 'em. See, she's an Eater. And we work with people like her sometimes."
Cargilla stopped, expelled the smoke from his lungs, and continued.
"Name says it all, doesn't it? They eat vampires."
"...What?"
The newcomer looked around in confusion. But his dozen or so co-workers looked away, and several glared at the girl with disgust.
"It's like some sort of black magic. They're a bunch of crazies. They tear out the vampire's neck before it can get to theirs."
"What does that mean, sir?"
Cargilla's answer was simple and true.
"They devour the vampire's flesh, drink their blood, kill them, then mix in their ashes with water and drink it. They're trying to gain the power of vampires while remaining human."
Val took about five seconds to process this new information. He looked at the girl with a slightly different expression.
"Is that even possible?"
"Who knows? I've tried it with ashes before, but never worked for me. I guess blood must work best, but how could anyone get a hold of vampire blood without waking it up, in broad daylight? In the sun, they'll turn to ash instantly. In the shade, they'll fight back. But that girl over there's a bit of a celebrity in our line of work. Can't turn into bats or wolves, but in terms of raw power and reaction time she's literally vampire-level. You'll see once you see her in action. You won't be able to disbelieve by then."
A tinge of hatred and fear rose to Cargilla's eyes.
"Listen up, newbie. That doesn't mean I dislike that power of hers. I'm damn scared because she somehow managed to drink a vampire's blood before it got turned to ash. Some say that she made a deal with a vampire to drink its blood by dragging thirty of people like us into a trap."
It was still possible for her to have taken blood by force from a vampire who was only weakened by sunlight, but Cargilla did not seem to be satisfied with that conclusion.
"If you want an easier way to get a vampire's power, just let one of them turn you. If you're not tainted yet, you should be all good. But Eaters are different. Fouled. Trying to gain all of a vampire's powers, but none of their weaknesses. If Vampire Hunters actually existed, they wouldn't be dhampyrs like in those legends. They'd be people like her--quick-thinking, underhanded, and determined to the point of annoyance."
He dragged his cigar against the deck and extinguished it.
"Just like vampires." He concluded.
When their mission had been first confirmed, a lone girl came to their recruitment location, asking to join them.
They were in the middle of a great flat wasteland. The one road in sight led straight to the horizon. There was nothing but a small drive-thru building and a parked van around them.
Cargilla, sitting in the driver's seat of the nondescript van, looked at the girl outside as though examining a specimen.
He could tell at a glance that she was of Asian descent. Her figure was rather full to be called a 'girl' still--her arms and legs were lean but muscular, reminiscent of a feline in top form. Under her thin white jacket she wore only a tank top.
Normally Cargilla might have gone for a catcall, but there was a hint of youth still in the girl's face, and she was staring straight at him while suppressing some sort of emotion. The incongruity of her appearance compelled Cargilla to think twice about treating her as a woman--of course, she was a bit too young age-wise for him anyway.
The strange girl spoke first in clumsy English.
"Um... Once more. Killing Growerth Island vampire? I want to help."
Initially he thought it a joke and thought to get out of the car to shoo the girl away.
"Hey, Missy. Where'd you hear about us? You hack our website or something? I know we're not really in a position to consider anything a joke or anything, but this ain't a sightseeing trip... wha-?"
"I know."
The girl's voice came from behind him.
When he had stepped off the driver's seat, she had unmistakably been in front of the car. But by the time he realized it, the girl had disappeared behind him.
Her mature, monotone voice sounded almost like that of a killer reading an execution order. Fear ran through his veins.
"I know. I came because I know."
'Is she a vampire?!'
But naturally, it was still daytime. The sun was blazing hard enough to make his skin tingle. And as far as Cargilla knew, no vampires were unaffected by the sun. Some legends spoke of vampires immune to daylight, but every vampire he had encountered so far avoided it like the plague and lived in the shadows.
"You can't take legends at face value."
He had said this before. And when a subordinate asked, "What if we end up fighting one that's immune to sunlight?", he replied, "Then we all get hypnotized, turned into zombies, or get our blood sucked out and get turned into freeze-dried food.".
Vampires like that, however, did not exist. And even if they did, he was certain that vampires of that caliber would not bother with a group like his--not that he had any intention of facing one. Creatures like that were better left to some secret police or a hidden organization from the Vatican, he thought.
They were merely running a business aimed at a niche. They would not expand their market, merely exterminating vampires that were weak to sunlight, and receiving pay in return. This was how they lived.
But one existence that went completely against this philosophy of his had appeared before him and disappeared behind his back.
If she really was a vampire, who could move at such speeds even under the sun, he was finished. Cargilla reached this conclusion, barely managing to suppress his scream but unable to stop the cold sweat streaming down his body.
"I will help, not get in the way. Let me go too." The girl said emotionlessly. It took Cargilla all the courage he ever had to respond.
"Who-who are you. What do you want."
The girl's response was monotone, but it clearly held back a greater power inside.
"Kijima Shizune. Japanese. Sixteen years old."
And her final descriptor answered Cargilla's questions.
"Eater."
She could hear the fearful voices and feel the gazes of the others as she listened to the sound of the waves.
Shizune Kijima closed her eyes.
'Do they think I can't hear them? Or are they doing this on purpose?
'No... I guess most people couldn't hear this well. Normal humans couldn't do that. But I can hear it because I'm different. I can hear things I don't need to hear--things I don't want to hear.'
The girl in white leather made up her mind to ignore her allies' chatter. Val, who had been smoothly sweet-talking her before they boarded the ferry, was now whispering about her in a hushed voice.
Of course, Shizune had ignored him entirely earlier, and she felt no great loss in continuing to do so. She also knew that her fellow employees--no, exterminators--were also avoiding her. But that did not impede her determination in the slightest.
'I chose this path of my own will. I have no regrets.'
Shizune's reason for killing vampires was simple but firm.
Revenge. That was how it all began.
The vampire appeared before her back when she had still been living in a small village in the mountains of Hokuriku.
Having been entirely ignorant, unprepared, and uninterested in vampires up to that point, its arrival signalled the beginning of an end for her.
It started with two little problems. Two little puncture wounds.
Two little puncture wounds on her little brother's neck.
It was the start of the night when everything had been stolen from her.
That night, a forest fire ravaged the little village, leaving behind twenty-two charred corpses. The incident left Japan shaken for about a month. And nothing happened afterwards.
The autopsy reports showed that the victims had all been killed before their bodies were burned. Gossip magazines had wasted no time in making comparisons to the Tsuyama Massacre(1), but the lack of a clear cause of death meant that no one could know if the deaths were even homicides or suicides. The case was left to disappear in uncertainty.
The ten-year old girl who had narrowly avoided the tragedy also went missing, as though in an attempt to avoid media attention. She was now on her way to the island of Growerth on a ferry.
What she wanted at the moment she resolved to hunt vampires was, simply, power.
Having chosen the path of an Eater, Shizune was more than used to solitude. Her allies' coldness to her did not particularly bother her. She merely disliked having to listen to their voices.
She could not stand hearing others talk about her with fear, disgust, or sometimes sympathy and pity, despite not knowing a thing about her.
'If only people didn't have voices and languages. If only we could only communicate with actions...'
It had been over six years now since she first drank the blood of a vampire.
The quickest way to gain power--power to annihilate vampires--was to become an Eater.
In the six years since, she had devoured the flesh of over a hundred vampires, drinking their blood and even their ashes.
For her first few kills, she had to take them by surprise or receive help from others, but by the time she had eaten ten or so vampires, her own strength was enough.
She would corner her target with raw power and sink her teeth into their arms and legs. The victim would be mortified by her--the human--and her superhuman feats of strength, and their shock would soon give way to fear.
Those fleeting moments were precisely what Shizune lived for. They were the light of her life and the greatest pleasure permitted to her.
When she first felt joy at this sight, she came to a realization: The moment she accepted vengeance as pleasure, she had lost her humanity.
Shizune watched the vampire before her, dissolving to ash under the moonlight with a stake through its chest. For a moment she tasted despair, but she brought a hand to her face, a slight grin forming, and realized something else.
The expression on the vampire's face--of fear, despair, shock, and the question--"Why me?".
It was the very expression Shizune had worn on her face the night her life was turned upside-down.
She killed many vampires. She annihilated them.
As many and many and many as there were.
She did not go after vampires recklessly. Shizune chose her targets carefully, making sure to select ones she knew for certain that she could defeat. Savouring each and every meal as she continued to build up strength and experience.
Revenge was no longer her motivation. She was being controlled by a great invisible force.
'No, that's not it. There is no invisible power on high. I control myself. The force that propels me is right here.'
She continued to slay vampires one after another in order to remain herself, she thought, trying to justify her actions.
But as she took joy in slaughtering her prey, the fact of her self-told lie came back to the surface.
As life went on, Shizune eventually stopped thinking about it. She knew that, no matter what conclusion she reached, she would never stop.
'I am a monster. Of course people are going to avoid me.' she thought, and allowed her thoughts to wander back to the other exterminators, disdain clear in her mind.
'I know what it's like. So I can excuse myself. I have the right to think this way, looking down on myself and hating me. But who do they think they are? Talking behind my back with nothing but assumptions backing them up. They don't know anything about me. They get lucky with their targets and think they're strong. It's like guessing answers in a multiple choice question. And they still lord it over as if they know everything.'
Deciding that there was no use in complaining about her problems, Shizune turned her attention back to the sea.
The air was calm, but the waves below surged back and forth.
And in the distance, at the centre of the horizon before the ferry, a small dot appeared.
The little shape soon spread over the horizon, becoming a mountain surrounded by green.
A rather sizeable city soon became visible along the foot of the mountain. Shizune's superhuman sense of sight allowed her to spot a certain structure amidst the scenery.
Waldstein Castle. Said to have been named after its master, it had been renovated in its entirety, and a save for a small section, it had been designated a tourist attraction. That small section was where Shizune and the exterminators had their business.
Remembering the reason she was going to this island, Shizune quietly began to renew her focus.
The ferry made port on the island. Tourists and their luggage left the ship one after another.
"Perfect weather today. Looks like we'll be done before sunset." Cargilla said. The bespectacled man, who seemed to be his second-in-command, spoke up.
"Sir, we also have to speak with the client directly."
"We're splitting up. You take a few people to see the client, and contact me by radio if anything goes wrong."
"What about you, sir?"
"Can't speak a lick of German. But it shouldn't be a problem for a native speaker like you, eh? I'm counting on you."
The subordinate nodded, and left the group with two exterminators in tow. Their group had brought along two station wagons and a small car for the job. The bespectacled man went to the car, and began to leave the port with his two companions.
He then caught a glimpse of the crewmen unloading some of the cargo.
"...? Those boxes seem a bit large for tourists to be lugging around. Is someone moving here, I wonder?"
The bespectacled man's car quietly drove along the smoothly paved road, past the hulking workmen carrying bed-sized cargo.
After watching his subordinate leave, Cargilla looked over the sight of the port town and gave his verdict.
"Strange."
"What do you mean?" Val the newcomer asked curiously.
Whether he was conscious of Val's curiosity or not, Cargilla continued as though speaking to himself.
"It might have been an indirect request, but we basically have the mayor asking us to exterminate a vampire. If things've gone that far, then there'd be rumours all over the streets. But this place is too energetic. Too peaceful."
"Maybe the rumours are there, but no one believes in them. Or maybe only the mayor and his middleman know about it..."
"...No. Judging from experience, where they're vampires, there's always something like an omen, or a strange atmosphere. Whether or not it's a tourist destination, whenever there's rumours floating around, people always get suspicious of big groups of visitors like ours. But..."
Cargilla observed the harbour once more, and shook his head in defeat.
"...It's just too quiet."
Just before he stepped into his station wagon, the leader of the exterminators looked over the town and mumbled to himself.
"It's in an even better state than most places that don't have vampires..."
The two station wagons and the cars of every passenger that had been aboard the ferry eventually disappeared.
Standing before the cargo that had been transported to the basement of the harbour office, a pair of workers began whispering to one another.
"Anyway, it's a real honour, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"I can't believe I've been entrusted with transporting Viscount Waldstein's family!"
The basement was dark, lit only by a fluorescent light. However, the room looked less like a storage chamber and more like a high-class sitting room. The cargo that had been brought here all bore the name of one particular owner, and each had been wrapped with the utmost care.
"I feel like I'm not worthy, you know? They could've just had their familiars do it. So... what the heck happened to 'em all? Those maids in green, the baobhan sith(2), right? All those maids! Can you believe it?"
Of the cargo, only two pieces had been unpackaged--a pair of small coffins. One of the workers, standing before them, complained wearily.
"I hear they're cleaning up after the trip. The two of 'em just wanted to come back earlier."
"So they can't stand waiting in line like the rest of us, eh? Kids are kids." The worker laughed.
At that very moment, a small voice escaped one of the coffins.
"It is truly disappointing."
The voice was unmistakably young and female, tinged with crystalline beauty.
"Since when has it been permitted for the people of this island to mock their masters?"
The workmen froze. One of the coffins was open.
The moment they heard the voice, the men nervously turned their gazes towards the coffins. But they never noticed the lid opening.
"To think that plebeian lowborns would dare to insult my Honoured Brother."
Rage and disgust were clear in her tone. And by the time these words reached their ears, a girl was standing before them.
She was wearing a mainly black gothic-style dress. Her eyes, so sharp they could not be human, glared at the men.
Of course, she had neither stopped the flow of time nor teleported to her current location. The men had merely been so terrified that their minds were playing tricks on them. Adding fuel to the fire was the girl's graceful movement, fluid and lacking in excess.
"...!"
"...Y-y-you're... a-awake--"
As the men grasped for words, the girl unleashed her tranquil fury upon them.
"Were you counting on the sunlight to protect your secrecy? I now understand exactly how you speak of us when we are not present."
"N-not at all, milady! We weren't-"
"Hold your ignoble tongue, you wretch!"
The girl's sudden burst of anger left the men petrified, as though her words themselves were a magic spell. Although it was a comically out-of-place line in this day and age, the girl's eyes, possessed of a superhuman glint, would not allow it to be taken as such.
The men's knees trembled as their fear reached its peak. But suddenly--
"Hwaaaaaa..."
It was a yawn laid-back enough to shatter a thousand years' worth of fear.
The workmen felt as though the frozen atmosphere of the room had melted instantly, and realized that the yawn had come from the second coffin.
At the same time, they also realized that the girl was holding her hands up to their throats with a look that could kill.
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