Book 9: Chapter 25: Forbidden Scissors

The three men in the standoff shared their Main Quests. Especially after the other two saw the Death Hunting Mission Qin Lun shared, they didn’t hesitate. They turned and chased into the cluster of buildings where the handsome young man had fled.

Watching the big man and the Assassin disappear, Qin Lun sighed softly. Apostles, Reincarnators… all were merely mercenaries driven by forces beyond their control. Comrades one moment, sworn enemies on opposite sides the next.

“So now… Integra!” Qin Lun raised his head, gaze locking onto the distant Rolls-Royes shrinking to a tiny black speck against the night. A flicker of cold light glinted in his eyes.

The stop caused by the three men hadn’t taken long. The Rolls-Royes remained within the range of his Perception.

With the acceleration granted by the Pentagram Crystal Mirror, that distance could be covered in under two minutes. Yet Qin Lun hadn’t gotten far before he was forced to halt once more. Another figure stood blocking his path.

His pupils contracted the moment he saw this newcomer. He didn’t attempt his earlier tactic of casually leaping over anyone’s head. His hands gripping the Burial of Light and Darkness tightened involuntarily. Wariness creased his features.

He recognized this person. Or rather, he had seen this person’s profile among the data on the Allied Forces’ Superhumans provided by Major Montana. This person stood tall, with a gaunt face and long limbs. He wore a gentleman’s vest fitted with double rows of brass buttons beneath an incongruously vibrant crimson trench coat. A broad-brimmed sun hat crowned his head, perched above antique spectacles with circular lenses.

Qin Lun had only ever seen this kind of quasi-medieval, old-fashioned attire on one other person: the Queen of Sandstorm, Monica.

“How should I address you? Alucard? Or Count Dracula? Major Gerthard of the German Army pays his respects!” Qin Lun inclined his body with polite formality. The Perception he’d spread out earlier snapped back sharply, even shrinking its scope, becoming far more concentrated than usual.

He no longer paid attention to the fleeing Rolls-Royes. This enemy before him was unlike the previous three. No matter the outcome of this fight, he’d have no chance of catching Integra afterward.

“Names are just tags to me. Call me what you like!” Alucard grinned, his hands darting from beneath his coat in a blur. They now clutched two massive pistols, one white and one black.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Sharp shrieks of supersonic bullets filled the air, punctuated by Alucard’s eerie, trailing words, “And who you are? Doesn’t concern me one bit!”

“Heh.” Qin Lun’s body began drifting upwards even before he straightened. He swayed like a willow leaf buffeted by a gale, his movements utterly elusive. Thanks to his Master-level marksmanship and evolved Swift Wind Step, Alucard’s bullets posed almost zero threat.

“This gunplay… it’s just… pretty lousy!” Qin Lun shook his head with a slight smile. Ever since he began his journey in the Shattered Starry Sky, marksmanship had been his core strength. At this range, it was no exaggeration to say he could predict exactly where the bullets would fly even with his eyes shut.

“Sabot-piercing rounds. The projectile core… appears to be silver needles imbued with Divine Light properties!” Qin Lun’s eyes glinted sharply. He quickly pinpointed the true nature of the bullets within his Perception range. A faint frown touched his lips. Divine Light inflicted extra damage on him; he couldn’t afford to be careless now.

“But as a half-baked hybrid Vampire… aren’t you afraid the opponent might turn that very weakness against you?” Qin Lun chuckled softly, raising his own gun. His elusive movements didn’t disrupt his steady wrists in the slightest. “Allow me to demonstrate what a true Gunslinger looks like!”

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The silver-white watch-face emblazoned on Qin Lun’s right eye pulsed. Its unseen hands spun madly faster! As the twinned cylinders of the Burial of Light and Darkness roared through their rotations, a deluge of black and white bullets ripped through the night. They blazed trails like countless tracer rounds.

Each streak of light struck one of Alucard’s projectiles head-on with pinpoint accuracy! From a vantage point high above the duelers, the lingering trails captured on the retina formed a peculiar sight: a spinning shuttle shape, pointed at both ends, rounded in the middle, constructed entirely of light.

The starting point of this luminous spindle? Qin Lun’s Burial of Light and Darkness, without question. The destination? Every streak converged relentlessly on Alucard. The colliding streaks wove the bullets from both combatants into a single, soaring metal tide. A veritable torrent of hot lead surged forward to engulf the Vampire lord!

Using his peerless gunplay, Qin Lun had transformed the fire from four pistols into the blazing chain of a heavy machine gun. The instantaneous metal storm utterly engulfed Alucard’s body.

The lanky frame of the Vampire Count shattered into countless pieces under the relentless onslaught. He disintegrated faster than a piece of meat torn apart by rabid dogs. Where he stood one moment, only a ghastly splash of shredded meat and gore remained the next.

“Oh?!” Yet Qin Lun, who seemed to have defeated his foe, showed no trace of triumph on his face. Instead, he raised an eyebrow as he surveyed the bloody mess stretching before him, letting out a long, drawn-out sound of disbelief.

Within his Perception vision, besides the bloody puddle ahead, the very air hung thick with a faint cloud of crimson mist. Its spread was vast, so diluted and thin it would escape a normal person’s eye.

But in Qin Lun’s sight, the microscopic, nano-sized blood molecules within that airborne haze stirred. They behaved almost as if possessing their own consciousness! Intermingling at a frantic rate, they seemed actively engaged in reassembling themselves into a cohesive physical form.

“So the fat man’s intel isn’t an exaggeration after all. A genuine undying body!” Genuine surprise touched Qin Lun for the first time. Never mind the startling inclusion of Divine Light in Alucard’s shells. Qin Lun knew firsthand the terrifying destructive power housed within his own Burial of Light and Darkness.

The attacks of a truly Legendary firearm weren’t easily endured. Bullets from the Demon’s Song inflicted corrosive damage. Those spat out by the Angel’s Praise were especially deadly to dark beings like Vampires.

Even someone like the late Baron von Wurdenbeller wouldn’t have survived being torn apart to this degree by the Burial’s fury. Though given the Baron’s physical resilience, he likely wouldn’t have been shredded into blood mist so easily.

Truth be told, when Major Montana handed Qin Lun the Allied Forces’ dossiers on their most prominent Superhumans, he hadn’t paid much attention to Alucard, the HELLSING organization’s trump card. Most of his research had focused on how to eliminate the Avengers Alliance members.

Despite Montana’s special emphasis on Alucard in the files – elevating him above even Captain America and the Green Hunter in importance – Qin Lun had stuck to viewing it as the Major’s personal, excessive “concern” for the HELLSING corps.

This wasn’t Qin Lun underestimating his foes. Rather, the Vampire bloodline simply didn’t represent what he considered a truly formidable Superhuman strain. Many confused the Blood Clan with common Vampires, but they were distinctly different beings.

The exchange program within the Shattered Starry Sky offered the Blood Clan lineage. Its designation read: “Those Deserted by the Creator.” Like humans, the Blood Clan were a higher life form created by the Maker, one intended to manage humans. They belonged to the same broad category as Angels. However, this proud race had succumbed to the corrosive touch of dark power. Their fall from grace saw them cast aside and utterly abandoned by their Creator.

Most orthodox members of the Blood Clan didn’t subsist souly on human blood. Their power stemmed from darkness itself! They wielded terrifying varieties of Black Magic, and their innate physical attributes were formidable. Like Angels, however, the Blood Clan lacked natural reproductive capability. Deprived of their Creator’s favor, reproducing as a race depended solely on passing their vital essence to create heirs.

Vampires were entirely different. At their core, Vampires were a viral mutation of humans! Under specific circumstances, a human body underwent radical genetic alteration. The subject developed an imperative to drain the lifeblood of their peers. Through this act, they consumed the victim’s Sol and life force to sustain themselves and enhance their combat power.

Major Montana hadn’t been wrong in one regard: by their fundamental nature, Vampires were hybrids. If the host’s main will was potent, it could suppress the chaotic chorus of Solamons and life forces absorbed from others. If that controlling psyche faltered, the host devolved into a pure beast – a being driven by primal instincts, greedily hunting further blood to keep the relentless hunger at bay.

Most Blood Clan members became proficient Black Magic casters; Wurdenbeller was a clear example. In contrast, Vampires only burned through the stolen life and Sol accumulated from their prey to fuel their unnatural existence and augment their fighting traits. The power disparity among them boiled down to a single factor: efficiency. The best masters maximized their exploitation of harvested life essence and assimilated souls.

The entity before Qin Lun now – Alucard, the blood-soaked legend formerly known as “The Impaler Count Dracula” – embodied this path. He was a master Vampire forged in the heart of warfare, ascending to prominence by manipulating countless solamons and life forces harvested from others.

Of course, Qin Lun held no particular prejudice against Alucard personally. Based on Montana’s intel, this Alucard seemed to have reinvented himself. He appeared to have transitioned from the sadistic Impaler Count of medieval invasions into a guardian – a Vampire Hunter defending humanity, decisively severing ties with his brutal past.

Qin Lun’s lack of deep regard for Alucard stemmed from a simple, fundamental truth: Vampires represented merely alternate forms of mutated humanity. Their acquired hybrid lineages carried inherent, inescapable weaknesses.

Their vulnerability to strong light and silver stood as one recognized vulnerability, though expending stored life force could temporarily mitigate its effects. Like Alucard’s reaction just now during Qin Lun’s attack: it wasn’t true immortality. His seeming immunity manifested when he unleashed other lifeforces contained writhing within his core essence, deploying expendable “decoys” to hastily rebuild pulverised tissue.

In essence, the finer his mastery over manipulating souls and life forces provided, the greater number of standby replacement bodies – soul-constructs acting as sacrificial pawns – Alucard could deploy. So long as a steady reservoir of life essence and dispersed souls remained accessible within him or nearby, absolute physical destruction couldn’t occur. Rapid regeneration rendered him practically invincible.

“In a peculiar, almost ironic sense, Vampires and Apostles make incredibly well-matched adversaries,” A jagged glint cut across Qin Lun’s eyes. Wasn’t an Apostle’s formidable resilience intrinsically tied to their Law Bodies’ near-limitless capacity for restorative reconstruction?

Observing the unnatural stirring energies within the blood mist, Qin Lun had no intention of passively waiting. With a fluid twist of his wrists, he made the Burial of Light and Darkness vanish. Beneath his boots, the spectral outline of a Pentagram Crystal Mirror solidified silently. His body rocketed forth like a cannonball, hurtling straight towards the epicenter of the swirling crimson fog.

Simultaneously, his right hand seemed to blur; clutched within its grip materialized the ominous form of the Dagger of Sin, its edge rippling with an unsettling aura of palpable darkness. Yet the weapon’s appearance held a significant difference from before.

Originally, the Dagger of Sin resembled half of a hefty pair of scissors – a single thick blade bearing a serrated spine of squared-off, jagged teeth. Its grip ended in a functional steel ring sized for accommodating someone’s thumb. Currently, however, an additional element appeared. A sliver of solidified energy, manifesting as the shimmering essence of “the Blood of Dissection,” intertwined and merged seamlessly with the original dagger blade. Together, they reconstructed the complete instrument – a sinister pair of black-and-red cross-bladed scissors!

Snip! A sharp, crisp slicing sound punctuated the night air as the black-red scissors swept through the void. They traced a trail of cold radiance, snipping out a precise, angular section of the swirling blood mist! That part of the severed crimson haze seemed to convulse violently, electrocuted by intense energy. Visible even within Qin Lun’s Perception sight, it rapidly dissipated like snow meeting fierce volcanic heat.