Their eyes met.
In that instant, Lee Jong-hak got goosebumps all over his body.
The distance between them was 20 meters. At this distance, Lee Jong-hak was confident in avoiding any attacks even if he was shot at with a machine gun.
However, the double’s attack was completely unexpected.
A tongue.
A bright red tongue shot out of the double’s mouth.
It was a bizarre attack that might have seemed ridiculous at first, but it was too fast.
Even Lee Jong-hak was unable to respond to the attack before it reached them, and the results were catastrophic.
Puk!
“K-, uk…”
Camilla looked down at her chest with wide eyes. The blood red tongue had pierced through her heart.
“Gurk!”
After vomiting a mouthful of blood, she reached out a trembling hand to Joffrey.
“Jo-, frey…”
“Camilla!”
Joffrey let out a thunderous shout, drew his machete, and cleaved down upon the tongue.
Clang!
But the sound he heard was similar to when two metal objects struck each other.
Joffrey looked down at the tongue in astonishment.
There wasn’t even the slightest scratch on this thin, red tongue.
“Th-, this doesn’t make sense…”
His wrist throbbed painfully. It felt like he’d struck a hard metal rod, not a tongue.
Joffrey couldn’t help but shudder inwardly.
He felt like this tongue had the strength to cut an entire house in half…
Spit.
The tongue then slithered back to where it came from.
Slurp.
The double then licked his lips with the tongue that should have been too long to fit in his mouth.
“Wh-, what the hell…”
Joanna couldn’t help but step back with a pale face.
A tongue? Killing people with nothing but a tongue? Was it only because Camilla wasn’t skilled enough to avoid it?
‘I, I couldn’t even react.’
A moment ago, if the tongue had aimed for her instead of Camilla…
It would be Joanna’s body that was cooling down at that moment.
‘It’s different.’
This was a being who was fundamentally ‘different’.
Her body felt like it was suppressed by an irrational fear that she’d never experienced with any Demon before.
At that moment, she could only think of one word, ‘death’.
“Ca-, Camilla!”
Joffrey still hadn’t come back to his senses. He held Camilla’s bloody body with despair etched on his face.
Lee Jong-hak shouted.
“You have to get your act together!”
“W-, we need to treat Camilla first! Jo-, Joanna! Is there anything you can do?”
“I, I’m a Wizard…”
“Dammit! Let’s stop the blood first! If it’s like this, she’ll…!”
“She’s already dead!”
Joffrey shivered uncontrollably at Lee Jong-hak’s words.
“Don’t turn a blind eye to the truth and try to deceive yourself! She died instantly! Her heart has been destroyed!”
“A-, ahh…”
Joffrey slowly lowered his head and muttered.
“It was… It was too simple… She died for nothing… ”
“…it is something that we were all prepared for.”
There is something that every hunter had to do before stepping onto the battlefield.
And that was to prepare themselves to accept the deaths of their comrades.
They didn’t have to be prepared for their own deaths since they usually wouldn’t realise it anyway. But the death of a comrade was impossible to ignore.
The death of someone with whom you had laughed and talked to about life and the future, and to whom you had gradually grown closer, was something that would engrave itself in your mind.
It was something that could shatter even the firmest of wills, and it broke minds.
Lee Jong-hak bit his lip.
Nevertheless, how many people could get used to the deaths of their comrades?
‘No, you should never get used to it.’
The moment they got used to it was the moment their minds broke completely.
Then, they would be no different from puppets dancing on the battlefield.
He could see the double looking at them calmly. His hands were resting relaxedly at his sides, and there was even a soft smile on his lips.
‘
‘…double?’
No.
This guy was no double.
“Are you the real Vampire Duke?”
“Hahaha…”
The Vampire Duke, Gullard, laughed happily. He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he looked at Lee Jong-hak with unbridled interest.
“Lee Jong-hak. Do you know how happy I was when I learned that you’d come to this city? It felt as though a large fish had finally swam into my carefully woven net.”
‘Well, just when I thought I’d gotten my hands on you, you slipped away.’
Gullard added this part inwardly as he continued to observe Lee Jong-hak.
“Did you want to meet me?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“There are some things I’d like to ask you. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
“…”
Lee Jong-hak kept his eyes trained on Gullard as he sent a sound transmission to both Joanna and Joffrey, who were standing beside him.
[I’ll make an opening somehow. So when you get the chance, don’t hesitate to run away.]
An opening? Against that monster?”
It wasn’t possible.
Joanna didn’t even dare to look at Gullard. Just being near him made her tremble with fear and feel like she would collapse to the ground.
Joffrey was the same. He’d only been able to act in such a way because of the anger that came with Camilla’s death. But under the overwhelming pressure that Gullard released, anger soon became terror.
For them, even Lee Jong-hak, who was still able to speak to such a being, was also a monster.
“The Chester Company had organised an event in Italy not so long ago. It was quite large. and many nobles participated in it. From what I heard, some pretty good products were supposed to be put on display.”
“…”
“You were one of those products, Human Dragon, Lee Jong-hak. However, you escaped… together with a group of slaves. And somehow, in that mess, Duke Sandro went missing.”
Gullard’s mouth twisted into a sneer.
“No. Sandro didn’t go missing. Sandro didn’t respond to the King’s summons, so it’s better to assume that he died. Do you understand what that means? A Duke died. And he disappeared without a trace, as though he’d simply evaporated.”
Lee Jong-hak couldn’t help but clench his fist at those words. The image of a blonde man flashed in his mind.
Gullard chuckled happily when he saw this.
“The expression on your face shows that you must have an idea of what happened. That’s good. I won’t kill you just yet, so—”
It was then.
Gullard’s expression became hard, and he stopped talking for a moment. With a fierce expression on his face, he jerked his head in another direction, and he seemed to be looking into the distance.
“What… is this…”
‘An opportunity!’
An opening that might have been the first and the last.
Lee Jong-hak shot towards Gullard.
* * *
Lukas disappeared from the sight of ‘Gullard’, who was looking his way.
Just a moment ago, he’d been looking down at the dirty alley where ‘Gullard’ was.
…’Gullard’ was fighting against Lee Jong-hak and the others in the distance.
And the ‘Gullard’ who had been defeated by Sedi fled after saying those questionable words to Lukas.
‘I see.’
He now understood why the ‘double’ existed.
And it should have been the same reason why the ‘Gullard’ on this side had been defeated by Sedi so easily.
The Demon titled the Vampire Duke. He had managed to see his essence to an extent.
He couldn’t deal with the Vampire Duke at that moment. At best, he would only be able to stall him. And in that time, it was likely that not just Camilla but Lee Jong-hak, Joffrey and Joanna would also die.
He needed more power.
Nevertheless, he now knew how to deal with Gullard.
Fwoosh.
For a moment, Lukas’ eyes became white and his vision stretched to the middle of the desert, about a thousand kilometers away from Zinga.
After all, it was best to leave the Demon hunting to the professionals.