Into the Creations

"Ugh…!"

"Ah, damn it! Hey, rookie! If you're gonna puke, do it outside! If you puke here, I'll kill you with my bare hands!"

Team Leader Oh Jeong-jin's shout echoed loudly through the apartment. The young rookie, who had recently become a detective, ran down the hallway with a pale face, covering his mouth. Moon Ji-hyuk watched the rookie's retreating figure.

A faint memory surfaced. When he first saw a corpse, his face had turned pale too, and he couldn't eat meat for a while. This was something Moon Ji-hyuk couldn't help with. As a detective, you'll see worse scenes than this. It's rare to see dismembered bodies, but they do exist. You have to overcome it and get used to it.

'He'll get used to it. Just like I did.'

Moon Ji-hyuk turned his attention back to the crime scene.

The gruesome scene at Apartment A, Unit 603.

Around 7 a.m., a man going downstairs for exercise discovered a pool of blood in the hallway. Blood had flowed out from under the door of Unit 603 and pooled in the hallway.

It was now 8 a.m. Oh Jeong-jin, Moon Ji-hyuk, and other police officers, along with the forensic team, were occupying Unit 603 and conducting their investigation.

There were a total of six bodies.

The peculiar thing was that three of the bodies had been killed with a long blade, like a katana, and one of them had been decapitated.

The other three bodies were found in the bedroom, and they looked like gangsters. Judging from the marks, they had been killed with a sashimi knife.

"Damn it… How the hell did they cut the neck so cleanly?"

Oh Jeong-jin grimaced as he looked at the man's head lying on the floor. The cut was unnaturally clean.

This wasn't something a human could do. Even executioners, whose job was to cut off heads, rarely managed to do it in one clean stroke. And it's not like they brought a guillotine or a cutting machine here.

"There's no way a human could cut a neck this cleanly."

As Oh Jeong-jin pondered deeply, Moon Ji-hyuk clenched his fist.

'A vampire. If it's a vampire's strength… they could cut off a head in one swift motion.'

What didn't make sense was the condition of the bodies. There were no signs of blood being sucked.

'If it's not blood they're after…?'

First, they needed to identify the bodies.

"Team Leader. We've identified the victims after questioning the neighbours."

Detective Park approached Oh Jeong-jin and reported.

"Yeah?"

"The owner of this apartment is Jang Sung-min. He's been living here for about a year."

"The one with the severed neck."

They had already identified the victim. His wallet and smartphone were still intact.

"According to the neighbours, four people lived here together."

"...Four?"

"Yes. They didn't know their occupations, but they often moved around together. They didn't interact much with the neighbours and lived quietly without causing trouble."

"Does anyone know what happened yesterday?"

"No one knows."

It was hard to tell if they genuinely didn't know or if they were pretending not to know. Most people avoid getting involved in cases like this.

"Was the fourth one a gangster?"

"Not the ones in the bedroom. They say he was a punk with bleached blond hair and piercings."

"...Three are dead, and one is alive… He's obviously a suspect. Catch him."

"Yes."

Detective Park immediately set out to investigate.

"Detective Moon."

"Yes."

"Secure all the CCTV and black box footage from the area."

"Understood."

Moon Ji-hyuk moved. Even as he walked away from Unit 603, he couldn't shake the thought that the perpetrator of this case was a vampire.

***

"Did the CCTV catch anything?"

Oh Jeong-jin approached Moon Ji-hyuk, who was sitting in the office reviewing CCTV footage on his laptop.

"No. Nothing special. But there's one man who caught my attention."

"A man who caught your attention?"

Oh Jeong-jin looked at the footage on the laptop.

"Why does the screen look like this?"

Part of the screen was distorted.

"It's from the CCTV in front of the apartment. I thought it was broken, but only the front part of the camera was damaged. The footage is still intact."

Moon Ji-hyuk rewound the footage a bit.

"This man?"

It was a man in a suit. His posture was impeccable. However, due to the damaged part of the screen, his face wasn't visible at all. There were no distinctive features on his body, making it difficult to identify him.

"Yes. For some reason, I think this man is the culprit."

"A hunch?"

"...Yes."

Moon Ji-hyuk nodded slowly. That's right. It was just a hunch.

"Detective Moon. We're not fortune tellers, you know? No matter how much this guy seems like the culprit, we need solid evidence. Without evidence, it's just a false accusation. And no matter how you look at it, this guy doesn't seem like the type."

Oh Jeong-jin tapped the monitor with the back of his hand.

"There are at least two culprits. We're assuming the gangsters were killed elsewhere and then brought here. The fact that there are cut pipes around the bodies suggests there was a fight. I don't know how they cut the pipes and the necks, but… it's not something one person could do alone."

'What if it's not a human, but a vampire?'

The words almost slipped out of Moon Ji-hyuk's mouth. But he held back. He shouldn't say anything that would make Oh Jeong-jin suspicious, especially since Oh Jeong-jin knew nothing about vampires.

Oh Jeong-jin was not someone to be trusted.

"And look. This guy isn't carrying anything. Not even a knife, let alone a sword. He doesn't have a bag or anything. Unless he's got some kind of magic pouch, there's no way he's the culprit."

"...."

Moon Ji-hyuk thought differently.

What if this man was a vampire progenitor? What if he had some kind of supernatural ability to hide objects?

'…No. That's going too far. There's no evidence that this man is a vampire, and it's unlikely that a progenitor would be involved in something like this.'

Moon Ji-hyuk shook off his wild thoughts.

He trusted his hunches, but he couldn't proceed with the investigation based solely on them. Moon Ji-hyuk removed the man in the footage from the list of suspects.

"Oh, right. We've got information on Jang Sung-min. Turns out he was running an illegal sports gambling site. According to the punk we caught today, he had 480 million won stashed in his closet. But as you know, not a single penny was found. I think this whole mess was about the money."

"…So it's about money after all."

"Nothing surprising about that. Money is often involved in crimes. And the three gangsters were part of the Bae-won faction. Did you know about the blood pool incident in the alleyway a while back? The blood belonged to them."

"Huh? Wait a minute. Isn't that strange?"

"It is. Turns out they were missing. And today, they were found dead. The boss of the Bae-won faction is denying any involvement, and the room they worked in is also clueless."

"...I heard the blood in the alleyway belonged to four people. Did the DNA analysis reveal anything about the fourth person?"

"They said it was a healthy man in his early 20s. Judging from the amount of blood, he was definitely cut by a knife. Detective Park checked nearby hospitals, but there were no men in their early 20s who came in with knife wounds."

"Were the gangsters killed just yesterday?"

"Yeah. The forensic team confirmed it. They were in a very fresh state. There were no signs of torture, but Ma Bong-cheon's testicles were burst. Dying as a eunuch… what a pitiful bastard."

"Did another gang capture and imprison them? No… There's no reason for that… What the hell is this?"

"I don't know, man. The deeper we dig into this case, the weirder it gets. It's beyond common sense. People are even saying the culprit might be a magician."

"…Maybe it really is a magician."

"Why are you like this too? Anyway, just investigate this properly, gather the evidence, and hand it over to the Special Affairs Division."

The Special Affairs Division.

To be precise, the Special Investigations Division. They handle special cases.

"The Special Affairs Division again? The mummy case was handed over to them not long ago. Do we have to hand this over too?"

"What can we do? That's what the higher-ups want. They're the experts in this field."

Moon Ji-hyuk easily predicted the common thread in the cases being handed over to the Special Affairs Division.

Vampires.

The agency believed that cases involving vampires were mostly handed over to the Special Affairs Division.

"Get it sorted out by today and send it over. The CCTV footage too. If you don't send it, they'll throw a fit again."

"…Yes."

Moon Ji-hyuk replied with a sense of helplessness.

There was nothing he, a mere detective, could do.

'...If I can't do anything as a detective… then I'll have to move personally.'

***

I woke up in a bed soaked with the sweet scent of a woman.

My body felt heavy. After spending a legendary night, instead of going to a motel, I came to Hera's place and had post-party sex with her.

My life as the 'Vampire Detective' was truly a life filled with sex.

'Maybe I'll sleep at Mi-young's place tomorrow.'

I had sexual relationships with several women. They would come to me when their desires built up, and I would occasionally seek them out to maintain the relationships.

Among them, I had the most frequent relationship with Hera. Hera's sexual appetite was stronger than I had anticipated.

Hera worked at Young Hye-jeong's office, so I was the only one in her apartment.

Click!

I opened the fridge, grabbed a can of soda, and walked over to the sofa.

Hera lived alone in a high-end apartment, which was more spacious and clean than most hotels.

As soon as I turned on the TV, the 7 o'clock news was on.

-[This morning, an explosion occurred in a residential area in Seoul. The fire burned down five nearby houses. Three people died, and four were injured. Thanks to the firefighters' efforts, the fire was quickly extinguished. The exact cause of the fire is still under investigation, but an LPG gas tank explosion is the most likely cause.]

"Ah! This is that episode."

The fire accident on the news was actually arson. The arsonist was a vampire who set fires for fun.

This episode's appearance meant that the current point in time was the beginning of the middle part of the drama. Moon Ji-hyuk would catch the vampire arsonist and learn that the vampire organization, Kantra, knew a way for vampires to become human.

"And the arsonist gets killed by a vampire hunter."

This episode also served to alert viewers to the dangers of vampire hunters.

-[Last night, gunshots rang out at the museum. The police explained that it was a gang fight and declared that they would not tolerate gangsters possessing firearms. The police chief advised Seoul citizens to avoid going out at night if possible...]

"What?"@@novelbin@@

My eyes widened.

The museum battle.

This episode was supposed to happen a bit later, not at this point in time.

The police explained it as a gang fight, but in reality, it was a battle between vampires and vampire hunters.

"...Damn it."

I cursed.

This was the spark that would ignite a full-scale war between vampires and vampire hunters. And that spark had already been lit, ready to explode within days.

The nights of Seoul would become a battlefield, unbeknownst to its citizens.

'I expected the story to twist a bit. But this… it's too fast.'

In the worst-case scenario, the Flower of Life, which bears the Orb of Life, might not come to Korea. That would be a real disaster.

'What went wrong? Killing Jang Sung-min? No… that's not it.'

That was something I did just last night. There's no way that incident could have had such an immediate impact.

"...The bus terror incident."

That was the only answer.

Because of that incident, vampire hunters had gathered in Seoul, and the Black Cross Society was frantically searching for the perpetrators of the terror attack.

'In the midst of that, they must have discovered a group of vampires living near the museum.'

Originally, they were supposed to find out later, but it seems the Black Cross Society was really pissed off because of the bus terror.

'Damn it. If vampires retreat in this situation… the Flower of Life might not come to Korea.'

The Flower of Life is currently in the possession of one of the executives of Kantra, a vampire organization. He will bring it to absorb the energy of the Korean Peninsula.

But what if the Black Cross Society is causing chaos in South Korea? Unless he's an idiot, he obviously won't come to Korea.

It's a shame to waste the energy of the Korean Peninsula which erupts once every three hundred years, but it's better than having the Orb of Life stolen by vampire hunters.

My plan was to intercept the Flower of Life before Moon Ji-hyuk could get his hands on it when it bore the Orb of Life.

'The Orb of Life must not be absent from the Korean Peninsula.'

After pondering for over 30 minutes, I suddenly stood up.

"I need to reduce the number of vampire hunters."

I brought something from reality. It was an item I got from a random draw.

A white clown mask. The mouth and nose were red, the left eye area had a green star pattern, and the right eye had a blue cross pattern.

The clown mask had a red, curly wig attached. Overall, it was a rather childish design.

[Devil's Clown Mask]

[A clown mask imbued with the power of a devil.]

***

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