Chapter Text
Early autumn had settled over the heart of New York City. A cool evening breeze stirred the trees, sending fallen leaves drifting down to blanket the streets of the South Bronx—one of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Dangerous and more run-down than most other parts of New York though it was, the Bronx was also one of its most vibrant districts, alive with hip-hop music and street art.
But once night fell, the streets grew eerily quiet.
Few locals dared to wander outside anymore. Ever since rumors had begun circulating that one or two residents were vanishing every day, fear had taken hold of the neighborhood. Some had even packed up and moved away. And that was a serious problem—one that needed to be dealt with before the entire district deteriorated any further.
A short, stocky Italian man in a garishly colorful jacket and a thick gold chain straight out of the hip-hop scene clutched the edge of a wall with his small, pudgy hands. He craned his neck around the corner and peered into the abandoned building that was the target of tonight’s job.
His face twisted as a foul, metallic stench assaulted his nostrils. It was more than the smell of blood. There was something rank beneath it—something stale and musty, like a homeless man’s dirty socks.
“This is definitely the place. Stinks to high heaven of demon...” he muttered.
He pushed his black sunglasses back into place before retreating to where a tall, broad-shouldered teenager was waiting. The kid already towered over most boys his age, his height rapidly closing in on six-foot-three.
“Listen up, kid. This is your first official job, so don’t get nervous. I know you’ve got the goods—and yeah, I’m including that freakin’ enormous sword on your back.”
He tried his best to encourage the newest recruit under his wing.
“Aw, come on! Quit listening to that damn tape player and try acting like a professional for five minutes!”
Dante, a silver-haired wolf cut teenager who had been enthusiastically banging his head to the pounding rhythm of heavy metal, stopped mid-motion. He blew an irritated breath through his nose, but reluctantly pulled off the headphones connected to his Sony Walkman.
“I think you’re the one who needs to calm down, Enzo.”
Dante tossed the Walkman to the short broker. “I already told you—this isn’t my first time killing these things.” He brushed the dust from his black coat.
“To me, it's just a little stretching exercise to kill some time.”
Enzo planted his hands on his hips and shook his head at the teenager’s blatant arrogance and complete lack of concern.
“Hey, hey! Rein in that ego right now, kid. Don’t you understand how big a deal this job is for a rookie devil hunter trying to make a name for himself? Especially a baby-faced brat like you, Dante! Out of every devil hunter I’ve ever had under contract, you’re the youngest—and you’re still in high school, for God’s sake!”
He jabbed a fat finger in Dante’s direction.
“Sure, I’ve given you better jobs than the others, but if some demon kills you, I’m the one who’ll get hauled off by the cops for breaking child labor laws and sending a minor into a death trap! You understand?”
Dante raised an eyebrow.
“Last I checked, I'm the only devil hunter you have left, Enzo. The old ones either died on missions or jumped ship to brokers who pay better than you.”
Dante knew perfectly well how much Enzo was counting on him. After all, he was the only person capable of dragging Enzo’s devil-hunting business through its current financial crisis—especially in a city already crawling with rival brokers.
Enzo choked as the truth struck him squarely in the face.
“Shut it, kid! I-I’m not trying to pull anything or rip you guys off...”
Dante folded his arms and fixed his smaller friend with a pointed stare.
“Fine!” Enzo relented. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll give you forty percent for this first job.”
“Seventy.”
Dante’s counteroffer came without hesitation.
“I don’t believe for a second that the client is only paying five hundred bucks to have a demon infestation wiped out and this whole business district brought back to life. So I want seventy percent of five hundred dollars. Not a cent less.”
Enzo’s mouth fell open.
He began counting on his fingers, calculating the net profit he stood to make from the job. The irritating brat was right—the contract was worth nearly a thousand dollars. Even after paying Dante seventy percent of five hundred, Enzo would still walk away with more than enough profit.
The short man squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists as he made his decision.
“Fine! Seventy percent of five hundred dollars. That’s the deal—and you’re not getting a damn cent more, you little bastard!”
Dante broke into a wide, satisfied grin.
“See? We make a pretty good team, don’t we, Enzo?”
He clapped his diminutive friend on the shoulder and strode past him toward the mission site.
“Go wait for me back at the office. And don’t forget to have my cut ready.”
“Hey! Wait a minute! You haven’t even heard the details about the demon in there yet! Dante! Hey!”
Enzo shouted after him, but Dante showed no sign of listening to his smaller companion’s advice. He merely raised two fingers over his shoulder—a casual signal that said, I’ve got this. Don’t worry about me.
Enzo huffed in frustration at the headstrong young hunter.
He knew Dante was skilled—exceptionally so. The boy possessed abilities no other hunter Enzo had ever met could match, including monstrous physical strength. Enzo still remembered the time a truck had lost control, crossed into the wrong lane, and hurtled onto the sidewalk toward an elderly pedestrian. Dante had stopped the vehicle with one hand. He had walked away without so much as a scratch, while the truck had flipped onto its side from the force of the impact.
Then there was his inhuman speed. If Dante had not become a devil hunter, he could easily have built a career as a professional sprinter—and probably shattered a few world records along the way.
But even his speed was not what impressed Enzo most.
That distinction belonged to Dante’s ability to recover from his injuries.
There seemed to be something in the boy’s blood that set him apart from ordinary humans. No matter how gruesome his wounds appeared, his body healed itself with astonishing speed, restoring him to perfect condition as though the injuries had never existed at all.
Those gifts were precisely why Dante could afford to be so arrogant, reckless, and impulsive—even more so than most boys his age. It was hardly surprising. Yet they also guaranteed that the kid would not be easily defeated, no matter what kind of enemy he faced.
And in the devil-hunting business, Dante’s abilities were the greatest advantage anyone could ask for.
Enzo watched until the silver-haired teenager disappeared inside the abandoned building. He adjusted his sunglasses once more and glanced up at the sky.
Tonight was the night of the new moon.
The sky was utterly black, with scarcely a trace of light to aid the eye. The only illumination came from a handful of neon streetlights, flickering fitfully as though they might die at any moment.
And that was exactly what weighed on Enzo’s mind.
The suffocating darkness of a moonless night would be Dante’s greatest obstacle on this particular hunt.
Enzo could only sigh.
“...The kid can probably handle it.”
He muttered the words under his breath before walking away, leaving the mission entirely in Dante’s hands.
-------****--------
Dante ventured deeper into the abandoned building, his boots crunching over broken glass and rubble scattered across the floor. The moment he crossed the threshold, the faint glow of the streetlights behind him faded away, swallowed whole by the darkness.
It was pitch-black inside—so dark that he could barely see his own hand when he held it in front of his face.
Dante narrowed his eyes, searching for the faintest glimmer reflecting off something in the distance, but there was nothing. Only a foul, animalistic stench—the smell of dried blood mingling with damp, musty air so rancid it made his stomach turn—and the steady drip of water leaking from a pipe somewhere inside the building.
He drew both of his .45-caliber pistols and chambered a round in each, ready to fill anything that came at him with lead.
According to the information he had let go in one ear and straight out the other, there was only one demon inside this abandoned building.
At least, that was what Dante thought.
Something rustled along the path ahead. Probably filthy rats crawling out to feast on whatever remains the demon had dragged back here to devour.
His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, but not enough to make out the demon’s shape clearly.
“Quit skulking around, you piece of trash,” Dante called. “I came all the way into your nest. Don’t you think you should come out and welcome me?”
Something darted past the corner of his eye.
Dante spun toward it.
Gone.
In its place came the sound of someone quietly sobbing.
“Help... me...”
A woman’s voice, trembling and deathly cold, drifted through the darkness. Dante raised his pistol toward the source and prepared to pull the trigger.
A woman? A survivor?
“Please... help...”
This time, the voice belonged to a boy no older than ten. More voices followed—men and women, children and the elderly—each speaking in turn.
They were trying to confuse him, but Dante was not about to panic simply because the demon wanted him to.
Then dozens of pitch-black figures began rising from the floor.
One after another, they emerged and closed in around the young hunter. Only then did Dante realize that the demon had already cut off every possible escape route.
Escape? That word wasn’t even in his vocabulary. Running away before he’d killed the damn thing would be humiliating as hell.
“I thought the client said there was only one of you,” Dante muttered. “This looks like the whole damn neighborhood showed up.”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
He unleashed a volley of bullets into the mass of black shadows. Each muzzle flash illuminated their forms for a fleeting instant before the darkness swallowed them again.
“Shadows? The Lurk Demon?” Dante murmured.
This was the first time he had faced a demon whose shape and movements were so difficult to predict. He fired again, testing its defenses.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Every bullet struck its target, yet the shots barely seemed to hurt the shadow creatures. Worse still, more of them kept emerging from the floor.
“Okay. Guess this is what Enzo was trying to tell me.”
Hitting them was not the problem.
Seeing them was.
Inside a building this dark, firing blindly was little different from throwing his ammunition away.
Still, Dante kept shooting, shifting his aim toward every movement he could detect.
Bang! Bang!
Another shadow lunged at him from the side. Dante twisted out of its path and fired at point-blank range, sending it flying backward.
A second attacked from behind.
He spun and shot it.
“Just how many of you are there?”
They continued closing in.
“Fine. You wanna do this the hard way...”
Dante bared his teeth in a grin as adrenaline surged through his veins.
Now this was the kind of excitement he lived for.
Click.
Dante pulled the trigger again.
No gunshot followed.
He glanced down at the pistol in his hand.
Empty.
“Seriously?”
He switched to the other gun.
Bang! Bang!
Another shadow collapsed.
Click.
Silence.
Dante stared at the second pistol.
“...Hell of a time for this—”
Both guns were empty.
And that was precisely what the demon had been waiting for.
A vast swarm of black shadows rushed him all at once.
Dante barely had time to react, let alone reach for the sword on his back. One clawed black hand seized his wrist, stopping him. Another wrapped around his ankle. A third clamped onto his shoulder, while a fourth coiled around his waist.
“Get the hell—off me!”
Dante planted his boots against the floor and wrenched himself backward with all his strength.
The shadows pulled the other way.
The floor cracked beneath his feet.
Dante clenched his teeth.
Although the creatures possessed strength far beyond that of any human, they still could not drag him away. The confined space put him at a disadvantage, but when it came to raw power, he was certain he had them beaten.
At least for now.
Dante was vastly stronger than any ordinary human, and at that moment, his strength was the only thing keeping the shadows from dragging him away.
Then the young hunter noticed something beneath his feet.
A black stain was spreading across the floor.
It was not a shadow cast by any physical object. It moved of its own accord, slowly expanding outward inch by inch.
The black surface rippled beneath his boots like liquid—a pit formed entirely from darkness. The shadowy figures surrounding him were emerging from that abyss, and now they were trying to drag him down into it with them.
“Oh... So that’s your game.”
Dante drove his heels hard against the floor.
“Not a chance.”
With a violent jerk, he tore one arm free, only for several more shadowy figures to surge forward and coil around it again.
This time, the demon summoned shadows from every direction, swarming him until he could not move a single inch.
“You clingy bastards!”
He ground his teeth in fury.
Every muscle in his body tightened as he fought against the tremendous force dragging him toward the abyss.
For the first time since entering the building, Dante began to realize that brute strength alone might not be enough.
A childhood memory flashed through his mind—his twin brother scolding him for being a swaggering show-off whose skull was thicker than a rock.
Maybe he had deserved that.
He was cocky, careless, impulsive, and far too eager to solve every problem with force.
Realizing it now, however, was not going to help him.
He needed to figure out this demon’s weakness—and fast.
The question was whether he still had enough time.
Think. Come on, think! Don’t let all that schooling through tenth grade go to waste.
What were shadows afraid of?
Light.
It was the simplest, most basic answer imaginable.
The problem was where the hell he was supposed to find light inside an abandoned building without a single working bulb.
Then, suddenly—
“Hey!”
A young woman’s voice rang out from somewhere in the darkness.
“Close your eyes!”
Dante froze.
“Huh?”
“Close them now, you idiot!”
The voice came again, sharper and more commanding this time. Dante instinctively turned toward it.
He could not see the girl.
There was nothing but absolute darkness.
Then a small object dropped from somewhere above.
Clink.
It landed directly in front of Dante’s boots.
He glanced down at the small cylindrical object, its metallic surface catching a faint glint of silver.
“...What the hell?”
He had no time to think. The object began to glow, and Dante’s eyes widened as he immediately realized what it was.
“Son of a—!”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
A fraction of a second later—
FLASH!
Blinding white light flooded the entire building.
Even with his eyes tightly closed, Dante could see the brightness burning through his eyelids. The shadows restraining him all went rigid at once. He felt the pressure around his limbs disappear, and the creatures that had been trying to drag him into the darkness froze as though pinned in place.
“...What the...?”
He had no idea—until he heard another sound.
Click-clack.
The unmistakable sound of a firearm being cocked.
A heartbeat later, automatic gunfire ripped through the darkness.
RATATATATATAT!
The thunder of the weapon reverberated throughout the abandoned building. Muzzle flashes strobed again and again from somewhere in the blackness.
One shadowy figure convulsed violently.
Then another.
And another.
A storm of bullets tore through their black bodies, shredding the shadows that had been trying to drag Dante into their trap moments earlier. Their forms burst apart into dark particles and dissolved into the air.
The automatic fire continued until the blinding light finally died, plunging the building back into darkness.
Only then did Dante dare open his eyes.
He felt no pain—None of the mysterious girl’s bullets had struck him,
That was a relief.
More importantly, he was free from the Lurk Demon’s grasp.
Dante stared into the darkness.
He could not see who had fired the weapon. He could not even see her face. But he knew how precise—and how devastating—the barrage that had come to his rescue had been.
And whoever the girl was—
She had just saved his life.
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To be Continued.
