Catch a Few Alive

Chloe lay stiffly on the messy floor, her body twitching intermittently a few times before she went completely still.

Nexus's power of light had been channeled into Chloe's body through the strike from the Evolution Trust. Richard could clearly sense the darkness entrenched within the girl gradually fading away, crumbling under the erosion of the light. Color was also slowly returning to her pale face, leaving it rosy and full once more.

Then her fangs disappeared as well.

The girl laboriously opened her heavy eyelids. After staring blankly for several seconds, her gaze fell on her mother. "Mom?"

Only then did Mrs. Lin snap back to her senses. "Chloe? Chloe, are you all right?"

"I... I don't know. I feel dizzy, like I have a hangover." She clutched her head. "I feel like I had a nightmare... a really terrible nightmare. In the dream, I was bitten by a vampire, and then I became a vampire too. I felt so hungry, so thirsty, and then I remember I seemed to lunge at someone..."

Then she noticed the way the two of them were looking at her. She seemed to suddenly realize something and froze.

"That was real, wasn't it? It wasn't..."

"Don't think too much about it. The important thing is that you're fine now," Richard said. "How do you feel?"

"Just a little dizzy, and I feel a bit uncoordinated... but at least I feel much more normal."

Although she had no idea what had just happened, Mrs. Lin could tell that Richard had used some method to restore her daughter to normal. If the way Mrs. Lin had looked at Richard before had merely been appreciative, it had now practically turned into awe and admiration.

"You... how did you do that?" she asked in astonishment. "Was it some kind of qigong? Or..."

Mrs. Lin had clearly taken Richard for some hidden master of internal martial arts, one who lived quietly among ordinary people. In the blink of an eye, she had imagined an entire long-standing martial arts lineage passed down through generations behind him. Mrs. Lin had read plenty of Eastern wuxia novels as a child. She knew that internal masters in those stories could use inner energy to force poison out of the body, and she figured what Richard had just done was probably something similar.

"Uh, not exactly. Actually... well, close enough."

Richard had originally wanted to explain, but on second thought, he decided against it. Explaining the power of an Ultraman's light would only be more troublesome, so he might as well let Mrs. Lin think of it as internal martial arts. It would probably be easier for her to accept that way.

Mrs. Lin immediately became enthusiastic. It did not show normally, but apparently this auntie had the soul of a wuxia fan living inside her. She promptly grabbed Richard and began asking about his master and lineage, what school he belonged to, what techniques he used, and whether his sect had some kind of inheritance...

Sure. My sect is M78's Land of Light, my master is Noah, and my specialty is the "Unrivaled Cross Storm," a single strike capable of shattering mountains and shaking the earth...

But of course, he said none of that. Mrs. Lin stopped asking as well, merely nodding repeatedly with an expression that said, "I understand." In her view, Richard's master must have been one of those reclusive sages from novels who stayed out of worldly affairs, so secrecy was only natural.

Having narrowly escaped disaster, the girl was equally grateful for Richard's intervention. When she saw him out, those clear, watery eyes of hers stared at him so intently that he felt a little uncomfortable. Richard declined Mrs. Lin's invitation to stay for dinner on the grounds that Chloe still needed rest, then left their home.

But honestly, Richard had not known before that he could do something like this. Thinking it over carefully, Nexus's light in the original work really did have the special ability to "purify," making it the natural enemy of darkness.

Still, he could tell that it was likely because not much time had passed since Chloe had been bitten. She had not yet been fully infected and transformed into a vampire, so purifying the darkness within her had allowed her to return to being human. If more time had passed and Chloe had completely become a vampire in both body and mind, then even Ultraman's light could probably only destroy her along with her body. There would have been no chance of saving her.

In any case, this experience had at least proven that vampires were real and that Cathy's story was reliable. Vampires had always existed in this world, living in the shadows of human society as though in the cracks between things. Now that he knew the truth, Richard felt that revealing it had become the responsibility of their newspaper. He could not wipe this race completely off the face of the earth, but after people read the report, they might at least be more vigilant. Someone might even be saved because of it.

So the question now became—how could he prove to people that vampires were real?

It was not as though no one had ever noticed the existence of vampires before, but even when victims reported such things to the police or the media, they were only treated as amusing gossip. Talk of vampires was generally no different from rumors like "UFO spotted in XXX." People would get a laugh out of it and move on. No one ever took it seriously.

But Richard felt that proving vampires existed was not all that complicated.

Didn't people say seeing was believing? Then all he had to do was catch a few alive, right? It was not as though that would be difficult...

Forget a few vampires. If Richard truly had the energy and patience to keep at it with these bloodsucking creatures, it would not be impossible for him to wipe out every vampire in the entire city given enough time.

It was not hard to see from the original work that Nexus's Deunamists possessed extremely powerful sensory abilities. In the TV series, this was mainly shown through their ability to sense Space Beasts. The Deunamists could often detect the vibration waves produced by a Space Beast's appearance from an enormous distance away, allowing them to rush to the scene and fight at once.

Through his previous battle with the Space Beast Pedron, Richard had discovered that he had awakened this sensory ability as well, and it seemed to be capable of even more than that. After coming into contact with the darkness within Chloe that had been gradually transforming her into a vampire, Richard felt as though the light within his body had remembered the characteristics of that darkness too. Though this darkness was far too weak compared to the vibration waves of a Space Beast, he seemed able to faintly sense its presence within a certain range.

For example, right now, he could sense several similar targets somewhere to his southwest, relatively close together. If his senses were correct, Richard guessed that there might be some sort of vampire hideout over there, with quite a few of them gathered inside.

After thinking it over, Richard first texted Jessica that he would be back late and told her to sort out dinner herself. Then he headed toward that location.

Tonight, he was going to catch a few vampires alive.