The Sinner Hunting System

The sensation hit him before he’d fully processed what he was looking at, a lurch of the heart, the specific dread of prey that has been noticed by something it has no business being noticed by.

His pulse went irregular. He couldn’t quite get a full breath.

That was from a single glance.

Terrifying, he thought.

And I was just sitting here thinking about hunting in this room. The Superbia was getting worse.

He pulled his gaze away and pretended he’d only looked for a second.

This was the first time a Fate Bond had failed to form. The first time he’d been in the same room as something genuinely beyond his reach.

Dragon lineage. In the IFSA archives, the dragon races held the distinction of being both the highest single-combat power ceiling of any documented species and the rarest currently living.

Their primary territory was the Black Forest Continent to the west, a kingdom built on dragon nobility, with beast-kin and humans as the subject population, and witches handling governance, a tradition that had produced generations of intermarriage and considerable mixed blood.

The archived assessment had one line that stuck in his memory:

Dragons regard themselves as divine, are constitutionally licentious, struggle to continue pureblooded lineages, and are congenitally drawn to wealth.

That single sentence covered most of what mattered: power approaching divinity, the specific difficulty of producing pureblooded offspring, a physiology compatible with nearly any other species, strong appetites, and an instinctive orientation toward accumulation.

The woman at the head of this table was almost certainly a noble or political figure from the dragon kingdom, and a product of the dragon-witch lineage that made up its ruling class.

Levels for this category started at ten.

Why is something like this operating a cursed goods business in the Northern Federation?

She can’t need the money. Nothing about this makes sense.

He filed the contradiction away and let it sit.

Existentialism.

He knew the distinction between the old seven cardinal sins and the new seven in theory, but most of the detailed knowledge he’d had about the newer sins had gone with the missing third of his memory.

He was working with almost nothing.

The remaining attendees arrived. The table filled. Everyone settled and went quiet.

After a moment, Erythra lifted her glass, took a small sip, and set it down.

"Begin."

Her voice carried a slight rasp, a natural laziness to it, a light undertone of not particularly caring about any of this.

The room produced paper and pens, each person had apparently brought their own, and everyone began writing out their transaction requests.

The notes were collected by circulating attendants and shuffled before being read aloud.

She’s dragon nobility and she can’t provide stationery.

Raphael filed this complaint privately and focused.

He had nothing to sell and hadn’t decided what to buy, so he sat back and listened.

"Seeking purchase: water ghost cerebrum and color-shifting mirror drake pituitary gland. Offering 900 Colin for the former, 3,600 for the latter."

Raphael listened and felt something shift in his thinking.

Cores. All of it. The fundamental currency of getting stronger if you don’t have what I have.

The System.

He hadn’t thought about Cores since a casual conversation with Evelyn, before everything that had happened since.

Most transcendents operated through two paths: contract with a living supernatural entity to borrow power, or absorb the Core of a dead one to incorporate it.

Either way, a physical component was required.

His hunting grounds captured everything, including the soul. It had been eliminating a category of logistical problem he’d never fully appreciated until now.

He listened to the rest of the requests.

Alchemical materials, potions, runes, magic scrolls, Cores of various supernatural creatures. Nothing aimed at him specifically.

He checked the wallet. One thousand four hundred Colin remaining, what was left of the emergency funds Elena had lent him after he’d spent some of the initial amount. He could watch but not buy.

A floating potion, a demon-ward potion, a recovery potion, these were starting at several hundred Colin each, well out of reach.

Everything supernatural costs a fortune.

He thought about the Red Gloves days, briefly, functional ammunition on expense account, potions exchangeable for merit points, equipment simply issued.

The difference between a kept dog and a stray one.

Then the attendant read out what he’d been waiting for.

"One .357 Magnum revolver, with one hundred standard rounds and fifty silver hunter’s rounds.

Quality craftsmanship, origin unverified. Revolver alone: 1,100 Colin. Full package with ammunition: 1,350 Colin."

Raphael’s eyes sharpened.

.357 Magnum.

His caliber. He’d been planning to buy whatever was available and compatible with hunter’s rounds, and instead this had walked in on its own.

He raised his paddle, he’d learned the gesture from watching earlier, and looked toward the seller.

The seller wasn’t wearing a hood. A plain black cloak, the ordinary kind, but the person inside it was anything but.

Skin pale to the point of appearing unwell, cheekbones prominent, jaw narrow, eyes the deep red of blood, ears running slightly long and pointed.

He was looking at Raphael with the measuring attention of someone deciding what they think of something, chin slightly elevated, a habitual arrogance in the angle.

A vampire. First living one I’ve ever actually met.

Which made the whole situation mildly absurd, because technically, in Blood Frenzy state, they shared something.

The vampire seller looked around the table. No competing bids emerged.

He seemed dissatisfied by this and pulled the revolver from its holster, setting it on the table in front of him.

"The craftsmanship on this piece is genuinely exceptional. If I were able to verify its origin, everyone here would be paying at least three thousand Colin for something of this quality."

He demonstrated, cylinder release, a full display of the grip, a dry spin of the action.

The sound was crisp and clean, the lines exactly right, the finish precise. Good work.

The room’s lack of enthusiasm apparently came from the sourcing uncertainty rather than any doubt about the object itself, and no one was willing to bid against Raphael’s paddle anyway.

The vampire exhaled, accepted the situation, and completed the exchange through the attendant.

Clean transaction, both sides delivered simultaneously.

Raphael took the revolver and turned it over.

His expression changed.

The weight was specific. The grip wore in a way he recognized. The balance point sat exactly where his hand expected it.

He looked at the base of the grip.

The IFSA stamping had been partly filed away, not completely, not even mostly, just enough to make it non-obvious at a glance.

But he had held this particular mark thousands of times.

This was his gun.

His gun.

His specific revolver, the one he’d lost when the Liberation Potion had taken him under, left somewhere in the ruins of that half-demolished coastal building when the D-Brotherhood assassins had buried him underground.

Which meant this vampire had been in that building. Or had sourced it from someone who had.

Raphael kept his face at complete rest, gave a satisfied nod, and pocketed the weapon. He looked at what remained of his funds, felt the pain of it acutely, and spent the rest on ammunition.

For the remainder of the meeting he watched the vampire.

Nothing visible. The man conducted himself like any other attendee, no tells, nothing that caught on any of Raphael’s trained instincts.

Until, in a room with no air movement whatsoever, the black cloak shifted.

On its own.

Shifted, and was still.

God.

The conclusion assembled itself from every available piece: the cloak that spoke, the cloak that concealed movement.

Alp’s Shadow.