Chapter 2: Partners (Part 1)

“So what happened after that?” asked the young hunter who had gathered everyone around to listen to the story, looking at The Hunter, who was gradually drifting into his memories, with a hint of eagerness.

“This ol’ geezer, *#%@!, always knows how to keep us in suspense,” muttered a pot-bellied, drunk hunter. He was too wasted to drink any more, his head resting heavily on the table. One hand still clutched his glass while the other hung limp at his side, yet he didn’t miss the chance to grumble at The Hunter.

“Heh… this story goes a long way back. I need some time to recall it before I can tell it to you. After all, we don’t have much time left.” Returning to reality, The Hunter let out a wry, hollow laugh, but his eyes were completely dead and devoid of life. He offered this explanation, and as he spoke his final words, he raised his glass to the crowd—as if in apology, or perhaps, as a way of saying goodbye to something.

That night, the rookie who had invited me left the bar with me. Before parting ways at the entrance, I asked for his name.

“Godfred Price,” he said after a brief pause, giving a polite gesture by sweeping two fingers across his temple in a salute.

“John Victor,” I replied, returning the courtesy with my own name.

Generally speaking, in Louisiana, AHA regulations state that a team cannot exceed three people during a bounty hunt. Therefore, hunters usually hunt in pairs or in groups of three. Aside from looking for people they already know, some hunters will commission the AHA to help them assemble temporary teams of two or three. Among these, quite a few temporary teams eventually evolve into long-term partnerships.

But no matter how a team is formed, if an irreversible death occurs during the hunt, the remaining teammates will never take the belongings or equipment of the fallen hunter. Instead, they will note the location and report it to the AHA so they can retrieve the body and recover the gear as a sign of respect.

Of course, there are always those who try to seize their teammates’ belongings, but they quickly discover that these corpses and everything on them become corrupted by the land the very moment they fall. While the AHA’s bounty contracts carry an effect that purifies the corruption of chaos, the AHA played a clever trick on the design: teammates holding the same contract cannot touch the corpse of a fellow contract holder until the current bounty hunt concludes. This is because the AHA requires all members of the same team to provide a certain amount of blood to generate the bounty contract through a blood-sacrifice dark magic that creates a lineage link. This ensures that a team embarking on a bounty hunt, at the very least, won’t suffer a stab in the back from their own.

However, the inability to loot teammates’ belongings and gear doesn’t mean they can’t loot other teams. Consequently, hunters show absolutely no mercy when encountering peers during a bounty hunt. The AHA is more than happy to see hunters fight and kill one another; this prevents the hunters from uniting to drive up prices against the AHA or seeking other gains. Furthermore, using the recovered corpses of hunters as raw materials, the AHA utilizes dark magic to create Blood Bonds, which act like a complete rebirth for a hunter. Using exorcism magic to absorb a certain number of Blood Bonds can help a hunter gain the experience of past generations of hunters condensed within them, or these Blood Bonds can be exchanged for glyph-enchanted weapons provided by the AHA—both of which are crucial keys to keeping a hunter invincible in battle, since everyone only has one life. If hunters want to acquire these Blood Bonds, aside from finding them in the golden cash registers deliberately placed across various regions by the AHA, their only option is to convert their looted wealth into gold bars to trade directly with the AHA.

It was precisely for these reasons that Godfred was trying to assemble a 12-person team for this operation. Whether the terms of this agreement would be upheld relied entirely on trust. Even if the massive profit of acquiring and dividing the Blood Bonds could temporarily maintain the cooperative relationship among them, without the constraint of a blood-sacrifice bounty contract, it was only a matter of time before variables and betrayals occurred.

Another variable stemmed from an AHA regulation: during a bounty activity, each team is randomly assigned to a different location within the designated lockdown zone, and the AHA’s carriages transport each exorcism squad to their specified starting points. Therefore, when the time came, the 12 of us would still need to rendezvous. The meeting spot was set at the south gate of the church, and no one could guarantee what might happen in the interim.

Thus, Godfred and his partner played host, inviting all the participants over for an evening gathering so we could familiarize ourselves with one another. They reserved a few tables in the corner of the same tavern where Godfred and I had first met, preparing whiskey and some tavern dishes to entertain us.

I arrived at the tavern early and chose a spot diagonal to the gathering area. It offered an excellent vantage point, making it easy to observe every move of the participants. Due to the peculiar nature of this bounty hunt and the lack of any participants familiar to me, I had signed the blood-sacrifice bounty contract as a lone wolf. Therefore, whether out of caution or to ensure a smoother execution of the operation, observing all the participants in advance became an absolute necessity for me.

On the night I first met Godfred Price, through casual chatter and probing conversation, he shared roughly what he knew about everyone.

The first to arrive at the tavern was Oliver Whitman, a man with dark, short hair and a side-parted hairstyle, wearing a brick-red lapel shirt, a patterned, waist-cinching vest, a double-row ammunition bandolier slung across his chest, and distressed brownish-yellow work trousers. The moment I heard Godfred mention this name, I instantly recalled hearing about him elsewhere. During hunts, whenever Oliver Whitman heard gunfire, he would rush toward it like a vulture catching the scent of blood. Once the firefight on the scene ended, he would strip the coin and gear off the fallen hunters. It could be said that he became a hunter solely for the money. The reason he joined this operation to acquire Blood Bonds was that he had overheard Godfred and his partner persuading another hunter, and he proactively volunteered to join. How could someone as greedy as him miss out on a treasure as rare and precious as Blood Bonds? After arriving at the tavern, he deliberately chose a seat second closest to the door, keeping his upper body rigid, his right arm resting on the table, and his left hand hovering near his waist close to his Scottfield Brawler. His entire body faced the tavern door, looking like a tense hyena ready to bolt at any second.

Right after him arrived Godfred Price and his two partners, Jesse Buchanan and Joan Damon.

Jesse Buchanan sported a full beard, wore a wide-brimmed cowboy felt hat, a dark, vintage belted jacket, a bandolier slung across his chest, a double-layered wide leather belt, and durable dark brown trousers. An Officer revolver was tucked at his hip, right at arm’s length. Jesse Buchanan was a veteran; Godfred said he was here to look for a missing brother-in-arms, serving as the tactical and strategic mind of the team.

Joan Damon had light brown short hair, wore a tan cowl-neck standing-collar long-sleeved top, a wide belt with a brass buckle, and slim-fit grey-blue trousers. She was an efficient, capable huntress with an axe hanging behind her waist. Joan Damon was an unfortunate soul. She used to run church wedding banquets in the countryside, but when the plague broke out, she was experiencing one of the most important and happiest moments of her life: her own wedding. After witnessing the guests mutate, tearing and biting into one another, and even watching her husband die a brutal death right before her eyes, poor Joan grabbed the most lethal weapon she could find on the scene—the very axe behind her waist. Relying on it, Joan managed to escape. What should have been the happiest moment of her life turned into a nightmare that would haunt her forever. Consequently, she swore to slaughter every last mutated, corrupted creature and find a way to completely end this corrupting chaos. Joan Damon was also the person in their team most dedicated to researching how to combat these foul monsters. To accumulate enough experience, she was the most frequent participant in bounty hunts—the veteran Godfred had mentioned earlier. Though she hadn’t been in Louisiana long, in time, she would undoubtedly become an outstanding monster-hunting expert.

Recalling his old acquaintances, a look of remembrance appeared on The Hunter’s face. The hand that had been holding the glass was now gently tapping the tabletop with the tip of his middle finger, as if counting down something. “Kill… kill them… all!”

“What about the others?” the young hunter pressed on, eager for more.

“You’ll find out, on the other side,” The Hunter smiled once more. Immediately after, he drew his conversion chain pistol from his holster and, using a fanning technique, began a slaughter directed at the drink table and the people inside the tavern…