WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Generation Zero Hunter ◈

Chapter 8

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Blood Web (2)

'BloodWeb, huh.'

The name grated on him a little, but he couldn't very well skip checking out a place that supposedly had quality information.

He had originally planned to use a public computer at the Agency to get onto BloodWeb. But at the moment, most areas of the Agency were under access control while the aftermath of the raid was sorted out.

Ian activated the mobile-phone-style communication terminal he'd received under the Hunter Support Agency's return support policy for people missing inside Gates.

Until now he'd had no reason to use it, and holding a phone tied up one hand, so he had kept it powered off and tucked inside his coat.

The logo "Oceania" appeared on the terminal's screen. It was a familiar name.

'Did they name the company after the lost continent?'

Maybe the company's founder had been a Generation Zero hunter from Oceania.

He turned these idle thoughts over as he looked at the screen. He skipped every complicated, tedious authentication step by choosing "Register later."

Then he went straight to the internet browser and searched for BloodWeb.

A link popped up at the very top of the search bar.

Ian tapped it without hesitation, stared at the screen, and blinked a few times.

Then he shut the screen right away.

"What did I just see?"

* * *

There was no horrifying image on BloodWeb's homepage.

In fact, there were no images at all.

Every readable, polished design element, the icons and pictograms and so on, had been stripped away, leaving only a background color and lines of text.

'This is....'

It was a PC bulletin board.

Honestly, if it had been built like a real PC bulletin board, white text on a blue or black background, Ian wouldn't have been this appalled.

But BloodWeb showed off a wretched piece of web design that assaulted the human eye: black text on a red background!

Ian gasped and opened the page source.

"Huh."

A laugh of disbelief slipped out.

He immediately understood what had been meant by the site owner picking a really strange concept. Compared with the source of other sites' homepages, the sheer amount of data was overwhelming.

In other words, the creator of BloodWeb had deliberately spent time and budget to build a homepage this visually terroristic.

Ian thought it made no sense for whoever made this not to be a vampire.

Hurrying out of BloodWeb, Ian made the rounds of a few other sites. Like HunterNet, the rest all had various design elements arranged properly.

Only BloodWeb stuck stubbornly to the design of the PC bulletin board days.

Ian grabbed the back of his neck. Wasn't that thing really a vampire trap meant to ruin hunters' eyesight?

He dug through several sites and found a modification script for BloodWeb. It couldn't overhaul the foundation of the site's design, but it could at least turn the background and text colors into something easy to look at.

Black text on a pale green screen. Ian sighed and peered into BloodWeb.

'Is it set up so you can't reach the advanced information without signing up?'

He tried a few boards, but most of them only showed notices like "This is a members-only board."

The only board a non-member could check was the announcements. He opened this week's disciplinary list post there.

『Onnuri_283 and…』

'No. How can even the member nicknames be like a PC bulletin board?'

Ian was truly dumbfounded. The numbers tacked on at the end, at least, were different from the feel of those days; they seemed to be serial numbers added to duplicate nicknames.

『Ruling on the Dispute Between zXSpiritSupremeXz』

In this age of the future, Ian caught the lingering scent of the internet of bygone days.

'That naming style should be one step later than the PC bulletin boards, though.'

『Both parties shall be suspended from activity for three days. Having entrusted yourselves to the blood-red web, you are all my kin, and so you shall get along peaceably.』

"...?"

Ian sucked in a breath through his teeth. The words the admin used, even the tone. Everything was chillingly familiar.

Above all, that antiquated sentence ending, the "-nira." Even in the final battle against the hunters, that very manner had been used to flaunt composure and dignity.

Behold, O hunters of the night! Our time draws near! I commend your struggle and your resolve, and I shall grant you one last chance.

Become Bloodkin.

'When those words were shouted under the blood-red full moon, the atmosphere was overwhelming....'

Seen in a post on a website with a PC bulletin board interface, it just looked petty.

Ian scrolled up. A host of emotions swirled through his head. Anticipation, tension, fear, and excitement.

It felt like watching the leads in a horror movie head straight for the very place where the monster lurks. It was close to the moment when, watching foolishness march toward a promised doom, you feel frustration and a thrill at the same time, two contradictory feelings together.

At last, Ian saw the admin's nickname, written small beside the post.

The Princess.

Ian put the terminal away and covered his face with both hands. The chill peculiar to his gloves cooled his feverish face, then the heat spread into them, and they turned lukewarm.

"Haah...."

Life.

* * *

Faced with an existential shock, Ian looked up at the sky for a while. Then he thought.

Could it be some other Bloodkin?

A vampire who admired the Princess so much that they'd built a persona around that nickname?

Ian's feelings wanted to believe this hypothesis.

But Ian's reason rejected it. At the very least, a vampire belonging to the "Bloodkin" that Ian knew wouldn't even have been capable of conceiving the idea of presuming to usurp the Princess's name.

Instead of browsing BloodWeb further or signing up, he kept searching for information about BloodWeb on outside sites.

Most of the posts were complaints along the lines of "why does the site UI look like this," followed by posts saying "there's a lot of useful information, though."

In a thread asking why BloodWeb's material never leaked to outside sites, Ian found the remark that "the site owner's agency regularly cracks down on reposted content."

An agency? What was that supposed to mean now?

Ian sensed it by instinct. If he found out, it would surely do his sanity serious damage.

But there was also a definite chance that this self-proclaimed (and so-called) Princess was the real one, though Ian wanted to avert his eyes from that as hard as he could. Pinning down her identity was information he simply had to learn.

The hunter, resolved to gaze into the abyss, opened the search bar and entered the keywords "Princess agency."

『Pioneer of the hunter entertainment business, BM (BloodMoon) Entertainment's first hunter-idol, getting to know the Princess…』

The hunter closed the search bar.

* * *

Exercising patience bordering on self-mortification, Ian compiled the information posts about BM Entertainment.

A hunter entertainment company founded by the Crimson Order, which serves the constellation 《Lord of Unquenchable Thirst》, as a promotional vehicle to expand its influence.

Ian had to feel bewildered over and over again in this one sentence alone.

That constellation, the Lord of Unquenchable Thirst, was naturally the dreaded Dracula. And an order that served Dracula would of course be made up of vampires.

And yet, instead of devouring humans with lines like "There is a human. A social creature, raising a perfectly ordinary, happy family. But right now, it is my dinner," those vampires were out there soliciting customers.

Shouting, "Everyone, let's all become vampires together! Sign up now and get a free constellation contract arranged!"

And the hunters, instead of beating vampires to death, were watching vampire idol fancam videos, going "Wow, maybe I should become a vampire too, since they don't age"?

According to the compiled post, the "Princess" had shown unrivaled performance in an S-rank Gate Break that occurred decades ago, then retired.

After her retirement, BM Ent., the Princess's agency, had grown seriously wary of information leaks and exercised its copyright to take down personal photos of the Princess and any post with even the slightest connection to her.

It looked like posts sourced from BloodWeb were being cracked down on in much the same way.

Ian read the compiled post carefully, then slumped onto a park bench.

'What on earth happened?'

Why had the Founders tolerated the survival of the vampires, and why had the Princess, who had returned to this world, taken on the bizarre position of hunter-idol?

From what he'd found out, a hunter-idol was somewhat different from the entertainment jobs he knew.

True to the original meaning of the word "idol," it seemed closer to an influencer who showed herself as an admired hunter and promoted the constellation she belonged to.

'Even so, I can't imagine that lofty Princess liking to make herself into a billboard.'

Ian fingered the Jade Necklace.

As with most magic handed down from the Common Era, the magic on the Jade Necklace carried a great many invisible conditions.

The farther away the target was, the more mana it consumed. The more you knew about the tracked target, the less mana it consumed. And so on.

"...Hoo."

Ian let out a sigh.

Now that he knew that someone using the nickname "Princess" had once worked in an unheard-of line of business called hunter-idol, had since retired, and ran a personal site called BloodWeb.

Would the Jade Necklace's tracking function work?

The amount of mana currently charged in the Jade Necklace was nearly at rock bottom. Measured against its brightness when fully charged, less than a tenth.

If, even in this state, the necklace worked and began guiding him precisely to where the Princess was.

It would mean the Princess lived next door to Ian, or else that she was a former idol with the hobby of going around posting pointless drivel online once a day: "The Princess is here, nira!"

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