Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Chapter 17. White Tiger, Revived

The customers packed throughout the club.

An eerie ghostly aura poured from their bodies.

Their eyes were empty and hollow, and only now did the mangled hands and skin that had been difficult to see beneath the club's dazzling lights come into view.

‘It's a trap.’

Smithers realized it too late.

Why, despite the place being packed with people, there had strangely been no scent at all.

And what was about to happen.

“Fall back!”

A desperate shout.

But...

BOOOOM!

The club doors slammed shut behind them, as though trapping mice inside a cheese-filled cage...

《Come... play with meee!》

The ghosts rushed at the vampires.

“Ghhh!”

At the same time, the vampires rapidly shifted their footing, swinging their arms and legs as they counterattacked.

They were all elites in their own right, so the spirit-medium dolls couldn't immediately overwhelm them.

However...

The real problem was that Alice's members, who had been hiding in the club's shadows, sprang out amid the chaos.

“Huuup!”

Cheshire Cat's dagger blazed blue as it pierced through a vampire's chest like paper. The strike carried a weight incomparably greater than before.

Queen of Hearts calmly fired a barrage of silver bullets soaked in holy water.

Perfect holes opened between the brows of the terrified vampires stumbling around in confusion.

Breaking Wall, Flying Force. Clear Mirror, Still Water.

Every bit of that power came from Kang Do-jun's training and the enhancement of his talismans.

‘What the hell... are these guys?’

Smithers's brow furrowed.

He couldn't believe vampires of at least Tier 3 to 4 were being helplessly beaten by mere underworld exorcists.

And on top of that...

SHWAAAAAAA!

The sprinklers overhead poured down water.

“Aaaaaagh! H-Holy water!”

“Fuck!”

Holy water burst from the ceiling sprinklers and soaked the vampires' bodies.

Traps installed throughout the club activated, tearing away arms and legs.

‘These bastards... aren't ordinary.’

A chill ran down his spine.

His opponents knew far more about them than he'd expected from the start, and they had prepared accordingly.

A level of meticulousness he had never encountered from any exorcist before.

But what irritated Smithers most was...

‘Is that Asian bastard commanding them?’

One figure kept darting through blind spots, repeatedly striking the vampires' vital points.

He was overwhelmingly faster and more precise than the other exorcists.

Smithers realized it instinctively.

That bastard... had to be the one who massacred more than a hundred vampires at the abandoned factory.

But Smithers wasn't afraid.

Cheap tricks like these could never bring down an Apostle like him.

‘Interesting.’

Grinding his teeth, he sent a thought to the vampires who shared his blood.

《Everyone, inject the new serum.》

The instant the order fell.

The vampires pulled the latest version of V-Rise serum from their clothes and injected themselves.

“Stop them!”

Alice's members charged in, trying to prevent it.

But they managed to stop only four or five before the serum entered the rest.

“Screeeeeech!”

“Grrrrrgh!”

The vampires' bodies swelled, mutating in an instant into massive grotesque forms.

Their strength multiplied several times over.

But the true monster among them... was Smithers.

“GET LOOOOOST!”

Blood energy overflowed from his entire body, and every swing of his arms unleashed a storm of blood... smashing apart the spirit-medium dolls filling the hall.

At the same time, the holy water sprayed by the sprinklers instantly evaporated, creating a thick mist.

‘M-My vision!’

With visibility completely cut off, Alice's members were the ones who began to panic.

And a space where vision was this severely restricted was the perfect stage for vampires.

“Guhhhk!”

“Mad Hatter, team leader!”

Vampires struck from every direction, inflicting wounds both large and small.

That was when it happened.

“Huuup!”

Clock Rabbit, the master of this club... was caught in one of the blood storms Smithers wildly hurled around and knocked backward.

That was when it happened.

“Get torn apart and die.”

Smithers appeared right in front of him and opened his enormous mouth wide.

It looked like the gaping jaws of a massive great white shark.

Just as a chill ran down Clock Rabbit's spine.

“Says who?”

A familiar voice came from behind him.

At the same time, Kang Do-jun shot in front of Clock Rabbit as dozens of talismans scattered through the air. Holding out the Annabelle doll in one hand, he shouted.

“Spirit Realm Separation (Spiritual Realm Severance)!”

FWAP-FWAP-FWAP!

Dozens of talismans scattered at once, flying toward the vampires inside the club.

At that moment, Smithers's nose caught the scent coming from them.

‘Those... papers have our blood on them! ’

He realized it.

The reason that bastard had been fighting so passively until now without finishing off the vampires.

It had all been to get their blood onto those papers.

“Avoid those yellow papers!”

“W-What?!”

Smithers screamed desperately, but it was already too late.

The talismans had already touched the vampires' bodies.

Even Smithers himself.

“I went through the trouble of preparing all this. You can't do that.”

Because Kang Do-jun personally approached him and slapped a talisman directly onto his body.

At that moment.

WHOOOOOM!

“DAAAAAAMN IIIIIIT!”

The talismans erupted with brilliant golden light, and along with Kang Do-jun... every vampire bearing one vanished without a trace.

The club fell completely empty, as though the chaos from moments earlier had been a lie.

The members of Club Alice stared blankly as they asked Clock Rabbit.

“Th-They really disappeared, Master.”

“Yeah... Even seeing it with my own eyes, I can hardly believe it.”

Everyone wiped the blood from their bodies and wrapped bandages around their wounds.

Then... they forced the trembling throughout their bodies to subside.

They hadn't truly understood when they'd only heard about it, but facing the vampires themselves had made it painfully real.

‘Brooklyn's vampires... are far stronger than we imagined.’

They were more powerful than any anomaly Alice had ever faced.

If that mysterious Asian exorcist hadn't helped them, there was no doubt they would have been slaughtered one-sidedly.

Now, all they had to do was...

“Prepare for the next step. We just need to move exactly as instructed.”

“Yes!”

All they could do was trust in the overwhelming existence known as Kang Do-jun and follow his lead.

***

WHOOOOOSH!

A freezing wind howled hard enough to tear at their eardrums.

The pounding beats and thick smoke that had filled the club moments earlier were nowhere to be found.

When Smithers and the other vampires opened their eyes, they found themselves on the rooftop of an old orphanage surrounded by rusted steel frames, peeling concrete, and a bottomless abyss stretching in every direction.

“...Where are we?”

“Weren't we just in the club? Is this an illusion?”

The vampires looked around in bewilderment.

It was an alien space that even the heightened senses of high-ranking vampires couldn't make sense of.

But Smithers, the only Apostle among them, instinctively understood.

“This is... a Domain.”

“A Domain?”

A space where the very order of the spiritual world had been distorted, one created by a powerful evil spirit or medium and possessing a kind of absolute authority.

The vampires stirred uneasily.

“How is that possible? You're saying some back-alley exorcist... constructed a Domain?”

“Only a high-level exorcist should be capable of something like this. Why would someone like that be in a place like...”

A cold shudder ran down their spines.

Because the thought flashed through their minds that the Asian they were fighting might not be a mere exorcist at all, but some enormous monster beyond anything they dared imagine.

That was when it happened.

“Hi, misters?”

“W-What the hell?!”

A small figure fluttered in the middle of the rooftop.

Two of the vampires instinctively became wary at the grotesquely distorted quality of her voice.

Her identity was... Annabelle, the master of this space.

“Ghhh!”

SWISH!

The vampires immediately unleashed attacks, trying to tear the girl apart, but their attacks passed through empty air.

Every strike simply phased through the girl's body and dispersed.

“Hehe, useless. I don't even plan on fighting you misters.”

“You don't plan on fighting us?”

“Yup! I'm just... lending this space to that mister.”

Annabelle smiled brightly and turned her gaze toward the metal door leading onto the rooftop.

Creeeeak!

The door opened with an eerie metallic groan, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps.

Slowly emerging from the darkness was Kang Do-jun, casually exhaling vapor from his vape with an indifferent expression.

“Hooooo. Welcome, everyone. So? Pretty amazing atmosphere for a Domain, isn't it?”

“...You bastard!”

Smithers ground his teeth and lowered his stance as though ready to spring at any second.

Now that he was seeing Do-jun up close, an aura dozens of times larger and more sinister than before was swirling inside his body.

“That bastard... dares...”

“Does he even know who we are to pull this shit?!”

Before Smithers could even give an order.

Three vampires, swept up in a violent storm of emotions that might have been fear or rage, kicked off the ground and charged.

Strengthened further by the serum, their attacks carried enough force for a single punch to pulverize a concrete wall.

But Do-jun merely stared lazily into empty space as though he had no intention of dodging.

“Elder, dinner is served.”

The instant those words left his mouth, the air above the rooftop twisted as though screaming.

Do-jun's shadow expanded unnaturally, and from within it rose the shape of a gigantic beast with golden eyes blazing.

《Good, very good... Vampires aren't particularly to my taste, but since you've prepared such a fine table, I'll gladly eat.》

Wakan Tanka.

The instant the enormous beast with silver-white fur manifested, the charging vampires froze in place. This was no mere spiritual body.

Its overwhelming presence carried even a sense of divinity.

When the beast opened its maw, a tremendous suction arose as though the entire space itself were being swallowed.

Smithers's pupils shrank instantly.

“S-Stop!”

But it was already too late.

CRUNCH!

“Aaaaaagh!”

With a single snap of the beast's jaws, the vampires' bodies burst apart into pools of blood.

Even their souls, which should have returned to Smithers—the master who had bestowed power upon them—were instead dragged into the beast.

Shiver!

Every vampire's blood ran cold.

Smithers in particular trembled as he stared at the sight.

‘Impossible.’

That unidentified beast... The aura coming from it was far stronger than even his own as an Apostle.

No, the terror sank all the way into his bones as he wondered whether it might even stand on the same level as the ‘Great One,’ the source of his blood and his master.

‘There's no way something like that could dwell inside a mere human... much less an Asian!’

After annihilating his subordinates in an instant, Wakan Tanka turned its ominously glowing eyes toward Smithers. Just as the beast licked its lips and stepped forward, Do-jun raised a hand to stop it.

“That will be enough. Didn't I promise that... I'd handle this one myself?”

《Tch. What a tease.》

The beast snorted in displeasure, then dispersed like mist and vanished back inside Do-jun's body.

Silence settled over the rooftop, and Smithers, now standing alone, asked in a trembling voice.

“What the hell... are you? Why did you drag us here?”

“Why? You've got some big shot above you, don't you? Something about the Blood of Origin.”

Do-jun took another long drag from his vape and added.

“If I killed you at the club, information would leak straight back to that bastard... and cleaning up afterward would become a pain. But using a Domain makes things simple.”

“How much of this was part of your plan?”

“From beginning to end. Everything.”

Kang Do-jun smiled.

His voice carried absolute certainty, as though there were no possible world in which he could lose to people like them.

Smithers trembled as he spoke.

“What the hell are you?”

“What good would knowing do a dead man?”

Smithers gritted his teeth and thrust both arms forward.

Then... he began chanting some incomprehensible incantation.

“Everything is for me, your death is my life. Let your blood become my power! (Everything is for me, your death is my life. Let your blood become my power!)”

As he muttered the words in Latin...

“Guhhhk! Guhk!”

“B-Boss!”

The vampires standing nearby began trembling violently, vomiting blood as their bodies shriveled like mummies in an instant.

Countless droplets of blood rose into the air and were absorbed into Smithers's body.

His body turned red-hot as it unleashed an intense aura.

“I don't know how you managed to tame that beast god, but you'll regret this.”

“Yeah, well... That'd be fine by me. I was planning to get serious from here on out too.”

“Serious?”

Do-jun slowly formed a hand seal.

At that moment, a bizarre vision appeared before Smithers's eyes. The shape of an enormous beast once again overlapped Do-jun's body, but it wasn't the Native American spirit from moments ago.

Fur white as snow, crossed by black stripes. The aura of a solitary king whose murderous gaze alone could freeze a heart solid.

“A white... tiger?”

Inside Do-jun's tobangguri.

The White Tiger Spirit that had slept for years... Seolhwi (Snow Radiance), had opened his eyes.

The Catastrophe-Class Exorcist Is Too Strong in America

Author

: Gisigami

Production Date

: September 15, 2026

Publisher

: ACES Media Co., Ltd.

Editor

: ACES Media Editorial Team

Address

: 12F, Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

Email

: acesmedia9@gmail.com

※ This work was published by ACES Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder,

and its contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and the author.

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UCI

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