As I dragged Keane Leon toward the rear exit of the tavern by his collar, the patrons inside erupted into a chorus of rowdy cheers and whistles.
"Yeah, beat his ass!" one of the fishermen yelled, raising his tankard in a celebratory toast.
They cheered for me like I was some kind of local vigilante hero, completely oblivious to the fact that I wasn't doing this for justice. I was doing this to harvest his DNA and forge my perfect key into the Dodorant Citadel.
I hauled his battered body out the back door and dumped him into a narrow, shadowed alleyway cutting right alongside the inn. To keep up appearances and ensure he wouldn't try to struggle, I delivered a series of brutal, calculated kicks into his ribs. Keane groaned out in agony, the sickening thuds of my boots echoing against the stone walls while the muffled sounds of the tavern's celebration continued inside. To the folks at the Golden Shrimp Inn, the notorious city pickpocketer was finally getting obliterated.
Keane curled into a tight, shivering ball, tears and blood leaking down his face.
"Please... please, stop! Take whatever you want! Just don't kill me!"
But I had a job to do. Ignoring his pleas, I landed a devastating, heavy kick straight into his solar plexus, hitting him hard enough to rattle his core. The air violently rushed out of his lungs, his eyes rolled back, and white foam began to bubbled up at the corners of his mouth. Within seconds, his body went entirely limp. He was completely unconscious, hovering right on the thin, fragile line between life and death.
Ensuring the alley was empty, I dragged his lifeless, heavy body deeper into the pitch-black recesses of the passage where the sunlight couldn't reach. I parted my lips, deploying my razor-sharp vampiric fangs. Leaning down, I sank them cleanly into his neck, drinking just a small, precise portion of his blood, just enough to harvest his genetic code and lock his D-rank profile into my DNA archive. I made sure not to drain him dry; I was still sane enough to keep my bloodlust in check, and killing a petty thief wasn't part of the plan.
[DNA copied, you can shapeshift into Keane Leon]
Once the DNA was secured, I stripped him out of his sticky, phlegm-covered outer clothes to ensure I wouldn't have to deal with that disgusting stench later. I hoisted his limp form up and shoved him deep inside a heavy metal dumpster, covering him with trash to ensure he wouldn't be found for hours.
I stood in the shadows, wiping a stray drop of blood from my chin. I had the face, the body, and the identity of Keane Leon ready at a moment's notice. But a massive problem still loomed over me.
I couldn't just shapeshift into Keane and get arrested immediately. Not without a definitive escape plan.
Getting inside the Dodorant Citadel as a prisoner was the easy part. The hard part was getting out. The moment I let those magic-dampening, strength-depleting chains snap onto my neck and limbs, my attributes would instantly plummet to 100. My blood magic would be locked, my wings wouldn't deploy, and I would be as fragile as a normal human. If I didn't figure out a way to bypass or break those chains from the inside before getting arrested, I would just be voluntarily locking myself in a maximum-security tomb forever.
I needed an insurance policy. A hidden tool, a structural blind spot, or an insider trick to unlock my powers once I located Luke.
Pulling my canvas hood low to cover my face, I stepped out of the dark alleyway and back onto the bustling streets of the Merchant District, keeping my single eye open for inspiration or an idea that could guarantee my survival.
I stepped out of the dark alleyway and navigated my way into the heart of the Merchant District, the fresh genetic profile of Keane Leon safely locked into my DNA archive. I made sure to strap my leather purse tightly across my torso, securing the buckles so that no other local street thieves could pull the same stunt on me, and I gripped the edges of my canvas cloak to keep my missing arm and facial scars hidden from the passing patrols. The S-rank bounty on my head was still very much active, and the morning light made every step outside a calculated risk.
As I walked along the coastal edge of the district, the dense buildings gave way to a clear, sweeping view of the horizon. Just by glancing out across the vast, churning waters of the Mirage Sea, I could see it.
The Dodorant Citadel.
Even from this distance, the island fortress loomed like a jagged black tooth rising from the ocean. It was a massive, sprawling complex enclosed by brutal, heavily fortified stone walls and bristling with an absurd number of towering watchtowers. Just looking at its silhouette made a cold shiver run down my spine. It was a living, breathing nightmare of engineering, a place specifically designed to swallow people whole and never let them go. And I was planning to voluntarily walk right into it just to see one person.
Luke Granhart.
He used to be my friend, someone I trusted, but now, because of his actions and his ties to the illegal distribution of those devastating Death Chant firearms, he was my primary target. My enemy.
To break into a hellhole like that and survive the mana-siphoning chains, I needed an edge. I needed a tool, a hidden trick, or a piece of contraband small enough to conceal from a prison strip-search but powerful enough to disrupt the magic-dampening stones once I was inside.
With that desperate objective in mind, I turned away from the shoreline and approached one of the crowded, cluttered trade stalls lining the merchant street, hoping to find exactly what I was looking for.
I searched meticulously through the rows of vendors until my eye caught an arts and crafts stall. It was a humble setup, clearly built only for children or local street artists, but this children's stall was about to become the foundation of my mastermind plan. Among the colorful clutter, I saw exactly what I needed, a box of standard paperclips.
If I could manage to use them to create a makeshift tension wrench and a lockpick, I could manually pick the keyholes of the two specialized suppression chains, the ones binding my neck and limbs, that would otherwise prevent me from unleashing my power. If I could pop those locks from the inside, I could escape freely.
I stepped into the arts and crafts stall, which was filled to the brim with vibrant landscape paintings, jars of powdered dyes, blank canvases, paintbrushes of all sizes, acrylic tubes, and, right there near the counter, the paperclips.
The merchant, an older woman with a kind, gentle face, smiled warmly at me.
"Traveler, what can I do for you today?"
Hearing her call me "traveler" made me reflect for a brief moment. It was a common pattern. Earlier, Keith Pat at the gate had called me traveler, and Brick, the sketchy merchant back in Caria, had used the exact same word. It made perfect sense; because I always kept my identity anonymous, wore a heavy hood, and spent my days wandering from place to place, I looked the part of a perpetual drifter.
I pulled out my notepad and wrote a quick, direct note to her:
Three paperclips.
She didn't question the odd, minimalist purchase. She just nodded, reached into a container, and handed me three sturdy, colorful paperclips. I paid her a few copper coins, gave a polite nod, and quickly turned to leave.
I knew better than to swallow them right in front of her. If a scarred, hooded woman suddenly started eating office supplies, she would instantly suspect me of smuggling contraband or planning a jailbreak, and she'd call the city knights.
I hurried away from the market stalls and slipped into a secluded, designated blind spot, a narrow gap between two stone warehouses where no people were passing by. Ensuring the coast was entirely clear, I put the three paperclips into my mouth and swallowed them down one by one. Thanks to my mutated, resilient anatomy, I could easily store small objects safely in my stomach and regurgitate or pull them back out whenever I wanted to.
As they slid down, I muttered a silent prayer to myself. I had to desperately hope that the Dodorant Citadel didn't possess some kind of advanced magical safety or high-tier magnetic artifact designed to pull out hidden metals from inside a prisoner's body during the intake search. If they did, they would rip the paperclips right out of my gut, and my primary escape plan would instantly shatter into pieces.
Knowing how high the stakes were, I couldn't rely on luck alone. I needed an extra, backup escape plan just in case I lost my paperclips or the locks proved impossible to pick while my stats were drained. I stood in the quiet shade of the warehouse, deeply contemplating my next move before I finally initiated the arrest.
But, luckily, as I kept surveying the crowded merchant docks, my eye caught a bizarrely specialized vendor. A dynamite stall.
I stopped in my tracks, completely taken aback. I didn't know what to make of it at first because, under normal circumstances, it should be completely illegal to openly purchase explosives in broad daylight. However, looking closer at the faded wooden sign hanging above the counter, it specified that these charges were strictly for fishing.
Back on Earth, dynamite fishing is a massive crime because detonating explosives underwater completely obliterates the coral reefs and destroys the marine ecosystem. But here in Lulu City, where fish is the primary lifeblood of their massive culinary trade, using localized blast charges to maximize the morning haul was apparently perfectly legal and culturally normalized.
A wicked grin formed under my hood. A backup plan.
If the guards somehow detected or stripped away my swallowed paperclips, a hidden explosive would be the ultimate insurance policy. If I could get my hands on a small, concealable blast charge, I could use it to forcibly shatter the chains or blast open a cell door during a chaotic prison riot if everything went to hell.
Staring down into my leather purse and counting my remaining coins, I tightened my grip on my cloak and walked straight toward the explosives stall. I needed to see exactly what kind of blast power I could buy to secure my second route out of the Citadel.