The heavy clock tower finally struck midnight, and the dead silence of the night signaled the start of my operation. I ran through the sewage blueprint in my mind one last time, left, left, right, right, left, mainstream, until the path was flawlessly burned into my memory.
I pulled out the navy blue blazer and sturdy trousers from beneath the mattress, slipping them on. I abandoned my heavy canvas cloak in Room 102, knowing it would only get in the way of the upcoming arrest. Standing in the center of the dim room, I closed my single eye and focused my mana, triggering my shapeshifting ability.
[Analyzing genetic data... 100% match found in blood reservoir. Commencing Morphological Shift.]
The physical transformation was grotesque and seamless. My missing arm rapidly regenerated, flesh and muscle knitting together into a whole, functional limb. My missing eye popped back into its socket, giving me perfect binocular vision. The jagged, terrifying lines of my Glasgow smile faded away into smooth skin, and the massive, crimson blood-wings receded completely into my back. Finally, my tongue reappeared, restoring my ability to speak after so long. Looking into the cracked mirror, Eirene was completely gone. In her place stood a completely accurate, fully physical manifestation of the street-level thief, Keane Leon.
[Visual confirmation: 100% accuracy. Heart rate, scent, and vocal cords successfully calibrated. Successfully shapeshifted into Keane Leon]
I slipped out of the inn and marched through the dark streets toward the central police precinct. When I pushed through the heavy double doors, the lobby was bustling with late-night activity. Several angry civilians were standing at the front desks, loudly filing reports about various valuable items that Keane had recently stolen from them.
Because I had intentionally altered his profile by dressing him in a clean, standard navy suit instead of his usual ragged black street clothes, the desk sergeants and the victims didn't immediately recognize me. To them, I just looked like an ordinary, law-abiding citizen standing in the lobby.
Realizing I needed to forcefully trigger the immediate, high-priority arrest required for my midnight transfer, I decided it was time to create some absolute chaos.
I stepped right into the center of the room, slammed my hands down on a nearby wooden partition, and shattered the bureaucratic quiet by shouting at the top of my lungs:
"Hey, you absolute dumbasses! Do you not see me standing right here? I am Keane Leon, and I'm here to surrender!"
The entire police station went dead silent. The shouting civilians froze, the desk sergeants dropped their pens, and every single eye in the precinct snapped directly onto my face. The debut of Keane Leon was officially a roaring success.
The moment the name Keane Leon echoed through the precinct, the lobby erupted into absolute fury.
An old woman pointed a trembling finger at me.
"That's the boy, officer! He stole a whole basket of my fresh laundry off the clothesline the other day!"
Then, to my utter disbelief, the two obnoxious drunkards from the Golden Shrimp Inn stepped out from the crowd.
"Here's the boy! I told you, officer! Yesterday morning, some terrifying lady beat the absolute hell out of him in the alleyway!"
I had to suppress a smirk beneath my stolen face, they were talking about me from yesterday, completely oblivious that the "terrifying lady" and Keane were the exact same person.
But the accusations reached a boiling point when a young woman in the back let out a hysterical shriek.
"That's the monster who took my boy! He stole my infant right out of his stroller and sold him into slavery!"
Wow. The girl's response was definitely taking it a bit too far, but it proved one thing: the real Keane Leon had made a catastrophic amount of enemies in Lulu City. Whether he actually did it or the city just used him as a convenient scapegoat for every unsolved crime didn't matter. I had successfully painted a massive target on my back.
A heavily armed police sergeant stepped forward, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade.
"Hands in the air, scumbag! Don't even think about moving!"
Playing my act perfectly, I put on a panicked, defeated expression and deliberately raised both of my hands with absolute ease. The sergeant didn't waste a second. He slammed a pair of heavy Magic-Dampening Chains around my wrists. Instantly, I could feel a cold numbness spreading through my veins as my active mana pools began to forcefully drain. What the guards didn't know, however, was that I had proactively swallowed three sturdy iron paperclips before leaving the inn. They had absolutely no idea that I carried a makeshift lockpick directly inside my stomach, completely bypassing their physical body searches.
Next, the officer snapped a heavy, iron Strength-Draining Collar around my neck. A massive surge of profound weakness instantly rippled through my entire body, making my limbs feel like lead.
Out of sheer curiosity, I subtly triggered my Appraisal Skill known as Inspect to check my underlying status condition through the suppression.
Keane Leon
Skill: Inspect, Blood Curse, Blood Sword, Defense Reduction, Blood Bow, Pain Manipulation, Shapeshift, Illusion of Cariñosa
Vitality: 100 (Heavily Suppressed)
Strength: 100 (Heavily Suppressed)
Defense: 100 (Heavily Suppressed)
Agility: 100 (Heavily Suppressed)
Mana: 100 (Heavily Suppressed) (Drained)
Even with my vampiric stats artificially bottlenecked and crushed down to a flat 100 across the board, my baseline reservoir was still more than enough to survive the night.
The sergeant let out a satisfied grunt, roughly grabbing the chain link between my cuffs to turn me toward the holding cells.
"Thank you for surrendering quietly, kid. You just made our job a whole lot easier."
I lowered my head, letting a deceptive, defeated sigh escape my lips. They thought they had successfully broken a notorious street rat. They had no idea they had just willingly escorted an apex predator straight through their own front doors. The midnight transport to the Dodorant Citadel was finally underway.
The guards didn't waste any time with pleasantries. They roughly hauled me out of the central precinct and into the biting midnight air. The moment we hit the pavement, the officers began aggressively swinging their heavy wooden batons, striking me hard in the ribs and lower back to force me forward.
"Get moving, trash! Keep your eyes on the ground!"
Under normal circumstances, a pathetic physical assault like this wouldn't even register. I could have easily cast my Pain Manipulation skill to entirely dull the nerve endings or reflect the blunt force trauma right back into their own skulls. But with the heavy magic-dampening chains locked tightly around my wrists, my active mana pool was completely severed. I couldn't channel a single drop of magic. For the first time in a very long time, I actually felt every single blow. The raw, throbbing sting of the batons bruised my flesh, and the heavy iron collar dug painfully into my collarbones with every jagged step. I ground my teeth together, forcing myself to endure the physical agony. I had to keep up the act. Every strike I took right now was just a tax I had to pay to make the master plan work.
After a relentless, bruising march through the darkened harbor district, we finally arrived at the edge of the restricted military docks. Floating on the black, churning waves of the Mirage Sea was a heavily armored Bureau transport vessel.
"Get on the boat!" a guard yelled, delivering one final, vicious kick to my back that sent me stumbling onto the damp wooden deck of the vessel.
The heavy iron chains clanked loudly against the floorboards as I collapsed into a corner, coughing slightly to play up Keane's weakness. Two other armed sentries immediately flanked me, their rifles trained directly on my chest, while the ship's engines roared to life with a low, mechanical rumble.
The transport boat detached from the mainland docks and began cutting swiftly through the pitch-black waters, completely cloaked by the midnight shadows. I leaned my head back against the cold steel hull, watching the lights of Lulu City slowly shrink into the distance. Looking ahead, the massive, nonagon silhouette of the Dodorant Citadel grew larger and more menacing with every passing wave, its nine watchtowers cutting aggressively into the night sky.
The timing was absolutely flawless. The sun wouldn't rise for hours, meaning my vampiric traits were completely protected from the lethal daylight. The boat finally slowed down, gliding directly into the submerged, heavily guarded aquatic gate at the base of the fortress. The destination had been reached. I was inside the Citadel.