My bedroom was exactly as I had left it before my six-day hunt through the jagged peaks of Caria and the blood-soaked warehouses of Don Anthony's arms trafficking guild. A thick layer of stagnant silence hung in the air. On the nightstand, the melted tallow candle from nearly a week ago sat completely dried out and cold. The heavy velvet curtains remained tightly shut, sealing the room in a permanent, protective twilight.
Evelyn clearly hadn't set foot in here during my absence; her hyper-analytical, slime-hybrid nature would have left the space entirely too organized. The only intruders had been the Bureau's inspection knights during their high-noon sweep, but they had merely searched for physical traces of the Crimson Phantom, leaving my personal quarters mostly unbothered.
Moving deliberately, I unstrapped the Death Chant Shotgun and the Death Chant Tommy gun from my wing joints, placing the heavy firearms gently onto the bedsheets. I peeled off Luke's grime-covered polo and dusty trousers, letting the stained fabric drop to the floorboards.
From my wardrobe, I selected a fresh outfit… a simple, unadorned black cotton dress that hung loosely over my frame, ensuring it wouldn't irritate my scarred skin or constrict the compressed muscle joints where my demon wings met my spine. I slipped my single right arm through the sleeve and let the fabric settle. Once dressed, I threw Olive's iconic crimson trench coat back over my shoulders, keeping the buttons loose. To counteract the faint, metallic scent of blood and the heavy, sulfurous stench of the 1st District industrial smog that still lingered on my skin, I grabbed a small glass bottle from my vanity and liberally sprayed a sharp, floral perfume over the coat.
With my physical form safely hidden and refreshed, I retrieved my firearms, securely re-strapping them to my translucent wing structures like lethal ornaments. I turned on my heel and proceeded back downstairs into the dim living room.
Before I could fire up my alchemical burners to cook the weaponized tear gas, and before I could risk initiating dangerous magical calibrations on the raw artifacts I had stolen from Don Anthony, I needed to master the tactical intelligence map. I needed to know exactly what I was walking into tomorrow dawn.
Walking over to the sofa, I reached down and grabbed the thick, heavy manila folder containing Vanessa's restricted intelligence files. I sat down on the cushions, letting out a slow, silent breath as my massive, translucent blood wings flared out behind me, completely relaxing and draping over the back of the sofa in the dim light.
With my single jade-green eye locked onto the documents beneath the shadow of my canvas hood, I cracked open the folder and began to read the confidential data.
The crisp parchment of the restricted manila folder crinkled beneath my fingers as I adjusted it within the dim, shadow-locked perimeter of the living room. My single jade-green eye tracked the densely packed lines of tactical intelligence Vanessa had left behind, my analytical mind instantly mapping the structural grid of her operations.
According to the Bureau's intercepted reconnaissance data, the primary forward operations base for the Katt faction was heavily entrenched deep within the treacherous, jagged ridges of the Lulu Mountains. The outpost itself was structurally minimal… consisting almost entirely of highly mobile, camouflage-treated military tents designed for quick evasion and guerrilla deployments. However, the most critical piece of data lay in the command structure: the encampment was currently under the singular authority of only one true Immoral Knight.
Vanessa Katt.
My gaze swept back and forth across the personnel registries, checking for the name of her monstrous twin sibling. There were absolutely no signs, active mana signatures, or logistical records indicating the presence of Victor Katt. A long, silent breath of immense tactical relief escaped past my scarred lips, the heavy tension in my shoulders visibly draining away. Dealing with a single Immoral Knight was a manageable hazard; facing the synchronized, high-tier destructive synergy of both Katt twins simultaneously would have forced me to re-evaluate my entire survival probability matrix.
Instead of an elite knightly vanguard, the camp's ranks were bolstered by a volatile, highly aggressive host of rogue mercenaries, disgraced sellswords, and cutthroat criminals whom Vanessa had personally recruited from the outer lawless sectors. Her objective was clear and calculated: utilize this expendable workforce to orchestrate localized incursions, disrupt trade caravans, and sow absolute, systematic chaos throughout the borders of the neighboring Lulu City to strain the capital's military logistics.
The folder detailed a disastrous engagement from earlier in the month. The Bureau had previously deployed an interception squad consisting of three mid-rank Luminous Knights and a vanguard of five Capital Knights to neutralize the ridge. The result had been a total tactical slaughter. Only two heavily traumatized Capital Knights had managed to crawl back alive, and the intelligence report laid the blame entirely at Vanessa's boots. Her combat methodology relied on a devastating, highly lethal elemental fusion: Tar Creation and Fire Magic.
It was a catastrophic, self-sustaining combo. Vanessa would flood the battlefield with thick, pressurized torrents of sticky, highly flammable black tar to completely compromise the enemy's mobility, gluing their armor to the earth before igniting the entire zone with high-output fire incantations. The resulting infernos reached temperatures capable of melting standard-issue steel plating within seconds, suffocating survivors in a localized pocket of superheated toxic smoke.
Vanessa Katt was an apex threat to the kingdom, an active calamity waiting to boil over. But beneath the absolute psychic barrier of my Leech's Hollow Mask, a cold, predatory cynicism flared.
I had already fought her once in the past during my early, experimental days in the underworld, and I had meticulously logged every single parameter of her casting animations and elemental boundaries. I knew exactly how to dismantle her. In a straight vanguard engagement, I wouldn't even need to fully exhaust my alchemical reserves. My sixth-evolution translucent blood wings granted me total three-dimensional aerial superiority, allowing me to completely bypass her grounded tar traps by raining death from above. My wing-strapped arsenal… the god-tier Death Chant Shotgun and my newly calibrated, Death Chant Tommy Gun… possessed more than enough raw kinetic penetration to shred through her protective mana barriers before she could even finish a incantation gesture.
Furthermore, I had deliberately designed my current loadout to counter her specific elemental output. The heavy, blood-themed crimson trench coat I had purchased this morning wasn't just a stylistic choice to hide my identity; it was woven from specialized, high-grade fire-resistant polymers and reinforced fibers specifically treated to insulate my skin against extreme thermal shock and acidic tar adhesion.
To ensure the execution went flawlessly, my alchemical recipe for the weaponized tear gas would serve as the ultimate equalizer. By distilling the volatile precursors resting in the wooden crate by my boots, I could flood the Lulu Mountain tents with a dense, blinding chemical fog. The tear gas would violently irritate the respiratory tracts of her mercenary grunts, inducing involuntary coughing fits, severe lacrimation, and total neurological panic, effectively removing her meat-shield army from the equation before the first bullet was even fired.
My overarching operational plan settled into my internal ledger with absolute, cold geometry. The parameters were simple:
My first plan is simple, deploy the alchemical tear gas into the Lulu Mountain encampment to instantly neutralize the mercenary perimeter.
My second plan is to engage and overpower Vanessa Katt using high-speed aerial maneuvers, rendering her tar-and-fire combinations useless.
My third plan was to capture Vanessa alive and intact and systematically interrogate her to extract the hidden structural blueprints of the core Immoral Knights syndicate.
My fourth plan is once her mind was broken and her secrets laid bare, I would utilize my high-tier demonic Shapeshifting Ability to seamlessly mimic her biological signature, voice, and appearance.
My fifth plan is wearing Vanessa's face as the ultimate camouflage, I would effortlessly infiltrate the deepest, most secure bastions of the Immoral Knights, bypass their defensive wards without raising a single alarm, and personally claim the legendary 10-gold bounty resting on the head of their grand commander, Cameron Gal.
I closed the manila folder with a soft, definitive thud, setting it down on the sofa cushion beside my purse containing my remaining 1 gold and 46 silver pieces. The intelligence was fully digested. The board was set. My blood wings gave a sharp, anticipatory ripple behind me, the heavy firearms swaying silently against my frame in the drawn twilight of the room.