The wet, dragging footsteps outside the storefront finally faded into the distance.
James slumped heavily against the wooden display counter, clutching his swollen, purple ankle with a hiss of agonizing pain.
"Ugh, my leg... You're a Blood Manipulation user, right? Heal me up. Filter the blood, boost the white blood cells, fix the tear… whatever you users do."
I looked down at my pale, trembling left hand. Siphoning back my blood from the pickaxes and the entrance barricade had kept me conscious, but I was still far too weak to perform delicate, internal vascular reconstruction. Mismanaging the pressure could easily trigger a massive internal clot in his leg.
"Sorry, I don't have enough fine control or mana left for complex healing right now."
Instead, I leaned down, pressing my palm firmly over his bruised flesh to cast Pain Manipulation. The localized anesthesia washed over his lower leg, deadening the raw, throbbing agony. James let out a long breath of relief, resting his head back against the counter.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
A sudden, muted banging echoed from the back of the tailor shop.
Tucked behind a rack of dusty wool coats was a heavy wooden door leading into the fitting and sewing room. James immediately raised his Tommy gun, his eyes wide.
"What is that? Another one of those things?"
"Stay behind me," I instructed, pulling the Death Chant shotgun close to my chest with my left arm.
I stepped quietly across the creaking floorboards, pressing my ear against the panel. I didn't hear the wet, guttural snarls of a bone-thrall… just heavy, ragged, hyperventilating human breathing. Someone was in there, utterly exhausted.
I raised my boot and kicked the door frame hard right beside the lock.
BANG!
The latch gave way, swinging open to reveal a cramped sewing room. Cowering beneath a heavy wooden cutting table was a young man. His ragged clothes were soaking wet… reeking of stagnant drainage water as if he had just crawled out of a filthy canal… and torn to ribbons, but his skin was completely free of infection marks.
"Oh, Lord have mercy! Please don't kill me!" he shrieked, throwing his hands up over his face.
I stared at him, my mind flashing back through a year's worth of chaotic memories.
I recognized that face instantly. Back at the Dodorant Citadel, I had worn those exact facial features for days. This was the real Keane Leon… the petty gutter thief I had knocked out, stuffed into a dumpster, and used as a genetic template to orchestrate the continental prison breakout.
According to the old Caria Times newspapers I had read a year later, my escape had turned this poor bastard into the continent's most wanted fugitive with a massive 10-gold bounty. He had been beaten, arrested, interrogated, and thoroughly ruined by the authorities before they finally realized he wasn't the high-tier demon who had shattered the Citadel.
Keane peeked through his fingers, locking his eyes onto mine.
My appearance had changed drastically since our first encounter. The tan skin from my days on the road was gone, replaced by the pale skin. The empty eye socket he remembered was gone too… both of my eyes were fully intact, and my left arm was the one carrying the gun while my right remained a stump.
Yet despite the changes, absolute horror flooded his features. The nightmare of what I had done to his life was clearly burned into his soul.
"Wait... You… You... You're the girl who ruined my entire life!"
I lowered the muzzle of my shotgun slightly, looking down at him without a shred of guilt.
"If you hadn't tried to pick my pockets and flirt with me in that alley a year ago, none of this would have happened to you."
Keane's jaw worked silently for two full seconds, his face cycling from sheer terror to a dark, vein-popping rage.
"Flirt with you?! Pick your pocket?! I took your purse! Purse with coins, you psycho! In return, you knocked me out, shoved me face-down into a pile of rotting cabbage in a dumpster, stole my entire face, and made me the most wanted terrorist on the continent!" he shrieked, scrambling out from under the cutting table and pointing a shaking, water-logged finger at my chest.
He wiped a smear of canal sludge from his cheek, his voice cracking.
"Do you have any idea what the knights did to me?! I got dragged out of an alley covered in spit! I spent three fucking weeks in a dark cell being interrogated by paladins who kept asking where I hid my 'demon wings'! That shadow walker pointed that shitty artifact at me and threatened me to pull the trigger, like heck I spared my life. My reputation is ruined! My life is ruined! I had to flee to this godforsaken city, and now I'm drowning in a sewer while skeleton monsters try to eat my face!"
Then James walked up to me. Holding the tommy gun.
"Keane, shut up, keep screaming like that and you'll bring every winged horror within five blocks right down on our heads." James barked from the counter, resting his Tommy gun over his uninjured knee.
Keane froze, his head snapping toward James. The sheer, overwhelming reality of our group's lethal efficiency hit him all at once, deflating his anger into a nervous tremor.
"Look, your bad luck brought you here, but my presence is the only reason you're still breathing. How did you get in here?" I said, stepping closer and looking down at his dripping, torn clothes.
"I... I was in an alley with a paladin named Patricia and gatekeeper Keith. Some monster dropped from a roof and tackled me into the drainage canal. I fought it off, scrambled through a narrow overflow pipe that dumped out right behind this building, and jimmied the back door open to hide. I thought I was safe until you kicked the door down." Keane stammered, pulling his wet collar up around his neck.
My eyes narrowed slightly.
"Wait, Patricia's alive!?"
"Yeah, her and some high-tier grand mage who looks like she's on death's door, last I saw, they were fleeing down the canal toward the city gates." Keane said.
"Then they're either dead or trapped, The city gates are completely compromised. We saw the swarm heading that way earlier." I said flatly, turning my back on him to check our supplies.
James leaned forward, adjusting his position.
"So what's the play, Eirene? My leg is numb thanks to your pain spell, but I can't sprint on an ankle that looks like a bruised melon. We can't stay in this tailor shop forever."
"We don't stay, we wait out the worst of the daylight here while I recover enough blood to mend James's structural bone damage. Once the sun drops, the UV rays won't burn my skin, and we push for the river exit."
I turned my single, piercing green eye back onto Keane, whose eyes widened in fresh terror.
"And as for you, you're coming with us. You're quiet, you know the alleyways, and frankly, you owe me for not leaving you in that sewing room to starve."
"I owe you?! Right. Whatever you say, boss. Just don't steal my face again."
"The streets are dead quiet now, We need to move before the horde realizes Hugh's distraction ran out and sweeps back through this district." James muttered, using the display counter to pull himself up onto his good leg.
"Agreed, the swarm won't stay tricked forever."
My immediate priority had been regrouping with Chris, Aisha, and the crystallized Lukreia, whom we had been separated from the second James tripped and broke his ankle. But listening to Keane's account, my focus shifted. Patricia was a formidable Paladin, but even her holy steel would buckle under the sheer volume of this infected wave, especially while carrying a weakened Grand Mage like Catherine.
It was currently high noon. The scorching UV rays beat down mercilessly outside, forcing me to keep my thick canvas cloak tightly wrapped to avoid instantly burning. If we could just survive until twilight, the sun would drop, allowing me to unfurl my dark, crystallized wings and freely scout or fight without lethal burning. But until then, I had to move on foot.
If Patricia, Keith, and Catherine fled down the canal toward the main city gates, their logic was obvious: reach the perimeter, breach the exit, or hold out at the guard settlement. If there were still living survivors or a defensible position in Lulu City, it would be at the gates.
"New plan, James, Keane, we're heading straight for the city gates. I doubt Patricia and the others made it past the perimeter without getting cornered." I said, slinging the Death Chant shotgun under my single arm.
"Works for me, anything is better than waiting around in a tailor's fitting room." Keane muttered, nervously adjusting his torn, damp collar.
We filed out through the back door of the shop, stepping into the damp, shadowed rear courtyard where Keane had originally broken in. The narrow alleyway smelled heavily of stagnant water and old stone, offering a sliver of shade from the harsh mid-day sun.
As we carefully navigated the slick cobblestones of the back alley, I glanced over my shoulder at the twitchy pickpocket sneaking along behind us.
"By the way, my name's Eirene." I said, my voice quiet as my crimson eye scanned the rooftops above.
Keane flinched slightly, even though he had an inspect skill. I still said it for dramatic effect.
"Yeah… I knew that, Eirene. I'm just not saying your name out loud. I'll be sure to remember it this time. Just... please don't knock me out again."
"Keep your eyes sharp and stay quiet, we find Patricia, we find my team, and we get the hell out of this city."