Upon receiving the system notification, Liam Price first told little Broly to stay inside before hurrying out the door.
He then leaped up onto the roof.
Considering New York wasn’t Alaska, and wanting to give little Broly space to train, Liam Price had bought a secondhand, abandoned factory building.
He had only made a few quick renovations, building two bedrooms for himself and Broly; the empty first floor remained unfinished.
Liam Price was a bit worried.
Would the child the system wanted him to “adopt” this time also crash-land on Earth in a spaceship?
If so, he needed to “catch” the spaceship in advance, or his newly purchased property would be in grave danger.
However, after jumping onto the roof and extending his ki perception into the sky to lock onto the baby, he searched for a long time without seeing any trace of a spaceship.
“Is this kid not falling from the sky?” Pondering for a moment, Liam Price kept one eye on the sky while expanding his ki sensing outward in all directions.
Due to his limited funds, the secondhand factory he bought was in a decent location, yet couldn’t command a high price.
In fact, Liam Price had paid less than eighty thousand dollars to buy this four-hundred-square-meter facility from its previous owner.
Even accounting for the strong nineties dollar and the uninflated real estate market, the main reason Liam Price got a plant adjacent to central Manhattan for under two hundred dollars a square meter was that the previous owner was desperate to sell.
The building was located in Hell’s Kitchen, where neighborhood safety wasn’t just questionable—it was practically unspeakable trash.
Originally, Liam Price planned to move in with little Broly first and have a heart-to-heart with the local “neighbors” in a few days.
Who would have guessed plans couldn’t keep up with changes?
On his very first night, he had to pay a house call to some of those neighbors.
Liam Price extended his ki perception across the surrounding three streets.
Since the system said the child he needed to “adopt” would appear nearby, this radius should logically be more than enough.
Yet after sensing for a long time—scouring every nook and cranny of the nearby streets—he still failed to detect the child’s presence.
Not only that, he noticed the streets surrounding his secondhand factory were completely deserted—not a soul in sight, not even a shadow.
“Hmm?” Liam Price frowned in confusion.
“Isn’t this Hell’s Kitchen?
Did the local gang members suddenly turn over a new leaf and give up nightlife?” Of course, he knew it was more believable that the gangsters had undergone sex changes than that they’d changed their ways.
Standing on the roof, Liam Price immediately turned his gaze toward a nearby building.
It was a nightclub, only two streets away from Liam Price’s new home.
Although the surrounding streets were empty, that place was blazing with light.
Liam Price now suspected the reason gang members didn’t dare wander near his house probably had everything to do with this strange nightclub.
Focusing his concentration, he projected his ki perception toward the nightclub to check if the child he needed to adopt was inside.
However, after holding it for only a few seconds, Liam Price gave up.
The signatures inside that building were far too cluttered—numerous and chaotic.
Pinpointing a specific presence was like untangling a ball of silk.
While Liam Price didn’t lack patience, he lacked time.
So he leaped straight off the factory roof, landing cleanly in the alleyway behind the nightclub in a single bound.
Yet with just one breath of the air here, Liam Price immediately knit his brows.
The air was foul.
Aside from a strange stench, there was a faint yet oddly thick smell of blood.
That stench was common enough in America, but a faint yet dense copper smell usually belonged only in modern slaughterhouses—where, even though machines quickly washed away blood, the sheer volume of slaughtered livestock left a persistent, heavy metallic tang in the air.
*This nightclub is ten—no, twelve—kinds of wrong,* Liam Price thought, without slowing his pace.
As he approached the back door, two club bouncers who were smoking weed and shooting the breeze immediately called out to him.
“Hey, redneck!
This ain’t where you belong!
If you wanna party, go around front and buy a ticket!” A guard styled in punk gear—boasting a mohawk, eyeliner, and a stainless-steel ring through his septum—shouted at Liam Price.
Because Liam Price wore a red-and-black flannel shirt, jeans, and work-style combat boots, the guy labeled him a “redneck.” Beside the punk stood a taller, burly man whose visible face and arms were covered in colorful tattoos.
“Hey, why so mean?
If this handsome boy doesn’t wanna use the front door, the back door works fine too.
Ain’t we all looking for a good time?” The heavily tattooed giant winked at the punk before eyeing Liam Price maliciously.
Their boss was having a blast partying inside the club while they were stuck out here in the cold.
He was genuinely starving.
“You disgust me…” Without another word, Liam Price raised a hand and blasted him with a ki sphere.
With a soft *thwip*, the hit tattooed man didn’t even make a sound before his upper body was utterly disintegrated by the energy blast.
Once his torso vanished, the remaining lower half of his body burst into flames with a sizzle.
Like paper effigies burned at a funeral, the mangled remains quickly incinerated from the inside out into a pile of black ash—clean, hygienic, and eco-friendly to the max.
“…Low-tier vampires after all,” Liam Price muttered, confirming his suspicion.
Then, his form blurred and reappeared beside the punk.
Before the guy could even scream, Liam Price clamped a hand around his throat.
“Be a good boy and cooperate.
Understand?” Even choked, the punk nodded frantically.
He had waited so long to finally get turned into a vampire—he wasn’t ready to die yet!
“Is this a vampire nest?” The vampire nodded.
“Are there living humans in here?” The vampire nodded again.
“Is there a baby in here?” The vampire looked surprised, but continued nodding anyway.
“Great.
Now you can die.” Liam Price released a ki sphere point-blank right from the palm gripping his neck, obliterating the head of the eyeliner-and-septum-ring guy.
The punk’s headless body fell to the ground, following in his partner’s footsteps as it crumbled into a pile of black ash in the blink of an eye.