Ten o’clock at night.
Even for New York, a city that proudly claimed to be a bustling international metropolis, pedestrians on the streets at this hour were incredibly rare—practically non-existent.
After all, New York by day and New York by night were two completely different worlds.
That was the unwritten rule of the streets.
Whenever night fell, people hurried home, locked their doors, and stayed inside.
After all…
walking the streets at night was a risky business.
Brooklyn.
Near the banks of the Hudson River, right across the street from a building that looked exactly like a frozen pork warehouse, Locke lay quietly in the passenger seat, his eyes closed behind his sunglasses.
As the darkness deepened, he could clearly feel his combat power returning—power that had been compressed by nearly half during the day.
It was a mystical, subtle sensation.
And this was just the state of his B-rank vampire gene.
Locke was deeply curious to see what kind of heights he would reach if he upgraded the gene to S-rank.
Beside him in the driver’s seat, Brown was holding a pair of binoculars, intently watching the tightly closed gates of the frozen pork factory.
This warehouse, despite its industrial facade, was highly likely to be the Satan Bar—a spot that particular vampire visited every single night.
As soon as they got off work, Brown had practically dragged Locke out to pull this overtime shift.
But…
Brown lowered the binoculars and glanced at the cracked face of the women’s watch on his wrist.
“Did we get the wrong place?
It’s almost eleven.”
This watch was a keepsake from his deceased wife.
When that mutant with the self-detonation ability had awakened, it had happened inside a shopping mall where Brown’s wife was picking out baby clothes for their unborn daughter.
In the aftermath of the disaster, this watch was the only relic salvaged from the bloody scene that could confirm his wife’s identity.
Locke, who was savoring the mystical power of his vampire gene, opened his eyes at Brown’s muttering.
He turned his head and said with a smile, “What’s the rush?
It’s not even three yet.”
They weren’t far from where yesterday’s dead vampire had lived.
That vampire’s transaction records were concentrated between three and four in the morning.
Either that vampire was exceptionally lazy, or this vampire bar didn’t open as soon as night fell.
Locke leaned toward the second explanation.
Locke said no more.
He folded his arms, closed his eyes again, and quietly savored the changes brought by his B-rank vampire gene.
Before this, his understanding of the “extraordinary” was purely theoretical.
Now, he had a tangible grasp of it.
To put it this way: before integrating the vampire gene, if he had fought Brown—who was built like a black bear and was a former Marine—he definitely wouldn’t have stood a chance.
But now, he could easily crush Brown.
Literally.
Extraordinary wasn’t just an adjective; it was a state of being.
A state of being that surpassed and even crushed ordinary organisms from the very source of life.
Even though vampires seemed to be at the absolute bottom tier of extraordinary creatures, they were still extraordinary.
Beside him, Brown’s eyes were sharp as he stared unblinkingly through the binoculars at the silent pork factory.
Time ticked away.
Soon, the sporadic honking of car horns in the distance faded entirely.
As midnight arrived, a dead silence settled over the surroundings.
And right at that moment, the frozen pork warehouse finally showed signs of life.
The warehouse doors slid open silently.
A white man wearing a black T-shirt and sporting a shock of yellow hair walked out, stretched, yawned, put a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it.
This seemed to be a signal.
Sensing something, Locke opened his eyes, sat up in the passenger seat, and looked out into the darkness.
“They’re here.”
He could already smell the faint scent of his “own kind.”
As the yellow-haired man blew out his first ring of smoke, men and women appeared from out of nowhere within the field of Brown’s binoculars.
Under Brown’s watchful eye, they silently slipped into the warehouse.
*So many Extraordinary Points.*
Locke’s eyes widened with greed.
Seeing this, Brown’s spirits rose.
He handed the binoculars to Locke.
“People are coming.”
“They should be vampires,” Locke corrected Brown’s grammar as he took the binoculars. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
With his Nightcrawler state active, he didn’t actually need binoculars.
He could see and even hear everything clearly.
However, he didn’t want to show off.
He feigned using the binoculars, aiming them at the open pork factory two hundred meters away.
At the entrance of the warehouse, the yellow-haired man was bowing and scraping before an ugly man in a suit.
“Lord Quinn.”
“Mm.
Lord Frost needs a few new faces.”
“Understood.”
The yellow-haired man’s eyes lit up.
He grabbed his walkie-talkie and barked a few orders.
A moment later, a dozen blonde women, wearing clothes so skimpy they might as well have been naked, walked out of the warehouse in a group.
Like products on an assembly line, they were inspected by black-suited bodyguards standing in front of a stretch Lincoln before piling inside.
Just as the last woman was about to board, the ugly man called Quinn grabbed her arm and pulled her into his embrace.
A crude, indescribable smile spread across his face.
“You’re not going.
Stay behind and keep me company.”
The yellow-haired man was briefly taken aback, but then his smile widened into a sycophantic grin.
He bowed like a court eunuch, watching Lord Quinn lead the limp, yielding woman back into the pork warehouse.
Once Quinn and the woman vanished, the yellow-haired man straightened his back.
With a cold expression, he watched the guests filtering in.
About an hour later, as the stream of guests dwindled to a trickle, the yellow-haired man stopped lingering outside and turned to walk back into the warehouse.
“Tsk.”
“How come these male vampires are all so ugly?” Locke put down the binoculars and rubbed his chin, feeling genuinely curious.
And…
Those male vampires didn’t just look ugly; they also carried a strange, distinct scent.
But it was different from the scent he had smelled on Blade.
Locke thought about it, unconsciously raising his arm to sniff his own skin.