I'm a proper student; I only take nine kinds of potions every day.

Without thinking twice, he turned around and ran back to the dock to continue carrying sacks.

In the end, Evan worked an hour longer than the other workers.

When the clock on the dock struck eleven, he finally put down the last bag of goods and straightened up.

Parker stood at the warehouse door waiting for him, clutching a few coins in his hand.

"Four hours of effective work, thirty-two cents."

The foreman handed over the money, and Evan reached out and took it, the coins clinking in his palm.

Thirty-two cents isn't much, but it's what he earned through his own hard work, every single cent was earned honestly.

Parker handed over the money, but didn't leave immediately.

He held a pipe in his mouth, looking the young man up and down with an undisguised look of confusion in his eyes.

The man who walked in four hours ago, Ivan, was as thin as a bamboo pole, with a pale face, and a forty-pound bag of tobacco swayed as he carried it on his shoulder.

The man standing in front of him was covered in sweat, but his face was flushed.

The shoulders stretched the seams of the canvas shirt, and the muscle lines on the forearms were faintly visible.

"Hey kid, you look a lot stronger than when you came. Your complexion is much better too."

Ivan laughed heartily: "Life is all about movement, Uncle Parker."

Parker scoffed after hearing this, took the pipe out of his mouth, and tapped the ash on the sole of his boot.

"Then I'm sure I'll live a long time."

He waved and said, "Be careful on the road, don't catch a cold."

Ivan put on his jacket, pulled up the collar, and pushed open the side door of the warehouse, stepping into the night.

In early November, the temperature had already dropped to around four degrees Celsius late at night.

The canvas shirt and denim overalls, soaked with sweat, clung to my body, stiff and hard in the cold wind, like wearing a layer of icy iron.

With each step, the stiff fabric rubbed against my skin, feeling cold and rough.

Fortunately, the blood wine enhancement from the Blood Potion was still in effect.

Evan started running, his boots clattering on the cobblestone pavement.

After running for less than a minute, the heat in my body began to evaporate, and my body warmed up. A thin layer of new sweat even appeared on my back.

As night falls on Hain Street and Guding Street, the streetlights cast a dim yellow light on the empty stone slabs, and the buildings on both sides stand darkly like two rows of tombstones.

But these tombstones are not quiet.

From behind a window came the intermittent howling of a drunkard, which sounded like singing or crying at the same time.

Gang members were shouting from deep within the alley, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

A stray dog ​​crouched beside a pile of garbage, barking wildly into the darkness, its voice sharp and hysterical.

In a third-floor window of a building, a woman was cursing her child in Irish-accented English, and suddenly burst into tears halfway through her rant.

This is the Nocturne of Guding Street.

It is performed on time every night without fail.

Ivan walked briskly, humming a tuneless little melody.

Back downstairs at his apartment building, he retrieved his repaired shoes from Old Tom's shop; the heels were finally the same height.

He tucked his leather shoes under his arm, went upstairs, and took out his keys to open the door.

As soon as the door was pushed open a crack, a stench wafted out.

It no longer just smelled like Mary's cheap perfume, but also had a more murky odor, accompanied by lingering wisps of smoke.

Strange groans and incoherent curses came from Mary's room, their rhythm chaotic, interspersed with the muffled thuds of the bed hitting the wall.

Ivan's brows furrowed, and a cold look of disgust flashed in his eyes.

"Almost there, you bitch."

He swallowed those words and remained silent.

They took off their work clothes, which were soaked with sweat and stiffened, and hung them on the back of a chair to dry.

After the sweat on his body had subsided somewhat, he took an old towel and went into the washroom.

There are no water heaters these days.

It's already a rarity for each apartment in this building to have a private bathroom; most apartment buildings have a public bathhouse downstairs with an ever-present long queue.

He turned on the tap, and the hose coughed twice, spitting out a stream of icy water.

He didn't feel cold when the cold water was poured on his skin.

The Blood Potion is still working its magic.

It felt like there was an inextinguishable fire burning inside my body.

"Blood potion, what a wonderful thing."

Chapter 11: Extraordinary Trait: Vampire

Evan watched as the water washed away the sweat and dust from his arms, his eyes burning with a fierce light.

"There are only four left... No, I have to find a way to get more."

"Potion Sister, how can I live without you!"

He knew very well that, given his current social status, the only way he could connect with the extraordinary world was through Pulis.

There is no doubt that the man had ulterior motives towards her.

Using students as test subjects for drug trials—this kind of person is definitely not a good person.

But this is his only chance.

Just like a person about to drown in the ocean, they won't care whether there are nails on the driftwood that floats by.

First, grab them and survive; we'll deal with the rest later.

After rinsing off the sweat, I had a big, satisfying bowel movement.

For the past two months since the start of the drug trial, Evan's stools have been either very small, resembling sheep droppings, or completely unformed.

Now it's a normal, complete, and pleasant banana-shaped stool.

"It feels so good to be able to poop freely!"

Ivan dried himself off and returned to his room.

He picked up the phenobarbital bottle from the table and poured out two pale yellow pills.

He poured out two small, grayish-white pills from the bottle of mercury pills, put all four pills into his mouth, and then rinsed them down with a mouthful of water.

Then he climbed onto the bunk bed, pulled over the old blanket covered in lint, slammed his head on the pillow, and sank into darkness within three seconds.

He was sleeping soundly.

So engrossed was he that he didn't notice anything approaching outside the window.

About twenty minutes after Evan fell asleep, a shadow appeared outside the closed window.

It didn't push open the window or pick the lock.

It went straight through the glass.

Like ink seeping onto rice paper, the shadow silently seeped in through the crack in the window, coalescing into a human shape in the room.

In the darkness, a pair of dark red eyes lit up.

Those eyes had no pupils, or rather, the entire iris was the pupil.

It has a deep, solidified dark red color, like two rubies soaked in formalin.

He was tall and slender, with an innate elegance in his movements.

He was like a gentleman accustomed to going in and out of opera boxes, except that at this moment he was standing in a dilapidated apartment covered with old newspapers.

Those dark red eyes quickly scanned the room, from the newspapers on the wall to the extinguished kerosene lamp on the table, from the wet clothes hanging on the back of the chair to the thin figure curled up on the bed.

His brow furrowed slightly when his gaze fell on the mess of medicine bottles under the bed.

That expression carried a hint of dissatisfaction.

It's like a lab technician discovering that their subject is taking unplanned medication.

He did not hesitate.

He took a glass syringe from inside his trench coat, and the needle flashed a cold light in the darkness.

He bent down and gently pulled back Ivan's blanket, revealing a section of his thin arm.

The needle pierced the vein in the elbow with precision and gentleness; Evan didn't even flinch in his sleep.

Dark red blood slowly rose up from the syringe, filling the tube.

He pulled out the needle, pressed his thumb against the puncture site, and held it there for two seconds.

Then he put the syringe away and straightened up.

The next moment, his body seemed to lose its substance, liquefying from the soles of his feet into a pool of flowing shadow that silently seeped out through the cracks in the window frame.

Silence returned to the room.

The only sounds were Evan's even breathing and the subtle scraping of the soil by the rats digging at the base of the wall.

A few minutes later, another dark figure appeared.

This time, the people who came didn't sneak in through the window cracks; they climbed in from outside.

She didn't have that eerie ability to penetrate; she was more like an ordinary person who had received rigorous training.

Her hands gripped the edge of the window frame precisely, the way her fingers exerted force revealing a special technique.

The old, creaky window, which usually groaned at the slightest touch, opened without making a sound.

The hinges looked as if they had been coated with an invisible grease.