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Time slowly passed by as the deep night settled over Iron Creek City.
Instead of heading back to home, Alex chose to stay behind at the rundown love motel, more like he was scared that someone might notice the rapid changes that's happening to his body.
And he didn't have any explanation.
With Liria gone back to Clara's coliseum to play her part, someone needed to keep an eye on Leo and the remaining four informants of the Night Whisper branch.
Seeing how scared Leo was, he thought the underworld killers hired by the scammed clients could show up at any moment to tie up loose ends, and Alex wasn't about to let his newly acquired S-rank asset get himself killed before he could even use him.
Sitting quietly in the darkened surveillance room behind the front desk, Alex kept his Feral Gaze active, secretly observing the main entrance and the dim hallway monitors.
He already worked out a realistic backup plan in his head. He was confident in his Rank C combat strength but he wasn't reckless.
If the assassins turned out to be high-level B-Rank monsters or a large squad too strong for him to handle alone, he wasn't going to throw his life away.
He planned to grab Leo and the others, retreat through the back alley, and hide them inside Mira's research laboratory at the Gene Association as emergency maintenance staff.
The Gene Association was a massive, federally backed powerhouse; no underground killer would dare stage an attack inside their halls.
Hours passed on, but the anticipated attack never came.
Feeling bored and slightly stiff from sitting in the narrow office chair, Alex rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes to rest.
The street outside remained quiet, without a single suspicious assassin lurking in the shadows.
However, because Leo hadn't locked the motel's front doors, business continued as usual.
Without Alex noticing at first, throughout the entire night, a constant stream of regular customers, secret lovers, and cheating merchants checked in and out of the rooms.
That steady traffic quickly became a serious problem for Alex, just not the kind he had planned for.
As he sat in the monitoring room, his Void Yin Constitution began to react to the environment. The entire motel was practically overflowing with raw, heavy emotional residue.
Thick clouds of invisible empathetic energy, pure, unadulterated lust, heated desire, and intense sexual excitement, seeped through the thin walls and drifted into the hallway.
Without his conscious control, his body acted like a starving sponge, greedily devouring the invisible energy drifting through the air and drawing it straight into his mana circuit.
By the time the first grey light of dawn began to leak through the front blinds, Alex sat slumped in the office chair, sweating profusely and breathing in shallow, ragged gasps.
A deep, agonizing itch spread beneath his pale skin, accompanied by a heavy, pulsing ache radiating through his chest and hips.
His entire body felt feverish, hypersensitive, and oddly heavy.
"System," Alex gasped out, his voice breathless. "Open... open status panel..."
The pale blue holographic screen instantly materialized in front of his flushed face.
His dark eyes skipped past his basic attributes and locked directly onto the numbers he triggered simply by sitting in a busy love motel all night.
[ Current Source Power: 58 Points ]
[ Feminization Progress: Phase 2/9 (Ecdysis) - 57.2% ]
"Fifty-seven percent?!" Alex choked out, gripping the armrests of the chair so hard the cheap plastic cracked under his fingers.
"Sixteen percent in a single night?! Fuck! How the hell did it jump that much without me even doing anything?!"
He hadn't even realized when his passive absorption had gone into overdrive.
He looked down, watching in helpless shock as the physical reality of that sixteen percent jump made itself undeniably clear.
The soft mounds on his chest had expanded outward and upward, completely filling out the front of his small denim shirt.
They were no longer "just shy" of anything. They had grown into solid, heavy, full B-cup breasts, plump, round, and unmistakably soft.
His dark pink areolas had widened slightly, and his stiff, sensitive nipples pushed hard against the fabric, aching for relief from the sudden, rapid growth and the tight compression of his clothes.
His hips also widened by another fraction of an inch, forcing his waist to taper inward even further into a distinct hourglass figure that made sitting in the office chair feel awkward, tight, and suffocating.
Every breath he took caused his newly developed chest to rise and fall heavily, brushing against his shirt and sending electric jolts of heat straight down his spine.
"Hahahahaha! Oh, this is simply priceless!" The Empress's sadistic, ringing laughter exploded inside his mind, echoing so loudly it made his head spin. "To think that you would find a perfect place to absorb Empathic energy on your own! Your body is practically begging to mature, little vessels."
"Your actions these days really satisfied me, for that I'll reward you with a new ability.. Heheee"
"How was it? Are you satisfied?"
"Shut up! I didn't do it on purpose!" Alex mentally screamed back, his face burning a bright, furious red as he crossed his arms over his chest, trying to ease the heavy, tender ache in his breasts.
Before he could even try to calm his racing heartbeat or wipe the sweat from his forehead, the doorknob to the surveillance room clicked.
The door pushed open slowly, and Leo stepped inside, holding two steaming cups. "I... uh...boos, I brought coffee..." the young man mumbled, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
Leo stopped dead in his tracks.
With his S-rank observation talent naturally picking up the smallest shifts in physical details and energy, his gaze instantly locked onto Alex sitting slumped in the chair.
He blinked, his eyes widening as he took in the flushed skin, the heavy scent of sweet pheromones filling the small room, and the undeniable, prominent swell pressing visibly against the front of Alex's denim shirt.
Leo swallowed hard, his face turning slightly pink as he pointed a trembling finger toward Alex's chest. "Boss... did they grow larger than yesterday?"
Alex froze. The silence in the small office became absolute.
Looking down at his own visibly heavier cleavage, then back up at Leo's wide, staring eyes, a familiar wave of embarrassment flooded Alex's body, instantly transforming into explosive, defensive rage.
"Damn pervert, why is it you again?" Alex snapped, his voice cracking with a sharp feminine sound as he grabbed a blank clipboard off the desk and threw it straight at Leo's head. "Shut your fucking eyes before I pull them out, Leo!"
The plastic clipboard flew across the narrow room like a spinning disc.
Leo ducked with a squeak, barely dodging the projectile as it slammed violently into the metal filing cabinet behind him and clattered to the floor.
"Ouch!!" Hot coffee splashed out of the cups in his hands, burning his hands, but he didn't dare drop them.
Instead, he scrambled backward, squeezing his eyes shut as his back hit the doorframe.
"I'm sorry! I swear I wasn't trying to look!" Leo stammered, his body shaking as he held the coffee cups out in front of him like an offering.
Alex let out a ragged, frustrated breath, his chest rising and falling heavily.
"Damn this fucking breasts, how do women deal with them every day?" The rapid movement made the heavy, tender flesh of his newly developed B-cups rub against the rough inside of his denim shirt.
A sharp, electric jolt of sensitivity shot straight from his stiff nipples down to his lower belly, making him wince and cross his arms even tighter over his breasts as he cursed.
"Also don't even dare use your fucking skills to spy on me, or else I'll simply kill you," Alex warned, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous tone that vibrated with natural hypnotic resonance.
He didn't give him a chance to reply, as Alex stood up from the office chair.
He walked over to the bank of security monitors and glanced at the screen showing the quiet street outside.
The sun was fully up now, casting bright morning light across the pavement. The street was empty of any suspicious vehicles or lurking figures.
"I don't think anyone's coming to kill you… just do your own work, and try not to attract any unwanted attention and get yourself killed…" Alex said calmly, turning away from the screens to pick up one of the warm coffee cups.
He took a sip, letting the bitter caffeine clear the exhaustion from his mind.
"Whoever bought that fake intel from your branch leader must still be trying to figure out where he ran off to."
"We have a small window of time before they turn their attention back to this motel, and we need to use it."
He set the coffee cup down and looked at the trembling young man.
Though Leo was a coward, his S-rank observation talent and underground connections were the only reasons their plan had a chance of succeeding tomorrow night.
"Spend the rest of the day keeping your head down," Alex instructed, smoothing down the front of his shirt. "Make sure the VIP registry for Lady Veronica Sterling is completely watertight in the underground coliseum's database."
"We will meet again tomorrow, before we go to the coliseum."
Without waiting for Leo to reply, Alex stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind him.