Read Novel Full Chapter 505 505: Caught
Chapter 505 505: Caught
Gabriel adjusted the armor one last time and began to conceal his aura as much as possible. He slowed his breathing, steadied his heartbeat, and pressed his presence down until it became faint enough to pass for an ordinary guard with decent strength.
He moved forward with slow and controlled steps. The silver armor on his body reflected the soft lamps on the walls, but beyond that, nothing about him stood out.
The deeper he went, the simpler the place became.
That was the first thing that caught Gabriel's attention. The halls here were not filled with gold, jewels, paintings, or anything that shouted wealth. The walls were plain. The floor was clean. The lamps were modest and set far apart.
For a king, this was strange. Gabriel had expected something lavish, or at least something that looked grand enough to match the status of the ruler of a kingdom.
"It seems he's not the luxurious type," he muttered as he passed another empty stretch of hallway and soon arrived before a door. It looked so ordinary that, if not for the pressure in this area, nobody would believe someone important stayed behind it.
No grand carvings. No heavy gold frame. No expensive ornaments. It looked like the kind of door one might see in an ordinary noble room, only thicker and better built. More importantly, it was left slightly open.
Gabriel stopped.
He spread his senses carefully and found nothing inside. No heartbeat. No breathing. No moving aura. That immediately gave him the impression that the owner was either away or in another part of the castle.
He stood there for two more seconds before making his move.
Gabriel slowly placed a hand on the door and pushed it open without making a sound. The room beyond came into view, and for the first time that night, real surprise touched his face.
The chamber was huge.
But the inside was so modest that it almost looked wrong.
The walls were left plain and unpainted. There was no expensive decoration hanging anywhere. There was just a simple bed, far smaller than what a king was supposed to sleep on, a drawer to the side, one plain chair, and a single window that let in a small amount of moonlight.
The cool night air drifted through that window and moved the thin curtain slightly. In that pale light, the room looked more like the quarters of a disciplined soldier than the chamber of a king.
Gabriel stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.
He looked at the room again.
"As a king, you should at least try to look rich," he thought.
Even the room of the lowest captains in Broken Dawn was more luxurious than this. That thought crossed his mind only briefly, because he did not come here to judge how a king chose to live.
He came for something important.
Gabriel's expression turned serious. He spread his senses again, this time not to search for people, but for the Soul Key.
With enough points in Perception, one could search for a familiar item if they had already held it before. The feeling was hard to explain, but once the item was known to the senses, it left a faint impression. Since Gabriel had one of the keys already, he simply focused on that impression now.
The room fell even quieter.
The cold air from the window touched his face. The faint lamp light from outside slipped in through the crack beneath the door. His breathing remained steady while his senses spread through the room carefully, touching the bed, the chair, the plain walls, the floor, the drawer, and every inch of the chamber.
It did not take long.
A familiar feeling entered his senses.
Gabriel's gaze shifted at once toward the drawer near the bed.
"There you are," he said softly.
He walked over without hesitation and opened the upper section first. Nothing. He moved to the next and found only folded clothes, simple ones at that.
He opened the last drawer.
Inside, lying quietly by itself, was one of the three Soul Keys.
It looked exactly like the one he had extracted from Henry. It emitted a presence that made it impossible to mistake for anything else.
Gabriel's hand moved immediately. He snatched it without a second thought and placed it into his inventory. The whole action was clean and fast, done in less than a breath.
The moment the key disappeared, Gabriel turned around to leave. For a brief second, everything had felt too smooth, almost like the path had been cleared for him without resistance.
'This is too easy…' the thought surfaced quietly, his fingers tightening slightly as a faint unease crept in.
Gabriel felt something was off, but he could not quite place it. Either way, now that he had the key, there was no point remaining here. It was time to leave.
He glanced toward the window. There was no point returning through the hallways. It would be simpler to use the window as his escape route.
With that thought in mind, he proceeded to turn.
But before he could move—
That was when he saw it.
A long shadow stretched across the floor.
It was cast by the moonlight from the window, and it did not belong to him.
Gabriel's body froze instantly. His eyes widened, and for the first time in a long while, his heart rate sped up so sharply that even he could hear it. The room that had looked so empty a moment ago suddenly felt too small.
Someone was behind him.
More than that, Gabriel realized something that made his scalp tingle.
Even his Undead Heart was not strong enough to keep him calm in this situation.
…
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