Cyno had spent the entire day trying to figure out where Nighttale had been murdered, and he had managed to find the most suspicious looking place.
Although the news was made public, the Hero Commission and police made sure to keep things under wraps, so the address was never publicly revealed.
But it was next to impossible to hide a major development such as this, not when the news had given them all the information they needed.
While Kyle flew above the buildings, Cyno was jumping from roof to roof, his movements so fluid that Kyle wondered how many times he had done things like this back in his world.
It was easy to forget who he was due to his jovial nature, but when it came to business like this, the general often showed forth.
They eventually stopped at the top of a roof overlooking a seemingly quiet street. The roof was pyramidal in shape, so they rested their bodies on one side, peeking over the edge.
In front of them was a large abandoned building, just like the news had mentioned.
But that was not the odd part about the structure. The building was scorched from top to bottom, and the windows and doors at the bottom floor had been blown to bits.
The debris had been cleaned up, in a way to disguise what had happened as a fire outbreak, but there was little that could be done to hide an explosion.
Kyle pointed at the front porch.
"You see those cracks on the floor?"
Cyno nodded, and Kyle pointed to the next thing. "Also, look at the way the soot spreads out of the building."
In a normal fire, the patterns would be closer, but in an explosion, the fire shoots out, leaving patterns like that.
"Someone is trying to hide something…"
In the event of an explosion, the area was to be thoroughly investigated, yet there were no police cars parked by the road, no rolls of unending yellow tape… the road was bare.
It was almost as though nothing had happened here.
At least, that was how it looked to the untrained eye. To someone like Kyle, you might as well write "beware of murder" on the front door.
He could smell it in the air—a thick smell of blood and rot was coming from the room, tainting the natural smell of the city.
And then he could easily spot the officers lurking in the shadows.
Some of them were disguised as pedestrians. Kyle had already seen one pass this street three times already.
There were two in the car parked at a distance; one of the officers inside was watching the house with his binoculars.
'Amateurs…'
Although their security was tight, Kyle had already figured out a way to get in a long time ago.
He turned to Cyno and tapped his shoulder smugly while pointing at the building. "Take me inside…"
Cyno's brows creased as he heard him. "What?"
"Do that fancy darkness thing you always do… use it to take us in."
Cyno tore his gaze away from Kyle and stared at the road. "I can't really do that…"
Kyle paused, his eyebrows creased, showing his confusion. "Why can't you?"
"It doesn't work for two people, okay? It's a single-person skill!" Cyno muttered, a little bit of irritation seeping into his voice.
"Tch, how useless…"
When he heard those words, Cyno's face hardened, and then he briefly tilted his chin toward the road. "Why don't you just turn into a bat? Hmm? Oh…"
Still watching the building, Kyle scoffed. "Who needs something as useless as a bat transformation?"
Cyno shrugged and smirked. "Instead of batting your eyes at me, maybe you should work on becoming a better vampire…"
"…"
Kyle decided to act as though he had heard nothing. "There should be another way into the building."
His eyes roamed the street, scanning for any potential entry point.
There was only one place that had fewer eyes than the others, the alleyway by the right side.
Unlike the other areas, there was no entry point apart from a single window too high for anyone to reach.
The only person that periodically kept an eye on that part of the building was the fake pedestrian, but all Kyle had to do was time his movement.
Still, it felt a little too easy, and if something looked too good to be true, it probably was.
'Did the police actually not think that someone with a flight Quirk might be involved?'
There was no way they did not make provisions for someone who could fly, so why was that part of the building less guarded?
"I'll be right back—"
He adjusted his position on the roof, hurrying over to the other edge to get a better look, after which he shook his head. "It is a trap…"
There was some sort of contraption mounted on the window, hidden so discreetly that someone without his vision would probably miss it at this distance.
"So that's a bust…"
He could simply knock out some of the officers, but then the police would know that someone else visited the crime scene.
Kyle wanted to avoid that at all costs.
He stared down at the building, his eyes narrowed as he angrily stared at it.
'How did Nighttale manage to hide all this while he lived in such an exposed building?'
When the realization dawned on Kyle, it was as if a light bulb had been lit in his head.
"How could I forget?" he muttered, slowly shaking his head.
"What is one thing every villain lair has, Cyno?"
Cyno shrugged. "What is it?"
Kyle smiled as he turned his attention away from the building. "A secret entrance."
[Geolocation]
Immediately, Kyle activated the skill. The world unraveled before him, replicas of each and every building around him coming into view in great detail.
He could even see the bright yellow visages of the officers—from the ones eating in the car, everything was being transcribed in real time.
Seeing the world from an entirely new perspective, Kyle turned his attention to the floor just by the side of the building they were at, a smile gracing his features a second later.
Underneath the seemingly normal dumpster was a hole big enough for a fully grown man to fit into.
Kyle traced his gaze from the hole, discovering a sizable tunnel that stopped underneath the house.
"I've found our entrance."
He jumped down the building, Cyno a step behind him as he landed on the hard pavement.
Making sure to make as little noise as possible, Kyle easily set aside the dumpster, then peered down the hole for traps.
When he was sure it was clean, he dove right in.
The narrow drop led onto a broader cave, completely wreathed in darkness.
Kyle could easily see through it, so navigating through the tunnel was a piece of cake. They emerged from a creaky floorboard in the living room.
"What a mess."
The entire building had been overturned, most likely the work of the police, and there was a lingering smell of burned flesh in the room.
He ran his hand through the sofa, bringing back soot and ash.
"What happened here?"
They did a brief search of the room but came up with nothing. Everything remotely useful must have been swooped up by the police already.
"It doesn't look like there is anything on this floor." Kyle looked at the stairs, then turned to Cyno. "Let's go up."
They went up the wooden staircase, arriving in front of a door seconds later.
After listening to ensure there was no one else inside, Kyle pushed the door open and stepped in.
"What the hell…"