If outgoing packets that leave a VPN node contain my endpoint’s IP address - which it must, since how else would it later be routed back to me - how does the location of the VPN exit node spoof my endpoint’s real location? Isn’t it obvious when the receiver inspects the packets what/where the source IP is?
If my endpoint’s IP address is not included in the packets that exit the VPN tunnel, how then does that same node - or other nodes in case of multi hop - route the packets back to my endpoint? Are there perhaps VPN specific identifiers in the packet that only that node knows how to route back to me?
Same way it happens with non VPN setups.
Network Address Translation. Your personal device is assigned a private IP (likely from RFC1918 or 100.64.0.0/17 range) and that is unique to you for as long as the VPN tunnel is established.
When the traffic leaves the public VPN endpoint it will be translated into a public address. All the website you are trying to access will do is respond to the public IP and there will be a translation table at the VPN provider saying which private IP to send the traffic.
Sweet! So the VPN endpoint hosts a dhcp server that assigns temporary addresses to the packets that are about to roam outside the VPN?
The temp addresses are internal to the VPN. The public ones are generally static or part of a pool that is shared among all users.