The Insider System

Chapter 333: Guarding

Once they woke three more people they all helped the ones who were yet to wake up back to the barracks which turned out to be in the castle like he had hoped. There all of them were healed including him just in case their heads were more hurt than it seemed.

Once that happened the guards from the jewelry shop left and headed back to work to tell their bosses that they had failed to catch the guy who tried to rob them. "Alright since you're the only one who kind of saw what happened you should go and do the paperwork about the people who attacked us."

"I really didn't even see any of them. I just know all of us were knocked out at the same time so there had to be more than one of them." Lake was backing off of what he had said earlier a little but he didn't want the reports he did in a second to seem weird when they had no information. "Just do your best. None of us expect the report to actually help us catch them."

Hearing this, Lake felt a little better to go ahead and activate Play The Part and let this identity do its job until he got a better look around. He had no idea what kind of paperwork he was about to do so there was no way to avoid using this skill now. As he was walking around he got a good look at how many other guards there were around in the courtyard.

He had to guess the total amount though since this was just one small part so while he was sneaking around he was going to have to look out for about 200 guards. There were probably others like servants and the people who lived here as well so maybe he would have to change identities again later.

If he was to take the identity of someone like the mayor he would be able to do anything he wanted while he was here. It would be hard to get rid of the body though since it would probably take place in a small office or something with no where he could put a body.

Walking into the next room Lake was able to tell this was some type of office and it made him think back to the time he had been in a police station when he was really young. He had been in to answer some questions but because of his age they hadn't brought him into an interrogation room and he had been able to see all of the cops desks.

The only real difference between that place and this one was there were no computers on the desks and the uniforms were made of metal. His body quickly went and sat at one of the empty desks and before long took out a blank scroll and started to write. Like all the other times he had used this skill Lake wasn't able to see what was going on perfectly but he was able to read what the body was writing and was surprised to find there was a lot of untrue information.

Play The Part made the identity take over the actions so he guessed this meant the person he was currently would have made stuff up in a situation like the one they were in now. He wasn't surprised by this since a good proportion of people were willing to lie to make themselves look better, especially at work.

The way this read made it sound like it hadn't been completely one sided and there was a lot of detail on how they had arrested someone and not too much on how they had been knocked out and lost the criminal before they got them to the dungeon. Once there was about a page of details that had mostly been made up, his body went and put it into a box with twenty or so other scrolls.

He was guessing these would be the other reports from today but he didn't try to read them because he wasn't really interested in what the other criminals here were doing. It was nice to know that there was probably a place he could sell stolen things in town even if he didn't end up using it.

Once his body walked back outside he took back over and started to head to a less crowded area. He was sure guards weren't supposed to just walk around randomly but if someone tried to stop him he would just lie and say he was looking around for another person for some reason.

Eventually he was on the walls looking down on the rest of the city and he started to plan how to get inside the main building while he pretended to work. There were a few windows near the top that might be able to be opened but Lake really couldn't see himself being able to crawl into one of them without being seen so he wanted a better way.

His next option would be the doors that were around. He was sure one of them would eventually lead inside if he tried them all but all it would take for him to be caught was for someone to see him open a door he wasn't supposed to and that would be it. This left the only option of walking in through the front door. There were guards but he was a guard so they would probably just let him in without even asking why he wanted to go into the castle.

He could check this as well before he tried his luck by hanging around and seeing if they stopped others from going in. He did think it would look weird to the guards if he just stood there and watched what was going on so Mana Vision and his amazing sense of hearing would have to do in this case.

He didn't really need to be close to gather evidence so there wasn't really a point in making himself look suspicious by hanging around somewhere as important as a gate into a castle. Getting closer so he could listen to the guards at the gate while still looking like he was looking out over the city, Lake eventually heard the gate open and when he looked he saw it was someone with guard armor on and like he had hoped the guards at the gate didn't do anything to stop them.

He knew this wasn't enough to go ahead and head inside since he would want to see this a few more times but it was a really good sign. After some more time another person came through the gate and Lake didn't hear the guards say anything this time either so he looked to make sure the person going in was a guard like him.

Sadly it looked like a servant of some kind so he had to disregard what the guards did in this case because a servant would have access to the house part of the castle for sure. It was too bad he didn't have any way of becoming them because it was sure to let him go straight inside without all of this extra stuff.

Next time he planned a robbery like this one he would go ahead and use Detector to find a servant that worked in the place he was trying to break into and save himself a load of time. He had no idea why he had thought a guard would be the best choice now that was thinking about it because there were bound to be people like cooks and such that lived out in the city.

He guessed not wanting to use Detector had made him not even try to find a way in that would be hard to think of. It was also true that without Detector it would be really hard for him to find these people that worked in the castle. He was doing this for excitement though so making it too easy would have ruined it.

This was supposed to be like a vacation for him since he hadn't had a chance to rob anyone for a while and probably wouldn't once he got back to the Temple. The Temple Head herself had told him he would be living there and he still didn't know how strict she would be about keeping him inside where she could have access to him at any time.

This could really be his last time stealing anything for a while so he wanted to savor it as much as he could. He wasn't the only one who was enjoying it either with the Insider moving ever so slightly since he had turned into the guard. As far as he could tell, sneaking around in a disguise was the Insider's favorite and stealing was really just a secondary thing to it.