The Insider System

Chapter 336: Time To Go

Lake eventually got tired of guessing who the people close to him were and cracked the door slightly to see if they were even close enough to him to notice him if he walked to the next room. Once the door was open he saw that this was just another hallway and the two people that were the closest were around a corner or something and couldn't even see the door to the room he was in.

He didn't think he had wasted his time since he was being careful but he wished Man Vision had a bit more detail to things that weren't giving off any mana because he would have been able to tell there was an obstacle separating them. Opening the door a bit more he looked around and found the next room he wanted to go into was just down the hall from him and there was no one in his way.

With Mute active he was completely silent so he quickly moved down the hall and opened the door to go in. This room had a bed in it but with no one inside Lake decided to not spend much time in here in case they would be here soon to go to bed. Using Man Vision to look for valuable items Lake quickly walked around and touched everything that glowed even slightly.

He didn't take the time to figure out what any of the things he didn't know by sight were so he wasn't sure if he would remember all of them but he really didn't want anyone to come into the room and see him poking around. Once he was done here he moved to look around the halls again to try and get to the next room.

He was pretty sure there were only two guards on this floor and they were the two people near him earlier so the others were probably all people that lived here. This meant he couldn't go into any of the rooms those people were in but that left two more rooms with things for him as far as he could tell with Mana Vision.

Getting to them should be easy as well if everyone had already gone into the rooms they would stay in for the night and the guards didn't move from their spot. Running to the next door that he was pretty sure led to an empty room, Lake cracked the door slightly before he went in to see if someone would ask. 'Is anyone there?'

When there was no reaction or sound from the room he entered and quickly figured out this was an office and guessed it belonged to the mayor. To him this meant this would probably be the best out of all of the rooms on this floor because it would probably have a vault or something similar.

Using Mana Vision he quickly found one of the two things in the room giving off mana and opened the desk drawer that held it. Seeing a weapon he wasn't surprised since it made sense for an important person to keep a weapon close by just in case someone came in while they were working.

A small crossbow that was obviously enchanted was perfect for a surprise attack on anyone who came in on you. Poking the weapon he moved from the desk to the next thing in the room that he had seen with Mana Vision to see if it was the vault like he was hoping. The shape made him think it was going to be some type of storage but that didn't mean a vault necessarily.

Moving everything out of the way, Lake saw a metal box built into the bottom of the wall, obviously a wall vault. The outside didn't have a handle but he guessed there was probably a way to open it if you knew how. So far every vault he had opened had some type of trick to it so he was sure this one not having a handle must be to stop thieves like him.

He had plenty of ways to figure it out though so he wasn't worried about it unless it ended up that he needed a key from somewhere else. He also had the last resort of just summoning it to him later without ever opening it. He wasn't sure if it would work since it seemed to be built into the wall but it was worth a try if he was unable to open it.

Getting closer to the vault so he could see if there were any obvious formations that he could use Decrypt on Lake didn't see any but he went ahead and used the skill anyway. Seeing some lines start to glow he was happy that he didn't just try to pry it open since this formation would probably be some type of alarm.

Once Decrypt had revealed the formation Lake was able to tell it wasn't an alarm but the way to open it and recognized that this vault was opened by password. Not being able to make noise at the moment because he was sneaking around he chose to move on even though he really wanted to open the vault with an attack using Crunch.

Since it didn't have an alarm formation on it he didn't have to worry about anyone being alerted if he was to damage the vault meaning it was the best way for him to get at the things on the inside. Moving to the door Lake used Mana Vision to look around at the rooms around him.

This room was between two occupied rooms so the chances of being seen by someone was much higher than earlier meaning he needed to make sure no one was about to walk out of the room they were in before he opened the door.

Once he was done making sure no one was moving around he opened the door and headed down the hallway to the last room that no one was in. Opening it he was able to tell right away that this room was different from the others. The walls weren't decorated and it was pretty obvious that this was some type of work room for someone that lived here because there were wooden tables with tools.

It reminded him of some of the setups that people in the Alchemist guild used but it was missing anything to mix big vats of potions in so it was most likely related to another type of crafting or research. Like the other room that had a bed Lake felt it was likely that someone could walk in so he decided to make this last room quick on the off chance the old person that had climbed the spire owned this room and was currently on the way back here now.

The glow that was currently lighting the whole city was magic so it made sense to him a mage of some kind would probably own a room like this one to perform their work inside. He had seen just how much work making a single potion could be so magic in general must need tools like these.

Using Man Vision, Lake followed his sight to the only thing in the room that seemed to be giving off mana, which was a shelf that held all sorts of items from books to what looked like rocks to him. Once he had touched everything he took some time to inspect the rest of the workshop in case there were other valuable things that didn't give off any mana.

It didn't make sense to him that someone like a mage would keep all of their items on one shelf so there had to be a secret stash somewhere. In the past he had seen things like barriers or vaults that made it harder for him to see the things inside of them like the vault that had hid the Holy dagger so there could be something like that here.

After some time he was unable to find anything and moved to the door knowing at most he had only gotten half of the things that were here. There was nothing he could do if he didn't want to use Detector though and he needed to start thinking of his way out. He had already touched enough things that he was bound to forget some of them anyway so he really wasn't giving up on anything.

Once he made sure it was safe to go out of the room he made his way back to the room that he had climbed in from and got behind the couch to think about how he was going to escape. The most obvious thing was to fly out of the window knowing that someone would see him but betting on his speed to escape.

That would probably work but he really didn't want to be seen because he wanted the first time they realized he had been here to be when the items he touched started to disappear. To make this happen the best way for him to get out would be to wait until the light outside disappeared before climbing back to the spire.

The spire had a staircase that led directly to the bottom floor with no guards around so he would be able to walk out the front door and pretend to be a guard for a while before making an excuse to leave. That would mean he had to stay here all night though so that wasn't going to work for him.