1 hour later...

Finally, Seth stopped ranting and he exited the Soul. Back to reality, Seth shuttled his gains to his private hideout, where he kept the safes.

He kept the gold bars in a sack he took them here a stuffed them in a corner. The egg though Seth had no idea what to do with that.

If it was a mythical beast he couldn't leave it in daycare, but neither could he spend all day caring for it. An annoying issue and Seth had not but one answer: kill the pet.

There were certainly positives, if it was a mythical beast Seth was sure to gain a lot of experience, but he would lose a potentially invaluable ally. Sadly, the moral issue of killing a conscious beast and sending him to death was hardly better than killing your average Joe.

`Fine` Seth decided to keep the egg so he put it in a leftover sack and took it out with him as he headed for a hotel. He needed to lay low for a while but also needed to test out his new skills, so Seth hired a carriage and with a couple of gold in his pouch he wanted to go on a bit of a road trip.

Home was tempting and he missed his family more than he showed but the risks were just too much. He loved them, but death was something he wouldn't play with. Seth took a sip of water from a particular waterskin, but quickly moved on.

So, to the mining town of Ronia which hosted some lovely hot springs. Seth was sold by a flyer he saw on the way to the carriage rank and once he asked the driver there and paid him the outrageous sum, he slumped back on his seat, forgetting the fragile egg on his back.

"CRACK"

`Sh.t` Seth got back up but was thrown back down as the driver started moving. A gooey slime-like substance had come from the egg and, once Seth had stomached his sick, he climbed up he finally saw the burden he had just hatched.

A snake: not even a multicoloured one but a basic black snake was slithering up the bench. Seth was now thoroughly infuriated, but thanks to a certain skill, he did not commit animal abuse, instead he sat down and let the beast curl up and sleep on him.

Seth was tempted to shake it off, maybe annoy the thing a fraction of how much it had inconvenienced him but alas the rocky road did it for him.

Luckily for Seth, the snake now saw him as his mother and so repeatably kept crawling on him in hopes of comfort and warmth.

Eventually, Seth stopped aiding the road in shaking the snake off and rewarded the beast for its dedication, After all, if it was a mythical beast Seth didn't want to be on its bad side.

And he thought it was kind of cute... But that is definitely not why he changed his opinion of it.

Once the 2 arrived at Ronia and Seth paid compensation for all the cleanup the driver was going to have to do, Seth booked a hotel stay and then made his way to a library for some investigative work on his newfound pet which he had named Ouroboros or Ouro for short.

Speaking of, he had left him at home with his shell because Seth didn't want the snake annoying him whilst he researched.

After a couple of hours, Seth had learned some information on beasts. Firstly, he was likely the baby of a dungeon monster so luckily feeding it was easy as most dungeon monsters only ate something called negative mana which was essentially the carbon dioxide of mana if mana was oxygen.

Humans used mana to make spells, this man is then turned into negative after it was used. Dungeons were the trees that took in the negative mana and spat out normal mana. Happy ecosystem that explains why the inhabitants didn't just wipe their world of all dungeons.

The second thing he learned was that normal dungeon beasts couldn't be taken out of dungeons, but eggs could as they hadn't been connected to the Dungeon's mana yet. Something about a man a `signature` which Seth was completely oblivious about but he was sure his real teacher would teach him it once it became needed.

Thirdly he needed to imprint his mana into the beast to get it hooked and like that, the beast would be tamed.

The final thing was that it was incredibly illegal to own a dungeon beast as you needed a permit to own one because of the dangers it could pose to society. A fair conclusion considering the beasts were biologically tuned by dungeons to hunt humans at maximum efficiency.

For now, Seth went to his hotel to digest his thoughts and tame his new pet. For the first time in quite a while, Seth was enjoying himself outside of robbing or stealing.

When he did arrive at his hotel he found it in a mess thanks to his new pet. This reminded him far too much of the old pets he used to have back on earth. Anyway, Seth sat next to Ouro and began fiddling with his mana.

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Sadly control didn't come easy and whilst Seth was wheezing away trying to move his mana into the snake it ran off into another room. Slightly annoyed Seth caught up to his pet and tried again.

It moved.

Annoyed Seth got up and tried again.

It moved.

Seth gave up and sat on his bed. It was raining and the pitter-patter on the roof made a calming backdrop for Seth to take a short nap. When he woke up his little friend had further destroyed the room and was now asleep on a fallen plant, surely basking in its mischief.

Before Seth got angry enough to commit a crime, he noticed that the snake was finally still. Sneaking up to it he started trying to move his mana and after an hour of gasping, wheezing, and focusing he felt a rope be connected between himself and the snake.

The second the bond was made the snake woke up in shock. It looked at Seth with its devious green eyes and then slithered up to him and fell back asleep on Seth's tired body.

Seth was partly happy that the snake didn't bite him in revenge, but that was outweighed by his annoyance at this freeloader's nonchalant attitude. He owned the snake, not the other way around, or so he thought.

Seth used his final trump card, Calm Mind and for once in this trip he wasn't annoyed, rather he was plotting his revenge.

Seth laughed; such a menial conflict had gotten him so annoyed that he was genuinely considering which window to throw the snake out of. He remembered why he loved pets, for as much as they annoyed their owners they provided far more than they took.

They filled a void called loneliness, they filled their owner's hearts with love and none of it felt fake. That was the one thing any animal had on humans was that you knew they weren't lying to you.

Seth felt so soothed by his holiday of annoyance that he actually started caring about his little slithery friend.

However, he did start to wonder what the snake tasted like.

Once the holiday was finished and Seth arrived back 2 weeks later he had already started with his mana control practice. The first thing he did once he got back was inform the guild so he could get back on that lesson grind.

Knowledge was power, and that statement was as true as they come so Seth hopped on that and then ended up back at his home.

Now with a new family member, he made some space for that little guy and left him to his business. Seth had taught him to not kill anyone through some `great` hand gestures but as a mythical beast, Seth concluded that even that would be enough to teach him.

Using that excuse Seth spent some time doing various other things, like mana training he also finished evaluating his new progress.

That orb of light he found was actually in his Soul island was the sun in the sky, no book in the library mentioned it and he only concluded such after finding out that the island wasn't even supposed to have a sun.

Now by physical standards that would mean the grass and trees grow, so an infinite exp glitch but sadly not. The effect of the sun was unknown, but Seth doubted something as broken as an infinite power glitch actually existed.

For now, it was back to the usual grind of pickpocketing. Seth wanted to power level some Phantom Hands experience, and on the side, he would play some high stakes gambling for the Calm Mind exp.

Waiting for the heat to die down from his earlier heist Seth continued this cycle for a month. During this, he managed to do a few more things of significance:

Firstly and most importantly, Calm Mind was now Serene Mind. That sounds pretty bland, but the effect of Serene Mind was revolutionary as it allowed Seth to far better control mana around him for the duration of the skill. This made practicing mana control far easier, and this leads to the next point.

Second, Seth managed to learn his first spell. The Thief spell tree was imprinted on Seth's mind from his evolution and Seth would unlock certain spells once his control reached a certain requirement. It was a godsend that made the continent as a whole far better at fighting than if they had been without it.

Thirdly, Seth had unlocked the rank 2 safe in his possession, the one from the first house he robbed, and it contained nothing particularly special except a great map of the country and a heart-warming photograph of an Adventurer getting some sort of a trophy, the man's 2 parents were smiling whilst they stood next to the jubilant young man.

This photo was nice, only if you forgot the fact that this man was lost for 2 months in a dungeon and that was a kind way of saying he was dead. Death was the ending of all stories; it came in all shapes and sizes, but no one could escape it.

Except for the Gods, Seth needed to become a God. He wanted his story to be everlasting so nobody could take a look at an old photo and grief over him, pity was for the weak and dead and Seth wanted to be neither.

The safe had nothing of value in it, a few lockets, and trinkets, but Seth decided to keep them in memory of the fallen, maybe they would act as a good luck charm. For his time Seth gained something worth far more than a few golds, he gained a renewed passion for his levelling for he would become immortal which was his creed.

With his motivation refuelled and with the police seemingly doing down their efforts of catching him Seth was ready to return to the streets and he wanted to come back with a bang!

Symbolically, not literally...

Anyway, Seth first needed a couple targets, a few unfortunate victims that had a couple gold lying around and the people who tended to have this issue were the Nobles.

Sadly, Seth was far too weak to steal from actual nobles, that's why Seth used potions to supplement his strength during the last heist but that was a gamble and Seth had played the odds.

This time Seth had no guarantee therefore he could not be so extravagant with his potion usage and if possible never use them in the first place. He needed to lay a precedent for his skill that he could work to improve upon for later and so he needed a good baseline to see just how good he was.

With his new intellect Seth managed to squeeze out a plan he honestly had no idea how he made. Seth understood why the actions happened and the consequences of them, but it was like an orchestra and Seth was only a newbie conductor.

So, with a plan on paper Seth familiarised himself with the plan and started to prepare for the show and what a show it would be.

On his desk was a newspaper he had picked up from before, its title read: `The Emperor Play is on at the Knighted Theatre.`

Below that it read, `This weak the Knighted Theatre has confirmed that it has gotten permission from the Central Kingdom Sect to perform `The Emperor` a prestigious play that re-enacts the Historia's Kingdoms creation. As a procedure that means the 1000 Gold Crown will be used as a prop yet again, this grand symbol of our glorious kingdom history is a show of prosperity and wealth that the crown brings to our kingdom.`

Ignoring the political drivel Seth was certainly going to enjoy his property and wealth, that gold crown was going to look great in his hideout.

Let the plan commence!