He had seen it before; it was the one he had seen enter the capital. `No, not there. Hold on` Seth got out his mission paper and looked at the target description. There was an emblem.
Seth bloomed a smile never before seen on his face but before he could enjoy his good luck he heard the door to the garage open. Seth ducked back into the carriage without a word.
Set heard the man mumble and he heard the distinct sound of a bucket and a mop. `Cleaning! Now? Really?` Seth could only curse his luck as he had to stay in the carriage and wait, or did he.
He remembered a spell he could use on the go that could distract the cleaner. He made the Comical Coin and threw it through the gap in the carriage door.
The cleaner woke up from his work mode and went over to the sound, its enchanting music called him over like a man to sirens singing.
The cleaner could have sworn he saw the glimmer of a gold coin but he was momentarily distracted by a shadow moving behind him and when he looked back the coin was gone. The cleaner felt robbed, a ghost had stolen his coin!
Seth was happy with his spell as it had been very useful. When he walked out the door he found he was in a garden and just like the previous Barons house this garden was also pretty large.
This garden was smaller but if you factored in land cost then the garden likely cost far more than the Baron in Darter and that was to be expected. Barons from remote cities were generally poorer than those who lived in the capital.
That meant that the fruits in this garden were highly ranked, as they had to use this space as efficiently as possible. Seth saw several gardeners at work but ignored them in hopes of finding a way out. By now Seth regretted wearing his multicoloured outfit and decided to find an outfit.
He would have to dress as a worker and leave as a worker to actually be able to get out, so Seth sneaked around trying to find an outfit. The mansion was 3 stories tall, and Seth was also worried about being detected by an old monster, so he tried his best to stay away from the main building.
Like a monkey, Seth decided that trees were the best mode of transport as there were several fruit trees planted very close together and so Seth took a tree highway towards a small building on the outside of the compound.
Seth climbed down the tree, trying his best not to attract the attention of any gardener and entered this small building. Inside, he hoped to find gardening tools and maybe a spare outfit, but all he found was a toilet.
Not helpful, but Seth changed that opinion after he thought about just stealing one. He waited inside the lavatory until a poor old farmer wandered his way in.
Seth quickly the last of his sleeping potion on the old man and although the farmer was likely past his 3rd evolution he did not have time to stop himself from falling asleep. Seth robbed him of his clothes and hid him inside a small cupboard filled with paper and cleaning supplies.
Now with a disguise, Seth tried to enhance it, but a mana ward stopped him in his tracks. He was too close to the wall. Seth remembered something from his classes in Darter.
“Mana wards are used in wars as a good defensive measure against mages. They are usually placed in walls or other breakpoints to stop their spells from breaking them down.”
Seth could not help but wonder what his teacher was up to. He hadn’t said goodbye to him, but he did want to thank him for his time, so Seth sent a quick prayer his way. It’s not like it would do him any harm.
Seth waited inside the stall for a while, he was thinking if it was best to just wait until all the employees left and blend in with the group. The issue with that plan was Seth had no idea when most people clocked out. In Darter’s manor people left at around 11, but Darter grew dark earlier and by 11 it was near pitch black, so they obviously left then. It was different in the capital; the sun rose and went down at normal times.
Seth was stuck and although the pressure of death had calmed, he still was sweating enough to fill a lake. Serene Mind had allowed his mind to be fairly calm, but his body reacted the way it was meant to and so Seth was currently a mess. His breathing was off-pattern, his back may as well be a water slide and his poor head was hot enough to cook an egg.
He needed to breathe.
`I’m alright... I have a disguise and a plan. I’ll be alright.`
Robbing people was a high-octane job and the stress levels really hit Seth like a truck. Especially when his Thief’s Intuition wasn’t helping because this was an unexpected situation. His stress did not help when he tried to think of how this was related to thieving.
Instead of thinking how they were going to kill him, Seth started to think about what he was going to do, and he resolutely chose to wait out the gardeners.
So he stayed in the cold shack and hid where he had left the unconscious old man. Seth had only used a sleeping potion so the man would wake up in the morning, but he still felt bad for putting him in a cramped space like that, so he slipped a gold coin into his pocket.
Seth waited for hours until he got the feeling it was around the right time. He had been counting but had lost count a few times, but that shouldn’t make too large a difference. Many had come and left and Seth’s back hurt from leaning on the hardwood, but as blood rushed to his legs when he got up he felt relief knowing that escape was near.
He looked outside and the gardeners were packing up, Seth didn’t dare thank his luck again and stayed quiet until they grouped up and started walking towards the exit.
Seth slipped outside in the garden's uniform and left with the group. Some gave him weird glances, but a smile and wave made them look back. Seth followed the group into the exit gate where Seth spied as much security as his eyes could let him and once they left the compound they were escorted outside the noble district.
Unlike in Darter, the noble district was much harsher on those without titles and although some servants had temporary Knighthoods and so could be housed and work inside the noble district in Darter, in Babylon there was no such thing.
Seth was in a group of around 50 servants with several guards taking them back to the gate. With an opportunity to get an inside connection, Seth started up a conversation with a guard.
Although he was cold the man revealed his name to be Charles and the two had a nice discussion on their favourite meal at dinnertime. Subconsciously it was because the two were hungry and Seth learned the man was having curry made by his wife. Seth was jealous but calmed himself with the promise of a hot slice of Pavement.
Seth and the guard finished their conversation with a goodbye and once Seth had fulfilled his promise he went home. He was meant to go out drinking today but his head was hurting, and Seth just wanted to sleep so he dropped by the tavern and told his excuse before he ended up in his bed.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Today was unexpected and Seth had learned to not mess with what he did not know. He thought too short-term and paid the price for his mistakes. If not for a bit of quick thinking and a good spell then he may have found himself with no head before sunrise.
The benefit he gained was some insider knowledge. The mansion gardener was likely to think he was attacked by a spy and not a thief as noble politicians usually liked to point at each other as culprits.
They may change the uniform as Seth stole one, but he could just steal one again. He now knew where they entered and left and even had a man he could speak to who thought he was a gardener.
It was an unlikely success and only time would prove if he could be victorious in the heist that was to come. Seth fell asleep with thoughts of how to break in and how to escape, running around in his mind.
Dawn came and Seth’s mind had somehow managed to keep the thought of stealing with him into his dream. It was an odd surreal dream where Seth stole some sort of heart from this tree and even against this defenceless tree Seth managed to fail.
He tripped on the vines; he slipped on the wood, and so eventually Seth had to call it quits and that’s when he woke up.
But it was just a dream and Seth was a productive man, so he put the odd past behind him and moved on.
He summarised in his mind what he needed to do.
`First, I break in.`
`Then, I take the weapon.`
`Then, I sneak the weapon out`
`Finally, I get paid`
Seth wanted more information about his surroundings so for once he was rather distracted when he was planning the heist, but he was still a mastermind Thief so after much trial and error he managed to sketch up an idea.
Before that, Seth needed to finish his information bank, so he left his home and made his way towards the capital's office of Statistics. The building was made of stone, but it had clearly been worn down by heaving ageing. It was like a fossil of the past, a time of decadence when the council could afford a stone building to house even its most mundane offices.
Vines therefore grew up the sides of the building and thanks to some gardeners they likely helped with the lack of structural integrity of the building. Inside this building was Seth, who was too busy asking the receptionist questions to notice these small fascinating intricacies.
Thanks to his clipboard and pen Seth managed to extract some relevant data from the poor person sitting behind the desk on the Tuesday morning. The most important was who owned the house.
The target was Baron Yoiden from the south of Historia. Usually, he controlled a city there but recently he had moved himself and his family to the capital in hopes of rising through the ranks.
That was the official answer, the receptionist gave an opposing one but likely a more truthful version.
The city the Baron controlled was likely going to see war soon, as it sat by the border with the Kingdom of Barbarians. He was really here to join a faction for protection against a likely incoming war.
Obviously, that couldn’t be the official version, it would cause pandemonium. So, Seth thought the receptionist was likely correct and so held such information at the back of his mind. It wouldn’t help in the stealing, but it helped Seth gauge the character of those he was stealing from and if he could do that well enough then he could gauge the security within the mansion as well.
Seth left the office of statistics and found himself in a local park. These were created for Gardeners but remained in Babylon because of massive public support.
Seth was here to work. As always, and so he quickly looked for a certain area of the park where people played games. Here Seth found an old man, one the receptionist had told Seth to ask.
Apparently, he was a retired local politician and was incredibly knowledgeable when it came to that sort of area. Seth sat down in the peaceful park, on a bench that held small wooden pieces and opposite a man staring intently at the board.
“Good afternoon,” said the wrinkled man as Seth sat down.
“Good afternoon to you too,”
The game being played was called Man vs. God. When it first came out it caused quite a stir as its naming wasn’t exactly pleasant to those who thanked God for all they had. Luckily for all the game had flattered the Gods enough in the rule book to allow the game to go mainstream and the game took the world by storm.
Oddly enough, no one knew who made the game. Considering their skill some had guessed they were above level 100 and such they should have been well known and yet no one claimed to have made it.
Toy makers around the world universally said they hadn’t done it, which was weird in its own right. Surely at least one would have faked ownership and yet even to this day, not a single person had uttered a word about designing the game. It was odd, to say the least.
Seth smelled divine intervention, but then why make such a heretical game.
This mystery had worked its way into the 6th position on the top 10 most confusing mysteries and they had these top 10 lists for nearly everything. It was where Seth had gained the knowledge of the top 3 classes in Darter.
Anyway, the game itself was played 1 vs. 1 and so Seth nearly immediately started to play against the old man. He had sat on the side of the human, whose goal was to beat God. There were three methods to do this, and each had its own advantages.
The most popular was the surround method where the human team surrounded the god and after 3 turns of no escape, the human team would win.
The next was loss of interest which the god did not interact with the human in the last 5 turns then they lost.
The final one was used, which itself was nearly the entire reason why people hated the game and called it heretical. Here you had to make a human travel across the board to the other side where if uninterrupted by the god, the human had a chance of ascending.
The human team would then need to take certain things from God for the human to ascend. A feather from their divine wings, an eye from their holy sockets and their self which although vague many interpreted as taking their spirit.
After this, the human team won. In every other scenario apart from these three, the god’s team won. They could murder the humans, silently stalk them but as long as they interacted from time to time then they would win. The game itself was simply rigged for the human team to lose.
So Seth lost, the old man played competently a because the odds were rigged Seth lost. They played again, this time the old man played as the humans and this time they won.
Seth was outmanoeuvred and outplayed and so he lost.
They played again, and again, and again until Seth finally won.
It was as the Gods, but a win was still a win and so Seth smiled. But it soon faded as he realised the sun was already setting. Panicked, Seth started asking questions but by that time the man had packed up his set and left.
He had wasted a day, and Seth felt a hole in his heart return. A fear that made him move, a lazy man turned productive, and it wasn’t because he was self-disciplined. He couldn’t sketch it up as anything but a waste of time and so he felt death come ever closer. He felt himself slip under the waves.
He calmed his mind with sweet promises and reassurance and yet Seth still had nightmares of a pain he could never describe and a place he never wanted to call home again.
The day began normally, and Seth quickened his pace today to get to the park and to ask his questions. He promised today would be different and that today he would be productive, and it was.
He asked and the old man answered that his actual name was Hyorn, and he was a Knight.
Hyorn told Seth about a time he visited the house that the Yoiden mansion back when it was on sale.
“A lovely building truly, yet it just wasn’t my type. It felt like no home but like some stone cage. it has three stories with a secret staircase leading to all three. That was the only nice part of the home. What else?
...
Ah, a library was on the second floor and there was another cool thing on the third floor. Was it a trap door? A secret cupboard? Sorry Seth, my mind truly wasn’t what it used to be. I just remember that the home was just, sad. I left sad and during my look, I felt sad which for someone as jolly as me is truly an oddity.
If you want my real opinion I think it’s been tampered with by witches, now I have some really good stories about those people. Wanna hear them?”
Hyorn was just an old man looking for a good chat and although Seth felt a nightmare may haunt him in the night. He felt abandoning such a kind person was just downright immoral and the information gained today was enough for Seth to sit his ass back down and chat and play until the moon came up and the sun went down.
The two ate using a nearby restaurant and after would immediately resume their game and it seemed Seth had gained a friend with a disguise and personality Seth himself had no definition of.
He had told the man his name, so he kept that but he created a backstory and cemented a personality so he could continue this questioning for as long as need be.
Seth wrote today off as creating a new contact within Babylon’s inner circle and to be fair he wasn’t completely lying to himself. The old man did have knowledge and could be of help in the future.
For now, Seth fell asleep, and the plan came ever closer to fruition.