The sun rose, and Seth woke up. His mind hurt of a past grievance, but he did try and move on. Seth wanted to relax for a bit first, take his mind away from all the... conflict.

Lucky for him, a national holiday was coming up. It was The God Of Luck's birthday tomorrow, and on that day many people set off lanterns in hopes they caught his favour. It was an important event as people universally wanted luck, as it helped in the day-to-day, unlike something like war: which was situational.

Many Gods once roamed the planet, but now they all were silent except in their colourful tales that Bards sang. Seth was troubled by the existence of Gods: If one could become a God then Seth would be first in line. It would solve his deal with death permanently: that was a real fantasy.

Feeling better at such a chance, no matter how minuscule it was, Seth felt better and his mind calmed.

He walked down the streets that he once ran from and decided to buy some more clothes. A blue shirt, black trousers, and some shoes were enough to humble Seth's pouch, and by the time he bought a good lantern to match, he was back to his normal finances.

He enjoyed his time shopping, getting haggled by skills was fun and attempting to ward them off was a neat little challenge and with their low-stakes nature Seth was able to relax from his worries. The shopkeepers themselves found such a challenge a good thing for experience in their skill, so they gave him much-needed offers.

The sun blazed high over the midday sky, and Seth was ready for tomorrow's festival. He lay in a park used by Gardeners to level and Landscapers to challenge themselves. Sat in such awe-inspiring beauty, the world moved even without him. Seth breathed a deep breath of air.

Calm. His mind was finally calm. The swaying of the trees and the bustling of the city was all white noise to the great lake that became Seth's inner mind.

He heard something, but he ignored it. He savoured this moment until the sun came down; its hot rays stopped warming his skin. The cold set in, and he made his way home. Gone was the rampant storm, and in came a sea of tranquillity.

His eyes closed as his head fell on his pillow, a weird bump in his bed reminded him of the safe he hid underneath it. Seth laughed at such a mild impasse; did it matter?

His snores came with answers as he ignored the trivialities and accepted ignorance.

Maybe ignorance was bliss after all...

The festival came and people wished for their problems to go away. Maybe they were stuck on a level, or they had issues with finance or relationships, either way lighting these lanterns was a way for people to make their problems someone else's.

Seth, as he used a lit piece of wood to light a fire to his lantern, watched as it climbed the sky closer and closer to the heavens. He remembered on his 5th birthday when he did this with his parents and he told them that he had wished for happiness. Their looks of pride and joy made that day better than he could have ever asked for.

Now, alone: he lit the lantern with a selfish wish of greed. Coward or not, Seth was human, and humans were sinful, fear made them so. Seth was more than just afraid; he would probably agree with his demonic status in that department, but did that make him evil?

His mind returned to troubling tides, but Seth shut them off as he watched his lantern join the sea of others as they floated to the sky. Blue and orange, they floated and outright disappeared.

A Proof of divinity was this unnatural event's name and Seth could not help but agree that this occurrence spoke well to the existence of mythical beings. The day was over now, and Seth returned to his normal schedule. The day still had hours left until it finished, and Seth had a house to break into, not before he finished checking the last of his gains...

Name: Seth

Class: Thief/ lvl 12

Skills:

=Deft Hands, (Mastery/ Rookie 71/100)

=Calm Mind, (Mastery/ Rookie 20/100)

A self-taught skill was a massive achievement, one many would kill for the opportunity to boast about. Seth was rather unfazed, whether it was a passive effect of his skill or just the fact he had mildly predicted it. Fear clouded his mind almost every day and although some jokes or a good heist could distract him for a while, eventually the clouds came rolling back. That night, for once, he felt the night sky was clear. Such a large event for Seth, considering his trauma, meant a skill was likely the cause. Such, the guess was rather easy.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Serene Mind's usage was going to be a lifesaver. Considering his high-stress class, he was likely going to keep it no matter what new skills came up. For now, he needed to give it a test drive, so he arrived at 402 Redbrick Avenue more likely known as house three, the one he gave a generous score of 5/5, to see if the skill was as good as it sounded.

Walking down an empty street, Seth came across a detached lodge. Wood made this home look exceptional and its secluded nature in such a large city surely made its price sky-high. Whomever this adventurer was must have done well for himself or his parents did for him.

Wasting no time at all Seth jumped the picket fencing and observed the house from all angles. The house was equipped with state-of-the-art tripwire security that would notify the Trapper, who set the trap if the certain trap went off.

They were invisible to the naked eye and only mana perception could see them. Now Seth did not have mana perception, but he did have an empty money bag, and that needed fixing. So this house was the cure to his disease.

Whilst he was walking here, he thought of many ways to attempt to get in but the best and most fun was setting the house on fire. Maybe he liked fires too much, but Seth would argue that there was no such thing, and, it would be a controlled fire and it would not spread too quickly due to the Builder's reinforcement skill. That was another thing that scummy salesman from the City Sect kept on bragging about when he inquired about it.

So he got close to the side of the house and made a mud square on the side of the house. This was to stop the fire was spreading, in theory, that is. Seth was no expert at this, but it made some sense and even if it went wrong, he could just run away.

Looking at his escape routes he could have sworn he saw a shadow move. He looked back and forth and wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. He felt from his intuition that he did but weirdly they weren't a threat in the slightest so maybe, he thought, it was a passing street animal.

Enough of that, Seth lit up a match, left over from the Lantern Festival, and held it at the centre of the mud-encircled wood. It finally caught on fire 10 seconds later and slowly but surely it broke down the wooden wall.

It spread, but Seth tried his best to slow it with his waterskin. 5 minutes later the centre had burnt into powder and the fire was barely being contained by the mud. Seth kicked in the powder to reveal a hole leading inside and, like a motorist, he jumped through a ring of fire. When he landed, he quickly but carefully put out the fire with the water. Luckily for him, he landed in the kitchen which had a tap.

These taps were connected with the Sea and were purified by water mages, a shockingly developed system that showed how this world could be good when it wanted it to be. Oh, and because they got paid ungodly amounts, but Seth was sure they were doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and in the hope of human advancement.

"Yeah right," Seth said whilst pocketing someone's jewellery. Truly this world was rotten!

As Seth was stealing, he was hopping around like a bunny trying his best to avoid any tripwires making an effort to skip doorframes and he leaned over like he was bowing as he looted drawers. Now the safe was another issue: it was in a separate room and just was sitting there. It was the only thing inside the room and Seth swore if he had not known about the tripwires he would have practically jumped in there.

`Hold on, why don't I take it from the roof`. Seth thought about the attic and how he could likely gain access through there.

So Seth decided to sneak into the attic and cut out a piece of the ceiling above the safe. He then lowered himself down to get to the safe.

As he was hanging down with only his bottom half on the room ceiling. He stretched his arms as far as they could go to just barely miss the safe. His hands could just reach it but not enough to pull it up.

Life could never be easy, could it?

So, his calm mind came up with a calm strategy. He jumped down grabbed the safe and booked it out the door. So what if the alarm went off, he was already down the street by the time he heard the shout of a man saying "They have already gone!"

That was truly the biggest fault with these tripwires, so what if they alarmed the security company if the robber had already escaped? Did the security companies know this obvious fault? Of course they did, but why inform their customers that their cheap-to-set-up but expensive package was bad at doing its job when they could just rake it in and occasionally pay a reimbursement fee?

The means truly outweighed the losses.

Seth returned to his inn, sneaking his new safe through the window. He counted up his gains in coins and he now had a total of 200 silver. With this money, he wanted to buy a hideout of sorts.

He now had 2 safes' and he was sure he would rack up more, so he needed a place to store them: somewhere safe and where no person would stumble into whilst they were cleaning.

It was already late, but Seth pushed on, he would not rest until his gains were secured. He had already gone house shopping when he was looking for houses to rob, and the one he had in mind fit pretty well.

After dealing with the City Sect housing department he now was the owner of a small underground storage unit that was repurposed into a small home. The location was incredible, making Seth wonder why it was so cheap.

Climbing down the manhole cover, Seth resolved his question extremely quickly.

He must have been near the sewers because Seth could hardly stop himself from being sick all over his new home. Thank god for his skill Calm Mind or he may have thrown a fit.

`No wonder that salesman was smiling like an eel when I paid for the property.`

He hated, he felt injustice, and he swore to get revenge. But what's done is done and so Seth moved on. Not before writing down that salesman's name and swearing sweet revenge, he was still human after all.

Having no money left, and feeling as tired as one could be, Seth fell asleep on the cold, damp floor of the sewage-smelling storage unit.