I cleaned up the inside of the vault, dusting off the tables and shoving them to the sides as I had planned. For now, I also tossed out the skeleton into the other stacked bones just outside the vault door. I still haven't decided what to do with all of them yet. Would anyone buy bones? Is that a thing these days?

Surprisingly, the interface chimed up once more shortly after I dusted and shifted around my new furniture.

「Cleaning - 1 Acquired」

So there were Skills for this kind of thing too, eh? I do faintly remember seeing it when looking through the Skills list, but most of the stuff on that list had long faded to the back of my mind. I really should look through it again.

Still, Cleaning? What good would the Skill do for me? Give me a job as a maid for some rich asshole? Might as well give me a skill for sleeping… Actually, a Sleeping Skill sounds really nice. Maybe it could have Perks to give me benefits for being well-rested... not that I ever truly was well-rested these days.

Anyway, the Cleaning Skill seemed a bit odd. I might be able to find something of worth out of it. And who knows? Maybe its Perks were good? Something like using the Aether to clean dust would be cool. Super niche, but cool nonetheless.

Hmm… does cleaning rust off of metal count as Cleaning? Oh, could it help clean up blood maybe? It would be nice to be able to remove my DNA quicker from scenes. Maybe my initial reaction was a bit harsh.

Why hadn’t I gotten it already though? Surely I’ve cleaned up… before…. Now that I think about it, I haven’t really cleaned anything since I got the interface… and even before. I liked organized chaos, so while I had picked up some stuff here and there I hadn’t really spent time just cleaning anything until just now.

I looked around the slightly less messy space, picking apart everything I still needed to do. At the very least, I’ll be able to power-level it quickly.

I spent several more hours cleaning everything up. I even managed to shove all of the bones out into the trash chut- I mean, dispose of them properly into the chasm…

Heh. Imagine in one or two hundred years from now, some archeologist finds the mounds of skeletons down there and thinks it's some kind of ritualistic suicide point. Maybe some cyber cult 'embracing the abyss' or something... maybe I should carve nonsensical signs and symbols and toss them down there too.

And I was right about power leveling Cleaning. I wasn’t sure how the interface calculated this particular Skill, but I did manage to level it up.

「Cleaning - 1>3」

Under the massive—and quite frankly disgusting—nest of bones and tattered skin, I managed to find quite a bit of chrome. All of it was ancient, the newest one being forty or so years old. I could probably scrap them for some smaller parts and whatnot. At a glance, there were about two or three hundred assorted bits and pieces? Not a bad haul. If I were to sell it all, I might be able to get a couple grand, if I was lucky. It would be a serious pain in the ass to haul it up to the surface though, so most of it was destined to be scrap metal.

I stepped into the vault and looked over the door. It was fairly simple to get the back panel of it off. Although the vault door would be tough to get through from the front, the back panel was just bolted on to allow access to the mechanics for maintenance.

I pulled off the panel and looked through it, carefully observing how the mess of gears and dials were set up. What looked like blood had dripped into the door at some point, making a chain reaction of damaged bits and pieces. Fairly simple fixes all around as long as I had the right parts.

Or I could go ahead and upgrade it directly instead of repairing the dial lock. Hmm… repairs first. I’d want to put in some kind of electronic lock, and I didn’t have the infrastructure in the vault setup for that kind of thing yet. In the future though...

Thankfully, I should already have most of the parts needed to fix it up. Older chrome ran off of gears and hydraulics more than pistons and microservos like more modern stuff did. Or even synthetic muscles like more advanced pieces. Since they didn't have batteries powerful and small enough for chrome, most of the older tech was built to run purely off of mechanical energy. Quite impressive stuff, if I had to be honest. The biggest drawbacks to the old tech were precision, comfort, and a near-constant need for repairs.

I stripped several pieces from the stack of limbs in the corner of the cave, stripping them into several stacks of different parts. By the thirtieth piece, which just so happened to be a bionic lung of some kind, I found the right array of gears. I stripped out the several lock actuators that had gone bad, replacing their gear work.

A yawn escaped my lips as I also took the chance to reset the dial lock to my own code. It was buried under the rest of the mechanisms in the door, but since I was already going through and replacing parts, it was easier to just get it all done now. I had to stop a few times to get some specific types of parts, which resulted in a quarter of my stack of chrome quickly turning into stacks of salvaged parts.

I reassembled the vault door and test-ran it a few times. The internals were a bit grindy, but nothing some grease couldn't fix. Unfortunately, all my grease was left back under the speakeasy, and I didn't want to walk through the Underground just for some. Next time I came down here I'd fix it up.

After that, it was already getting super late. I barely managed to withhold a yawn as I shut the vault door and headed out into the relatively clean area outside my new stash. I’d have to power wash it or something to clean off the stains—and stench probably—but for now it looked way better than it did originally.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

There was still a lot I needed to do, but for now, the rest of it could wait. I was incredibly tired after a long day, and there was no chance I wanted to sleep down here. At least, not until I reinforced the vault and cleared out the ventilation shafts.

I retraced my steps, this time not running into anything that wanted to kill me. The corpse of the giant-rodent tail-whip creature disappeared at some point, which was worrying. I’d probably have to track down and kill whatever scavenged it sometime in the future. It would be unfortunate to get ambushed by my new neighbors.

The subway through the wall wasn’t as annoying to get through this time around. The rodent hadn’t been near as kind as I had been when it entered the thing. Bits of metal were torn and gnawed into a rather gaping hole. Honestly, it was a bit strange; I hadn’t heard it in the slightest. Hmm... unless something else came through here while I was checking out the stash. What were the chances it was friendly?

I backtracked to the small sewer, grabbed my stuff, and started the long ascent up the shaft. It was tiring as usual. Maybe I should get some kind of auto-ascender? If I was going to start coming and going from the Underground it would be a lot smarter than doing everything by hand… and far faster.

At long last, I reached up to the rotting wood and used the ledge to haul myself back up and into the speakeasy’s office. I took a breather, before finally stripping off my armor and returning back to plain clothes.

As I stuffed the armor back into my bag, I checked the spot on it where the vermin’s tail had struck me. Although it was barely visible, a hairline fracture in the paint took away from the abyssal aspect of the armor.

How'd the paint guy say to fix it? Thermal absorption or something like that, right? I grabbed my lighter and held it under the fracture. Within seconds, the dark paint absorbed the heat and its self-repairing properties showed themselves. The hairline fracture healed, returning the armor to how it had been before the fight.

Honestly? I was quite impressed with the entire set. Sure, I hadn’t used any of my more exciting features down in the Underground, but the test still ended up being quite successful. And rather eye-opening.

The armor was durable enough to protect against the vermin’s tail whip, which had been a pretty strong strike. I still needed to test it against rifles, but it would probably pass without fail… I guess I could shoot it myself to test it at some point.

Its stealth properties worked like a charm- when they worked. Not even the Wendigo spotted me in the darkness; It had single-mindedly been after the blood splatters. The biggest issue was the absolute voidness of the armor. I thought it might be an issue when I first painted it all up, but this test run proved the issue to be real. Once something saw me, they were able to track me quite easily. That issue would only become more apparent the brighter the area. The Underground was near pitch black though so the effect wasn't that strong comparatively.

I did have some workarounds; some were quite simple while some were pretty complicated. The simplest would be to just wear a cloak over the armor. Classic rogue style. A camo cloak of some kind could easily help me blend in, and if I lined the inside of the cloak with more paint, I would look like some kind of abyssal entity wearing the cloak like a shell. I'd also have to do something about the armor if I wanted to wear it out on the streets to get from point A to point B. It attracted the eye too much with it being voided out heavy armor.

Other than that, the armor was kinda hot. The Underground was usually pretty chilly and I was sweating down here. Specifically, my lower back right where the battery pack was. Maybe I should look at getting some small fans or something? Or- or maybe some kind of cooling enchantment. I know the Crusade puts that kinda stuff on their armor. My opposition to magic was slowly starting to break down, so I might think about it. It would be quieter at least.

Course, there were some other things I noticed, but those were the main ones. Overall, I was happy with the armor. For the most part. Well... maybe not. But I could improve on a lot of that.

And my new stash location was pretty good! It would take a while to get fully set up down there, especially since carting stuff to and fro would be annoying. It was big enough to turn into a hidden workshop too so I could move my printer and stuff down there.

And now that I had a stash, I finally had a spot to store my goods. Speaking of goods, my current loot was a bit lacking... how bout I go get some new stuff?

-- -- --

The next morning, I headed to my first target on the long list of names I acquired during the art gala: Christoph Von Franz. He was some kind of accountant for one of Sentinel’s many, many subsidiaries. The guy was quite low on my list. He didn’t seem all that wealthy, nor did he have anything that really spoke to me.

Similarly, he didn’t have amazing security. The guy was drunk when I talked to him and hadn’t held back as he bragged about his ‘excellent’ security. He talked a big game about some kind of Mount Knocks vault, but as best I could tell Mount Knocks was a clothing corporation under Sentinel. They did sell vaults, but they were slightly better than your everyday gun vault. If anything, they were insanely overpriced since they were a brand item.

The real issue would be the building's security, not Christoph’s private systems. Blackout was still in the plans for my armor, but I needed some precisely made parts, so it wasn’t an option till I got a 3D metal printer… or hired Tike Metal Co. to make them. I didn’t exactly want the schematics for the parts to be floating around though, so I was better off just making them myself.

That, and it would be expensive to get such small and detailed parts made. At that point, might as well save for the printer. I wasn’t too far off either. If I pulled all my gold and Rayn together, I had about seventeen thousand Rayn. Carone said he could get me one for thirty-five thousand, or a multi-medium for forty, so I was about halfway there.

Anyway, that brings me back to the current heist. Nothing Christoph bragged about really spoke to me, so I wouldn’t mind selling most of what I got for some extra Rayn. Might be able to get a couple grand here, which would be a nice supplemental income and good practice for the larger heists on my list.

Christoph Von Franz owned a penthouse suite on the hundred and nineteenth story of the Whitechapel Center. As best as I could tell, the first forty floors were shops of various kinds, with the forty after that rented out to various corporations. It was only the last forty that were actual apartments. Similarly, it was the last forty that I’d have to watch closer for security.

Getting in would be easy. Just enter like any other customer then take the stairs to the top. It would be a long climb, but I could use an elevator to get up quite far without arousing any suspicion.

Getting out would be easy. Christoph’s penthouse suite faced out towards a building eighty stories tall. Said suite had quite the view, or so he bragged about. That also meant it had glass windows which would make the perfect jump point for the Drop Chute. Snatch the loot, smash a window, and jump out to safety. Of course, after that descend out onto the streets of the city and either vanish into the shadows or enter the Underground for the perfect escape.

The only parts I was concerned about were moving through the apartments section and actually getting to the Mount Knocks vault. The armor was a bit too conspicuous, even with a coat covering it up. But hey, that’s what casing the joint was for. It was really about time I got on that.