As soon as Villin made sure Max wasn’t being followed, he quickly returned to the tower.
When Max had run for about twenty minutes and had also made sure he was in the clear, he also made his way back. Outside, he could see Villin working on the wards. The ward lit up a couple of times as Villin worked, showing his progress. At first, Max became silent, admiring the sight. He had never seen a ward lit up at night. It had two kinds of beauty to it.
The first kind was something that all humans would find. When a ward lit up you could see the pretty lights shining in the darkness.
But this was nothing compared to how Max looked at the complex symbols weaving in and out of each other. It wasn’t all put in straight lines like how you would write on paper. The ward he could occasionally see was chaotic, but there was some sort of beautiful order within that chaos.
After admiring Villin’s work for a couple of minutes, Max refocused knowing there were still people after him, and quickly walked up to Villin who paused his work as soon as it was safe to do so.
“Eh- I did it, I think. I couldn’t take the materials but I think I got into their core room and grabbed the most valuable things.” Max said, obviously uncertain if Villin would mark it as a success.
Max promptly took off his backpack and placed it on the ground before Villin, he had put the papers and various small items inside of the bag as soon as he saw a chance to do so.
Villin looked at the bag offhandedly but didn’t inspect the contents, “You succeeded, congratulations. Remember why you succeeded as that is where you can gain the most. You succeeded because you moved quickly and decisively, preparing shortly after you heard of the task. You also succeeded because you chose your enemies wisely.”
Villin smiled at him before continuing, “As for the items you gained, they are yours now. I will be honest, “Athena’s Forge’ would love to buy the items you got off of you for a friendly place, but you should feel no obligation to leave them to us. Use them as you see fit.”
Once he finished his words, Villin turned around and walked into the tower, leaving behind a surprised Max. Max took in Villin’s words for a while, he didn’t get it. Why didn’t Villin take at least part of the treasure? After a good while, he lowered his head towards the tower. “He must be trying to teach me another lesson.”
This is what he thought, even though Villin had no such ideas, he simply let them keep it because he provided no real assistance, this was Max’s achievement, and it was his loot.
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After a good night’s sleep, Max felt lively again and it was finally time to check what all he had gotten. He looked around and saw that the three people sleeping in the same section as he was were all out of bed already, they were probably working or taking classes.
Last night he had snuck in but luckily none of his roommates woke up because of him. He hid his backpack under his bed where it still was now.
To have a decent overview, Max placed the backpack on his bed and turned it inside out, making it that everything he had gotten fell onto his sheets.
Around half of everything were papers, the rest were various small items that were next to the crystal holder.
First, he grabbed the crystal holder and injected some magical energy to see how many crystals it had inside, once the number appeared, Max froze entirely. The largest amount of magic crystals he ever had was a few hundred, yet this holder alone held over twelve-thousand magic crystals inside. That was an unimaginable amount for an individual.
Max figured that, if he wanted to, he could probably live off of such an amount for his entire life.
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After putting this crystal aside with shaking hands, Max turned to the other items. At first, he wasn’t sure what they were, but then he noticed they could be assembled together.
He spent a couple of minutes assembling the foreign objects, but when he succeeded he was even more confused.
On one side was a handle, much like that of a shovel, but the other half of the object was different entirely. There were hidden runes all around it but he couldn’t properly sense them.
After some time, Max decided to just try it out. He grabbed the handle and began inserting magic power. The device greedily took in magic power and after a bit, Max heard a clang. Something had come out of the object and fallen out. He crouched down to take a look before finally realizing.
“Holy shit, this thing can create magic crystals!”
Amazed, Max used some more magic power to create a few more crystals and made sure it worked properly.
The device he got condensed magic power into a physical form. He could trade magic power for crystals. Even though eighty percent of the energy would be lost, it was still a massive deal.
Even though Max could only create about a dozen before his magic ran out. This would still mean he could get at least twenty-four magic crystals a day if he lacked any. Even though with the fortune he got from the crystal holder that wouldn’t be much, it was still an extremely valuable device.
Admittedly, Max thought crystals were created using a spell, or perhaps they were mined, that they were made like this was a surprise to him.
Max figured he should probably sell it once he got out of school, for now, he also probably shouldn’t use it.
Other than a few spare parts for the crystal creator, all that was left were the papers that he found.
He began reading them, and as soon as he began, he couldn’t stop. Every paper was more shocking than the last, the information these contained was insane.
This included everything. Dirt on various guilds, the skills of important people or students, locations of a number of secret branches of a number of guilds, and more.
It was this that truly made Max realize how much power ‘Today’s Oddities’ had. They had dirt on almost half of the top guilds, and they had proof for it as well, all documented here.
After calming down, Max split the paper into three piles. One pile included all the dirt they had on guilds. One pile included all the secret branches they were aware of, and the last pile was the rest.
Max decided to gift the first pile to ‘Athena’s Forge’, he had no use for it. He could sell the second pile to various members of Athena’s Forge who were looking for a target to raid.
As for the third file, he would look at them case-to-case.
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When Villin saw Max approach him with a pile of papers, Villin wasn’t surprised. But this changed when Max gave these papers to him for free, not asking for anything in return. Villin knew that a number of members would become loyal to him, it was one of the reasons he created the core tower and its requirements, but for someone to act loyally so soon was surprising.
The only reason Max seemed to be giving the papers to Villin was to help out the guild, that was what loyalty meant.
Still, Villin gladly accepted the papers and thanked Max sincerely. After going through them though, Villin didn’t find it too useful. These papers could be used as blackmail, but Villin didn’t think that that was the way to go. Blackmail was a double-edged sword, bringing temporary loyalty in return for resentment.
This resentment would grow and before you know it you would have life-or-death enemies.
Right now, Villin wasn’t prepared for such things and he didn’t see what he would gain either. He would keep it all though, if he needed to he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
A good example would be if one of his members got caught failing a heist. In that case, he wouldn't hesitate to use blackmail in order to get the member back and keep them quiet about their identity.
But before that, it was best not to use this double-edged blade.
Other than deciding to keep an extra eye on Max, not much changed. ‘Today’s Oddities’ were surprisingly quiet about the whole event, not mentioning it in their papers at all. The reason was that they still didn’t know who attacked them, they didn’t realize Athena’s Forge was responsible either. They figured that since Max said he was from Athena’s Forge when masked, he probably wasn’t in reality.
Thus far, Villin was surprised that none of his members had told a news outlet about the requirements to become a core member but he knew it shouldn’t take long for someone to approach ‘Today’s Oddities’ in secrecy and share the information in return for magic crystals.
And just a few days later, someone indeed approached them, but things went somewhat different compared to how Villin expected it would go.