I had three of the most dangerous people I could find in the whole Federation, I hoped they were as good as I hoped for. I still had to have 2,500,000 UC, and preferably, quickly to be able to help them with the setup, and I already had the perfect job for us.
Still, I let them enjoy my house since I felt something different ever since they arrived. The house felt rather... warm since they arrived. Mira was in the kitchen, mostly cooking what she had inside of her inventory, meat that they hunted together. Heck, as I observed, the white-haired woman was butchering a bunch of large horned rabbits in the kitchen with an ungodly sharp knife.
Walking to the garage, you would see Alice fidgeting with the IFV, heck, she was taking off the gun from the IFV, the bloody darn autocannon, I just hoped she didn't break anything on that thing. Still, maybe a combat engineer would know better than me.
"Damn, you have an ungodly amount of psionic enhancement on this weapon," Alice commented as she looked over the barrel of the autocannon. "Barrel cooling, velocity enhancer, and cryant barrel, what in the actual hell?"
I interrupted her work, "In monkey's term?"
"Your IFV is so good, girl. I mean, it's barrel alone had extreme cooling property, and overheating would be the least of your concern, if I were you, I'd upgrade this thing into something much more... impressive," She said. “And the fire rate, goddamn, it’s a literal anti-aircraft gun strapped into an IFV.”
"Like what?" I asked her back.
"The barrel alone could be supercooled, and it certainly had more strength than a regular barrel, allowing it to use super pressured ammunition," Alice further explained. "Basically enhancing the projectile's velocity."
"Ok..."
"And you can guide bullets, right, so your autocannons are technically self-guiding munitions on themselves," Alice further explained.
"Wow, now that's something," I commented.
"It would certainly be useful had, say, a helicopter been dispatched against us," Alice further added before continuing her 'work' on my vehicle. “Whatever, boss, I’ll follow both your and Elene’s orders, but let me play with your new toys, alright?” Alice asked.
“If you say so,” I shrugged my shoulders. “So, Alice, if you don’t mind me asking, how can I make the fullest of your class?” I asked.
“I can deal with vehicles, weapons, or anything mechanical, even golems or automata. I deal an increased amount of damage, and most of my magic is designed to repair that thing. However, since I’m also a marksman, you can rely on me if you need a sniper, but never ever ask me to charge with a juggernaut suit, I’ll be dead before you flick your fingers,” Alice explained.
“So, if I have a destroyed tank, can you fix it?” I asked.
“Hell no, I said fix, not revive, a destroyed tank is a dead tank, if you have disabled tanks, then yes,” Alice added. “I’m just like a healer, but for mechanical things.”
“Gotcha,” I nodded.
I re-entered my house. In the middle of the living room, Elene already pulled out multiple blueprints onto the table, I could suspect that she already planned the heist pretty meticulously, knowing her experience as a squad leader first-hand. I wouldn’t call her the best one as a leader, but she certainly had the best interest in her heart. She could be reckless.
The black-haired wolfkin then turned her head toward me, “Hey, Ain.”
I replied, “You know, there’s an option to build a meeting room for this house, I think that’d be the best for us.”
“Really?” She asked back, half surprised.
“For real,” I said.
I opened the [Safehouse] interface and searched for the option to add a meeting room to this safe house. The options immediately gave me the lists of the rooms that I could upgrade, despite the fact that I only needed to build one.
[Bedroom Level: ⬛⬛⬛⬜⬜⬜] [400,000 UC To Upgrade]
[Bedroom Level: ⬛⬛⬜⬜⬜⬜] [200,000 UC To Upgrade]
[Living Area Level: ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜][100,000 UC To Upgrade]
[Kitchen Level: ⬛⬛⬜⬜⬜⬜][200,000 UC To Upgrade]
[Workshop Level: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜][50,000 UC To Add]
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[Armory Level: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜][50,000 UC To Add]
[Training Room Level: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜][50,000 UC To Add]
[Meeting Room Level: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜][50,000 UC To Add]
I pressed the button to add a meeting room. As soon as I did, a loud construction noise erupted from the far corner of the house, lasting only a moment before it abruptly stopped. I assumed the construction was finished and moved toward the new room. It was situated next to the empty space where my inventory was usually stored.
Elene followed closely behind, entering just as I did. The room was simple but functional—a planning board with markers, a cluster of magnetic tabs stuck to its surface, and a table surrounded by four chairs. There was also a rack filled with a bunch of assault rifles, explosives, ballistic vests, and so on. There were also four rugged laptops on the table.
“All we are missing is a projector, but this will do,” Elene said, putting the blueprints that she brought onto the table.
“What’s the general idea?”
“I was thinking of a stealth approach, but, thinking about it again, well, it’s too slim, and if we fucked up, the plan B is way harder to implement than a loud plan A,” Elene commented, attaching the blueprint of the bank into the whiteboard using magnetic tabs.
“I see,” I nodded, enjoying the view.
Elene took a deep breath, then grabbed a marker and began sketching on the blueprint spread out on the table. The faint squeak of the marker against the paper echoed in the otherwise quiet room. She drew a series of lines and circles, marking key entry points, blind spots, and every possible angle that could either be used to launch an attack or defend against the incoming police assault. At least, that’s what she claimed.
After marking several critical spots on the blueprint, Elene paused, her hand hovering over the paper. Then she wrote something that made me stop in my tracks. She scribbled the words "Heat Level: 6" in bold, block letters beside the plan. I blinked, confusion flooding my mind. Heat level? What was that supposed to mean?
[Heat Level: ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ ]
“Heat level?” I asked, still trying to make sense of it.
Elene glanced up at me, her expression unfazed. “It’s something we picked up—well, Mira did—from a contractor we worked with.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What does it mean?”
She shrugged, her tone casual. “The higher the heat level, the tougher the heist. Simple as that.”
“What can be expected?”
“Swat officers with body armor, nothing too serious, well, with some special units, but that’s nothing that we can’t handle, we are contractors, after all,” Elene said.
“What’s the difference between a regular person and a contractor?” I asked, still trying to understand.
Elene leaned back slightly as if considering how to phrase it. “Our multi-realm ability,” she began, “and the fact that some things no longer follow the rules of this world. Like how an IFV can absorb more damage than it’s supposed to, or how we perceive pain differently than normal people.”
I furrowed my brow. “Then why doesn’t everyone become one?”
Elene paused, clearly choosing her words carefully. “Because... how do I explain this? You’re punished for your sins—if that’s the right way to put it. The only good part is you forget the process of being... converted. But trust me, it’s not something you want to go through.”
“Huh?” I said, still not quite understanding.
Elene sighed deeply, her gaze turning distant, her eyes darkening. “Without getting too into the religious side of things... for people in this world, it’s literally throwing yourself into hell to cleanse yourself of your sins. And, as you know, we’re all killers. There’s this place, and you... kill yourself there. It’s painful, beyond anything you can imagine. I don’t remember everything, but I can tell you this: unless you’re sure you want it, don’t even think about going through with it.”
I tilted my head, still confused. “Okay, so all of you were tortured in hell for a single day? That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Elene’s lips pressed together, her expression shifting in a way that made it clear she was reliving something painful. She went quiet for a moment, then spoke in a lower, darker tone. “’Hell`’ isn’t what you think. It’s another dimension where time moves differently. One second here could be 10,000 years there. The pain... it stretches on like it has no end. And the horror? You’d tear your own eyes out just to stop seeing it. The only thing that makes it bearable is that you forget the details after a few minutes... but the feeling? That never goes away. It stays with you.”
Her voice trembled slightly, and she looked away, clearly trying to push the memory out of her mind. “You get hurt by things you can’t even imagine, and there’s no relief. Sorry... I don’t want to dig it all up. Forgetting 99,9% of it is a kind of blessing, but the 0,1%... that still haunts me.” She then pushed out a very large sigh. “Anyway… are you going to trigger my trauma or what, Ain?”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, feeling a strange wave of empathy stir inside me. Something about the way her eyes threatened to spill over with emotion made it hard to ignore. I couldn’t fully understand what these three had gone through, but the rawness of Elene’s words left me with a heavy sense of what they must have endured to become… someone like me.
“Here’s the plan, we are going to assault the bank, through the front entrance, or the back, up to you, which requires different preparation, of course, but the point still stands, we have sixty seconds until the first police arrive at the scene,” Elene explained, giving me the layout of the bank.
In hindsight, the bank was small—probably only four blocks in size—with a single front entrance and a locked back entrance. The back entrance, of course, would give us more time. We’d be able to slip inside without too much noise, at least until we set up the thermal drill. Once that started, all hell would break loose.
“The thermal drill—the Thermomaster Psio-Thermo Drill 5000—can burn up to 10,000 K,” Elene said, her tone steady. “It’ll cut through the steel vault door like butter, but because of the door’s design, it’ll take about three minutes to break through.”
“That’s quick,” I commented.
“Yeah, but once we’re in, we’ll head to the extraction point. Mira will pick us up in an armored helicopter. Any questions?” Elene asked, turning her gaze to me.
“I’ve got one. Have you briefed the others?” I asked.
“Well, we made the plan before we got here, but I needed your feedback first,” Elene replied, her voice casual but firm.
“For now, no. I’ve got nothing to add,” I said, shrugging.
“Alright then, boss," she said with a smirk. "Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what’s next?”