New Skill Unlocked!

Stealth - Allows the user to more easily escape detection. Passively makes the user less visible while in shadows, disguise, or while otherwise attempting to hide. Stealth is broken by taking hostile action, or by being discovered after failing to pass a perception check.

Skill level - 1

Just standing on the rooftop had earned him the skill, something that his hours stumbling through the forest had been unable to achieve. A small part of him, distracted from his vigil, wondered if he had gained the skill more easily while within the city because there were simply less ways to break stealth here. There were no sticks for errant feet to step on, no crunching leaves to announce his position. All he had to do was casually enter a high rise apartment building on the edge of Adventurers Corner, take the elevator to the top floor, climb the disused roof access ladder, and clamber over some pipes. His efforts were rewarded with an unimpeded view over Mo’el’s workshop.

Once there, he idly identified as many people as he could in the crowd while he waited for any suspicious characters to appear around the shop. With his elevated view, he spotted his first thief in under an hour. Not going into the workshop, per se, but among the crowd, where he was plying his trade among the unsuspecting revelers.

One thing he would not underestimate again was the city's love for Charles Eadwhin. In the two days since his crushing victory against the voraturtle, the city had become vastly more boisterous. They had not even bothered setting up multiple parties around the square, instead opting to make the entire square the center of it all. Vendors had moved in like a pack of sharks smelling profits, while the jubilant populace celebrated wildly in the streets. There had been six fights in the square, one involving two high leveled individuals who caused so much damage to the square itself that the city's rapid response teams had come to place both men under arrest. And that had just been the first day!

Regardless, his time on the rooftop had sprung from the realization that his previous plan was flawed. He didn’t know if it was a product of his newfound lack of inhibition, courtesy of the PMU, or if he could chalk it up to plain and simple inexperience, but a nagging feeling had stopped him from going through with the plan to convince Mo’el to be an intermediary for the thieves.

After reflecting on it further, he realized that the main problem with his plan was how much information he was giving away! If he were to go through Mo’el, that would be one extra, greedy and unscrupulous person who knew about David’s plans for the crypt. Furthermore, Mo’el knew about David’s secret weapon, the pocket watch, which even now sat in his pocket. That information would undoubtedly be shared with whatever thief Mo’el managed to hire for the job.

No.

Better to convince the thief to come to him.

So, with that plan in mind, David had spent the last two days training in the morning at the dojo, where he finally gained Hand-to-Hand-Combat Level 2. He used his afternoons to spend the last of his money on gear and provisions, like flashlights, gloves, travel food, and water. His nights were spent observing Mo’el’s.

He was now officially broke.

If his plans failed to follow through, he would be spending the next few days in the forest again, searching for beasts to kill in order to earn a basic income while he continued trying to lure in a thief.

After earning Hand-to-Hand-Combat Level 2, David’s combat proficiency had increased by a fairly large margin, allowing him to consistently beat both Cassandra and Temir. He was now reasonably confident against most people around his level.

He still had no confidence whatsoever against someone who had reached level 10 and broken the superhuman barrier, becoming a Tier II human. Not in a fair fight, at least.

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That was why he had thought ahead, and purchased a stun grenade from Mo’el during his shopping spree. He knew he was taking a risk that Mo’el would share that information, but he considered it rather low. So long as he did not act suspicious around Mo’el himself, then the man should expect nothing, and it was unlikely that the local gangs would run their problems by Mo’el, which would lead to them not knowing he had it.

His two days of preparation and covert spying paid off when he was woken by the soft beep-click of his hotel room door opening, early in the morning of the third day. It took David a moment to collect himself, coming to the realization that someone had just broken into his room. He hurriedly thought of his plan, his hand searching under his pillow for the stun grenade. His grasping fingers found the hard cylinder as the door was closed softly down the short hallway, his intruder still unaware that he was awake.

David sat up softly and buried his middle finger in the ring around the grenade, pulling hard to release it. The intruder must have heard the click of the ring eing pulled, because david heard a sharp intake of breath before he launched the grenade at the wall, bouncing it around the corner and into the hallway where the thief was. David briefly heard the intruder scramble for the door as he curled up with his hands over his ears and his eyes tightly shut. A moment later there was a colossal thud and an intense flash of light which seared his eyes through his eyelids, and then he was up.

He threw his cheap hotel covers off in a mad scramble and charged to his feet, his 9mm pistol quickly materializing from his inventory and falling into his hand and he rushed around the corner. He rounded the corner in a rush, nearly tripping over the hunched form of the thief, now nearly invisible in the returned darkness of the room. David turned his stumble into an awkward knee into the man’s chest that knocked him onto his back, where he remained curled up in a ball, his eyes tightly shut and his hands clenched around his ears in agony.

David kept his pistol trained on the thief, reaching over with his off hand to flick the light switch. What he saw was a…teenager?

A young man rolled around on the ground in front of him, a soft groan escaping his lips as he appeared to be trying to regain his breath. ‘That stun grenade was way more effective than I thought it would be…’ After about a minute, the teenager finally opened his puffy eyes, only to be greeted by the sight of a barrel in his face. He timidly raised his hands, suddenly a much smaller threat than David’s imagination had ever pictured. David motioned with his finger for the boy to roll over, sure that he was still deaf from the grenade, and the teenager, no older than 18 at most, nervously complied.

David stepped forward and roughly patted the boy down with one hand, his other hand keeping the pistol buried between the boy's shoulder blades. In his pockets he found a fake hotel ID card, internal circuitry clearly visible. ‘That’ll be how he got through the door.’ He also found a small foldable knife and a pair of brass knuckles. The boy had no identification on him of any kind. David concentrated on him for a moment and used Identify on him.

Calvin Rhys - Human - Type II

Level 11 - Warrior (Rogue)

???/???/???

His skill had not reached level 2 yet, but it was enough to scan someone who had only barely passed into tier II.

David threw the knife and brass knuckles across the room, then stood up, giving the teenager a light kick on the leg to signal him to roll over. The boy did so, warily keeping his now sheet white face fixed on the barrel of the gun pointed at him. David noticed that his hands were no longer clenched around his ears, so he quickly went over the plan he had made, the carefully considered story he would tell. He cleared his throat, somehow nervous to speak even with his fingers steady on the grip of his PPW-9m.

“Please” the boy begged, “Don’t kill me.” David glowered at Calvin, his eyebrows lowering into a frown. “Why are you here, Calvin?” The young man gulped audibly when David said his name, and his hands visibly shook. David watched Calvin’s eye’s flick towards the card spoofer on the floor, then to his weapons across the room, leading him to seemingly deflate even further. “I was just supposed to rough you up a little…T-thats all…” David considered his words for a moment before cocking his head to the side slightly and asking “And who told you to ‘rough me up a little’, Calvin?” He visibly blanched at this, shaking his head furiously. “I can’t tell you that! They’d kill me!” David chuckled darkly and tightened his grip on the pistol in his hands, his finger depressing the trigger ever so slightly. “Are you so sure that I won’t?”

Visible beads of sweat rolled down Calvin’s forehead, and he scrambled back to place his back against the closed hotel door, his hands coming up in front of his face in a futile gesture. “Please! It was the Attica gang! I don’t want to die!”

David felt his face morphing into a savage grin, he knew he had the boy right where he wanted him now. “What if I told you I had a way for you to escape punishment from the Attica gang?....and get paid for it, too.” Calvin’s shaking hands froze, before slowly lowering from in front of his face, his panicked expression morphing into one of confusion. “W-what..? What do you mean?” David felt the boy’s eyes meet his own, and he wondered in the moment if the boy could see the sudden calmness that suffused his mind. All his prior nerves had fled him as his heart rate settled and his mind became clear. He knew exactly what he had to say.

“You see Calvin, I have a job for you…”