The next four days passed in a blur. Dantalion, parse the info, then repeat. I actually had to start using Beelzebub to speed up my sorting, because after repeated usage, I’d realized Dantalion actually had one crippling weakness. It produced TOO MUCH data. I had reams and reams of paper stacked to the ceiling from the manor, and honestly, about eighty or ninety percent of it was useless.
I had lists of the types of timber used, the exact dimension of the beams, the variations of screws, bolts, and nails, the exact age of each piece of material in comparison to the house, and in some cases, the actual names of the fucking workmen who installed them. I wasn’t sure where the hell Dantalion was getting some of this stuff. Some of it was craftsman marks and probably some documents lying around the house, but since the form was basically black boxed, I had to work with what I had.
Which was everything I could possibly want, and about ten times that amount in random bullshit I didn’t need.
“Well this looks useful,” Ray said excitedly. “It’s a recording of the security watch rotation…” He slumped as he kept reading. “Nevermind, this is their order of performance in the staff talent show. Also, apparently their dental is REALLY good. Wow, DeWinter doesn’t skimp. They even cover crowns.”
I held up a page I was holding. “They also provide free childcare, and there’s a staff retreat to a planet called Carcello once a year. Hold on a second, let me see that.” He shrugged, handing it over, and I scanned both papers. “I think I have something else, one minute,” I dug through a stack I had made an hour ago, finding a list of dependants, then I started cross referencing.
Grabbing another piece of paper, I started writing, checking all three of them and producing a master list. “Ok, this should be all the staff members. I eliminated the non recurring names, so we should have it narrowed down to current staff, there’s reference to some recent health plan adjustments in the healthcare paperwork. Search for anything referencing these names. We’ve got dossiers on everyone buried in here somewhere.” We’d stopped going through those when we wasted ten minutes assembling a complete set of documentation on a gardener who had been fired for embezzling eighty years ago.
While he did that, I checked my stats. I’d specifically funneled all my wishes into Focus in the last few days, which amounted to eight hundred points in that stat. I’d made it up to twenty per wish at this point, though I could feel it getting harder to increase as I went. I suspected I’d stall out for a while at twenty five.
I’d also gotten another five thousand points of VItality, and forty two hundred Might off that last trial, apparently having thoroughly impressed everyone. Though thinking about it I might have had two trials since I last checked. Regardless, I was left with eight scrolls on hand for myself and five with my friends for emergencies.
It was frustrating. I was gaining more points more regularly than I ever had, and it was still just a drop in the bucket. Hopefully coming out on top in these trials would help. But I needed to focus on pushing up Perception and Creation. My stats were starting to become wildly unbalanced.
“Alright, I think we’ve got what we need,” announced Ray. “Check this out.”
He handed me a few stacks of pages, and I rifled through them. “Height, weight, eye color, blood type, favorite song…hah! Here it is, work schedule. Hours, break times, hey, they have prime rib on wednesdays. I’ve got patrol routes, where’s the map we made out of all those room diagrams?”
He pointed across the room. “I think it’s over there. It was under the requisition forms for the pipes. Or the duct work. Wait, possibly the boiler schematics. Your powers terrify me.”
‘Yes, clearly I am mighty,” I said dryly. “To wield the weapon known as paperwork. Realistically, this is a fantastic ability, I just kind of wish I could pare it down a bit. Also, don’t forget this is the result of sitting around using my information gathering form for pretty much five entire days with only short breaks. Probably won’t have time to deep dive into a location like this very often.”
Dantalion was kind of weird. I was getting stuff off paperwork, impressions from Paths and techniques being picked up by the Eye of Revelation, material analysis from Song of the Soil, and some odd stuff I was pretty sure was the overlay. The longer I focused on this one building, the deeper I went, and the information got REALLY specific.
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The result was almost a kind of psychometry, reading the past of places and people, though it was VERY hit or miss, and took a lot of time and focus. I was pretty sure without the mask to support it, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up my deep dives for nearly this long.
Being on a B-ranked planet also helped. More Impact seemed to allow for deeper impressions. Though one thing I’d noticed was that all of my readings were for people who were C or D-ranked or below. I wasn’t getting shit about B-rankers, and I suspected their impressions were just too high level for me to read.
Not that I thought there were any B-rankers inside. Comments on some of the other dossiers led me to believe there weren’t any present, but they HAD visited on occasion, and I wasn’t able to detect hide no hair of them in the house’s history.
With the routes combined with the house blueprints, we were finally able to make a legitimate plan for entry. We had schematics for the formations and enchantments on the house and where their weak spots were too. With Bael at my disposal I was pretty sure I could get in and out without being detected at all.
We just needed to wait for the right time. Namely, about five hours from now, when Lady DeWinter went to sleep. She stashed her necklace in a warded jewelry box I had the specs for, and I had a plan on how to get the thing out and replace it without anyone noticing.
“So, at eleven PM, I’ll enter through the eastern atrium. The third glass pane on the top left hand side has an overburdened containment rune and it flickers for a half second every two hours.” I circled the pane on the diagram I’d drawn. “Once I’m in, I’ll have twenty minutes until the guard patrol sweeps the storage room under the Lady’s closet where I’ll be using Dust Construction to lower the jewelry box out of the room. Did you get the specs to Chess like I asked?”
He nodded, reaching into his ring and withdrawing a small bronze device the size of a palm. “He says it’s single use. Couldn’t do anything more intricate in such a short time period. It’ll open a small hole, and once you remove it there won’t be a trace. Are you sure you can put the floor back?”
I blew out a breath. “I’m not SURE, but I’m fairly confident. I did some practicing on our downtime. Pit of Despair was made to return things to their natural state when it ends. I can mess with them, but with a detailed schematic of the flooring, which I have, I should be able to put it back exactly as is. Once i finish planting the decoy, I’ll return with the real thing, pass it off to you, and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
We’d decided that I would be the one to go in. Bael was easily the perfect technique for this, and Raxus didn’t require Ray to do the job himself. He just needed to get it done. We’d already outlined most of this days ago, we’d just needed the last few rotation details to slot into the plan, and now we had everything.
With all that confirmed, we were good to go, and I decided to rest for a few hours until it was time for my heist to begin.
Closing my eyes, the time flew by like it was barely passing, and before I knew it I was being shaken awake by Ray. “Thanks for this, Fist,” he said solemnly. “Seriously, this means so much to me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said firmly. “You took my mind off things, plus helped me figure out this cool new form. I say we’re even.”
Despite knowing that wasn’t true, I didn’t want Ray to feel like he owed me. I could have used that, leveraged him into working for me later, maybe joining my faction, but…I didn’t want to be that guy. Contracts were something I was good at and enjoyed, but I didn’t want every interaction to become transactional. I didn’t want to be my dad.
I triggered Bael, and Ray blinked as I vanished, disappearing from his view as my stealth form covered me. It was kind of funny to watch, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
Looking out the window, I spotted one of the guards outside the manor, and I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind him before I slipped into the shadow of a nearby wall. I counted off to twenty five, then slid effortlessly between a pair of circling detection wards.
My path through the estate was a bit winding, having to double and triple back to avoid some of the wards and formations this place was covered in. Bael did a lot of the heavy lifting, but to maximize my chances of going undetected I went out of my way to follow the path with the largest number of weaknesses and gaps in the enchantments.
When I reached the specific pane of glass a combination of Pit of Despair and Dust Construction turned it to sand and then held it in the air while I slipped through, reforming it perfectly as it was. The half second gap was more than enough time to slot it back into place with all the right runes where they needed to be. I’d actually needed some help on this part, sending the runes to Zeke via Callie for the feedback on where the weak spots were.
My own understanding of enchantment wasn’t up to snuff here, but I had lots of resources at my disposal. Knowledge was power, and with this much of it…well, I was almost considering just becoming a master thief.
Slipping between the guards was child’s play, and when I reached the storage room, a quick flash of Dantalion let me know the Lady was asleep. The floor of the closet was clean, and it was easy to dissolve it, catching the Dust with a parallel and Dust Construction, and using it to lower the jewelry box down.
This part had involved Zeke too, and I withdrew the bronze disc he’d had me commission from Chester and opened up a temporary hole in the box, swapping the two necklaces before replacing the box and floor both, my mission completed.
After that, I made my way to the nearest window, and once I caught sight of the next patrol, I used Double Trouble to teleport down behind the last guard and slip out through my planned route. Arriving back at the building, I dropped my invisibility and held out the necklace to Ray. “Alright, we should be good. They most likely won’t notice the swap, at least presuming your copy was any good, but we should get out of here anyway. No use tempting fate.”
He clapped me on the shoulder, grinning wildly. “I owe you for this, man. Whatever you have to say about it, I know that. You need anything. Ever. You ask. Here’s hoping the next trial is a bit less involved. Now come on, let’s go get something to eat. Dinner is on me.” I laughed but followed him anyway. I never turned down a free meal.