Chapter 31

It may not be there, but Seth wanted to be there anyway, and this was a good excuse.

Down the streets and into the entertainment district Seth made his way to the boring part and into the Museum.

Apart from a few kids on apprenticeships and a couple of old people, Seth found the area to be sparsely populated. With peace and quiet somewhat secured Seth played the entrance fee and walked right in.

The first thing Seth saw when he walked in was a giant fossil of a beast.

Before humans came to dominate the planet and the gods had risen, the world was ruled by the beasts. Back in those days, the average rank beast that roamed the planet was these kinds of beasts.

Usually ranked above 10, meaning equivalent to level 100, these beasts could take on 5 humans of the same level.

These were called the Era of the Beasts and they dominated with their insane strength, Humans survived through this age for unknown reasons, but many believe it was due to God's sympathy.

Time passed and history dictates that the gods grew sympathetic to humans, and they descended to help calm the beasts. This was called the Era of the Gods and they roamed the planet observing the beasts and humans. The Gods noticed humans' capability of servitude and so they allowed the humans to worship under them.

Humans in this period were happy slaves, free from the terror of the beasts it is written that they lived a life of happiness and fulfilment. When the Gods decided to leave, the reason why is unknown even now, They decided to give humans three final gifts these became known as The Three Gifts of Benevolence.

The First Gift was a wall erected over the top 10,000 cities; this gift was later known as the Gift of Protection.

The Second Gift was Dungeons and the Gods themselves brought all the beasts into the Dungeons. For unknown reasons, God only set a timer before the humans had to clear the dungeon before the Beasts were temporarily allowed outside. From the scriptures it is believed to be because the Gods felt bad towards the beasts, this backs up the theory of their omnibenevolence. This is known as the Gift of Retribution as it reversed humans from the hunted to the hunters.

The Third Gift was the Gift of The System, and this is the greatest proof of divinity for the average human. Not much is known about the creation of the system just that it came about right after the Gods left humanity. This Gift is more widely known as the Gift of Salvation as it allowed humans to become stronger than the Beasts thus preventing any harm from coming to them any longer.

Using these Gifts humans become the dominant force in The New World. It was now the Era of Humanity.

Another name for this era was the Age of Prosperity as humans travelled and populated the entire planet. By this point, the continent was still connected through a large land bridge called God's Gate. That disappeared and so did the Gods.

Once that happened the Age of Humans began and from it, the human population exploded. Human kingdoms were formed from powerful adventurers and the church's power massively decreased as their patrons no longer supported them to such a degree.

The Kingdom of Historia arrived around 400 years ago after the emperor purged a particularly tough dungeon just before it went into meltdown saving countless lives.

The empire he was in gave him land, but the young man decided he wanted to rule all by himself, so he grouped up and fought against that kingdom. Gaining land and glory the Kingdom flourished, and the kingdom prospered.

The city of Darter was made 330 years ago to trade with other coastal kingdoms and to increase the kingdom's supply of fur and wood which it bought from more northern nations of the Eastern continent. Buying that with its massive food supplies the kingdom grew and grew under the Emperor's reign until the kingdom reached a peak of being called a high-level kingdom.

And then it all went downhill. A particularly bad moment was 100 years ago when a dungeon which hadn't been purged enough had a break an entire city was wiped out and the kingdom experienced its worst moment since its formation.

It didn't improve any further from that and the kingdom barely survived through old money and descended classes. Seth came to the obvious conclusion that the kingdom was screwed if nothing dramatic happened and looking at the current Queen the kingdom was heading to the history books.

That was the history Seth could find in the wider world, most of the museum was on the founders of Darter and other boring stuff.

Seth did find one piece of information interesting. It specified that the Gods were not human, which was rather interesting. According to Genesis accounts, The God of Nothing was created at no time and at no place and he did not exist. He then created the God of Time, the God of Space until the world was filled with everything and such the God of Nothing ceased to exist since there was no longer any nothing left in the universe.

The God of Nothing was a very strange character to Seth's mind, it was a living fallacy, but it answered a question that all wanted an answer, so the lack of logic was ignored, and people accepted the answer.

Seth himself had no other remarkable theory on the topic and simply did not care. It helped him in no way to his goals, so he moved on.

He did find a segment on the ruling family of the City. Shockingly the family was rather vain and so had a family tree all the way up to the first man appointed to rule the city back 400 years ago.

In this segment were several books on the topic that you could read and so Seth found a remarkable amount of information on the family and what their ancestors did. It even recorded the class they inherited.

It used to be Emperor's Loyal Knight but over the years the class decayed, and it became Kings Loyal Knight. With such information, Seth now could get a better sense of the Lord's power.

The Lord was likely the highest-level person in the city as all young nobles get rough training when younger and an unlimited supply of criminals to farm free experience from when they grow older, so it was sufficient to say that they were around level 100.

 This meant that any one-on-one fight was to be avoided completely and Seth would actively avoid even meeting the Lord.

His official title, instead of Lord, was Baron Alexander Blackword but that was far too long, so most called him Baron Blackword.

His Manor was creatively called... Blackword Manor and information about it did exist.

It was made when the city was first designed but has been renovated many times since then and it boasted 5 floors. The rest of the information was just pure boasting.

Seth had to make a plan to steal from there based on its name and the number of floors it had...

Seth enjoyed his history lesson that was all for nought. The next destination was the actual Manor itself as it wasn't that off to look at it, mainly because gawking tourists existed, so Seth joined them for a day and started to observe.

Since the Manor existed in the centre of the City, its high walls were easy to see from all directions. It doubled as a fortress of sorts, so it had sturdy walls and constant military overwatch. It reminded Seth of Buckingham Palace but without the guards wearing ridiculous hats, these people wore ridiculous weapons.

And not because they looked funny, but because of the sheer cost of those things.

Justice was good and all, but money talked really sweet and delivered some of the country's finest weapons to protect its wealthiest inhabitants and these rank 7+ weapons were as powerful as they were expensive.

Seth did really question his sanity for a moment, but he reminded himself that he did have help. Fortune's Syndicate allowed 2 more to help with this heist at any moment's notice and those 2 were both talented and good at their jobs.

Seth, looking at the gate's security decided this place was an absolutely no-go, so he needed to find another way in.

There was one other factor that affected Seth's entry and that was a magic disruption field that went all the way along the gate. It was both unhelpful and incredibly expensive. Seth actually pondered if he should just rob those, but they were lodged in the ground so Seth would only get 2 or 3 before a guard noticed him.

Seth imagined the security would stay the same over the robbing period although the Baron was leaving so you would expect him to ramp up security he also had to protect himself at the event so Seth doubted he would be able to solve both.

Instead, Seth reckoned that he would prioritize himself and take the best and brightest guards with him as personal security for these kinds of people was incredibly important.

However, Seth liked surety and wanted concrete information about the target rather than educated guesses so tonight he would follow the Baron on his way to a dinner party.

Finding this kind of information was as easy as breathing Darter as it followed under political waffle and so the press ate it up. It also helped that the Baron paid their bills, so they followed his carriage like he was some celebrity.

Seth was already on site dressed as a young reporter with a simple notepad and pencil. When the Lord got out Seth ran up to him and asked him various questions as did the other journalists around him.