6 - Heist

Waking up, I was confused by the dream, but chose to think little of it.

Since I didn't know what to do with the two new treasures, I put their matter to the side.

I decided to focus on getting 5 more treasures for the next compass upgrade for now.

Although it seemed like the royal treasury would be better protected than the vaults of the 4 families, the truth was both were similar: tremendously difficult to breach.

It was essentially a fool's errand to try to steal these treasures in a simplistic way.

Part of me even thought about going around the empire and looking for treasures in other places.

Still, I decided to at least try my hand at it. Who knows, I might even get lucky and gather the treasures in the imperial capital faster than I had originally thought?

With that in mind, I began to make a plan to sneak into the royal treasury.

***

First step to any good heist, the layout of the building.

With my now enhanced physique, plus the compass map, this became a cakewalk.

I spent a few weeks learning things like stealth, climbing high palace walls silently, running quickly with minimal noise, throwing daggers, swinging a sword, and so on. Anything I deemed useful to the heist that I had been missing from my skillset so far.

Surprisingly, I was able to pick up new skills relatively easily. It seemed to be an extra benefit of all the physical enhancements of the mystical fruit.

Those few weeks kind of got me side tracked, since it was honestly pretty fun learning new skills, and I also wanted to spend some time enjoying my newfound rich life in the capital, so it quickly became 3 months.

Finally, 3 months later, I was ready to do a preliminary sneak into the palace.

All I had to do was loiter around and observe the compass map as I went. Since the range before the map started losing "resolution" was quite far, I could gather map data on a large area at once.

Of course, the map itself already had all the data, but I could only view it if I was at the location I wanted to look around at, since the map was currently locked to my position. Hopefully, that would change in a future upgrade.

I brought a notebook to draw my own map in.

I was literally copying from a one map to another one, because the first was missing a super basic feature.

Yeah, this would get annoying. This would get annoying real fast.

Using the compass map's zoomed in mode, I could see my immediate surroundings in a relatively wide radius, from 3rd person.

Thus, I could see onto the other side of the palace walls, and I could see when the guards patrol was weakened. When it was clear, I climbed up the walls and went in.

Quickly, I crossed the few dozen meter cobble and grass expanse to the inner palace wall, hugging up against it.

This was the actual, literal palace wall, the previous one had, obviously, been the perimeter wall.

The wall where I was was built in a weird way, such that it covered me from most viewing angles. Unless a guard looked right at me as he walked by, I would be safe.

It was dark, nighttime, so it's not like it'd be easy to spot me from the corner of their eye either. Their were torches, but again, the weird and awkward architecture made this particular spot stay dark despite the torches.

I had scouted this spot as the best from outside. The map could just barely reach here from outside the perimeter wall, when zoomed in.

There was a backdoor to the palace nearby.

Waiting for the guards to do another cycle, I silently made my way to the backdoor, where there was a guard on standby.

I silently crept up behind him and knocked him out. I had gotten good at doing that, and a lot of other things I'd rather not tell anyone I was good at.

I had captured wanted criminals and used them to hone a variety of skills. In the process, I also learned that if theol other party allowed me to, or was knocked out, I could place them in the treasury, which is what I now did with the guard.

Of course, the fate of those wanted criminals who then knew my secret was....well, it wasn't being handed to the authorities, and it wasn't being let go back into the world either, let's just say that.

...

I killed 'em, ok? Listen, they were hardened criminals. They all had it comin. Still made me sick to my stomach the first few times, but yet another skill I had obtained in that process that I'd rather not tell anyone about is getting used to having blood on my hands.

How'd I find them so quickly? Well, it's amazing what super sharp hearing, a veteran war hero's physique, a map that lets me see through walls, and a boatload of money being given to information brokers can get you these days.

Back to the heist. Or rather, the pre-heist. Again, this was still just me doing a preliminary sneak-in for the sole purpose of monotonously copying down what the compass map zoomed in mode showed onto a physical map.

I changed clothes with the guard and kept him in the treasury.

I went inside the door. I saw a lounge with a guard alone, relaxing in a chair.

I approached and opened the door without any fear.

The guard inside tensed up for a moment before calming down seeing I was wearing afellow guard uniform.

"You new? Never seen you before. Then again, I'm a bit drunk right now to be honest. Well it ain't my shift for like, an hour, ya know. Hey, you won't report me, right? Come on, that'd be petty of you. As a fellow guard..."

The guy was overly talkative, perhaps because he was drunk, and I suspected more than just "a bit".

If this was his personality, it would work.

The guards all wore the same uniform, so I knocked him out and put his clothes onto backdoor guard, who I then put back into position.

If he was missing, it'd be suspicious.

Meanwhile, the guy inside had said it was his shift in an hour, so I had time to kill. Plus, if a drunk like him went missing on the job, it was far less suspicious than the backdoor guard, who was holding down an important position of entry and exit.

Having done this, I headed deeper into the palace.

The security was surprisingly lax, considering where I was.

The guards couldn't find me when I wanted to hide, since even though they were well trained, it seemed like my natural talent for stealth, as well as all other feats of physical prowess and precision, had gone through the roof with the mystical fruit.

Hence, I managed to slip past them time and again.

Eventually, my physical map was largely complete, except for the inside of the treasury.

Of course, I hadnt gotten the upper palace floors, since those were useless to me.

The treasury was in the one and only basement floor.

Standing around the corner to the singular long hallway that lead to the treasury, I saw two guards before the door.

I was too far away for the map to see inside from here.

Damn needlessly long corridors before important rooms in buildings.

I had gotten blood on my hands, but I didn't want to kill innocent people, and I also didn't want to arouse attention before the day of the heist, so I was stuck here for a moment.

Was there really nothing I could do?

I tried getting them to give up their positions, making sounds and so on, but they wouldn't budge, which was both unexpected and annoying.

Since when did guards plant their feet so firmly on the ground?

Be like the guards outside, who had literally walked right past me as I was 'hidden' in a dark corner, please.

Disgruntled, I changed tactics.

No more heist day vs. pre-heist day.

This was it.

I'd deal with the fallout of my actions later.

Covering my face with a cloth, I walked towards the two, finally showing myself in the long corridor.

My senses suddenly began to focus in for some reason, and it felt like the hallway was stretching before me.

The two guards started to move in slow motion as they pulled out their weapons, and my hands automatically pulled out and threw two throwing knives from the treasury subconsciously.

The guards deflected them, but in the mean time I had focused strength into my legs and charged forth, crossing the 40 meters remaining of the 50 meter long hallway in the span of a few seconds.

Taking advantage of the moment of weakness after they deflected the knives, I directly slashed at one's arm such that they dropped their sword.

I slashed their legs to immobilize them, and then focused on the other one remaining.

It happened too fast, I had operated on instinct, and I still was.

I ran up to the 2nd guard and directly parried his sword swing, causing his sword to go flying across the hall. Weaponless and a sword against his throat, he surrendered.

I ordered both to take off their armor, and for guard 2 to treat guard 1's injuries.

They did as told.

After, I knocked them both out and placed them in the treasury for later.

Finally, I was there.

Once again, I could see through the wall and door by abusing the compass map's characteristics, so I didn't need a key to look inside.

Although I saw many riches, the treasure items were all deeper inside, on a special pedestal near the back.

Here now, with the map in zoomed in mode, I could see exactly what the 9 items were.

3 books, a sword, shield, and armor set, a ring, a weird truncated cube looking device, and one last thing that truly surprised me.

Rather than just surprised, it'd be more accurate to say I was left utterly speechless out of the raw degree of immense shock.

The last treasure item was a person. Or, at least what looked like a person.

It was currently sleeping, and looked like a slim middle aged man wearing an well manufactured looking piece of clothing, what I would later learn was a "suit."

Still completely speechless, I looked again and again at thr compass map, but what I saw was very clearly yhe same each time.

It was a golden colored man on a pedestal with 8 other golden colored items, against a blue backdrop of the environment.

Reminder that the items are only golden in the compass map projection.

Shaking my head and sorting out my thoughts, I tried to think of a way in. Currently, I had no idea.

Then, it hit me.

I had already incapacitated the guards.

I had been silent all the way, but right at the end, I had had no choice but to fight two of the guards directly outside the door, so it was already too late to go silently. In that case, who cares about the aftermath? That's the emperor's problem, not mine.

I had already been kind enough sparing the guards' lives for no reason other than that I couldn't bear to kill innocent guards.

So with that in mind, I took out the kama and slashed as hard as I could, sending a giant blade beam flying towards the door to the imperial treasury.

Boom!

The blade beam crashed heavily into the giant pair of double doors, and directly knocked them away and broke the locking mechanism.

It was probably as strong an attack as a battering ram. No, probably even more.

Walking inside, the first thing I did was start collecting all the treasure.

Unlike the Valender estate, I didn't have to worry about there being a lerson next to me to see the treasure disappearing, nor did I have any good, nor bad, feelings for the emperor.

Of course, the people of the empire, any empire really, would grow up while being told to respect and look up to the emperor, and be loyal to the imperial family, but it's not like that really mattered.

For some, it made them grow into loyal, patriotic soldiers, but me, well...I couldn't care less.

So, I then proceeded to, shamelessly and utterly ruthlessly, take away every. single. little. thing in the royal treasury, leaving not even a scrap behind.

The golden key also had a function for selecting everything touching a thing it was touching, whicu theoretically meant I could select the ground and bring the entire land under me into the treasury, but I wasn't going to try that.

Of course, it probably wouldn't work anyhow, but I wasn't gonna be the one to find out.

Anything in the middle of the contact chain would also be pulled in, so it was a little tricky to use for anything else, but it was perfect for clearing and emptying out large treasure troves like this.

It only took a few minutes to get everything.

It had been 45 minutes since I met the drunk guard.

Finally, I walked to the pedestal with the the treasures.

I tried to take them directly, when I was suddenly met with a barrier.

It was a "force field type", as I would later learn, and it specialized in keeping things out.

Looks like the royal family kept security somewhat lax up until here because they knew that the most valuable treasure of all could never be taken away so easily.

Unfortunately for them, they met me.

Well, actually they hadn't met me, I had never met the royal family personally, but-listen, you get the point. It's a turn of phrase.

Anyway, I just willed the key to take the whole pedestal in, force field barrier and all, and voilà!

Maaaan, let me tell ya.

This is about as easy as it could ever get.