8 - Magic, Dream, Recon, and Lock-Picking

Demon summoning.

Even if it was lesser, it didn't seem like a good thing.

Although the Goddess' blessings didn't work in the perimeter territory, the fact the blessings existed at all was proof enough for the Goddess' existence. Moreover, there were also her apostles and such.

Thus, even though her religion was far leas popular in the perimeter, it still was around, and was also the only religion in most places.

Along with it came the Goddess' teachings, in which were mentioned demons.

Thus, I had a vague understanding of how vile of a book was currently in front of me.

'Has the royal family really used this?'

On the other hand, the "Lavencia Knight Breathing Technique" seemed interesting. I had never heard of the so called "knight breathing technique."

I had never known much about knighthood, but could it be they even breathed differently from commoners?

No, surely not. Such a thing would have gotten out if it was made popular. It was probably only practiced by the royal family, maybe even only by the emperor himself.

Although who knew what it did. What difference would altered breathing make?

Well, now that I thought about it, I had a convenient little answering machi-friend. A good friend here named Tom, yes, king Tom, who could answer such questions for me.

"Tom, what is this knight breathing technique? And what's a 'Lavencia'?"

"You really are clueless. Alright, listen closely. Lavencia is the name of a family. A knight breathing technique is a specialized breathing technique, commonly taught to knights but more generally to warriors and combatants at large.

There are better and worse ones, and the best ones can let you manifest something called an 'aura'. An aura can be used to launch blade beams, like with that kama or this sword, without needing any special treasure or item. It can also do a lot more than that.

The key is that it is not a breathing technique for air, but mana. Mana is a special energy..."

He went on and on. It was overwhelming. By the end of it, I had a better grasp of a lot of things, but I'd have to take some time to process and digest it all.

Still, a question immediately popped into my head after he finished his lengthy explanations.

"If mana is used to cast spells, and knight breathing techniques are a subdivision of mana breathing techniques, which help circulate mana, then can knights who have aura also cast spells?"

Tom had a surprised look on his face.

"Hey, great job, kid. You catch on fast. But unfortunately, no. Well, technically yes, but not quite. It isn't that easy. Spells are something you have to learn.

There are specific steps to circulate mana for each spell, and spells require magic circles that have to be inscribed in a specific way, which you have to memorize with exceeding precision in order to cast them.

All these take time, patience, and months if not years spent cooped up in a little room or a library, reading books on magic spells. Alongside practice, and if you don't have an experienced mage beside you, and the knowledge you have is superficial, a spellcast can backfire, resulting in backlash and, in the worst cases, death.

In comparison, aura is much easier and simpler.

There are also things call "skills", where your body basically casts a spell subconsciously for you. Those are learned through intuition and gut feeling, and aren't something that can be studied in a library.

Most knights and other combatants that focus of physicality rather than knowledge, brawn over brain, tend to comprehend and use skills rather than spells.

You'd think mages would then have less skills to use, but no, they also have a lot. Although they often aren't able to comprehend and use them, but they're there. It's just, what mage would spend time learning skills throigh physical effort with a low chance of success instead of a new spell?"

"Then aren't mages objectively better than skill users?"

"They would be, if skills weren't so god damned overpowered and magic wasn't so hard to learn. Of course, usually, most people learn a mix of skills and magic."

"How overpowered are skills? Could you give me some examples?"

"Sure. Take the skill [Berserk] for example. Raises all stats by 50%, isn't that crazy?

Oh, stats, that's strength, agility, and such by the way."

50%. I imagined a watermelon next a another, 50% larger watermelon and shivered.

Overpowered indeed.

"So are there no spells that can do something similar?"

"Some, but not that many at each tier. There are quite a lot if you add up all the ones from all the tiers though. But at a high tier every class has both spells and skills. So it evens out."

"What's a class?"

"..."

"..."

"Forget it, sit down. This is gonna take a few hours."

***

I had a weird dream again. It was the same one I had been having ever since I ate the fruit.

Every so often the dream would become clearer.

This was one of those nights.

The silhouette had gotten clear enough to make out more of.

It was a woman, like I had thought, but she had the body of a spider waist down. The spider body was black with a red crown symbol on it, and red accents, and it was shiny, too shiny, almost as though metallic.

Her forearms and hands were also black with red accents, and seemed unlike human hands. Almost like a doll, smooth and shiny, and her fingertips were sharp, like claws.

There were no nails, only the outline of long nails underneath the black surface, as though she was wearing black gloves.

Her upper body was attractive, immensely attractice even, but the lower half kind of ruined any fantasy I might've otherwise had.

I couldn't see her face clearly, but it seemed pretty. She was looking at me, and mouthing something, but I couldn't make it out still.

"...ome...me...los...ild."

I tried hard, I tried so hard to hear her clearly. My mind in that moment was overwhelmed with a desire to listen to what she was saying, but alas, I couldn't understand the tendrils of speech that got through to me.

When she saw my condition, she finally stopped moving her mouth for the first time in all my dreams thus far.

Was she giving up on me?

For some reason, the thought of that was more than I could bear.

Finally, she moved and took something out from thin air. No, it'd be more accurate to say she moved her hand into a spot and the spot and the spot was covered by a black fog. When her hand came out of the black fog, it pulled something out along with it. The fog disappeared.

It was a metal brick with something inscribed on it, but I couldn't make out what it said or what metal it was.

She threw it at me.

It hit me square in the face and I woke up.

Gasping, I shot up from my resting position.

Confused, I was about to go into the treasury to ask Tom about these dreams when I noticed the brick laying in the corner.

Tom was bent over it, inspecting it.

I went in and walked up to him.

"Any idea what that is? It appeared in my dream just now."

"Well, it has a rune on it for dimensional travel. I presume that's how it got here. A skilled analyst, runesmith, or someone similar could probably backtrack where it came from through the rune, but I don't know any more than that. Runic analysis, not exactly my forte. This is already the best I can do for ya."

"What about the metal? And are there no other effects? Or is it too high level for you?"

Tom scoffed.

"Too high level my foot! Do you think high level treasures are so common? No, there are definitely no other effects. As for the metal, it's something called 'black star iron', I believe. It's made inside stars, sometimes can be found in asteroids and some hyper rare deposits here and there. Used for high level artifacts, among other things. That's all I remember."

"It's used for high level artifacts, but this isn't one?"

"Exactly."

'Hmm'

It seemed like the spider lady in the dream wanted me to reverse engineer her location through the rune on this thing and find her.

Beyond that, it was useless.

Relieved it wasn't dangerous, I started to go about my day.

Getting freshened up, and doing some light stretches, I went outside to...absolute mayhem.

Knights were patrolling the capital's streets in a grand fashion, and people were talking non stop about the current events.

I asked someone near me what was going on.

"Did you just wake up? Apparently, someone raided the imperial treasury! And they took everything! Literally everything! Noone knows how anyone managed to do it without notice, but the emperor has ordered the knights to do a thorough inspection of the entire city to see where the thief could be hiding the haul. That is, if it's in the city at all."

The man hastily replied with zest.

'Ah, so here's the fallout.'

Well, had nothing to do with me.

I was just your normal, rich, law abiding citizen. Nothing to see here.

Hehehe.

Sitting down and ordering breakfast, remember that I'm staying at an inn right now, I started thinking about what to do fr9m here.

The 4 families still had 8 treasures, collectively, so I had to get those, of course.

The palace, contrary to what one might think, was actually easier to raid. Because of its size, the sound of me breaking down the giant double doors didn't make it to anyone's ears. In comparison, in a still large, but relatively small, compared to the palace, manor or mansion estate, it would certainly attract attention if I barged in like before.

I also silently took note that if I ever built a palace or other large structure, and placed important things in a locked room in it, I should assign a large numbe of personnel on the path to it, so one of them could run away to inform me of a break-in. I certainly wouldn't hear it, nor would anyone else, and too few people would get immobilized like I had done to the 2 guards.

Having thought up to here, I had the thought to barge in and fight the 4 major families of the capital, but I ended that thought as soon as I had it.

Even if I could win the fight, which wasn't a certainty, I'd rather not kill innocent people.

Plus, who knew what treasures the families had, and if one might not help them fight back and win.

I couldn't risk it.

So I would have to be covert again, and this time properly, without breaking through the final door directly.

First, some recon.

Then, at the end of it all, it'd be time to leave the capital and head somewhere else.

***

Something I had been neglecting to do was open the compass.

It was ready for its next upgrade, but so much had been happening, I had been postponing looking at it.

Now, I finally opened it.

The light shined, bright and golden, once again before dissipating.

When it settled, I looked at it. It looked the same, except the number had become [14/100].

Yikes!

The next one was gonna take a long time.

Opening the change log, it said:

[Upgrade 2 (10 treasures):

-Can now add waypoint markers to the map with a name and details.

-Effective range increased from 30KM --> 50KM]

That was it?

Well, I guess it wasn't bad. And the compass was overpowered enough as is, not to mention there were still future upgrades left.

I took a look with the extended range, but there were still no new treasures around.

Now that the compass' matter was done, I got to work on my plan to steal from the 4 major families.

The key thing I needed to get my hands on were the vault keys.

Get it? Key thing is the keys.

Sorry. Anyways, I needed to enter the families and get close to the location of the keys, and then I needed to take and use them.

Thanks to the golden key, taking and using were relatively simple matters. The golden key was like a thief- ahem. Gentleman's- best friend.

So I just had to find out where they were and get close.

I spent the next few days doing basic reconnaissance. I had mapped out the 4 estate's, and done something similar to what I had done in the palace, only it was even easier with the lesser security in the estates. I just didn't do the last step of breaking open the vault doors. Instead, I backed off.

Still, I managed to be sure of my ability to get that far and get out without being noticed.

It wasn't that these families and the palace all had lax security, it was just that I had too much going for me.

The compass map in zoomed in mode gave me a perfect real time recreation of my immediate surroundings, even letting me see through walls, my senses and physique had been enhanced by the fruit to the level of the empire's best soldier, and I was constantly in peak condition, I had the cover of night, I picked up rogueish skills like stealthily sneaking around and having light footsteps very quickly and became extremely proficient with them.

The golden key and treasury made it too easy to steal, steal fast, steal without noise, get out without a commotion, and hide it all without anyone able to see.

It was all too much for ordinary security measures to handle.

With that said, I came up with a simple but workable idea on how to break in.

Honestly, I should have done this from the start, before doing the heist at the palace, but I somehow didn't think of it at the time.

I was gonna learn how to pick locks.

I don't think it would've mattered at the palace, since the locking mechanism there had been more complex anyhow, but for these families, it would work just fine.

It might seem like this was all too simple, but keep in mind that a normal robber would only be able to rob a few things at a time. Moreover, normal people didn't know about the magical treasures, so if they came in, they'd just take a few gold bars and leave.

No one else could do what I was doing, and empty out entire treasuries. Well, I had dine it in the heat of the moment in the palace cause I just couldn't help myself, but I had enough mortal goods now, so I wasn't planning on doing that again.

I'd just take the treasures and some things I liked and call it a day. Or a night, rather.

So with that, I spent another month getting insanely good at lockpicking.

Like before, I was a fast learner. Really fast. My proficiency after a month was orobably about as good as a professional thief who'd been picking locks for decades.

Seemed like my ability to pick up new skills would stay for the long term.

Ah, not "skills" as in those kinds of skills. Although...I wonder if they're similar. If it's the body circulating the mana for me automatically, couldn't I theoretically learn a "skill" without any history of mana breathing?

I asked Tom, the treasure spirit.

"Indeed, it's possible you might gain some rogue class skills after all this thievery of yours."

He didn't seem to mind my new "profession". He even praised me once for being smart.

"You're at least a heck of a lot smarter than those idiots in the palace."

Or so he said.

With that, I was ready.

I had been in the city for 4 months now. It was time to rob the 4 great families all at once, and promptly leave.