Chapter 348: Rash Robbery

In the hours he had waited for the sun to go down Lake had been able to make a pretty decent plan to get inside of the general magic store but after that his success became very uncertain. If he wanted to use force he was sure he could take every item in no time but he didn't want to resort to killing everyone because he didn't want a magic detective after him for the rest of his life.

This made what he wanted to do much harder to plan for since he still didn't even know what type of defenses he would be dealing with once he was inside. He still had everything he had touched while inside earlier to sell if he was unable to get anything else so it wasn't like he was going to completely waste his time either way which made the idea of failure much more palatable to him.

Moving from where he had passed the last few hours he made his way to the top of a building nearby the magic store before diving towards its wall while using Ghost Touch. As soon as his outstretched hand touched the wall it became ethereal and he passed right through it landing on the very top floor of the store.

It didn't take a genius to figure out the best option was for him to enter onto the top floor where no one was and since it was right above where the best things were held which would hopefully decrease the amount of distance he would have to move while trespassing.

He hoped this would make it much easier for him to keep from getting caught since if the guards started to walk towards him all he would need to do is jump and use Ghost Touch to go through the ceiling and back into the empty room at the top.

Using Mana Vision to look down he eventually saw that his hopes that the guards would be moving around while patrolling were only partially true. It seemed they knew what the thieves would really want and had placed a guard who didn't seem to move right next to the barriers that held the items he was after.

This was fine because it was still less annoying than the barrier itself since he knew how to get the guard out of the picture and had no idea what he would need to do to get the barrier to go down. He had some ideas that were more complicated than just smacking it really hard but he had a feeling deep down that a smack or some type of violence was what he would resort to when none of them worked.

Picking to go for the clothes first since it was the furthest from the room he was currently hiding in which would make this room the last place they would look for him if he was discovered buying him time he used Ghost Touch to walk through walls and floors that separated him from the room the clothes were inside.

This building seemed to have a lot of secret passages through rooms that weren't being used to display items and he guessed they were extra store rooms they could hold excess stock for items they had a lot of and these were empty because they didn't have anything extra when it came to the really expensive stuff at the top of the store.

He didn't remember seeing these extra rooms filled with items anywhere in the store when he used Mana Vision though so maybe they were just used to let the guards move around the store without using the stairs so they didn't get in the customer's way when they needed to change rooms.

It didn't really matter what they were for to him he guessed since it gave him a way to get around that was a lot easier than he had expected coming in. Arriving at the room he used Ghost Touch to make a small part of the wall in front of him ethereal he stuck his hand through and smacked the guard that was in the room to knock him out.

After he did this he grabbed the man so he wouldn't make any noise as he fell from the effects of Mute before stepping into the room fully. Setting the guard onto the ground, Lake didn't waste any time before walking towards the barrier in the center of the room and using Decrypt.

Before long the part of the barrier formation that was outside the barrier had been revealed to him and he got to work feeling it out to see if there was any weakness he could use to to destroy it even though he knew there wouldn't be.

Once he confirmed all the important parts of the formation was on the inside he got down and inspected the floor that was what held the formation inside of it to see if there a chance he could just cut this part of the floor free before summoning all of it to him later where the amount of strength he used to break the formation wouldn't matter.

Of course the guards would probably notice an action like this no matter how fast he moved and would do their best to remove the items and place them in a safer place guessing he was up to something after he left. There was a way around this, it was just going to leave a huge mess on the street outside the building.

Pulling his sword, Lake used Crunch and sliced the floor around the barrier in the center of the room. Only pausing briefly to touch the newly freed chunk before running off to the next room through all the walls that divided them he heard people start to yell right away. historical

The voices made him realize he should have thought out his auctions more before he went straight into the messy plan he had crafted within a few seconds but it was too late for him to stop now. It was just too bad he spent all that time waiting for the sun to go down because a plan like this that had no finesse involved could have been done during the day.

After he sliced through the second and taped the chunk that was slowly starting to fall he went towards the third and final one. At the speed he was moving he should be able to get outside before it slipped free and fell onto the floor below. After cutting the last one and tapping his hand onto it he used Ghost Touch on the wall next to him to slip outside.

Outside he saw people on the street below all looking up most likely because they could hear all of the guards on the inside yelling but ignored them and used Retrieval to summon the three chunks from inside into the space around him. After confirming the items on the shelves inside the barriers were still there he cast Fly and started to make his break for it.

Every few seconds he would use Retrieval to keep the chunks from hitting the ground. He didn't have infinite mana so after a while he had to drink a bit of a mana potion to continue this. After a while he made it out from above the city and lowered himself a bit closer to the ground in the hopes he could find a place to put the chucks down onto the ground and summon them again once he was further to stop the constant mana expenditure.

It took a bit longer than he would have liked it to to find a good spot but once he did he put all three chunks down and sped off in the direction of the Holy Domain while keeping his eyes peeled for people following him using Detector even though anyone around here being able to follow him at his top ground speed being very unlikely.

...

"Sir, someone just robbed the magic store down the street." This was bad news but it wasn't the first time this had happened so he was unable to keep the uncaring look from taking over his face as he asked. "Why are you telling me and not the city guards?"

"Because of the message Hampton sent out yesterday about looking for a group of elite criminals." Remembering the brief message they had received a few hours ago from Hampton that had gone out to all the mages that watched over the towns in the Earth Domain.

"Does the robbery that happened just now match the description we were told to look out for?" Seeing his servant start to nod he stood up quickly and started to walk towards the communication formation to send out a message of his own to tell Hampton and everyone else there had been a possible sighting of the people Hampton was after and that they needed to be on guard.