“Tom … we need a mimicry.” I said to Tom who was laying on a roof right next to me, quite some time after my meeting with the professor.

“What´s that?” He asked, the sounds muffled by a completely black mask.

“An extremely rare magical item, completely forbidden by the kingdom. It was quite hard to find out anything about this thing, but it is apparently capable of soaking up the magical aura of anything placed nearby.” I explained and ducked myself even further behind the roof as the first guards started to show up.

“Hmm … never heard of it, but I´ll ask around. If someone is willing to sell it, I will find it.” Tom whispered, clearly conscious about the guards as well.

“Great. Use whatever is needed to silence the seller.” I said and watched how a few of the guards entered the shop with a broken window while others ran off towards the distance, probably searching for whoever broke the window apart.

“Understood …” He said, robbed down the roof and used a ladder to climb down into the small backyard. Shortly afterwards, I followed suit and together we walked out on a completely different street where no guards were. “Twelve minutes. Even the hoodlum could escape.” Tom picked up an empty bag outside and we walked further away from the crime scene towards our next destination.

We were on the very edge of the noble district, where all the low nobles lived and most importantly, where quite a few jewellers were. This was already the third day of robbing these places, which got easier and easier. First of all, we would ask a random criminal to throw a brick through the window of one of them, measure the time it would take for the guards to arrive, and then relocate to another area where we already took the time once.

There, I simply had to lockpick the door, and then start the timer in my mind. Then, I would simply stab every glass showcase, carefully throw the valuables into the bag and then flee once I was over half the allocated time.

Sure, traps were quite the issue, which was probably why nobody did that before us. Sometimes, they were on the ground, spewing fire towards me, sometimes they were inside the cases, trapping my hand within them. But thus far, no trap managed to stop me. Either I could react in time, or I was a bit hurt, but none could capture me. I even had to reattach my hand once as something sharp fell onto my wrists as I was just collecting a sapphire necklace. After cleaning up every trace of my blood though, I still managed to escape with around half the items.

And always, without fail, we left one of our signs, mostly by arranging different pieces of jewellery in a three-pronged crown shape.

Our reputation as an underground organization started to rise and rise, not only because of my abilities but also because of the formidable information network Tom expanded each and every day. First were the prostitutes and then came the beggars, nobles, gossiping women, and finally even a few maids at court. They sold information, and we bought everything we could, selling it at a higher price to anyone interested.

It all started to escalate a bit, especially as we had to release some information about Mary and me to the Wolf Street Gang so they wouldn’t be too suspicious of us early on. We naturally limited the scope to two pieces of information: ‘The Whites are blackmailable. We know what they don’t want you to know.’ and ‘They have a freaking chonker of a sapphire in the vault of the king.’ … or so.

Both of them were actually right though … after all, I asked Mary herself and they probably knew about the sapphire as well.

In any case, our organisation was growing each and every day, including Sundays and Mondays which I always hated. One was the day where I was supposed to pray to the gods in public and hold some speeches about them, and the other was Monday.

Naturally, we couldn’t grow without creating any animosity. First of all, was the Wolf Street Gang which sent multiple letters of protest to our official address, a run-down house that was owned by a grandma. They demanded us to hand them over every sapphire we had, which we naturally agreed to … okay, who am I kidding? We didn´t reply during the first two times until I decided it was time for a little present and sent the messenger back … around one metre sixty shorter.

The D’Antonio crime family was the least affected by our actions and indirectly even profited as we sold all the stuff we stole through them … excluding all the sapphires of course. But they still looked at our rapid expansion with concern. After all, nothing was binding us to sell through them and the increased attention from the authorities did start to worry them a bit.

The last group of the three big crime groups was the Tarasov Clan, a group that also complained a few times. It was nothing serious yet, as they specialized in assassinations and thievery, but as they were the previous main information broker, they wouldn’t shut up until we compensated them with a fuckton of jewellery. We didn´t want war with them … yet.