Villin grinned as he looked down at the base from ‘Today’s Oddities’. He had climbed up a nearby three-story building that was used to teach classes. Today’s Oddities’ building in A1 only had two stories total, it was quite massive horizontally though.

Looking up at the moon, Villin knew it was almost time to make his move. He reached into his bag and took out a pair of black glasses. Then, he put them on.

When looking through the glasses, Villin’s vision change as it looked like he was standing a small distance away from Today’s Oddities waiting for a certain something to happen.

Villin grinned as he found that the device he created hadn’t malfunctioned.

The masks he had left around the tower were all enchanted. He had taken inspiration from the cross-school tournament he had once attended and partially recreated the glasses that were used there.

The biggest negative was the limited distance these ones had, they would only work within a few kilometers from each other. 

Still, Villin was very happy with this device. Since his own people would use the masks he had made and enchanted when attacking other guilds, he could keep a proper eye on them during the raids.

Villin sat down comfortably on the rooftop as he waited. It could still take another couple of hours before Max actually made his move.

Surprisingly, Max made his move just a couple of minutes later. As he was stalking the building in the moonlight, he noticed an individual exiting through the main entrance. It was a woman of about eighteen years old, she had brown hair and looked around cautiously after going out.

Seeing that she had come, Max took in a deep breath before walking towards her. After a bit, she noticed him, but despite seeing the stone fox mask he was wearing she didn’t back down.

“I’m assuming you’re ‘The Fox’ that contacted me?” the woman asked as she looked at Max in the eyes.

In response, Max simply nodded, “Yes, I have very important confidential information on ‘Athena’s Forge’, something that could ruin the leaders.”

Quickly, the woman gestured at him to keep quiet, “Don’t talk out here, you never know who’s listening. It’d be much, much harder for anyone to follow you inside. Take this and follow me.” as she said this, she handed Max a metal pin. Villin figured it was most likely used to get past the wards.

“Since this is top secret information, I’ll take you into the safe zone, that’s what we call the most secure room in this building.” the woman said with a wink, “And say, are you sure you can’t just take your mask off, I promise I won’t divulge your identity but it would make talking much easier.”

Hearing this, Max nervously shook his head, “No, if Athena’s Forge’s leadership figures out I’m doing this, I’ll be ruined.”

“Alright then.”

After this simple conversation, they both silently walked through a couple of hallways. They passed a bunch of doors and every time the woman would have to use the key she always kept on her to get passed.

After some time, the duo finally arrived at their destination. The woman opened a thick metal door revealing a room that seemed to be glowing. Runes glowed all around the room. There was a large magic array on the floor and a bunch of enchantments on the walls, all to avoid anybody sneaking in or finding out what was said. 

Once they entered the room, Villin began having trouble seeing what was going on. Despite the unorthodox technique he used to spy, it was still having a lot of trouble working in this room.

Still, he just barely managed to see what all was going on.

Once the door was closed again, the woman went ahead and sat on one side of the table that was placed in the middle of the room, “Hello Fox. As you know, my name is Sylvie, and I’ll be your contact within ‘Today’s Oddities’. I will make sure you get properly compensated for anything you tell me. The reason you can trust me is that I get twenty percent of the money you get, hence the more money you receive, the better it is for me as well.”

Max hesitated for a few moments before speaking, “Are you sure this room is safe?”

Hearing his concern, Sylvie smiles, “I can assure you that this room is completely safe. No sound gets out of here and spells instantly get detected. If the wards in this room get penetrated, we’ll know immediately!”

Hearing this, Max seemingly let out a breath of relief before he seemed to realize something. “Oh, you say you can’t cast spells here? But I recorded everything using a spell, I won’t be able to show you any proof without casting anything!”

Hearing this, Sylvie’s eyebrows arched. It was extremely rare that someone who wasn’t a journalist had a recording spell of any kind, but soon that surprise turned into happiness. This would make things much, much easier.

“That’s not a problem, I can temporarily disable that was if needed, should I do so now?”

“If you do I can show you what I recorded, I think that’ll be the best way to explain what is going on.”

Hearing the mysterious way Max was speaking in, Sylvie couldn’t help but feel excited, this was probably going to be good. She didn’t smile physically though and stayed professional as she walked over to the corner of the room and inserted her magic power into a few specific points, disabling one of the wards.

Once she sat back on her chair she gestured towards Max, “There you go, feel free to cast the spell now.

Still properly nervous, Max grabbed his wand and pointed it at the table, “Vartneshica!” At the last moment, just as he finished his spell, he tilted his wand towards Sylvie, and a streak of red light headed right for her forehead.

Sylvie, who hadn’t expected this at all, was unable to react and the red streak hit her on the forehead. Her head jerked back at first before slumping forward, she was unconscious and most probably had a concussion.

Max was breathing heavily but quickly got himself to stand up and grab anything on Sylvie’s body. He grabbed her key and swapped their metal pins. He wasn’t sure if there was a difference between them but wouldn’t take chances either. He also grabbed a few seemingly random objects off of her body. Anything emitting magic power really, just in case one of them was used to get past some of the wards.

After doing this, he quickly left the room. Sylvie would be out for an hour at least, so there was no use in tying her up, he simply had to hope the building had no guards inside and that everyone focused on the outside. He also hoped Sylvie didn’t tell anyone about the interview that might get worried.

The nervous wreck that was Max, quickly but silently ran through the hallways, looking for something that looked like a door to a treasury. He went through a total of three doors before finally finding something somewhat suspicious.

It was a door with a large ‘Keep Out’ sign on it. He used the key he had gotten from Sylvie to get in and saw a stairway going down, into the basement it seemed.

Once he was down he found himself in a completely spotless, white room. The only things that were in the room were shelves full of pieces of paper on them. It seemed that this was where they kept their records. This included interviews, papers they released, and more. Villin looked at some of the papers he could see without touching anything but didn’t do anything else as he silently went deeper into the basement.

This was good for sure, and valuable, but he didn’t think it was ‘IT’. He was looking for another, smaller, room. One that had a few dozen papers at most, keeping only their most important things.

And soon, he found himself before another door.

The door was made out of metal and didn’t seem special but Max could feel magic power coming off of it.

Without touching the door, his hand hovered over it as he tried to discern the runes that had been hidden. It would be practically impossible to get it entirely right, but he was just seeing if he could find a weak point to somehow disable the enchantments.

Yet, even after twenty minutes, he didn’t find anything. He would have to get in, take what he needed, and get out while the alarm was going off, at least, that was how it seemed.

Villin thought for a moment, before backtracking. He explored the area around and found that he was only really two locked doors away from a window. Even though this window would also cause the alarms to go off, at that point, it wouldn’t matter.

He grabbed a couple of chairs to keep the two locked doors open, and went back down into the basement.

He wasn’t the best fighter but he also wouldn’t have taken action now if he wasn’t capable of blowing through a stone wall. Villin stood next to the iron door that seemed to be leading to the main treasury and pointed his wand at the wall next to it.

“BOOM!”

An explosion rang out as Max cast his spell, soon followed by sirens going off all over the building. He quickly entered through the hole he had made inside of the wall and took in the room.

This room was extremely small. It only had one decent stack of papers on a shelf that was mounted against the opposite wall. Next to it was a crystal holder followed by a couple of unfamiliar objects.

There were also boxes of materials but Max ignored this as he quickly grabbed the stack of paper and the crystal holder without checking it.

He then turned tail and ran as fast as he could, up the stairs.

When he got through the door leading to the basement and opened it, he saw multiple members of the guild but none of them were turned towards him. When the alarm went off, everyone thought that attackers had appeared and they quickly made their way to the outside of the building, trying to figure out who attacked the building.

Max used the momentary confusion and sprinted towards the door he had opened, a few people noticed him and tried to follow but since Max kicked the chairs away after he went through the open doors, they had to grab their keys and open them first, making it impossible for them to catch up.

Max quickly jumped out of the window and ran. There were a few people that had just gotten outside that tried to chase him but they were even less of a fighter compared to Max and were completely unable to catch up. Soon, he was out of their sights.

Villin nodded contently, it seemed that Max had managed to complete one of the requirements without assistance using his wits and by picking an ideal target.