Night has fallen. All the servants should be asleep except for the guards. I take out my knife and cut my hair short. It's sloppy but with it plus my mask I should be difficult to recognize at first glance. Then I take a pen and paper and write down a short note before leaving it on my bed. Finaly I cast a wind spell to silence my foot steps and set out. Its show time. 

Starting of I immediately head to Bram's room. He's asleep, and with a spell I make sure it stays that way. On his night stand are the clothes I asked for neatly folded along with a small pouch filled with seeds, good. Putting on the clothes I find they're actually pretty decent quality. Not quite as fancy as a noble's garb but good enough for a merchant's child. I would have preferred peasant's clothes but at least it comes with a cloak. I throw a few enchantments on the cloak for stealth and durability before getting changed. Time to move on to the next spot.

After walking a little I end up in front of Cornelius's room I unlock the door by messing with the lock using magnetism and quietly sneak in. He doesn't have his armor on, perfect. I take a gauntlet before quickly leaving. I REALLY don't want to alert him. Thankfully he didn't manage to break the sleep spell. Next I'll use this gauntlet to secure my funds.

In front of the treasury are two tired looking guards. Their sleep deprivation made knocking them out easy. I put on the magic nullifying gauntlet on my left hand and unlock the vault. Inside would've probably glowed a shimmering gold if it wasn't the dead of the night. If there were any alarm spells in the treasury the gauntlet would have deactivated them. I fill a fancy pouch with the highest valued coins and hide it by stitching it on the inside of my tunic over my heart. I fill a second pouch with some low grade currency and a few mid grade and leave the pouch on my belt. This is a measure to help reduce the damage a pick pocket could cause. They'll go after the obvious lesser pouch on my belt but miss the hidden valuable one over my heart. I chose to place the expensive pouch over my heart so in the off chance someone targets my heart with an arrow or something, there is an extra layer of protection. That kind of stuff appears in media all the time and considering I'm currently in the world of a piece of media I might as well prepare for it. Looking around I find some quality equipment as well. Must have been taken from monster hunters as collateral or something. Among the assorted weapons I have no skill in using I find a nice staff and a necklace that dramatically increases mana reserves. I finish up in the treasury and head to the library.

Once there I realized I didn't think about how dark it would be. Because there's no lights on I can't really make out the book titles. Thankfully there are no guards around this area and it'll take at least another hour for the guards to change shifts. Even if the new shift gets there early they wont find the guards I knocked out as I have locked them inside the vault when I left, so I have time. After taking awhile, mainly going off of memory and eventually just taking the risk and using fire magic for light, I finally find all the books I was looking for. 

Now finally on to the last step. My hands shake a little as I tie up the books into a bundle. I hook the bundle unto my new staff like a hobo in a cartoon. Looking out the window my heart beats like wild and I can't help but let out a little giggle. Freedom awaits.

"I love it when a good plan comes together," I quip as I take the plunge out the window I looked out when I first took over Bernadette Autumburn. Once I land, I run and run and run and never look back.

----------------------------------------------

Cornelius POV

I serve an organization. My current task is to facilitate the growth of a little girl and to instill a love of the organization that I have, into her. There have been some accidents and bad morals taught to her, but for the most part the plan has been going well.

However she has been acting odd for the past week. I assumed it was just the start of some rebellious phase. She demanded to get dressed by herself and intentionally did poorly in her etiquette classes. There have been a few cases of such behavior being shown in other nobles around that age. I was thinking about some way to deal with this new streak when news I couldn't have possibly expected came up. 

It seemed the young lady has gone missing, leaving only a note saying "don't look for me, as I do not wish to be found." While the note implies she ran away of her own accord, that theory has gone under questioning as several guards had been knocked unconscious and many valuables have been stolen. It even seems the brigand picked the lock to my room inorder to use my armor to disable the various alarm spells. Thankfully said gauntlet was left in the treasury as anti-magic metal is very expensive. Back to our muttons, this dastardly crook likely had this planned out extensively. The case of the missing young lady is likely actually a kidnapping disguised as running away, as an eleven year old likely doesn't have the capacity to pull off such a scheme. To also support this theory of kidnapping, the surveillance magic devices set up around the manor by the organization I work for, detected what looks to be a cloaked male making off with various ill gotten gains.

With the acknowledgement from the marquis, I formed a search party and started scouring the nearby landscape.