The bunker was a ruin of stone fallen into a pile and was left for others to clean up. Seth had the pleasure of being that someone and so he got to work.

The bricks were individually fine, but after an hour of placing them in his carriage, he had barely gone through half the pile. His original plan was to ship the bricks to some construction agency and sell them, which he still planned to do, he just changed the method as to how those bricks went onto his carriage.

He hired a strongman, named Rulen. He was a Construction Worker, so an evolved version of a worker and he gained a skill called Tough Shoulder which reduced the weight of whatever he was trying to carry if they were on his shoulders.

So Rulen packed a bag of bricks and hauled them onto his shoulders where he then took them to the carriage. Seth only needed to post a job on the City Sect for about an hour to find such a worker and he only needed to pay 12 silvers for the entire job.

Seth would occasionally take his carriage to a construction company which bought the bricks for a reduced price. Seth simply didn’t want them and so he allowed himself to take a loss in the negotiations. The person even had a skill which seemed to detect how low he would go so he was selling the good bricks for coppers.

“Damn salesman!” It seemed their greed was a universal rule.

Ignoring the hypocrisy, Seth finished up the bunker by paying his strongman and after he went Seth had a little exploration of what he had paid for. The bunker's design allowed for the top to be crushed but the stuff under the surface was completely fine.

An empty hall therefore showed itself to Seth and it seemed the area was just ripe for a little hideout. It was a good thing Seth had paid for both houses with cash and he bought each house with a different identity. Seth wasn’t dumb enough to buy both houses under the same name, it was why the policeman hadn’t searched his hideout before.

He simply told the salesman to buy it under their name and after Seth gave them a hefty tip they were more than happy to take the money and Seth received the key.

In return, Seth had gained anonymity and he was going to use it well. He unloaded the leftover treasure he had in his carriage namely the Black book (mana training technique), the rank 5 safe he was meaning to open and the crates of salt he had been meaning to sell.

Thinking about it Seth had likely made an extra buck travelling all the way here and could likely sell that salt for a good amount. Seth had to smile at such a happy accident.

With the day nearing evening Seth was getting hungry so he went back on the prowl for a good meal. Local cuisine tonight was cooked beast, specifically a rank 2 frenzied deer. It was a bit chewy for Seth's taste but the spices on top of it made the taste just that much better.

The whole meal cost a silver but that was considering the fact it was ranked meat so obviously the price was inflated.

Seth walked out with a full stomach and since the evening had just started Seth wanted to explore the nightlife. He needed to understand the city before he could steal from it. See who had little and who had too much and then try and reduce that difference.

Seth was no saint, but he could at least do some good. At least that made sense in Seth’s mind.

He continued to spend the night drinking and observing the streets and remembering back alleys. These were his escape routes and he had to remember them carefully as the future always demanded an escape route.

Another thing Seth wanted to do was create a fake persona. One of the things that made him most suspicious when he was locked up was his lack of identity. This time he wanted alibis and witnesses and people who would testify to his good character.

Unlike Darter Seth was going to be in Babylon for a lot of time, his goal was to reach his 3rd evolution. Obviously, that was down to change, if the heat got too hot then he would immediately flee but he wanted to get a good set-up going for a series of heists.

This was part of being a Thief, so Seth felt an intuition that this stuff was all great for levelling and was good for Seth's success as a Thief.

Seth needed to create an identity and what better to use than Isaacs. He already had the ID so now he just needed to act like he had the class. Seth opened the badge up to remind himself of the class he would need to act in and looking at it Seth's mind was set.

Beggar was the poor man's class and Seth still mourned his unfair death. Seth didn’t act like it wasn’t his own fault, so he prayed to the man nearly every time he remembered him. It still wasn’t enough for what he had done but Seth was unable to do anymore. He had no family, that he had checked so Seth was left with nothing but a sorrowful heart.

As a Beggar Seth's main objective was to make friends and remember the city's winding roads.

For the next week, Seth had spent his time doing exactly that, making friends, remembering road routes, and finding places to eat and drink. Seth still had a waterskin, but water access was always helpful. (!!!)

He had made friends with several people but the main two were a fruit seller named Carol. She was a nice woman whom Seth had chatted to several times over the week and eventually Seth managed to get her name. She was married and even had a small child. Seth had bonded with her with his views on politics and some wise words he had stolen from some philosophers on Earth.

The other was a ratty bloke called Rat. He was a Beggar like Seth and the two had bonded over their hatred for the church, The two even begged with each other a few times and chatted a lot over the week. Rat was an orphan who grew up in the slums, he was a hate-filled little rodent and not exactly the attractive kind as well. But he had a heart as greedy as Seth and the two made fast friends.

Seth had enjoyed his little experience and had made some friends whilst at it. With all that out of the way Seth was practically dying to start doing what a Thief did best and he had even found a target to go with it.

A lovely casino house named Fortunes Favoured was a large building that Seth had visited in the last week and Seth had to say that the service was impeccable.

The food was lovely, the music was divine and the gambling fun. That right there was the issue, it was too good at its job. Seth had stayed there far too long and lost himself 2 gold in the hour he had been there, and those losses were unacceptable.

That was the personal reason, the other was that Seth had noticed a lack of security. Several guards looked drunk whilst Seth was in there and the pressure they gave off suggested they were hardly of any threat.

The bank vault was in the basement, that information was just chucked around like it was relationship gossip and Seth couldn’t be happier. Albeit it was suspicious, it came off as too easy.

Seth had gathered info on all the first floor throughout the night he gambled and there were a total of 4 guards on the floor. That was a good amount but the Casino itself was a great place to disappear into: there were many people, and a quick outfit change could make one disappear.

These were all good plans, but Seth needed to get some equipment for the job. He needed to find the underworld.

It was remarkably easy to find, he just asked some people down in the slums and they happily told him all they knew. God knows what his money was then used for, but Seth didn’t want to think about that.

Seth wondered about the streets of Babylon that he had become so familiar with and came across a dark alleyway. He walked into the darkness and found a hatch on the floor. He opened it up to find a staircase leading downwards. He opened the hatch and closed it behind him.

Torches lit the staircase as Seth stepped down. The dark orange passage allowed Seth's mind to imagine many scenarios of what he was about to see but none of them came close.

It was a market inside a dug-out cave, somehow worse than Darters underground. People with stalls took up most of the space with a metre gap between the stall and the exits/entrances.

The stalls themselves were covered in fabric and had small fires lighting up their merchandise and kept their face somewhat hidden in darkness.

Seth looked around each and every stall, comparing prices and looking for what he wanted and once half an hour had passed he decided to buy his first object.

It was a cool pen that could be used to focus mana at one point to create a single point of high heat. This would melt through metal and Seth thought it would be great for heists to come. It cost 80 gold.

The next item was water creation stone, it condensed the water in the air to refill whatever container it was inside. Seth bought it for 20 Gold and placed it inside his father’s waterskin. It had served him well and Seth cherished the memory by keeping the object close to himself.

Seth didn’t really want to buy any more; he had already spent the equivalent of 100 grand so with the new items he placed inside his bag he exited the underworld.

Seth appeared inside a back alley far closer to home and with the time coming close to noon he went to have some lunch. This time at a restaurant he had found especially appetising.

Named Joni’s Pave-eria it sold Babylon’s finest Pavement. Seth did love himself some pizza and it was probably in his top 3 favourite foods so who could blame him for eating there a lot.

With a happy smile, he ate his pavement and whilst he did he was thinking about how he was going to get an alibi for the upcoming heist.

He could just do it at night, be at a nightclub or something, leave, rob the bank, and reappear in time to make authorities none the wiser. Seth did have a laser pen he could no use to drill directly into the vault.

Seth liked the plan, but he would need to know the security at night before finalising it, so Seth enjoyed the rest of the sunlight by continuing his cultural appreciation mission and once the sun set Seth was ready for some scoping out.

The Casino was part of a block of entertainment buildings and because of this Seth could rule out 2 directions as the building was attached on both sides to other buildings.

So Seth had a back entrance and a front entrance to work with. The front had 2 guards watching the front door both stood right outside the door, and they were just chatting, it was a remarkably simple security idea but incredibly effective.

The backdoor had more leeway to it. Only a single guard was here and perhaps Seth could quickly put the man to sleep before anything happened.

Seth watched the man from across the street and thanks to the darkness of the night Seth managed to watch him all the way until the sun rose and he was swapped out for the day shift.

During this time Seth had noticed a great habit that Seth could easily exploit; the man was terrified of any creature he saw. Many times throughout the night did Seth hear the screams of “SPIDER!!!”

Seth thought of a plan where he could implement his friendly snake.

Seth now needed a few more pieces of information before he went in. He wanted to know how many guards were inside and he wanted to know what sort of vault he would be facing.

To find out what guards were going to be inside Seth just needed to strike up a friendly conversation which with Seth's profound charisma was going to be easy, Seth almost laughed at the ease this mission was going to be.

Before that, Seth had spent the entire night staying up watching someone move every half hour so needless to say he was absolutely shattered. He was going for a rest, but he would be back before they closed to complete the easy mission.(50+ Chapters Ahead)