He woke up refreshed and ready, so he got changed into an interesting disguise, which he then enhanced, and ate before practically running towards the casino. Ignoring how much he looked like an addict he blitzed through the door and walked towards a guard.
“Hello, Jason,” Seth read the nameplate, “I was looking for a job in being a guard and was wondering if the place was hiring.”
Jason looked at Seth, who was still fairly muscular from his training and decided to answer the strange mam. “No I don’t think we need anyone else right now but I’m just a guard you’d have to ask my manager for a better answer.”
“Thanks then,” Seth walked off before returning, “Where’s your manager?”
Jason smiled; it wasn’t every day your boring job turned fairly entertaining.
“In the back, I’ll show you” Seth was surprised by how helpful this guard was, but he summed his success up to his charm. Seth wasn’t that conceited; he could get this bored guard to enjoy his little antic and in exchange for his entertainment he would help Seth in whatever he was doing.
They walked over to a backroom where Seth continued asking odd questions and doing little shuffles to the background music. He either looked weird or on drugs and considering his outfit the guard summed Seth up as amusingly weird.
Seth and the guard arrived at a backroom where an old man was looking intently at some documents. “Loss, another loss, ah finally a win.” Both Seth and the guard watched him for a moment before the guard coughed loud enough to get his attention.
“Ah dear god, you scarred me! Fred don’t sneak up on an old man like that or a pay cut may be in order.”
Seth noticed the guard's lack of negative reaction and guessed that the two may be closer than he guessed.
The old man continued his questioning, it seemed he was using a skill to view the games in his casino. It was a very average skill and one that anyone would learn when entering a casino. It was a good way to void off cheaters so there was a sign on the door that said `Be wary Cheaters of our Monitor skill, we are watching!`
Whilst the old man was scolding his relative Seth saw a nice painting on his desk. It was of a family next to a nice home and Seth saw the old man hugging what he assumed to be his sons. Looking at the many people in the painting it seemed the old man was a family enthusiast and looking at the smile Seth could almost feel his happiness come through the painting.
`That Painter must have cost a pretty penny` Seth thought, as a reaction to these foreign emotions.
Once the old man had finished his little joke he started to ask the real questions, “So why have you decided to bother me and who’s that next to you?”
The guard answered, “This man wants to meet you for potential employment”.
Seth nodded and said, “Yeah I was wanting to see if you needed any help with your security.”
The old man nodded and asked the guard to leave, “Right then we don’t really need any help with that. Our vault is as secure as it can get, that damn thing cost me nearly a thousand gold!”
As much as the old man was bragging, it really did explain his carelessness towards security.
“Sorry about that young lad. Employment is tough nowadays, but it will get better eventually so keep looking and you’ll find something eventually.”
With the positive encouragement the old man tried to get Seth to leave but he wanted to know one thing beforehand.
“Can I at least see what real security work looks like first? My motivation for looking for jobs has been waning and I feel if I see a good example like this I’ll be able to enter my interviews with far more motivation than before. Please...” Seth looked at him with makeshift puppy eyes. (!!!)
Sometimes begging was the best way around problems and Seth used the fact that the old man was likely a family man to try and get some more information out of him.
It worked with the old man folding to Seth's immaculate charm. This time he could thank his interesting disguise. The reason they found Seth so innocent, and curious was due to his choice of outfit.
He was wearing some fluffy clothes, a scarf and a bobble hat which gave him off as younger than he really was. Add that to his enhancement magic and Seth was able to create a disguise that could make any kind of person surrender.
Especially to someone like the old man who had grandchildren and his disguise was super effective.
Seth was led to the basement where he got to see the entire set-up. 2 guards, each armed with weapons and this time they weren’t distracted. They seemed like they were on constant standby, and their robotic stillness made Seth almost weirded out by their determination.
The old man noticed Seth's odd looks and so he explained his 2 guards' strange habit, “Those two are Mob and Rob, twins who compete with each other to see who can stay still the longest. Both want to eventually become guards to the king, so they stay alert all shifts. They’re the best an employer could ask for.”
The old man looked incredibly proud at that point, and one could easily tell that he treated his employees like family, his nest words only reinforced that. “Those two were some of the first people I hired and have done me well throughout the years. Anyway,” he seemed embarrassed of his own emotions, so he moved on quickly.
“The vault is my most prized possession.”
Seth could see why; it was not only large but entirely made of metal. It radiated less mana than the Lords but more mana than the Treasuries and Seth could say for certainty that if he had done the plan not knowing the rank of the vault he would have not been prepared and it all would have been for nothing.
He had guessed the vault to be rank 5 or maybe rank 6, he didn’t expect it to be rank 8. Luckily Seth's real reaction and the reaction of the character he was playing was that different, mostly just shock but the character had some pinches of awe sprinkled in.
“Wow!” It was much easier to lie through speaking than through expressions, especially for a nonexpert like Seth. Seth turned to the old man and said maybe the most childish thing he had ever said, and Seth cringed when saying it but held it in for the character demanded he did something along those lines.
“Thank you, uncle!” Seth wanted to run and hide but the plan came over all and the money at the end of the tunnel was a good motivator for him to keep going.
Luckily for Seth the old man enjoyed his little show and after showing him some of the security features like a tripwire and the sort of Seth had to say he needed to go.
“Sorry, my mum is waiting for you at home.”
“It's okay young man and although you didn’t get the job today you can still be a guard eventually. Tell you what if you don’t get a job in the next year I’ll hire you myself, I was planning to expand around that time anyway.”
Seth was starting to feel bad; this man was a bit too kind for a casino owner. But he had already begun, and experience was needed to reach godhood, so Seth sucked up his emotions and pledged to leave enough for the old man and only take some money.
It would reduce likely his experience gain, but Seth actually didn’t care. This was beyond his greed and had to do with his morals and Seth now only wanted to warn the old man of his lack of security.
Seth walked out feeling happy and ready to complete his heist. He just needed to plan a bit more and he would done.
The first thing he started planning against was the Mob and Rob duo which Seth didn’t think he could deal with. Although they weren’t highly levelled, they were highly competent and that was arguably harder to deal with. (!!)
A sleeping potion, ignoring Seth's lack of supply, was too expensive and considering how the two stood apart he would need not one but two, doubling his necessary expenditure. That would be if he threw them, if he used rag he could get away with only using his backup.
But Seth didn’t really want to use his last potion supply, so he wanted to think of a new plan where he only relied on himself. The plan he came up with was simple.
Just don’t rob the casino when it's them on shift. It was remarkably easy once Seth thought of it, but it was one of those things where if you didn’t think about it immediately you would struggle to think about it at all and it would completely avoid you.
The mind was truly a weird thing.
Set continued creating a plan worthy enough to be called the product of Mastermind Thief and by the time the sun went down, he had created a plan that seemed good enough. Sadly Seth didn’t want to settle for good enough, so he decided too extra thorough.
He wanted to learn about the safe and since he had a great look at the safe from his undercover mission Seth reckoned he could identify it if he did some shopping. Even better was the fact he had a price point, so Seth walked his way across Babylon to a popular vault store nearest to the Casino.
He walked into the brick store and immediately noticed that the change in wealth made a large difference to the level of security people had. Seth could hardly see anything below rank 4 and the prices on the top safes were enough to make Seth salivate.
Clearly, Seth had his work cut out for him and his next heists were already guaranteed to be harder than his previous ones. He wasn’t deterred by such a fact, but the added experience gains were instead great motivators towards getting his aim of immortality realised.
Seth looked around the store for the safe he had seen previously and looking around he saw a few that were similar in look but different in price, or similar in price but different in look. Seth eventually gave up on his search and went to a different store.
This one was renowned in the city, and one could tell why just by looking at its storefront. Glass, so much glass stood staring into a main street in the dead centre of the city. Seth dreaded to know the cost of such luxury and when Seth entered the store it somehow got worse.
They used light orbs like they were candy, and the shelves were encrusted with gold. Even the salesman was wearing clothes better than Seth had ever owned.
Seth was feeling rather intimidated but looking at the price ranges he was seeing amounts closer to his target, so he started looking around. Most vaults in the store were rank 6 and above and finding a rank 8 vault at 1k gold was not a terribly hard goal.
Seth quickly found the right vault sitting near the centre of the store, apparently, it was a popular model given its `affordable` price point. Seth was astonished by the salesman saying that the price was nowhere near affordable and guessed that this store was used by the uber-wealthy. Seth realised their sense of scale was incredibly messed up.
Anyway, Seth asked for the security features of the vault to which he gained knowledge of its locking mechanism to its backdoor access. Seth listened carefully as he learned what he would be facing.
Knowing about the security would reduce the time the Pick Lock spell takes to unlock the vault, considering that Seth judged it would take 2 hours, if he helped, for the vault to unlock and considering the vault was made of steel and Seth had no chance of taking it with him, as it was so big, he decided to unlock it on site.
With all the knowledge needed secured Seth only needed to finalise his plan, prepare the equipment, and choose a date. All were easy but none he could mess up. He walked out of the store thinking carefully about his next choice of plan.
The first thing Seth did was prepare an alibi. It was the night of the heist and Seth had chosen the date because it was guaranteed that the twins wouldn’t be on shift.
He was in a tavern drinking with his friend Rat and whilst Seth was keeping a Serene Mind his friend was off the hook. Rat wasn’t the best at holding his drinks and Seth would use this to his advantage.
Seth told his friend he was going to the toilet and with no time to spare he climbed out the shutter window of the bar toilets. Below the window, on the street-facing side, was a backpack that had everything Seth needed for the heist.
For now, Seth did nothing but walk home. He needed to pick up another friend of his.
///
As always, have a nice day.
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