Chapter 163: This is a Heist Story now.

Chapter 163: This is a Heist Story now.

Nir read over the letter in her hands again. The servants brought it to her, saying it came without a sender, but that it was not magically tampered with. Which seemed strange, because who sent mundane letters these days? But it was the best way to stay unnoticed.

She swiftly opened the document with her claws, reading its contents. Her eyes grew wide at the first line, then just wider and wider from there.

"Nir, we need your help.

You still live with our parents, yes? Then you must know about the scrying field surrounding the mansion. Your friend, Mer, will need to visit tomorrow night. Unnoticed.

If you could possibly make sure the scrying field is down during that time, we would be very thankful.

- Z."

It read.

For a while she was confused what a scrying field was, but then a bit of extra paper appeared at the bottom of the letter.

"Scrying Field = The Dome - Mer," or so the extra bit read.

"Ah, they mean the dome," Nir nodded to herself, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

Inside, though, she was beaming. She could imagine only one idiot who would send her a letter like that. Her br- Zyl, she corrected, even in her head.

He asked her for help. So soon. She'd barely apologized, and he was giving her a chance to help. Trusting her with a plan.

It seemed… secretive. She didn't quite get why it was secret, though. Then again, Ber secretly sent a spy on her. Maybe there were more secrets around than she'd thought.

Nir tilted her head back and forth in front of the letter. It felt a little like Mer was asking her if he could visit. She hadn't had a friend over in a long time. Maybe a secret meeting with a friend would be nice?

She smiled. If her family liked secrets so much, they'd be proud of her for having a little secret of her own, right?

And she'd never liked the dome.

- - - - - -

Mercury would describe flying with Irrithuriel as an experience. It was certainly a thing he'd now done. It was certainly a thing he'd do again. It was also certainly a thing he wished would never happen again.

Since flying as a full on dragon would have been a bit too conspicuous, Irrithuriel simply had a set of wings appear on her back, her clothes shifting to accompany the change in form. He tried to drag out what would inevitably happen next by asking about the clothing, but fate was relentless that day.

A moment later, before he even got the chance to ask, the old lady scooped him up with one arm, and waved goodbye to Zyl with the other, then beat her wings a single time.

Within that motion, she activated about a dozen Skills.

The amount of wind that Mercury suddenly felt push against his face went entirely beyond anything previously comparable. He'd been on the back of a motorcycle before, even on the highway, sure. He'd stuck his head out a car window. He'd gone far too fast to be safe downhill.

This, though?

Even if the incredible noise pressing against his ears hadn't given it away, Mercury knew they were going far above the speed of sound. There was so much wind, it easily blew apart his cheeks, and turned his fur sleek against his body.

There was so much wind that <Adaptable > kicked in, changing his bone structure a little to be less susceptible to air resistance. So much wind that he had to activate the threshold bonus from getting strength past a hundred on his neck, increasing muscle density just to keep his head in place. There was so much wind that, honestly, all the thoughts that weren't dedicated to swearing about how much wind there was considered activating his ihn'ar to see if he couldn't pick up an understanding of the wind.

And then they arrived.

There'd been so much wind, that it felt like it completely blew Mercury's mind blank. When he arrived, his fur was frazzled from the sudden stop, and <Adaptable > was working hard to get him back to a reasonable condition.

He might have been more befuddled, if not for <Itinerant > already making the journey much, much easier on him, and <Unbroken > and <Unrestrained > helping him make it out on the other side.

Mercury took a deep breath of distinctly slower moving air, and unceremoniously hopped down from Irrithuriel's arm. His landing was a bit clumsy, accompanied by a stumble, because he only realized mid-air that he couldn't see his legs anymore.

<Thousand Snowflake Illusion> was already cast, and made it very hard for him to realize how he was stepping. A moment later, he could see an illusory image of his legs, making the coordination much easier.

When he turned around, he saw a murky silhouette of Irrithuriel giving him a weak smile and a half-hearted shrug. She was also hidden, but had weakened her Skill's effect on Mercury specifically, letting him see through it just a bit.

The mopaaw shook his head at the old lady, mentally chiding her for forgetting to do so earlier.

Quickly, though, he focused on his mission again, raising his gaze to look at the mansion. It was still a couple hundred meters out, since they'd flown to the edge of the dome. Mercury couldn't exactly see the dome, but he could definitely feel it was there.

His sense for mana had improved by quite a bit recently, and was almost second nature by now, so he could notice how it grew thicker just a little bit in front of him, like a rounded wall of mana. Which seemed to be indicative of the dome.

And they waited.

Neither Mercury or Irrithuriel spoke as the minutes ticked by. Nir would deactivate the dome for them, or they'd head back and try a new approach. She hadn't sent a letter back, but then again, they really hadn't expected one. Especially since secrecy was quite important. Of course, the fact that they didn't have much of a public address or a sender location on the letter didn't help matters.

Mercury's pondering on the letter they'd sent was interrupted when the air in front of him changed. The mana vibrated for a moment, fizzling like it was being shocked, then the containment stopped. The wall in front of him dissolved, as the mana began to slowly seep into its surroundings again, spreading out.

With a victorious smile, Mercury turned to Irrithuriel, who shot him a determined nod. Then, he triggered <Veil >, which combined with his already active illusionary appearance to make it extremely easy to overlook him entirely. He also had a few nets of very thin <Thread > in his inventory, prepared to help a guard who got a bit too close… forget their encounter.

And then he set off.

Going from the outside to the inside of the dome was still a significant change. There was more mana inside, once compressed and held in place by the scrying-field. Now, of course, the field was gone, and the mana was entirely inert, no longer maintaining an enchantment, but it was still distinctly present.

It was so thick, in fact, that Mercury felt it prickle against his skin. Absorbing some of it could definitely help him grow his mana pool, but that was not what he was here for at all. Instead, he stalked through the way to the mansion.

To get there, they'd picked a bit of a less travelled road, which essentially meant he was going along a mountain path, hopping from ridge to ridge. Soon, the rocks gave way for a much more pleasantly nerve-wracking part of the journey, the gardens.

Dozens of flowers and plants filled his vision as he stepped over the edge of a cliff, catching the first proper glance of the mansion from above. There were guards of all kinds patrolling the premises, clad in metal armor, their boots clanking more or less as they walked.

A moment later, he hopped down the cliff with only a couple jumps. The flowers seemed to welcome him as he hid in the brush, stretching out and veiling him from the guards' sight. They were also <Grass > in a way, after all.

With the help of <Training Weights> he'd even pushed <Veil > to level 3 before coming here, so he had that extra layer of protection, too.

It was already quite dark outside, but with <Night Vision>, Mercury was able to easily maneuver through the gardens, sneaking by the guards. The ones out here seemed tired and careless, many yawning as their shifts went on, or leaning on their weapons if they wielded polearms.

Getting past them was not very difficult for Mercury anymore, especially with how sparse they were.

Only a handful of minutes later, he'd already made it to the main gate of the mansion. The building was huge, carved from different kinds of rock and sculpted beautifully. Its door was taller than any humanoid would reasonably need, seemingly enough to let a giant walk through without too much trouble. The sight made Mercury feel even smaller than he usually did.

But the only thing he cared to notice about the door was that it was distinctly closed, with two guards stationed next to it. Opening it would be very difficult - the door would have to weigh quite a bit, being that huge - so sneaking past was probably the way to go.

A quick look around told Mercury that there were windows, some with baskets of flowers hanging in front of them. A couple even had hanging vines grow along the walls, reaching up to them. A thin smile placed itself on Mercury's face.

Rather than dealing with the door, which was probably trapped to hell and back, he decided to simply walk sideways instead. With a few swift jumps from hiding spot to hiding spot, he'd made it to some of the plants that adorned the mansion walls.

They welcomed him.

<Grass > reached out to the vines, and Mercury could feel their desire to grow, to spread, to use this house as a guide and reach for the sky. He had to only feed them a little bit of enthusiasm, encourage them slightly, and cling onto a newly growing stalk tightly to begin his rapid ascent of the building wall.

Now, maybe if it had been a moonlit night, the guards would have noticed him, but Irrithuriel made sure that the sky was cloudy. It was dark, the air heavy with an approaching storm, and not one person was facing the mopaaw. Their eyes simply slid past his phantom form, deflected by a multitude of abilities.

A moment later, he jumped to the side from the vine, landing on a bed of flowers that was hung on a windowframe. Tiny clumps of earth rained down, but Mercury ignored them. Instead, he tried to open the window.

Locked.

Nothing a swift use of <Telekinesis > could not fix. The latch was inside, but the Skill wasn't exactly confined by walls, but by sight. So, since he could see where the locking mechanism was, he could use his nifty little ghost hands, push it aside, and a second later, he was already inside the building.

Which was where the trouble would start properly.

The spot he arrived in was a hallway, one with a handful of guards patrolling, but he didn't have quite as much darkness to hide in anymore.There were dozens of lamps, magical and otherwise, attached to the walls and the pillars which held up the ceiling.

Mercury almost clicked his tongue, before holding back and realizing that it was a very bad idea. Instead, he funnelled more power into <Veil > and kept moving. He had no idea where the study was, and the building was huge, but that didn't mean his toolkit was empty. <Intuition > and <Seeker Of Secrets> could surely guide him.

[Take a right.] Appy sounded to him, and Mercury followed her advice without hesitation. There was a door there, but it stood open just a smidge, and he quickly squeezed past. A guard looked down at him, but a stray breeze knocked a strand of her hair loose, and by the time she'd tucked it behind her ears, there was nothing to be seen.

A couple breaths later, she shrugged it off, then kept staring into nothingness.

Mercury, for himself, kept following Appy's advice, and whenever she didn't know, he simply went with his gut. Sure, there was a chance it was wrong, but the chance for it to be right was quite literally higher, so he was bound to eventually reach the goal, even if it was highly annoying that he had to double back five times.

There were multiple instances of him almost being discovered, which ended in two uses of his prepared threads, and when on the third time that failed, he used one of Irrithuriel's prepared potions, having the guard fall asleep immediately.

Of course, there was a chance he might remember, but then again, anyone but the most insane people would simply discard the idea of a mopaaw throwing a potion at them as a dream. Far more likely they just fell asleep, no?

But, after a couple dozen hallways, each looking almost the same, and a couple much more special looking rooms, Mercury finally pushed open a door to something different. A desk, bookshelves lining the walls, an expensive looking desk near a window… he'd hit the jackpot.

Except for the fact that there was someone sitting at the table.

Said person was slumped over, and deeply asleep, lying on his arms. The person had hair like seaweed and a thin frame like a breeze could snap him in half. Despite that, he even slightly stirred from the noise of the door opening.

Mercury froze like a deer in headlights, his mind going blank for just a moment, until the man fell asleep entirely again. Why, exactly, Thorythenior was sleeping in his wife's study, Mercury didn't know. And he was sure it was Trinya's study, given the fact that it was orderly.

Zyl didn't talk much about his father, but he certainly wasn't orderly. The man was lazy to the bones, and if he already had to put in the effort of taking a book from a shelf, he certainly wouldn't put in the effort to put it back.

Maybe that was the reason he slept in the study. He needed to go there for something, but then simply didn't see a reason to go back, and laid down on the table.

And now Mercury had to deal with it.

Gritting his teeth, the mopaaw closed the door as silently as he could. The linger effects of <Stealth > that he still had access to, as well as <Quiet >, helped him do so almost soundlessly.

Luckily, there was not even a hint of movement from Thorythenior.

As slowly as he possibly could, Mercury shuffled closer to the desk. That was where the map was most likely to be, but as he hopped onto a lower shelf, Mercury noted that there was very little left on the desk. Anything that had laid on there was sweeped onto the floor by Thorythenior.

Obviously, Mercury has looked at the floor before, but there were only miscellaneous papers there, nothing major.

His gut told him the map was likely to be in one of the desk drawers.

[The map is likely in one of the desk drawers.]

Appy told him the same thing.

Again, it was something Mercury knew as well, except that said drawers were simply hidden behind Thorythenior.

Despite the increasingly large grimace on his face, Mercury set about his work. But he wasn't exactly dumb enough to immediately approach the sleeping man. Instead, he decided to use his best method for this situation.

<Thread >.

His mana was at about a third by now, having sustained <Veil > for multiple minutes, but he still poured more of it into his ability to create string. He made them as thin as he possibly could, more like silk than any type of rope, and simply draped tiny bits of it over the sleeping dragon.

Second after second ticked by, and Thorythenior's sleep seemed to become slightly more restful, to the point where he turned, fell off the chair onto the floor with a thud, and didn't even seem to notice.

Mercury winced at the noise, but also saw his chance, quickly trying to pull open one of the drawers, only to find it locked. He cursed mentally, grimacing, and tried poking around in the lock with <Telekinesis > for half a minute. No chance, the lock seemed entirely different from any normal pin lock or latch he could have dealt with.

None of the other drawers had the map, and there was no key on Thorythenior, so Trinya probably kept it on herself. The grimace on Mercury's face grew deeper. He had to be fast, then.

Quickly, he pulled out another potion, keeping an eye on the thin, frail looking dragon on the floor next to him. He applied a drop of it to the lock, while taking out the ice ink Irrithuriel had given him.

Then, there was a loud snapping noise, followed by some creaking and cranking as the lock undid itself. The mechanical whirring lasted maybe ten seconds or so, but it was enough for Thorythenior to frown and stir some more on the floor, leaving Mercury to reapply some <Thread >, using up more of his mana reserves. He was down to less than 100 Mp now.

With a final loud snap, the lock was done, Mercury pulled open the drawer, spotted the map, held it firmly in his head, and activated the ice ink.

Immediately, black drops of liquid climbed out of the vial, much more than should have fit in, assembling into a model of a mountain range. Multiple spots were marked with circles or other symbols, and a small legend even shaped itself into the corner, explaining what things meant.

Before Mercury had a chance to fully understand any of it, he shoved the construct into his inventory, packed up, and hoped no one noticed the open drawer.

Watching his mana tick down, he hurriedly jumped over to the window, undid the lock, and jumped onto the windowsill.

From outside, he locked it again, giving the inside of the study a last gaze.

He froze.

Thorythenior had one eye open, blearily staring at Mercury.

His eye was dark, almost black in the night, with no light in the study, but Mercury was sure the dragon saw him.

He clung onto some vain hope. Maybe he was asleep and just blinked.

Maybe he wouldn't be seeing properly after waking up in the middle of the night.

Maybe he-

Thorythenior closed his eye, and turned around, no longer facing the window.

With his enhanced hearing, he could barely pick up a grumbling whisper.

"Too bothersome. Not getting up."

After a moment of hesitation, mercury decided he did not need to be told twice. He took his chance, and jumped down from the windowsill, quickly making his escape from the estate.