The Insider System

Chapter 407: Not My Problem Pt.3

After four hours of jumping around the city, taking the most expensive things he saw, Lake decided it was time to head home. He still had other things he wanted to do before leaving, and his bag was full, so if Lake took anything else, Lake would have to drop what he already had.

It was a wasteful use of time, though he did think leaving things slightly worse than what he took would be funny. It wasn't funny enough to do, though, so he quickly returned to the guild and his room. Upon entering, he sent off one of his servants to get him a bag that he would transfer his newly acquired things into.

None of them were expensive, so running off to sell them now wouldn't be worth the time, but once he had a few bags filled to the brim, he would make a trip to the thieves guild. That was, of course, if Lucas didn't have anyone to do it for him.

Now that Lucas had been willing to put up with his thievery, having the guild behind him when negotiating prices would be lucrative. Once he had the new bag in hand, Lake opened it up and transferred all the items within his over to clear space. When his hand touched the runic knife, Lake stopped because the rest of the things inside were things he wanted to keep with him.

He did take the knife out and set it on the table, though, because it was one of the reasons he had returned to the guild hours before he needed to go. This item was mysterious, but it never had to be with him having a skill that could tell him more details than he could ever need.

Inspecting the Knife, Lake went to work sorting through the information that appeared in his vision, but about halfway through, he stopped and shoved the knife back into Booster Bag. One of the facts he had just read said this item was magically marked, and putting it back inside the space created by Booster Bag would keep that from being a problem.

He wasn't entirely sure, but putting something inside a pocket space should be similar to being inside a barrier, which would interfere with the tracking. Standing up, Lake ran out of his room and down the stairs to Lucas' office. "Where's the person I should bring stolen things to?"

He wasn't doing a great job hiding his panic, so it was clear to Lucas that he needed the information enough that it was okay for him to be bothering him. "He's on floor two, a man named Felg. Tell him I sent you, and he'll work on your problem first."

As he headed towards the elevator, Lake nodded to Lucas before saying. "Thank you for your time." It had only been a few seconds, but Lucas was busy making saying thank you a polite thing to do. Getting off on two, Lake used Detector to look for Felg, but it ended up being unnecessary because after a few seconds of walking down the hall, a man glowing gold ran towards him.

"Lucas told me to come meet you. Come with me this way." Lake had forgotten about the mirror thing Lucas had that let him talk to anyone at any time, but it was clear to Lake that it was responsible for making this happen. "Sorry about the scare." He meant this in two ways, but Felg didn't seem to be listening, focused on not hitting anyone as they ran through the hall.

Taken into a small room that looked slightly like a storefront, Lake was about to ask Felg what they were about to do, but they didn't stop there, quickly entering the door behind the counter. "Take out the item and put it on the table. I'll be right back." Doing what Felg said, Lake took the knife out and set it down before looking over to see Felg changing his clothes.

Quickly turning away, afraid Felg might be taking everything off to change, Lake asked. "What's about to happen?" He thought for a second that Felg might ignore him again, but before he turned his head to look the man's way, he got an answer. "I'll be trying to identify how your item could change to make it so it can't be identified as stolen any longer."

Lake actually wanted all of his items stolen because it made Inner Vault double the bonuses he received from the item, but he didn't want to say that because it might sound weird, so he asked. "Could you just remove however they're tracking it?"

"It depends. Let me look at it before I tell you what I can or can't do." Turning because it sounded like Felg was approaching him, Lake saw the man's face twist with confusion when he saw what he had brought him. "Would you be okay with just throwing it out? This item couldn't be worth much of anything."

"It's more than it seems." Lake didn't clarify what he meant by this because his only evidence was that it was useless when he put it inside Inner Vault and that trash was better, but that sounded like good reasons to throw it away. "If you say so."

After Felg said this, he stopped talking or moving, and Lake took that to mean he was appraising the knife. A few minutes later, he finally moved again and looked his way, saying. "You were right; there's something weird about this knife. I'd recommend throwing it away again but for a different reason this time."

"You don't have any other recommendations?" Getting a shake of Felg's head as his only answer, Lake asked. "Why?" There was clearly a problem that would make Felg say he should get rid of the knife, and he wanted to know what it was. "I can't get any details from the item, which leads me to believe it would be dangerous for you to keep it near you."

"Well, what about this? Can you see anything about this item?" Taking one of the other ruined items from his bag and setting it on the table, Lake gave Felg the time to appraise it. "Yeah, this one has a simple tracking mark on it. I could get rid of it if you would like me to."

"Could you do that on this item as well, even without being able to tell the mark is there." Felg seemed to think this was a good idea because he shrugged instead of saying no. "Do you have any more items for me to look at?" Nodding, Lake started to take everything he had acquired over the last few days out for Felg to look at, including the things inside Inner Vault.

"Alright, this might take a while." Lake was okay with that but didn't feel he needed to be here for the entire process. "I'll be back in a few hours. Is that alright?" Getting a nod from Felg, Lake went to his room to read his map. He had started to assume that Detector would work well with a map being able to highlight words on a page, but he wasn't sure if this was right or not just yet because he hadn't tried it out yet.

He could see something like the map not being a good version of how the world looked getting in the way if he didn't word it right, but that was why Lake wanted to get the correct wordage down before he and Lucas left.

Unfolding the map, Lake stared at it for a while before taking out his list and setting Detector to look for the place on a map that represented the location of the first item on his list. Hilariously, this worked on the first try, but seeing that the map had a high degree of accuracy, he wanted to find a better way to use it with Detector.

After thinking for a while, Lake set Detector to look for the part of the map that represented the distance between him and the first item on his list and was delighted when a line formed on the map. If he were to run in a straight line while following what the map said, the line should shrink as he moved, which would be a helpful way for him to gauge how long it would take him to arrive in the future.

Wanting to see if he could push it even further, Lake set Detector to look for the place on the map that represents the location of each item on this list. When dozens of dots appeared on the map, Lake knew he had a good way of knowing which journal would be the closest later.

The new method of using Detector he had just found would save him and Lucas a lot of wondering as they no longer had to run in a direction unaware of how much further it was when they went after the closest journal.