The Insider System

Chapter 412: Not My Problem Pt.8

Finding a group of guards, Lake walked up to them and said. "I just saw someone break into a house over there." This trick worked the last time he'd used it to get something, so he had faith that with just a few adjustments, it would work this time as well.

"Where?" The guards didn't even look at him before they were ready to go, which showed that they would probably believe almost anything he said as long as his acting was good. "I'll bring you, follow me."

Not wanting the guards to realize this situation was weird, Lake made sure to run fast both to get there in less time and to make sure it seemed like there was actually an emergency where they were going.

"It's this house here." After saying this, Lake turned around to see how the guards would react to him telling them this was the house and saw that they all looked perturbed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Seeing they looked like they had given up on stopping the crime, Lake knew he had been correct to run away instead of stealing the helmet. "Alright then, can you go in to stop a crime, or do we have to wait out here for them?"

"We have to wait out here." Lake nodded to this and pointed at the door. "Are you going to knock to tell the people inside?" Lake already had all the information he needed to know going back inside was a bad idea, but he wanted one of the guards to say something that would let him ask who owned the house without it coming from nowhere.

"No one inside other than the thief."

"How do you know that? Is the house abandoned because it looks pretty nice if it is?" The guards all looked at one another for a while before one finally answered. "We're not sure. This house has been off limits to everyone for years, and while we've all heard rumors on why, no one knows what's true."

Lake knew this was a good line of questioning for him to go down because rumors tended to be at least somewhat accurate if you could separate the facts out of what you heard, and he had confidence he could with what he already knew. "What kind of things do people say?"

After his question, the guards stayed quiet for a while, but they soon came to a silent consensus that repeating rumors had no consequences for them since anyone would probably tell him if he asked, and they all started to repeat what they'd heard.

"My father says the home used to belong to someone who was involved with the death of the Holy Goddess."

"It belongs to the king. He comes here to escape all the prying eyes in the capital."

"My sister lives nearby and says a black figure moves around inside occasionally. She says it's taller than normal people and peers at passersby from the windows."

Taking all the rumors in, Lake decided there were enough details that made it sound like a Demigod was using this house for something to leave. He'd assumed this to be the case when his skills couldn't figure out who owned this home, but now it was confirmed, so he wouldn't risk going back inside. "Oh wow, maybe we should just leave then. Whatever's happening inside is probably too much for us to handle."

Lake was about to leave even if the guards decided to stand here and wait for the person who went inside to come out, but he felt a reaction like this was the right one for him to have to what they just said. "No, we'll stay and watch for a while. You can go if you don't feel safe, though."

Lake didn't stick around for long after the guard said this because he couldn't ask for a better excuse to leave, but he still couldn't help looking back a few times as he left the town. He really wanted the helmet, and the fact the Demigod wasn't around or using the item currently made him feel he could take it without repercussions.

Stopping on the edge of town, Lake started to head back towards the house as he took his arrow out. Because Detector could locate the item, he could use it to find out if the helmet had a tracking mark placed on it from a distance before he actually tried to take it from the house.

And as long as all he did was touch it, he could wait till he was back at the guild and with Felg to summon it to him. Making the amount of time he had the helmet before giving it to Felg as short as possible would make the risk to him negligible, so he was more than okay taking it.

Done using the arrow to gather information on the helmet, Lake went underground so the guard he'd led there earlier wouldn't see him, and before long, he was back in the house. Staying low so no one would see him through the windows, Lake passed through a few walls until he was in the same room as the helmet.

Taking the time to look around for traps before getting any closer, Lake saw other things in this room and used Mana Vision to see if he could see them because he didn't think he had earlier. As he'd thought nothing other than the helmet was visible to him while he was using Mana Vision, so he turned to Detector to find out why that was.

Setting it to look for items over level 40, Lake was disappointed that nothing else started to glow, but Lake guessed the only item the Demigod decided to keep that was actually worth anything was the helmet, while the rest were just regular clothes.

Knowing this area was devoid of traps, Lake started walking towards the helmet and set a single finger on it before turning to leave. Once he was back outside, Lake closed the ground behind him so no one would fall through and ran out of the town while taking out his list to identify the next item he'd be going after.

A few seconds later, Lake had the name of the next target, but without his map, he didn't know how far he'd have to go to retrieve it. It was in the Holy Domain section of his list, though, so it wouldn't be too far that he'd end up being late to getting home.

Third Eye Estimated Lv.50

A mana vessel that acts like a third eye for the owner

Around an hour later, Lake found himself heading up a hill, and with the arrow pointing towards the top, he figured the item he was after would be in the wooden fortress he'd just gotten his first glimpse of. He hadn't been able to see it from the bottom, but now that he knew people were living up there, he switched Detector to look for the Third Eye.

As he got closer to the fortress, he eventually saw a small thing near the top of the fortress start to glow. Having his target's location identified, Lake was about to go into the ground so he wouldn't get spotted by the person with the Third Eye but stopped when he felt a searing beam of attention lock onto him.

Stopping and looking back at the Third Eye, Lake wondered if his locking onto it with Detector had been the reason it had found him or if he'd just gotten too close, but either way, going underground probably wouldn't have helped him because there were plenty of things between them that should have stopped it from being able to see him.

Starting to run again, Lake heard people yelling about an incoming enemy. With it only being a few seconds since he was first spotted, Lake had to assume the people inside were decently strong, already getting ready for an attack in such a short amount of time.

He didn't think they would be ready for him to go through the wall right into where the person with the Third Eye was, though, so he didn't worry about it. Once he arrived at the wall of the fortress, Lake jumped upwards until he was level with the person using the Third Eye, where he then used Wind magic to make a platform to jump off of towards the wall.

Passing through the wooden wall of the fortress, Lake saw a woman around his age pressing an amulet to her forehead, wide-eyed and looking directly at him. Lake couldn't help but smile a bit at how surprised she looked to see him, but his smile didn't last long because a beam of light shot from the girl's finger toward his face.

Lake, not having much time because of the speed of Light magic, clumsily dodged to the side just in time to hear the girl scream for backup. Knowing another dash straight at her probably wouldn't work with her being fast enough to react to his attempts to touch the Third Eye, Lake used Ghost Touch to open a place for him to slip into the room below.

Falling to the ground, Lake found himself in the middle of a crowd of people, all heading for a staircase up to where the girl with the Third Eye was. Feeling a little awkward about this, Lake was about to greet them all before jumping to use Ghost Touch on the ground the girl was standing on, but he was beaten to it when the people closest to him all shot spells of various types from their hands.