The Insider System

Chapter 70: Minor Annoyance

Lake didn't need to take a cart out of the guild because the guild was in the center of the city next to the palace so as soon as he walked out of the guild's gate he would be in the nicer part of the city. This was the perfect place to unlock Pickpocket. All Lake needed to do is grab something off one of the people passing by.

"This is the door people go through to exit or enter." Joy had led him to a small door. Lake guessed it didn't make sense to open a huge gate every time a person needed to leave. "I'll see you later Joy." Lake needed to be alone for what he was going to be doing, so even though he knew Joy could get into trouble if she stayed here, he couldn't take her with him just because he enjoyed her company.

The odds of the guild being attacked and her dying were pretty low so it would be ridiculous for him to lug her around with him. Stepping out of the door Lake saw he was on a small staircase that led to the street below. On the street he saw a crowd of people had gathered to gawk at the Alchemist guild.

Lake wondered if it was always like this. He hadn't been able to see this street from his balcony because the wall blocked it from him seeing it. Lake walked down the stairs to see none of the people were actually close enough to touch the guild. They had not entered onto the side of the street the guild was on.

Lake could see the people closest to the guild had their hands up, and were acting like mimes touching the air in front of them like it was a wall. Lake was smart enough to know that they weren't miming, there was probably some kind of wall he was just unable to see it yet. It probably acted like a one way mirror or something, and was completely clear from this side.

Getting to the point where to go any further he would have to push his way into the crowd. Lake stuck his finger out to see if he was able to even pass through the barrier. Lake's finger passed through like there was nothing there, so he shoved his way through. Once the people on the other side realized what was happening they all backed away.

Lake had expected this to happen, because if he was unable to see what was pushing him out of the way, Lake would also give it some space. Lake smiled at all the people looking in his direction but none of them were able to tell because he had put his armor on on the way to the guilds exit. He had had his armor with him in a bag so it would have been stupid to carry it instead of wearing it.

After looking at all the people for a while Lake disappeared or at least that would be what it would look like to them. All he had actually done was jump to the roof of the closest building. There was no reason to push his way through a mob when all he needed to do was take one step to reach here.

Landing on the roof Lake turned to look towards the guild Lake saw from this side it looked like the guild had been swallowed by a huge cloud. He guessed this wasn't normal and that was why all these people came to investigate. If Lake had lived here and saw this he would have taken the hint and hid or ran away but he guessed all these people weren't able to tell this was a bad thing.

Once he was done looking at the guild, Lake looked back into the crowd to see if any of the gathered people were able to follow him with their eyes. Lake saw multiple people looking at him on top of the building and marked them. Lake knew some of the people in the crowd were sent here to find information.

The people who were able to see him move that fast were more likely to be spies with high Perception and they were likely to follow him once he started moving away from the guild. Lake knew there were others around he was unable to see because they were hiding, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

Lake started hopping from rooftop to rooftop while trying his best not to make it obvious he was watching his back. It didn't take long to see some of the marks he had placed were following behind him just down below on the ground. A few of them had also grouped up which meant he was probably dealing with organizations with a lot of manpower.

Lake wasn't against using these people to level up but he knew it would be stupid to just try and kill them all, because the stronger ones would just use the opportunity to sneak up on him, and he would just be trapped in a different guild. Lake decided his best bet would be to try and outrun them.

Even if it didn't work on all of them it would still lessen the number of people he would have to fight. Picking up his pace a little, Lake started to head around the guild. Lake thought it would be stupid to run away from the one place he would be safe if the situation got out of hand. Lake was just going to do a lap around the huge barrier that was surrounding the huge guild.

He figured this would give whoever planned to attack him plenty of time to do so. Then Lake would access and run if he thought he had no chance of winning. With Burst he should be able to at least surprise whoever it was and make it to the barrier. After a while of running Lake saw most of the marks had either fallen behind or given up, and he was just dealing with 5 that were still on his trail.

Seeing it was so easy to get these people to lose interest made Lake think if he was to go back into the guild after the lap, and do this again later it would make the people following him think he was just someone the guild had told to keep an eye on the situation outside. If he made it seem like he was a nobody the guild didn't care about he would be able to do anything.

The fact that he was out here already made it seem like at best he was some messenger who might know something, but he should be able to demote himself in their minds by wasting some time. Then the only thing that would make them pay attention to him was his armor that was very obviously not a guards armor.

His armor wasn't really that noteworthy though so it didn't make him seem important, his armor wasn't even enchanted, just durable. Anything better would have taken much longer to get to him, so he had settled for something he could get in a few days. He had chosen this because he wanted something in case he was able to escape before schedule.

He had figured something was better than nothing but now that he was going to stay with the guild he had time to order something better. He also wouldn't mind if it looked like a guards armor because it would make it easier to blend in whenever he left the guild. Of course the best thing would be if he didn't need to go through any of this and he could just walk outside and blend in with the crowd.

With the fact that anyone who came through the barrier would draw a massive amount of attention, wanting to blend in wasn't really realistic. Lake just needed to get all eyes off him, because his skill Trespasser would take care of the rest. This actually made Lake remember he had another skill from Thief that was being used right now.

It was also the reason he knew there were so many people paying attention to him. His skill A Thief's Sense made him aware of the amount of attention he was drawing. Lake had had it for so long he had forgotten that this wasn't normal. Using this skill he would be able to tell when he was fine to head into the city with no one following him.

...

Lake had just stepped out of the barrier for the third time and he could feel almost no one was actually looking at him anymore. The crowd had also started to disperse. He guessed what was happening wasn't interesting enough for people to miss work. Starting his lap around the guild Lake could tell no one had bothered following him this time.

Lake took this as a sign that this was his chance to blend into the crowd and he did just that. Lake landed in a small group of people that were walking down the street. Nodding at the only person that had seen him land, Lake said. "Nice day today." The person just shook their head in agreement and looked down at the ground.

Lake knew these people saw people who could do stuff like Lake had done everyday, and they had no reason to care, especially when he had armor and a weapon. They would just think he was an adventurer or something. Lake looked up at the sky and saw he still had more than half the day left before he needed to find somewhere to sleep.

Lake didn't want to go back to the guild tonight and have to do this all over again tomorrow because he doubted it would work. To pull this off he was going to need some money. After thinking this, Lake looked around at all the people in front of him. Some of them had pouches on their waists or bags on their backs, so it wasn't hard to find a victim, it just took a little effort to find a good one that couldn't fight back.