Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 22

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The village didn’t really have a problem with theft despite the fact that none of the homes even had doors, let alone locks. One part was that people just didn’t have much worth stealing, but another part was that the population was so small. Everyone knew everyone, and if someone did steal a bracelet or a shirt or a garden spade, they were going to get caught immediately.

I was sure there were people who would steal just for the thrill of it, but it hadn’t been an issue in the last nine months or so. Or, if it had, I hadn’t been made aware of it. Regardless, theft wasn’t really a problem. People had no need to lock things up, or even to have locks in general.

The Collectors’ headquarters was an exception to that rule. It was made of the same mud bricks as every other hut in the village, but its windows had locking shutters and the entryways both had actual wooden doors on them with real locks. I spared a moment to wonder if the village blacksmith had made them; I’d never seen him produce anything more than farming tools, and most of that work was repair jobs. The village had a serious lack of raw metal to work with.

There were two moons out tonight, luckily both small ones. Tuamar the purple moon and Lasrin the red hung in the sky, casting the world into shadows that I moved through. No curtains stirred in the huts around me as I walked by, and my steps were silent. I was constantly scanning for movement, but came up empty. Perfect.

It took less than ten minutes to make it to the village square, largely because without Senica along to drag her feet the whole way, I was able to move at full speed. I approached the Collectors’ headquarters cautiously, wary of any ward lines I might cross. I was confident there weren’t any, but it would be foolish not to check, so I took half a minute to confirm there was nothing on the door or hidden behind it.

Most of my confidence stemmed from the fact that while wards themselves might be difficult to see, I would have known instantly if there was a ward stone in the building to power them. At least, I would know if it was active and full of mana. Ward stones weren’t necessary to set up a ward, but it wouldn’t last very long off just the mana invested in it by a single mage. Considering how starved for mana the whole village was, I doubted Noctra was going to spare some for anywhere but his own manor.

But on the off chance that he was inclined to do that, I couldn’t think of a place more likely to be protected than right here. This was where all the mana he stole from the village was stored until he could take direct control of it, after all. Worse, it was all locked into a draw stone, where it could be taken by literally anybody who could lift more than fifteen or twenty pounds. Even if they couldn’t get the mana back out, it would be just as lost to Noctra.

My suspicions were misplaced. There was no ward, not outside the door and not behind it. Noctra either didn’t think his draw stones were worth protecting in such a manner or he was just too mana-poor to do even basic alarm wards. Or maybe he didn’t know how. I had seen no actual evidence of any wards anywhere in the village, not even the supposed barrier that protected us all from monsters.

I couldn’t afford to assume there wouldn’t be any defenses ahead of me just because I hadn’t seen them yet. It was imperative that my theft of mana from the draw stones go undiscovered until at least tomorrow. Tonight, I’d complete my mana crystal and start filling it. Then just before dawn, I’d break into the manor and find Father. All of this assumed that the draw stones weren’t empty.

My unlock spell took a few seconds to finish analyzing the lock and manipulate it into opening, but then I was through. I closed the door silently behind me, but left it unlocked. If I was lucky, I’d be making at least two more trips before my mana crystal was portable and I could finish draining the entire stash, and there was no point in wasting mana on repeatedly unlocking a door. It wasn’t like anyone was awake to check on it anyway. At least I hoped not.

The inside of the building was significantly darker than the outside, illuminated only by the thin strips of magenta moonlight coming in around the outside edges of the shutters. The first thing I saw was the familiar four tables up against a wall to my right, two on the floor and two flipped upside-down to sit on top of them. The chairs were missing, but I spotted them a moment later on the far side of the room as part of a mis-matched collection surrounding a dinner table, one which still had dirty plates and what passed for silverware sitting on it.

Apparently, tidiness wasn’t a prerequisite to join the Collectors. Hopefully their draw stones were better organized and maintained.

An open doorway behind the table led to a kitchen, which had a back door and no other exits. It was hard to tell with just the slivers of moonlight to illuminate the place, but I thought the kitchen wasn’t in much better shape than their dining room was.

Another doorway led to a simple office where the paperwork the Collectors filled out every evening was stored. It had a single desk flanked by shelves on either side, and the chair for it was missing. I glanced back at the table with its mismatched set and shook my head with a smile.

The only other exit from the front room was a hall leading off to the right. It had entryways with curtains hanging from them every ten feet or so on either side of the room, eight in total. These then would be the bedrooms for the Collectors, and the place I was most likely to be caught despite being the darkest part of the building. I paused at the front of the hall to listen.

Soft snores came from behind the curtain to my left. That was one Collector accounted for, seven more to go. I assumed they were all in their rooms, but that wasn’t necessarily true. Worse, I could see candle light coming from underneath the curtain on the third room on the right. One of them could have fallen asleep without extinguishing the candle, but it was just as likely someone was awake in there.

My target was the door at the end of the hall, and it was a door, unlike all the privacy curtains. I could barely see it in the dark, but I was willing to bet it had its own lock. Perhaps I could save myself some mana and swipe a key from one of the Collectors, but that meant spending time trying to find it and the risk of waking up whoever was in the room I ended up searching.

I was getting ahead of myself. Maybe the door wouldn’t be locked. Before I could find out, I needed to get down the hallway undetected. I moved forward slowly, ears straining to listen for noise. Since this was among the most dangerous parts of my attempted burgling, I even spent a bit of mana to use a sense-sharpening invocation for a few seconds.

As I’d expected, that third room on the right was the problem. There were two people inside, arguing softly, and I couldn’t help but laugh to myself when I heard the subject.

“Look,” a man said. I thought I recognized the voice as the Collector who oversaw the table just next to the one my family was assigned to. “It’s your week to clean the dishes. That means getting the water too. Just because Tsurai is sweet on you and normally brings it over doesn’t mean you get to skip your chores when he’s too busy.”

“I’ll get it done tomorrow,” the other Collector snapped. That voice I couldn’t place; she was probably one of the Collectors who did Testings and the like.

“You say that, but every time your turn comes up, it’s always excuses until Dracken gets sick of looking at it and does it for you.”

Roommate problems. A tale as old as time. I remembered back when I was fourteen, just before my core had ignited, I’d had similar fights with the two other kids I was living with. None of us were interested in cleaning anything, and in all fairness, we had very little worth the effort. Our home had been a rundown old shop that had been abandoned for decades. We were just the latest in a long string of squatters hiding from the Sentinels there.

This plan was a bust if I had two Collectors up and moving around. It looked like I was going to have to spend some mana on a pair of sleep spells after all. My core was barely full enough to manage it, and if any other problem cropped up that required magic to overcome, I was going to be screwed. At the same time, I couldn’t hide in the building for hours and hope that these two night owls would go to bed.

There was a third option that would only cost me half the mana, but it did leave me open to considerably more risk. I could cast an aura of silence around myself that would prevent any sound I made from traveling more than a foot away from me. With that active, I could walk by the curtain and into the draw stone room and, as long as nobody looked out into the hallway, remain completely undetected.

It would get me access to the draw stones, but I’d need to use it again when I left. It’d still be slightly cheaper than a pair of sleep spells, and it would have the advantage of not giving away that there was somebody in the village who was capable of casting intermediate level enchantments. But if I had to make multiple trips and the two Collectors were still awake when I came back, it would be a net negative on the total amount of mana I harvested.

On the other hand, if the draw stones were empty, I would only be wasting half as much mana to find out since I could simply continue to channel the aura of silence spell and walk right back out. Using aura of silence to sneak past them when I knew I’d have to come back through here several more times was ultimately a losing strategy that only won out if there were wards on the door or if the draw stones were empty. If I didn’t come away from this with more mana than when I started, it was all pointless and Father was likely doomed.

Noctra needed to touch someone to cast his inferior version of a sleep spell, and he needed to verbally chant the runes that went into constructing it. I needed to do neither. All I required was a visible target, and even that could be accomplished through divination magic. But why waste the mana when I could simply pull the curtain aside far enough to peer into the room?

“What the-” one of the Collectors started to say when he saw my eye looking at him. He made it halfway out of his sitting position before collapsing back onto the bed and flopping over.

The other one, the woman, had just enough time to look surprised and turn to face the doorway fully before I finished casting the second sleep spell. I winced when she dropped straight down to the floor, but she’d probably be fine. Based on the awkward position she’d fallen in, I expected her back would be killing her after she woke up. Oops.

With that obstacle taken care of, it was time to find out whether this whole venture was worth it. I crept past the last two rooms and stopped in front of the door at the end of the hallway.

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