Nick began to realise that he had been rather wrong. The second floor was an entirely different kettle of fish. It certainly wasn’t going to be the same smooth sailing experience that the third floor had given him. His first close call had been in the hidden servant's staircase. Just as he’d been about to open the door to the second floor he’d heard footsteps on the other side, thinking quickly he ran down the stairs towards the first floor. He just barely made it out of the line of sight of whoever came through the door, the cramped conditions and low level of light saving his ass. He held his breath until the footsteps disappeared up the staircase and then very cautiously made his way out onto the second floor.

He found himself in a much larger room, this one still clearly dedicated to the servants though. There were counters and massive piles of boxes everywhere, set up in suspiciously useful stacks spaced apart throughout the room. It almost looked like the perfect layout for someone to sneak around the room. Nick quickly discovered why he might need such a layout when he noticed that the room was filled with servants bustling around. They were engaged in various tasks, folding sheets, ironing, stitching things, all things that Nick just had to assume that servants did. The servants were moving around the room in patterns, rotating from task to task.

Nick crept closer and finally got a look at the servants' features. They most certainly weren’t human. They had the features of a human, but their faces never moved. Their waxy eyes never blinked, their mouths were set in a slight smile, and their skin had no wrinkles or blemishes. Their joints were unnatural, the limbs connected by fixed points and only able to move in certain patterns. These were dolls of some sort, very realistic human-looking dolls, but still dolls. Nick was in some sort of lifesized dollhouse, doll-palace? While the sight was unsettling, it did ease a lot of the burden on his mind. If the hotel could make people, he at least didn’t have to deal with them yet.

Nick stealthy made his way around the room, moving between boxes whenever the servants moved. It was actually kind of fun, it was like he was playing a stealth-based game but in real life. Wait, was this real life? Nope, Nick wasn’t going there. Nick made it to the edge of the room and used Treasure Sense. He was quickly flooded with information about the floor. There was a lot of rather valuable stuff down here, if he had to estimate, then he’d say the second floor held treasure at least three times as valuable as the third floor. Nick turned his attention to the floor below him. When he used the skill again he could roughly tell that the value of items doubled again on the first floor.

This allowed Nick to work out a pretty clear progression. The lower the floor of the palace, the higher value of the treasure and likely the higher difficulty of getting the treasure. Nick would have to see how hard the second floor was before even entertaining the idea of entering the first floor. Nick first had to work out how he was going to make it out of the room he was currently in. He was right next to the door but he’d have to move out into the open to make it through it. He also had no idea what was on the other side of the door. Nick waited for a moment and tried to piece together some fashion of a plan.

That’s when something in the room changed. All of the servants stopped their tasks and lined up. Nick heard footsteps outside the door and then a new group of servants came marching through the door. This new group took over from the old group and the old group marched out of the door. They appeared to be changing shifts, which gave Nick an idea. He then sat around and waited, patience was the true characteristic of a high-level thief, you know? After about ten minutes the same thing happened. All of the servants stopped what they were doing and a new group came in and swapped out with them.

Nick then darted out of the room behind the group of servants leaving, hoping that his assumption had been correct. Nick found himself in another fancy hallway, though unlike the last two floors this one was actually lit up. It wasn’t too bright but the occasional group of candles kept the place somewhat lit. It also created darker shadows that Nick could take advantage of. Nick hid behind a cabinet of sorts, using the dark shadow it cast to hopefully disguise himself. Though did the dolls actually see? Nick wasn’t willing to test it out, he’d continue working on the assumption that the dolls had the same senses as a person.

Nick chose the closest room to try and loot, he remembered that it held something of considerable value. Nick checked that the coast was clear and quietly entered the room. The first thing that Nick noticed was a massive painting on the wall, in fact, it was the only thing that he noticed. Nick stared dumbly at it, completely forgetting where he was. The giant thing was at least two metres long and depicted another morbid scene. Starting from the left, there was a line of people in dark robes who were simply watching the events that were taking place across the rest of the painting. As his gaze moved further right he saw people in all sorts of damaged states trying their best to get away from something. People were running, crawling, and some people were even trying to drag themselves along the floor with bloody fingers, but it looked like they were all being pulled towards what sat on the right end of the painting.

It was hard to properly describe what the thing sitting at the right end of the scene was. It was a shadow of sorts, fitting with the theme of the rest of the paintings Nick had seen, but this one had a shape to it. It almost looked like a face of some sort, but whenever he tried to discern the features of the face he’d see something different. Sometimes it looked mischievous, sometimes angry, sad, or apathetic. The longer he looked the more emotions he would see, it must have been some sort of optical illusion. The bloody and tortured looking people were being sucked towards this shadow, the closer they got the more anguished their expressions would be. That was until he saw the people who finally made contact with the shadow. There were various people all being absorbed into the shadow in different states and positions but they all shared the exact same apathetic expressions.

Nick was absolutely mesmerised by what he saw, in the most horrified of ways. The painting instilled a deep disturbance in him, there was something about it that made him feel afraid. Nick found himself wanting to leave, to run away from the painting. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind, but the fear wouldn’t leave him. Nick gritted his teeth, he was here to steal not to run away from a silly painting. Nick then looked around the room and discovered another rather important detail. There was a figure in the bed. Inspecting it, Nick found a doll with its eyes closed. Great, Nick would have to somehow dismantle the painting without waking up the creepy doll.

Nick sat back and thought about it for a while, how the heck was he going to pull this one off? Then he had a brilliant idea, Nick pulled the large sword he’d kept from the bandit swordsman he’d killed. He hadn’t gotten rid of it with the rest of the gear he’d sold off, as he considered it part of the bandit's set that he wanted to keep. Thank god he hadn’t sold it, because it was the only sharp thing he had available to him. Nick then approached the painting and awkwardly angled the sword towards it. Nick had never once held a sword in his life, it was a rather unwieldy thing to him. Nick then used the sharp edge of the blade to begin cutting the canvas of the painting, right up against the edge of the frame.

It certainly wasn’t a perfect job, but it was the only way he could see himself getting this painting out of here without waking the sleeping doll up. It took a while for him to get the job done, constantly having to take breaks to let his arms rest. Trying to finely cut with a giant sword was proving to be quite taxing on his muscles. This entire event room had been more of a workout than he’d signed up for. When he had finally finished cutting the painting out of its frame he quietly rolled it up and stuffed it into the black sack, which thankfully hadn’t increased in size at all. Nick then stuffed the sack back down his pants and snuck out of the room. He was making his way back across the hallway and into the shadowy protection of the cabinet when he heard knocking.

Nick looked down the hallway and found that one of the servants was going from room to room, gently knocking on the doors before then entering. After a minute or two they would then exit the room and move on to the next one. Nick began to panic, the doll was only a few doors away from the room he’d just burglarised at this point. When the doll went into the next room Nick made his move. He activated hasten and darted into the servants’ room. He dashed behind the boxes as quickly as he could and waited, hoping that no one had seen him. He didn’t hear anything and when he peeked his head around the boxes he found that the servants were just continuing with their tasks.

Nick wasted no time in moving his way between the stacks of boxes and goods, knowing full well that his deed was going to be discovered any minute now. It was when he was finally inside the hidden staircase that he heard it. A high-pitched wail spread through the house, sending shivers down his spine. Why the hell did the dolls make such a creepy sound? It was certainly fitting, but Nick didn’t like it one bit. He quickly hurried all the way back up to the fourth floor and darted his way into the storage room that had the hatch to the roof. Not a moment too soon, as he began to hear a flurry of footsteps, the dolls had all woken up on the floor and were now moving around.

Nick didn’t wait to get caught, he pulled down the folded ladder and made his way out of the hatch. He then awkwardly pulled the ladder back up, he didn’t need the dolls discovering where he was too quickly. Nick was now faced with his next serious obstacle, how the hell was he going to get down from the roof? Nick crept over to the edge of the roof and found a number of problems. The first was that the guards looked like angry bees, even more of them had appeared and were swarming around the house. The second was his biggest issue, he really had no clue how he was going to get down from up here.

Nick had struggled enough just trying to get himself up onto the roof, now he had to work out a safe way down. He once again channelled his inner action movie knowledge, searching for an answer. He quickly found one, but he wasn’t sure how much he liked it. He couldn’t think of anything better and he wasn’t sure how much time he really had to stand around and think up something else. So Nick decided he just had to give it his best shot. He made his way over to the edge of the roof and lowered himself down over the edge, hanging by his hands. He had lined it up as best he could and just had to send it. So send it he did.

Nick let go of the edge and braced himself. The building whizzed by and just as he passed the windowsill on the fourth floor he grabbed onto it. The force jolted through his shoulders and he almost lost his grip, but just he managed to hold on. That was one dropdown done, just three left to do. Nick had seen muscled up action stars do this a number of times, but he certainly didn’t feel like much of an action star right now. Nick took a deep breath and dropped again, this time he was more aware of what to expect and the jolt of force didn’t surprise him as much this time. Just two more and he was done.

Nick dropped again, though this time he slipped. Only one of his hands managed to grab onto the edge of the windowsill, the grip only three of his fingers. He then swung from that one arm and slammed into the wall of the building. The force of the slam winded him and he unintentionally lost his grip. Nick watched the building whiz by as he fell the last story of the palace, his body crashed into the floor hard. Nick was certain he had broken something, he was becoming somewhat of an expert at identifying injuries sustained from falls. Nick got up to his feet, he was sure that his fall would have been heard. He activated Hasten and Fight for your Treasure, if there was ever a time he was fighting for his treasure it was right now.

Nick was flooded with strength and as he took off he literally shot along the ground, his speed beyond anything he’d experienced before. He stumbled a bit, his mind not quite able to process how fast was moving but he managed to stay on his feet. He wasn’t sure where he was going but he assumed that the way out of this event was going to be similar to where he started. Nick then heard a loud wail spread out through the gardens, not too far from where he was. It looked like he had finally been discovered, Nick made a dash from the tree line that surrounded the garden. Something told him he’d make it out as long as he made it to those trees.

That’s when Nick felt a jolt of excruciating pain and something flew past him. It was his own arm. Nick watched in horror as his shoulder was torn apart by an arrow, then sailed past him carrying his arm with it. Nick screamed and continued running, his shoulder now a bleeding stump. He was only a dozen or so metres away from the trees when the next arrow hit him, this time in the leg. Nick was sent to the floor as the arrow literally ripped his leg from his body. Nick screamed out in pain, his mind filling with white. Nick wasn’t sure how he managed it but he got up onto his last leg and managed to hop his way towards the tree line, now only a few metres away from his perceived safety.

That’s when the next arrow tore through him, and the next. Nick wasn’t sure what they were hitting but he activated his skills again and the burst of speed plus the force of the arrows was enough to send the remainder of his body into the trees. Nick’s vision flashed white.