“Why can’t it work!”

The construct flew through the room before crashing into the wall and shattering and a sigh escaped Liliei. It had been two weeks already since the fight with the Elite and she hadn’t progressed much. They had gone back to the Dungeon – still the second floor at the moment – but from the moment she had hit Level ten her progress on this front had stalled and she hadn’t gained another.

[Liliei Sil

Race: Mana Spirit

Level: 10

Abilities:

-Main Ability 1:

1) Tendency to be harder to notice. Ability to use mana to reinforce concealment and reduce the chance of being seen.

2) Reduce the chance of being noticed when moving. Ability to use mana to hide a movement done for a short time.

-Secondary Ability 1:

1) Burst of movement tends to be faster and more precise.

2) Increase smoothness and flow of movements.

-Main Ability 2:

1) Increase efficiency at manipulating own mana, and allow faster reconstruction.

2) Increase ability at external mana manipulation, and allow creation of external constructs.

-Secondary Ability 2:

1) Increase perception of mana.

2) Increase the size of the mana pool.

Stats:

Own Mana Manipulation:

-Speed: 22

-Precision: 14

-Intent Potency: 8

-Perception: 5

-Mana Pool: 8

-Mental Strength: 4

Skills: None]

Since she didn’t seem to progress much on her Levels she had decided to increase her Abilities, but even that was at a standstill. She didn’t understand why her first Ability worked, so she couldn’t work on it that much, and, for her second Ability, she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was supposed to do. She had tried to make more of the permanent constructs but had quickly discovered that the more complicated it was the more it took of her to get it in its permanent state.

And the increase wasn’t small either, just trying to have a cube even one half bigger than original was already too much. She didn’t even dare thinking what it would take for a more resistant version, or some of the ones that drained her even normally. It was all in getting the extremities to stay in the sort of intermediate state, but she couldn’t find any way of getting it there more easily.

She had at least got a little better at giving different properties to the constructs. It seemed that the thinner the strands, the more resistant the product would be, and that the less she fused them the more flexible it became. She however hadn’t found how to change its texture and all the construct felt rough to the touch, which wasn’t that comfortable for clothes, but still more than normal ones.

She hadn’t tried to touch much on their appearance for now, she could get a color and something like a texture which was enough as long as one didn’t look too close.

The final thing she had been trying was to improve her body. Evlem had directed her to a library where she had gotten two books on anatomy and she had been trying to understand how it worked to improve her own body but without much success, first because the explications were either too complicated or not complete enough, and while Teria had taught her to read, there were lots of words she didn’t understand. And second because her body seemed to refuse the changes or just revert back every time she tried something.

Hence she decided that she needed a break, and went out. There was still around half an hour before noon and she would get to the first floor of the city before the affluence. As such, she decided to go by the columns around the city instead of the pads. When she got to the first floor, she looked behind at the large plains, and thought that while the view was quite good, it couldn’t really compare to the Dungeon’s scenery. After a few more minutes looking, she shook herself and went to the market street.

There, the people were starting to arrive, and she decided to try something. She activated her first Ability and started walking amongst the crowd and looked how people reacted to it. Her first observation was that people acted as if she was here, dodging her when walking, but seemed not to notice her. It was quite strange but it allowed her to move in the middle of the people without problem which was good, but it still didn’t help her much for improving the Ability. Furthermore, she had already been usually unnoticed without using it and had less problem moving about without it, since she couldn’t move fast without revealing herself.

She decided to go back out of the crowd, and started cutting through until she got to one of the alleys. She still had a moment before the crowd would reduce so she decided to try how her skills had suffered from the time without use. She made herself a small dagger and a heavier construct in a spherical shape and after choosing a mark she went back into the crowd. Her target was a Beastkin that was currently buying food from one of the stalls. She placed herself in further in the direction he had been going and started walking through the crowd.

After he bought his food, he put his pouch back in the pocket of his coat and continued walking in the same direction as before. Liliei adjusted her path a little to pass just beside him, and when they were just side by side she made her move. Activating her second Level Ability and reinforcing her arms a little, she slipped her hand in his pocket, taking the pouch and placing the sphere construct in its place. The two hadn’t exactly the same weight but it seemed to do the trick as the Beastkin continued on his path without noticing anything.

Liliei could barely contain her excitement as she went back to the alleys. She had done it! She let the construct disperse as it was starting to cost her to keep it, and she was too far for the Beastkin to find her. She looked into the pouch but there wasn’t much, only one silver and some coppers. Still she hadn’t been detected at all and it was a good sign. It was a proof for herself that she had gotten used to her new body.

Satisfied, she suddenly got the idea to go check how were the houses on the tenth floor. She had never gone there and wanted to see with her own eyes the place she would have to go into. She started going to the transport pads before realizing that she would be quite noticeable with her clothes on a higher floor where the richer people lived, and decided to go by the columns. Thus she could use her Ability to stay unnoticeable.

The climb was quite long but thanks to her current body she didn’t tire, and only had to rest for a moment when she got to the floor to keep her mental tiredness in check. Then she went onto the floor and got dumbfounded. She had thought that the tenth floor were richer but still basic, however what she was was quite different from what she had envisioned. Each house was situated in the middle of a large property, usually with a garden, and the houses were huge. If she was to go in there looking for some precise thing, it would take quite a while to explore.

And, on a hunch, she tried to see what she could detect with her increased perception by focusing it on one of the houses. There was the constant ‘noise’ of all the enchantments that covered the city, but just like that she could detect three large protective enchantments on the house she had looked at. If it was the same inside, it would be quite hard for her to do anything even if she got there in the first place.

And that was just a mansion on the tenth floor in this city, while her goal was the home of one of the most important elven family – and the Elves’ magic was know to revolve around an excessive use of huge rituals and large scale magics. She started going back down as she thought about what to do.

For the first time she really thought what it would take to get in someplace protected like this. And what she thought wasn’t good: no matter how she saw it, there was no way Nalaine and her would be able to go through with something like this, it was just too complex, too enormous for them, even if they Leveled a lot – high Leveled individuals would probably be taken in account when creating the protections. Thus they needed to find other people to help. But how could they find someone? The couldn’t exactly just go ask around until they found someone. In fact they couldn’t ask at all, how would it go – ‘Hey we would like to steal something from the Elves’ equivalent of royalty, wanna to help?’. If they didn’t think of the as fools, they would report them.

Plus they were in need of pretty specific things. First someone that knew their way around enchantments, preferably security ones, but that would be quite hard. Good enchanters were probably all recruited by either Adventurers or crafters since they were very useful.

The second thing they would need was someone to plan everything. Nalaine was good at thinking things on the moment, and reacting, but she didn’t make large plans and was a bit too impulsive for that as well. They would need someone to decide how to get in, how to find what they were searching for and how to get out, as well as gather the information now that she thought about it. She would look quite dumb were she to prepare everything just to find that there was a large reception at the house and going in would be impossible.

She went back to her house, training her Abilities – without much success – while thinking about where to find people that could correspond to her need. Finally, she was having another failure at improving her ability to make construct independent when she got an idea. She immediately went out, going straight for the pads and to the first floor. Then she went to the Guild and after getting Reig’s attention and going to the small separated room, she asked the Receptionist if she knew someone that would fit.

The woman thought about it for a while before a smile appeared on her face.

“I think I know exactly the one you need.”