The last remaining guard twitched as Kent vaulted through the open doors. Just slightly but he could tell from the corner of his eye.

There was no other reaction, which Kent was thankful for. So, they do have an alarm. He determined, but apparently, it wasn’t accurate enough to determine the point of entry or exit. Kent just hoped that they thought someone had just fled the institute.

With each step over the white tiled floor Kent’s heartbeat speed up. I didn’t know that it could beat faster than it just was. He smiled as he rushed into the open auditorium.

Just to be safe he turned around readying himself for a round of combat if the guard had decided to follow up on their twitch. With two knives in his hands and ready to drop the Night’s Embrace he glanced at the portal. For a long moment, he was worried that he would have to murder more people to potentially ensure his survival.

The long moment passed, and the guard didn’t once bother turning around. He considered whether that had just been his imagination playing tricks on him.

Maybe it had been. He hoped it had been. Otherwise, this would begin to stink like a trap. Which obviously didn’t make any sense. Who would even know that he planned to break and enter today or at all?

Regardless of any potential curveballs up ahead. He had decided on this path, and he knew roughly where to go.

Up the stairs that is. The ground floor was exclusively studying rooms for the teaching and tutoring aspects of the institute.

But instead of taking the ones right in the richly decorated sunroom just one door over, he moved through the halls further into the back of the building. The risk was too high of encountering someone who could see him. Several of the attendant scholars had frequented it, and Kent had suspicions that a developed mana sense would sniff him out.

After the second corner, he dropped the constant drain on his mana and entered the real world again. By his estimation and the feeling the Night’s Embrace exerted on him, he guessed he had roughly three times the time he had just spent in his cloak until things would get prickly.

He hurried along the smaller hallways as quietly as he could. Putting up a front as though he belonged wasn’t as easy as he hoped it would. His hands were shaking and even his gait was far from firm and purposeful. There was no way he’d make a legitimate impression in case of getting blindsided.

When he came closer to the kitchen area of the institute, Kent slowed down. Here he was at a disadvantage. He didn’t know when the kitchens – servant kitchens that also served as a rest room for the employees – were active and what sort of personnel could potentially discover him there as an invader.

But them being kitchens and the appetite some people seemed to have; it was likely that they were still open. If not to cook, then to be cleaned or prepare for the next day.

The small hallway which Kent had just snuck through opened up into a wide corridor that was difficult to completely overlook at a glance. Regardless of potentially seeming suspicious, Kent leaned slowly into the larger hall. Glancing along the corners carefully.

He threw a couple of glances left and right, first briefly, then more rigorously.

Once again, he couldn’t see anyone close by. It seemed like people were still occupied with the broken window or too absolved in their own projects to care for it.

His mind went over the various paths to the different servant’s staircases before he decided on one. The path lead him along the edges of the room, past two doors and a single branching hallway.

Trying to keep his footfalls as soft as possible he crouched along the wall when he approached one of the many two-story rooms.

He passed the first door leading from the room hushing past it quickly. Muffled sounds were coming from the doorway leading to a room unknown to him. He did not linger. Open to view from all sides he hurried along, passed the small hallway.

He kept moving, with his heart racing as it was, he struggled to be as slow and casual as he was. He wanted to run, wanted to move and release the pent-up energy within.

He couldn’t.

Then the door, the last one he needed before the out-of-the-way servant’s staircase, opened.

Heart clenching in worry he grabbed a knife from his holster and readied his skill.

At the same time, the stepped back as softly as he could. His left tried and failed to reach for one of the many pillars lining the hall, eyes trained on the door. More than one voice originated from the swinging door now, one hand holding its edge, and the back turned to Kent.

“Yes, that sounds prudent,” one of the two voices said. “While you are at it, might as well, prepare the same meal again, instead of keeping this one warm. No doubt his excellency would be pleased by that.”

Each word spoken sent Kent’s heart pumping further and faster. Each made him once more aware that he was still in the open. And he realized that he might need to be fast instead of sneaky and casual. The more time spent within the halls of the institute, the more likely he was bound to be discovered.

Then his hand touched the pillar and he smoothly glided behind it. A few moments later the door swung closed, and the person dressed in servant garments walked towards the servant’s staircase.

Which made his current plan inaccessible for too long. He had never scouted the servant’s stairs out, more than glancing inside when they were opened on occasion. Without the little information he had, he couldn’t risk entering those while a person was inside.

Without much consideration and in light of his most recent inspiration, he focused on his harness. Then Accelerate Metal began pushing him upwards to the second floor of the two-story room.

A bit more than halfway through his ascent, the skill stopped. His deceleration to fast for what he expected. He just about readied a second cast when his fingers grasped the ledge. Then a door on the second floor opened and Kent’s heartbeat stopped

He hung there for many breaths. His fingers and trunk burning from the exertion of holding on to the railing and lifting his legs below the balcony.

When the steps had moved away enough he pulled himself up further and heaved himself onto the floor after making sure that no one was around to see him.

He rushed as fast as he could into one of the entryways to the doors, checking to see whether it was unlocked.

Like that he checked each and every door, finding most locked. The few that weren’t seemed like public offices, an occasional classroom, and a pair of lavatories. This was dangerous, but he needed a place to retreat to in case he should come across anyone else.

Kent had planned for that though. He decided to go through this part of the institute because he knew it was less busy and less secure. Given that all Institutes of Magical Development were standardized in size and layout he’d discerned that much. There had been mentions of it being vastly understaffed in terms of researchers and teachers.

By the time he heard the next voices coming towards him, he had determined three rooms that were unlocked and empty of occupants. He hid in one of them, hands shaking and breath staggered, impatiently waiting for the steps to pass.

When they did he slowly set off towards the front half of the building, where the institute’s showroom and exhibition was situated.

Hopefully, it would have useful items in addition to paintings and sculptures. To even out the dept the quest had complained about, he was looking for stuff he could steal that was both valuable and wieldy, which art pieces only partially fulfilled.

After hiding three times, he still hadn’t been found out and Kent was slowly calming down again.

His mind had by now numbed against the stress. Every time he heard people approach, he barely cared anymore, each time he had accepted that he might have to resort to violence and by now he was almost anticipating it. Just so he could get it over with. It was the only surefire way he knew of to circumvent discovery.

He still had his cloak, but surrounded by mages he wasn’t certain of his ability to be unnoticed. He couldn’t afford to stand around under its effects unless entirely necessary. He still had to consider that he might have to flee the city, and his primary method of fleeing might not work.

Something in the second room reminded him of the enchanted gear some mages supposedly had.

He, inspired by that, began looking around the classrooms whenever he was stuck in one. Might as well not waste time. But most objects he did find, were of little utility for a mundane person, even less so for an aspiring mage.

A blackboard that magically collected the chalk rubbed on it and created new chalk sticks, was certainly interesting for a specific kind of person.

Kent was not that person. He sat down on a chair that began moving towards the center of the room, as well as molding to his contour, the moment his behind touched down on it. While it turned out to be fairly comfortable, he couldn’t just carry a chair around with him, when robbing a place as renowned as this. And a chair wasn’t even that useful when clearing dungeons or surviving in the wilderness.

Truth be told, however, the count of magic items throughout the rooms he had been in thus far, was disappointing. His magical sense, poorly developed and weak as it was, revealed little to him. And that made sense. He could thus far only see active magical effects and that at a very limited range. Not even his spellcore-enhanced knives were detectable to him yet unless they were literally a handspan from his face.

This made Kent uncomfortably aware of the fact, that he could be tripping magical alarms the entire time, without him properly noticing such.

This was why he revisited the room he had already been in twice, deeming it better to trip the same potential alarms multiple times, instead of a variety of alarms. This also made his break-in take longer than anticipated.

Or it felt like that in any case.

When he finally stood in front of a large, oaken door, one hall removed from the largest staircase within the institute, he felt a bit silly. Maybe he should have just taken the main staircase, instead of taking this roundabout approach. Especially since he had to use this door anyway – for he didn’t know of any other entrances to the exhibition.

Kent approached, carefully inspecting the entirety of the portal holding two oak doors, and working his mana sight over time. His sense only extended a few meters for strong sources of energy and was very rough in most major ways, if he wasn’t working with attuned metal, so he could barely determine anything.

It was good then, that several parts of the massive oak doors were reinforced by metal.

Besides the fact, that the door in front of him, the entire wall around it, and the floor and ceiling, ahead had a soft magical glow, showing an active magical effect, he felt very confident.

Not at all dreading the upcoming moments.