Chapter 206: Caught Stealing

***Thaddeus Thompson, Level 43 Swift Hand Fighter***

“C’mon Tad, it’ll be fine.” Monroe said, casting nervous glances around the sewer directly below the Lord’s tower.

“Every morning, the Tangled has to un-split to eat breakfast so all of her copies are full, yeah?”

“I guess?” Tad said, not understanding where Monroe was going with that.

“So there’s a short period of time every morning when the Lord has to have an actual person watch it. All we have to do is sneak past them and make a tiny bit of it disappear. Like this much.”

Monroe held his hands apart, indicating an amount about the size of a man’s head.

“The guard will be blamed for it and we get away scot-free with enough to last us a month.”

Resistance could keep a man alive longer while starving, but that just prolonged the suffering. If they had enough flour to make a dozen loafs of bread, that could last them another two weeks…if they didn’t just eat it all at once.

Tad wasn’t confident they wouldn’t just inhale the flour the instant they got it home, cooked or not.

“I mean, maybe all that’s true, and maybe we get some flour, but what about…” Tad glanced back and forth, scanning the length of the sewer to make sure he was in the clear.

“…The rumors?”

“What rumors?”

“About William Oh. They say he can see people’s innermost thoughts. That you can’t hide anything from him.”

“That’s just a bunch of hooey. Not even charm Classes can letcha see into a man’s mind, and he sure as hell isn’t a diviner.”

“But…nobody’s ever gotten one over on him. Ever. He seems like he always know-”

Monroe interrupted with a harsh whisper.

“That’s just a story, Tad, He’s just a damned fatass Lord sitting on his ass while the rest of us starve. He’s locked himself up in that tower of his for more than a week now, and I guaranteed you he’s not coming out anytime soon.”

“Now, they’re gonna change the guard any second now, I can hear ‘em getting up. When that happens, you gotta use that Ability of yours to grab some of this feck’in flour or I’ll throttle ya.”

“Yeah, but-“ Tad muttered

“Shut up, the guard’s changing. The goods are four feet that way,” Monroe said, pointing. “Get to it, Ta-

“Ahem.”

A throat was cleared behind them, prompting the two of them to swivel their heads and reach for their weapons.

Despite the near-darkness, the two Rogue Archetypes could easily make out William Oh’s figure, hand resting on the haft of a tomahawk.

It felt like someone reached into Tad’s chest and pulled the fear right out of him as his heart leapt, rattling against the bars of its cage and howling like a madman. The sudden sensation made him drop to his knees, panting violently.

“Can I help you gentlemen with something?” the Lord of the Burned Stronghold asked.

“Fancy meeting you here, milord…in the sewer…underneath your vault.” Monroe said, gulping audibly.

“We were just…looking for places to scrape out some fertilizer for my buddy’s farm.”

“Don’t lie,” William Oh said, “It makes everything complicated, especially when I know exactly what you were doing. You two had a half-baked plan to steal some flour by teleporting it through the wall. Which one of you can steal things through a wall?”

Tad raised a shaky hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Thaddeus, but they call me Tad.”

“Alright, Tad. I’d like to see how that Ability works. Join me for breakfast. The other guy:” The lord turned his attention back to Monroe.

“Have some jerky,” He manifested some dried meat out of thin air and tossed it to Monroe. “And if I catch you thinking you can steal from me again, I’m just gonna kill ya. So please, leverage that cunning of yours for the good of the Stronghold rather than taking what’s not yours. Understood? Now git.”

Despite being an accomplished Climber in his forties, Monroe nodded like a child being scolded by an adult and scurried away at the Lord’s dismissal.

“C’mon,” William Oh said, gesturing Tad to follow with a hand that was half-melted and missing a finger. “Let’s hit the shower to get the stink off, then Anna’s making pancakes.”

“The girl from the post office and bakery?” Tad asked.

“Yep.”

“Huh.”

“Pancakes?”

“You don’t want pancakes?” William Oh asked, glancing over his shoulder at Tad.

“Didn’t say that,” Tad said, hustling to catch up.

***William Oh***

Will thanked Anna for breakfast and dug in, while Tad stared at the cheerful blonde girl with a slack jaw.

“What’s the post-office girl doing here?” He asked.

Will frowned.

“She’s a Tangled.”

“The post office girl too?” Tad asked.

“They’re the same person.”

“Oh. But there’s more than one of them. I seen ‘em.”

“They split into multiple bodies.”

“They can do that!?”

“Yep.”

“Is the guard girl all over town a Tangled too?”

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“Same person,” Will said, his voice muffled by a slab of pancake. Tad seemed like he might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, which explained how his friend convinced him to do something as stupid as trying to steal from a Lord.

“You guys dating?”

Will nearly spat out his pancake.

Just when you think someone’s clueless.

“…Something like that.” Will said after clearing his throat with some water.

“…” Tad’s eyes clouded over with confusion for a moment before a glitter of understanding crossed his expression. “Okay, so-“

“Look, that isn’t why you’re here.” Will said, forcibly changing the subject. “You’re here because you have an interesting Ability. Tell me about that.”

“Well, the Ability is a secondary called Pickpocket, I got it when I was a lot younger, kicking around Akul. It helped me stay afloat long enough to get my levels and catch a ride up to the Flotilla, but it took a long while.”

“How’s it work?” Will asked.

“Well, I can move small objects from one container to another container I’m holding.”

“You ever upgrade it?” Will asked.

Tad shook his head. “Always more important things to do, ya know?”

“What’s it scale with?”

Tad went on to simply read the Ability aloud for Will.

Pickpocket

Active: 1 Charge

Discretely transfer a tiny object or group of objects from one container to a container on your person. Distance and size scale with Acuity.

The charge cost is very low but there are a lot of limitations built in. How many upgrades would that take to make into an actual teleportation Ability?

Remove ‘tiny’, “Object’ needs to be expanded to include creatures, remove ‘container’ x2, scale up the size and distance drastically…

Maybe five or six upgrades, just to be safe? and even then, there’s no guarantee.

Tad would have to upgrade Pickpocket when he hit Advanced, and then dump a ton of rare sacrifices into it.