Nick had to hold back a grunt as his legs and arms wobbled. He’d vastly underestimated how difficult this climb actually was. He was currently holding himself in the corner by posting his arms and legs against each face of the wall, straining all of his muscles to hold him in place. Nick was making very slow progress shimmying up the corner, he would painstakingly stop every 30 seconds and wait until the patrol passed by him. It was the pausing that was hurting him the most. As he shuffled up the wall he had some sort of momentum to work with, but as soon as he stopped moving he could feel all the tension and strain on his muscles.

With a lot of sweat and maybe even a few tears, Nick eventually managed to get himself up onto the roof. He lay there panting for a good while, he had severely underestimated the effort that took. He was certain that he’d probably chosen the incorrect method of going about this whole thing. With all the open windows around the place, he was sure that at least some of them would have led to safe spaces. He probably would have known which of the windows to use if he had been able to go over all the resources that the den had coating its walls. Nick regretted simply feasting and watching the Hogs and rogues engaging in their shenanigans, he’d been in there for a good hour and definitely could have learnt a lot.

Nick could only sigh at his own complacency. He had expected one of the Hogs to give him some sort of explanation or tips, which he shouldn’t have expected at all. They didn’t really give him any information or tips for the 65th event, he was in the wrong for expecting it from them for this one. Nick resolved himself, he’d have to take a bit more initiative moving forward. He had to stop expecting people to give things to him, he needed to start working towards his goals himself.

Nick rolled onto his side and got up into a low crouch slowly, he didn’t need a patrolling guard to spot him after he’d made it this far. He moved away from the edge of the wall he’d just climbed and started precariously manoeuvring himself around the tiled peaks of the roof. There had to be a maintenance door or hatch somewhere on the roof, someone was definitely taking care of all the tiles up here. Nick soon discovered a makeshift walkway among the tiles, confirming that there were at least previsions for people being on the roof and thus the existence of a door of some sort.

Thankfully Nick didn’t have to stumble around in the dark for too long before he found it. A simple hatch inlaid into the roof. Nick slowly lifted it and inspected the room below, it appeared to be some sort of storage room and an empty one at that. Nick cautiously lowered himself down into the room and quietly closed the hatch behind him. Success! Nick had managed to make it into the palace, the next step was locating something valuable he could bag. When he activated his Treasure Sense he got a lot of information that he had to slowly process.

There wasn’t anything very valuable up on the fourth floor, the one he was on, everything of value was located on the lower three floors. The first and second floors seemed to have the most valuable stuff, with the third only having some mildly valuable goods. It seemed Nick needed to find a way down to the third floor. First, he decided to get an understanding of the fourth floor first. Why was there nothing of considerable value up here? Nick cautiously crept out of the room he was in and found himself in a hallway. It was very quiet up here and Nick began to search through room after room, quickly working out why there was nothing very valuable up here.

The fourth floor was mostly made up of various storage rooms and small living quarters. The storage rooms held things like spare sheets and linen, massive amounts of it. He found spare household utensils as well, things like candlesticks and old mirrors. Most of these storage rooms just held old junk that was piling up dust. The small living quarters seemed to be for whatever servants ran this place. Nick found that many of the rooms had figures sleeping in them, the few that didn’t, he explored. He confirmed that it was mainly servants living up here when he checked through the wardrobes and found simple working clothes and the occasional uniform.

Nick had a growing worry in his heart. Were the people here actually ‘people’? He hadn’t gotten close enough to the guards or sleeping servants to actually check their features, they looked humanoid though. The belongings and various items all pointed to this place being inhabited by people, real people with lives. What was this place? Was the event room an actual living, breathing, space? The lord on the 65th floor had been an obvious monster of sorts, were the people here just monsters? Nick had a sort of ethical dilemma growing inside him. He was confused by the whole situation. Could the hotel create people, just average human people? The thought was very concerning to him. Would he find himself in challenge and event rooms fighting against other humans created by the hotel?

Nick was spiralling into a strange existential dilemma, one that he really wasn’t in the place to be dealing with. Nick found a storage room and sat down for a bit. He took some time to just focus on his energy, watching as it flowed around his ethereal silhouette of a body. He let his thoughts slip away as the simple act of observing his energy became all he was mindful of. Nick was here to have some fun, not to consider existential problems. Nick got up with a relaxed sigh. He was here to have fun.

Nick let a goofy smile spread across his face. He was in an old European palace, trying to blunder his way through an impromptu heist. It was an absurd situation, he should have been having fun with it. Nick then left the storage room and began creeping around the floor again. He had heard stories on the internet about old palaces and manors like these having hidden staircases for the servants to use, so that’s what he looked for. Any major staircases would definitely have guards or at least people using them, a hidden staircase just seemed like the smarter choice to him.

Nick scurried around and eventually found what he was looking for at the end of a long hallway. A small doorway opened into the wall, revealing a small staircase hidden inside the cavity. Nick made his way down to the third floor and pressed on a door, which opened into a little room. Nick was surveying the room when he heard footsteps from outside the doorway. Nick’s mind rushed into work, he scanned the room and found a stack of boxes he could try and squeeze behind. He activated Hasten and darted across the room, sliding himself between the boxes and the wall. Not a second after he made it, the door to the small room swung open.

Nick heard a couple sets of footsteps march into the room, and then he heard the door he’d just come through open up. The footsteps began marching up the hidden staircase, the door closing behind them. Nick waited for a while, just to be safe, then poked his head out. The room was undisturbed. Were those people coming off their overnight shift or something? Nick pulled out his clock to check the time, but the engraved dial was completely blank. He had no idea what time it was, but when he had been outside it looked like the dead of night.

It didn’t matter, Nick was here to steal not question the shift arrangements of the palace’s workers. With a quick use of his skill, Nick identified a nearby room that seemed to have something valuable in it. Nick opened the door of the room he was in, poking his head out. He found a lavish hallway, decorated with tapestries and a beautiful rug. Nick wondered if he could get away with stealing an entire rug, it would certainly be pretty comical. Smiling to himself, Nick crossed the hallway and entered a room that his skill indicated had something valuable in it.

The room was a very generous guest room, from his best guess, a large four-poster bed that hadn’t been made up and furniture all covered in dust covers being his biggest clue. Using his skill led him toward something hanging from the wall. Nick pulled off the sheet covering it and revealed a grotesque painting. Nick shuddered as he looked at it, though he wasn’t quite able to look away. The painting depicted quite the gruesome sight, it was some sort of ceremony. A group of people all wearing dark black robes were all holding down a nude man, this man was covered in cuts that were bleeding profusely. It was a rather disturbing image but Nick was absorbed by it, it was intriguing in a morbid way.

When he finally had finished admiring it, he took it down from the wall. He pulled out his sack and tried to fit the painting and the frame into it, which didn’t work in the slightest. The painting was far too large for the sack. Nick was stumped, how the heck was he going to steal this damn thing? Nick sat on the floor for a moment, how did the people in movies do it? Nick tried recalling any movies he’d seen that involved the theft of art, but nothing was coming to him. That’s when he remembered some videos he’d seen online a while back. He’d been bored and binging content with a mate when they stumbled upon a company that restored classic paintings.

Nick slapped his own forehead, he really was just a bit slow sometimes. He had to remove the canvas from the frame, then he could roll it up and make it out like a bandit. Now, how was he going to remove the canvas from the frame? Nick spun it around and looked at the back but didn’t find any convenient latches or anything holding it in. Of course it wasn’t going to be easy. Nick was getting a bit frustrated so he decided on the most direct course of action. He picked up the frame and just dropped it on one of its corners. The wooden structure broke apart easily, though it wasn’t quite the effect that Nick had wanted.

The canvas had been pinned to the wood, so he was left with a messy pile of wooden bits and canvas, all stuck together. Nick then got to work unpinning all the wood from the canvas, it took a while but eventually, he was left with a neat pile of broken picture frame bits and a mostly undamaged painting. Nick grinned to himself, easy peasy. He was now practically a professional art thief. Nick then crept from room to room on the third floor, finding a couple more paintings he could use his newly acquired skills to take apart. Worryingly, all of the paintings that Nick came across were rather morbid.

He checked a few rooms and discovered that these rooms had their own paintings, though his skill told him weren’t valuable. When he took off their dust covers he saw they were all incomprehensible messes. Not in a cool, abstract, incomprehensible kind of way, no they were just blurry dots on a canvas. Though, Nick was sure this art would mean something to some pretentious art critic out there somewhere. Every painting that his skill told him was valuable were morbid creations. There was a distinct pattern about them all, they all had a theme of darkness and suffering. People being tortured or killed in gruesome ways, their faces filled with anguish. Pervasive darkness and shadows filled the background of each painting and the only people in them that weren’t suffering were people wearing black robes. Though Nick couldn’t make out their features, they could have been suffering as well.

Nick found himself enthralled by each of these paintings, they were horrific to look at but he could never quite look away. His eyes were absorbed by them for minutes at a time before he could finally feel satisfied enough to get to work dismantling them. After what felt like a few hours of work, Nick had amassed a collection of about a dozen or so paintings. He had stripped the third floor clean of its fine art. Anything his skill told him was valuable could no longer be found, neat piles of wooden junk were all that remained.

He then set his sights on the second floor, where his skill was telling him that the value of the treasure was substantially better than up here on the third floor. Nick felt a bit of greed bubbling up inside of him, if it was this easy so far he’d be making an absolute killing down stairs.