Luke had managed to swipe the soul gem necklace before Brutus could inspect Gertie’s body, and although the man had his suspicions, a quick pat down hadn’t revealed anything. This meant either Luke had received nothing from the departed, or he still had ways to evade the inspection, maybe even through the use of that inventory everyone else thought was fried.

Either way, Brutus couldn’t prove anything yet, so he’d have to wait the man out and who knows, he might even use whatever he still had as bribes when they began working on him in earnest. These are the thoughts that were running through his mind as they walked Luke to his new, stripped-down quarters.

A decision had been made to move Luke to a more securable room, which meant a central room without roof access or windows, making the single exit point the door he’d enter through. This would ensure that there wouldn’t be any more unexplainable disappearances, and should Luke try for an obvious escape, it would be through one door and into a group of waiting guards.

Brutus would be one of their number so it would be impossible for Luke to overwhelm them. Brutus knew Luke would be smarter than this, but he still wished Luke would try, if only for him to put the man in his place.

They arrived at Luke’s room and Luke walked in without questioning the reassignment. Once he was settled, he asked the rest of the guards for a moment alone with Brutus and as expected they intended to refuse, but a single look from Brutus had them complying.

“What is it?!” Brutus asked, wasting no time as soon as they had their privacy.

“Nothing much, I just want to see if we can reach an agreeable trade for the defensive shirt you took,” said Luke.

Brutus stepped back, ready to intercept any attacks that might come his way, but Luke reiterated it would be a trade. He went to one knee and removed his left boot, then he removed the insole before tipping the shoe over. Two shakes loosened whatever was inside and a third revealed what it was. 3 items tumbled onto the floor and before Luke could move to pick them up, Brutus was on them, and on him. He held a blade to Luke’s throat with his right and used the left to scoop up the 3 items, backing away as soon as he had them.

Schrödinger's Monkey Pelt> has been affected by . Detection and effect range has been tripled.

Luke noted and dismissed those notifications while Brutus was backing away to inspect the objects. The first was an old key with multiple runes engraved in its metal, the type you’d expect to open a small, enchanted lockbox. The second was a strip of flattened and smoothened gold whose worth Brutus wouldn’t know without consulting an Appraiser. He stopped while considering the strip, only lifting his head once he thought he’d found the answer.

“You think I’ll fall for this!? I’m not going to inform on myself by having this appraised anywhere near here, the mayor would know about it within the hour. I’ll just hold on to this for a bit longer then…”

Luke was surprised at that analysis, not only for how correctly the brute had judged the outcome, but also how he hadn’t thought to utilize the strip like that. As he reevaluated the man’s intellect, the man himself continued inspecting the last of the items Luke had dropped.

It looked and felt like a small diamond but in reality, it was a type of expensive waystone. It used to be the choice item for those who could afford it due to its high resistance to most elements, and its projective power, but production had eventually been phased out for 2 reasons. The prohibitive cost of each, and its propensity to attract thieves who would tail the affluent and repurposed the stones for resale.

“There’s more where that came from,” Luke had said, “I can tell you where the lockbox is, if you promise to hear me out. Do we have a deal?”

The man had approached Luke threateningly at that, but after thinking better of it, he’d stood down and nodded. The man left as soon as Luke gave him the location, but not before dropping another gem that upped Luke’s estimation of him.

“Just as well this way stone isn’t blooded, otherwise I’d be questioning what your aim in tracking me is.”

He threw a cruel grin Luke’s way before turning to give instructions to the remaining detail. One of the guards came into the room and stood just inside the doorway, per Brutus’ instructions. He had the look of a brawler, with the facial scars to show for it, and in his hand, he held a cheap relay construct which told Luke Brutus still doubted his word, despite his expensive bargain. What he didn’t know though, was that the caution had been expected, and the construct would be the boon Luke would use to take back all that was his.

◆◆◆

Luke wasn’t under any illusions that the hand-held construct was the only form of information relay in the room. This had become obvious to him during the phasing incident with the hoodie, seeing as there hadn’t been a construct in his old room but they’d still been informed of his sudden disappearance.

He assumed this had been due to a type of formation, but he didn’t bother looking for it since he didn’t have much experience with formations. Even if he did, breaking it would have the same result as being caught on the construct; his captors would know he was up to something.

Fueled on by the mixed feelings from Gertie’s departure, he’d decided to do away with waiting for midnight, and instead, make his exit with haste. In order to achieve this, he needed a way to get the jump on Brutus and sending him on a wild goose chase had been the best he could come up with on such short notice. He’d then have to time his attack while Brutus was on the move, which would be the hardest part of his plan once Brutus had taken his bait.

Lucky enough, the problem had provided its own solution in the way of the surveillance construct and the muscle behind it. As the muscle watched him, Luke mentally kept track of the hoodie whilst simultaneously preparing for his next move.

Although Brutus had made it seem like he’d fetch Luke’s belongings alone, he’d fetched 3 guards on the floor housing the top-most elevator shaft. They went into formation with Brutus in the middle of the pack. Two guards flanked him on the left and right whilst the third stood in front of him. The flanks held their weapons at the ready whilst the third held both the key and the waystone.

He keeps climbing in intelligence with every showing, thought Luke, realizing why Brutus had given the items to the guard in front.

He meant to use the guard as a decoy.

If Luke was sending him into a trap, then the guy with the key would incur the effects instead, leaving Brutus unscathed; and if Luke was tracking the waystone, despite it being unbloodied, then the feedback would register from the guy with the key, lulling Luke into thinking Brutus had walked into the trap instead.

Lucky for Luke, the waystone was only a means of amplifying the detection range of the hoodie, so it wouldn’t matter to him who carried it. As the elevator stopped on the first floor, Luke pretended to relax into the bed and draped a sheet over his resting form. In seconds, he would turn it into the best cover-slash-utility blanket for the next sequence.

◆◆◆

1 x added to inventory. 2 x retrieved. 1 x retrieved. 1 x Utility Cut-outs equipped.

Luke retrieved most of the items for his plan, save for the water, which he’d saved for last. Equipping the utility cut-outs had been the top priority, seeing as this would avail him the physical attributes he would need to pull this off. He followed this up by retrieving the needle from the syringe, loosing the needle hub from the luer lock before detaching the head and reattaching it to the utility cut-outs’ catheter instead.

He socketed the stamina capsule next, and watched the fluid suffuse the catheter up to its head before he pointed it upwards and turned his focus to the inside of his right elbow.

“Oi! Wacchu doing under those covers!?” asked the guard in the room. Luke had the mind to break from his plan and take the man down before he could inform on him, but the man’s statement gave him a false sense of comfort, “Rubbing one off while I watch, ey. You sure are all kinds of messed up, boy! Hahaha…”

Luke blew a sigh of relief at that last part and chose to continue, knowing he had at least another minute before the man grew more suspicious. He rubbed his left thumb vigorously around the groove and once the veins started popping out, he brought the needle shaft to one, gently pushing it in till it was hub deep. The bevel had helped a bit with initial bite, but it hadn’t done much for the pain from the rest of the shaft sliding in.

The fluid initially entered his bloodstream in a rush of heat, but the burning sensation quickly turned to dripping flare-ups, which he assumed were from every occasional drop absorbed into his blood stream. As he relaxed into the rhythm, a notification popped up, informing Luke of the benefits from his improvisation.

You have leveled the bonus, [Adjustable]. [Adjustable] is now at level I. Adjustment discovered,

+---------------+

|Auxiliary Alert|

+---------------+---+

|"Augmentation Drip"|

+-------------------+------------+

|Class: Auxiliary Bonus (Utility)|

+-----------+--------------------+

|Limitations|

+-----------+------------------+

|Blocks other modes of delivery|

+------------+-----------------+

|Side Effects|

+------------+--------------------+

|X-ticks of health lost per - - - |

|capsule (X is a function of the -|

|consumable, and is distributed - |

|over the volume of the vial) - - |

+---------------------------------+

|(Side effect limited to the - - -|

|- - - specific consumable) - - - |

+--------+------------------------+

|Benefits|

+--------+------------------------+

|Increased efficacy due to direct |

|- - - - - - intake. - - - - - - -|

+---------------------------------+

|Increased duration of effects. - |

+---------------------------------+

|Automatic calibration of dosage -|

|- - - and dosing frequency. - - -|

+-----------+---------------------+

|Description|

+-----------+---------------------+

|"Socket consumables for a steady |

|- - - - - distribution" - - - - -|

+---------------------------------+

The health side effect explained the pain, and why it had been sharpest at the start, as this was when he’d taken in the largest volume of the potion into his bloodstream all at once. It was quite the bummer he couldn’t stack the effects by simultaneously taking the same potion orally, but after giving it a second thought, he found it was probably for the best. He could end up poisoning himself if he was allowed to take in whatever amount of the same potion he wanted.

He also guessed the automatic calibration might have something to do with this, since it would just hold off its own distribution, but if so, this couldn’t explain how it would handle the overdose amount ingested. He’d just have to experiment a bit with this in the future.

◆◆◆

A number of floors below him, Brutus and has team had already alighted the elevator platform and were well on their way to corner room Luke had directed them to. It would have been ideal for them to reach the room before he made his move, but the guard’s instincts were finally kicking in, telling him there was something to watch out for with the way Luke continued to fidget under the covers.

“Oi! That’s enough from you! Get out from under those covers, nice and slowly,” the guard commanded, as he shuffled his feet slowly into an intercepting position. It seemed Luke had fidgeted for a second too long and the guard was finally anxious. He couldn’t hear it, but he knew the man had to have his spear trained at his form.

Below them, his hoodie also stopped moving and Luke knew Brutus must’ve been receiving feedback from the relay as well. With the moment at hand, Luke threw the top cover towards the guard while simultaneously summoning the next items for his plan.

1 x has been retrieved.

The blanket had served its purpose, having forced the guard to drop the relay to focus on Luke and it. The relay cluttered uselessly on the floor, signaling the beginning of Luke’s countdown.

He emptied the saltshakers onto the sheet in front of him before facing the tank down and recalling the container into his inventory. This resulted in the tank’s contents being emptied onto the sheet by letting gravity do the rest of the work. He bunched a section of the sheet once it was soaked and then proceeded to run a current through it, effectively forming an observation screen to block the relay.

Gentle Breeze> has been equipped.

With Gentle Breeze now in hand, he approached the guard and parried a spear thrust from him, batting the spear to the right before stepping-in to the left. Instead of trying for a gap in the armor, he made use of it instead by draping the sheet over it and the guard’s exposed head. He amplified the current running through the sheet and incapacitated the guard within the second.

Improvisation discovered: Main utility, [Signal Veil], discovered – blocks communication and observation. Extra utility, [Tase], discovered – inflicts [Spark] damage. has been subjected to [Shock (minor)]. is under a [Stun] aftereffect, duration – 10 seconds.

Luke ignored the notifications for the moment, since he already knew how the effects worked. Both were dependent on the flowing current, with the tase functionality kicking in at the sufficient amperage, whilst the interference relied on a continuous current, or continued pulses of it. The interference leveraged the disturbances in the effect field caused by the running current, which made it hard for observation effects to see through haze.

The Stun effect wouldn’t last so Luke used the pommel of his sword to knock Brutus out before the effect timed out. He crushed the relay underfoot before retrieving a single flash bomb from his inventory. He checked the hoodie’s position and confirmed Brutus and his team were already on their way back by way of the elevator.

He wasted no time on his next move since he had to make it to them before they reached the last elevation floor. He removed the pin on the flash bomb and let go of the tube before slamming a foot into the door. As the door flew off its hinges, he activated Phase Blink and dropped down 2 floors before opening his eyes to cancel out the effect. He overshot by a few centimeters, but these were just enough to place him a few meters through a third floor down. The skill had corrective measures in place for such situations, and these would guard against him getting stuck in-phase while sharing the same space with foreign objects.

[Phase Blink] voluntarily cancelled. ERROR: User cannot straddle phase boundaries! Corrective measures will kick in. Correcting… 82% of users body is above the boundary so user will be moved up.

Since most of his body was still above the third-floor boundary, the corrections pushed him upwards, resulting in him tripping and tumbling towards the door. He rolled into the tumble and sprang up once he had his feet below him. He retrieved another flash bomb, removed the pin, and threw the tube into the corridor before promptly closing the door again.

A second later, a collective ugh told him the flash had detonated. He kicked the door like before, but instead of walking out into the corridor, he dropped down and put ear to the ground, listening-in on the activity down below. The lack of activity told him it was safe to phase in, and he did so, managing to barely stick the landing after adjusting his timing.

It seemed regular laws still applied to his incorporeal self, meaning the speed of his fall would increase the longer he held the blink. This would make it harder to estimate the length of a blink needed to traverse varying distances, but he’d gain force the longer he managed to fall.

Looking to exploit this, he checked Brutus’s position and prepared to make his next move. Avoiding the brute would only afford him a head start in the escape but taking him out would smoothen the rest of the path.

◆◆◆

Brutus and his team were now on their way up via elevation platform. He hoped he could get to Luke before a lucky cut or thrust could end his feeble attempts at escaping. This was partly in order to inflict his own pain on the former Wind Sword, as well as to make sure the man wouldn’t die in the attempt. Although the latter was highly unlikely, if it did happen, he would have to suffer the consequences of failing the mayor, and then there was also the possibility of his hidden loot disappearing with his demise.

He was sure the man still had access to his inventory, seeing as the weird protective cloak he’d confiscated from the man hadn’t been seen by anyone else prior to today. It was because of this fact that Brutus chose caution in pursuing Luke, for he didn’t know if the man would have something that could take down even someone of his caliber.

He hadn’t bought the boot trick for one bit, seeing as he’d already rummaged through all of Luke’s stuff before today. He’d personally gone through all the man’s belongings, even to the point of checking underneath the insole, and beating the heel for hollow points. Since he hadn’t found anything back then, today’s display had to be a sleight of hand.

What had ‘fallen’ from the boot gave him reasons to question why Luke had given the items to him. An opportunity to escape had been the first thought, but there had to be more to it than that. He’d also toyed with ideas surrounding the waystone, like whether Luke had a way of tracking it even before bloodying it.

Possibly, so he’d decided to hand it over to someone else for handling. He’d taken his paranoia a step further by ordering one of the other guards with him to wear it in his stead just in case Luke had a way of tracking it as well. With 2 decoys flanking to his left, he was pretty sure Luke would go for either one of them, should he be tracking them, giving Brutus advance warning and a head start on his counterattack.

◆◆◆

Luke retrieved a flash bomb and held it in place by crooking his index through the pin. In one hand was his sword, point-down, and in the other was the blanket of interference. Like this, he was ready for the next confrontation, and wouldn’t waste time delaying it. To this end, he closed his eyes and began falling through the floor unseen, since the action had triggered his Phase Blink.

His target was now the elevation platform moving up directly below him at this very moment, and although the movement added an extra factor to consider when calculating blink length, his hoodie took care of this concern.

Now that he was aiming for the hoodie’s position, his connection to it would guarantee he wouldn’t overshoot, even with his eyes closed. He waited until he was just above the hoodie before materializing and taking ‘Brutus’ by the shoulder. The shoulder snapped and cracked from the impact, and the pain was surprisingly enough to knock the big guy out, as demonstrated by the notification that popped up.

has been knocked out. Mechanic Discovered: All accumulated force during a Phase Blink is exerted outwardly on first impact. New Skill discovered.

+---------------+

|Auxiliary Alert|

+------------+--+

|"Phase Bomb"|

+------------+--+--------------+

|Class: Auxiliary Bonus (Skill)|

+------------------------------+--+

|- "Appropriate the accumulated - |

|- force of a Phase Blink for an -|

|- - - - - - attack." - - - - - - |

+---------------------------------+

That transference seemed like quite the useful tool to avoid damage from extended blinks, and the Phase Bomb was sweet too, but that wasn’t Luke’s current focus. The take-down notification didn’t mention anything about Brutus, Luke thought, which means-

Bam!

A fist struck him in the temple, disorienting him for a split second. He couldn’t muster the focus to block or intercept any other incoming blows, but this didn’t mean he couldn’t channel lower-level effects. He willed a low charge through the sheet, and this gave it the tasing effect that forestalled further blows for a second.

The gap had been welcome and long enough for Luke to recover, but a foot was already making its way to his face by that time. Instead of moving to dodge, he leaned slightly away to roll with the blow, which resulted in him falling face-down towards the ground.

Brutus was ready to follow this up when a weird vial came in view, drawing his attention for a brief moment. This was all the time required for a direct flash from the detonating bomb to take him out.

It had been triggered when Luke activated the interference blanket, and he’d made use of Brutus’s blow to both distract him, and to lean his body away from the direct flash. Although unintentionally phasing through the floor was a possibility, he still risked it by closing his eyes and willing it not to happen a split-second before the detonation.

The collective ugh had been his signal again, and he’d known to open his eyes then.

[Phase Blink] voluntarily cancelled. ERROR: User cannot straddle phase boundaries! Corrective measures will kick in. Correcting… 53% of users body is above the boundary so user will be moved up.

That message told him he had been close to phasing through, despite his best efforts not to trigger the skill. A win was a win though, so he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he busied himself, knocking out all the guards on the elevation platform.

Brutus’s resistance made it hard to do so with the pommel, so he resorted to stabbing him shocking his system before pommeling him again and this time, it worked. With Brutus out of the picture there wouldn’t be anyone to put much of a challenge to his escape, save for the lady mercenary, with whom Luke already had a deal with. The commotion was already rising on all floors, but Luke ignored it, blinking through the platform to land on the ground floor.

The guards on the first and second floor reacted to the crash by rushing to the platform entrance and encircling it, but none had the courage to approach it with all the dust obscuring the view. Luke took advantage of that reluctance by slinging a flash bomb to the ceiling.

He closed his eyes and kept them shut until he heard the now familiar confirmatory ugh. And as the guards were still reeling from the flash, he threw one last flash bomb to the ground floor before making for the first-floor and escaping through a window. He materialized into a roll and got up unmarred since Phase Blink expressed the accumulated force of his descent to the first impact outwardly. With foot on street and the guard frantically searching for his trail, his great escape was well on its way.