Hugo almost docked at the airship dock in Tembisa before he thought better of it. There would be too many questions if he showed up alone. Airships were far too valuable for them to go unnoticed.

Instead, he looped around and landed in the forest outside the city. As he landed, he thought about his plans. Was he going to go through with this?

Stealing eight mana cores would be dangerous. He would be risking his own life, and the lives of the whole wheel for a selfish reason. Did the state of his body matter to him that much?

He thought about it as he walked towards the city. It was very important to him, but if he had to choose one or the other, he would always choose saving the wheel. He didn’t consider himself noble or anything, but if he let that many people die, he would be wracked with guilt for the rest of his life.

It all came down to how much risk was an acceptable amount of risk. He already knew he could get the one in Reval without dying. He had already done it. He knew that the six in Paarl were stolen by a crew of tiger gang people. It would be difficult, but it was possible.

The real unknown was the mana core in Ettel. It was the core they were saving to feed to The Daughter after The Mother died. That would be very difficult. He would have to infiltrate a royal grove as a human. Their security would be as high as they could make it because The Daughter was the future of their people. He didn’t even know what kinds of riese magic they would have protecting it.

He paused in his walk through the forest. He sighed and solidified a large mace. He used it to crush the skull of the ice ape in front of him, then continued on his way. There were a lot of variables. A substantial amount of risk to even attempt the thefts.

As he saw the city walls in the distance, he decided wanted to try anyway. If anything went wrong along the way, he could always blow up a shimmer processing plant. He was going to try.

Looking down at his outfit, he realized he was rather distinctive right now. His pants were expensive, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he didn’t have a single weapon. That plus the burns and broken arm would make him look very suspicious.

Reluctantly, he took off his pants and was left in just his underwear. A few minutes of calculations were enough to fabricate himself a cuirass and a titanium sword. He inscribed it with a durability rune rune and started towards the city. He followed the footpath to the small gate at the bottom of the western wall.

“What happened to you?” the sentinel manning the gate said.

“Don’t ask. Let’s just say I wish I had listened to my trainer. I was being dumb and he was right to send me back to the city naked. By the way, can you point me in the direction of the closest clothing shop?” Hugo said.

As long as he was going to be notable, he might as well be a funny story instead of a suspicious one.

There were several businesses just inside the wall, geared towards returning harvesters. He sold his sword for much less than it was worth, and visited a clothing store and life mage.

Once he was dressed and healed, Hugo bought some drawing supplies. He couldn’t go back to the Baden family for money, so he needed to make his own. He was going to sell his design for a crossbow. He needed to wait until the morning to have enough mana to fabricate it, the constant fighting and healing had drained him.

He used the last of his money to get a room at the Gilded Lily again. He found himself doing that a lot, falling back into the same patterns. He needed money, so his first instinct was to sell crossbow designs like he did his previous life. He needed a place to stay, so he went to the most expensive hotel in town.

That wasn’t really a problem. What could be a problem was assuming that everyone would act the same way, even if he changed things. He resolved to pay attention to the current situation more, not just going off of what people had done the previous time around.

While he fabricated his crossbow again, he came up with a plan for the next eight weeks. The grandmaster said he had ten weeks, but he was giving himself a shorter timeline so he would have a safety buffer. If he wasn’t successful in stealing the eight mana cores before eight weeks were up, he would just restart. He couldn’t chance the grandmaster being off by a week or so.

Step one was getting the Acomarian ritual again. That had taken Binh three weeks to source last time around, so he needed to get the ball rolling on that one right away.

Once he had that ball rolling, he needed to commission eight lead containers. He needed to block the mana core's signature from any passing light mage. It would do no good to steal them, only to be found out right afterwards.

Next was Lenna’s family warehouse. The Coppel's mana cores were well guarded. It would take some time to plan and execute that heist. Once he had those ones, he could move on to the core the Shimmer Corps were using as bait. It shouldn’t be too hard to steal as long as he had a good distraction. The mana core that the riese in Ettel housed would be the hardest to steal.

There was so much about that one that he just didn’t know. He didn’t even know who it was that killed the serpent hydra. He knew it had been killed by the riese the previous times since a tribble horde hadn’t devoured the city. But he didn’t know if it was still the huntmaster that killed it. Without Lina to take on a hunting trip, there was no guarantee that he would even be out there at the right time.

Breaking into the royal grove would be difficult. The magics protecting the tree would need to be circumvented. The numerous armed guards would need to be dealt with, and then he would have to break into the vault near the armory. He had never even seen inside that vault. That heist had so many unknown variables. He needed more information.

Just existing as a human near their tree would be suspicious, so he couldn’t really case the place himself. He would need to hire a riese to do the work. The huntmaster wouldn’t work with a human no matter what. Hugo knew Yasmin well enough to convince her to help out, but if she figured out what he was doing, she would alert the royals and sabotage his efforts.

He needed to work with someone unethical, someone that wouldn’t rat him out because they were worried about their own secrets. He knew just the riese. Amir. His former uncle would be the perfect contact for the riese job. He was already planning on selling his family out for power, what was one more?

In fact, he already had a great idea on how to approach him. He could offer his services as an agent that couldn’t be predicted with their seer magics. Someone like him would certainly see the benefits of working with someone that couldn’t be seen by The Mother or rival riese.

All three of the jobs would require a crew. There was no way he could do this on his own. His first instinct was to approach Mia. He knew her well, she had experience getting into and out of places, and her runic skills were formidable. She was probably already working with Lenna on her magic armor. If they were friends already, Hugo would recruit the both of them.

He was already feeling better about his chances.

He headed out into the city to earn some money. Just like last time, he hopped up on the wall, on Thao’s section. Hugo waited until the sentinel lieutenant was watching, and he loosed six bolts downrange.

Five of the six bolts hit the troll he had been aiming at. He was impressed with himself, that was an improvement on his accuracy, considering the troll had been seven hundred yards away. The little telescope on top was handy.

“That’s an impressive weapon,” Lieutenant Thao said.

“Thanks, I made it myself,” Hugo said happily.

Thao nodded and walked away. Hugo stared at him in shock. What was this? Why wasn’t he gushing about the crossbow?

Had Hugo misunderstood Thao’s interest last time around? Was the man just attracted to the female riese and the crossbow was a nice bonus? Ugh.

Now he had to decide how integral to the process Thao was. His excitement probably affected the price he was able to get out of his cousin, Huong. He would try one more time when the lieutenant walked by again, otherwise he would just approach Huong on his own.

In the meantime Hugo experimented with crossbow bolt designs. He remembered that the optimize ritual had changed his bolts a bit. He wanted to recreate that design, without having to spend a mana stone to do so.

A half hour later, Hugo was constantly hitting ice beetles from eight hundred yards out. The icy air around them helped him locate them, and he happily sniped them. There weren’t a lot of monsters out there though. It was too early in the year to be busy on the wall. He wondered if that was part of the reason he got a lackluster reaction from Thao. There wasn’t a lot of urgency this time of year.

“I have been watching you for a bit,” Thao said.

Hugo looked up, he hadn’t heard him walk up. “Yeah, what are you thinking?”

“Have you thought about being a sentinel? Someone with your skills would be welcome on our team. You would have to go through training like everyone else, but someone with your skills would be an asset to the city,” Thao said.

“No thanks, I have my sights set higher than that. I do plan on selling my design though, so maybe you will be able to buy one of these yourself one day. I just have to find a weapons shop I want to deal with,” Hugo said.

Thao looked disappointed at the rejection. He started to walk away and then turned and said, “You mentioned you didn’t have a weapons shop lined up yet. I have a cousin that owns a formations shop. He has the licenses for weapons too. Would you like an introduction?”

“Yes, I would love that,” Hugo said.

They didn’t talk much on their way to Huong’s shop. It was an interesting experience, getting to know Thao as a man. The sentinel was completely different. It just confirmed his suspicions that he had been flirting the last time around. Hugo had no idea at the time.

The negotiation with Huong was thankfully easier than last time. Hugo knew that the man wouldn’t have a platinum in his safe, so he only asked for seventy gold for the designs. The shopkeep still asked for a demonstration, and Hugo was only too happy to let him put a crack in the stone backstop of the archery range. It was funny. Soon enough, he was walking away with a pouch full of gold.

As he got into the Gilded Lily that night, he asked about Commissioner Binh. The grain buyer wasn’t in Tembisa at the moment. They weren’t supposed to tell people about guests at all, but a few silver convinced the attendant to say that the commissioner usually arrived for negotiations in five days.

With a few days to kill in town, Hugo decided to do something he should have done long ago. He was going to visit the metal guild. It was time to finally get permission to sell mithril. Shortly after breakfast, he headed over there.

Walking through the metal gates made him shiver with bad memories. The last time he was here, he thought his life was in danger.

Now that he was far less stressed, he noticed that the metal guild was beautiful. Fantastic metal sculptures, ornate murals, even the baseboards were covered in gold. He wondered if there was a formation mage who chose the weak metal just so he could make things look nice. Hugo walked up to the young woman sitting at a desk.

“Hello Sir, how may I help you?” she said primly. She gave him a onceover and frowned slightly at his clothing.

“I’m a formations mage and I would like to get permission to sell mithril. As I understand it, it’s a restricted metal?” Hugo said.

“That’s right. It’s on the restricted list,” she said and got out a paper for him, “You will need to fill out this request for an interview, along with paying the appointment fee. Please make sure that you bring your reference letter to the interview, they won’t give you your badge without it.”

Hugo looked over the paper and said, “What if I don’t have references?”

“We usually insist on references, particularly with valuable metals like mithril,” she said.

“Is there no other way?” Hugo said. He had just killed his parents, he wasn’t getting a reference.

“The only other way is to take an oath with a shadow mage. Most people don’t like that option,” she said with a bored voice.

“Oh, yes. Let’s do that,” Hugo said happily. This would give him practice resisting the effects of a shadow mage so he would have a better chance attacking the Black Marshal. If he failed he would be released from the oath when he went back in time.

Hugo happily paid for the appointment and shadow mage visit and scheduled it for tomorrow afternoon. She gave him a strange look, but still took his money.

The next thing on his agenda was to apologize to the sentinels. He had missed the meeting scheduled with them, being drugged at the time. He didn’t really care what they thought at this point. However, if he wanted to work with Mia and Lenna, he would need to pretend to still want to save the wheel. He could probably still tell the Dean the truth, given the way he thought about time travel. It was interesting how different he and the ritual grandmaster were.

He followed the column of smoke to his next destination. He needed to get a mundane smithy to create lead lined boxes for mana shielding. No mage could create lead after all. While he walked, he tried to think of a believable lie. He couldn’t just tell them his plans, no matter how much he paid them. Eventually, he thought of something he had learned in his cryptozoology class.

The smithy didn’t have much of a front shop, just a counter and a few examples of their work on the walls. Hugo could hear the banging of hammers in the back. Since no one was there, Hugo had to yell, “Hello?”

“Be with you in a bit,” came the answering call.

Hugo patiently waited while he thought of dimensions and details for the boxes.

An older riese came out from the back, wiping off his hands as he did, “Alright then, what can I do you for?”

Hugo wondered about how a riese ended up as a metal worker. He bet that was an interesting story, but he wasn’t here for that. “I would like to commission a few metal boxes for harvesting monster parts.”

“What kind of boxes?”

“They are for thundertusk trophies, two boxes for the tusks and two boxes for the claws. They will need to be lead lined so they don’t suck in mana. The tusks can still shoot lightning after the monster dies if it absorbs enough mana,” Hugo said, “If you have some paper, I can write out the dimensions.”

“In a bit,” the riese grumbled, “First off, lead ain’t cheap. If you want to block mana, that’s going to take a lot of lead.”

“It doesn’t have to be a fully lead box. In fact I would prefer that the outside of the box not be lead because I am a mage. Money isn’t a concern,” Hugo said.

They talked about dimensions and design for a bit and they agreed on a price. The riese then said, “Gonna need to see your permit too.”

“Permit?”

“You gotta have a permit to buy anything made out of lead. It’s a restricted metal on the guild’s list.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I have an appointment with them tomorrow. I will get that permit as well. Can I commission you now so you start the work?”

“Aye. But you will need to pay in full upfront. If you can’t get a permit, I will keep the money and the boxes,” the riese said, “And don’t think of bribing me without a permit. Ain’t nothing worth the metal guild’s ire.”

Hugo nodded and gave him two gold. They had agreed on less, but Hugo wanted him to be motivated to get the job done quickly. Plus, this was all play money to him. He couldn’t bring it with him, so he was happy to give it away.

He didn’t have much else to do in town. He wondered how long it would take to get to Ettel and back. He needed to get a contact within the riese that could get him an audience with Amir. The backstabbing brother was still a royal, so Hugo wouldn’t be able to just walk up to their grove tree.

A thought occurred to him. He was being stupid. He needed to change his plans completely. He chuckled to himself and headed back to the Gilded Lily.