Hugo was marginally concerned about going to an unknown location with the striking worker. There was a small chance this could be a trap. He wasn’t really worried though. He had full mana, his fabricated preparations, and fast reflexes with his barrier domain. He should be good against anything a mundane could throw at him, or even a small team of mages. Still, he decided not to eat or drink anything they gave him.

The stout man led him through tight alleyways, winding deep into the poorest section of the city. The apartment buildings around him seemed like they were about to fall down on him, and the pathways were littered with trash. Hugo was led up through one building, and then across a plank to another building, then down to the basement.

The older man from before sat at a large table with two middle aged women. The riese and woman from before weren’t around. The table had a variety of papers strewn about and a small collection of opened packages.

Hugo took a seat across from them without being asked.

“If we are going to do this, we have to do it our way,” the old man said.

“Nope,” Hugo replied immediately.

This surprised the three of them, and the lady in brown hair said, “No? That’s all you have to say?”

“I am putting my life on the line here, same as you. I won’t go along with any plan that I think is dangerous,” Hugo said, “I will be happy to go along with smart plans though. What do you have in mind?”

They didn’t seem to have a quick answer to that, and the women looked at each other. The older man said, “Let’s discuss this plan. Perhaps we can come to an agreement. Come over here, you have to look down on the model.”

What Hugo had assumed were open packages were actually a paper miniature of the factory. It was missing the roof and had little paper men standing in for guards. Hugo could see that the mana core was labeled as well. It was at the back of the factory, surrounded by the management offices.

“Only four guards?” Hugo said, “I figured there would be more.”

“There might be. This is all a guess. We haven’t had the time to do a proper job of preparing. There are also five guards outside,” the man said.

The brown haired woman pointed to the opposite end of the factory and said, “We can actually avoid most of the guards inside and out by just climbing through the intake funnel over here. We can just climb up the conveyor belt from there, it’s covered so the guards won’t see us. That puts us past all but two of the guards.”

“Huh, that’s easier than I expected,” Hugo said.

She shrugged, “Usually this is filled with feedstock and the threshers are active. The only reason this is halfway viable is the strike has shut this all down. Anyway, three of us and you crawl through here to end up here. We wait until we are sure the guards are past and then sneak into here. Navid has the unlock code for this office here, and he says he knows how to unlock the safe door.”

“No real names,” the older man said.

“Right, sorry. Anyway, we can get you through the office and then into the vault. After that, you would be needed to take care of all of the magical defenses. Can you handle that?”

Hugo nodded, “I have mana sight and a bit of lead paint. That plus the lead lined box should take care of all of their countermeasures. I am doubtful I will be able to get the core out without alerting them though. What is our escape plan?”

“While we are sneaking in, the rest of our union will be creating trouble outside. They should pull guards from inside to handle the ‘unrest’. Once they are out of the building, you can do your thing and we will run back to the conveyor belt. As long as your box does its thing, it’s smooth sailing from there.”

Hugo nodded. That seemed rather easy. “What do we know about the guards?”

“All of them have a truncheon and a hand crossbow. Some of them have armor. There is one soulmarked too, a barrier mage,” the brunette said.

The other woman spoke up and said, “And we think a few of them have shimmer casters. They aren’t supposed to have them, but Mar... someone said they saw them.”

Hugo nodded along. This was still doable. With only one soulmarked among the guards, Hugo could pull this off on his own. Nothing wrong with bringing along a few meatshields though.

“When do you want to go?” Hugo said.

“As soon as possible. Our members usually go home by now, the guards are already getting anxious,” the brunette said, “How soon can you get ready?”

Hugo held up his bag with the lead lined box in it and said, “I am ready now.”

...

“What was that?” a voice yelled out.

“Calm your tits. It’s just the idiots outside. Relax, Marcus. I will let you know if any one trips the wards I set up,” a different guard yelled back.

Hugo was motionless along with the other three infiltrators. They had cut their way into the grain conveyor belt undetected. They spent ten minutes slowly crawling up the covered conveyor belt. As soon as they got close to the far end of the building, a guard had heard them climbing above. This heist was off to a bad start.

Not only did they have to figure out a way to crawl undetected with guards below them, they needed to do something about the barrier guard below them. He was obviously proficient with wards if he had set up several around the factory. The vault was bound to have a ward or two. They couldn’t attempt to get inside until they had taken care of the barrier mage stationed below.

One step at a time.

Hugo motioned to everyone else to stay still and carefully crept to the front of the line. There, he solidified a new floor of mana. He anchored it a few inches above the conveyor belt. It cost him fifteen mana to make the full length, but it was worth it. Now he was moving forward without touching anything that could make a sound. He looked behind himself to make sure his fellow criminals were following. They thought of themselves as noble union workers fighting for a just cause, but they were all really just criminals.

Hopefully this would be the last time Hugo found himself breaking the law. It had become disturbingly common over his various lives. Maybe he needed to read a book on ethics or something when he started over in his own body again.

Once they got to the end of the conveyor belt, Hugo looked across the expanse. Normally this was where the bundles of processed grain got packed up for shipment. Now it was empty except for the two guards wandering about. The plan was to wait for them to walk around behind the offices in front of him, but Hugo knew the barrier mage had to be taken care of first.

He looked down to his right arm. He had hoped to use this as a backup, something to help with the escape. It didn’t bode well that he was using it before they even got into the offices. Hugo hopped down to the stone floor of the factory. He ignored the other three frantically waving at him. This had to be done.

The mundane guard was an older woman, shining her mana light into every corner as she walked. The barrier guard followed her at a sedate pace, bored with his job already. Hugo ran up to him as silent as the wind.

It wasn’t silent enough.

As he drew closer, the barrier guard must have heard him. He stopped and spun around. Showing remarkable reflexes, the man solidified a set of flat shields covering his whole body. He turned around just in time to see Hugo firing an arrow from the bracer on his right arm.

The arrow shot forward, pierced the barriers, and hit the man in the throat. He went down gurgling. Hugo had loaded the lead arrow from Paarl into his spring powered bracers. He mentally thanked Koppel security forces for the donation. He only had the one lead arrow, so he was more than relieved when it did its job.

The old woman had turned around by now, and shined her light into Hugo’s eyes. She immediately fired her hand bow. Hugo threw up a shield of his own, but it wasn’t needed. Her shot went wide. Hugo solidified himself a bat and knocked her upside the head. She fell to the ground like her strings were cut.

Hugo glanced back to the barrier guard. The man was still alive, choking on his own blood as he tried to scream in pain. Hugo drew a knife and put him out of his misery.

“What are you doing!” the union worker whisper-yelled at him. “We were supposed to keep everyone alive. Cartwright isn’t going to want to negotiate with murderers.”

Hugo pointed at the mage and said, “This guy had wards set up all over. He would have raised the alarm if we had stepped foot in one of the offices. We would have been caught.”

“Now what are we going to do?” another worker said in horror. “This is big. They aren’t going to ignore this, they are going to bring the mage hunters in. We are all dead.”

Hugo considered killing them all now. He decided not to. If they could get him into the vault, that would make everything easier. Instead, he said, “This is just a small change of plans. We still take the mana core, but we don’t leave the note. Instead, you contact Cartwright tomorrow and say you know who the thieves are. You can help him with his investigation in return for some consideration in the negotiations with the union. I am sure you all know some thieves or gang members that deserve to be set up.”

The third worker came up to Hugo and called him vile names. “We were doing all this to save lives, not take them. I have half a mind to turn you in now.”

Hugo said nothing.

The oldest worker put a hand on the other two and said, “We can decide that later. For now we need to get what we came here for. Without it, their lives would have been lost in vain.”

Hugo nodded at the practical one. The other two didn’t say anything, but after a few moments, they quietly walked towards the offices.

The security pad in the offices was something Hugo hadn’t seen before. There were a set of eight symbols and one of the workers typed in a four digit code into the pad. The door unlocked and the four of them slipped inside.

The vault door was at the back of the office. According to the union, it’s where they kept payroll and the mana core. The payroll was likely gone at this point, moved to somewhere more secure during the strike. The mana core should still be there since it was integrated into the power structure of the building.

The same union worker that got them into the office knelt down in front of the vault and got out a set of tools. Lockpicks, a set of magnifying glasses, and a horn with rubber on its ends. There were two spots for keys on the vault and he shuffled back and forth between them, slowly adding lockpicks and carefully listening to the vault as he worked.

It was taking a while, but Hugo wasn’t worried. With the barrier mage taken care of, there were only mundane guards left. He felt confident he could handle anything they could bring to bear.

While he waited, he looked at the other two workers. What were they doing here? They weren’t helping pick the locks and you didn’t need two people to keep watch in an office with a closed door. Hugo gave them a closer look. He saw something they were trying to hide. He would have to do something about that.

He was distracted when the vault door suddenly clicked open. Finally. He walked up to the vault as they swung the two foot thick door open. He would have had a problem opening that himself, even with his overcharged runed knives. Good job, unnamed union guy.

With mana sight active, Hugo checked for traps and wards. The walls and shelves were covered. Even the ceiling had a fire rune. They took their security seriously. The mana core was in the back, covered with layers of wards and pulsing magics.

Hugo turned back to the three union workers and said, “I think it is time we parted ways, gentlemen.”

“What? No, you gotta give us the mana core first,” one of them said.

The other two were quicker to understand and drew their hand crossbows and pointed them at Hugo. The third one caught on and fumbled his own crossbow out.

“Oh come on, gentleman, do you think I would have said something if you still had these loaded?” Hugo said and held up their crossbow bolts. They were all lead tipped bolts. He had used his barrier domain to sneak them out earlier. Bringing that many armed workers was a clear indication that they were planning on double crossing him.

They looked down at their weapons in shock and Hugo burst into action. They didn’t have a chance. Moments later all three were on the floor with their own bolts stabbed into their hearts. With Hugo’s stats, mundanes didn’t have a chance against him.

Ignoring their bodies, Hugo reached into his bag and got out gloves and lead paint. He quickly got to work. There were layers upon layers of magic here. First he took out the obvious traps, the pressure plates in front of the core. Then he slowly dripped lead on top of every bit of magic leading towards the core. It took some time, but the lead paint was a perfect counter to the magic protecting the mana core. They really should regulate this stuff better.

A sweep of the room with mana sight revealed a few more bits he had missed the first time. Eventually, he was ready. Hugo armored up with his barrier domain and yanked out the mana core. As he did, a spray of acid came at him from the hole the core left. The acid ate away at his barriers as Hugo stumbled back in panic.

He dropped the core and swiped at the acid covering his chest. Some of it came off, but the rest kept eating away at his mana barriers. Just before the acid broke through, he recycled the barrier armor and jumped back. Some of the acid fell to the floor, the rest clung to his tunic and started eating away at it. Frantically, Hugo cut off the tunic and dropped it to the floor.

Searing pain revealed that he hadn’t been entirely successful. He swore and used his knife to dig out a few drops of acid eating away at his skin. The knife was useless a few moments later. He dropped it to the floor and crouched with his hands on his knees. He panted loudly in the small vault. That was close.

He pushed his health points into the acid burnt spots on his chest and waist. He wanted to stay here until he was fully healed, but he didn’t have the time. The two guards outside had been dead for a while now. Someone was bound to check on them shortly.

Hugo carefully picked up the mana core. Now that he was paying attention, he saw that it was covered in some sort of crystal. Probably an acid proof one. He dropped it into his lead lined box in his bag. He shouldered the bag and winced in pain. The straps hit some of his raw skin. He had to do something about that.

Walking around bare chested was suspicious anyway. With more concentration than was normally needed, Hugo fabricated himself a chest and backplate. His upper arms were still bare, but he didn’t want to wait any longer. He grabbed his bag and strode out of the office. He grabbed the lead tipped bolts on the way out.

He didn’t bother with the conveyor belt on the way out of the building. If the union workers here were planning on killing him, their buddies were probably waiting near the conveyor intake. Instead, he slipped around to the exit on the other side of the building. There was a small door there, and he kicked it open. He didn’t bother with trying to remove the alarm it probably had. With the mana core removed, he had to assume someone knew it had been taken. Hugo reached back and activated the rune on his bag.

The door was probably guarded most of the time, but not right now. The yelling strikers had turned into a riot while he had been in there. All of the outside guards were on the side facing the street, trying to prevent the rioters from breaking down the fence. Hugo was far away, but he still nodded in thanks to the Cartwright packers union. They made this all possible.

Hugo dashed away from the factory and hopped a wall. He ran down alleyways and hopped onto the main street. Then he started walking towards the airship docks. He smiled as he saw shimmer corps and sentinels racing up and down nearby streets. A few of them must have seen him walking by, but the disregard rune on his backpack made them think he wasn’t carrying anything.

With a spring in his steps, Hugo climbed the stairs up to his airship. That went better than he could hope for. A heist planned and executed on the same day. Nice.

“That’s him,” a voice said as soon as Hugo got to the top of the stairs.

Hugo looked up to see the airship attendant he had talked to before. Standing next to him was a trio of nox, each holding a shimmer caster and a spear. The central one stepped forward and said, “Stop there. You are under arrest in connection with the disappearance of Grandmaster Langa. Put your hands behind your back and come quietly.”