Robbery
In one of his safehouses, Nox was trying to create a new item with his supply of god's blood. He did not actually have much of his after his experiments in creating Status Pick but he hoped it would be enough.
Since experiments based on divine power would be far too dangerous to inside the Dungeon, Nox opted to use one of his surface safehouses inseat of the more hidden ones deep within the labyrinth.
Status Pick was infinitely more complicated to make so, within a day, the item was successfully refined but he only had around ten drops of it and no more god's blood to refine more.
'I estimate one drop will be sufficient for my purposes but this will still mean that I can only summon four Black Monsters before I run out . . .' Nox pondered.
'Hmm . . . That's not nearly enough. Looks like I have to find some more blood, one way or the other . . .' He ominously thought.
'First though, a test run is in order." Nox decided.
Making his way to the 12th floor, he quickly searched for a deserted area before withdrawing a vial from one of his supply pouches.
"Well then, here goes nothing." Nox said to himself as he let a single drop of the dark red liquid inside the vial drop onto the ground.
Using the senses granted by the Arcanum skill, Nox could detect a pulse of divine energy and now, all he had to do, was wait and see if a Black Monster spawned.
About two minutes later, nothing happened and Nox was getting disappointed.
'Was I wrong? Or was the amount simply not enough?' He asked himself.
*sigh*
"I guess I should find more blood and resume testing . . ." He said to himself in low spirits as he walked away, thinking on what might have gone wrong.
But suddenly, he felt a tremor.
'Please let that not by a regular Infant Dragon.' He prayed in his mind and, as he did so, Nox tracked the tremor to their point of origin.
He arrived just in time to see a completely black Infant Dragon starting to emerge from the ground.
"Yes! I'm a genius!" He shouted out loud.
The shout however, drew the attention of of the dragon that fired a fiery breath at Nox.
"Shit!" Caught unprepared, he rolled to the side just barely dodging.
In this time period, the monster completely emerged from the ground.
"Alright junior, you've had your chance now die." Nox said before firing his Sylph Cannon and taking down the dragon in one shot by piercing its scaly hide and destroying its magic stone, the only way to kill a Black Monster.
The dragon's body immediately disintegrated, leaving only a piece of its black scaly hide behind as a drop item.
"Okay! A new material to study and proof that my method works, that's the best result to ask for." Nox said to himself with happiness.
"Time to get back to work." He decided, leaving the dungeon to continue his plans.
In order him to be able to focus on his research, h need a good supply of Black Monster Bait and for that, more god's blood was required.
'Now then, when I need a rare resource that extremely valuable and, sometimes illegal . . . What do I do?' Nox asked.
'The answer is . . . Steal from criminals that deal in said item!'
And so, Nox began gathering information and drawing plans from a large scale string of robberies he was going to commit.
It's not like it was the first time he was doing something like this. Whenever he needed resources during the last few months, he always resorted to robbing the various criminal gangs of Orario.
After he got in good with the Hermes Familia and got access to their info, this only became easier and more profitable.
Nox would get wind on which gangs were currently the most loaded and then used his superior stealth to gather info and plan his infiltration to clean out their stores of items and vallis.
'Looks like there are two major players, one of which I have robbed before . . . I'll leave that one for second since I know their facilities already.' Nox decided.
The first robbery went smoothly, he snuck in cleaned out their stores and vaults into his Item Box and crept out without being seen.
'Hehehe, too easy. I got a lot of other valuable goodies too. Why earn through hard work when you can just take from criminals and do a good deed.' Nox happily thought.
'Onto the next target.'
Expertely sneaking into their base which he had previously visited, Nox quickly entered the vault before stashing everything but then, something unexpected happened.
Magic stone lights came on and illuminated the vault that was immediately sealed and a barrier magic was activated, Nox could feel it weakening his stats.
"Well, well. Guess they had to get smart eventually." He jokingly said to himself, not at all nervous to be caught red handed.
'I'm supremely confident in my ability to run away after all.' Nox thought.
"So you are the mysterious phantom thief huh?" A female voice sounded out.
Nox was actually quite surprised when he heard it but his cloak and mask hid this perfectly.
"Valletta Grede, head honcho of Evilus. Don't you have some diabolic stuff to do instead of harassing hard working thieves like me?" Nox complained.
Valletta had medium length pink hair and yellow eyes. She wore a black top with black pants that had red lines in them, with both the top and bottom damaged to some extent, leaving her stomach exposed, along with a brown belt around her right thigh and a black coat with fur trimming.
"Hahaha! You're funny! Alas, I have nothing better to do and these fools paid quite a lot to take you out." She said.
"Guess they finally hire someone competent instead futilely do something about it themselves." Nox shrugged.
"Got that right but you don't seem to nervous." Valletta pointed out.
"Well, I'm quite good at running away and even better at ensuring my life's preservation so I can't say I'm too worried no." Nox confessed.
"Oh? I'm intrigued. Let's see if your confidence actually has some basis to it." Valletta responded with a sadistic grin and a signal for her men to attack.
Four throwing daggers flashed into each of Nox's hand as he threw them out against his four attackers.
They were pitch black and left smokey trails of dark grey and purplish color as they zipped through the air after being thrown.
Three of Nox's attacker dodged while the other blocked but, much to their shock, the dagger turned in mid air towards them, even the deflected daggers launched itself back at their target.
Only one of the attackers managed to completely dodge the attack due to superior agility, the other two that initially dodged also got away will small grazing cuts but, that man that chose to block ended up with two daggers on his chest as he crumbled to the ground.
"Shit!" One of the cut thugs shouted.
"Get over it!" The other said.
"You're gonna pay for that." He proceeded to threaten Nox.
"Are you sure about that?" Nox asked with a mocking tone and the two grazed attackers crumpled to the ground, trembling as blood began to seep out of their apertures.
All the thrown knives were single use magic items imbued with curses and poison just for good measure, a graze was all it took.
"Nice dodge by the way." Nox praised the only survivor that was shivering in fear.
"I-I heard y-you never k-killed anyone in your p-previous r-robberies." He stuttered.
"No one was competent enough to catch me in the act after all." Nox explained as he pulled out eight more daggers.
"Goodbye." He said, throwing them all at the last man standing and, as good as he was, he could not dodge them all.
"Nice toys you have there." Valletta commented.
"Indeed, pity i won't be able to hit a Level 5 like you with them." Nox lamented.
"Ah! And here I though they were the reason you were so confident." Valletta responded.
"Not at all." Nox declared.
"Fancy joining up with Evilus." The woman offered.
"Can't say I'm all that tempted." Nox responded.
"That's too bad. I was really starting to like you." Valletta said as she got ready to fight.
"Quite usual for any woman that meets me." Nox cockily replied.
Valletta chuckled at the response and said.
"Looks like I'll be breaking a lot of hearts by killing you." She licked her lips.
"Now is really not an opportune moment for me to fight you so I'll be seeing you around hotness."
As soon as he said this, Nox disappeared in a cloud of swirling darkness, using his Invictus Shade to disappear before Valletta's eyes and just phase through the walls of the vault to leave.
"Evilus huh?" Nox said to himself as he fell into though during his walk back to his safehouse.
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