The air at the Southern Docks was so humid that one could feel it literally like a wet body shroud, that also carried the heavy smell of salt-rot and the industry produced iron tang. Aleric was on the jagged top of a nasty gargoyle at the Old Gate, his black robes swirling wildly in the strong wind that was rising. He didn't see with the regular human sight, but rather allowed the glowing red fire in his eyes to penetrate through the veil of the physical world.
For Aleric, the darkness wasn't a barrier but a medium. He regarded the universe as a continuous mixture of thermal heat and mana-conductivity. The House of Valerius convoy, which was far down below, was represented by a pile of glowing embers. The horses were puffing out golden-colored vapor, and the C-Rank mercenaries were the very blurry silhouettes of glowing aura; their mana-circuits were vibrating at the very dull rhythm of those who had reached their biological maximum.
Aleric made some adjustments to his mask, and he used the technique of shallow and controlled breathing. He turned on his Gaze-Detection, not for the purpose of spotting the guards—he could already see them through the stone walls—but as a warning against the unexpected. That was a kind of passive radar, a sensory net that was made to color the corners of his awareness the instant a conscious mind pointed its attention at his apparition. He was as good as dead in the system as long as the net didn't make any signal.
The convoy made it to the Blackwater pivot—a very sharp and sudden turn of ninety degrees where the narrowness of the street made the front horses take a crawl. The third wagon was losing its momentum and the weight was shifting. This was the instant of the very max disorder.
Aleric stepped off the ledge. He did not fall; he descended with the calculated grace of a falling leaf, utilizing a minor kinetic-dampening seal to negate the sound of his impact. He landed atop the canvas of the third wagon, his weight barely registering on the wooden frame.
Beneath him, the unmarked crates pulsed with a rhythmic, deep-blue radiance. Raw, high-density mana crystals. To a common thief, this was a king's ransom. To Aleric, it was a volatile variable that needed to be erased.
He was like a surgeon stealthily entering his theatre—doing it in silence, taking all the necessary precautions, and working quickly. He did not even exhale while doing the incantations or imagining the mathematical calculations in his mind. Rather, he put his whole hand down at the surface of the irregularly grooved timber with steadily increasing pressure. With a quick sharp heartbeat of his mana, he gave a Temporary Void-Mark, the link that connected the physical coordinates of the crates to his internal storage, a now.
The storage process was nearly instantaneous, and there were no struggles, no violent ripples; just a silent transition where the matter followed the path of least resistance into the void. His stamina flickered and dropped a little as the connection stabilized, but he was still in his operating limits.
The next moment, the wagon's load was shifted. The crates did not break or fall; they merely stopped being in the physical world. The third wagon therefore was dragging nothing but air and the whispers of an invisible fortune.
Aleric rolled off the rear of the vehicle, landing on the cobbled ground and immediately blending into the darkness of a nearby door. He was leaning on the wet stone, his breathing calm, his eyes scanning the guards' glowing aura in the far distance to be sure that his leaving went unnoticed.
A hidden side-entrance to the Academy's North Spire, a mile away, Kaelen was standing in the rafters of the coal-shed. It was complete darkness all around, and although Kaelen could not see like Aleric, she felt the sudden and heavy pressure on her body that made her skin crawl.
There was a carriage that was totally empty and without any sign of nobility. A person was standing next to it and his aura was like that of a cold wind in a closed room. Kaelen was not able to see the light of the man's power but through her feeling she could sense the sharpness and discipline of the aura—it was very high master and very hard for her to breathe. The man dominated the atmosphere with a cold and academic authority.
Then, Valerius's convoy came and the lead driver stopped the horses suddenly. The guards took their places and slightly bent their bodies as the official stepped in.
"The shipment is here, Excellency," the head mercenary declared, his voice shaking and bending very low at that.
The official went one step further. Kaelen was observing that the man was pulling back the tarp of the third wagon. There was a breath-taking stillness for the moment that they all held their breath and then the air got heavier. The aura of the official which was cold and sharp turned into a chaotic, jagged pressure that made Kaelen feel like she was going deaf. The sheer panic of the man was so strong that it produced a stifling tsunami of fear that he released as he comprehended the wagon to be empty.
He started to scream, his voice was quiet but very urgent, and the weight of his presence was beating down on the bewildered guards. The mercenaries stared into the empty compartment in a daze that was almost insane. They had been with the wagon the whole time. Nobody had stopped. Nobody had attacked. The cargo had just disappeared.
Kaelen pulled back even more into the shadows, and her heart was racing. It was then that she understood the brilliant aspect of Aleric's plan. There was no blood, no
The audit is successful, he thought, the cold logic returning as he rested.
Aleric, during his analysis of the Academy's hidden financial records, had revealed the nefarious plan that was behind the stones. The Valerius family was not simply moving wealth; they were supplying the exact, unprocessed material needed for the operation of a forbidden Mana-Extraction Array. This array had been set up to artificially raise the "merit" scores of the chief noble student by tapping the mana from nature and concentrating it in their cores.
The Faculty's intention was to use the results of this array to enact the "Student Purge" and maintain the Academy's reputation. They would claim the noble elite were "ascending" while the F-Rank commoners stayed still. Thus, they'd have the political power to get rid of hundreds of lower-ranked students under the pretext of academic standards. The stones were the power source for a device of separation.
Aleric did not take the crystals for selfish reasons and he probably would not give away his plan. The heist he had pulled off was solely for one purpose: Strategic Neutralization. By making the shipment disappear, he had literally stopped the array from being turned on. The high-ranking students would not be the ones, as usual, to show the sudden improvement and there would be no "data" for the Faculty to support their purge.
The professors concerned would be so busy trying to hide their corruption and account for the stolen illegal assets that they wouldn't have time to pay attention to an unimportant $F$-Rank student. He had skillfully taken advantage of the enemy's own greed to protect his presence.
He shut his eyes and let himself fall into a light, tactical sleep. He had removed one variable from the equation and the world was, for the time being, once again in the same state.