I Warned You

Concluding the deal with Illsrvati, the problem of finding the bank robbers has become a matter of waiting. Even if Astur doesn't completely comprehend Illsrvati's capabilities, she is aware of the potential of her species and trusts that she will bring back the necessary information.

"Given the size of the hotel, I expect Illsrvati to return with the information we want within an hour unless something unexpected occurs, but even then I don't think the time frame will be longer than an hour and a half. So I'm going to take a nap again, wake me up when she gets back," Astur says as she returns to the bed.

"Wait," Ystur pulls Astur's arm, "Why not have some fun and play a game or something? All you ever do is sleep, try something else for a change."

"Like what?" Astur asks.

"I don't know, like a card game or something."

"Pass. I don't want to do something I'm guaranteed to lose. As long as Kretea is here she'll win by default through her absurd luck."

"I don't think I'm so lucky to win every game. I mean I just lost last… when was the last time I lost a card game?" Kretea asks.

Rolling her eyes, Astur points at Kretea who is trying to remember her last loss, "See?"

"Ok, I see your point. Anything that involves a lot of luck will be her win. I can agree with that, but it's boring to spend this time without doing anything and isn't it tiring to sleep so much?" Ystur asks.

"Do you want to learn a secret?" Astur asks.

"What kind of secret? Is it about some conspiracy theory I read on the internet? Or the secret to becoming a God? Or the secret to immortality?" Ystur asks, shaking Astur's arm with excitement.

"Calm down. It's a secret about life. The secret to time travel," Astur says.

"Time travel? Does this mean you can travel through time and can even teach us how?" Ystur asks.

"Of course. First, you need to find a comfortable spot to rest and close your eyes. After experiencing a strange illusion, you'll be able to open your eyes and it will usually be several hours into the future from when your first closed your eyes, but only a few moments will have passed for you," ignoring Ystur's piercing stare, Astur continues, "I can even tell you how to get teleportation powers. You see, someone I know has a hobby of cultivating strange foods, one of them can give you the power to teleport. Once you eat it, you'll blink and suddenly find yourself in the hospital. Instant teleportation to the hospital."

"That's bullshit," Ystur bluntly says.

Even Kretea, someone Astur can usually trick easily, sees through her, "That just sounds like sleeping and a severe case of food poisoning."

Continuing to ignore the two of them, Astur says, "I'm going to go time travelling," jumping into the bed, Astur pulls the bedsheets over her and quickly being her time travel procedures.

"All that, all so she could justify going to sleep…" Ystur mumbles.

"I don't think Lady Astur will be able to remain sleeping for long. As she said, with Illsrvati's resources, it likely won't take too long for her to find the location of the bank robbers. In the meantime, why don't we consider how to approach them?" Kretea suggests.

"I guess that's fine, but are we just gonna let Mom sleep?"

"... Why don't we consider how to approach them?" Kretea suggests again.

"But what about--"

"Let's talk about the robbers."

"But… ok," Ystur gives in. She can clearly see that Kretea has no intention of waking Astur up, so she moves on with Kretea's suggestion, "The first way I can think of is to use brute force. We simply break into their room and directly deal with the robbers and take their money."

"This was also my first thought as well, but there are some glaring weaknesses to this plan as well. The first is the noise problem. Such an operation will generate a lot of noise. A direct confrontation like this will most likely bring us into combat with the robbers. Assuming they are close in strength to Joseph, the one from the sewers, then accounting variables regarding their unknown equipment, combat with them is guaranteed to attract attention. Since Lady Astur also wants to rob the County Treasury, such attention is counterproductive to our goals. There are a few other minor problems as well, but they aren't something that can't be dealt with," Kretea explains.

"Is that so? Then what else… maybe sneaking in? But I can't see that working," Ystur says.

"There is a possibility, but such a method will require a lot more information, which we currently lack. But we can try and formulate a plan with some imaginative scenarios. For example, given their status, it is likely that they won't leave the room much outside of some absolute necessities, such as food. Going on this assumption, they'll have to leave to get food every so often, so maybe we try and ambush them when going out for food."

"But what if they are exclusively ordering room service or other delivery methods?" Ystur asks.

"That could be a problem. We could try and mix this idea with the previous brute force method. We pose as the delivery person and when they open the door for the food, we use that chance to rush in. This won't cause as much as a commotion compared to breaking in their door, but it will still likely cause a battle between us and them. The beginning part isn't as risky, but we still have a high chance of being discovered by a third party," Kretea says.

The two go on for another fifteen minutes coming up with a variety of shallow ideas, but nothing concrete as they lack enough information for them to formulate a proper plan of action.

"At the end of the day, it's hard to come up with a foolproof plan when we don't know the specifics regarding the situation," Ystur says.

Going through her bag, Ystur pulls out a pair of six-sided dice.

"Let's play a game. I call it, 'how long will it take for Kretae to lose'. We roll the dice, you win if you roll a total of eleven or higher, otherwise I win."

Upon hearing the rules, Kretea frowns, "This game feels incredibly unfair."

"Don't worry, you get to roll the dice," Ystur hands over the two dice.

With a sigh, Kretea decides to amuse Ystur and play along, not expecting to win much. But as the dice roll across the table, they both land on a six for a total of twelve. And then eleven on the second roll. And then again on the third roll, and back to twelve on the fourth roll. After a few minutes of Kretea constantly rolling either eleven or twelve, Ystur takes over and rolls the dice for Kretea. But the result doesn't change and even when Ystur tries to manipulate the dice, they still manage to give Kretea's winning numbers.

As time passes and many dice rolls later, they hear someone knocking at the door.

A voice calls out, "It's Illsrvati."

Kretea gets up to let her in. Meanwhile, Ystur is sitting at the table they were playing at with dead eyes. More than two hundred rounds were played, and Kretea never went below eleven. Astur had gotten up some time ago and had been watching the game unfold. Kretea had noticed, but seeing that Astur had signalled her to keep playing she didn't say anything. Ystur on the other hand had been so absorbed into the game she failed to notice that Astur had woken up a while ago.

Walking over to Ystur, Astur places a hand on Ystur's shoulder. As Ystur looks up at her, Astur says, "I warned you."