Chapter 48: Heist
Sora and Zatanna had stayed one more night before returning to Tokyo. Their stay there wasn't by choice as the earliest flight back was the day after.
Of course while they were there they weren't idle. Zatanna busied herself with studying Aldous' grimoire, already being able to cast a few basic spells.
The real winner of the trip was Sora. Out of the many books he had 'borrowed' from his predecessor's bedroom/library, there were three books that held his attention.
He realized how narrow minded he was on his views about magic and chakra. He had assumed that magic was ruled out for him due to chakra not being as flexible as it's counterpart.
Imagine his shock when he received a prompt upon touching one of the spell books. Aldous had a lot of spell books on different branches of magic but the three that caught his attention were Evocation, Enchantment and Rune magic.
[Evocation magic manipulate magical energy to produce a desired effect. Some call up blasts of fire or lightning. Others channel positive energy
to heal wounds.]
[Enchantment magic affect the minds of others, influencing or controlling their behavior. Such spells can make enemies see the caster as a friend, force creatures to take a course of action, or even control another creature like a puppet.]
[Rune magic manipulates magical energy with the use of symbols to produce a desired effect. Runes can turn a twig into a legendary sword. A simple rope can be used to chain the gods.]
The descriptions alone drew his interest and upon digging further, he couldn't help but learn them.
Despite Aldous' warning on learning to many branches of magic, he felt he could handle it as long as he didn't take on too much at once.
He limited himself to start with these three before even thinking about touching another branch.
Despite evocation looking like the most versatile only second to prepared runes, he preferred the subtle ways of enchantment.
Not everything needed to be solved with brute force. That was something he understood quite well.
They had been back in Tokyo for almost a week and neither he nor his shadow clones had rested for more than two hours each day. Between his forced evolution at the sanctuary and the time he spent studying the spell books, his panel was looking more furnished.
[Template Name: Sasuke Uchiha]
[Template Progress:48.5%]
[Skills]:[Engineering Mastery Lvl 73] [Energy Sensing Lvl 50] [Sealing Mastery Lvl 89] [Medical Knowledge Lvl 94] [Art of the Mind Lvl 61] [Analyze Lvl 10] [Teaching Lvl 64] [Alchemy Lvl 70] [Poison Resistance Lvl 17] [Cursed Seal of Heaven Lvl 9] [Transmutation Lvl 60] [Counter Lvl 20]
[Magic]:[Evocation Magic Lvl 12] [Rune Magic Lvl 8] [Enchantment Magic Lvl 15]
He also found out something interesting. Magic skills were capped at level 50.
How did he know that?
It's simple. He didn't know how either. It's the same way he knew that his other skills capped at level 100.
Rune magic was easily the hardest to level up compared to the other two but it would be worth it in the long run.
He had tested enchantment and so far it was his favored type of magic. It would also be what would aid him in what he was about to do.
Today was the day he would be infiltrating YoshiTech to steal some 'information'. They had a server which he easily figured out was a decoy for anyone looking to snoop into company.
Fortunately or unfortunately for the company, the main server which contained employee information wasn't available to the public. It was only accessible via touch from the building itself.
The fact that they had things to be hidden that required them to take such measures convinced him that he was on the right track.
Obtaining the blueprints for the building wasn't too difficult and it revealed a lot despite it's deliberately vague nature.
The YoshiTech building is a ten story building with various divisions on each floor. The ground floor up to the sixth floor was open to normal employees but anything above that was classified.
The blue print was practically almost blank for anything above the seventh floor with his vague it was.
Luckily, he didn't need to go above that. The server room he's looking for is the entire seventh floor.
With his plan set and everything he needed in his inventory, he entered the ten story building with confident strides.
His appearance was that of a man in his early twenties. He had brown curly hair and a cleanly shaved face. Average at most.
"Good morning Mr Daiki!" The receptionist greeted with a smile as he entered, returning it with a small smile as he continued on his way.
As for what happened to the actual man that Sora was impersonating, to put it simply, he was asleep.
Sora had a shadow clone steak out the building to find someone he could use to enter. Imagine his luck when he found someone who worked on the fourth floor.
Daiki Henma. An assistant in the research and engineering department who graduated not too long ago. He got the job due to his father's connections.
Sora couldn't care less about any of that but at least his cover was secure. With his engineering skill at 73, he was confident that nothing short of advance alien technology could confuse him and even that was a give or take matter.
With his entry point found, a simply use of enchantment and the man was fast asleep. Unless someone went to check on him or called in from his home, his cover would be fine.
He confidently stepped into the empty elevator and set his destination. Going straight to the seventh floor would be stupid and give him away.
He needed to bid his time properly and not be hasty or everything would be for naught. As the elevator stopped and opened on the fourth floor, he got out just as a man was about to walk in.
"Daiki, you're late. What happened? Did you forget your ID in a strip club again?" The man said jokingly but with a tiny bit of seriousness.
Another thing to note was that Daiki was a…strange man. He spent most nights in the strip club and mornings trying to bed some of his female coworkers.
Not that it worked a lot. From what he could dig from his mind, for all his displayed confidence the man had only gotten laid twice in his life.
"You say that like it's a bad thing. You can't tell me you don't like a redhead dancing on you-" He was interrupted as the man held up his hand with a sigh.
"Why did I even ask? Just go and get to work." The man said exasperatedly as he quickly entered the elevator.
Just his second interaction as Daiki and he was already struggling not to roll his eyes at the lifestyle.
The lab was less than a minute walk away from the elevator. Upon getting there, he quietly entered the lab buzzing with other grown men who were discussing around a table.
Just as he got closer to the table, one of them called out to him.
"You're late!" A man who from Daiki's memory is the head engineer said. Sora opened his mouth to make an excuse but the man held his hand up.
"Don't say anything, just come over here and get to work." He said, not in the mood to hear about Daiki's latest adventures.
'This guy's identity, while annoying is certainly easy to use. It saves me from any complicated actions or behavior.' Sora thought as he got closer to the table to see what they were pondering on.
With a single glance he got understood the entirety of what they were trying to do and of course, the major errors they had.
They were trying to build the perfect mechanical prosthetic limb, starting with the arms. Their design would be half decent if they just wanted the arm to prosthetic to dangle there like an ornament.
The moment they would try using it, it would be disastrous. First of all, to create the perfect limb, there needed to be a bridge connecting the limb and the brain in a non harmful manner.
Their method was simply connecting the artificial limb to the stump where it would directly connect itself with the muscle and bone. It would then send mimicked or false waves of energy to intercept and interpret the commands from the brain to the arm, causing it to move.
On paper it looked alright but it was so full of flaws that Sora get second hand embarrassment for them.
One of the main problems is the mimicked waves themselves. There waves traveling through the muscle would kill several cells during their circulation to and from each destination.
Then there was the fact that the waves would be constantly emitted. Constant exposure to those waves without time to recover and regenerate would eventually cause the muscles themselves to soon breakdown.
And with no form of exit, the dead cells and muscle tissue would remain inside the body and can cause other problems. Not to mention the fact that the arm would cease to work with the muscles dead to transmit the waves.
Even if you ignore all these concerns, the response time between the transmitting waves isn't something manageable as each action would take nothing less than 15 seconds to be intercepted and then interpreted before being performed.
All in all, it was a terrible idea. That didn't mean that he was going to help them figure it out. He simply sat there, giving somewhat unhelpful inputs as Daiki would do.
A few hours passed and everyone came to an agreement to go on a break for a while to cool off.
'That was the most boring few hours I'll never get back.' Sora thought as he slinked out of the lab, using a touch of enchantment to 'suggest' to them to ignore him.
He made his way to the stairs as the elevator would attract the attention of those upstairs. As he got close to the flight of stairs, walking out of view of the security cameras, he dipped his hand in his pocket, fishing out a tiny remote from his inventory.
He pressed the a button on the remote as the red light on the camera flashed for a second. In the control room, they wouldn't notice but the camera had been frozen in the image an empty staircase.
Upon getting closer to the sixth, he could see that the floor was occupied with people from various departments.
He also sighted multiple guards around. There was even one beside the stairs that led to the higher floors.
'This is going to be a bit harder than I thought.' He thought as he considered changing disguises.
Just before he made up his mind, he caught something at the corner of his eye. The familiar serpent coiled cross badge. It was worn by a middle aged man in a suit.
The man looked unfriendly and kept his features stern as he loitered around.
'That might just be my ticket up there.' The higher floor were accessible to those who had that badge and he had just found one.
Luckily, enchantment magic didn't need any grand gestures or anything. Lacing a suggestion in his target's mind to slow down his walking, he watched as the man slowed down a bit to take his time.
This allowed him to catch up to him, immediately casting two more spells as he placed a hand on the man's shoulder.
'[Mass Suggestion] [Fast Friends]' He thought casting the first one to suggest to the surrounding people to mind their business and the second spell with his target as the man in front of him.
The man's eyes looked unfocused for a second before he gained a look of familiarity.
"Daiki! How nice to see you." The man said as he extended as hand to Sora to shake which he did.
"It's nice to see you too. I don't suppose you would have access to the server room upstairs, would you?" Sora said, going straight to the point.
"Of course I do." The man replied eagerly to which Sora showed a smile.
"Perfect. I'm going to need you to take me there if you don't mind." Sora requested politely as he held in a smirk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was how Sora ended up being escorted past security and upstairs to the server room. Any would be obstacles were met with a minor confusion spell.
'I can't imagine their faces if they knew what they were doing.' Sora thought as he stood in the server room.
There were multiple servers standing around but fortunately, they were all connected to one main server. This was where Sora had inserted a cable connected to his watch as a holographic screen was displayed above it showing a progress bar.
The watch was something he put together specifically for this purpose. It projected a solid holographic screen and keyboard for proper interaction.
'Perks of being me.' He thought with a small amount of pride.
"…for some reason she just won't take a hint! How do you expect me to…"
The man whose name he now knew was Hozuki,talked at length about his life while Sora extracted what he needed from the server.
He was seriously considering just snapping his neck. Why would he want to know how long his wife lasts in bed. No matter how friendly you are with someone there are limits to that kind of info.
Another ten minutes passed as the download was completed.
'Mission completed. Now time to scram before someone notices something off.' He thought as he exited the server room with the still talking Hozuki trailing behind him.
On his way up, he had hacked the security cameras, setting them on a loop while he worked. It would only take one curious man there to ruin his entire plan.
He exited the room, making his way down to the fourth floor as the 'break' he was supposed to be on was almost over.
He had managed to dump Hozuki with someone else before stopping at a bathroom to undo all signs of his tampering with the cameras.
It's not like they could trace it back to him but unlike a certain group of superpowered teens, he knew what 'covert' meant.
Done with that, he continued his journey back to the lab to meet the brainstorming idiots.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To avert any suspicion, he was forced to stay until his Daiki's shift was over and he could go home and even then, he wasn't done.
He immediately rushed to Daiki's home to meet the man still sleeping. Making sure everything was the way it had been previously, he let out a breath of relief that no one had come to visit.
Stretching his hand towards the sleeping man, he cast the spell.
'[Modify Memory]' He intoned internally, implanting memories of Daiki going to work and coming back exhausted before passing out in the bed into the man's open mind.
Immediately that was done, he sped out of the house, moving in the direction of his own apartment.
'I fought deadshot to the death and crippled an entire gang on my own and yet I've never felt this tired before.' He thought dryly as he made his way back.
It wasn't actual exhaustion, it was more of boredom causing him to feel extremely tired. He wanted nothing more than to simply lay in bed an pass out too but there was still work to be done.