The Insider System

Chapter 157: Looting The Fortress

Lake looked right next to the bed first. There was an armor stand that he was guessing would be what this bandit would have been wearing if had attacked during the day but now it was just a nice decoration. It was too bad it was so big because he would have probably taken it with him to sell if he didn\'t think he could make more by taking a lot of smaller items.

He was about to start digging through the rest of the stuff when he remembered one of the new skills he had just gotten. Pulling up his stats Lake went through the list and realized he had new skills to look at first. Not only that his strength had actually broken 100 so he was about to have an awesome skill.

Race: Human Lv.12 ( 4/10)

Job: Brawler Lv.8 ( 345/1280 )

Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )

Stats

Health 120

Stamina 120

Mana 550

Strength 101

Endurance 15

Agility 89

Dexterity 119

Perception 101

Intelligence 114

Charisma 41

Free stat points: 144

Skills:

Debilitate (L) Lv.1

Your next strike will stun the target and have a chance of knocking them out.

(The higher their Endurance the less of an effect it has.)

(Cost 20 Mana)

Item Sense (L) Lv.1

Shows you the most valuable item in a radius around you.

Only works on items you don\'t own.

(Scales off of Perception)

The first two were obviously from Mugger hitting ten and he didn\'t spend much time on them and read the ones from hitting level 1 in brawler.

Barrier (G) Lv.1

Create a shield from your mana that scales off of your Dexterity.

Cost: 10 mana

Echoing Strikes (R) Lv.1

Unarmed attacks deal 30% damage when blocked.

It was almost getting to the point where it didn\'t even make sense for him to carry weapons anymore. He guessed this was what happened when you started to focus on similar jobs like how he had done with Ripper and Brawler. They were both jobs that focused on unarmed fighting and the fact he just happened to have really high Dexterity was just making it seem like he was someone who wanted to fight unarmed.

The truth was he thought swords and stuff were cool so he guessed he would need to diversify to other weapon jobs if he was to ever use one again. After making sure he would remember these skills even existed by reading them a few times he then looked at the skill he got for hitting 100 in strength.

The Best Stat (U) Lv.1

90% damage reduction from targets with lower Strength.

After Lake read this he wondered why he would care about damage coming from people weaker than him he would rather have the opposite where he took less damage from people stronger than him but after reading it again he realized someone\'s combat strength didn\'t always come from the Strength stat.

A lot of people focused Agility or Intelligence to fight, meaning their strength would be neglected like his Endurance was. He guessed this skill would make it so a mage would do less damage to him with magic or a Ranger would have a hard time piercing him with their arrows. That being said this seemed more like a skill you would get from Endurance but he guessed one of the past Insiders had been a meat head to the point where they hadn\'t thought of this.

That was the exact kind of person that would name a skill The Best Stat when talking about strength. Now that he was done with his new skills Lake found the one he thought could help him with his current situation.

Retrieval (U) Lv.1

Summon anything you had in your hand back to your hand.

(Cost 5 Mana)

This had been an Archer skill at some point so he was sure it had been called something like Arrow Retrieval or something like that and it had just let you recall your arrows but now that one of the past Insiders had gotten their hands on it it was much more. Every time he read it he realized just how crazy it was.

Anything he had ever touched could be summoned so all he needed to do was touch all this loot and summon it later to sell once he got to town. He was about to get to work when he realized just how crazy this skill was for someone like him who stole things. He could just go into a store and touch stuff and summon it later after he left.

It was too bad he hadn\'t gotten this skill earlier he would have already made the one million gold he needed in all likelihood. After touching the twenty or so weapons that were in the room and every piece of armor he could find he went to the boxes and chests and started to open them. Bag after bag of gold to the point where he realized all he was going to have room for in his bag was gold and it was a good thing he had Retrieval for the other stuff. He couldn\'t sit here and count it so he just packed it away before moving on to the weirder loot that was in the chests. The first thing was a pile of about a hundred cores and after touching a few of them he realized these were all cores that held stats. These were worth a lot even if he had no intention of using them as he was touching them so he could use Retrieval on them later Lake realized a weak point of this skill.

There was no way he would be able to remember each of these later and to prove his point he turned his back and used Retrieval. Feeling a small amount of mana disappear and a small amount of weight in his hand, Lake dropped it and tried to do it again but couldn\'t remember what anymore of them looked like well enough to summon them.

"Fuck." After a few seconds he got over how mad he was and tried to think of a way to get around this. What if he was to write down what all of it looks like? Lake instantly forgot that idea and tried to find a better one that wouldn\'t take longer than just running back and forth a few times.

"If I put them all in a bag can I then summon the bag?" This made sense to Lake because if he couldn\'t that would make it so he wasn\'t able to summon something like a potion. It probably had something to do with how he thought about it. Like if he thought bag just the bag would show up but if he thought bag of cores the bag and all the cores would show up.

Wanting to test his theory, Lake touched the chest they were all in and turned around. Using Retrieval caught the chest as it appeared in his hand. Just from the way it sounded as he balanced it in his hand he could tell it had stuff inside it and he rejoiced as he set it on the ground.

Opening it up, Lake saw all the stuff inside it and started to pack the chest full. There was a lot of loose loot he wanted to take with him so he needed to pack it all away so he could leave. As he was working Lake saw a light start to bloom in the room and looked to the bed. The body had started to glow a golden color which meant he was sure all the bodies that would had by now since he had killed the leader last.

He was almost packing the three chests he was going to use to take all the small stuff so he just went back to work; he would worry about getting his Intangible Loot later. When he was done with the small stuff Lake looked at the weapons that were on stands around the room and after thinking about it grabbed a pelt that was on the bed and laid it on the ground.

After that he started to fill it with weapons and once he had all of them in it he rolled it up and summoned it to make sure it would work. It did and he caught the heavy bundle before laying it down back where it had been on the ground. With that he was done and could move on to getting the head ready to go.

Getting his knife out, Lake got the head off and gathered the Intangible Loot and after holding the head put it down to see if he would be able to summon it later. When it appeared neck hole down in his hand Lake grimaced and set it on the bed. It was still better than having to carry it all the way back but he went ahead and wrapped it up so the next time he didn\'t have to feel the neck hole again.

...

Lake was walking down the mountain after getting all the Intangible Loot from all the bodies that were glowing. He had sadly gotten a extra stat point in Strength from Intangible Loot which he hadn\'t wanted but what could you do he had been able to get Brawler to level 9 though so that was nice that meant he would get two more skills that would probably make him even better at unarmed fighting with the next level.

Race: Human Lv.12 ( 5/10)

Job: Brawler Lv.9 ( 137/2560 )

Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )

Stats

Health 120

Stamina 120

Mana 550

Strength 104

Endurance 15

Agility 89

Dexterity 120

Perception 101

Intelligence 114

Charisma 41

Free stat points: 144

Now all he needed to do was get to town and sell all this junk. Thinking about how much he could get, Lake got excited. It was starting to feel like he would finally start making real progress on the last Insider mission he had to complete to get to the first level. It was crazy to think he wasn\'t even level one and he was already so strong.

What would he be able to do when he hit level one. He was sure it would have something to do with his Unique skills and the golden writing and if that ended up being what it was he couldn\'t wait to start changing skills to suit him better. Skills like Retrieval and Poison Control had shown him how you could take something that wasn\'t originally useful to someone who was a criminal and turn it into something that was.

That being said he wasn\'t sure if he had any skills that had much potential yet because he hadn\'t leveled up many jobs that weren\'t Unique already. Rogue was a good one to start with he guessed, he had been kind of surprised when it hadn\'t already been tampered with so he guessed he would be the one to fix that.

Getting to the bottom of the mountain, Lake looked out across the lake he would have to cross to get back to the road and had a sudden thought. "Can I run on water?"