Finding the Safe
"I am in."
Slipping through the narrow skylight at the back of the basement, Arthur Sterling relied entirely on a physical constitution that was now more than double that of an average man to breach Steve's fortified villa.
The basement was pitch-black. Hooking his heavy boots over the concrete sill, he hung head-down and groped blindly into the void below.
His sensitive fingertips met only empty air, a realization that briefly unsettled him.
Only after his enhanced eyes rapidly adjusted to the suffocating darkness did he realize the basement ceiling was nearly three meters high.
It had to be a massive underground garage; a long, sleek rectangular silhouette stood parked not far ahead. Even in the heavy gloom, it was unmistakably a high-end vehicle.
"The ceiling is about two-point-eight to three meters high," Arthur muttered silently to himself. "With my current bone density and muscle mass, I can easily drop this."
After a quick, flawless mental calculation, he was completely satisfied.
He relaxed his core muscles and let his legs slide off the sill. His calloused hands hit the concrete floor first; just a fraction of a second before the heavy impact, he tensed his body perfectly.
With his arms exploding with twice the normal human power to absorb the kinetic shock, he executed a flawless tactical roll and landed upright on his feet.
"Huff," Arthur exhaled sharply.
Without a single moment of pause, he ducked swiftly into the deep shadows behind the parked vehicle.
His supernaturally keen hearing had already caught the faint, rhythmic swivel of a motorized surveillance camera, but he hadn't visually spotted it during his descent.
A careful look from behind the car's chassis soon confirmed his tactical suspicion.
The glowing lens covered only the massive main garage entrance; from its rigid angle, it absolutely could not see him lurking in the back corner.
Reassured, he accessed the void and drew a chemical glow-stick directly from his invisible private space. A quick, sharp snap filled the dark garage with a pale, eerie green light.
The underground space was incredibly large, easily spanning fifty or sixty square meters.
There was more than enough room for three or four full-size Chevy Suburbans to park comfortably side by side. Yet only two highly expensive cars stood inside the cavernous space.
Up close, Arthur identified the first as a pristine Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, a massive, highly capable off-road beast.
Base models started around fifty or sixty thousand dollars on the open market, and the paranoid wealthy often sprang for heavy, legal armoring and massive power upgrades.
The second car resting in the garage was a sleek, low-slung Bentley sedan.
Arthur had picked up a massive wealth of mechanical knowledge about cars lately.
After only a few extra, analytical glances, he recognized it precisely as a second-generation Bentley Continental.
It was the ultra-luxury coupe built entirely after Bentley had been aggressively taken over by the Volkswagen Group.
In the United States, its standard base model ran an exorbitant one-hundred-seventy to one-hundred-eighty-thousand dollars in cold hard cash. It was far pricier than many entry-level supercars an absolute, undeniable rich man's toy.
He silently admired the simple fact that the traitorous Steve really knew exactly how to enjoy his violently stolen wealth.
Using the faint green glow from his light-stick, Arthur quickly confirmed that, apart from the heavy steel vehicle ramp leading outside, the underground garage had one more solid door, apparently leading straight up into the main villa.
Once he was absolutely sure his enhanced eyes hadn't misjudged the layout, he pocketed the light-stick and groped his way silently toward the door.
At the heavy wooden frame, he reached out and gently tried the brass handle. His focused face soon froze; the door was locked tight.
He frowned, glancing back toward the garage entrance, then firmly decided to give it a shot anyway. From his invisible private space, he produced a professional-grade lock-picking kit wrapped in dark leather.
[Lockpicking] had been one of the very first supernatural skills Arthur had successfully unlocked after his miraculous transmigration. Still, the delicate skill demanded incredibly high, sensitive expertise.
At first, he could easily grind system experience points simply by opening common, mundane door locks with their actual keys.
Once the skill hit LV2, using standard keys no longer yielded a single drop of experience.
Losses and massive gains always came together, though. With his [Lockpicking] skill sitting solidly at LV2, he could now effortlessly open the vast majority of standard locks legally sold on the consumer market.
Whether his sensitive hands could successfully handle the heavy security door to Steve's villa garage, however, he genuinely wasn't entirely sure.
He carefully selected a few slim, steel tension tools and a rake. Inserting them smoothly into the brass lock, he pressed his ear directly to the cold mechanism and listened with absolute, terrifying focus. A physical constitution more than twice the human norm had likewise drastically sharpened his five senses. Lately, he had profited massively from that biological evolution, learning exactly how to exploit those heightened senses during infiltrations.
Click.
The heavy door inside Steve's garage wasn't actually an especially sophisticated, military-grade lock. Arthur probed the internal mechanism with his steel picks, expertly teasing the brass tumblers into place while gently twisting the knob with exactly the right amount of tension.
After several tense minutes of meticulous trial and error, a soft, satisfying click echoed in the dark. The door unlatched and opened.
A sharp, victorious grin flashed across Arthur's handsome face.
He quickly stowed the steel tools back into the void and slapped a thick strip of duct tape directly over the metal latch to absolutely keep it from accidentally re-locking behind him.
With his escape route secured, he slipped silently inside.
A short, shadowed corridor greeted him. His enhanced eyes had already perfectly adapted to the heavy darkness. Though no main lights were turned on, he could still make out the structural details with predatory clarity.
On the exact same side as the garage, only a single wall away, stood what looked exactly like a large storage room. Its door was slightly ajar; to be absolutely safe from ambush, he checked it thoroughly and found only towering racks of highly expensive, foreign liquor. Indifferent to the vintage alcohol, he left the room at once.
He continued silently along the carpeted corridor in the opposite direction. Five or six meters ahead, an elegant spiral staircase curved gracefully upward into the main house.
He crept up the wooden stairs like a ghost. Another heavy door waited at the top landing, but it wasn't locked at all. A gentle, controlled turn of the brass handle and it swung open without a sound.
The absolute moment it did, Arthur's racing heart leapt; he had successfully entered the ground floor of Steve's luxury villa.
The sprawling villa sat on a massive, highly exclusive plot of land, but its actual built-up interior area wasn't overly large. It had one deep basement and two above-ground floors.
Though recently constructed with modern amenities, the interior radiated a heavy, classic character.
Inside were many expensive vintage pieces; even the rich hardwood flooring and stone tiles had been specifically salvaged and imported by Steve from ancient European buildings.
Many incredibly wealthy American tycoons absolutely loved that specific, cultured style.
So, massive U.S. mansions are often lavishly decorated with dismantled, priceless antiques shipped from Europe and the rest of the world, just to falsely project an air of deep, cultured heritage.
Perhaps Steve felt deeply, paranoidly unsafe at night, or for some other psychological reason; though the massive main chandeliers were completely off, a few subtle wall fixtures on the ground floor remained dimly lit.
Arthur's combat nerves tightened once again. He prowled the ground floor with absolute, lethal caution.
He vividly remembered that Steve had originally kept the massive safe holding nearly a ton of pure gold bricks right on this very level; attempting to manually move that staggering, dead weight up a flight of stairs would be an absolute logistical nightmare.
He searched every shadowed corner while keeping a highly alert eye out for any armed guards, and quickly noticed that the interior of the villa actually had absolutely no surveillance cameras. Steve clearly, deeply disliked having his private life actively watched by security feeds.
So, after ten-odd minutes of incredibly careful, silent searching, Arthur finally returned to the main corridor located right beside the lavish living room on the ground floor.
By now, he had almost completely searched the entire first floor. Downstairs featured a massive living room, a sprawling kitchen, a laundry area, a private gym, and a large study, but absolutely no guest bedrooms or maid's quarters where anyone could possibly sleep.
There genuinely didn't seem to be any armed guards stationed inside the villa either, which let Arthur breathe a massive, profound sigh of relief. After rigorously checking every single one of those places, he had found absolutely nowhere a massive, multi-ton safe could logically be hidden.
On the entire ground floor, there was only one highly specific spot Arthur hadn't fully inspected yet.
It was a securely locked door tucked away in the corridor right next to the living room. From the villa's overall architectural layout, his highly intelligent mind had already guessed the enclosed space behind that door couldn't possibly be more than three or four square meters in total.
So just moments ago, he hadn't paid it much tactical attention. Besides, the locked door was really entirely too close to the villa's massive main entrance.
At first, Arthur had logically assumed it was just a simple storage closet for coats and shoes. But after touring the whole, sprawling floor and finding nothing, he couldn't help but grow deeply suspicious.
"The massive safe couldn't possibly be hidden right in there, could it?" Arthur wondered silently.
He walked silently up to the door and studied the otherwise completely ordinary-looking wooden panel for a long, calculating moment.
Then, once again, he seamlessly took his professional lock-pick set directly from his invisible private space. He worked intensely on the brass lock for a short while.
Soon, with a crisp, echoing metallic click, the simple mechanical lock yielded flawlessly to Arthur's talented tools.
He pulled the heavy wooden door open at once, and his steady breathing instantly turned heavy with raw excitement.
Sitting squarely behind the door, two massive, thick-walled steel safes stood perfectly side by side in the dark.
Arthur knew with absolute, thrilling certainty that he had finally found Steve's mountain of stolen gold.