Chapter 39: Planning.
Left alone, Loki immediately stepped into the basement and picked out a topaz crystal necklace.
He took four steps counterclockwise while chanting the honorific name of the Celestial worthy of Heaven and Earth and entered above the grey fog.
Once Loki was above the grey fog he made himself a chair and a table and then sat down in it with his back resting on the backrest as he half closed his eyes and used cogitation to enter a half-sleep state.
'What should my divination statement be?' Loki wondered as he built up the statement that he would use to divine into the situation.
'Is the thievery competition only a fight for the position of Ludwig?'
'No that's not what I am wondering about.'
'The thievery competition is a ritual for advancing to Sequence 5: Shepherd of the Hanged man pathway.'
'Yes, this is it.'
Loki quickly held up his topaz pendulum in his non-dominant, left, hand and allowed it to still.
Once the necklace was still, Loki closed his eyes and chanted his question seven times.
'The thievery competition … pathway.'
'The thievery competition … pathway.'
'The thievery competition … pathway.'
…
'The thievery competition … pathway.'
Once he was done, Loki relied on his connection with the Sefirah castle to help power his divination with the crystal pendulum.
Opening his eyes Loki looked at the crystal pendulum that was hanging from his hand.
The pendulum was not spinning, not at all.
'*sigh*, so I can't rely on divination like Klein did.' Loki thought with slight worry.
'Is there any other way to confirm my suspicions?'
Loki thought for a while with closed eyes.
'It couldn't be a ritual for a deity's descent since that needs a prolonged sense of suppression and gathering of negative emotions.'
'It could just be a stupid decision from Mr. A since he's a crazy person, but would he really cause such a big incident just because he wants to see chaos?'
'While possible, it feels rather unlikely.'
'Hmm…let us assume it is for a ritual to advance to the next sequence then since that fits the best.'
'Given how much planning Mr. A has put into the ritual, what would he do if he loses a key component?' Loki thought with a tired cunning smile that only barely hid his thoughts.
'What if he loses the Beyonder characteristic that is required to make the potion of the Sheperd pathway?'
'Will that be possible?' Loki wondered as he looked around the Sefirah Castle.
'*sigh* I don't think it is impossible.' Loki thought with firm eyes and then laughed at himself deprecatingly.
'He at least deserves such a punishment for violating my life like this. I want him to pay for making me vomit on that god-forbidden roof and staying there for the entire day while having to look at so much madness!'
'With added interest!'
After a failed attempt at making himself laugh that only increased how tired he felt after having to look at people killing each other for the entire day, Loki escaped the grey fog and called for Kreacher.
"Kreacher!!"
*POP*
"Yes, Master.", Kreacher said with a polite bow.
"Do you know what happened to the gun that the man Granny killed had?"
Kreacher looked at Loki with wide eyes but did not go against his training of always obeying his master and said, "I have it. But, Master, are you sure?"
Seeing Kreacher worried about him, Loki nodded lightly and spoke kindly, "Could you pass it to me Kreacher? And thank you for worrying about me, but I know what I'm doing, at least I think so."
"I see. If master is sure, Kreacher has nothing to add." Kreacher nodded and with the snap of his fingers, the gun teleported in front of him which he dropped in front of Loki on a table.
"Thanks, Kreacher. Ah, I have another request, can you make me a holster for this thing?" Loki requested while Kreacher nodded with a short bow and left the basement.
Holding the gun in his hand with unfamiliarity Loki looked at it with an unhappy frown.
'Will I be able to hurt a Sequence 6 with a normal gun?'
'Well, it's not wrong to take it for self-defence anyway.'
Fiddling with it for a while, Loki managed to open the magazine.
"Five bullets."
"*sigh* Why can't I be like Klein and get my own demon-hunting bullets? Are there even demon-hunting bullets in this world?"
'When will I have my own Tarot organisation? Wouldn't that make things much easier?'
'Will I get a beautiful member like Miss Audrey?'
'Haa~~! Dreams are good Loki, but right now you have to fight against the evil overlords that are performing a ritual to kill a lot of people.'
'Hehe…talking in the third person is fun, isn't it Loki?'
'Definitely not a sign of madness. Definitely.'
Rolling over to the next day, Loki reached the depressing and frankly stinky streets of the Black Market to resume his position on the top of the two-storey house.
Sitting in his usual position, Loki noticed something unnerving on the streets.
'The bodies that were in the street yesterday…they've all been taken care of.'
'Is he eating those body parts?'
Loki felt bile moving into his mouth because of the thought but he quickly suppressed it.
Instead, he finally began to observe the situation of the thieves around him.
'If I want to pull off a heist at the level I am thinking of, I need to make sure I pay attention to everything that will happen over the next week.'
'And I have a few tests to conduct to see if I will be able to do as I want.'
Spending another day on the roof, Loki managed to keep his bile inside his stomach in spite of the horrific things that had happened in the streets.
Occasionally throughout the day, Loki fired shots at the shack to see if Mr. A would be lured out but no matter where he fired at the house nothing happened.
'Is he not going to come out until the end like yesterday?'
'What is he even doing inside there?'
'Eating the corpses from yesterday?'
Whenever no one was paying attention, Loki would steal bullets from the other thieves as he continued his experiments.
In the meantime, there was a new rumour among the participants of the black market competition.
"The death doctor will take care of the bodies after we leave."
Loki unknowingly had already amassed a reputation without doing much among the large group of participants.
The days were a blur for Loki and he was slowly learning everything about the participants and his own target, Mr. A.
Whenever he went to the ground, Loki took a safe spot hidden in the shadows, something he'd spotted from the roof of the two-storey house, and fired stray shots towards a few thieves who were guarding the shack since it had become an unspoken neutral ground.
He wanted to see just how much it would take to send all the contenders spiralling with hate until they would break their positions and come in search of him.
'It isn't much.'
'All it took was four shots at most to make them break position and search for the person who shot towards the shack.'
Loki made and refined his plan several times and tried his best to take care of everything that could go wrong, he wanted this plan to be flawless, or else he was sure he'd die a vain death.
The last day soon arrived and Loki woke up in an exceptionally good mood, even though there were dark circles around his eyes and drool sticking from his lips, he was in an exceptionally good mood today.
Because today was the day he was going to perform the biggest heist he had ever planned.
'Knives check, no one's head will be spared from my ultimate knife skills.'
'Charms check, no one will escape the power of the Sun.'
'Mask check, so that I look cool.'
'Cloak check, slots for blasphemy cards so that I gain anti-divination properties.'
'Secret items check, causing chaos is a duty of mine.'
Loki looked at the pocket watch hanging on his waist and once it hit six in the morning, he stepped out of the house.
'Today is going to be a hectic day.'
'Hopefully nothing untoward happens.'
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