(Time-Stilled World, Castle Bravo Perimeter, Leo's POV)
Once the repair work was done, the most difficult part truly began, which was planning how to carry out the actual heist?
So far, although Leo had scouted the outer courtyard in suffocating detail—mapping every collapsed arch, every inch of stone between his entry point and the teleportation gate—he had not even gotten a peek inside the central structure, which was where he suspected the treasure being kept.
Leo knew that if he wanted even a sliver of hope at completing this mission without dying a gruesome, meaningless death, then he needed to figure out a way to breach that structure and scout its interior.
But every time he so much as looked at it from his perch in the tree, his instincts screamed at him to look away.
He didn't want to go in.
He couldn't go in.
Not while that thing—that robed priest with its faceless mask and silent footsteps—resided within those walls like a sentinel carved from some forgotten nightmare.
He remembered what he'd seen. How even the air shifted when the priest passed. How even beasts stronger than him fled at its approach, tails tucked, claws trembling. And how just being outside the courtyard when it passed made his body feel like it was being slowly crushed by a weight that wasn't physical.
So the idea of voluntarily stepping inside the same structure that creature called home?
It felt suicidal.
A gamble no sane assassin would even entertain.
And yet… as he watched day after day, taking notes, memorizing patterns, sketching maps, and fighting against the creeping sense of dread that coiled tighter around his chest with every sunrise… something changed.
It happened on the twenty-third morning.
He was watching from the tree again, eating cold rations with numb fingers, when the priest exited the building for its usual incense-burning ritual, walking that same unnerving circle around the inner courtyard.
But what caught Leo's eye wasn't the priest—it was what it ignored.
Two Grandmaster-ranked wolves were loitering in the courtyard, pacing too close to the building, one of them even pawing at a broken pillar.
They collapsed into a pool of nerves when the priest walked out, the pressure too suffocating for them to move, as they whimpered and snivelled, and yet… the priest didn't turn.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't react.
It kept walking—slow, methodical, as if the creatures didn't even exist, giving Leo hope that perhaps it too ignored Grandmaster tier beings.
Leo sat up straighter, heart skipping a beat.
"It doesn't register them as a threat," he whispered, eyes narrowing. "Maybe that priest isn't a fighter type ghost."
He held his breath.
A thought clawed its way up from the back of his skull, rising like bile in his throat.
Fifteen minutes.
That was the window.
Fifteen minutes from when the priest exited the structure to begin its ritual, to the moment it returned. Fifteen minutes where the sanctum stood open. Unguarded. Quiet.
Just once.
Just one trip.
In and out.
No touching. No breathing too loud. No Big Risks. No sudden movements.
Just a glance. A survey. A chance to see what was really waiting behind those towering doors, so he could build a real plan—not one crafted from guesswork and desperation.
His hands shook. His breath came shallow.
But he made the decision anyway.
Because if he didn't do this, he might as well call it quits now, as attempting the mission blindly and without a proper plan, was guaranteed to lead to death.
—----------
And so, the next morning, at the precise second the priest vanished through the main gate, Leo leapt from the tree, blinked into the courtyard in a burst of [Stormflash Traverse], and sprinted low—barely daring to breathe—as he slipped through the colossal doorway of Castle Bravo's central tower.
And what he found inside…
Made him forget how to move.
The air struck him first.
Not with heat.
Not with cold.
But with something ancient.
It pressed down on him like liquid lead, seeping into his lungs and bones, wrapping around his heart like an invisible noose.
The scent was thick—like burnt parchment and decayed flowers—and the silence was deafening, the kind that made one's own heartbeat sound like a war drum.
He staggered forward, eyes wide.
And then he saw it.
A church. Or something older.
Circular. Hollow. Lined with faded pillars carved in a language he didn't know.
The walls were inked with black-stained murals of death and rebirth, of worlds crumbling and flames swallowing cities, all centering around one colossal, cracked painting that took up the entire far wall.
Zhanrok.
The two legged lizard god.
His body was cloaked in stone armor.
His hands stretched over a pile of skulls.
His crown broken and his eyes glowing with divine rot.
Beneath that painting stood a simple, unadorned stone table, and atop it… the Origin Metal. Two small pieces.
Not locked. Not sealed.
Just placed there—casual, defiant, humming softly with that same pulse that made Leo's fingertips twitch and his vision blur for a heartbeat.
It did not look like anything special, just two pieces of iron ingot if one was not specifically taught to identify it.
And if Leo had not seen its picture before, it was an object that he wouldn't have been able to recognise either.
In front of the table that contained the origin metal and resting like a centerpiece between treasure and the painting, was the ancient casket.
Long. Gleaming. Etched with gold and blackened glyphs that shimmered with residual power, as just glancing in its direction made Leo feel powerless and dizzy, as he nearly fainted from a glance that did not even last a full two seconds.
'Don't look at it… don't go near it–' His instincts screamed at him, as he moved as far away from it as he could.
He did not touch anything within the room, nor did he cross the floor, as he simply stood at the threshold, memorizing the layout, the position of the table, the number of steps to the exit, the shadows in each corner… all the while trying to calm the thunder thumping loudly in his chest.
Then—when the fifth minute of the fifteen was almost up—he turned, slipped out, and vanished in another silent flicker of teleportations.
As it was only after he collapsed under the roots of his vantage tree, drenched in sweat, with fingers digging into the dirt that he finally allowed himself to breathe again, as he could feel his heart beating out of his chest.
"That was the most dangerous thing I have ever done…." Leo said to himself, as he placed a hand over his thumping heart, trying to calm it down, while breathing in an unsteady rhythm, as his mind recovered from the dizzy fog that it felt ever since he glanced at the casket.
'The resting place of an ancient god….' Leo thought, as he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, as his fight or flight response was fully activated.
"I can do this…" he finally whispered to himself, admitting what he had been too afraid to admit aloud until now.
His voice was hoarse.
Low.
Almost broken.
"I know what I'm stealing now." He said, more confidently now, as for the first time since entering the Time Stilled World…
He began to believe in his odds to succeed.