Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 322: Night Thieves

Time soon passed, and fortunately, with Barnabys and cipher’s connections, which had spread to almost all parts of the continent over the years

After entering the capital, they soon found a safe house he had prepared for them before now

The safehouse smelled of mold, cheap ale, and the sharp, ozone tang of superheated air.

From the single, grime-caked window of the attic room, the Grand Cathedral of the Kingdom of Light loomed over the city like a golden mountain.

Even in the dead of night, it was illuminated by massive arrays of holy magic, a shining beacon of the Pope’s absolute authority.

In the shadows of the attic, away from the window, three hardened veterans of the Black Thread prepared for a sacrilege.

"So many months," Lukas muttered, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that bore no resemblance to the terrified teenager who had once faced Prince Nero.

"So many months of hauling cargo, burning cultist camps, and sleeping in the dirt. And it all comes down to breaking into the Pope’s personal piggy bank."

Lukas sat on a rickety wooden chair, a set of fine dwarven tools spread across his lap. He was performing maintenance on his arms.

Or rather, the heavy, matte-black Magitech Gauntlets that seamlessly covered his forearms where his flesh ended. He twisted a wrench, loosening a pressure valve near his wrist.

HISS.

A jet of scalding steam vented into the room. Lukas didn’t flinch. His mana channels had been burned away a lifetime ago by the Golden Prince, but Hephaestus’s engineering had given him something better than natural magic: pure, unadulterated plasma.

"Cooling cycle is still hanging at exactly 1.5 seconds," Lukas noted, his eyes tracking the glowing blue mithril filaments woven into the metal.

"If I push it to a continuous beam for more than five seconds, the heat sinks will melt my elbows. I’ll have to stick to surgical bursts."

"Surgical is what we need," Elena said, stepping out of the shadows.

During this journey, the High Elf Princess had shed all the aristocratic softness she once possessed. She wore a sleek, form-fitting suit of dark grey tactical leather, designed for maximum mobility. Over her right eye, the silver rim of her Photon Lens caught the faint light of the moon.

She held out her hand.

The air around her palm didn’t blow like a normal breeze. It hummed, spinning inward, tightening into a high-speed centrifuge.

"Light travels in a straight line," Elena recited quietly, the lesson from their masked professor permanently burned into her methodology.

"If you want to hide, you don’t wrap yourself in shadows. You bend the world so the light never touches you."

She extended her hand toward a wooden mug sitting on the table.

[Wind Art: Vacuum Shroud]

She didn’t shatter the mug. Instead, the rapidly spinning wind forced the air molecules outward, creating a localized vacuum around the object. The ambient light of the room hit the dense, spinning wall of air pressure and refracted, bending completely around the mug.

In the blink of an eye, the mug vanished. It was perfect, seamless active camouflage.

"I can sustain the Shroud over all three of us for exactly twelve minutes," Elena reported, releasing the spell. The mug popped back into visibility. "That gives us twelve minutes to scale the outer wall of the Cathedral, bypass the courtyard patrols, and reach the vault doors before the Paladins spot us."

"Twelve minutes is plenty," a deep, rumbling voice echoed from the corner.

Alaric stepped into the meager light.

He was a giant. Standing nearly seven feet tall, his body was a tapestry of scars earned from So many months of fighting on the front lines of the underground war. He wore heavy, sleeveless mythril chainmail that highlighted arms as thick as tree trunks.

THUMP-THUMP.

The sound was rhythmic, like a heavy war drum buried beneath his ribs. The Titan’s Capacitor, the ancient iron artifact fused to his sternum, was idling, slowly pulling in the ambient holy mana of the city and converting it into dense, terrifying kinetic potential.

In his right hand, he effortlessly held The Anvil—the massive slab of heavy dwarven mythril that required two men just to lift off a forge. He rested the flat of the blade on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

"They have hundreds of Crusade Paladins guarding the outer perimeter," Alaric rumbled, his grey eyes locked on the Cathedral. "But their Divine Armor is designed to resist dark magic and standard elemental attacks. They aren’t expecting a sledgehammer."

"No brute force unless absolutely necessary, Alaric," Elena warned, adjusting her monocle. "The Pope is at least a 7th-Order entity. If he senses a battle, he will unleash his Domain. We cannot fight an entire holy army and a 7th-Order Pope in the middle of their seat of power." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"She’s right, big guy," Lukas grinned, snapping the final panel of his gauntlet shut. The blue runes glowed with a lethal, steady hum.

"We’re ghosts tonight. I’ll melt the locks silently. You crush the automated golems without making a shockwave. We then get the Sword of Heroes, and jump out the window."

Alaric looked at his two oldest friends. They had survived the Academy. They had survived the fall of the Empire. They had spent Gods know how long building Damien’s Black Thread in the shadows, waiting for the day their teacher would return

They even experienced the Dwarven war back then and almost lost their lives.

But to fight the wars that were coming, Alaric knew he needed a weapon that could cut through concepts, not just flesh. He needed his bloodright.

"Twelve minutes to the vault," Alaric said, his expression hardening into absolute granite. "Let’s go!."

Elena raised both hands.

The air in the attic began to spin. A high-pitched, almost imperceptible whine filled the room as she pulled the atmospheric pressure inward, creating a dense centrifuge of wind around the three of them.

The light hitting their bodies bent, refracted, and slid away.

To the naked eye, the attic was suddenly empty.

"Moving out," Alaric’s disembodied voice rumbled.

The heavy wooden window silently slid open, and the three ghosts of Class F stepped out into the night, dropping toward the glowing, heavily fortified sanctuary of the Kingdom of Light.