Ryan had received professional training in the "Theft" skill back at the base — searching a corpse took him only a couple of seconds.
But aside from a pure gold pocket watch, he found nothing else of value in the corpse's coat pockets.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a jet-black storage ring on the ring finger of the corpse's left hand, and his heart leapt.
"This guy actually has... a spatial storage ring!"
Such spatial equipment was priceless in this world — treasures exclusive to nobility and high-ranking transcendents.
Having one meant that ring almost certainly held treasures of incalculable value!
Without a moment's hesitation, Ryan touched the black ring. It was like opening a folder on a computer back in his past life — a dazzling array of items suddenly appeared before his eyes.
Inside that roughly one-cubic-meter storage space were vast quantities of precious metal coins — gold crowns, silver nairs — along with large-denomination banknotes issued by the Ormar Imperial Bank.
There were also several professional treatises belonging to the "Doctor" transcendent class, along with a variety of strange materials and rows upon rows of serum vials...
This was a fortune that would make anyone's eyes turn green with envy!
...
"I've hit the jackpot! This guy actually kept his entire fortune in a storage ring..."
The moment Ryan saw everything inside that storage ring, he immediately realized this was his "great stroke of fortune."
But in the next instant, his thoughts began racing.
"This guy escaped down here, which means the people from the Weasel Gang up above aren't all dead yet. When they come down, they'll definitely track down this body. Even if I grab this stuff and run, with Quinn — who's unlocked his third-stage Gene Lock — on my trail, the odds of escaping are practically nil! And now that Tiger's dead, the Zombie Serum toxin is still active in my body... without the antidote, running now wouldn't buy me much time before I died anyway."
After a moment's thought, Ryan realized this wasn't the ideal time to make a break for it.
And in that same instant, an even more reckless plan flashed through his mind.
If the plan worked, there was a real chance he could shake off the Weasel Bandit Gang's control entirely — and become fabulously wealthy overnight!
"Fortune favors the bold. Let's do it!"
The situation was urgent; there was no room for hesitation.
After weighing it for a moment, his eyes hardened with resolve, and he acted without further delay.
Ryan didn't bother meticulously cataloging everything in the storage ring, nor did he even take the ring itself. Instead, he swept everything wholesale into the folding space carried by his "AI Core," leaving behind only some clothing, coins, and other seemingly worthless items.
Baron Morin's corpse remained otherwise exactly as it had been.
The sewer was awash with filthy water, leaving few traces behind. Trace tracking and counter-tracking had been part of the assassin trainee curriculum; he carefully cleaned up whatever traces he'd left, then retraced his steps back the way he'd come.
Though a few small inconsistencies remained, Ryan calculated that even if the Weasel Gang's leadership found something suspicious, they wouldn't possibly suspect him — not in the short term, at least.
"Catch the thief with the goods on him" — that was the principle they'd operate by. Those people wouldn't care about Baron Morin's death; they'd only care about the things he'd been carrying.
No one would ever imagine that he possessed a folding space carried by a top-tier 21st-century "AI Core" — a place to stash things without leaving any trace at all!
With no stolen goods to be found on him, there was much more room for him to argue his innocence, and for others to speculate wildly.
...
Once this was done, Ryan hurried back to the sewer junction where he'd started.
Sure enough, he confirmed Captain Tiger and the other two rookies had already been killed by the poison gas.
The gas concentration around him had dropped considerably thanks to air circulation, but it was still lethal.
His AI Core kept sounding warnings in his mind.
"This gas can instantly kill a transcendent — its toxicity really is off the charts..."
Ryan didn't dare take any chances.
Following the concentration readings from his AI Core, he carefully positioned himself at a downwind opening some distance from Tiger's body, to avoid being killed by the gas himself.
Then, deliberately, he inhaled two lungfuls of gas — enough to knock a person unconscious, but not enough to kill.
Instantly, that pungent, ammonia-like smell flooded his respiratory tract, and everything went black before his eyes; he lost consciousness completely.
Right now, the odds of getting caught while fleeing were extremely high — but... sometimes the most dangerous place is actually the safest.
That's right — his plan was to fake being poisoned, use the chaos to his advantage, and then get back to the base to obtain the antidote for the Zombie Serum!
...
He had no idea how much time had passed before his consciousness gradually returned.
Vaguely, Ryan heard voices talking nearby.
"Still haven't found the goods?"
"No..."
"Boss Quinn, Baron Morin's storage ring only had some coins and clothing — nothing important. Given the situation, either he ran off without carrying the goods on him, or someone stole them after he died..."
"The storage ring's still there, so theft is unlikely. Unless whoever stole it also had a storage ring, they couldn't have hidden even a few items, let alone made off with everything. The most likely explanation now is that Baron Morin had a contingency plan — he must have hidden the goods somewhere before things went sideways, and wasn't carrying them on him at all..."
"I never expected that guy to be hiding a poison gas bomb like that. The commotion from the operation was too loud — it drew the city guard of Steelburn Fort, and we had to pull out in a hurry. If the goods are still in the estate, there's a good chance they've fallen into Marquis Barrett's hands by now. If that's true, we're in serious trouble..."
"Unfortunately, Tiger's dead, and the only survivor down in the sewer is that rookie who got knocked out by the gas — no one knows what actually happened. And I've personally searched the bodies myself, checked the surrounding area too — no sign of anything hidden..."
"We'll question 9527 once he wakes up. Though I doubt we'll get anything useful out of him — that gas kills on contact. Him surviving at all was pure luck..."
"Ugh... this is a real mess now. That lord went to the trouble of using his agents planted inside Steelburn Fort just to get us in. Now we've come back empty-handed — how are we supposed to explain this..."
...
Ryan checked the time display on his AI Core — he'd been unconscious for three days.
Taking a look at his surroundings, he immediately confirmed he was back at the Weasel Bandit Gang's main headquarters.
"The base's medical lab! So they did bring me back here..."
This was exactly as he'd expected. Lying on the medical bed, he glanced around the sealed chamber and felt a sense of relief.
Just as anticipated, not long after Ryan regained consciousness, Boss Quinn and several of the gang's higher-ups came personally to question him.
After all, he was the sole survivor from the sewer — everyone wanted to know what had happened after Baron Morin fled down there.
Unfortunately for them, Ryan's answer was, naturally, that he knew nothing at all.
He claimed he'd inhaled a lungful of choking gas and blacked out.
To anyone listening, his story didn't have a single hole in it.
Happening to be positioned right at the edge of the blast, near a downwind opening — that was the only reasonable explanation for how 9527 had survived.
After all, if even Tiger — an "Awakened One" who'd unlocked his first-stage Gene Lock — had died, a mere rookie surviving could only be attributed to sheer luck.
Under normal circumstances, without his AI Core's warnings, Ryan would have died just like Tiger and the other two rookies, killed before he even had time to react.
And no one would ever imagine that after secretly pilfering the contents of the storage ring, he'd been bold enough to go back into the toxic gas zone and knock himself out on purpose.
...
Now, Ryan's next task was to get the antidote for the Zombie Serum inside his body!