Chapter 176

  The first thing Jake o do was deactivate all the surveilnce cameras ihe bandit HQ. He was going to snatch the Skeleton Key from the safe and didn’t want the surveilnce cameras rec the cealed safe door opening by itself. Ohey realized the Skeleton Key was missing, they would surely hurry to check the recorded footage. Since Jake was keeping Cloak up, all they would see was the cealed safe being opened and the Skeleton Key floating out, which would raise some questions in their minds. He had to avoid that.

  So he o turn off all the surveilnce cameras. Additionally, he wao erase all previous recs from every camera and turret to sow fusion. He didn’t want to give them any indication that he was the one who had infiltrated their facility. Los Demonios were already aware of his ability to turn invisible. To keep suspi away from himself, he had to e looked like one of their own had snatched the Skeleton Key.

  Apart from the base leader, only Miller’s three closest subordinates seemed to have access to the security trol room and the safe. This meant that Dominic, Minh, and Patrick would quickly bee his primary suspects ohe disappearance of the Skeleton Key was discovered. All three were terrified of Miller, and from what he had gathered by eavesdropping on their ret versation, they definitely weren’t friends.

  Each of them had their own agenda. Dominic might be Miller’s favorite. It was hard to tell for sure, but he was the one who Miller had given the Skeletoo. It ossible that Miller chose him at random, but Jake doubted it. Uhe other two, Dominisistently defeheir leader’s decisions. He was a bootlicker trying to earn Miller’s favor.

  In trast to Dominic, Patrick enly critical of their leader. He had voiced his s about how poorly Miller hahe atta their base. Dominic would definitely remember this and would likely report it to Miller ohe Skeleton Key’s disappearance was uncovered. As for Minh, he appeared to have been spying on Los Demonios’ leaders, pursuing an agenda of his own that Dominic would most likely report to Miller as well.

  The three of them were very different, and ohe disappearance of the Skeleton Key came to light, there would be no unity among them. Rather than supp one ahey would likely turn on each other, exposing all kinds of dirt. Terrified of incurring Miller’s wrath, each would desperately attempt to deflect suspi away from himself, which would py right into Jake’s hands.

  As he tio browse through various options on the puter, he stumbled upon a few more fasatiails about the base’s operations. He was already aware that repairs to damaged structures were initiated through the puter in the security trol room, but he now learhat the stru of ructures and traptions was also managed from that very room.

  To build a ructure, the user simply o pie from the list. If all the necessary requirements were fulfilled and there were enough resources, the structure would be selected. The step was to pick a location on the map of the pound where the user wahe ructure to be pced. It was that easy, almost like pying a video game but iy.

  When he was a human survivor, Jake had never reached the stage where he could build his own base. He had never even learned how basic crafting worked in this game-like world through personal experiehis was why he was now so ied in seeing it in a. In fact, his curiosity was so intehat he briefly eaihe idea of attempting to build something himself.

  However, he quickly dismissed the idea. If a ructure suddenly popped up somewhere in the base, its octs would immediately notice, and the three sub-bosses, who were currently outside the HQ, would realize someone was in the security trol room. Staying ued was Jake’s top priority, s to build a ructure was out of the question, at least for the time being.

  While navigating through the data on the puter, he suddenly stumbled upon the list of all the bases belonging to Los Demonios. The list included the coordinates for each base. Jake checked them on the map, learning and memorizing the locations of all the bases. Beside each base, its status was dispyed, and all were currently marked as “Under No Threat”.

  So it appeared that when a base came utack, its status automatically updated across all security trol rooms in every other base. Therefore, when this base was under siege by void monsters, the leaders of all the other bases were likely notified of the situation. This system made sure that when one base was utack, the others were quickly informed, allowing them to quickly e to their allies’ assistance if necessary.

  Anyway, Jake now khe exact location of every other base iy, except for the main base. Uhe others, it was located somewhere outside the city. However, when Jake typed in the and to dispy its coordihe puter requested that he input a password.

  So this meant that while some general information could be accessed easily through the puter, more sensitive data or important ands ated entering a password for added security. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the password, and his Enhanced Intelligence skill didn’t currently allow him to hack eleic devices—at least, not yet. Still, he was uerred. The inal members of Los Demonios, such as Miller, khe location of the main base. So when the right moment arrived, Jake would easily find it. He would just o employ his Mind Reader ability on one of the inal members of the gang.

  As Jake explored the avaible ands on the puter, he stumbled upon another intriguing option. He could actually modify the behavior of the mae gun turrets. Presently, they were programmed to attaly mohat he base. However, he could adjust them tet specific targets. He was surprised to find that he could set the turrets to eliminate all members of a certain group within the base, such as guards or workers. Additionally, he had the option to disable the turrets altogether or figure them to refrain from attag anything.

  Out of curiosity, he decided to try making the turrets passive for a moment, simply to see if he was allowed to do so. He reasohat it wouldn’t affect their appearance, so no one in the base would realize that there was a ge in their behavior, sinone of the turrets were currently firing.

  However, wheempted to do so, a familiar prompt appeared, asking him to ehe password. So deactivating the turrets or altering their settings also required authentication. It made sense. Just like accessiive information, modifying the turrets’ settings was cssified as a signifit and, ating a password for added security. The encrypted system was desigo prevent unauthorized users from tampering with the defense meisms—an essential feature, especially froup like the bandits, whose livelihood depended on maintaining their territory.

  However, even if Jake could and the turrets to kill all the bandits within the base, he probably wouldn’t have gohrough with it. After all, what would he have achieved by that? Sure, the workers would have their own base, but how long they could hold it was anyone’s guess. As he had just learned, when one base was utack, all the others were immediately informed about it. So if the workers took trol of the base, it was only a matter of time before bandits from the other bases came rushing in. Jake doubted the workers would be able to defend their base against the bined forces of other bases for long. It would likely be just a matter of minutes before Los Demonios recimed it, wiping out all the rioters.

  The workers would have no ce without his assistance. Yet he was far from ready for a tough fight at the moment. Before ung a full-scale war against Los Demonios, he o evolve to the stage and level up a bit more. Thus, his main priority at the moment was to obtain the Skeleton Key.

  Having learned everything there was to know about trolling the base via the puter, it was time to move on to the third and final phase of his pn.

  First, he checked the feed from each surveilnce camera to locate every guard within the HQ. There were two on the sed floor: one positioned just outside the door to the security trol room and the other at the end of the corridor, where he could see the eretch. The tter was the smoker Jake had met on the roof some time ago. On the first floor, there were a few muards. Jake itted the positions of all of them to memory.

  , he deleted all the recorded videos from each surveilnce camera within the HQ. After that, he moved to deactivate all of them. For a moment, he feared that a prompt might pop up asking him for a password. If that happened, Jake would have o resort to destroying the hard drives entirely. However, it turned out that deleting the recorded data didn’t require a password. Once he erased everything captured by the cameras, he proceeded to deactivate them. Now, nothing of the massacre that would take p the HQ over the several minutes would be recorded.

  Jake had to act quickly now. He wasn’t sure whether the cameras’ current offliatus was visibly apparent, so he o hurry in case it was. He had to finish what he started before any guards in the HQ realized the cameras were down.

  Moving quickly, he approached the door and jumped up, reag the ceiling and ging to it with Adhesive Secretion oozing from the tips of his fingers and toes. Since he didn’t have much ma in his body, he decided to deactivate Cloak, causing his body to bee visible. There wasn’t much reason to keep it active from this point on anyway, and he wao serve as much mana as possible. In its active state, using abilities like bded tentacles or tendrils caused Cloak to e additional mana to keep up with his quick, chaotients and keep all of his additional appendages cealed. So to save what little mana he had left, it was wiser to keep the ability turned off for the time being.

  He then g the touchpad built into the wall o the door. He had memorized the code Dominic had entered when he and his two panions walked into the security trol room. It was a simple fit code. However, it turned out that exiting the security trol room didn’t require entering the code. To unlod open the door, he simply o press a button oouchpad.

  With a thought, he grew multiple long tendrils from his back. He reached down with one of them and used it to press the button oouchpad. He immediately retracted the tendril as the door slid into the wall with a faint hiss. Jake went pletely still, waiting for his first prey to show up.

  He didn’t have to wait long.