Bait for the Twilight Wing
I had no intention of rushing the recruitment of the original protagonist's party. This was still the early stretch of Solari World, the part where Jin was grinding through tutorial hell — there was no real need to slap a party together in a hurry. Besides, running into the original party members this early wasn't exactly easy.
So rather than chasing down the rest of Jin's companions — Luna already being the exception — I started looking for other useful talent. Follow the strategy guide and you can clear the game with just the original party, sure. But if you actually want to build a stable power base, you need to recruit as many capable people as you can get your hands on.
The original party's biggest problem was the gender ratio. Including Jin himself, there were three men. Only two women. I had zero interest in adding some stinking male extra to my party — not in the real world, and not in Solari World. Which meant the only assets worth taking from Jin's party were two: the warrior Reina, and the thief Arme. And as it happened, this was the perfect window to meet the master thief herself.
In a normal playthrough, Arme is the last character to join the protagonist's party. Being a thief, information on her is hard to come by. But you can piece together her movements from a handful of in-game events before you ever meet her. One of those events is the string of burglaries happening right here in the Coulon region.
According to the setting materials, Arme was a highly skilled master thief operating in Coulon County, and she relocated once the territorial war between Count Coulomb and Count Ernest kicked into high gear. Meaning: before the war truly starts, she's still here.
Even in the game, rumors of a serial burglary circulate while Jin is working as a mercenary in Coulon. Have a drink at the tavern and the innkeeper NPC will tell you all about it. Jin, of course, is too busy with the territorial war to pay it any mind. You can't actually recruit Arme at this point in a normal playthrough.
"Is that thief to be our next companion, Master?"
The words "next companion" seemed to pique both Luna and Sera's interest. I nodded.
"I think the last dungeon expedition made the value of a thief pretty clear to all of you. The Shelter of Blades was relatively merciful — once you knew the traps were there, you could just walk past them without disarming a thing. Plenty of dungeons aren't that generous."
That was why a thief who could disarm traps was a late-game essential. The reason Arme joined last was because Jin, after grinding through dangerous dungeons, finally felt the need for a trap specialist and went out of his way to recruit her. Flip that around, and it meant that if you already had an outstanding trap expert, you could tackle those dangerous dungeons from the early game.
"As you say, Master. You seem to hold this thief in rather high regard."
"When it comes to disarming traps and appraising relics, I doubt there's anyone who can match her."
There was some exaggeration in that — Arme's level wouldn't be that high yet — but once I buffed her up with Power of Sex, it would almost certainly be true. Watching her lift the treasured collections of Coulon's wealthy like she was picking change out of a pocket, her current level didn't seem all that low either. The real problem was how to recruit her.
"According to rumor, the thief is so elusive that no one even knows if they're a man or a woman. And yet you've already seen through her identity with the Solar Medal."
"Buhihit! That's right."
The Solar Medal really was the perfect excuse. I could skip every tedious explanation with it.
"There's a pattern to where Arme shows up. She's a cute little cat with a taste for high-value relics. Which means we can throw her some bait of our own. Luna — I'm going to borrow your swords for a bit."
Luna's dual blades would make more than sufficient bait. Even I drooled over those mythic-grade weapons. Arme, who understood their value better than I did, wouldn't need any convincing.
Luna courteously held out the pair of swords I had bestowed upon her. Not so much as a flicker of reluctance crossed her face. I'd really picked a good one. Of course, I was only borrowing them for a while.
"Sera. Take these swords around to the antique shops and have them appraised. Hit as many stores as you can. Don't sell them."
"You want to start a rumor?"
"Buhihit! Exactly. Her eyes will be on those antique shops, no question."
Arme.
According to the setting materials, her nickname around this time was the Twilight Wing, wasn't it? "Wing" is the kind of epithet you slap on a thief with fast feet. And the "Twilight" in front of it is when she does most of her stealing.
In other words, her nickname told you everything: Arme was a thief who appeared like the wind at dusk, stole what she wanted, and vanished. You could read her entire style from the name alone.
A thief with set business hours might sound a little ridiculous. Some people call it the dignity of a master thief, or a thief's mockery of the rich. The truth is, it's a side effect of her skills.
Arme's unique skills receive bonus effects depending on the time of day or the location. Haste, her bread and butter, is normally a garbage ability that only boosts movement speed by about thirty percent. Trigger it at twilight, though, and the effect doubles. Use it inside a dungeon, and it doubles again.
Her Sleight of Hand skill also gets a massive boost at night. That's true of most thieves, actually — even in the real world, thieves are stronger at night than during the day. Arme just leans into it harder than most.
Put like that, she sounds like a thief riddled with defects. But Arme's real strength is that she's not just excellent at dungeon crawling — she also has considerable Appraisal, Mercantile, and Archaeology skills. Those are a huge help with money management. You can sell items for more, and historically significant pieces in particular will fetch their true value. That's one of the reasons I want her.
The problem, as always, was catching her.
The wealthy men she'd robbed weren't fools. Arme was a member of the protagonist's party, which meant she had the kind of broken stats that came with the territory. Among the original party members, her base attributes were the highest, and her skill proficiencies were absurd. Even operating in broad daylight, she'd outclass any first-rate thief. Her track record of cracking the vaults of countless rich men proved it.
And those outstanding base stats were also why she was the last recruit. Get a broken character like her from the start, and the game stops being fun.
Ordinarily, someone at my level would get cleaned out no matter how thoroughly I prepared...
The other wealthy men who'd settled here had all been forced to hand over their most precious antiques. But there was a decisive difference between them and me. I already knew Arme's quirks inside and out.
"Master... what if that thief actually steals our treasure?"
Sera asked in a worried tone. I was in the middle of placing Luna's dual blades on a small, hastily assembled altar in the living room.
"Buhihit! Don't worry. I've got it all figured out."
The altar holding Luna's swords was a wooden stand I'd commissioned from a carpenter's shop and gotten back in an hour. It came up to about my waist, and the construction was so flimsy that knocking on it produced a hollow echo from inside. It looked like someone had slapped together scrap plywood from a junkyard. Nothing guarded the swords sitting on top of it. A snot-nosed kid could have stolen them, never mind a thief of the century.
"You are baiting the thief quite blatantly, I see."
Luna observed, looking at the setup. She was right. This was bait, nothing more.
"How are you going to catch a thief like that? From what I hear, she's so elusive she vaults high walls like they're her own backyard, and she can crack even the most complicated vaults in an instant. And once she's got the goods, she vanishes like the wind."
Sera still hadn't wiped the worry from her face.
"Catching a thief like that takes more than ordinary measures. I plan to use this."
I showed the two of them a wooden box about the size of a small vanity. Getting my hands on this had taken some work. I'd scattered copper coins among the beggars roaming the streets and barely managed to collect this much.
"What is that?"
"You're better off not knowing. Ah, and I don't know when our sly little cat will show up, but once she's paid us a visit, we'll need to go somewhere else for a couple of days."
"What?! Is that... some kind of terrible poison?"
Ordinary poison wouldn't be enough to take Arme down. One of her skills was Poison Immunity. Even the nerve toxin from the Giant Scorpion that had contaminated an entire oasis in one go wouldn't do it. Besides, antidotes were something she guarded with her life.
"Similar, but different. Anyway, we start preparing today. We'll take turns guarding the living room."
Coulon really was a wealthy city — a world of refinement utterly unlike the south of the kingdom where she had been born and raised.
Arme had been born the daughter of a brothel keeper in a barren shantytown. That she'd become a thief was perhaps inevitable. She had talent, and she quickly became a thief better than anyone else — too good to waste on petty pickpocketing.
With her skills, she could have become a mercenary and made a living running dungeons. But thieving was more comfortable. Risking your life was the same whether you were a mercenary or a thief, so she saw no particular reason to change professions. Arme was already a master thief who burgled the mansions of noble-class tycoons, and to her, a house with ironclad security was no different from a dungeon.
Staying too long in one town was the kind of thing petty thieves did. A master thief like her couldn't leave traces in one place for long. Do that, and a long tail would inevitably show.
So Arme had decided that today would be her last day in this city. One last big score, then she'd leave. Rest somewhere new for a while, then start working again. Same plan as always.
Arme had a set method for choosing her targets. The moment she made an appearance, most of the wealthy clamped their mouths shut and bolted their mansion doors. Even the arrogant rich men who normally bragged about their collections went quiet once a real shadow fell over the city.
That was a testament to her reputation, but for Arme herself it was nothing but an inconvenience. When the rich clammed up, gathering information got hard. Those nobles usually beefed up their mansion security or moved their collections, putting themselves on guard — so she didn't pick them as targets. Her prey was limited to the suckers who still didn't know to fear a nighttime visitor.
And she'd found just such a sucker. The name was Derick Walker. A slave merchant who'd only recently arrived in Coulon. Apparently he'd made a killing in the slave trade during these turbulent times, and he seemed to possess some rather impressive antiques.
"It was a weapon worth at least ten platinum! That beautiful luster, the immaculate condition, and the mysterious mana! It was a piece far more suited to a warrior's hand than a rich man's display case. Far too expensive for our shop to purchase, so I wanted it badly, but..."
If the antique dealer she'd bought off was telling the truth, the item she was about to steal would be the most expensive of her entire career as a master thief. A target more than worthy of decorating her finale in Coulon.
Arme spent several days thoroughly investigating Derick Walker's mansion. A veteran of this kind of work, she mapped the layout and drew up an operational plan in a matter of days.
What determined the success or failure of a heist wasn't sleight of hand or reflexes. It was planning. Draw up a perfect plan that accounted for every variable, then execute it. If the plan itself had slim odds of success, she abandoned it cleanly. That was why she'd never been caught.
"Hmph. Suspicious. The security is far too sloppy. Just two maids guarding the whole mansion? And the swords are sitting out completely unprotected... It's like bait."
Something smelled off. Arme investigated the mansion even more carefully. The conclusion she reached was that the swords stored there were not fakes. The beastkin maid took the weapons to antique shops once a day to haggle, and the appraiser Arme had bought off confirmed they were the genuine article. Not some clumsy imitation of a relic — a real piece, forged from extraordinary materials and mana.
"Doesn't seem like anyone's lying in wait at the mansion, either... Even if it is a trap, it's an awfully sloppy one. Are they looking down on me?"
Even analyzing the trash coming out of the mansion to count the occupants, there were only three people in the house. No variables after all. That's what she thought.