Buried Wealth

Mission Name: The Truth of the Matter
Rank: C
Mission Location: Neutral Village / Borders

Challenges: -
Task: You have heard a rumor that a local rich man has stashed money near by. It might be heavily guarded or it might be buried in the middle of the woods. Do you torture the rich man to find its location? Do you use your skills to investigate and rob them during the night? The decision is your. Get creative; those with a lot of money are remiss to give it up, sometimes even under threat of death.

Word Count Requirement: 2,000
Reward: 4,000 Ryo / 20 AP

Character Requirements: Missing Ninja
Character Exclusive: -

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The night was in full spin, there was a cool breeze blowing through the town and it was decently warm enough that the breeze didn’t feel like you were being frozen while wandering the lit streets. People were coming and going in this town even this late at night, it was a welcoming sight for the wandering criminal Uta as it meant that he could move without much attention drawn to him as he just looked like any other person out on the street that night and for the most part that was right. After all he didn’t have a job currently and he was well off on funds so it wasn’t like he was struggling or needing something to do. In the last town he had been able to find a nice release for his desire to harm people by taking care of a individual that had been sleeping with another person’s spouse. So he got to be the icon of wrath for that person and got a nice chunk of change from it, he was almost at that point in his funds he could get access to the more spicy things from the black market or maybe even start building his own base of operations though it would be meager.
 
He had grand plans for his hideout, his lair, his home away from home if you will. Uta had visions of making a base that could be moved around the continent on its own two feet if you will and look like some basic building that wouldn’t stand out in any place maybe like an old farm house or shed with a situation of being bigger on the inside kind of thing. He figured he would need a good amount of money and some very talented people who knew how to deal with dimensions and Space-time stuff. Uta himself didn’t really have any inkling on that type of thing quite yet but dreams weren’t ever suppose to be realistic after all.
 
Coming back out of his daydream for the possible future Uta decided it was time to sit down and relax with a nice cold drink so he picked a local pub that was pretty packed and after some pushing and shoving to get himself to the bar, he was finally able to order some drinks and then it was time to redo the pushing and shoving though a bit more smoothly now that he had drinks in his hands and find a place to sit down and take a load off. Uta found a spot near the side of the pub that was inbetween the front and back it was decently lit in here but not so much that it would be blinding, it was a warm kind of light that encouraged the drinking and cheerful talks. This was the part that Uta tended to enjoy the most as he didn’t really have friends and his appearance tended to scare away anyone that would think to approach him all willy-nilly, he took this time to simply listen to the surrounding talks and enjoy his drinks. He had plenty of time and money to do both so he was just there to enjoy himself and if he was lucky he might get a quip of something fun to do or some rumors of the local area.
 
The night waned and the patrons ebbed and flowed in and out of the pub, each having a new story to tell their friends or work buddies and Uta just got to be a free listening audience member, he heard stories about those that were corrupt in the town, about the local crime bosses, gangs and everything in between. One rumor that perked up Uta’s interest was one about a some local crime boss or merchant? The details seemed to change as quickly as the drinks flowed but someone with some great amount of wealth had hidden or stashed away a large amount of money either in their home or in the local woods. The details were fuzzy at best but as Uta had learned over the years, rumors tended to be based of a small snippet of truth though they could easily grow to vastly different and exaggerated accounts but still some free money from people who didn’t want others to have it was always something that Uta would enjoy dealing with.
 
After all, if they were going to hide it in the woods then clearly they didn’t care if some random passerby found it and took it. Clearly if your only security is some dirt and not even seals or guards then you definitely don’t mind if someone takes whatever you wished to hide. At least that is how Uta rationalized it in his own mind, though now it was a game of trying to narrow down the truths and get rid of the extra bits in these rumors after all who actually had this hidden wealth? Was it really a crime boss or was it some rich merchant? Was it in a nicely guarded Safe in someone drug den or home? Or was it out in the woods in some buried piece of land? How much was the wealth? What was the wealth in question in more important because sometimes people had weird collectibles that only meant a lot to the person who had it and not the traditional wealth of Ryo or gold bars or even bonds and deeds.
 
These were all the details that Uta had to filter through to get to the bottom of these interesting and juicy rumors and It wasn’t a simple bit of work, mainly because everyone was drunk or trying to make sure they didn’t say anything that would lead anyone to coming after them for saying something they shouldn’t have. Even though people love spreading rumors no one was willing to take on the responsibility that spreading them could have. It took some work but at the end of his drinking and listening escapade he was able to figure out generally what was going on.
 
Basically there was a local Merchant by the name of Mr. Jameson who runs on of the largest businesses on this side of Key country, it sold a variety of goods from clothes to food. It seemed that due to the massive success of the business meant that Mr. Jameson had quite a lot of extra funds laying around and had become quite worried someone would bring into his home to steal it or maybe even kill him to do so he apparently if the rumors were true had decided to take a large portion of his wealth and bury it somewhere in the woods that were apart of his large amount of land. No one knew how valid this part of the rumor was but since these rumors came from the very servants of the person in question it was treated with some hint of truth with it. Now it was just a task of trying to figure out how to find the wealth in such a large place, Uta needed a map of the area and that was the next task. So he spent the following day after all that drinking getting more acquainted with the area and finding that map he needed.
 
With that portion of the task taken care of now it was time to figure out the most likely place it could be dependent on what has been said, Mr. Jameson has a large amount of land though the vast majority of it was in town on the edge with the very back end just barely coming into the woods. After all Mr. Jameson had spent a good amount of money to clear cut a large portion of the woods around the town and his own property specifically so he could build more buildings and have line of sights around his home. So this greatly helped zero in where he could have potentially hide this wealth that was being spoken on, taking note of where the property ended and what parts fit the description from the rumors Uta had been able to reduce the search area down to a 100 meter circle. That was still a massive area to search but it was no where near the undertaking of having to search the whole forest.
 
Now it was time to think of what kind of person Mr. Jameson was, this would help further reduce the search area, So Uta spent days on end tracking, studying and learning about Mr. Jameson and his habits and mannerisms. It was a bit of fun like a wolf stalking a herd of sheep just waiting for the right moment to get the prey he desired. Mr. Jameson was a very paranoid person its why he buried some of his wealth thinking it would be a good back up plan in the worst case scenario. Though he was also kind of stupid in a sense as he didn’t put any additional guards on his property with this decision as to not cause more attention to where he buried his little goose egg. Though there had been a change in where the guards patrolled and the frequency of the patrols in a key area, it would seem that he had the guards specifically patrol around a spot not far for the edge of his property specifically more often than others.
 
Uta’s observations from watching the guards and their own patrol routes always had them closely inspecting and a heightened sense of alertness from the groups each time without fail, there was a very clear difference between how they treated the rest of the route to this specific spot. By the time it was the right moment to investigate the location Uta could have told anyone the ins and outs of the property, Mr. Jameson and even the people who worked for him on that property in great detail. He almost felt like he knew them better than his own family and that brought a chuckle to him as he typically didn’t put this much effort into something but was enjoying it all the same. Now it was time to enact his plan which was simple, to go there and search around in between the patrols and once he found it and verified it was there to wait for the next patrol rotation and grab it and go.
 
This took some time as while the area was been brought down quite a lot from the 100 meter circle he had figured out to about a 10 meter area it was still 10 meters to look for and he knew that they wouldn’t bury it close to the surface and probably had some kind of marker to help people find it when needed though only to those who knew about it. Hours passed and Uta was getting tired from all the searching and hiding and swapping back and forth but eventually he found a strange formation of rocks that didn’t seem natural here in the woods and that was where it had been buried once he validated the prize was there he waited once more till a patrol had passed and went about retrieving the loot, it was a chest filled with Ryo and Uta was quite glad to get it, with the money in hand he buried the chest back into the ground covering it up well enough to pass till morning and hurried away from the scene of the crime. With any luck his retrieval of the wealth wouldn’t be noticed till morning of the next day and by then he would be well and truly gone from the area.
 
Now it was time to run and hide, and Uta was back in the woods which he was most comfortable being within, after all he had grown up in similar area and all that hunting and working engrained various tricks and such that allowed him to move through the woods without leaving a trace that even a skilled tracker would find difficult to find and follow. By the time he made it to a place he could rest the sun had come up and he was miles and miles away from the town. This is when he could rest and enjoy the weight of extra Ryo he now had.
 
WC: 2062

Claims:
+4000 Ryo, +20 AP

Using Max Stat Discount on the below:
+248 towards Hiding in the Rain: 1065/1313 > 1313/1313 Prior trained: Here
+1500 Towards Thousand Flying Water Needles: 0/1500 > 1500/1500
+314 Towards Water Pressure Trigger: 0/1125 > 314/1125

Approved