Chapter 151: Useless.
Even though it appeared that he had gotten away with it, Dante didn’t make the mistake of thinking that he had cleared himself of all suspicion. If it were that easy to fool, they wouldn’t have bothered interrogating him with truth magic.
While going on with his job, he thought everything through and came up with things he needed to do and others he had to pay attention to.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the rest of his shift. Thanks to the Productivity enhancement app not allowing any gossip, he was spared from having to answer any questions his coworkers might ask. Once it was 17:00, he ignored Ben’s usual tirade and left the dish pit.
The first thing Dante did after leaving the hotel was send a message to Victor detailing what happened. He also told him about the power used against him, keeping things vague and hiding the fact that he knew it was magic.
As expected, the fixer wasn’t too happy with the news. He sent back a list of instructions that can be boiled down to "keep going with your life as if nothing happened."
To avoid sabotaging the heist any further, Dante was barred from making any contact with the other members of the crew, meaning he wouldn’t be attending the follow-up meetings they were going to have in the next few days. He couldn’t visit the Triple Jackpot either, since that would risk implicating the others.
There was no way to tell how far the hotel’s security would go to figure out if he was truly a problem. They might keep an eye on him only when he’s washing plates, or they might send some of their wizards to monitor him while he’s off the clock. Either way, unless he’s absolutely sure, he had no choice but to pretend that he was just a normal guy forced to wash dishes for a living.
’I have to do this for twenty-five more days, huh...’ lying down on his bed, Dante stared at the ceiling as he thought. He wasn’t really staring at the ceiling but at the plethora of screens projected through his OAM. Each showed the live feed from the security cameras in the streets surrounding his building.
It was just another meaningless waste of time, just like washing all those dishes in that wretched hotel. Would magic-wielding wizards allow themselves to be caught? And would they not notice any of the twenty spider-bots -the ones he stole from that brat- which he had Volcan scatter around Hollowgrid? Even if they were to be caught on one of the cameras, would he be able to notice it in time? That part can be handled by his resident AI, so why bother with all this trouble?
Depression drew a long sigh out of Dante, one born from feeling absolutely useless. His part of the plan wasn’t by any means critical, but now that he was under suspicion, he wouldn’t be able to pull even that off.
Getting the promotion that would allow him to move around the hotel freely was out of the question, meaning he would be stuck washing dishes while the others are doing their job, guaranteeing that he would be entirely useless.