We were on a white platform. The entire space was evenly lit without a source of light. There were no walls and roof or even a ground aside from the platform. It was just... black. A void.

  In the black backdrop that was akin to looking at a starless expanse of space, I could sometimes vaguely see shapes and scenes that would disappear soon after.

  A few "meters" ahead of me—as wrong as that is to say—the Scum was crying. He had hugged his knees and every once in a while would pound his head into them as if looking for any form of stimulation.

  It's only been five minutes of real time since I had realized I don't really know how, nor do I like torturing people regardless of how deserving they are, and decided to use this as an educational experience instead.

  I had brought the both of us into his Mindscape, which is, by the way, different from the Dreamscape. Little by little, his memories appeared in the backdrop. The Mindscape wasn't this empty beforehand, but every time a new memory or thought appeared, I'd shatter it with a flex of my magic like knocking on a piece of fragile glass, and every time, the Mindscape would become just a little emptier.

  He cried and begged as he felt himself disappear little by little. Honestly, even I felt somewhat bad for him, but I pressed on. There were some things I wanted to verify and this doesn't really matter anyway, since there should be a copy of all his memories sitting in his soul.

  Based on some of the things I had recently reconfigured into usable info from decades' worth of Morgana talking to herself, souls are basically like save files in the game of life.

  They record all the personal experiences and knowledge and even physical characteristics, which is why soul possession is so difficult to pull off.

  In this case, all I was destroying was his mind that he would soon stop using anyway since I was gonna kill him.

  By the end of the one hour in his Mindscape—that was less than ten minutes of real time—even the white platform had vanished.

  There was nothing left. Even the symbol of self, which was a copy of the Scum's body, had broken down like a glass statue shortly after the platform faded into the darkness.

  Back in the real world, I looked at the result of my first experiment. He was alive still, if you could call this alive. But in from a biological standpoint at least, he was alive. He breathed, his heart beat, and his body was warm. In magical terms, unfortunately, and I mean, truly unfortunately as this was the main thing I had wanted to check but, I wasn't equipped to examine whether he still had his soul or not, and there is no point in guessing.

  After some thinking over everything I had learned from this, I got rid of all the bodies on the ground floor in the same manner as before, minus the woman's. As I was about to head for the first floor, I looked back at the woman and decided to cover her body with a white cloth, which was actually one of the living room blinds.

  The top of the stairs gave way to another corridor. On both sides were a series of doors, the closest of which was open.

  If the first room was any indication, all the doors led to bedrooms, almost all of which were occupied. It was still noon, but these guys were supposed to have a busy night ahead, so I guess they slept early.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  In the end, it was too easy. Some of the doors were locked, but I easily transfigured the lock. I know there is an unlocking charm, but just saying its chant didn't really work much like any other charm I had tried to copy from the movies, so I guess I'm missing something. Thankfully, transfiguration once again came to the rescue.

  I made sure that all of them were thoroughly knocked out, so there was no chance of one waking up, so that I could later take my time practicing on them.

  The last door was different. There were three people inside, and by the looks of it, they were working. I think the last door leads to an office instead of a bedroom.

  After some consideration, I transformed two pieces of the hardwood flooring into two glass beads the size of olives.

  I brought up my hand, took a deep breath in, and knocked.

  "What is it?" the same gruff voice from before asked, but this time I didn't answer—I just knocked again.

  "Do you want to die? Just open the damn door and come in." I didn't say anything—I just knocked again.

  "Ben, open the damn door before I shoot holes in it and the guy behind." Another voice said, this one with a more distinct Slavic accent.

  "Oh, fucking hell, who the fuck is it? I'll fucking kill you if you don't give me a damn good reason." The owner of the gruff voice opened the door towards the end of his sentence, but he didn't see anyone behind the door.

  He was too tall, and before he could even think to look down, one of the glass beads shot into his head, leaving a hole in his forehead.

  The other two couldn't see me, and the shot was mostly silent, so it was a shock for the boss when a second glass bead punctured the other guy inside the room. 'I knew it. Much faster and more mana-efficient than turning their brain into glass. There is blood, but I think I can fix that by having the beads be hot enough to cauterize the wound instantly.'

  The boss was good, though—even in this situation, he went for his gun without wasting a second. Unfortunately for him, I was ready. By the time he had just pulled out his pistol and before he could even aim, let alone pull the trigger, I used a telepathic shock to knock him out.

  Now with time to catch my breath, I took a closer look around the room. It was, as I had guessed, an office. Unlike the ground floor and the basement that were full of boxes, the only box here was the one on the main desk.

  I looked inside, and from what I could see, it was mostly financial papers and the like. Nothing worth my time—I'll just leave it here for the police to deal with when I call them.

  Seeing nothing else of worth, I took a memory dive for the second time today, this time into the head of the boss himself.

  The things I saw about him weren't particularly surprising. He wasn't any more or less of a scum than the rest of his guys. He was moderately smarter, however, with some talent in money laundering and a degree in finance.

  What was surprising, was that unbeknownst to most of the other guys, two of those wooden crates in the basement are filled with gold bars under the first layer of gun ammo.

  Apparently, he had told them their money was sent overseas through hidden bank transfers, but in reality, he had turned almost the entirety of their fortune into gold that he later melted into unmarked bars that he was gonna take with him tonight. 'Jackpot. Looks like I can visit the wizarding community sooner than I thought.'

  After going over all the useful information I got from the boss, I killed him too and got rid of all the bodies in the office. To my immense disappointment, he didn't have a hidden safe in his office, but I already got dozens of kilograms of gold, so it's alright.

  Over the next couple of hours, I practiced a lot of things on the bodies and minds of the other Scum. I wasn't worried about the one missing Scum anymore since, according to the boss's memories, he was already dead.

  In the afternoon, about two hours before Alice comes home and raises hell about not being able to find me, and two and a half hours before Mrs. Gray comes back from her... wherever she is, I was in the basement once more looking at around a hundred kilos of gold, worth roughly 900,000 pounds.

  After mulling over how to take this with me for a while, I had an idea. First, I got rid of all my clothes, shoes, and helmet the same way I got rid of the bodies, making sure nothing of myself would remain in this place. Of course, I took out the money I had stolen out of it first. Second, I turned the entirety of the gold into a copy of the outfit I just destroyed.

  'Perfect. Now if I want gold, all I have to do is separate a piece of my clothes and undo the transfiguration.'