Grey spoke with Alice and Reynolds for a while before soon getting tired.

With nothing left to do, he recalled the books he sto borrowed from the Lunar Academy when leaving, the books about forge mastering. Since leaving the Academy, he hadn't really had any time to go through them.

'I'll need to think of a way to prepare a storage ring for the others. There's also that multi-elemental sword, I need to find a way to reduce its consumption, or even better, make a new one, entirely from scratch!'

The thought of the sword kind of excited him since it was something he hadn't seen before. He had not even seen a sword that could use two elements, much less one that has the ability to use all elements. It was like a cheat or something.

Time soon flew by, and day turned into night.

Grey spent all his time reading the books about forge mastering, further deepening his shallow understanding of the topic. Sadly, there was no way for him to practice, or else he would have improved even further.

He had already come to the decision that since he couldn't practice for now, he would increase his theoretical knowledge about it, then when he could, he would start using it.

'It should take around two to three days for the people from Capital to come, so I should be able to find the vault within this period of time.' He thought.

He took out an empty piece of paper from his storage ring, placed it on the ground while also taking out ink and a quill pen. He slowly started to draw out the rough map he made of the Smith family manor in his head.

After almost twenty minutes, he drew out almost the entire front view of the manor, as well as the places he walked through while being carried to his room.

With the map in hand, he sent out his spiritual senses to check the people who were watching the door. They were still doing their job dutifully even though it was already night. Surprisingly, they were not the only ones Grey found, he sensed almost five more people hiding in different locations, all were at the Peak of the Origin Plane.

'This guy sure is cautious,' He chuckled.

Grey blinked twice and disappeared from where he was standing, the room was soon left empty.

Outside the room.

Grey appeared behind the room, hiding in the tall flowers close to the room.

None of the people guarding the room noticed his departure, it wasn't like they could sense him anyway. And due to Grey being an Earth Elementalist, the room he was placed in was actually made entirely of wood. This way, there would be no way for him to be able to use the earth element to create an opening in the room.

After appearing behind the flowers, Grey did a rough estimate of where the people were hiding before blinking from one place to another within seconds.

He appeared within the line of sight of one of the men, but he didn't stay for even up to a second, so it was impossible for the man to see him.

When Grey blinked past, the man looked at the spot Grey appeared before disappearing within a second. He was almost sure he saw someone there, but due to how fast, he thought maybe it was an illusion, or his eyes were playing tricks on him since he has been looking at the same place for hours now.

And just like that, Grey evaded all of them without anyone realizing what was going on. He soon appeared in the main building.

Almost all the manors he had seen had the same building system, they were divided into three buildings, the main building, left and right wing.

If his guess is correct, which it probably is, then Jean would be staying in the main building. Not just that, but the vault would also be in the main building as well.

There's a chance the essence stones were not kept in the vault. Take Alice's father for example, he kept all his essence stones in his bedroom, with most of them being mid or high grade.

Grey was sure there might be some essence stones in the vault, but it would probably only be low grade essence stones.

After sneaking into the main building, Grey started moving around the halls, searching his room with his spiritual sense, he would instantly retract it once he knew who was inside, trying his best not to attract any attention, while also using the space element to perfectly shield his aura from the people in the building.

There were guards patrolling the halls, but they weren't that many, so Grey didn't have any problems with dodging them.

After thirty minutes, he finally found Jean's room. Now the issue was getting inside the room.

Although it was already late, Jean was very much awake, in fact, he was quite busy in his room. He wasn't the only one there, rather, he was accompanied by one of the middle-aged ladies from before.

When Grey sent his spiritual sense inside, he quickly withdrew it, before moving as far away from the room as possible.

'I'll have to look for his office then,'

He changed his direction, deciding it was best he searched for his office. Who knows, there might be a secret room in the office that might just be the vault.

One hour later.

Grey looked around the office intensely, but unfortunately, he couldn't sense if there was a secret room in the office or not. He couldn't start touching everywhere since it would alert Jean of someone entering his office.

He could only leave in disappointment, times like this made him miss Void even more. Given Void's size, and specialty in the space element, coupled with his superior sensory abilities, he would've already found the place by now.

Grey wouldn't even need to take the risk of coming out in the first place, he would've stayed in the room, studying his books while Void did all the dirty work.