So there was a small problem with my plan of making my own entrance into the sewage system. Somehow, none of the nearby alleyways goes over a sewage pipe, none. None in a nearly twenty-mile radius of my apartment. How is that possible? Seriously how?
Wait, hold up…it's fucking vampires, isn't it? Some count Oorlock looking jerks probably set up shop down there and bribed some people so this happened. If it's not vampires, it's probably some cult, but I'm fairly certain it's vampires. God, I hate those leeches.
But despite this setback, I've come up with a multi-step solution that should work nicely and will still follow along with some of my earlier plan.
So Step 1: go and get the lead magical crack head style.
Step 2: Alchemically transmute the lead into gold
Step 3: sell the gold
Step 4: Use half of the gold money to buy stocks for permanent income,
Step 5: Buy a house with a basement with the other part of the gold money,
Step 6: move into said house
Step 7: Make the basement my sanctum.
Perfect solution, better living location, close by and easily accessible sanctum, more secure than abandoned buildings or warehouses, and I'll have free rein to redecorate into something fitting for a dignified Hermetic.
With that now settled I check the time on my car's clock, eleven O'clock at night. It's a new moon, and pretty much all the street lights in this area are busted, so it's basically pitch black. The only reason I'm able to see at all is the enchantment I put on my glasses. Said enchantment gives me night vision, and it highlights lead and human beings in such a way that it allows me to see them through walls.
I leave my car and step into the cool night air. The sky is overcast, blocking out any potential light that could come from the stars. I head around the back of my car and open up my trunk. I pull out a bag I enchanted with an anti-gravity enchantment, which should make whatever I put in it weigh next to nothing.
I start walking towards the house, which is an abandoned two-story Victorian-style house that probably got abandoned due to all the poison in it. Betting it has arsenic green paint, and asbestos in the walls, along with the two hundred pounds of lead in piping and paint. It definitely fits the bill of an abandoned building; it's covered in a thick layer of cobwebs, any remaining paint that hasn't already peeled off is sun-bleached into a gross yellow, and the walls are covered head to toe in graffiti. The enchantments show no human life signs, and lots of lead throughout the house. The lead seems to be mainly in the piping, both gas and water, with a small amount in the walls, probably in the form of paint.
Once I'm at the steps of the house, I stop walking and fish out a stick of chalk from my pocket. I get down on my knees and start working on the ritual circle. It's a fairly complex piece, designed to direct sound energy into the center of the circle, and then convert said sound energy into magnetic forces keyed specifically to lead. So in practice, it's gonna cause the lead piping to get ripped out of the walls, which would normally make a lot of sound, but said sound will instead be made into more magnetic energy, which will attract more lead, which makes more sound.
Basically, it will turn into a sound-magnetic feedback loop that will last until all of the lead has been pulled out, and when I say all of it, I mean it. It should hopefully pull out the lead particulate in the paint while not getting the actual paint itself.
Once all the lead is collected, the circle will convert any leftover energy into heat, which will melt all of the lead into one solid blob that I can bag and take with me.
Now, is the piping flying through the walls gonna absolutely wreck the structural integrity of the house? Yeah, it is. That's why I'm drawing the circle right out front of the house, instead of the inside, where I would be crushed to death.
"íchos se molývdino magníti," I mutter under my breath as I activate the ritual. The words I spoke acted both as a focus for the ritual and as the initial burst of sound that kicks everything off.
I take a couple of steps back once the ritual is complete since I don't want to get brained by a flying lead pipe the same day as my awakening. That'd be the quickest death I've ever had.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, most likely because all of the noise that would usually be made by the piping being ripped out of where it was installed was being converted into magnetic energy.
Then, after a couple of seconds, I notice some cracks are starting to form, small at first, but they grow larger quickly.
Finally, the first piece of piping comes shooting out of a newly formed hole in the upper part of the house. It's a pretty big piece, like two feet long. Seeing the size of it, I'm starting to think I didn't make the circle big enough.
A couple more pieces from new holes land in the center of the circle, and yeah, it's definitely not big enough.
"sympiéste kai lióste to mólyvdo." I raise my right hand and make a squeezing gesture with my left as I mutter an incantation. That spell will heat up and compress the lead into as small a ball as possible, as long as I repeat the words and maintain the hand gesture.
"sympiéste kai lióste to mólyvdo," I mutter as even more pipes and some lead dust enter the circle.
"sympiéste kai lióste to mólyvdo" again and again, I repeat the incantation, not moving an inch in fear of incurring a nasty dose of paradox. Man, I'm really hoping the current consensus is soft enough to allow this as some weird metahuman with a magic fetish.
Once I've repeated the incantation close to sixty times, the stream of lead seems to slow down to a trickle.
"sympiéste kai lióste to mólyvdo," I mutter the incantation a couple more times, and the stream of lead has stopped fully, save for a bit of lead dust, but that won't make much of a difference either way.
Once I stopped the enchantment, the metal was in the shape of a rough ball about the size of a basketball.
The ritual stops converting sound into magnetic force, and I can suddenly hear the creaks coming from the house, and there are a lot of creaks. Good God, I really screwed up the support, didn't I? It sounds like it's gonna collapse any minute.
Then, almost like the city itself was laughing at me, the house collapsed with a loud crash. Fuck that probably attracted some attention.
I grab the enchanted bag and scoop up the ball, making sure to tie the top so the ball won't fall out.
I throw the bag into the passenger seat of my car, start the car, and leave the scene of my crime.
I broke some speed laws for the first block or two, but once I was a sufficient distance away, I slowed down to the actual speed limit.
It takes a couple of minutes of traffic-free driving to get back to my apartment, and in that time, I realized I don't know the cost of gold.
I mean, I'm hoping it's like one or two thousand bucks per pound, but I'm not sure. Even if it's only 500 bucks per pound, which I doubt, it'll still be more than double my annual wage, maybe even more than triple.
Once I parked my car and got myself and my lead basketball into my apartment, I decided to quickly search up the price of gold, so I don't go and get ripped off when I sell it.
I grab my phone and open up my go-to search engine and search for the current price of gold.
Oh, nice, four thousand? That's amazing.
Wait… does that say what I think it says?
PER OUNCE??