Kilian flipped over the clothes several times and couldn't find a hole, stain, or any bug attached to it. It was oddly clean and had a noble aura around it. It seemed expensive to him at least.
He slipped out of his leaf-kilt and put on the new clothes. They were a bit loose on his body but they fit quite well. He searched through the closet and found some relatively worn combat boots and they were a bit too big. He decided to go barefooted instead.
Kilian left the room after finding barely anything important. There weren't even any jewelry which he could sell.
Once he entered the corridor, the feeling of despair became thicker. Of course it had little effect on Kilian but based on his standards, this could cause an average B-rank assassin to immediately pass out.
What was weird was that the feeling was nearly nonexistent within the rooms. Kilian shut the door behind him.
"Hey Kal, where do you feel that weak life form?" He asked as he looked down the hallway.
At the end, there is a white door with a golden handle. It looked interesting.
[Just up ahead.]
Kilian approached the white door then saw mist swirling around the crevices on it. The mist was dark and the closer he got, the thicker the despair became.
He smiled and accepted the challenge. He twisted the door knob and pushed the door. Instantly, a room without any windows appeared. There was nothing but a glowing red crystal floating on an altar with a book open under it and an untouched black orb. Surrounding the altar, were candles and runic symbols that were seemingly smeared in torn pages with blood.
Kilian stared at the crystal. Completely ignoring everything else in the room, his body closed in on the altar and he squinted his eyes.
"What is that?" Kilian maintained a distance from it.
[Seems like a Void Crystal]
"Void Crystal?"
Kal stayed quiet for a moment before replying, as if attempting to remember something.
[Void Crystal is a type of device used to store mana or some other type of energy. Unless broken or someone purposely withdrawing the energy, the Void Crystal will often stay fine a few hundred years and not corrode much.]
Kilian smirked, "Seems like whatever energy it's storing is pretty destructive."
Just the aura alone coming closer was already a few times more than outside the room. He tapped his foot against the doorway and pushed the door further back in case something would jump out at him.
[Perhaps, but it seems like it's leaking instead, what a decently strong aura.]
"If it's leaking then it should be pretty old or broken right? Might just explain some of the mansion's age also."
[Indeed. And aside from warding off potential danger and keeping this mansion hidden and preserved, it hasn't done anything much. This Void Crystal is of decent quality also, so there should be something else inside the manor which is feeding off of it.]
Kilian remained quiet. This seemed like some weird ritual. Even though he had seen some cults back in his old world, he didn't know what kind of potentially dangerous power they might be playing with here.
"Something else that might be in here, huh? Who knows if something will go wrong if I end up taking the Void Crystal."
Kilian rubbed his chin and stared at the Void Crystal. The glow around it faded then became brighter as if it was a visual heart beat.
His gaze darted towards the dark orb under it instead. It seemed to be the center of the disgusting aura.
'What is that?' He wondered.
[I sense a life in there though I'm unsure what it is. Seems like an egg or an incubator of some sort.]
Kal spoke up with uncertainty.
Kilian looked at the orb and slowly began to approach it.
Slow step after slow step until his toes were basically touching the edges of the circle. He paused for a moment, nothing. He took Kal's silence as a sort of approval and walked even further.
At this point, the aura somehow became weaker.
Nothing happened to Kilian so far. His instincts and experience told him not to pick random things from around him, especially if it could prove dangerous. But something was very attractive about it. Something drew him in.
[Kilian. Store it in the ring first.]
Kilian's hand hovered over the orb for a moment before he swiped it. The orb disappeared into his ring. He fiddled with it with his thumb and looked around. Silence. Nothing happened, but he was still a bit wary.
He left the room and shut the door behind him. He looked down the corridor and everything was the same as he left it, then looking further down the trail at the other corridor facing him, it was entirely collapsed.
Kilian walked across the corridor quickly and arrived before the mess.
"Yep, a mess indeed." He stroked his chin. He could even see holes twice the size of him dotting the ground. The doors were ripped off their hinges and the windows were worn and broken. He wondered what's around here, but he'll have to investigate later.
The man looked up at the stained glass painting. Now something was different about it. When he got this close to it before, he thought of it as something pretty, but he saw multiple cracks on it, and it's mostly around the heads of some of the animals on it. Just below, he spotted four gems, one red, one blue, one green, and one a pale purple. All were sitting in a rhombus formation on a stone platter just behind a small broken stone pillar.
Kilian moved closer to the gems and crouched to get a better view.
The gems looked aged, the red and blue gems were shattered and on the brink of falling from the wall they were glued on.
"They look pricey." Kilian muttered as he reached out his hand to grab them.
Unexpectedly, he somehow pushed in the gem platter. He heard a click and the movement of some gears, causing him to jump back and look around. The clicking noises rung for a solid minute then stopped.
He then sensed something. It was a weird feeling, as if something that wasn't there revealed itself, but he didn't think it was a being. It felt the same when he was taking in mana to release an Ice Bolt. He saw light whisps of energy around the stairway like smoke, trailing to the center of the room and clustering around the four pillars.
[Quite the amount of mana I see! Those pillars seem to be worth something, go check it out.]
Kal's voice had a bit of expectency.
"You sure?" Kilian already began slowly walking down the stairs cautiously.
[Of course, have I ever lead you to death?]
"We've only been together for a day and a half so there might be some knots in our relationship." Kilian replied. It wasn't him being cynical, right?
Surprisingly the mana in the air was neither warm nor cold, it felt like something was moving across the exposed skin of his feet but he couldn't gauge the temperature.
He prepared to use Ice Bolt if anything went astray.
As Kilian neared one of the pillars northeast of the room, he spotted a large X mark on the head of the lion. He tilted his head as he didn't remember there being an X mark on any of the animals' heads.
Kilian moved further down to the southeastern pillar, there was also an X mark on the viper's head.
He looked at the bear head and yeah, there was an X mark.
Kilian looked at the dragon head and it was... just fine?
"Hm?" Kilian approached the pillar and confirmed his vision. It was just fine, save for the multitude of cracks and layers of dust.
He looked at the door with the exact same symbol on it. It was ajar but all he could see was darkness. The first thing that came to Kilian's mind: was this house haunted?