Door noises!
Without thinking too much about it, I slowly open the door. To my surprise, the door is rather smooth as it opens, no weird, old or creepy noises as it opens. A moment or so later, I fully open the door, revealing whatever is inside of it. As anyone can guess, it's something that I would never expect in my lifetime.
"A bedroom?"
The first thing that I saw when I fully opened the door was a bed. One that is neatly done with two pillows on top of it. The sheets are rather normal looking, colour in white with a few decorations on them. On both sides of the bed, there are two small bedside tables, exactly the same height as the bed. These bedside tables are also for the simple side, made of walnut wood, I think. On top of them several objects are present. A clock, a picture and I cannot make out what else is there as I'm too far to see it and they are for the small side to be honest. I carefully inspect the rest of the room before entering, who knows, something might be waiting for me. Anyway, to my left there is a desk and once again it's a rather plain looking one also made of walnut wood, not only that, the thing is almost covered in papers. To my right there is a wardrobe one that seems to follow the same aesthetic, simple looking made of walnut wood.
"Nothing too suspicious to the eye it seems, but what about if I use magic? Will I find something if I do so?"
With that in mind I concentrated a little bit on increasing my magic sense, or in other words, I will use my Magic Sense Skill to sense my surroundings using magic. This skill allows me to sense magic around me, there is a limit to how far I can sense magic but in a situation like this, it will do its job excellently. The moment that I used the skill I quickly discovered something that left my eyes wide open.
"There is nothing at all."
Yep, nothing at all, I'm just a tad bit surprised about it, but it really seems there is nothing in this room related to magic, or in other words, nothing out of the ordinary. Which in a way is quite odd, just why is the owner of this place guiding me here? What is he trying to do? Two questions that I will have to ask him personally, after all, I don't think that I can find said answer here. Or can I?
"Just one way to find out. I have to explore around in this bedroom."
Step! Magic noises!
As I say this, I also get inside of the room and unfortunately the moment I'm fully in, I felt something, something familiar. I quickly turn around to see what's happening behind me and when I fully turn around, I quickly discover what happened.
"Sigh… the door is gone once again."
The goddamn door disappeared on me again! Just like before, I did feel something when it happened, a little bit of magic was used when I was fully inside the room, it seems at that moment the door disappeared. Now another question quickly pops in my mind.
"Am I stuck here now?"
Magic noises!
This is rather convenient, almost as if there is someone listening to me. As I say this, with quite the annoyed tone of voice mind you, another door appears right in front of me, or to be precise, it appears in the wall in front of me.
"Well, this is rather convenient, wouldn't you say?"
Of course, this is more than suspicious, after all, while said individual might not be listening to me, at the very least I'm being carefully observed, being guided to god knows where. I do hope it's nowhere bad, but at the end of the day I'm an uninvited guest here and my motives to be here are not that grand either. Before I do anything related to that door, I decide to explore the room first, and the first thing that I want to see are the papers on the desk, there are far too many of them, that's why it caught my interest. I walk up to the desk and once I was close enough, I grab said papers.
"Newspapers?"
From all the things that could be here, I can't say that I was expecting newspapers to be one of them. There are some other random papers from the owner of this bedroom, like some notes, bills, letters and so on. I mean, in these random notes there can be something that can tell me about this place, in a form of a riddle for example! I have to put them all together and then bam! I found everything that I was looking for. Now, newspapers? That can never happen. I think.
"Curiosity did kill the cat and it's not like I'm in a rush so, let's see what we have here then... From the paper itself, it seems to be a little bit old but not that much really, just a couple of months or a year old."
At the bottom of the page that I'm holding there is the time it was published, that in this case it was 6 months ago, a few days after the big incident. Let's read the newspaper then, it starts with this;
"Breaking news! Monsters attack the city and complete chaos ensues! The residential and commercial areas are almost destroyed thanks to it!"
Quite the title I must say, but let's keep going.
"A few days ago, several monsters appeared from what seemed to be out of thin air. These monsters are what the experts call "Shadows". These Shadows can take the form of any monsters that you can think of. What makes them dangerous is the fact that they are extremely violent and aggressive, attacking anyone and anything that comes across their sight. These Shadows monsters range from small ones, roughly the size of a human or smaller, medium size, bigger than a human up to the maximum of three times the size, anything above brings them to big size category until of course they hit the ceiling. For last, there is the colossal size, these ones as the name suggests are Shadows whose size is equivalent to a 7-floor building or bigger. Their strength and magic power are also in the same way, going from the weakest, the smaller ones to the strongest, the colossal ones. Thanks to these differences, the adventurer guild has ranked them depending on their size, but unfortunately, even the small ones are considered C- rank, making them dangerous to an average person, quite dangerous in fact. The medium ones are at C rank, it does not seem like it, but it is a massive step up, they can easily be twice as strong as the small ones. The big ones can range from C+ up A rank, as anyone reading this can understand, they are far too dangerous even for adventurers and in the case of those that are rank A, even for an army. For last, the colossal ones, their rank will start at A rank however, they can easily climb up to S rank and above."
"This newspaper really is from all these months ago… Thanks to this, the information here is somewhat outdated."
I felt the need to express myself out loud, but only for a reason that I cannot explain. Now, what is the piece of information that is outdated, one might ask? It's the ranks of the big ones and the colossal ones. The only colossal that I know, knew in this case, its strength was equivalent to SS rank while there have been some reports of the big ones being close to S rank. Nothing that I can't deal with, but that does make them strong enough to be a threat to a whole city.
"The Shadows monsters, they use Dark magic and this type of magic is extremely destructive and dangerous. If one is not careful it will do massive amounts of damage to oneself and the environment around himself. The adventurer guild has sent adventures to deal with the threat, but they will take a few days to arrive. In the meanwhile, please be careful and do not engage with the Shadows monsters, you can die. You have been warned."
And this is the end of the newspaper. Quite the dramatic way to end it, but it's more than necessary. At the same time, I can affirm that, at this time it seems there weren't any Crystal monsters present. The Crystal monsters on the other hand, are weird and much different from the Shadows ones. I don't mean only physically, spiritually and so on, no, I mean why are they here? The Shadows are here because of the Demon Lord, they were created because of such an entity, not by him but, because of him, there is a difference, but I will talk about this later on. The Crystal monsters seem to be summons of some sort, as if someone is summoning them with some type of goal... But what goal? Ah, too much information without any concrete sight, I'm moving too quickly in other words, let's stop here for now. As I said, these newspapers are 6 months old and from there things have progressed rather quickly. Maybe in the middle of all of these papers I will find something else, if I don't, I will keep exploring.
"Can't say that I was not expecting this but there isn't much else of interest here."
Fantastic conclusion if I say it myself. After this, I decide to check the rest of the room. Another thing that picked my interest is the picture in the bedside table next to the bed, the right one to be precise. With this in mind I walk up to said bedside table and softly grab the picture, bringing it closer to me.
"No wonder I couldn't make out what is in the picture, it's all blurry!"
I let this out a tad bit louder than I should've to be honest, however it did surprise me by quite a bit. I can somewhat make out what is in the picture. Not really. There is a pink blur basically all over the picture however, I can somewhat make out a silhouette of a person? A female one if I would say… Hard to see because of, well, all the blurriness.
"I wonder who could this be, maybe this room belongs to her?"
An expected question as curiosity got the best of me and blurted out said question into the world. Since I knew no one was going to answer me I decide to get moving. Once again, I look around, who knows, maybe I can find something new. The goddess of luck does not seem to be on my side as I don't find anything special. I could go to the wardrobe and check if something is there. But a new question pops up.
"Should I?"
I quickly ponder the option, but what can I really find in there besides clothes and a few shoes? Well, I can always find a dead body instead.
"Nah! Why would I find such a thing?"
Huh, I do not know, maybe because it seems a good place for it? To scare me and then take advantage of it to do something to me? But if that was the case, I would've sensed something with my Magic Sense skill… Oh my, I might be just a tiny bit paranoid! I need to calm down. Anyway, with my guard up thanks to the paranoia, I walk up to the wardrobe and once I was close enough, I carefully open it.
"Well, I should've expected this, no?"
I say it with a little disappointment, it seems for some inexplicable reason, I wanted to find something exciting at the very least, but reality is often disappointing. Inside of the wardrobe there are only clothes, ones that belong to a woman, maybe the one from the picture? Either way, nothing out of the ordinary if I didn't take a closer inspection to them that is, making me find something rather interesting.
"Are these infused with magic?"
For some reason these clothes are indeed infused with magic, mainly for protection, against physical and magic in general. Nothing uncommon but the quality of these is what picks my interest. They are extremely high quality, something that only those with way too much money, adventurers whose ranks are the very minimal A rank, from royalty and from members of the Hero party, are the individuals that can or possess such clothes. Does this mean that, whoever this belongs to, said individual is from one of those? More and more questions start to pop up in my mind as I think more about it, but they all are about the same thing. Who is this person? Who is this woman with pink hair? The size of the clothes are roughly between 148 centimetres to 153 centimetres, not tall at all, quite short in fact even for an average grown woman, not only that, she also seems to be for the thin side as the clothes are quite tight in some areas.
"But this still won't tell me much else really."
And so, this wardrobe thingy turned out to be a bust as I didn't find anything important really, only questions without any answer to them. Well, time to go then. With my hopes crushed and without wasting too much time, I gathered my courage and of course with my guard up, I finally walk up to the door that decided to appear out of thin air, carefully open it.
.....
...
…