[Bonus chapter]B and E (Part 1)

'I felt nothing when killing these men but I did find the feeling of stabbing them to be strange. The smell and sight that comes after is probably the part I dislike the most but I'll just have to get used to it, especially the smell.'

Alex ruffled through the second guards pockets, taking his knife and a set of keys he had on him. The motorized gate had another, regular, gate built into it, which Alex assumed one of these keys would open.

He decided to leave the guns at the gate since they wouldn't be useful when trying to sneak around anyways. He placed the two knives under the waistband for his pants and put the keys in his pocket as he stepped away from the corpses to check the system messages.

[Absorbing Life Force]

[Absorbing Life Force]

'No level up message...' Alex looked at the top of the system window on the home page and saw that the bar underneath his level was about 4/5ths of the way full.

'One more person should allow me to level up. It feels like I'm leveling up quickly right now but I'm sure it will slow down as time goes on. How many people will I need to kill when I'm level 20? What about level 50? Will I have to kill a thousand people just to level up a single time?'

<Sigh> 'I don't know if there is one but I would assume there's a limit to how powerful I can become, a 'maximum level'. It's too early to be thinking about these things though...I'll worry about it when the time comes.'

Alex readied himself and walked up to the gate while taking out the pair of keys he just acquired. Luckily for Alex, his deductions about the keys were proven correct after he tried the second one and the gate swung open, allowing Alex to step onto the property for the first time.

There was a beautiful looking garden surrounding the house, with bushes and such strewn about beside some flower beds. The house was about 20-30 meters away from the gate and there was a paved driveway that led from the gate to the only garage the house had.

'Luckily there aren't any lights between here and the house, that will make it easier to get close without being seen, assuming anyone is even keeping watch in the first place. There also don't seem to be any guards outside but that makes sense. The second floor is dark but there are lights coming from the bottom floor of the house, if there are guards then they will probably be there.'

Alex started walking towards the house in a wide arc, trying to avoid the most obvious route someone would take, and kept low as he did. The jacket Alex was wearing had a hood attached, which he made sure was up at all times during this mission to try and make it harder for people to recognize him and keep his blonde hair from giving him away in the darkness.

Alex reached the house after a few minutes of slowly creeping through the darkness and pressed his back against the wall while he caught his breath. Due to the stress and fear of being caught, Alex's heart was beating so fast and hard he could feel the pulses in his neck and arms.

He leaned against the wall for a few minutes and focused on calming down, eventually finding partial success as his heart beat slowed a bit, but not completely. Needing to know what the situation was like inside, he inched his way towards the nearest window with light coming out of it and peeked into the house.

His heartbeat immediately returned to the speed it was beating before as he realized how difficult this would actually be. The room Alex was looking into seemed to be the living room since there were multiple couches and a even a TV. The reason his heartbeat sped up was due to the fact that there were 5 guards sitting on the couches watching TV while another 3 were walking around the home keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

He could see the guards that were walking around because the house had an open floor plan, making most of the bottom floor visible from pretty much any window. The 3 guards that were walking around seemed to be extremely alert, while the other 5 were relaxing like they were in their own homes. The 3 guards walked in circles around the house, checking every part of the bottom floor as they did.

'Shit... I expected there to be 3 maybe 4 guards inside at most but this is too much for me to handle. Never mind trying to take them all out, I doubt I could even sneak past them!' As Alex tried to figure out a way to sneak past the guards, he neglected to keep track of the 3 that were walking around, only noticing that one was close to him when the man started looking out the window he was using.

Alex whipped his head back at breakneck speed and pressed his body against the wall. His heart was beating so fast he really thought it might explode.

'Did he see me? He would have said something if he did, right?!'

"What was that?" A voice said from inside the house, causing Alex to go as pale as a ghost while his heart sank into his stomach.

"Hm? Did you see something?" Another voice asked.

"Yeah, it looked like a red glow in the window but I don't see it now." The first voice replied.

"Oh, that was probably the light on the TV, don't worry about it." Someone said in a dismissive tone.

"Yeah...you're probably right." The first voice replied.

Now that he was focusing more on the sounds coming from the house, Alex could hear the guard walk away from the window. A wave of relief swept over him as he crept away from the window and started walking around the house.

'I can't sneak past them and I can't kill that many of them. I need to find a different way to reach the second floor.'