Exploration

The group quickly arrived near the abandoned house. As the group were nearing the entrance they suddenly heard a wail.

Everyone tensed up, a few already stepping back when Dorian said "Don't worry, it's just the wind going through the house."

As they heard him, everyone calmed down as they realized he was saying the truth. They would normally have been able to tell the difference between a wail and the wind, but they were so nervous and tensed right now that their minds were muddled.

It was another story for Dorian though, as he knew beforehand that this wasn't the Butcher's house.

Natasha patted Dorian on the shoulder and asked "Why don't you lead the way? You seem more… experienced."

Dorian shrugged and quickly approached the entrance. As he arrived before the broken door, he turned around and looked at everyone before asking "Do we open the door, or do we get through that window?"

There was indeed a window, but it was a little too high and Dorian didn't really see them jumping over it. So it came with no surprise when they unanimously replied "Door."

Dorian looked back at the door and tried to find a way to open it. Had he been alone he would have kicked it open, but he was afraid that if he did so, they would run out screaming for their moms.

In the end, Dorian grabbed the door with one hand and used the other to punch the old decaying wooden bonds. As expected, they broke straight away, letting Dorian lift the door, allowing him to open the way.

The others looked at him impressed and made their way inside. Once sure everyone was in, Dorian quietly laid the door against the wall.

This house was quite big, and could probably be called a mansion in this world. When Dorian joined the others, Rose said with an excited smile "This house used to be a rich merchant's home, until some mishap happened and he disappeared. Since then, no one destroyed this house because it is said to be haunted!"

Dorian smiled and asked "Do you believe in ghosts?" Rose scoffed "Of course I don't, those are tails to scare the kids!"

Dorian's smile widened but he said nothing, quietly inspecting the house. At first glance, it didn't seem to be very interesting, there wasn't anything worth it in here.

At some point, they reached a set of stairs, leading to the first floor. They stopped and Natasha said "We should split up, one group searches above, the other continue on this floor."

The others nodded and Florian asked "Who's willing to go up there?" This time, no one raised their hand. Seeing this, Dorian stepped toward the stairs, and looked at the others.

Soon after, Flint joined him, followed by the couple Florian and Leticia. Now, the group was split in two. Dorian nodded to Natasha and began climbing the stairs, which creaked under his weight.

Thankfully, the four of them were able to reach the first floor above safely, without the stairs breaking down.

Dorian randomly went to one of the rooms, and found himself in a dilapidated child's room. He looked behind him and saw the others were heading towards different rooms, so he decided to explore this part.

The room was quite big for this time period, as it was as big as Dorian's in the real world, maybe even bigger.

He walked to the bed, which took most of the place, and patted it, creating a cloud of dust. Several insects came out from the quilt and below the bed.

Dorian shook his head and looked around the room. The walls had holes in them, and were grey because of all the time that passed. But Dorian was able to discern that the original color of the walls was blue.

That meant this merchant was really rich because colors like blue were quite hard to make and thus costly, and for someone to color a whole room in blue…

There were also toys, wooden swords, wooden horses and small soldiers. Except for the sword, the rest of the toys weren't much different from Earth.

There were a few pieces of furniture, and Dorian wanted to move a few of them but decided not to as he feared the house would really fall down on their heads if he did so.

But as he kept looking around, he saw the edge of a box on top of a piece of furniture taller than himself. It was well hidden by the darkness and he would have missed it if he hadn't paid enough attention.

He tiptoed to reach the box, which was pretty light, and put it on the bed. It turned out that it wasn't a box, but a small chest. Which was locked.

Dorian tried looking around for the key but found nothing, so he turned to the other option, break it open. But now that all his equipment was in his Spatial Bag, his strength had returned to 15, which was good but far from breaking a chest.

And Dorian didn't want to put on his equipment, so he had to think of a way to cleverly use his strength.

What first came to his mind was crushing the chest under a big weight, but he eliminated it as it could destroy whatever was inside the chest.

Dorian thus eliminated this option, and turned toward another one, the lever. He needed to find something that could work as a crowbar, and use it to break it open…

Suddenly, Dorian slapped his forehead because of his stupidity. He said to himself "Stoop being dumb Dorian! This is not the real world, you have advantages!"

Dorian took a needle he had seen earlier and inserted it in the lock, trying to fiddle with whatever was inside. After a good five minutes, Dorian opened his status, and saw a new ability:

[Basic Lock-picking (Level 1/10)]

New knowledge appeared in his head, and Dorian had become able in the art of lock picking.

He got up and approached one of the wooden furniture and teared apart a small piece of one of them. Then, using this small piece of wood and the needle, Dorian successfully unlocked the chest.

Dorian was curious about what was inside when suddenly he heard a cry from downstairs. He sprinted out of the room and saw the three others were also out of the rooms, rushing toward the sound.

Before Dorian could say anything to them, they all sprinted down the stairs. The stairs were very fragile, and they almost couldn't support their weight when they walked carefully on them, so it didn't take to be a genius to guess what would happen when three people ran on them.

But those three had never encountered any danger before, and hearing their friend cry out made them panic, making their thinking process near nonexistent.

As soon as they all got on the stairs, with a breaking sound they all started to fall down. Dorian jumped from his stair to the one below, landing firmly on the ground.

He went to check on the ones who fell worried, but was relieved to see that they were fine. They could have easily hit their heads or been pierced through by something sharp below the stairs.

The three were groaning in pain, but Flint managed to say "Don't wait for us, go check what happened."

Dorian nodded and began running around. But he didn't know where the voice came from. His first instinct was to look outside the house, but saw no one.

As he searched, he wondered what could have happened to the ones downstairs. It could have merely been one of them being extremely afraid of spiders and who fell upon one, but if it had been something like that he would have seen someone.

But now, he had searched through almost all the pieces, but found nobody. As he was between two rooms, he saw the other three had joined him, Florian was limping and the other two helping him.

Dorian nodded to them and opened the room he was about to check. How surprised was he when he discovered the dark entrance that seemed to lead straight to hell.