He could also hear the faint chattering of people coming from several rooms to the sides, and even in the direction he was heading in. However, he wasn't intimidated by such an observation. He didn't know whether it was the fact that he was confident in his strength, his new ability, or just that he was desperate enough to finish the mission and leave the city behind to truly focus on strengthening himself.

Suddenly, he began hearing the footsteps of several figures rushing in his direction from the front. The steps clattered in a rhythmic beat above the marbled floor, and with every second the sound grew louder and louder. At first, he was forced to pause as he was caught off guard by the abruptness of them. But he decided to just soldier on and have an active disposition in whatever might appear next.

With a swoosh, just as he appeared at the end of the hall where tables lined the place and a soft red rug covered the place, he witnessed three women and a man looking at him with a start. Meeting their gaze with the exact same expression that he carried thus far, the group was quick to avert their gazes and change directions somewhere else.

'Maids?' He thought with a confused expression. Their clothes were rather normal and weren't exactly telling of their profession, but the way they carried themselves was. They had this subservient glint in their eyes, and the moment their eyes met they were quick to get startled and seek forgiveness without a word.

Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Melvin continued looking around the mansion, hoping to find where the basement was in a race against time. At the end of the hall, there were paths leading both left and right. At first, he went left, and all he found were numerous rooms that had various purposes, but no stairs leading down.

Retracing his steps, he was once again at the end of the hall before he went to the right path. This time, he could tell that there was something eerily different about this place.

All of the rooms were closed, dark, and carried this ominous presence over them. There was no light to speak of here, and the only thing that carried him forward was his newfound powerful eyesight.

At the very end of that path, he was greeted by a circular opening leading down. Focusing there, he could make out the faint shapes of small wooden steps.

With a nervous gulp, he took a slow exhale and began going down. The steps creaked whenever he stepped over them, something that made him even more nervous and agitated.

As he ventured deeper, the darkness began to fade by the presence of an ember flicker that danced around. Melvin wasn't foreign to such a movement and light, knowing that it came from a candle, and candles always signified people.

His steps momentarily paused as he prepared himself for what would come next. He knew that whoever he met down here would be not only suspicious of his motives but would outright attack him.

True to his expectations, when he reached the end, he saw two men with two thick staves in their hands glaring at him with a cautious expression.

The moment their eyes met, Melvin immediately entered combat mode. It wasn't something that one willed into existence, but more so your body's direct and intelligent realization of danger. His mind became perfectly alert, his heartbeat drummed dangerously inside his chest, and a stupid amount of adrenaline danced around his body.

With a jump, and most importantly without saying another word, Melvin lunged at the two. The man forward was the first to rush in with his staff, but Melvin was quick to duck down to evade. Although he could have blocked the attack with his forearm, he didn't want to risk taking a direct attack from someone whose strength was still a mystery.

Just as he ducked down, he was met with the other man charging at him. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Melvin masterfully twisted his body on the ground by balancing himself with his hands and kicked the incoming man in the stomach with his strongest kick sending him flying backward. The man's flight was only stopped by the nearby walls as a thud resounded through the small space they found themselves in.

Melvin, however, had no time to pay attention to that as the other man's staff was already descending upon him with vengeance. Just from the air vibrations alone, he knew that this was a very powerful attack and that if it were to attack him he'd be in a world of trouble.

Due to the abruptness of it all, he wasn't able to dodge but merely brandish two of his trusty daggers that he always kept hidden behind his pants in front of him. Another clang reverberated through the small room, and Melvin's forearms threatened to burst out due to the sheer force behind the attack.

His eyes slightly widened at the realization that these two guards were clearly Novice Tier. However, this wasn't his first rodeo, and he quickly composed himself as his gears turned to salvage the situation. The guard kept trying to push down the staff as if he sensed Melvin's gradual loss of strength compared to his, and to him, this presented the perfect opportunity. He did what most combatants always feared without the slightest hesitation.

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In a lightning-fast and practiced manner, his two hands swiftly let go of the daggers they were gripping and latched into the swiftly incoming staff. Holding the staff with both hands, the guard seemed both shocked and unprepared for what would come. Taking advantage of both the surprise and loss of balance, Melvin pulled the staff in another direction with every fiber of his being, and to both of their surprise, it was easily removed from the guard's grasp.

A wide smile crept up Melvin's smile upon witnessing the shock and slight fear on the guard's face. "How about that?" He muttered with a slight tease.

The guard's eyes swiftly looked down, and when Melvin followed their trajectory, he noticed both of his daggers. Quickly realizing the fact that he had just let go of one of his runes, and thus growing weaker, he immediately started to act.

The both of them lunged at the same time. The guard rushed toward the daggers, and Melvin toward the guard. Fortunately, the staff was rather long and it was quick to obstruct the guard's path as it hit him with its full might directly in the stomach, sending him sprawling backward.

Suddenly, as Melvin's eyes were following the falling figure, he smiled once again and ducked to the right. Just then another staff flew with immense strength aiming for where his neck was. If that attack had landed, Melvin was sure he would be unable to fight, and thus die.

"This tracking ability is too freaking awesome," He yelled as tightly gripped his own staff and hit the guard who tried to sneak attack him in the face. A wave of teeth, blood, and snot shot up to the skies as the guard's head cut through the air before landing on the ground with a thunderous sound.

The moment he had first attacked that guard, he made sure to put his own tracking ability on him as he knew that he'd be fighting two at the same time, and his decision proved to be more than successful as he would have died without it. The more Melvin fought the more he realized how complicated of an Art it was, if you made the slightest mistake and you didn't think far ahead, you'd be done for.

As for the execution of the skill it was rather simple and anticlimactic. A bolt of invisible energy would escape his own head and land on his targets, and what would follow was an intuitive understanding of their position in the skill's range.

Noticing that he wasn't receiving any notifications, Melvin sighed in relief as he didn't want to kill anyone per Evarius and Borus's instructions. He crouched down, picked up his own daggers, and hid them in their usual place, behind the waistband of his pants. The other guard was still moving, and so without wasting any more time as the fight thus far had made quite the ruckus, he ran toward him and hit him in the back of his head with the staff.

Upon witnessing his lack of movements and the absence of notifications, Melvin sighed once again. Now that the fight was more or less over, he began surveying where he was.

"Hmm..." He mumbled in confusion as he deeply stared at the place. It resembled a pantry for food storage with the dark, damp, and dimly lit environment, but more so because of the multitude of wooden chests lining the area. At the same time, he was expecting it to lead somewhere secretive and so where he didn't see anything whatsoever he couldn't help but be disappointed.

However, he was quick to comfort himself, "They said they'd help me regardless so I suppose it's all the same to me." Approaching one of the wooden chests, he easily opened it and took a look inside. The moment it parted open, his jaws parted open in shock.

"Goodness," He mumbled as he stared at the mass of gold coins before him. Opening another chest, he found bright red jewels that brightly shone even in that darkness that was only slightly illuminated by a faint ember light from the ceiling.

Another chest had Mana stones, and another one had these small squishy balls of various colors. As he gazed at the softballs that oozed with the smell of salt and fish, Melvin had an intense urge to consume them, something that he found to be very peculiar as he had never felt such a sensation in his life.

Still, eating strange objects he found in a dark room wasn't something he was planning on doing regardless of how curious he was. Thus, his eyes shone with greed and he began filling up his pockets with everything he could get his hands on. He grabbed a bunch of gold coins, mana stones, and the soft sea balls as he called them. Needless to say, his pockets were very quick to get filled and he barely got anything.

As he ran toward the small room trying to find a bag, he heard a sudden muffled groan of pain prompting him to stop. He knew for a fact that it wasn't the two men lying unconscious beside him, but it came from something deeper. Getting pulled from his greedy reverie, he got his head on the mission once again. Not only was it necessary for him to satisfy the guards as they would be the key to him leaving the city, but he was also invested in the well-being of whoever might be imprisoned here.

He approached the nearby location where he heard the sound and began removing the chests over there, and that was when he found a small wooden door that led downward. "This is it!" He said with bright eyes.

Gripping the handles tightly, he pulled them upward and the dark room behind him was immediately illuminated from the bright light that invaded it. Melvin's eyes squinted as he was also taken off guard by the abruptness of it, and after his eyes adjusted and the doors were wide open, he was able to see inside, and he was once again shocked!

Small wooden stairs leading down, but that down was what shook him to his core. A perfectly marbled space with an altar in the middle and bright golden gemstones lining the ceiling with an intense light. To the sides were dozens of steel cages where a combination of human clothes, body parts, bones, hairs, and everything in between filled the space. Needless to say, the stench was disgustingly awful and it threatened to make Melvin's stomach put down all of its contents. In some horrible manner, the smell was even worse than when he just woke up in this world surrounded by corpses.