Infinite Realm

(AN : There's quite a high possibility that errors, and a whole lot of them at that, might exist.)

Placing one hand on the door, Sato applied a bit of force and pushed it outwards. On doing so though, he experienced a large amount of resistance as a result of the door's weight. 

'The heck?!' Sato wondered what kind of creature such a door was made for. 

In order to move the door, Sato was then forced to use both arms and push it in. But by doing so, he would be open to any possible ambush from within.

"Xue Yan, keep a close eye and cover me." Sato said to her.

While Xue Yan wondered why Sato was overly cautious, she didn't say anything but simply nodded in acquiescence.

After receiving her confirmation, Sato sheathed his sword and placed both hands on the door. With a low grunt, he pushed the door with an appropriate amount of force to prevent it from producing too much noise and alerting whatever potential figure that might be in there.

*Creak*

With the force applied from Sato's arms, the wood-like door began to move in slowly, creaking at every juncture; signifying how long it has been since the door had ever been opened.

It took Sato a full 4 seconds before he was able to create enough space for one person to barely enter at a time. Despite Sato having the original intention of using little force to open the door, he ended up using almost all of his strength because of the door's weight.

'If the door is this difficult to open then I wonder what the circumstances would be with the tower.' Sato thought as he glanced at the door that he had barely managed to open.

"Aren't you going in?" Xue Yan asked as she noticed Sato leaning on the wall instead of going in.

"I need to catch my breath first." Sato replied.

After at least 10 seconds had gone by before  Sato squeezed into the building through the miniature opening. He scanned the entire room briefly before inviting Xue Yan in.

The room that the two stepped into was just like any regular room in a house. It was an average-sized room and from the furniture and placing, Sato guessed that it was probably the sitting room. Just like a regular sitting room, there was a table, a few chairs, and a roughly created bookshelf to decorate the room. It simply looked nothing out of the norms, except for one minor yet important detail; the entire furniture was bigger than normal. The chair was big enough to carry a cow and still have some leftover space. The table was a rectangular one with a width of 3 metres, a length of 6 metres and a height of at least 1 metre. All in all, this implied that whatever species or creature that dwelt here had a much larger physique than an average human being.

"It looks like we made a mistake in our conjecture. It's even possible that whatever civilization this is, might not even be human. They might not even be related to humans." Xue Yan said.

"Not really. It's true that they might not be humans but saying that we aren't related is definitely wrong. Otherwise, why do they look like us?" Sato retorted.

Recalling the murals in the corridor, Xue Yan realised that Sato might be right so she only nodded in response.

"It seems like here's safe. Let's split and try to find any clue regarding this place. If you find anything 'special', you can keep it to yourself." Sato said. The 'special' here was any loot or supply that wasn't directly useful as a clue to discover the identity of the ancient civilization. In summary, any resource, consumables, weapons or equipment.

Though the two were a team, it was just a temporary arrangement that resulted from Xue Yan's deal with him. Because of this, there would surely be an issue of sharing loot among them. For the battle against the kobold chief, because of their misinformation, Xue Yan was left out of the loot since she had agreed that with them taking the risk to fight a world-class boss, it wasn't right of her to still go after the loot. Even though they had eventually discovered that the kobold chief wasn't the world-class boss, because of the following events that had occurred, there was no time to correct the error of sharing the loot. While Xue Yan didn't make a fuss about the previous error, Sato guessed that she was still dissatisfied but didn't speak up because they still weren't out of their predicament.

Since he wanted to prevent such a problem arising once more, Sato made up his mind that whatever they find here individually, would be held by the person who found it. So even if Xue Yan finds a piece of Legend-rank equipment, Sato wouldn't pester her nor pressure her to hand it over and vice versa.

"Alright."

Xue Yan wasn't dumb so she could easily figure out why Sato made such a decision. The truth was that even if Sato decided to hug all the loot, she wouldn't argue with him; though she would be dissatisfied, Xue Yan wouldn't retort. This is because it was thanks to the combined effort of Sato and his friends that she was still alive. While dying in the game would result in losing a bunch of Experience points or a level at most, Xue Yan didn't want her progress to be hampered. The reason was because of something a friend of hers told her regarding the game, Infinite Realm. From that, Xue Yan reached the decision that she would try her best not to lose out to the other pros and one way of doing that was to minimize her death count.

Apart from the main door that Sato and Xue Yan entered from, there was another door and also a passage on the opposite side, that lead to the stairs. In the passage, there were two doors; one by the left and another by the right and a bit further in front was the stairs. 4 different possible options to pick but only two players.

"Let's leave the stairs for last. We can explore the door over there and leave the other two for individual selection. What do you say?" Sato brought up a solution.

Xue Yan nodded, "No problem."

The two then went into the door within the sitting room. Taking a good look inside, they noticed that it was a store of sorts. A few large empty crates were scattered all over the place alongside a bunch of sacks that looked to be filled with something.

Xue Yan walked over to inspect the sacks but Sato suddenly grabbed her hand.

"What?" Xue Yan was a bit surprised at his actions.

"From the looks of things, this room might be a store of sorts. It's quite possible that whatever that's in there might be a soluble or a good. If that's the case, then with all the years that have gone by with it being left like that, it might have expired already." Sato explained.

Seeing him stop, Xue Yan replied, "So? There's still the chance that it's just some metals or something like that, that's in there."

Sato nodded. "True. But what if it's as I said? It's quite possible that the compounds might have expired to the point of becoming poison."

Xue Yan's face reacted visibly to Sato's words because it was likely true. Foods like eggs and oysters become poisonous once they go past their expiration date. Even if this world had magic, it didn't mean that the foods don't spoil.

Xue Yan then took out a piece of clothing and used it to shield her face. At the same time, Sato walked over to the sacks and pried them open with his sword.

Just as he had thought, a small pure-colored gas escaped from the sack before it diffused out. This gas was the result of the elongated storing of certain types of materials (whether edible or not) for some time.

After the gas had cleared out, Sato inspected the sack and discard it was just as he had thought. Checking through the entire sacks in here, Sato reached the conclusion that there was nothing of worth in this room. And so, just like that, Sato and Xue Yan exited the place and went over to the rooms by the stairs.

After selecting their choices, the two walked into the rooms and scanned around for anything of importance. This only took them 5 minutes before the two exited the room with only a 30 second lag behind the other.

Following the original rule Sato had brought up, none of them said anything about their findings; only reporting that there was nothing of value in there. Together, both Sato and Xue Yan then went up to the top floor.

With the second floor partially damaged, there was not much to look at. Sato and Xue Yan walked up the stairs before glancing around the floor upon reaching. After a light-detailed search of 3 minutes, they left the house, supposedly, without any loot.

"Let's keep moving." Not bothering about whatever harvest Xue Yan might have reaped, Sato walked alongside her towards the tower at the centre.

After seeing the state of the previous building, they both unequivocally decided to ignore the other buildings and focus only on the goal at the centre since the chances of discovering any information in relation to this ancient civilization were much higher at the tower. Of course, the greed and adventurous spirit of players made it so that they wouldn't totally ignore the other buildings.. Only once they were done exploring the gigantic tower would they finally explore the area.