Sense Treasure was a passive skill that allowed the owner of the skill to feel the mana in the air and find where precious things were hidden. It worked by allowing the owner of the skill to feel lingering emotions that got imprinted on the mana in the atmosphere by the person who considered that object precious.

It was incredibly valuable for Vanessa's purpose of finding hidden documents that could prove the Howling Spear guild wrongdoings. She picked that skill recently last time she leveled up. That night, it was leading her to one small office downtown with no apparent connection to the guild or the Mayor.

Vanessa was carefully not to be filmed by the security cameras. She climbed the building outside wall made of bricks with the aid of a pair of climbing hooks she purchased recently. The window was locked, but with a very simple mechanism. She only needed a thin piece of wire to pull back the latch holding the window to the frame.

She got inside taking care not to trip in any alarms, but the office had no security at all. Vanessa started to wonder if there was really anything in there useful to her. Her Sense Treasure skill was pointing to a specific drawer. Upon close inspection, that drawer had a false bottom that, when opened, revealed a simple flash drive inside.

That was it. That was what her skill was telling her was precious in there.

After pocketing the drive, Vanessa took a bit longer taking a look over other documents around the office. It was just a small lawyer's office. There was nothing there that could connect the lawyer to the Mayor or to the Howling Spear. It made no sense for her to be there anymore.

She came out by the same way she came in. She even locked the window from outside making it seem no one was ever there that night.

The drive home was long. Avoiding main roads and security cameras around town. When she parked her bike in the garage beside Eric's own bike, Vanessa was almost falling asleep. All she wanted was to hit her bed and turn off for the night.

However, when she opened the door for her room above the garage, the lights were on and there was a man there looking at the papers she had laying around her desk.

Vanessa, didn't think twice. She drew a knife from her thigh and threw it at the man standing there aiming directly at his head.

But the knife lost its way when a powerful gust of wind blew it off its trajectory making it land on the wall and missing her target.

Before Vanessa could draw another knife, she heard a familiar voice.

"Vanessa?" Matthew said scared after she just tried to kill him.

It took a couple of seconds before Vanessa recognized the man in front of her. It was so late and she was so tired that she didn't even recognize Matthew standing there in her room waiting for her to get back.

"Matthew?" Vanessa asked not trusting her own tired eyes.

"Yes! You're lucky Ffyr noticed your attack before you hurt me." Matthew complained and then looked worried after noticing the big shadows looming under her eyes.

"What the hell are you doing here so late?" She asked rubbing her hand on her face and disarming herself putting her weapons and other things over the desk.

"I was worried about you. You haven't talked to me in more than two weeks." Matthew explained himself.

"And you couldn't wait until morning? Don't you have class tomorrow?" Vanessa mumbled confused by her drowsiness.

"Tomorrow is Saturday." Matthew said. "I've been trying to get in touch with you all week."

"Saturday?" Vanessa asked sitting down on her bed and removing her boots.

"Are you ok? You don't look well." Matthew asked worried about her.

"Just a bit tired…" She said laying down and mumbling something else that Matthew didn't understand.

She was quickly fast asleep.

Matthew covered her with a blanket and took a better look at all the documentation that she got. Secret bank accounts, funds coming in and out the Howling Spear guild to the Mayor and her campaign, hundreds of contracts that Vanessa marked as suspicious from the government with the guild. She was building a solid case there. She clearly worked really hard.

"I don't understand a thing." Ffyr said looking aver the documents with Matthew.

"Well, you don't know how to read." Matthew laughed at her.

"No, silly! I mean, if these guys are evil, why don't you just go there and beat them up?" Ffyr asked energetically.

"We have laws. We can't just do things because we want to." Matthew explained.

"That's dumb." The chaos spirit commented getting bored and going outside.

Matthew looked more at the documents. Drug dealings, bribery, human trafficking… He felt scared. Those were pretty serious crimes with some pretty dangerous people behind them. Eric was right to worry about her.

He sat down on a chair and looked at Vanessa's sleeping face. She looked a lot older than the last time he saw her. What could he do to help her? Would just being there help? Lost in this thoughts he too fell asleep sitting right there beside her bed.

Matthew woke up with Katia poking his face.

"Uncle Matty." She said when he finally opened his eyes. "Dad is calling you and Aunt Ness for breakfast."

Matthew moaned and rubbed his eyes. He stretched feeling his body ache for sleeping sitting down. Vanessa was still sleeping despite Katia's attempts of waking her.

"Let's let Ness sleep more. She's very tired." Matthew said while patting Katia on the head. "We'll bring her breakfast here later." He added getting up and walking to the kitchen with Katia.

Eric had pancakes ready for Matthew when he got there.

"What time did she get home?" Eric asked Matthew while serving him.

"It was 3 or 4 am." Matthew said thanking Eric for the food with a nod. "I saw what she's working on. You were right." He added not wanting to go into details because Katia was there.

"So… You'll help her?" Eric asked while putting some honey on his daughter's pancakes.

"Yeah. I'll stay close to her until she's done."

At noon, Eric left with Katia to a birthday party of one of her school friends. At the same time, Vanessa woke up by the car noise downstairs from her bed. She looked around startled, but then realized she was home and safe.

"Good morning." Matthew said with a smile.

"Morning, kid." Vanessa replied without looking at him.

"I brought you some pancakes Eric made, but they're cold now." Matthew said giving her a plate with the food.

Vanessa sat upright on bed. Used her hands to clean the sand out of her eyes. And slowly ate the pancakes with a knife and fork resting the plate on her lap. She savored the honey and the blueberries before getting self conscious about Matthew's staring.

"You don't need to babysit me." Vanessa said annoyed by his presence.

"And you don't need to keep me away from this." Matthew said pointing at the piles of documents on her desk. "I'm also not a baby."

"You don't get it, kid." Vanessa said between bites. "They are dangerous."

"Exactly. If they're dangerous, you need my help. Or did you forget what you said about us being a party?" Matthew admonished her.

Vanessa tried to come up with an argument against his, but was left speechless. She knew that he was stronger than her, then playing the protective card wasn't going to help. Trying to make this about her and not him also wouldn't work since she made a fuss more than once because Matthew kept things from her. He was right. She could use his help.

"Ok. Just don't get in my way." Vanessa said not wanting to admit he was right.

After eating, she sat on her desk and booted up an old laptop with no internet connection. With that she would be safer to try opening the flash drive she found on the office last night. If the drive had a malicious program inside, it wouldn't alert anyone over the internet, and losing an old laptop wouldn't bring her any harm.

"What's in there?" Matthew asked while watching her connect the drive on the laptop.

"I don't know. Let's see."

When she opened the archives inside the flash drive, her heart sank and she immediately felt sick. Matthew got stunned. It was not the first time he saw horrors like what he was seeing in the pictures that opened up. But when Matthew saw them, they were being committed by demons.

"What the hell is that? Who are these people?" Matthew asked with anger taking hold of him and stirring the demonic mana inside of him.

"These are the true monsters I'm after." She said frowning at the horrors in the screen.

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