7. Spoils

Jason reluctantly commands the system to loot the dead Builder cultist, receiving Landemere Vane’s key ring, summoner’s robes, and a large cache of spirit coins. Rejecting the bloodied robes for now, he covers the corpse with a fallen tapestry to keep it out of sight while he searches for anything that might aid his escape.

He inspects a large, intricate summoning circle set into the floor, noting heat-warped damage and missing metal, then turns to a desk where he retrieves branded healing unguents from the Greenstone Alchemy Association. As he skims scattered notes and multilingual books, Jason realizes he can read every language, though the arcane theory eludes him.

Behind an overturned table, Jason finds a locked display cabinet impervious to damage. Using Vane’s key ring, he opens it and retrieves four ornate skill books: basic and intermediate texts for ritual and astral magic. Only Ritual Magic I meets his requirements. Checking his racial ability, Mysterious Stranger, he confirms language adaptation, absorption of essences/awakening stones/skill books, and immunity to identification and tracking.

Jason then inventories his snake spoils: night-scale leather, dark quintessence gems, and the Night Fang dagger that inflicts stacking umbral venom and bypasses bronze-rank defenses. From well quests, he examines an Awakening Stone of the Stars that he cannot use and a Dark Essence he can absorb, which would grant one awakened and four unawakened dark abilities.

Weighing his lack of power against the threats around him, Jason recognizes the Dark Essence as a path to real abilities and contemplates absorbing it to survive cannibal wizards and whatever else prowls the manor.