Chapter 6

I reached level four after just an hour. During that time, I’d used Lightning Bolt to blow through the first several rooms as I made my way back to the last room I’d cleared. Early levels were always faster, after all, even without absorbing essence cores.

That reminded me, I still hadn’t looted all of the carcasses I’d stored.

Deciding to take a break after I reached the point at which I’d stopped the day before, I entered my sanctuary to relax and eat the rest of the leftovers I’d saved from the day before. Once I finished my meal, I shifted a half-dozen bodies from my storage to the table.

“I wonder if looting works inside my demesne.”

It probably shouldn’t, since looting had only been something possible within the dungeon. But since I was in the dungeon, and my demesne was attached to my soul, I figured it was worth testing.

I tapped each of the bodies with the intention of looting them, watching as the bodies immediately broke into small motes of energy, which reconsolidated into a pile of loot.

“Oh, so that’s a bit of a cheat,” I said as a sly grin spread across my face. “Is my demesne some kind of loot harvesting workaround?”

It sure looked like it since I didn’t notice anything of value missing from the carcasses. Even the bones, brains, and intestinal linings were included with the rest of the materials.

It looked like everything of value that could be manually harvested from the bodies had appeared as loot, including the essence cores.

One thing I didn’t notice was the presence of anything other than beast materials or cores. There were no coins, weapons, gear, or skillbooks.

I did a few more tests, and it didn’t take long to verify that looting a mob within my demesne would grant a lot more material than looting one outside of my demesne. However, I still didn’t receive anything other than harvestable material for any creature looted within the space.

It made me wonder if something about looting had changed, or my demesne was interfering. Even exiting my demesne and looting the bodies I’d previously stored didn’t result in anything new. The only difference was the drastically reduced amount of harvestable beast material I received.

Since I’d run out of bodies to experiment with, I headed to the next room to acquire more. It was always possible that the issue was the mobs I was looting, though I didn’t really think that was the case.

To my surprise, the next room contained a new type of mob. Thorn monkeys were a species of monkey with retractable, thorn-like spikes growing from their tails. They weren’t much of a threat if you could land the first hit, since their bodies were generally pretty weak.

The introduction of a new mob likely meant I was coming close to the end of the floor. That was good since I was very much looking forward to leaving the dungeon and learning what had changed since the time on which the simulation was based.

I moved carefully, trying not to draw the attention of the lone thorn monkey perched in a nearby tree just a few feet away from the path.

Outside of the dungeon, most monkey species tended to congregate in groups. While the same also applied deeper in the dungeon, on the first floor, I only expected to encounter a single mob at a time unless I did something to draw more.

Moving carefully, I managed to sneak up on the unsuspecting creature.

I missed my old Stealth skill, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was able to craft something that would provide the same effect.

I only really needed it while I delved alone, and I didn’t plan to do that for much longer now that I’d filled half of my skill slots. I wanted to gain at least one more skill just to be safe, though.

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Hopefully, the dungeon would provide a skillbook that I could use – either an inspection skill or one of the elemental skills I was looking for.

Feeling well within range to target the unsuspecting monkey with Lightning Bolt, I unleashed the smallest version of the skill that I could manifest, watching to see how the reduced-power attack would fare against the physically weak mob.

Even knowing that thorn monkeys were not all that resilient, I was a little surprised when the creature collapsed to the forest floor, and I received a small influx of essence.

I looted it immediately, smiling when a spear appeared next to the essence core. It looked slightly better than the starter weapon the dungeon had initially provided, but without an actual inspection skill, I couldn’t verify anything.

“So, it’s either my demesne interfering or an issue with the mobs themselves,” I said as I sent both items into storage.