He dealt with the eggs first. Methodically, he crushed each one under his heel, extinguishing their dormant life force without emotion. He would not allow a new generation of these creatures to rise.
Next, he carefully detached the venom sac, wrapping it in a piece of cloth torn from his ruined trousers and stowing it securely in a pocket. Finally, he turned his attention to the glowing rock. He had no tools, so he used his hands.
He wedged his aching fingers into the cracks between the mineral and the stone floor and pulled. With a groan of protesting rock, the mineral came free. It was heavy, and as it separated from the earth, its glow intensified for a second before stabilizing. The ambient Qi in the basement, already thin, dropped noticeably, as if the rock itself had been the sole source of energy in the entire space.
He had no way to carry it, but he had a solution. "System," he thought, "is there a storage function?"
[The Supreme Inventory is a basic System feature. Cost to store non-living items is proportional to size and energy signature. Store "Unidentified Spirit Mineral"? Cost: 5 SP.]
"Confirm."
He held the rock, and with a faint shimmer of light, it vanished from his hands. His SP balance dropped to 1,265. The convenience was well worth the minor cost.
With the treasures secured, he turned his attention to the final task. Cleanup.
The remaining drones were a chaotic, mindless swarm. Aryan's approach to them was not a fight, but a grim, methodical harvest. He moved through the basement like a specter of death, his fists and feet rising and falling with an efficient, brutal rhythm. Each 'crunch' of an exoskeleton was not the sound of combat, but of a job being completed. He was not a warrior; he was an exterminator earning his pay, and he left no part of the job unfinished.
It took nearly an hour. When he was done, the basement was littered with the broken husks of hundreds of spiders. The silence was now truly, completely absolute.
He slumped to the floor, his back against a cool stone wall, every muscle screaming in protest now that the adrenaline was gone. He took out one of the spirit stones his father had given him and began to cultivate, drawing the pure energy into his depleted meridians. The stone's power washed over his weary body like a soothing balm, slowly refilling his empty dantian.
As he cultivated, he analyzed the fight, not with the fear of a survivor, but with the cold critique of an engineer reviewing a flawed project. He had been reckless. He had been lucky. He had won, but his victory was inefficient. He thought of Amit, the man he used to be. Amit would have been paralyzed by terror, haunted by the memory of the queen's shriek. Aryan felt... nothing. No revulsion, no guilt. Just the quiet satisfaction of a problem solved and the clear, cold understanding that Amit Agarwal was just as dead as the spiders littered around him.
This was the price of power: to methodically kill the parts of yourself that held you back.
After another hour, having recovered about half his Qi and with the pain in his body settling into a dull ache, he stood. The job was done.
He walked up the stone stairs, his footsteps now echoing in the empty tomb he had created. He pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped out into the late afternoon.
The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows and painting the sky in hues of orange and purple. The air was fresh and clean, a stark contrast to the foul stench of the basement. It felt like stepping from one world into another.
He was bruised, his clothes were in tatters, and the faint, coppery smell of death clung to him like a second skin. But he was alive. And he was rich, not just with fifteen gold coins, but with the wealth of experience and power. He turned his back on the distillery, a silent monument to his first victory, and began the walk back toward the city to claim his reward.
The first test was complete. The results were positive. The man walking out of the sunset was not the same one who had walked in.