Waking up with a start, Marcus quickly looked around and found himself sleeping on a mat in a vaguely familiar room.
'What happened, where am I.'
Marcus then quickly remembered that he had overexerted himself and fell unconscious once he was out of energy.
Looking at the interior of the room he was in, Marcus quickly realized that he was inside the mansion on the estate he had been given.
Standing up Marcus first felt for the connection he has with Blitz and sent him the signal that he had woken up.
Blitz while not able to converse in words sent over a manner of feelings from worry, to relief, to hunger.
Shaking his head Marcus exited the room finding that he was in one of the second story bedrooms.
Walking down the halls Marcus began calling out for Lilia trying to find where she was, and when he made it to the first floor, he finally heard a response coming from over in the kitchen.
Entering into the kitchen Marcus saw Lilia cutting up some vegetables and throwing them into a large pot.
However, when she saw Marcus enter the room, she immediately ran up to him and hugged him before sobbing and saying, "Please do not do that again, I thought I had lost you forever. No matter what I did you would not wake up, and I did not know what I was supposed to do."
As Lilia cried into his chest Marcus patted her on the back trying to comfort her and when a minute had passed, he said, "How long was I out, judging by how you have cleaned up this kitchen I would say it has been a while."
Lilia then moved her head out of Marcus' chest and looked up at him with a smile and said, "You have been out for almost three days, I was really starting to get worried, but Blitz comforted me and since you have a connection with him, I figured he would be freaking out if something was really wrong with you."
'Three days huh, I guess I did continue to use my embodiment of darkness for far longer than I ever have before. It really is a miracle that I was able to keep it up long enough to completely absorb the power that the shadow demon had left in Tyler's soul.'
Marcus then continued to comfort Lilia praising her for doing such a good job cleaning up the kitchen and taking care of herself.
However, as they were distracted talking to each other the pot Lilia was using to cook with began boiling over and, she and Marcus had to rush over and clean up the mess.
'Ah Lilia, actually is a pretty good cook, the soup she made was quite good.'
Marcus after finishing cleaning up after dinner looked over at Lilia who had fallen asleep at the table and with a warm smile on his face Marcus carried her up to second floor bedroom she had cleaned up and placed her on the sleeping mat.
'Now then I have been sleeping for far to long and now it is time to get to work.'
Putting on a set of cheap clothes Marcus decided it was time to really clean the place up.
Going around to every room Marcus put the furniture that was too degraded to be serviceable into his item box and once he had met his capacity would go outside and put them into a large pile.
After just a little over an hour Marcus had finished gathering up a large pile of furniture and with a single fire shot set them ablaze.
Marcus felt a bit bad about doing this, but he had no other idea what else to do with all of the decaying furniture.
'Okay now that that is done, I need to fill in that damned secret room below the cellar.'
Filling his item box with large quantities of dirt, Marcus made many trips into the secret room and emptied the dirt into it until he had completely filled it up.
Once Marcus had finished with his goal of getting rid of the hidden room where the former owner of this mansion had sacrificed children, he got to work cleaning up the wine cellar that had the contents of many bottles of alcohol spilled throughout it.
Using his boots of the deep to send out a few small waves of water Marcus began washing away the filth in the cellar and once he had a good layer of water, he brought forth a number of towels from his item box and began soaking up the water.
The cleaning process even with the use of his skills was still going quite slowly but after nearly and hour he felt it getting easier and he thought, 'Did I just get the cleaning skill.'
Specter Powers: Ghost Sounds, Spectral Arm, Phantom Pressure, Life Drain, Tendrils of Shadows
When Marcus looked over his status, the only thing he had been expecting to see that was different was the acquisition of the cleaning skill.
However, what he saw instead was enough to shock him to the core.
'What the hell happened, all of my stats have gone up by twelve, whoa my sealed unique skill is now showing two characters, I even got two new specter powers, my digging and creature appraisal skills have leveled up, ah and I did get the cleaning skill as well as cooking.'
As his mind started to overheat from the new information his status had reveled to him, Marcus took a moment to calm down and began reading the descriptions of his new abilities.
He first tried to read the description of his now partly unsealed unique skill but found that the description read like a redacted government document saying things like, 'This unique skill allows the user to (redacted)'.
Sighing Marcus figured he must have done something during the battle with the shadow demon or when freeing Tyler that subconsciously activated this skill.
'Whatever, I do not really know what this skill does, but it did nearly kill me when I first used it and the administrator must have sealed it for a reason. I am sure as time goes by I will figure out what it really does.'
Pushing the thought of his secret unique skill to the back of his mind, Marcus read the description of his two new specter powers and was pretty happy with the two new additions.
'Life drain does pretty much what you would expect letting me steal the life force of living creatures and converting a small portion of it into my HP. Of course, its effectiveness is dependent on a lot of factors like the difference in level, the age and race of the target, and how strong my spirt stat is. I also need to be in contact with the target but I can still use it even if I am ethereal so they would not know I am there. Nevertheless, as strong as life drain is tendrils of shadows is better. This is the same ability that the shadow demon was using, and it certainly has a good amount of uses. It can be used to attack, bind, and even allows me to channel the life drain ability through it. Unfortunately, it cannot be used in places where there is bright light but other than that it is quite powerful.'
Once he had a good grasp of what his new abilities could do Marcus got back to work cleaning the wine cellar and with another fifteen minutes, he had managed to eliminate the foul odor that had permeated the room.
With that completed Marcus got to work through the rest of the night going around and moping the floors and using his magic to dust the place.
When the first light of day was beginning to crest over the horizon Marcus had finished cleaning the first floor and had even managed to get his cleaning skill up to level three.
'Okay that is enough cleaning for me. This place is too damn big, and I cannot expect me and Lilia to clean this entire place by ourselves. I am going to need to hire a few people to keep this place in tip top shape, the only problem is my limited funds of around two hundred seventy gold left.. I suppose I will need to sell some of the stuff in my item box and learn how to forge weapons and then hope I can make a living off of that for a while.'