Dead before the escape?

As I attempted to write with the quill pen I realized that it wasn't writing anything but I figured maybe if I tried to insert my mana into it it might work so I tried again this time trying to push mana into the pen and suddenly it was working just like a modern pen though it wrote everything in a deep green almost black color still that was fine by me. After figuring out how the pen worked I wrote out every spell I knew into the book and then let it sit as I did the same in the book I actually wanted to use. I finally had a spell book of sorts though apparently the spells I'd learned were the simplest of spells falling into a rank of zero while the most powerful seemed to max out around rank 9 and could drastically redesign the landscape for miles essentially I could cast the equivalent of a small varmint gun and the big spells were like nukes yikes!

I redoubled my efforts to get stronger magically one thing I should mention is that due to my background of being in a high technology society I was able to conceptualize and envision some of the things that the spells demanded you envision. Due to my background I'd become more powerful and faster than a spell caster who had been studying as long mind you I was somewhere in to a month of nonstop spell casting and opening my mana channels to increase my capacity though I wasn't overpowered by any means and I was practically out of food having lived off of trail rations and water that I'd summoned useful but it drained me and it might be why my mana capacity had more than doubled in that time though I didn't know it was abnormal for it to have expanded so much.

My power had more than doubled but it would certainly have crushed me to know that even the laziest farmer could have easily matched me for capacity even doubled what I'd started with and I'd only achieved the power of a lazy farmer this was going to be a long path indeed. As I reached the end of my food I decided enough was enough and made one last raid on the library looking for anything that might be of use for me and even came up with two useful books that seemed to be about rituals and components but I didn't go through them much due to the fact that I was just about out of food. Opening the door that I'd seen corpses behind I figured that it was the exit and I peered out over the obviously old carnage I mean half of the bodies were little more than skeletons and the others were nearly to the same point in fact none of the gear even looked salvageable so I just carefully tiptoed my way past them to the other door which was directly across from the one I'd entered. As my hand touched the door handle a cold chill went through my body and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up so I ripped the door open and flung myself through it slamming it shut behind me.

Moments after I'd slammed the door closed a series of loud thuds came from the other side so I decided discretion was the better part of valor and hurried along as fast as I could go in the semi dark of the tunnel I'd found myself in. It wasn't long before I came to the end of the tunnel and found myself at a door this one was in pretty bad shape but still standing if barely so I peeked inside and looked for any more "corpses" and not seeing any I exited the tunnel and closed the door and looked around. My first impression of the room was a bedroom and with a second look it definitely had been one once a very rich bedroom with one of those canopied beds and a glass fronted cabinet with row upon row of bottles that I figured must be wine but honestly I couldn't read the labels so it could have been cleaning supplies for all I knew.

After a quick search of the room I pushed the wine cabinet in front of the door to the tunnel and then used the bed to make it even more secure though moving that great big monstrosity took a while in and of itself but with how heavy they both were I figured that the tunnel was securely blocked off. I thoroughly searched the bedroom for anything salvageable and all I found was a mysterious glowing hand which I picked up very carefully so as not to actually touch it and then I carefully wrapped it in the remains of the blanket off of the bed. After acquiring the hand I opened the other door in the room and carefully looked around again finding nothing and that the door lead into a hallway that had a number of rooms off of it so I headed into the hallway going to my left in the hopes that I could find anything that might be useful.

Now at this point I was starting to get the feeling that I'd just gone from a relatively safe area to a definitely not safe one so I carefully explored each step I took was carefully placed and every single inch of space was carefully examined before I committed to exploring it and that was how I managed to avoid dying to the first room I came upon. In the middle of the room lay a single corpse which I immediately hit with a arcane arrow out of my homemade wand I'm not even sure why I made the wand to begin with other than the fact that I saw one in the hands of one of the illustrations in one of the books I'd read.

The corpse started twitching when I was casting my spell but luckily it didn't get up before my spell was completed and then the arcane arrow took its head clean off which dropped it right back down to the floor much like the lore of zombies it's head was it's weak point apparently. After dispatching that lone zombie I quickly searched the room finding a few bits and pieces here and there that were interesting but ultimately useless for me at least that's what I felt though I did find more of that odd bone colored clay type material which I added to my bags along with the other materials that I'd collected from the storage room.