Confrontation
SCREEE! The corpse monster screamed, causing a mental wave to hit Lena. A wave of dizziness hit Lena causing her to tip around as if she was about to fall. Gu Hao didn't feel much better as his vision faded in and out of darkness. On the other hand, Pro only frowned and felt a little uncomfortable while muttering, "Eh? It's weaker than I thought?"
Pro glanced at the corpse monster who got into pouncing pose as its prey were ripe for harvest, but for some odd reason, it froze in the pose. Even after the dizziness of Gu Hao and Lena faded away, the corpse monster was still frozen in that pouncing pose.
Blinking his eyes, Gu Hao's vision gradually returned and he saw the monster frozen there. His thoughts churned as he internally made a conclusion, "Did the one here make a move?"
Pro blinked his eyes as he stared at the corpse monster in interest, "Did it work?"
Pro then saw the corpse monster twist its head over to look at the bathroom. Pro's mouth twitched and he swiftly backed out through the wall to the bedroom. Then, he poked his head back through the wall to check the situation.
Pro then saw the monster silently pounce forward, but not towards the two humans. Instead, it pounced towards the bathroom where it seems to hit a solid, invisible wall. A system prompt then asked if Pro will let the invader in and Pro agreed.
Discovering that the invisible barrier seemed to have disappeared, the corpse monster scurried in. It then paused by the sink as its head twisted 180 degrees to glare at the toilet. Without even closing the bathroom door, it crawled over to the toilet and sat its butt on it while staring into space blankly, not knowing why it was doing so.
"Oh sh*t! It works!" Pro happily exclaimed as he stepped through the wall and swiftly closed the door to the bathroom, "Kids, you probably don't want to see what happens next~"
Pro then glanced at the corpse monster with a smirk. The corpse monster's head twisted over and stared back at him. As he activated his
10 seconds later, the corpse monster's non-stop screech was heard from the bathroom, sending shivers down Gu Hao and Lena's spine. The screams continued for nearly a full minute before weakening into short, weak bursts of screeches as if a mother was done giving birth. After 20 minutes, the screeches came again, but it was cut short after 5 seconds as if its owner finally broke through the limit of pain and lost its voice.
Looking at the bloody toilet in front of him, Pro's mouth twitched as he placed both his hands together in a praying gesture, "Amitabha, all are equal in the face of constipation. Benefactor with an unknown name, may your spirit rest in peace."
After his little gig of happiness, a smirk rose on Pro's face as he glanced at the system message that caused him to be exhilarated.
[Host has eliminated an intruder in your domain. Domain is now absorbing the remains of the intruder ...]
[Absorption completed. Intruder was determined to be a Lower-Level Baleful Spirit. System Library updated with new info.]
[After absorbing a powerful spirit, host gains 550 life points.]
Pro stared in shock and drooled over the amount of points he got. You must know that he only gets around 10 points per living human that he uses his ability on because he is afraid to kill them by accident when he didn't want to. Also, the only time he killed someone, he only got 200 points, and here he got 550 points just from killing a neighbor!
"It seems that I will have to pay my neighbors a visit or get them to visit me. They make a very nice move-in gift," Pro drooled as he thought about all the points he could get by absorbing their remains.
Glancing at his status screen, Pro cheerfully stared at his 580 points.
"I finally have enough points to upgrade. I can't afford another room anyways, so let's see what an upgrade will bring. I hope it won't take too long," Pro muttered before commanding, "Upgrade level."
Ding~
[500 life points has been consumed. Host Level has been upgraded to Mid-Level Baleful Spirit.]
[Yin Energy Capacity increased by 100 points].
[Host gains new ability
[Reduce energy required to use normal ghost abilities by half.]
"Oh wow! Instant upgrade, that's kind of a cheat in itself, but too bad it doesn't recover energy or anything," Pro glanced at his status as he sighed.
[Name] Pro Ye
[Title] None
[Level] Mid-Level Baleful Spirit
[Yin Energy] 10/200
[Possession Object] Toilet
[Abilities]
Toilet Attraction, Constipation, Toilet Paper Illusion, Pain in the Ass, System Library
[Domain]
Small Bathroom, Small Bedroom
[Life points] 80
"Now I have more energy to use. So I can now make big bosses that have more stamina last longer on the toilet. Hmm, the normal ghost abilities are the abilities that are inherent to a ghost and are not listed on the ability screen. So reducing its energy cost by half means I will have an easier time affecting the physical world in my domain!" Pro happily smile as he knew he would have a much easier time cleaning the toilet.
"I also got a new skill
[Toilet Paper Illusion] Mental attack to cause target to always see toilet paper in host's domain before they poo, but will not see the toilet paper after they poo, Cost: 10
"Ohhh! Nice ... is what I want to say, but for f**k sake, what kind of sh*tty ability is this?!" Pro howled in anger as he cursed the developers of the system once more.
After 10,000 omitted words of curse, Pro finally calmed down and sighed, "Well, on the bright side, I don't have worry about buying toilet paper. Now, even if there is a city lock down and people shoot others for toilet paper, people can still peacefully visit my toilet because it has toilet paper."
Pro glanced at the shrinking roll of toilet paper that was about to run out in the bathroom to comfort himself. He then searched up the information of the absorbed baleful spirit, which was noted as partially fragmented due to an incomplete spirit.
[Name] Unknown
[Gender] Female
[Life Details] There are fragmented memories of her love for spiders and an unknown male who seemed to her boyfriend. It's clearest memory was of the day when her boyfriend poisoned her to death after she found out that he cheated on her and refused to break up with him. After hiding her in the closet in apartment 448, her boyfriend left and never came back.
The spirit's first memories after being born in its domain of apartment 448 is of an unknown man dressed in a black robe with a face hidden by fog. He seemed to be holding some ritual to call her spirit back and to turn her into a resentful spirit. The only message that was left was that she was the fourth guardian of the fourth floor ...
"..." Pro could only stare at the lazy summary of information.
At this moment, Pro wished that there were images as he very much wanted to take a look at the image of the black hooded man as he might be the black hand behind the scene or at least a clue to him, but the system only provided readable text.
Heck, the system was even too lazy to describe all the fragmented memories, but even if it did, it would never be as good as seeing it. However, Pro can't complain as he didn't even have the ability to read memories in the first place, getting a general description of it is good enough.
Plus, the later part of the description actually came with some details regarding the levels of spirits! The spirit itself was a lower level baleful spirit, and based on its life details, there are three other guardians on this floor.
One is in room 445, which is across from room 444, and the other is in room 441, which is by the elevator. These two rooms are the ones with lower level baleful spirits. As for the other six rooms on the fourth floor, there are some lingering spirits living in each of them.
Then, there was the being known as the red man of the stairs. The only info of him was that he was here before the guardians were born on the fourth floor and it is an existence that required the entire floor of spirits to resist together.
Its true form that is hidden inside a wall of flesh is a blood red male spirit with a top hat. It only showed its true form once, and it was in front of the black hooded man when he came to call the spirit of room 448. Based on the description, Pro guessed the next level after baleful is probably red specter or something similar.
As for the unknown black hooded man, he never came back to the fourth floor afterwards. The spirit also didn't have much info outside of the fourth floor as it was bound to the fourth floor. An invisible barrier prevents the spirits from going through the ground or roof, and the only way to go to the next floor is through the stairs or elevators, but it was noted that the guardians were instilled with the notion of staying on this floor involuntarily.
Pro blinked his eyes as he thought about how he never tried to go through the floor or roof to a different floor, "So, am I also affected by this mental hint as well?"
Pro scratched his head before concluding, "Maybe not, but I know I am bound by the system. Can the system expand to the floor above?"
[Ding~ To expand to a different floor, the host must assimilate the current floor into host's domain.]
"Well, it seems I can sometime in the future, so I am not bound by the same rules ... could I really be an accident?" Pro muttered as he scratched his head.
Clearing this thoughts and seeing that his energy has recovered somewhat, Pro then opened the door to the bathroom. There was no worry about the blood stains from the corpse as it was all absorbed by the domain.
Seeing the door opening by itself, Lena, who had just moved Gu Hao over to the wall opposite of the bathroom, jumped in shock. Gu Hao weakly opened his eyes to stare at the bathroom.
Of course, they saw nothing which made them even more frightened, but seeing that nothing came out even after a couple of minutes, Gu Hao breathed a sigh of relief, "It seems it was solved."
"Solved?" Lena asked in confusion.
"Yes, it seems the constipation ghost is a friendly one?" Gu Hao muttered as he tilted his head.
"Huh? Ghosts can be friendly?! Why is that?" Lena exclaimed in shock.
Gu Hao fell silent for a while to think about it before meekly replying, "Maybe cause it was an outcast from the other ghosts due to its weird ability?"
Standing at the doorway to the bathroom, Pro couldn't help but curse when he heard this, "What do you mean outcast? And what do you mean weird ability?! This weird ability just saved your life!"
Of course, no one heard him. As the tension lifted, Lena glanced around the room and saw Alice's head on the ground. Her eyes widened in shock as she recalled the event, and she began to throw up in a nearby corner.
Gu Hao weakly frowned. Although it was uncomfortable, but he saw some gory pictures from case files when he snuck into his father's study room before and threw up enough back then. Gu Hao could only closed his eyes and sigh as his breathe slowly evened out.
After Lena finally finished throwing up, she weakly looked over at Gu Hao for support, just to see him with his eyes closed. She trembled as she scurried over, "No! Don't sleep! You promised that you would be with me! You can't just die like this!"
After shaking Gu Hao a couple of times, Gu Hao spat out a mouthful of blood onto Lena's clothes. He weakly opened his eyes as he said, "I-I'm just resting, but if you keep shaking me like this, I might really die ..."
"Ah?" Lena froze before she gently let go of her hands in embarrassment, "A-Are you really alright?"
"For now, yes, but I don't know for how long," Gu Hao muttered.
"Ah?! T-then, what should I do?" Lena anxiously asked.
"Call the police," Gu Hao sternly commanded before coughing a couple times.
"No duh! You should have done that in the first place!" Pro rolled his eyes from the bathroom.
Listening to Gu Hao's command, Lena pulled out her cellphone that she miraculously did not drop while escaping. She dialed 911, and waited, but there was no call signal tone. Her face paled as she checked her phone, "There's no signal here!"
She stared at the pale Gu Hao who stared back with a wry smile.