The Second Floor

Tap. Pro flew down from the steps and landed as light as he could.

"Finally, I've reached the second floor. Even with my leaps of fate in order to speed up my downward climb, it still took me nearly 3 minutes to get down here. Going back up may take about 5 minutes or more."

After mentally judging the required time for climbing back up, Pro then cautiously peeked his head through the door to get a quick survey of the second floor. With one look, Pro became puzzled for a bit before he recognized what was going on.

Unlike the fourth and third floor, the second floor did not have a straight hallway distorted by space. Instead, it was the original floor design with four interconnected hallways.

Glancing at the elevator that actually melted in the wall as soon as he poked his head through, Pro rolled his eyes in annoyance while he began to consider his options, "Unlike the floors above, the space here is not distorted. Although this is normal, but it actually makes it more difficult for me to explore with my limited time."

Glancing at apartment 220 near the doorway, Pro concluded with high confidence that apartment 220 was the security room of this floor.

Without hesitation, Pro sneaked across the hallway and into apartment 220. In there, he encountered two security uniform spirits and easily harvested them both. Pro felt a bit of sadness regarding the small amount of points he harvested. So, he decided to do another harvest before heading back.

Peeking his head out of apartment 220, Pro glanced at the nearby apartment 221 and 222 on opposite sides of the security room. Apartment 224 sat the furthest down the hallway and had a high chance of having a baleful spirit, so Pro took that out of his current options.

Pro wasn't too sure if apartment 221 had a baleful spirit guardian due to his mistaken speculation regarding apartment 335. The same goes for apartment 222, but Pro had a hunch that it should follow a similar pattern and only have lingering spirits. There's also the additional fact that apartment 222 is closer to the stairway door than apartment 221 which was at the end of the hallway.

After deciding his target, Pro cautiously entered the hallway and sneaked his way into apartment 222. Glancing at the familiar room design, Pro can't help but comment in a joking tone, "Either the designers are lazy, or the author is lazy."

Pro searched apartment 222 and easily locked onto the four lingering spirits in the apartment room. Although it was a bit outside his expectations, Pro easily slayed all four spirits.

Unlike the third floor where a lot of the lingering spirits were part of their possession objects, the spirits on the second floor were just simple black clumps of mist very similar to a wraith. Still, Pro easily cut through them, found their possession object, and destroyed them.

After collecting the shattered possession objects, Pro swiftly left the second floor and spent about 6 minutes to climb back up to his domain on the fourth floor.

[Ding! Object with yin qi detected. Absorbing remnant yin qi. Host gains 10 life points.]

[Ding! Object with yin qi detected. Absorbing remnant yin qi. Host gains 5 life points.]

[Ding! ...]

Pro nodded in sanctification as he saw the extra 60 points he got. Honestly, he felt that the lingering spirits on the second floor were weaker than the third floor and Pro thought it's only fair that he gets less points. Of course, Pro knew the true reason is the long run up the stairs because the longer he takes to return to his domain, the more yin qi he will lose.

"Still, some points are better than none," Pro muttered before he decided to take a break to handle his domain affairs, "I don't have enough time to harvest the entire second floor anyways."

Alice seemed to be teaching Ali something on the bed in his bedroom. Pro nervously eavesdropped on it, intending to stop Alice if she was teaching anything not family friendly. However, to Pro's surprise, Alice was actually trying to teach Ali how to say mommy. Pro felt a weird feeling in his heart as he peeked at the heartwarming scene, so he just left them be.

Pro went to welcome his new security guard. He is finally back to having one after that knight destroyed all of the previous ones. After teaching it some rules and commanding it to guard the elevator, Pro then spent a couple hours to clean his domain's friendly neighborhood trashcan.

The bodies inside were decaying, and although Pro wasn't able to smell anything, he was afraid that his visitors will eventually be able to smell it. Of course, he wasn't afraid if the police came, but it would be a bit troublesome if his daily harvest time was disturbed.

Now that he had a new trashcan he can deposit the bodies in, Pro decided to spend some time to deliver the bodies over. Carrying one corpse in each hand, Pro skipped down to the third floor and deposited the body in apartment 338, the new designated trash can.

After wiping his hands clean, Pro stopped by in apartment 334 to pick up Ali's doll clothes. He also collected the assortment of miniature objects crafted by Ali's citizens. Perhaps they can come in handy when his own doll army rises.

Returning to his domain, Pro dropped off the miniature objects in apartment 448's living room. He then brought the doll clothes over to Alice. Within his expectation, Alice and Ali's eyes seemed to sparkle in excitement when they saw the cute outfits. Alice pecked Pro on the cheeks as Ali hugged his leg while rubbing her head cutely against it.

Leaving Alice and Ali to continue their bonding time, Pro continued his cleaning of apartment 442 and ventilated it bit after he was done. After finishing up, he noticed that he still had a couple hours left until daybreak.

Hence, Pro went back down to the third floor and carried one of the apartment 220 security office beds up to his own floor's security office to see if he could increase his capacity.

As soon as he carried the bed into his domain, he received a notification.

[Ding! A yin object without an owner was detected. The yin object can be used to upgrade Guard Bedroom. Will host consume 20 points to assimilate the yin object into host's domain?]

Pro's eye lit up as he confirmed without hesitation, "Yes!"

Pro then watched the bed held in his hands melt into the air.

[Host's domain has absorbed a yin bed. One of the yin beds in Guard Bedroom is now upgraded into a yin bunk bed. Security uniform spirit capacity +1.]

With a light skip, Pro hurried over to the security office and took a look at the bedroom. As he expected, he saw the four beds in the room, but the bed in the upper-left corner of the bedroom is now a twin bunk bed!

"If my guess is correct, this means that I can have up to 8 capacity in my security office!" Pro speculated as he excitedly rush off to carry the other two beds back to his domain.

After consuming another 40 points, the guard bedroom now had three twin bunk beds and one normal single-size bed. The maximum capacity for security uniform spirits is now 7!

"Sweet! Now I don't have to worry about not having enough loyal guards to use as bait!" Pro snickered while a lonely security uniform spirit shivered as it felt a chill.

After his excitement calmed down, Pro could only lament with a money miser attitude, "Rooms can be upgraded ... but, this means another bottomless pit for points. That's all my earnings from the second floor down the drain."

"Still it is necessary. It's rare to find something that can upgrade my domain in the first place. So, if I get the chance, I should take it," Pro concluded as he recalled all the random objects he brought up to his domain from the third floor, but received no notifications from them.

After stashing these random objects away in apartment 448's living room, Pro then decided to spend some of his points to expand his domain. Instead of completing his expansion into apartment 448, Pro decided to expand into the living room of the now cleaned apartment 442 and the bedroom of apartment 442.

Pro wanted his domain to have a connection to the security office besides the hallway. That way, he doesn't have to sneak through the hallway in order to reach the security office.

[Expansion Name] Living Room attached with Kitchen(442)

[Room Category] Medium

[Expansion Cost] 1000 Life points

[Are you sure you want to add Medium Living Room attached with Kitchen(442) to your domain?]

"Yes!"

[Deducting 1000 points. Expanding domain, please wait ...]

[Expansion completed. Current host domain size: 7 small rooms, 4 medium room, 1 large room]

[Expansion Name] Bedroom(442)

[Room Category] Small

[Expansion Cost] 200 Life points

[Are you sure you want to add Small Bedroom(442) to your domain?]

"Yep."

[Deducting 200 points. Expanding domain, please wait ...]

[Expansion completed. Current host domain size: 8 small rooms, 4 medium room, 1 large room]

"With that, Alice should be able to move through here to hide if the hallway is occupied by the enemy. Although Ali can't phase through walls as a physical doll, she is still a yin object so she can be brought along in ghost form," Pro muttered in satisfaction, "As for Toi Toi, he won't mind being the distraction for the ladies to escape."

A certain toilet paper roll in the domain trembled as if it sensed its fate, but noticing nothing wrong, it returned to being a silent roll of toilet paper.

Pro glanced at his remaining 540 points and realized he was poor once more. Glancing at the time, Pro realized it was almost daybreak. So, he returned to his bedroom where Alice had continued to teach Ali, who was now in her pink dress, to call her mommy.

Seeing Pro walking in, Alice's face blushed a little as Ali tilted her head in confusion. Pro chuckled as he pat the cute Alice's head, causing her to giggle happily.

Pro then felt a soft poke on his thighs. Glancing down, he saw Ali staring up at him with her cute button eyes as if asking for attention as well. With a warmed heart, Pro also gave her a pat on the head with his other hand, causing Ali to have a happy smile on her face as she hugged his thighs.

After a happy family moment, Pro then reminded Alice that it's almost time for work. As Ali didn't want to be left alone in the bedroom, Alice and Ali both stared at Pro with pleading eyes. Pro could only helplessly agree and plopped Ali onto the living room sofa after warning her to not scare the visitors.

With that, Pro welcomed another day of harvest. The only notable difference of his visitors is that they complained about a faint stench in the hallway and complimented the cute doll. Some even reminded Pro that they found the doll a bit "weird".

Of course, Pro ignored these reminders. How could his cute Ali be weird? It's you normal people that are weird!

The setting sun gave the old apartment a golden red glow as Pro cheerfully counted his earnings of 150 points. However, knowing he was still poor, Pro decided to go harvest the second floor once more.

However, just when he was about to set off, the phone in the bedroom rang. Pro raised his eyebrow, strolled over, and picked it up.

"Alert. Alert. Incoming intruders discovered by guard number one. Alert. Alert."

Kacha.

As expected, it was a warning from the security uniform spirit guarding the elevator.

"Invaders again? Did the next group of investigators come already?" Pro muttered with a hint of worry as he activated his domain perception.

Watching the elevator door open, Pro noticed four sketchy humans with black, cloth masks wrapped around their heads, revealing only their eyes and the bottom half of their face. The group of four consisted of three middle-aged males and one female in her 20s.

At the front, a muscle-toned male confidently walked forward while holding a m4a1 assault rifle in his hands. The female walked beside him while playing with a combat knife in her hands. A Colt M1911 was buckled in the holster on her waist that swung back and forth coquettishly.

Following behind the duo in the front, two scrawny males had Glock G17 hand guns in one of their hands. With the other hand, the two males were lugging a seemingly packed, black long bag.

Observing his guests that were clearly not good people, the even more evil Pro grinned with a sinister smile.

"Well, well, that m4a1 assault rifle certainly looks mighty fine and useful," Pro's eyes shone with greed as he hollered to Alice and Ali, "Girls get ready, it's playtime~"