Tranquil Mountain Hot Springs-Part 3

A cool breeze wafted through his hair as he approached the hot springs. A fence surrounded it, but the entrance remained the same, looking like a resort or hotel entrance with a sign reading "Tranquil Mountain Hot Springs" in bold lettering. If he remembered correctly the hot springs were in the back, and the inside had a lobby, a few rooms for people to stay in, and a recreation room for entertainment. Belle glanced around and found Tommy standing near the fence, waiting for him.

"Oh, there you are," Tommy says, noticing Belle. 

"What's the plan?" Belle asks him. The fence was tall and there was no way he was going to climb it. 

"Don't worry, I've got the keys right here, nobody will come around at night so just get in and get out, have it all solved before morning, I'll wait out here just in case," Tommy explains.

"Okay, when I get back we should go have breakfast somewhere," Belle smirks, grabbing the keys. Tommy nods and Belle approaches the lock on the gate, sticking the key in and twisting, the lock falls off and he slips in. Unlike some of the other locations he's been to, this place didn't have overpowering miasma, instead, it seeped into the ground. Like it was a permanent part of the environment. The moment he stepped onto the premises the mission lit up in front of him.

[Mission Details: Find the sources of the spirit's power and remove them to defeat the evil spirit]

[Sources Found: 0/4]

[Evil Spirits Defeated: 0/1]

The missions just kept getting more confusing, last time it was a cursed object, and this time he had to destroy sources of the ghost's power. It was getting too damn complicated but he couldn't do shit about it besides grumble to himself. Before he walked in, he picked up the camera and started the stream, while people from the development site could be watching, he doubted it as they didn't seem like supernatural folk. The system also took measures to censor things so there was a possibility it would censor the location. 

"Hello everyone, today I'm going to be investigating potentially haunted hot springs, it's undergoing some renovations so I've been called in to make sure everything is okay." Belle smiles, turning away from the camera to face the entrance. Whatever renovations they were making they hadn't started on the entrance yet as it looked the same as all those years ago, just slightly more worn down. As he stepped through the door, he glanced around the lobby. The receptionist desk was still the same, but the renovations had already reached this part, with the lights in various states of removal, half of the walls painted, and random tools and ladders strewn about. He noticed four constant streams of miasma leading in four different directions and assumed they led to the sources, but he kept on high alert as the ghost could be anywhere. He decided to follow the closest one, which led to one of the rooms in the back, as he was walking toward it he had the unsettling feeling of being watched and whipped his head around. But nothing was there, only the closed doors of the other rooms. When he reached the door the miasma was leading to, he hurriedly opened it and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He breathed out a sigh of relief, after closing the door the unsettling feeling disappeared, instead, he was left with a room that stunk of death.

"Ugh, what the fuck is that smell." He grumbles, holding his nose. They hadn't gotten to renovating the rooms by the looks of it, they were dusty and filled with battered furniture. The stink and the miasma led his sight down, toward the floor, there was a loose wooden floorboard and he grabbed out his axe, bringing it down lightly on the floor, smashing the wood. Clearing away the wood he peeked inside and found…a rotten hand.

"Fuck, that's disgusting!" He shouts, backing up a step, right into a body. Huh? He slowly turns his head around, to find, a shriveled man standing there, staring straight at him. The zombie-like man reaches out toward him and Belle jumps back, accidentally stepping his foot into the hole and slipping on the rotten hand, kicking it out of the hole right toward the zombie. 

"Urgh." He groans, hitting the floor with his back. He looks for the hand and finds it resting on the zombie's face, the zombie appears frozen, standing stock still, until, the hand twitches. 

"That can't be good," Belle mumbles, scrambling to stand up. He watches with fascination as the hand starts to crawl up the zombie's face, landing on its head and gripping it. The hand squeezes and the zombie-like man lets out a groan, his skin becoming more and more shriveled, before eventually, he turns to ash, leaving behind the hand whose appearance has changed from rotten to vibrant, if slightly pale. The hand is floating in place, its fingers facing toward him. Belle raises the axe, but the hand turns around and floats through the door. Belle sits there for a second, a stunned expression on his face. 

"Wait!" He shouts, slamming the door open and chasing after the hand. He follows it through the halls as it heads toward the back of the resort, he's slowly gaining ground on it when he turns a corner and finds two people standing there locked in discussion. When the hand floats past them, they turn toward it, surprised. Belle only has a split second to stare at them in confusion before he follows the hand around another corner and throws the axe toward it before grabbing out the gun. The axe misses, embedding itself in the wall at the end of the hallway, but Belle aims the gun slightly below the hand, and bringing up his emotions of fear from earlier that day, he fires the gun. It hits the hand, breaking it apart into a million pieces as the miasma surrounding it disappears. He takes a second to catch his breath before he remembers the people from before. They seemed human, not like ghosts, but he's never seen them before so what the fuck were they doing in the hot springs. He runs back and turns the corner, but nobody is there, the duo has disappeared without a trace.