“Goodness Gracious… At this rate, we’ll never be done cleaning up the area!”

  “Don’t complain, we are getting paid a hefty sum of coins to be doing this, the lord is being quite generous with us”

  “Still… Lifting all those pieces of debris is killing my back! So many damned places collapsed…”

  “Your back is hurting because you keep lifting with your back instead of your legs! There is a proper way to do this, and it isn’t by bending your spine at every occasion!”

  “I don’t get what you mean by ‘lifting with your back’ and ‘lifting with your legs’, what’s the difference?”

  “You seriously don’t get it? I always knew your mom didn’t stop being an alcoholic even during her pregnancy!”

  “Hey! I am naturally stupid, alright? Don’t drag my mother into this!”

  “Well- Hold on a minute…”

  “What is it now?”

  “Something is moving…”

  One of the men pointed to a stone brick that was subtly twitching, as though something was trapped underneath. The bickering duo looked at one another with a raised eyebrow.

  “By the gods, is someone trapped underneath?”

  The less bright of the two exclaimed and immediately began moving forward, nearly tripping over a piece of debris, as it was already getting dark. Winter was rolling over the horizon, and the days were shortening, which only made the cleaning efforts last longer.

  “Can’t you think for a second? It’s been nearly a month since everything collapsed! Anyone who got trapped underneath would already be rotting”

  The smarter of the two rolled his eyes, warning his fellow that it was probably some creature that had been disturbed, and a creature that came out of the ground had a strong chance of being dangerous, especially if it could move a whole stone brick so easily.

  “Is that so…? Oh, more stuff is moving now… I think it’s quite big”

  Taking several steps back, the two men ended up side by side as they curiously watched things unfold. They were expecting some sort of odd beast or creature to come out, which would make for a nice story to bring home, but the shape of what burst out wasn’t anything they expected.

  The stone brick from before was flung upward, revealing a large hand reaching out of the ground. It quickly grasped upon something, pulling hard as a larger figure extracted itself from the earth with much effort.

  Both men were left stunned as two purple dots landed right on them. Soon, light emerged from the beady eyes, illuminating the two gawkers before quickly going away.

  It was hard for them to actually make out much about the figure. It looked weird, but it was mostly covered by darkness at the moment, and the light that had just been shone had momentarily blinded them, leaving them with no clue of what they were actually staring at.

  There was a moment of silence, and then…

  “Excuse me, I am in a bit of a pickle–snafu–might I have a bit of assistance, please?”

  A very pleasant, feminine voice spoke out, the sort of tone you would expect from a singer so great that she could be summoned to the royal court to perform.

  “Oh… Sure!”

  “Wait”

  Once again, the dimmer and brighter half of the duo had very different ideas about what to do.

  “What’s up? It’s clearly just someone who needs help…”

  The man then whispered.

  “...She probably is just a beastfolk or something, let’s not be insensitive, alright?”

  The other man whispered back.

  “Didn’t you notice that weird thing she did? She said ‘pickle’ and ‘snafu’ nearly at the same time, that’s not normal!”

  “Come on, she must have just been searching her words and accidentally stuttered, I would be a bit stuttery too if I had just crawled out of a hole in the ground!”

  “And you don’t think that it’s weird that she just came out of the ground?!”

  Whilst they spoke, the woman just tried to extract herself further, managing to lift her body a slight bit more. Clearly, whether they helped or not, she was going to get out of here.

  “Stop being so paranoid”

  And thus, the dimmer of the two walked forward, grabbed the woman’s surprisingly strange arm… It was cold, and somehow simultaneously thick and thin, as though belonging to some large skeleton.

  But confident in his belief that he was simply interacting with another sapient species, he didn’t think much of it. There were plenty of folks who might look very weird, but were very fine people nonetheless.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Be careful!” the other man warned as he took a few steps backwards.

  “I am telling you, everything is fine! Are you alright, Ma’am?”

  As he managed to pull her out of her conundrum, he realised that there was something that went beyond just being strange, namely, she was missing a leg and arm… And also, her chest was partly see-through, like it was a ribcage.

  “Oh… Are you an undead? They aren’t common in the area. There have been some tensions with the undead nations ever since the war all those years ago…”

  “No–No. I am very–fully alive”

  With these words, she casually placed her hand against his shoulder, which he assumed was for support, as it was hard to imagine someone walking with half of the limbs missing, even if they were able to stand still without them just fine…

  Instead of doing that, she lifted him off the ground and swung her teeth at him like a battleaxe, tearing a good chunk of his face off. Then, staring directly at the other man, who had made quite some distance by now, and seeing what had just occurred, spun on his heels to take off running.

  But he did not move after turning around. He came face to face with two orange eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness…

  Before he could register what he was looking at, the figure lunged at him, making him stumble backwards as he was overcome with paralysing fear. He fell to the ground and onto pieces of debris, his eyes looking straight up at two purple dots.

  “W-Wait…!”

  He did not get his wish, only a fist that crushed his skull alongside the debris beneath it.

  ___

  Didn’t expect one of them to actually come and help me… Must be one of those who used to eat rocks as a child.

  Seems like the city itself got messed up due to the collapse of my tunnels. I was hoping not to run into people first thing first, but at least it wasn’t the day.

  So as quickly as my singular leg could allow me to go, I started hopping away, making my way to an area of the city that didn’t seem to have suffered much as a result of the collapses, settling down in some narrow alley.

  With an unnecessary wave of my hand, I summoned my five lovely ghosts of torment and vengeance. They might look like corpses, but they were all dressed nicely. Poppy, in particular, looked like a noble girl going out on a stroll.

  “Lis–Listen, girls… I want you to bring food to me, make–make them run in fear–terror to here”

  The five spectres acted all meek in my presence, but my orders were law. They went on the move immediately as I hid in the shadows.

  I wasn’t really aware of the precise strategy they employed, but those five seemed adept at working together, as they were able to herd several victims to me within just a few hours. However, just as I suspected, regrowing lost limbs was far harder than simply sticking them back on, even with nutrients. The process was slow.

  It allowed me to discover something, though, I could focus my regeneration on a specific area if I so desired, so I put my all toward regrowing my leg, leaving my arm and everything exactly as it currently was.

  In this way, I wasn’t able to regain the entirety of my leg–Or rather, I was able to, but I was still missing my foot.

  So when it seemed like the sun was going to rise, I limped my way to the darker corners of the city and recalled my minions. On the plus side, I now had five more interlocutors to exchange with!

  Nara, aren’t they adorable with their elongated limbs and bodies?

  I believe the right term would be ‘nightmare fuel’, Mara

  Let’s not be too mean. They are better now than they have ever been.

  I reached out to pet the head of Gigi, the demon girl, who seemed horrified but couldn’t do anything about it.

  “Wh–Why so afraid–fraid–scared? Have you-you done something wrong again?”

  “I…Did…Not…Miss…Mara…I…Have…Been…Good…I…Promise…”

  “I was–was just mess–messing with you”

  I lightly tapped one of her broken horns. They were definitely in a better state than they had ever been, and they were useful to me now as well, which was commendable.

  As of now, the five of them had the same abilities without much difference between them, but I could tell that this would certainly change with time. They would develop in their own ways as I developed myself.

  But currently, they seem to possess an ability similar to my ‘Embodiment Of Negativity’, allowing them to inflict fear upon their victims. Annie had demonstrated as such with the second man from earlier, rendering him unable to do anything from sheer fright.

  Of course, they also enjoyed the benefits of being souls twisted into malevolent spirits. I could touch them due to being a Vengeful Spirit myself, but they could phase through solid objects and people normally.

  Allowing them to come from any direction.

  Their ability to float seemed a bit limited at the moment, though. They could only float if they were moving through something solid for the most part. Otherwise, they would just hover slightly above the ground for a few moments, which wasn’t too great, but as they had shown, they could do their job just fine despite the limitations.

  I paid extra attention and bothered to learn about them. As Nara had said, souls of such good quality were rare. It was unlikely that I would get souls that would be both so marked by their death and whose death would also be of such importance to me.

  I killed without much thought or care, after all.

  But with the furnace, I should be able to craft myself some good minions despite it all. I just needed to gather lots of negative emotions and learn about how each emotion affected souls. It would just be a lot of trial and error, but eventually, I should be able to find a reliable way.

  Nara, it took me seven upgrades before getting the option to evolve. How many upgrades do you think I should be able to get before my next one?

  It can vary, but presumably, it should be a bit more, and of course, you’ll probably be getting better options now that you have evolved

  Mmh…

  I spent the day just discussing with my lovely ghosts and Nara, and surprisingly, it seemed like my midnight snack didn’t cause much of an alert. I assume that people were just not immediately assuming that the people I ate had actually been killed.

  Though I would have presumed that their screams of fear would have raised some alarms… But I guess nobody cared, that, or the collective effort to clean up the city left everyone so tired that they genuinely didn’t hear a thing.

  In any case, once night fell again, I went on the hunt again.

  I went from house to house like a rabid beast, not even caring about inflicting fear upon my victims. I was here solely to get myself fed, and after eating many people, and also robbing a few shops in full, I was effectively back to normal.

  Of course, I was now clothesless as a result of a fiery blast, but all was fine nonetheless.

  Let’s move somewhere else, girls… I have a new idea for us to gather both food and negative emotions! And if we’re lucky, we might get to stock up on other stuff as well.

  I do hope this idea won’t get you on the wrong end of a dragon’s breath

  Don’t worry, this time was just a fluke…