Chapter 95: The So-Called Evil God!
The pitch-black shaft was gripped tightly in his hand, while the blade radiated a colder, eerier light than it did in reality.
"You know… even for a pervert, it's hard to feel excitement when facing pain of the soul…"
The spiritual body, which had the weathered face of a middle-aged man, opened its mouth and began painfully retching.
But a spiritual body could not vomit anything.
"Ughaa—!"
Its hands clenched tightly into claws, one above and one below, gripping its own mouth as it forcefully tore it open to both sides.
Luke watched as its body swelled like a balloon, with many bulges rising all over it.
The spiritual body wiped its mouth and continued muttering nonstop, using speech to distract itself from the pain.
"You know, back when I…"
The next instant, the blade pierced through its mouth and ran through its head.
Luke flashed in front of it, gripped the shaft, and twisted with force. Under the blade, its head split open.
"You talk too much."
Without hesitation, he faced the headless body still standing in place. He flicked the blade three times and two strokes later, he had chopped the remaining body into pieces.
A exorcism tool was an object where resentment lodged after a person's death. Manifesting its power inside a dream and using it against this sort of spiritual body was just right.
Soul energy scattered in every direction. After the spiritual body broke apart, the gloomy street was gradually overwritten by the world constructed from Luke and Miko's minds.
The street became incredibly bright, completely different from the earlier pitch-black oppression.
However, the fear that had unconsciously formed in his heart did not disappear. Instead, it grew more and more intense.
Luke shifted his gaze to the fragments scattered across the ground.
In the blink of an eye, before he could react, they rapidly gathered on their own and reconstructed the previous body.
Resurrection?
He looked at the same spiritual body in surprise, inexplicably feeling that something was wrong.
Although dreams were spaces that represented imagination, this lucid dream was also Miko's dream, with outside power interfering. It could not possibly ignore the rules of the real world.
"Hey, you really have no manners toward your seniors. In the workplace, acting like that would…"
The spiritual body hunched over, raised its head, and looked at him angrily.
"Heh."
Luke raised his blade speechlessly and slashed down again.
Smack.
The blade that swung toward the spiritual body was caught by a hand spat out from its mouth, gripping the shaft.
Under Luke's strength, the spiritual body could not stop retreating. At the same time, it opened its mouth.
"Mmmgh! Mmmgh!"
The spiritual body mumbled something unclear, but from its clenched fists and widened eyes, it seemed to be in extreme pain.
Crack, crack.
Like the sound of bones dislocating and shattering, two hands stretched out from inside the humanoid spiritual body's mouth. They tightly grabbed the upper and lower jaws, forcefully pulling the mouth apart to both sides.
"Ah…"
A weak, pained cry came from the ever-widening mouth. The hands inside were desperately exerting force, as if they wanted to tear this spiritual body in half.
The blade fell again.
The spiritual body, along with the unknown existence inside it, was split in two.
"Useless. A god that represents fear, the Yin-Yang Eyes that communicate with reality… ah!"
The left and right halves of the body spoke dryly with half a mouth each, using their respective arms to pull the other half close, sticking themselves back together.
"…Reality's Yin-Yang Eyes. Dream and reality are no longer separate. Flesh and soul…"
Riiip!
The spiritual body that had just fused back together split open from the corners of its mouth, its face blooming like a flower.
Luke saw a body with no facial features, only limbs. It was like the mannequin exorcism tool he had encountered before, bursting out from the spiritual body.
"Sensei!"
Miko's face tightened. She lowered her head and stared at the pitch-black ground, her emotions sinking into the same fear she had felt when she first learned she could see evil spirits.
"It's fine. Just trust me."
Luke once again gathered his own power and the power of the exorcism tool, resisting the interference from this so-called god of fear that the previous spiritual body had mentioned.
From the moment it burst out, the surrounding environment turned back into a pitch-black night.
Fear was a powerful emotional response, usually a feeling toward the unknown, danger, or threat. These feelings were hidden deep within darkness, which was why many people still could not resist their fear of the dark even now.
Clearly, nothing terrifying had appeared yet, but Miko had still sunk into deep fear. The dark night dream represented her emotions. If his spiritual power had not interfered, this place would probably have already become somewhere so dark that they could not see their own hands.
It seemed just like the spiritual body torn apart earlier had said.
This evil spirit truly was a god that represented fear and could awaken the fear inside their bodies.
A god?
Luke looked at the thing before him and tightened his grip on the shaft, increasing the spiritual power protecting Miko.
He had not forgotten his system mission.
Although he did not understand why humans, standing at the top of the food chain, still imagined higher beings and called them gods.
Perhaps it was emotional support. Perhaps it was something else.
But gods that truly existed in reality…
"A god…"
The newly born spiritual body, the so-called god, placed both hands beside its head. Its knees bent slightly, and it hopped left and right like a standing humanoid toad dancing there.
At the same time, fear spread little by little.
"At their root, they're just names given to powerful evil spirits."
If Kasumizuki, a miko who served a god, heard that, she would probably agree and clap several times.
That useless miko, seriously, could she do this or not?
Why was she still not here?
He charged forward again, and the guandao smashed toward the evil spirit's position.
The evil spirit still used its toad-like hops, leaping and swaying its body to dodge his attack. Other than using that ridiculous dance to awaken fear, it seemed to have no other means of attack.
"Why are you running? Let me cut you once!"
Luke stepped out with his left foot, twisted his waist, and drove the guandao in a horizontal sweep, cutting the evil spirit in half at the waist.
Chop, chop, chop!
Using the ground as a chopping board, this time, he minced the evil spirit into pieces.
Just in case…
"Fire."
Because this was a dream, even though it consumed a lot of spiritual energy, he still relied on imagination to manifest a ball of flame. He used the minced evil spirit as fuel and burned it to nothing.
Before he could even relax, the fear that had not disappeared from his heart made him feel something was wrong.
Above the flames burning the evil spirit, clouds of smoke continuously rose, gathered, and formed a body again.
"What the hell! Are you Majin Buu?!"
Luke looked speechlessly at the spiritual body that had once again condensed from smoke and revived.
It began circling him again, joyfully waving its limbs. Its body spread out like a frog once more, hopping left, then hopping right.
Unlike before, this time, a mouth gradually grew from its face. It happily made "hoo hoo hoo" sounds.
Why could it revive?
Although this was a dream, and he and Miko's imaginations could construct things that did not match reality, their rationality and awareness made it impossible for everything in this world to break away from the rules of reality.
So even if this spiritual body really was a god, it could not revive after death.
In that case, the reason this spiritual body could "revive" again and again was…
Interference from the outside?
Or had he not truly killed it?
Luke recovered his strength while analyzing the words spoken by the previous spiritual body before its death. But at that moment, he suddenly felt a sense of rejection.
"Miko, what are you doing? Didn't I tell you to just trust me?"
Feeling the force pushing him out of the dream world, Luke spoke to Miko behind him.
"Sensei…"
"The dream… the dream is moving on its own…"
Miko shouted. Under the constant oppressive fear in the dream, she had slowly sensed spiritual power and had begun grasping some of her own spiritual power.
So her spirit had started unconsciously pushing him and the evil spirit, trying to drive them out of the dream.
At the same time, now that she had grasped that power, she also knew that the fire he had imagined earlier, along with splitting his power to help her, had left him somewhat weak.
"Oh, is that so?"
"Sensei, you don't have to worry about me…"
Miko murmured, looking at the still energetic evil spirit and the slowly tiring Sensei. Clumsily, she gathered her power to resist the fear brought by the evil spirit.
"Don't worry. I won't abandon you. As long as we firmly hold on, there'll be a way…"
Luke took a deep breath and mobilized the power accumulated in the guandao to replenish his spirit.
Across from him, the spiritual body continued hopping in place. On its smooth face, bones began squeezing out from both sides again, forming a pair of ears as it moved toward a fully human state.
"In that case… right, Miko, you fell asleep holding that dagger like I told you, right?"
Luke asked.
"I did."
"Then try to draw out the dagger's power and manifest it inside the dream… Mm, it isn't that hard. Concentrate and imagine it."
Miko followed what he said and began recalling the appearance of the dagger in reality.
Luke looked at the evil spirit still hopping and dancing before him. As its disgusting, ridiculous dance continued, the surrounding fear grew thicker and thicker.
"Sensei! I did it!"
Miko's surprised voice came from behind him.
She looked at the dagger in her hand, which was emitting golden light, and felt that she could easily resist the evil spirit's attack.
Luke looked at the darkness around them, which had once again been blocked, and nodded lightly.
If he had known that extreme fear would let Miko experience spiritual power, he would have found a few more places like that cursed building and thrown her into piles of evil spirits several times.
Then this time would not have been so troublesome.
"Although I don't know why this thing can keep clinging to life, I still have a way…"
Now that he no longer needed to worry about Miko, he spoke.
"What way?"
Miko hugged the dagger exorcism tool and looked at his back.
Luke took a deep breath and gathered his power.
Pointing the blade at the spiritual body that was still circling him, greedily enjoying its new growth, he said softly:
"That is… kill it once every time it revives. If it revives again, kill it again. Kill it until it no longer dares to come back!"
The spiritual body's ears twitched. It stopped its ridiculous hopping, casually lowered both legs and both arms, and stood like an ordinary person, as if thinking about his words.
Luke had seen this kind of evil spirit before, the sort that would not die no matter how many times it was killed.
But that only meant one thing.
It had not been killed enough.
He raised the weapon shaft and charged again. The evil spirit continued its dance.
"Hello, hello?"
A voice suddenly appearing above his head made both Luke and the evil spirit pause.
"Sensei?"
Miko tilted her head and called to him in confusion. Having just grasped spiritual power, she sensed the newly joined spiritual power.
In the half-dark, half-bright sky, a pair of eyes four people tall emerged, sweeping left and right as they observed the entire dream.
"Miko-chan, bastard, evil spirit. Mm, everyone's here. Hello, hello? Can you hear me?"
Kasumizuki's voice continued from above.
This girl finally arrived.
Miko looked at the two huge eyes in the sky. Although their color and shape were not the same as her own, they carried a similar feeling.
She knew the one who had arrived was Kasumizuki the miko.
Mm.
Herself, Sensei, the miko, and the evil spirit.
They could play mahjong in her dream now.
"Can't hear me?"
Kasumizuki murmured in confusion, then started shouting again.
"Hey! Brother Matsuzuki, the signal here isn't very good! I'm talking and they can't hear me!"
She paused.
"But they're not answering me!"
Luke speechlessly took a breath and shouted, "We can hear you!"
He really did not want to answer her.
"Oh? If you could hear me, you should've said so earlier! Right, you can speak a little quieter. I can hear you clearly."
He quickly asked, "How's it going outside?"
"We found the cultists' gathering place. After Shibuya Jun saw Miko's luck drop to its lowest point and your maid sent me a message, we started searching for them using the luck clues."
"Oh."
Luke nodded and shifted his gaze to the evil spirit, whose dancing had begun to accelerate. Its facial features started emerging again: nose, eyes, and even hair.
"This thing can revive. Do you know how to kill it?"
"Of course I know."
Kasumizuki pressed her hand against Matsuzuki Saki's back and closed her eyes, watching Miko's dream.
She stood in a pool of blood. On the operating table beside her lay a body whose front had been cut open, all its organs removed, leaving an empty human shell.
The corpse's final gaze contained no emotion, as flat as dead water.
Shibuya Jun stood beside a group of kneeling cultists while holding his crystal ball, measuring his crystal ball against their heads.
Because of the so-called True Lord's soul fragments inside their bodies, these cultists were continuously generating fear. The cult leader above the blood sacrifice was constantly absorbing power from them through his body.
The descent of their True Lord would bring them not wealth, but only fear and imminent death.
Kasumizuki "looked" at Luke and began speaking.
"Yin-Yang Eyes. Eyes that connect the realm of the dead and reality. They are both physical eyes as organs and a spiritual trait."
"These cultists rooted themselves inside Miko's dream. Through her soul, they connected to the evil spirit in the realm of the dead that can absorb fear."
"And through the cultists' souls, they constructed a real spiritual body for it, searching for flesh it could attach to."
"Right now, the passage to the realm of the dead has already opened."
"Its spiritual body can continuously revive by absorbing fear through flesh. That is the rule of the realm of the dead."
…
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