Chapter 147: Since Things Have Come to This, Let's Kill Everything, Breathing or Not
"Faster, faster, faster! Those two are coming! Nooooo—!"
"Jiejiejie! Found you!"
Stelle casually wiped a hand across the blue baseball bat she held, and a surge of crackling, lightning-like energy coursed over its surface.
Thump—Bam!
With a single, decisive swing, the ball of green ghostfire was instantly scattered. The eerie, cyan-blue flames erupted into a shower of sparks that rained down across the floor, sputtering out like a cheap firework.
"The special effects look pretty high-end," Stelle commented, resting the bat on her shoulder. "So why is it so weak?"
"Probably a lack of funding," Rekka replied dryly.
Just then, another globe of spectral fire shot toward them.
"Since you cowards don't dare, let me have a taste!" it shrieked, clearly believing that striking first would grant it the upper hand.
The ball of green flame nimbly dodged a lazy swing from Stelle's bat and charged straight into her chest, phasing through her body.
Three seconds later, it was violently ejected, scorched and smoking from the raw power of Preservation that dwelled within Stelle.
"So hot, so hot, so hot! It's burning me to death! Burning me to death!" the ghostfire screeched in agony before making a desperate beeline for Rekka's chest.
'This one isn't hot!'it thought in triumph.'This one is—'
The green, fiery eyeball looked up from within Rekka's soul and found itself staring into the abyss. Before it loomed the magnificent, colossal, and utterly terrifying form of Phantylia, the Lord Ravager. The sheer, unadulterated power of Destruction radiated from the vision, an echo of Nanook's will.
"Ah... ah..."
The ghostfire trembled, its very essence quaking from the core of its being.
'Brother, brother, this... this isn't right,' it stammered internally.
There's a certain kind of bliss that comes from randomly possessing someone, only to find yourself in an intense, soul-crushing staring contest with an avatar of the Antimatter Legion. This was the opposite of that. This was getting far, far more than it had bargained for.
After all, when Rekka walked the Path of Destruction, he was a miniature Nanook. If he got angry, he could simply 'log in' to that apocalyptic power.
When the green eyeball emerged from Rekka's body, its entire demeanor had changed. It was the very picture of sycophantic terror.
"Yoho, quite the face-changer, aren't you?" Stelle leaned in, poking the huddled, quivering ghostfire with the tip of her bat.
The spectral flame tremulously moved aside and let out a laugh that was pure, unadulterated fawning. "Two ancestors! This lowly one failed to recognize your greatness and has offended you! I truly deserve ten thousand deaths! I'll get lost right now, right now!"
"Did I say you could leave?" Rekka's voice was quiet. He crouched down, pinched the wisp of fire between two fingers, and held it up to his eyes.
"I didn't expect a haunted house to actually have ghosts," Stelle said, peering at the green eyeball in Rekka's hand with genuine interest. "This can't be one of the staff members, right? It can even possess people."
"Yeah, probably not staff," Rekka agreed. "We can start killing."
The eyeball's survival instinct went into overdrive, and it began frantically trying to save its own ethereal life. "How can you do this! I'm just a temporary worker here! No one said there would be life-threatening risks!"
"Oh~ so you're a temporary worker," Stelle said, a look of sudden realization dawning on her face. "Then we can't kill it."
"True," Rekka mused. "After all, killing staff members means we'd have to pay compensation."
"Wait," Stelle's eyes widened. "Did we just kill a bunch of staff members earlier?"
Rekka fell silent.
'What do you mean, 'killed a bunch of staff members'?!'the Heliobus shrieked in its mind.'Holy crap!'
The little ghost was nearly scared to death by their nonchalant exchange.
"We broke the law!" Stelle's face turned pale with shock. "Rekka! We killed the staff! Are we going to be thrown into the Shackling Prison?!"
"Probably... yeah," Rekka nodded, his brow furrowed in mock seriousness. He was just acting, but he was committed to the bit.
"If that's the case, are we going to become fugitives on the run?!" Stelle let out a wail and started to actually cry. "I don't want to be locked up in prison until the end of time—!"
She grabbed Rekka's hand, her face a mask of theatrical despair. "We're accomplices now! The two of us will have to flee to the ends of the earth!"
"Wait, I don't think we've reached the point of becoming fugitives yet."
"Oh..." Stelle sniffled, then her eyes widened in a new wave of horror. "But if I killed innocent people, does that mean I can't be a Trailblazer anymore?!!!"
She froze for a moment, then resumed wailing even louder.
Rekka looked down at Stelle, who was now clutching his arm and sobbing uncontrollably. For a moment, he was at a loss for how to even begin comforting her.
"Um... Stelle?"
"Waaaaah—"
"Stop crying for a second. I don't think things are as serious as you imagine."
"How is it not serious?!" she sobbed. "We killed the Xianzhou's haunted house staff! Isn't that murder?!"
Rekka carefully moved the green ghostfire in his hand further away. He leaned in and explained in a whisper only the two of them could hear what a Heliobus actually was. Having encountered one like Cirrus before, he knew these spectral entities were anything but harmless staff.
Their hushed discussion made the little Heliobus sigh in relief, but its reprieve was short-lived as their conversation took a dark, conspiratorial turn.
"How about this," Rekka said, a ruthless glint flashing in his eyes that was entirely for the ghost's benefit. He made a sharp throat-slitting gesture. "I say we go all the way."
"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! Don't let anything that moves escape. Split the earthworms vertically and shake the egg yolks until they're scrambled!"
"Makes sense..." Stelle narrowed her eyes, getting into character with terrifying speed. "Since we've already been seen killing staff members, for the sake of secrecy, we definitely can't leave any witnesses alive."
She held her baseball bat and scraped it hard against a crooked stone statue, sending a trail of sparks into the gloom.
"Exactly, Stelle," Rekka lowered his voice, adopting the sinister tone of a final boss. "Everyone here today, whether they're hiding in the tree bark or crawling in the gutters, must die. Use your bat to pry open every crack in the bricks and smash everything you see moving!"
Cirrus, the Heliobus pinched between Rekka's fingers, now felt that its path was full of tribulations. It really should have checked the almanac before going out today. Not only had it failed to absorb a single iota of emotion from these two living devils, but it was also about to become a victim of their "silencing."
'This is fucking game over,' it thought.
Survival instinct forced Cirrus's mind to race. 'Right! I've got it! I can instigate these two villains! Let them fight it out with those judges from the Ten-Lords Commission!'
"My lords, please, don't kill me!" it pleaded desperately. "I can tell you where the other people who saw you are hiding!"
"Where are they?" Rekka asked, his voice dangerously low.
Seeing a glimmer of hope, Cirrus's green flames flickered rapidly. "Right ahead! Just keep going down this path! Uh... can you two let me go?"
"Lead the way," Rekka said, applying just enough pressure with his fingers to squeeze the Heliobus out of shape.
"Yes, yes, yes... this lowly one will do my utmost!"
Rekka loosened his grip and dropped Cirrus onto the ground. The ball of green fire immediately floated ahead, maintaining a pace that was neither too fast nor too slow.
Stelle shouldered her bat and followed behind, walking with an exaggerated, swaggering gait.
"I say," she whispered to Rekka, "if we really run into people later, what's our cover story?"
"It's fine," he whispered back. "We're just playing with this little thing. Later, we'll just crush it and let it return to the void."
Rounding a corner, the narrow path suddenly opened into a somewhat desolate clearing. In the center, a Foxian girl with fluffy green ears stood with her eyes squeezed shut, tightly clutching a Command Flag as she looked around cautiously.
"You can't see me, you can't see me, you can't see me..." she chanted under her breath.
"Hungry!" Stelle's voice boomed, dripping with mock evil. "Today I'm going to eat 648 people as snacks!"
The sudden, terrifying declaration made the Foxian girl scream.
"AAAAAAAAAH—!!!"
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