"Daaarling, Did you miss me?"
Well, what better way to say I missed you than pointing a knife at your throat.
For obvious reasons, I couldn't say that... If the reasons aren't obvious to you... please go and get help my friend.
"Wow, we have already reached the Darling stage on the first day! I didn't know you were so romantic."
"Heehee! I did promise that I would become your girlfriend if you managed to survive till dawn."
I smiled back charmingly at her. (in retrospect I probably looked like a doofus)
While I might be all smiles and flirting on the outside, inside I was shitting my pants. I had no idea how would she react to me releasing all the souls from the orb.
Might as well get this over with.
"So, umm are you mad at me for breaking the orb"
"Hmm" she paused and tilted her head to the side, "I must say you are really full of surprises."
She floated around and stood behind me, slowly leaning over as she whispered into my ear.
"If the orb had made its way back to that bitch's house."
"I would have killed you!"
I shivered a bit at that, turns out not giving it up was the right choice after all.
"But, oh my you were so cool back then darling." She circled back in front of me and held her face between her hands as she smiled happily as a dreamy expression filled her face.
"You actually broke the orb, right in front of their faces. Hahaha that was so awesome. That old hag had spent centuries cultivating and capturing souls into the orb and you destroyed all of her hard work in a single night. I wonder what is the look on her face right now..."
She was grinning in pure malevant joy at the expense of her enemy's misfortunes. I don't know why but I thought that the her mischeviuos look was extremely cute.
"After seeing how you dealt with the situation last night, I knew that making you my boyfriend would be a great idea"
Heh, I smirked internally, she was totally falling for me.
"Though I am a little mad, It was my first gift after all and you went and broke it. It still has sentimental value you know"
I smiled at that, "Ah but you see it hasn't completely been broken, after all you did manage to track me down using the mark"
"Mark?" she asked a little confused. Then she closed her eyes and tried to sense it.
"Aah I really can sense it, It seems to have even grown stronger... what happened"
I grinned in satisfaction as I showed her the tattoo on my palm like a Chad showing off his Ferrari (ok we all know it was more like a kid showing off his toy but just let me have this moment okay?!).
I summoned the orb and knife forms before sending it back, "Pretty cool isn't it?"
"Hmm you really are full of surprises, that cursed knife of yours seems to be extremely special to be able to let such a fusion happen. Almost as if...", she hesitated a bit before shaking her head and changing the subject, "... anyway, the good thing is that we can contact each other anytime, pretty awesome huh darling"
I smiled in satisfaction, you might be wondering why I was so happy about having my location privacy all leaked to my one-day-old-girlfriend, it wasn't some weird fetish of mine or anything.
The point is that if I am in trouble I might be able to ask for help...
It might be embarrassing to ask for help and she might not even want to, but... Who cares as long as I survive.
"So, how did you find where I was if not for the mark?"
If she hadn't known about the mark then...
"Oh, I had placed another tracker on you when you left. Just in case you decide to give back the orb to its previous owners, I needed to be able to find you to kill you." she replied, the cute smile on her face not wavering a bit.
Aaah I have really gotten myself a deadly girlfriend haven't I?
But this was fine, I wouldn't have settled for anyone less either way.
"Actually I was planning on secretly following you all the way but that scarecrow would have noticed my presence he deals with the dead everywhere so he is really sensitive to my presence, also I did leave a him with a huge trauma the last time...."
"Yes, I wanted to ask you if you knew where I could find a lot of soul energy to harvest quickly."
"Ooh, you want to grow stronger do you? That's great, once you are strong enough I could bring you along with me and we could try to steal from and mess with bigger fishes. That would be really fun!"
"Yes, boyfriend of mine! We will go on plenty of dates together wrecking chaos in the process."
Looking at the intoxicating smile on her face I couldn't help but smile back too.
Now I was sure why I felt so attracted towards her yesterday night, we were both the same type of people, seriously awesome with a dash of crazy.
"Yeah, well most of the souls you released will not last long and will quickly get captured by the others, you needn't be bothered by collecting those weaklings either.
"Hmm, I will outline some places for you and send that information through the mark. The smart and strong ones will most likely hide in these locations."
"Thanks a lot for your help"
She smiled smugly and crossed her arms as she levitated around the room.
"Darling there is no need to thank me, hmm next time you plan something big and crazy like last night, do remember to call me so I can join in on the fun."
"Definitely, in fact I already have something planned"
She instantly teleported right in front of my face, her eyes both black and red were wide and open, full of mischief and curiosity, she stared right into me and asked excitedly
"What is it?"
I smiled at her cute reaction and pinched her nose.
"It's a Suprise"
She pushed away my arms and scruched up her nose at my action.
"Hmmph! It better be something good, otherwise.... I will stop calling you darling...and call you stinky pervert instead."
HUh, I grasped my chest in mock pain.
Stop calling me darling... that would be really bad.
"b-but if It's something good, I will call you by your name then." she said her face slowly reddening.
I didn't remind her that I hadn't yet told her my name to save her the embarrasment.
"Hmm, In that case if you like it you will call me Luke, and I will call you Al"
"Al...short for Alice....I like the sound of that...Ok I will see you soon don't make me wait to long."
She drifted back towards the mirror after that.
However just as I turned around and let out a sigh, the temperature of the room dropped rapidly.
I could feel her cold breaths on my neck as she whispered into my ears.
"Just, before I go... I wanted to warn you you are not allowed to cheat on me. I do whatever I do to my fullest. Since I have decided to become your girlfriend I am going to go all the way in, so you also better play you part properly. If I find you messing with other girls..."
"I will castrate you,
then I will kill you,
and finally rip your soul to shreds."
After some time the temperature went back to normal.
"So she does get jealous after all" I smirked to myself in satisfaction.
Even though we were boyfriend and girlfriend, I knew better than to think that our relationship was based on love.
I needed her to be a trump card I could use to protect myself, she was just hoping to find some excitement.
Whether our relationship would evolve into something more, only time could tell.
Though I still had to admit, she was really cute... otherwise I probably would have never even bothered asking her out. I had high standards you know.
Anyways I checked the mark and sure enough she had sent the information to me. As the day slowly approached its end I prepared for my night hunt.
All the supplies and loot had been burnt to a crisp after the explosion last night.
I was lucky to have survived without a scratch.
--------------------------
Even as I left my house and was on my way I ran into an anomaly.
An old lady dressed in black was sitting on the bench by the bus stop waiting for the bus.
I approached her and kindly asked, "Granny are you lost? There are no buses coming here at this time of the night."
"Ahhh really, but child I am not waiting for a bus, I waiting for my son, he said he will come back soon, I just have to sit here and wait."
"Ok granny, in that case let me sit here with you, its not safe to be out here at night."
"Sure sure, there are very few kind young men like you these days..."
I smiled and sat next to her, from this angle I could clearly see my shadow being cast i n front of me by the lampost. I looked at the lady and sure enough, she didn't have one.
"Granny, have you ever thought that the reason your son didn't come back was because he thought you were already dead"
The granny looked at me and smiled kindly
"That is a very rude thing to say to an elderly person you know. If I hadn't known better I would have really felt bad."
"Yes, so I will apologize for what I am going to do next in advance."
"What..."
I summoned the knife form of the orb and stabbed her in the gut. The knife passed straight through her as if she was a hologram but it was nonetheless stuck inside her, before she could even saw another word she got sucked into the knife.
I checked my stats,
Soul Energy: 100
Huh, that was pitifully low.
I stood up and went on my way without wasting a second. I ran into many more ghosts on the way, after killing 10 of them and raising my points to 1000, I couldn't find any more.
Alice was right about them, with the unspeakable horrors around these weak ghosts won't last for long. After all the presence of so many new residents in the city of terror, will threaten their position in the list of the top ten. It might not affect the ones backed by organizations but those lone wolves like Dr.Chainsaw and Night Raven will surely be threatened if a strong ghost arises.
Either way such weak targets might help me level up quickly but it won't prepare me to fight against stronger opponents.
I finally reached my destination.
It was the amusement park.
According to Alice any ghost that manages to claim it as their territory would be extremely strong. If I was lucky I might even run into a battle royale and harvest plenty of soul energy with minimal effort.
However, when I sneaked into the location the silence couldn't have been more profound.
I couldn't even hear the wind rustling by, or any crickets chirping in the night.
As if all of nature held its breath in anticipation of what was to happen.
Like a calm before the storm...
Looks like I was just in time.