Finn then gave Blue Whale the 500 gold coins that she wanted for the mansion, and he wasn't worried about her scamming him.
She wouldn't run away with the money because she had a reputation to uphold and because running away with 500 coins, which were nothing to her, wouldn't even be worth it.
On the contrary, she was happy that she had finally managed to sell that cursed mansion that nobody wanted to buy before.
It was haunted, and she could have lied about it not being haunted to make sure it got sold, but she was afraid that her reputation would take a hit if she had sold something about which she didn't share the full information.
After signing five documents, three of which were about Blue Whale not carrying any responsibility for his death, Finn thanked her and left the tavern together with Sophie.
This time there was nobody catcalling Sophie, and when Finn walked by, everyone shut their mouths to not bother him.
They walked back to the Middle District, and upon seeing a carriage stop, they took a public carriage towards their new mansion.
Sophie, who was sitting next to Finn in the carriage, turned to look at him.
"The ghosts are probably going to be high-level monsters, you know?"
"Yep, most likely."
Finn nodded with a smile.
"…"
Her boyfriend knew what he was getting himself into, but she was confused as to where his confidence was coming from.
"Do you have a way of defeating a ghost then?"
"Yep."
"See, of course you don- Wait, you do?!"
It was the first time Sophie had shown a surprised expression to Finn by slightly widening her eyes and raising her voice by a few decibels.
To Finn, it meant that her ice barrier was shaking a little bit, so he smiled at her without answering.
Sophie also realized what she had done, and instead of being embarrassed, she was a little happy that she started to feel forgotten emotions when she was around Finn.
"Yeah, I do. But I won't tell you."
After a few seconds, Finn answered with a smirk.
"Why?"
"Because… I don't want to."
"…"
Sophie's happiness quickly passed, and she was now feeling a little angry, like a kid would feel if he showed his mom a candy he wanted and she told him that she wouldn't buy it for him.
"I might tell you if you say please."
Finn kept smiling because he enjoyed slowly shaking Sophie's ice barrier by teasing her.
"I would have said it, but because you are acting like that, I am not saying it."
She crossed her hands and turned around to look outside the window.
"Oh no! Are you pouting? Is my cute Sophie pouting?"
Finn kept smiling while poking her cheek with his finger, but after a few seconds, she had enough and grabbed his finger with a tight grip.
"Who are you calling "my cute Sophie," huh? You want to see your finger break?"
Suddenly, Finn realized that he might have been enjoying his teasing session a bit too much, and now his finger was in danger.
He could instantly heal it back up with a potion because this was a game, but the pain would be real.
"No Sophie. It was a joke. You wouldn't break my finger because of a joke, right?"
Finn looked at her with puppy eyes, but the tone in which he said it made it sound kind of sarcastic, so she got even more pissed off.
"I would."
CRACK
She used her strength to bend Finn's index finger in a way that it should never bend, and because Finn's endurance was pretty low, making his bone toughness pretty weak, it instantly broke.
"AAARRGHHH! OWWWW! *GULP*"
He quickly pulled out a healing potion from his inventory and downed it.
His finger magically went back to its normal position, and the bones repaired themselves, but he could still feel slight pain.
Finn then looked at Sophie, but she was ignoring him with her hands crossed while looking outside the window.
"SHHHHH!!!"
The other passengers in the carriage shushed Finn because he was making too much noise, and he started apologizing to everyone.
"I am so sorry."
He kept politely bowing his head because his scream woke some of the tired passengers up.
"...pft..."
But while he was apologizing, he heard a soft, almost unnoticeable chuckle behind him, so he turned around with a smirk.
"Did you just laugh, Sophie?"
"No."
Sophie instantly denied everything with a flat tone.
"You did, didn't you?"
"No."
"Are you getting embarrassed now?"
Finn's smirk widened, and he instantly forgot how his last teasing session ended up.
"…Do you want another finger broken or should I just break the entire hand this time."
Sophie glared at Finn with her eyebrows furrowed, and his smirk got immediately wiped off of his face.
"Who laughed? I didn't hear anyone laughing."
He expressionlessly looked ahead, but deep down he was happy that he finally made her ice barrier crack a little.
It was only a miniscule crack, but every journey starts with a single step, so he couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from twitching in delight.
"That's what I thought."
Sophie eased her eyebrows and continued looking outside the window.
---
They soon arrived on the edge of the noble district, and because the public carriage wasn't allowed to travel inside, they had to get off.
Before entering the noble district, they had to pass a gate that was guarded by knights in silver armor, but Blue Whale had already thought about that and given Finn a permit to enter.
He walked up to a guard who was standing next to the golden gate.
"Permit."
"Here you go."
Finn pulled out the piece of paper, and after reading it, the guard gave it back.
"Please enter."
He opened the small side gate for Finn and Sophie to enter because the big gate was for people with carriages.
The noble district was large, and there were no public carriages because everyone who lived there was rich enough to afford a personal carriage.
Luckily for him, Finn's new mansion was really close to the gate, so he had to only walk for ten minutes, and he soon arrived in front of it.
The size of the mansion was pretty decent, but Finn compared it to the mansion that Sophie's family lived in, and he felt a little disappointed.
It was to be expected since the mansions get bigger the closer they were to the center of the city, and his was on the edge.
That said, the mansion was still large, and compared to other people's guild headquarters that consisted of a small wooden hut, it was enormous.
Finn came up to the metal gate in front of it and opened it so that he could check out the mansion.
CREAK
The old gate creaked, and it sounded like a person's scream, but Finn had already expected as much when he saw the state of the mansion.
Overgrown weeds that hid the road leading up to the mansion and dilapidated was a nice way of describing the mansion itself.
The roof had holes in it, and the walls were losing their color. The windows were broken, and the statues that once decorated its garden were in pieces.
"What a mess."
He sighed and continued walking towards the mansion's entrance.
Soon he reached the front door and opened it to see the state of the mansion's interior. It didn't disappoint Finn.
It didn't disappoint him in being so shit that is. There was dust everywhere, the furniture was overturned, and there were stains on the ground and the walls.
The more rooms Finn checked, the darker his expression got.
"If we hire some people and buy some new things, we can fix the mansion and make it as good as new."
Sophie tried to make him happy by showing him positivity, but what she said only made his heart sting even more.
"Five hundred and thirty-five..."
He mumbled.
"Hmm? Five hundred and thirty-five what?"
"That's how much money I have left."
Finn turned to look at Sophie while holding his head in despair.
"By the time I pay for all the repairs, I won't even have enough money to buy a single fucking wooden plank to throw into the fireplace, and we will freeze to death!"
Sophie wanted to help him, but she didn't have a lot of gold coins, so she just looked at the floor in thought.
"And that's not the worst thing..."
She then looked at Finn again with a raised eyebrow.
"What is the worst thing then?"
"The things I need for the exorcism cost money too."
After Finn was done talking, he looked at the floor with a dark expression, like he had just seen his life fall apart.
"…"
Sophie didn't know how to respond.
When she found out how much money Finn still had, she thought they were rich, but after hearing about all the things they would need to buy to fix the mansion, she felt like they were poor again.
"Well, we have to take it one step at a time. Let's start with the exorcism, and after that, we can think about the mansion."
She tried to remain positive so Finn wouldn't feel depressed.
"You are right. Let's check the basement. That is where the ghosts are supposed to be, and from what we find, I will know which ghost we are dealing with."
"There are multiple types?"
Sophie asked while they were walking towards the basement of the mansion.
"Yes. Ghosts like to mark their territory, and you can find out their strength by looking at their mark."
They entered a broken wooden doorway with a lamp in Finn's hand and went down the stone stairs that led into the dark basement.
"Oh… and what is the mark of the strongest ghost you know of?"
Soon they entered the cold basement, and with the small light of the lantern flickering, they looked around to see any irregularities.
"Well, that would be a B-ranked ghost, but those ghosts almost never appear in our area. And their mark would be…"
Looking around, they saw huge claw marks on the walls, as if there was an overgrown bear stuck there and it tried to scratch itself out by clawing everything around it.
Finn slowly breathed out, and he could see his breath turn foggy when it left his quivering lips.
"…Huge claw marks… The mark of a B-ranked ghost are huge claw marks…"