Getting to his room, he locked the door and sank into the bed, leafing through the magazine. An hour passed, a time during which he had finished reading the magazine and become bored. With nothing else to do during the day, he decided to do something he had not done in a while and cultivate. The spirit energy in the world was low and could in no way compare to the blessed lands back in the Immortal Realm, but it was something.
Soon, he lost himself to the familiar sensations, breathing in and drawing spirit energy into his body, before circulating it according to his cultivation technique- Divine Truth.
Sometime close to midnight, his eyes snapped open. Looking around his room, he frowned a bit. Something had disturbed his cultivation, but because so much of his attention had been diverted inward, he could not discern what.
After some internal deliberation, he spread out his divine sense until it covered the entire hotel. At that moment, he knew something was wrong. The entire hotel seemed to be isolated from the rest of the outside world, covered in a layer of thick darkness. Within the hotel, a dark mist seemed to slither along the floor, twisting and turning through every room, and absorbing what little light there.
As he silently contemplated these unexpected changes, he heard a muted scream, which seemed to come from a place far away. And it sounded like Elina.
He spurred into action, leaving his room and heading to the ground floor. The hallway was filled with that dark mist, and despite the lanterns and light bulbs placed at regular intervals, most of the visible light seemed to have been swallowed up by something. Sounds also seemed muted, seemingly swallowed up by the black mist that permeated everything. Noticing these changes, as well as the chill that kept growing, The Observers eyes narrowed.
Just in case Elina was in danger, The Observer decided to make use of his law of space to get to the reception quickly, warping himself to the doorway leading to it. Before he walked into the reception area, he looked in to see what he was dealing with.
The reception was darker than anywhere else in the hotel. As he looked in, he noticed that the entrance door to the hotel was wide open, and through the open door, he could see nothing but a pitch blackness. Elina stood with a dagger in hand, trembling as she muttered something in an unknown language.
Seeing and sensing no one else, The Observer took a step into the room. "Elina, what's going on?"
"Stay back," Elina shouted as she turned around to face him. To show his harmlessness, he raised his hands into the air and stopped moving. "Who are you?"
"Reynard. I am Reynard."
With her dagger pointing at him, she demanded. "Prove it. Prove you're really Reynard."
"How?"
"On the counter, there's a candle. Light it."
"Are the candles special, or is light the key thing? Because if it's the latter I have a better solution," The Observer explained after a short pause.
The look on Elina's face told him that she hadn't expected such a reply. "Light," she eventually answered, "light is the most important thing."
"Alright. Just, try not to get scared." The Observer snapped his fingers as he released a tiny bit of his divine energy. A second later a small globe of light materialized beside his head, its light brighter than the brightest lanterns in this hotel. The moment the light appeared, the dark mist in the room began to boil and soon it all evaporated. The wall of darkness outside the hotel, however, remained unaffected.
Elina stared at all this with an open mouth. "Who… what are you?"
"It doesn't matter right now. Do you know what's going on?"
Elina did not reply immediately, looking as though she was still trying to comprehend what was going on, her eyes flickering back and forth between the light The Observer had summoned and his face. The Observer didn't try to hurry her, and eventually, she seemed to compose herself.
"A spirit has been haunting the hotel for three weeks now," Elina explained. "It doesn't always appear but whenever it does someone gets ill. I've been trying to get rid of it but nothing seems to be working."
The Observer studied Elina with his divine sense. Best he could tell, she was a normal human. "Elina, forgive me for being rude, but, why are you trying to do this yourself?"
Looking a bit frustrated, she replied "I tried hiring some exorcists, but whenever I did so it refused to appear until they left, and I can't afford to keep paying them to wait an unknown amount of time. Please, can you help me?"
"I can try, but I have little knowledge of the supernatural," The Observer replied while adding in his mind, 'of this world'. Still, his agreement seemed to reassure her a bit.
As he spoke those words, the mist in the room dissipated, even as the layer of darkness covering the hotel disappeared. With his divine sense, The Observer could tell that it had completely left the hotel. "It's gone?"
Elina nodded. "It's the same as when I hired those exorcists. When it knows someone is capable of getting rid of it, it runs."
And it thinks I'm capable? The Observer mocked the creature in his mind. "Why don't you return to your room and get some sleep? I'll keep watch for the rest of the night."
"Are you sure?" Elina sounded a bit hesitant about leaving him alone.
"I am," he replied. He barely slept anyway, so he might as well just keep watch and ensure nothing goes wrong again. While he did not have an exhaustive knowledge of the entities that existed in this world, his time in the immortal continent had shown him that beings were either flesh and blood or souls. And if what was disturbing the hotel was a soul, then he had a few techniques he could try to get rid of it.
Succumbing to his urging, Elina returned to her room, and The Observer returned to his. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, he closed his eyes and unleashed his divine sense, using it to scour every bit of the hotel. Even after confirming that there was nothing out of the ordinary, he didn't release it. Instead, he slipped into a trance-like state that allowed his subconscious to take over monitoring the hotel. This way, the moment anything occurred, he would know and be able to react.
When morning came without incident, The Observer finally reined in his divine sense. He doubted that the spirit would be so foolish as to attack the hotel in broad daylight. Even if nothing else, a Paragon was the chief of police in this city, and he would probably strike down anyone stupid enough to create a ruckus so obviously.
After going through his usual morning rituals, The Observer sat down to consider how he might spend his day. Theron had promised to introduce him to The Paragon of Secrets, but after that, he had no idea what might happen. If he found himself with some free time, he should probably spend it learning a bit more about the spirits he might find in this world.
Yesterday night's incident with the spirit could repeat itself, and when it did he wanted to be ready. When he had scanned the hotel yesterday, apart from the effects the spirit had caused like the dark mist, he hadn't been able to find out the location of the spirit itself, and that worried him. His divine sense was the one thing he was most proud of, and anything that could hide from it was not something simple.
But what worried him the most was the thought that the ability of the spirit to hide from his senses was not a unique one. If that was the case then he would need a way to reliably detect and harm those spirits.