CHAPTER 21: COIN TOSS

Wayne drove the blue sedan into Londan before abandoning it in a random alley, leaving the supplies in the trunk for whoever might find them. The four of them took a taxi back to the detective agency. Veronica, Vera, and Kristen were in a rush to return to the academy; two of them still had graduation theses and reports on the raid of the Death Sect’s base to complete.

Before leaving, the three expressed their gratitude to Wayne. All else aside, he had saved them. Once they finished with their work, they would visit the agency with gifts.

Kristen warned him not to leave his agency without a good reason. Although the death energy surrounding him had dissipated thanks to the Gate of Truth—a blessing in disguise—there were still other Death’s followers in Londan, and who knew when he might be targeted again.

She valued him highly and would take him to the academy for enrollment now if possible. Unfortunately, Evanston was a women’s academy and admitted no male students.

She remembered there being night schools specifically for training mages. She would need to ask around about the specifics. And since night schools provided a crash course with a limited curriculum, she would have to personally tutor Wayne first.

Once he completed his preliminary studies and built up a knowledge base, she would recommend a qualified mentor for him. That way, he would bask in the goddess’s light and inevitably throw himself into Moonlight’s embrace.

What a foolproof plan!

***

Wayne waved goodbye to the three ladies. Heeding Kristen’s advice about not going out unless necessary, he flagged down a taxi at the door and headed to the apartment where the failed art student lived.

Don’t go out unless necessary—well, I have something necessary to do!

Time to meet the vengeful spirit!

He had signed a contract with an undead hound, gaining his first servant. Previously, he had let the hound run free since he had no mana to feed it, but things were different now. Like a teenager who had just gained superpowers, he felt confident about himself and was eager to awaken his servant.

Besides anticipating his first summoning, there was a reason that he had to find the spirit. After awakening, a vengeful spirit would go mad from hunger if it didn’t receive its master’s mana for too long, which could turn it against its master.

Dusk was approaching. Wayne didn’t want unnecessary delays. He planned to bring the dog home before nightfall. Of course, he wasn’t completely unprepared. Just in case, he held the sacred tome that repelled evil spirits to his chest. He put on the white glove, too.

He was confident that even if he was unlucky enough to be targeted by ghosts, he could turn things around and chase them instead. He would be the one scaring the ghosts for once.

Times had changed. The young man was no longer poor... well, no longer as poor. And at least he needn’t be afraid of ghosts anymore!

***

The taxi stopped by the roadside. Wayne followed the Book of Greed’s guidance to look for the burial site of the vengeful spirit.

The Book of Greed could only hear the wails of dead spirits and could not respond to the wishes of the living, which frustrated him greatly. Living people would make much better servants. Wouldn’t signing a master-servant contract with magical girls be more straightforward and efficient? He would enter the magical world much more smoothly!

He reached his destination quickly with no troubling ghosts getting in his way, as if his ID had turned red from killing a player in PVP and scared away other players. It was an empty clearing in the back of a pet shelter with a veterinary clinic nearby. The occasional barking of larger dogs could be heard.

As night approached, the barks sounded more like wolf howls, and with the fog thickening, the atmosphere immediately became eerie and sinister.

It was creepy. Wayne saw green light particles emerging from underground, gathering like phosphorescent flames and flickering with ghostly coldness.

“Damn taxi driver must have taken a detour!”

He complained about arriving late. After taking a few steps, he stopped in front of a patch of soft mud. He closed his eyes, calling to his servant and channeling mana to it through the Book of Greed.

The soft, damp soil slowly rose before a rotting paw emerged, followed by a nauseating stench that made him cover his nose. It wasn’t always a good thing to have a dog’s keen sense of smell. It had shattered many of his fantasies, like the idea that a pretty girl’s fart didn’t smell.

A fully decomposed large dog crawled out of its grave, one eye greyed, and the other an empty socket flickering with green flames. Receiving its master’s mana, its rotting flesh rapidly fell away, leaving only a skeleton.

Hazy mist accumulated and wound around the undead dog’s skeleton like arms, constructing a semi-transparent body that looked both insidious and macabre, yet somewhat majestic and cool.

It was a Doberman with a compact, well-proportioned body, standing close to seventy centimeters tall. Its ears hadn’t been cropped, and its tail wasn’t docked, so its ears drooped rather than stood upright.

The putrid smell in the air had faded considerably. As their eyes met, the Doberman bared its teeth and growled. Wayne saw a bone-deep hatred in its eyes.

Images flashed by, revealing the vengeful spirit’s past: this Doberman had been raised as a pet by a young boy. As the boy grew up and entered school and then the army, his family had no time to care for the dog, so they sent it to a pet shelter.

The staff didn’t care about the animals they kept. They misappropriated a portion of their budget while using the cheapest dog food and occasionally starving the dogs, and they washed them by simply hosing them down in cages. The Doberman, with its uncropped ears, suffered from bacterial infections and fell ill.

Later, the Doberman became pregnant and gave birth to seven puppies.

The shelter staff happily registered the seven puppies and applied for more budget for dog food. The money didn’t go to the dogs, of course—it went straight to the staff’s pockets. Right in front of the Doberman’s eyes, they hurled her pups to the ground and killed them.

That night, amid the thick fog, the Doberman went berserk and attacked the staff, which led to it being starved to death for assaulting humans. It was later buried in this wasteland.

Many more pets were buried here, killed by the same abusers. Whenever night fell, remnant cold lights would drift up eerily.

“These scums!”

Wayne felt a headache brewing. He could sense the Doberman’s desire for revenge and thus understood the meaning behind ‘vengeful spirit’. It was named that for a reason; for him to gain a vengeful spirit’s loyalty, he had to help it get revenge. Only then would the spirit move on from their past.

That was troublesome!

As a playboy who loved both cats and dogs, Wayne detested animal abuse, especially since the staff members at the pet shelter were paid to take care of the animals, yet did the opposite; they deserved to be haunted by the vengeful spirit.

However, he still believed that human lives were more valuable than a dog’s. To just let the Doberman have its revenge...

Woof, woof, woof!

Sensing his hesitation, the vengeful spirit became restless and growled with increasing ferocity.

“Don’t fuss. I didn’t say no.”

He pondered for a moment before taking a coin out of his pocket. “How about this—we’ll flip a coin to decide. Heads, you get your revenge. Tails, I’ll seek justice for you through legal means. How’s that?”

Unsatisfied, the vengeful spirit stared intently at his neck, considering the feasibility of turning on its master for freedom.

He touched his neck with a hiss. “Good dog, I’m a detective. I’m best at collecting evidence. With my intervention, those dregs of society will definitely get kicked out of the shelter. Then I’ll pay for headlines to condemn those inhuman scums. The furious public won’t let them off the hook.”

The vengeful spirit didn’t understand and was ready to lunge.

Resigned, Wayne calmed the spirit down with the sacred tome. Communication with it was difficult.

The man and dog faced off. It didn’t take long for night to fall completely, and the surrounding fog thickened to an unusual degree. The spirit’s mist-formed body blended with the environment. The two clusters of flickering cold flames exerted tremendous pressure on him.

Maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t beat the dog.

“How about this? I’ll take good care of you from now on with the best dog food and the best dog house. Now work with me to find a middle ground. I am your master at the end of the day.”

The vengeful spirit didn’t resist this time. His description had awakened its happy memories with its former owner, and it silently agreed to the coin toss.

“Heaven is always watching. Let heaven decide their fate...”

With a shrug, Wayne tossed the coin, and the man and dog followed the coin’s fall with their eyes until it buried vertically into the mud.

They gaped. It was neither heads nor tails. What choice should they make?

He recovered from the shock and mused, “Since the coin’s upright, why don’t you bite them half to death, then I’ll investigate and collect evidence for articles condemning their evil deeds?”

The vengeful spirit didn’t respond. It wondered if they should go for another coin toss.

“Don’t worry. I’ll treat my dog right. I guarantee that these people will end up on the streets after losing their jobs, and when they find work again, I’ll buy more headlines to condemn the heartless employers who hire them...”

The more he spoke, the more excited he got. He never knew he could be so evil. “You must know that they will be sleeping on the streets once they lose their homes. Say you can’t sleep at night, and you get lost and happen to run into them. Naturally, you’ll bite them and chase them. They will be trapped in the endless nightmare of your revenge.”

The vengeful spirit perked up, nodding repeatedly in approval. An instant death would be too easy for them.

You’re evil, Master!

“Only occasionally. As long as you’re happy.”

Wayne only realized that he could hear the spirit’s inner voice after responding to it instinctively.

“Go on. It’s late. I have to go home!”

Mist surged wildly as violent resentment converged it into a ten-meter-tall wall, taking the green will-o'-the-wisp along the ride as it crashed toward the pet shelter like a tsunami. That night, screams and dog barks echoed, and the entire shelter cowered in fear.

The next day, the news that staff at the pet shelter had been attacked by mad dogs made headlines.

The staff had horrible bite marks all over their bodies and were running high fevers from the resulting infection. At the end of the article, the journalist lamented that the kind-hearted people who loved animals shouldn’t have met such a fate. The public also expressed sympathy; some even visited them at the hospital.

Two days later, the newspaper published a shocking story with damning photos and words of distaste, stirring up waves of condemnation. When the bones buried in the clearing were unearthed, another set of photos made the news. The storm of backlash continued...

***

Night, Wayne’s Detective Agency.

Wayne lowered the newspaper and his cup of black tea, looking around. “Hm, where did Do go? Off to play with someone again?”

“She’s still so energetic this late at night!”