CHAPTER 50: CARELESSNESS

Fortune left early that night.

It was frustrating, but Deklan wasn’t dispirited.

As the saying goes, tomorrow is a brand-new beginning!

He could certainly pick off where he left off with Marsha tomorrow, and this time, he’d do it to the end.

But the world doesn’t work that way.

"I’m sorry, young master..." Marsha smiled weakly as she lay on the bed. "I don’t think I can keep you company today. Can you not go hunting today, especially going to the inner area?"

Deklan stood by the bed, looking at Marsha, who was covered by a blanket to her neck, only exposing her face, which was very pale. He had left her to rest last night since the mood was gone, and he came back to her looking like this.

"What happened...?" He asked whisperingly.

"I don’t know," Marsha coughed, as her eyes barely opened. "I suddenly felt sick when I woke up."

A minute ago, Deklan was cheerfully hopping over from his place to Marsha.

He even cleaned himself earlier to make sure—he was smelling fresh and good, expecting an early steamy session in the morning. But he was disappointed to be greeted by Marsha’s sickly complexion, a sickness that came out of nowhere.

[Pfft...!]

Laughing? Do you know something about this?

[Host, have you ever seen a Ghost fornicate with a human before?]

I’ve seen it a few times in some messed-up movies. Why?

[And how did the human end up after?]

Sick? Go insane? What are you even trying to say he—?

Deklan’s thoughts stopped mid-track when he remembered something important that he had forgotten.

Stiffly, he looked down at his body and saw that he was in his Ghost form.

His mind was so tangled up in Marsha that he had forgotten his death by the Drifting Skeletal Wolf.

And that left him in his Ghost form.

For shit’s sake! No wonder people were looking at me weirdly.

Deklan cursed hard in his mind as, other than having the composition of his body changed from flesh to mana when he’s in this form, nothing much about him changed. It was easy to forget that he wasn’t in his fleshy form.

Not to mention, since it was night already, the Dual Existence skill was set to his Ghost form.

So, his perceived senses also didn’t change.

Is it going to be bad? Is she going to be okay?

[That... is for you to find out alone.]

Fuck, you always had to make things ominous. Can’t you once answer like a normal person?

[I’m not a person.]

Touche.

Deklan shook his head and focused on Marsha again.

He caressed her hair gently as he gestured toward his slightly translucent body.

"It’s my fault that you’re like this... I forgot I’m not in my normal body," Deklan sighed, annoyed that there’s even something like this to think about. "Go rest for the day. I’m going to regularly check to see how you’re doing."

Just as Deklan was about to leave, Marsha caught his hand.

Deklan glanced over his shoulder; his eyebrows raised.

"You still haven’t answered my question."

"Alright, I’ll skip hunting today. I’m only going out to train as usual. Don’t worry about me and focus on resting."

"Okay..."

Once he eased Marsha’s worry, Deklan stepped out of the house and stood by the porch.

He stood there motionlessly, like he was a statue.

And in the next second, he raked both hands through his long hair in sheer frustration, punching as well as kicking the air with wild swings like a child throwing a tantrum. But then again, he got excited for no reason, and now he had to drag himself through the day while suppressing his expectations.

Cuddling on the bed and engaging in bed-talk—gone.

It’s not possible anymore with Marsha being sick.

"Nah, I can’t do this," Deklan clicked his tongue and summoned the Albino Spear, eyes fixated on the hamlet’s entrance. "I’m going to go insane if I don’t work up this heat. Sorry, Marsha—but I’m still going hunting today."

"Speaking of those bastards..." Deklan lowered his stance.

His eyes glistened with malice as he prepared to dash.

"It’s not that I lied to Marsha. I also need to retrieve my body," He thought aloud, only now remembering that he had forgotten about his body—and he blamed the Drifting Skeletal Betas for this. "It’s probably eaten clean by now, but I have to check."

Swish!

Moments later.

Deklan rushed out of the hamlet like a madman.

He carried a bloodbath alongside him, so thick that the very air reeked of blood as he passed.

For the next couple of hours or so, the time in the morning that he spent meditating and planning his day was used to hunt down the remaining Drifting Skeletal Betas inside the forest. He didn’t even bat an eye as he passed another roaming Ghost.

All of his focus was fixed on killing as many of these bastard wolves as possible.

Being exhausted of mana yesterday carried a backlash until today.

Deklan could feel that his body was extremely fragile, deprived of mana, and it would take a good time for him to return back to normal. He already tried drinking Minor Mana Potions, but it didn’t give him any mana.

It’s ironic considering the name of the potion.

But that wasn’t the potion’s fault.

All the mana it provided seeped into Deklan as intended, but the backlash made his body hollow to the point that it couldn’t capture the mana it was fed. Instead, the mana seeped out again and returned back to the world.

Even so, Deklan doesn’t need it.

His raw strength is more than enough to kill the wolves.

Splash!

Deklan impaled a Drifting Skeletal Beta from below with his spear and hauled it off the ground.

He suspended the poor wolf mid-air, and with a twist, cut open a big gash on its belly.

A notice from the system appeared, notifying him of its death, but Deklan wasn’t paying attention.

"More! I have to find every last one of them!" Deklan looked around like a bloodthirsty hound that was trained solely to find these wolves. "Don’t even try to hide, dogs. I can still smell your disgusting scent even from here."

Deklan’s high perception, experience, and sheer fucking made him a potent hunter.

All the wolves have acute noses, and they could already tell that someone was hunting their kind.

And to preserve their lives, the wolves hid in caves, near the inner area, or even in the tops of the trees.

But having to hunt so many of them already, Deklan could track them down and kill them easily.

It was only when the sun was at its highest that he finally stopped.

Deklan looked down a wolf that was stabbed by a spear to its head below his foot, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "That should be the last one of them," He nodded firmly. "I didn’t exactly keep track, but I should’ve killed almost a hundred of them already. A good hunt."

He pulled out the spear and nodded in satisfaction.

Now that he had finished what he came to do, he put away the Albino Spear and checked his money.

[Spooky Dollars: 702]

"At least now I’ve got the money to cover my carelessness," Deklan nodded.

Earlier, he’d already gone back to inspect his physical body—and, as expected, nothing of it remained. In a forest crawling—with ravenous Ghosts, hoping his fresh corpse would still be where he left it was nothing more than a naïve fantasy.

And the cost to repair his body inflated because of that.

Now, it would cost him exactly 200 Spooky Dollars to repair his body.

It seemed his current strength, the condition of his corpse, and the time since death all dictated the price. For now, while he was still an Iron-rank nobody, he could probably shoulder the cost—but he could already tell this would become a serious problem later on.

Good thing that he knew about this right now rather than later.

Deklan sat down on the carcass and contemplated.

"Right now, I’ve got plenty of carcasses stored in my inventory to use as sacrifices. Since the inventory space is in another dimension with no concept of time, they stay as fresh as the moment I put them in—blood still red, and usable." He folded his arms, tilting his head as he weighed his choices. "Should I use them now... or should I try hunting down the other Alpha Ghost across from the Shadowed Town first?"

Of course, Deklan wanted to use the Awakening Ritual as soon as possible.

But he wanted his Mana Vein to be of a decent talent.

Sacrificing a silver-rank Ghost on top of everything he gathered would certainly give him the edge that he needs. Hunting a silver-rank Ghost should be impossible for the current him, but with the new Ghost Resident he got, it might be possible.

Deklan shrugged and stood up again.

"I guess I’ll wait a bit longer to try and hunt down that Alpha Ghost. I’m going to take it down either way since I now rule over the Shadowed Town, so might as well wait," Deklan pointed his hand at the carcass, intending to put it away, but paused for a second. "Hmm..."

A thought came to mind.

Deklan put the carcass away and took out another carcass, this one was the Drifting Skeletal Wolf.

He crouched down, summoned the Albino Spear again, and slit down its belly.

Once it was opened, he reached his hand inside, feeling his way around to try and find something.

"This guy is a bronze-rank Ghost, so it should have a Paranormal Heart," Deklan muttered, licking his upper lip as he dug deeper into its chest cavity until he finally found it. He grabbed the thing he felt to be a Paranormal Heart, and pulled it. "Let’s see if I’m right."

Deklan had already used the doppelganger technique to harvest its Minor Presence.

And now he was checking if he could still harvest a trait from it.

Once he pulled the heart out, he immediately cut it open and found a small glowing gem inside.

Seeing the gem brought a smile to his lips, "Seems like I can..."

...

[Hearing Trait]

Description: A trait that could be used to form a Paranormal Heart. It contained the trait that targeted the hearing sense. Once the Paranormal Heart was formed, the host would have a guaranteed chance to learn a Minor Presence that targeted the sense of hearing.

...

"Patience is key for success," Deklan smirked as he had come to a decision.

He would wait until he hunted down the other Alpha Ghost and also gathered all the traits from the Ghosts in the forest. All of them, if it’s possible.

It might not work, but in the case that it works, he decided to gather all traits first.

Deklan put the gem and the carcass away again as he turned to look over his shoulder.

"Now, let’s check our lovely new Ghost Resident, shall we?"