Cedric spoke with a sigh as he put aside his phone.

“Everyone knows that abilities need fuel to run I presume?”

He looked around, Alastair already knew about it but rest seemed clueless. Aiden was obviously acting dumb. The vampire had already told him about aether. He hadn’t informed Hellen and Valeria the entire thing which the vampire told him back then. Not even the treasure.

Hellen nodded, “No one told me, supers tend to keep each and everything about abilities hidden. But I guessed as such. It should be one of the restrictions which abilities like the sound one I mentioned earlier have. Right?”

“Yes.” Cedric replied, and continued. “This fuel, this energy required to use abilities, we call it ‘Aether’.”

“Now, just like supers, ghosts have limited aether. You know I am always in the library reading books. Maybe it slipped from the cracks, but one of the books had some information on the domain of special ghosts.

“In the case of a special ghost’s domain, when they aren’t actively using it, the normal ghosts which are in their domain can borrow its abilities. The book didn't mention what abilities a domain has.

“It mentioned that when normal ghosts borrow the domain of the special ghost, they are using its aether.

“Let’s take an example. When I lend you my bike, you are using the fuel I put in it to ride the bike, getting it? In relation to special ghosts, that petrol is an aether and the bike is a domain. Just like the normal ghosts can't use their aether to use the domain of special ghosts, you can't put in the fuel to ride my book. It’s only when I put the fuel, or in this case the special ghost’s aether which the domain functions on.”

“I see.” Aiden softly muttered. Everyone thought he was commenting on Cedric’s explanation, but it wasn’t the full part.

Aiden finally knew something about abilities. He didn’t experience the feeling of using aether when he gripped the baseball bat made from his ability but maybe that’s because his head was splitting apart from the headache as it is. He couldn’t have had the time or clarity to sense anything else.

“So, by counting how many times the helping ghost uses the phaseless ability, which we are assuming to be an ability of the domain of the special ghost, we can get to know…how much reserves of aether the special ghost has? What will knowing that do?”

“Correct.” Cedric smiled as he looked at Aiden. “For your question…” Cedric took a deep breath and looked around, speaking softly this time. “First thing, none of this should be made known outside. The Bureau doesn’t want others knowing anything regarding this.”

He then continued after seeing everyone nod. “Supers are divided into ranks, from which you can infer that ghosts are divided into ranks too. These three, and you. Lucas, are all Novices. Above Novice comes Adept and then Masters. You guys must have heard of the 6 great heroes? All of them are at this rank.

“The amount of aether one can store depends on the rank of the person holding the ability. Higher ranks means their ability gets a boost obviously. A soundwave from an Adept would be a lot stronger than a Soundwave from a Novice. But their conditions and side effects also get relatively upgraded, I heard. How? I have no idea, this is already beyond what someone of my status should know.”

Hellen smirked lightly, a chuckle escaped her mouth as she spoke, “Is this what we were dealing with in the past? Judging from all the ghosts I was up against, it seems my team was only ever given Novice phantom ghosts to go up against? Is this because the Bureau thinks we are incompetent? Or we’ll take the loot which ghosts have?

“Anyways, I must say I am thankful about it. There were some ghosts which were truly very difficult to deal with, if all of them were novice phantoms, then I don’t know what we would’ve done if there were more difficult types of ghosts out there.”

“I know about this.” Cordelia spoke in a flat tone. Judging from her face, it seemed that the talks hadn’t gone as she wanted.

“My father is in the department which handles this. Outside groups which cooperate with the Bureau are often given Novice phantoms to deal with. Anything of higher rank and special ghost including the normal ghosts within their domain are given to teams within the Bureau to handle.”

Her father works at such a position in the Bureau huh. No wonder she didn’t accept that the Bureau would let them continue to deal with the ghost. Aiden thought as he continued listening to her.

“This is not about discrimination but that the outside groups are calculated to be able to handle only those types of ghosts, even the groups which have a super or two in them. Very rarely will there be an outside group which has an Adept super among them, in which case we let them deal with Adept phantom ghosts, and that too only if they have an impressive past record.”

Aiden looked at Scottus who had arrived in a different attire with myriad stuff hanging from his belt. He also held a few more things, likely for Alastair and Cordelia.

He looked at time on his phone and stood up, addressing aunt Hellen and looking around. “Aunt Hellen, it’s almost time, if we start now, we can still get some information out of the helping ghost.”

Getting the cue, the rest of them stood up and began getting ready.

Alastair confirmed with Hellen about the information on the Helping ghost and also the one which was wreaking havoc on the town. He knew the underlying meaning behind the Bureau’s message, they didn’t care about the normal people being murdered everyday if it meant they could stall the ghost.

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Shaking his head to get rid of the thoughts, he looked at everyone in the room, including Valeria and Luna who didn’t speak throughout the discussion. With some thought, he said,

“We should make some people stay back, or better, in the car outside. So that we can chase the ghost more effectively.”

“Not in the car, a more dangerous ghost is about to become active outside.” Valeria quickly spoke up. She was here on her own volition, initially only there to help the town with the murder case while she visited her sister, who knew it would blow up into something so big?

“Alright.” Alastair agreed. “They’ll stay in this living room then. Let’s discuss the team and confront the ghost then?”

“Valeria and Cedric must obviously stay behind.” Scottus put forward his opinion. In a way, he wasn’t wrong. They were the only useless normal people against a ghost.

Luna was Cordelia’s partner, Hellen was the most experienced of them against ghosts and Aiden was possibly needed against the helping ghost so that they don’t need to heavily damage the ghost for it to resort to running.

“Keep a super of two behind if that’s the case. I don’t think I can resist if the ghost decides to come for us. And Cedric is a normal man too after all.”

Valeria spoke. She could take this chance to get acquainted with the super. Maybe they’ll put in a word or two for her if the Bureau decides they don’t need her around after knowing the amount of information she knows?

She knew she was the only one without a backing here. Aiden and the little baby he had with him had the backing of Hellen and Lucas. She knew too much for a normal investigator, she had to make sure that the Bureau decides to hire her seeing that she already knew a lot of things rather than kill her off.

Alastair considered her request and said after looking around, “Lucas and Cordelia can stay behind, that way we won’t need to take Luna along with us too.”

“Works with me.” Cordelia readily agreed. She had lost all the hopes she once had for this mission. She couldn’t wait to get out of here.

“Wait, why am I staying behind? I need to look out for Aiden. You can stay behind yourself, no?”

Lucas retorted. Alastair simply shrugged, “If you think you can handle Scottus, then by all means I have no problem staying behind.”

Scottus had an annoyed look on his face as he faced Alastair. “Oi, you make it out as if I am some sort of dog. I can behave okay? Just not around idiots.”

“Same.” Lucas spoke quietly.

Surprisingly, as if to prove his words, Scottus showed no reaction to Lucas. Or could it be that he didn’t hear it in the first place?

“I’ll stay behind then.” Alastair spoke up after seeing no reply.

“Take Scottus with you too.” Aiden said. He thought it would be better to have Lucas, him and Hellen after the ghost like last time.

“Nope.” Alastair’s tone was firm. “We need to see the ghost and want firsthand information on it.”

Hellen smiled mockingly, “You can’t trust us even at this point? You do know that we are in this together right? Against a special ghost at that. We aren’t stupid to feed you wrong information, not to mention we are only going to chase it in the first place. You’ll be able to verify that from the living room itself.”

“We should let it be.” Cedric softly called out to Alastair. “I don’t believe they have any reason to lie.”

Alastair looked at Scottus and asked with a careful tone, “Will you stay back?”

“One more expression making me look like an unstable factor and I will really be one.” Scottus mocked back. Alastair might have been ranked higher but they never had a match in the academy.

Hellen called them out in the middle of their discussion after she was done finding the ghost through her laptop. “Cedric, Luna, Cordelia and Valeria stay back. Me, Aiden, Lucas, Alastair and Scottus will go after the ghost. You want first hand information? Fine. Alastair, Scottus and I will enter the room to deal with the ghost, while Aiden and Lucas will stay in the hallway for emergencies.”

Without giving them any chance to discuss further, she held a gun in her hand and led the way upwards.

The rest of them looked at each other and quickly followed. When they finally reached the room behind which the ghost was supposed to be, all of them stayed silent.

“Didn’t you want firsthand information? Go on.” Aiden imitated Alastair’s voice and spoke with extra emphasis. He was enjoying the hell out of the Bureau team making a fool of themselves.

“Why don’t you do it?” Scottus snapped.

“Didn’t you hear aunt Hellen? I am supposed to stay back in the hallway. And by the way, I was the one who opened the door when it was my first time against the ghost.” He laughed with relish.

Scottus turned to Alastair, “Top ranker, it’s your turn to show them that the Bureau is not to be messed with.” He smiled and took a step behind Alastair.

The man in question was calm and for the first time, Aiden felt energy gathering in Alastair. He didn’t show any expression, no one knew he had an ability yet.

Thankfully Hellen was quickly alerted and Lucas put himself in front of Aiden, gathering his own energy.

“Relax, I am just arming myself.” Alastair smiled. “Trust. Unity. Remember? I won’t harm you.”

Aiden witnessed a sword manifesting in Alastair’s right hand. It was long, thin, and shining silver.

What are the conditions of his ability? I didn’t see him do anything out of place.

Hellen raised an eyebrow too as she looked at the ability. Disregarding everyone’s reactions, Alastair walked towards the door and held the knob with the left hand. Turning slowly, he opened it as the familiar smell of decay assaulted their noses.

Once he opened the door, Alastair walked inside holding his sword with both hands. Hellen followed after, with Scottus going in last after taking a look at the two standing in the hallway.

“It must’ve just hid itself, the smell is still in the air.” Hellen spoke out. “C’mon, go search. If our guesses about its information is correct it would be just an aggressive peak human physique looking to kill you. No abilities in the play.

“And yea, don't damage the heart, that is, don't kill it. The Bureau needs information about the number of times it can perform phaseless ability. Injure it enough that it feels the threat of death and begins running away.”

Nodding silently, Alastair directed Scottus to search from the left while he took the right.

Just a few seconds passed that a decayed hand shot out from a corner towards Alastair.