Sinerman Mansion
The tense silence was soon broken by Des deciding what she finally wanted to hear about.
"Tell me about the world outside," she prompts.
Aren looks at the ghost, and though he had heard it speak before, it is only now that it speaks a full sentence that he realizes the voice is feminine.
"The world outside? What exactly?" he asks slowly, as if afraid that anything he says might upset the being in front of them.
Desmond gives him a look that makes him flinch. "Everything? The world, you... him," she points at Sith, whom she knows isn't human, but also isn't like her, so she isn't sure what he is.
Sita clears his throat and looks at Aren, who nods at him, because when it comes to academic questions, Sita is better. Aren is more of a fighter than a thinker. Sita thinks and considers what to say.
It seems that this Higher Spirit really hadn't been here long to ask such questions. However, he also doesn't want to say too much, because knowledge is power and this Higher Spirit doesn't need any more reinforcement. It is especially disturbing that it is interested in the world outside the mansion. Could it mean that it wants to get out? That could be dangerous.
Sita decides to share at least the basics and doesn't intend to delve into any depth.
"I should probably start with the history. Ahem," Sita adjusts his stance and begins to recite as if he is reading it straight from an open book.
"In the year 1499, the exact day and hour when the year turned 1500 happened to be the day the Spirit World attacked the human world," he narrates.
"At that time, there was a great war going on in the Spirit World between *Yama and **Mara. Yama is the ruler of the Spiritual World and the spirits. Mara is the supreme demon. Mara had been at odds with Yama for a long time and attacked Yama in an attempt to take over the entire Spirit World. The war has been waged for years, perhaps centuries. Yama slowly won the feud until he finally cornered Mara. Mara, in an attempt to save himself from defeat, did something no one had ever done. She tore the veil between the world of the living and the dead and fled with the rest of her army to the world of the living."
Des hadn't quite expected to get the full history lesson and watched the fox man as he spoke. Sita flinched under her intense gaze and hesitated, unable to tell if the ghost was angry or not. Maybe she didn't want to hear about Yama and Mara?
He cleared his throat and decided he'd rather cut the whole sentence short. "Mara and her army hid themselves by possessing the bodies of the living. Mara, however, who had ambitions, decided that if she couldn't control the Spirit World, she would at least control the world of the living. She began to wage a war of conquest on the rest of the world, and her supernatural strength and army caused her to be successful. She conquered villages, cities, and kingdoms." He noticed that the High Spirit stopped looking at him and instead began to wander his eyes around the room.
Sita therefore began to speak even faster. "Yama felt responsible for the trouble the Spirit World had caused the Human World, so even if he couldn't go to the Human World himself to help, he could provide the tools. He opened up Spirit Channels through which humans could connect with the Spirit World and provided the knowledge of contracting with Spirit Beasts. People learned how to use Spirit Beasts and Spiritual energy and began to fight against Mara. Mara was eventually defeated, captured, and taken back to the Spirit World." Sita gasped when he finished speaking as he had rushed through the rest in one breath.
Desmond looked again at Sita, who suddenly fell silent. She wasn't really interested in this at all, so she was thinking about other things and only half-listening to the whole thing.
Des didn't see why she should care about the past; she was living in the present, and if it happened before or during her waking days, it didn't affect her. She was more interested in the present world.
But there was one thing that caught her attention. And that was the Spirit Channels; she remembered the rifts and the creatures in them. She suspected there was a connection. Desmond wasn't stupid, just her knowledge was limited at the moment. "Tell me about the Spirit Channels," she asked the fox man.
Aren and Sita exchanged glances, then Sita slowly stood up and walked to the side, where he began to cross, leaving Des to turn in his direction and set her back to Aren.
Sita grabbed the edges of his kimono with both hands. "The Spirit Channels are the link between the Spirit World and the Human World. In order to use them, one needed to cultivate Spirit Gates in their body," he recited like a wise professor from the academy.
"Depending on the strength of the bloodline, it's possible for a person to be born with open Spiritual Gates. These are then connected to the Spiritual Channel, which links them to the Spiritual World. Every open Gateway is initially empty and needs to be occupied by a contracted Spiritual Beast. Over time, a total of ten Spiritual Gates can be opened."
He begins pointing at his body, first touching the brain and then the heart. "The first Gates always open either in the brain or the heart. The other Gates are located in the glands, the kidneys, the bloodstream in the hands, and the bones in the feet. Ten in all." Sita continues to explain while Aren slowly stands up and very cautiously moves towards one of the windows.
"Each of the Spiritual Gates can be occupied by contracted Spirit Beasts, which imbue humans, otherwise Spiritualists, with supernatural powers. Such Spirit Beasts are divided into three categories: Supportive, Passive, and Active. However, it always depends on the level of the contracted Spiritual Beast. Most weak, low-level Supporting Beasts have only one function, to let more Spiritual energy from the Spirit World flow into the Spiritualist's body. But the stronger ones can also have abilities like faster healing for the Spiritualist, resistance, strength, psychic protection, curse resistance, and so on." Sita seems rather engrossed in the explanation, but in reality, she's trying her best to impress the Higher Spirit enough to not notice what's going on behind her back.
"Again, Spirit Beasts that are Passive turn into tools. Like Spirit Weapons, vehicles, spatial inventories, or even just kitchen dishes. And Active Spirit Beasts can take solid form and actively assist the Spiritualist. By the way, the Active Spirit Beast is me. My specialty is sealing seals and exorcism." He says rather proudly though he thinks a moment later that maybe he shouldn't have revealed it.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Desmond is interested in this and so she listens intently. So the rifts were Spirit Channels, so on the other end were the creatures she saw. She hesitates. She saw the rifts disappear. Was it possible that she had broken them?
"And you are?" Des asks, still wondering what he was. He wasn't like her, and she didn't think he was the same as the creatures she'd seen in the jeans.
"My name is Sita," Sita says without hesitation.
Desmond shakes her head. "No. What are you? You're not a ghost."
Sita pauses, unsure if he should oppose her. "I am," he says carefully.
Des shakes her head again. "You're not. Not like me."
Sita understands what she meant. "Ah. Of course. I'm a Yokai. But I'm also classified as a spirit. Ghosts and spirits like you are... someone who was once alive and is now dead. Yokai are a little different. They're living beings who became Spirit and didn't die before."
Sita lece moved his eyes and then closed them as he smiled. "Yokai can be made of humans, but mostly animals that have been exposed to Spirit Energy for too long or have had a Spirit Gate unoccupied for too long and have too much raw Spirit Energy flowing into their bodies. Such Spiritual Energy will eventually destroy the physical body, and if the soul is strong enough not to be destroyed, it will create a new body. Such beings are then Yokai."
Meanwhile, Aren managed to make it to the window without Spirit noticing. He slowly touched the handle on the window and pressed it bit by bit. To his relief, there was no sound as he slowly opened the window. His plan was to stealthily get as far away as possible before she noticed, and hopefully this time he could finally escape.
But in a moment, he had to admit that he was probably cursed. He didn't believe it was a coincidence that he was so unlucky. Des suddenly turned her head 180 degrees without moving the rest of her body and looked at Aren, who was frozen with one leg sticking out the open window.
Sita tensed up and laced his fingers together as he readied a seal he could use to restrain the ghost if she got angry. "I... ah... it was a little... hot," Aren came up with a lame excuse.
In fact, Des would have accepted that explanation, but she noticed something else that made her straighten to her full height. Both Aren and Sita flinched, and Aren waited for nothing before throwing his other leg over the sill and leaping out the window. He didn't have to worry about height, as the room was on the ground floor, so he barely buckled his knees when he hit the ground.
"Watch out!" He heard Sita shout and Aren felt a chilling sensation go through his head. It was as if he had stuck his head in icy water that took his breath away.
What he felt was Des's body flying out the window and her body flying through Aren's head, but Desmond didn't care about the fleeing Aren. Des flew up and soared higher and higher until she stopped above the roof of the mansion. She frowned and looked around.
A red haze rose into the air around the boundary of the estate. Des could see that there were several people doing something beyond the boundary of the estate, she could see that there were other beings that were similar to her or Sita next to many of them. Desmond understood through the information she got from Sita that these were all Spiritualists and their Spirit Beasts.
However, she didn't understand what they were doing. She flew off in their direction to learn more and completely forgot about her guests.
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Outside the border of the mansion
Two dozen Spiritualists stood on the border where Sinerman's mansion ended. All of these people were seal and barrier specialists, composed of the Stragos family members and teachers from the Academy.
As soon as Velica's father learned that his daughter had been attacked by a feral High Spirit and that she had been hiding from it for two whole days before she managed to escape, he didn't delay a second. He immediately contacted the Spiritualist Academy, planned their next move, and headed to the area.
The two squads of Spiritualists summoned their Spirit Beasts, focusing on seals and barriers to form a strong seal around Sinerman's cursed mansion, preventing the High Spirit from moving freely and also preventing unauthorized people from entering.
Behind the troop of working Spiritualists stood two dominant men. One of them was a strong middle-aged man with a wrestling physique, brown hair, and a beard around his mouth with a goatee. He wore a fitted brown vest over which he had an orange short coat and brown pants.
image [https://cdn.leonardo.ai/users/e70a625f-a29f-469a-912e-d78c50e456f1/generations/2a2759dd-083f-4f2e-8218-0ebef34fdcd0/Default_An_elderly_dignified_manly_man_with_stubble_brown_hair_5.jpg?w=512]
He was the head of the Stragos family, Will Stragos, who was more of a businessman than an active Spiritualist. He owned many businesses in the city and owned the largest export company on the continent.
Next to him stood another man who looked rather eccentric.
He was an older man whose hair and beard had long since turned snow white, and his face bore the wrinkles of age. He was thin but still had the firm stance of someone who kept himself in good shape even in his old age. He wore a loose white shirt with wide sleeves and loose long blue pants with a yellow-trimmed belt and yellow collar.
What immediately caught one's eye, however, were the pair of cat ears he wore on his head and the black cats with two tails hovering over each shoulder. Two purple orbs curled around the black cat above his right shoulder, and the cat itself had purple eyes. Meanwhile, over his left shoulder was an almost identical-looking cat, but this one had red eyes and two red orbs circling around it.
image [https://cdn.leonardo.ai/users/e70a625f-a29f-469a-912e-d78c50e456f1/generations/aa9e8d16-27bf-4f47-a3ce-402d6c4240f4/Default_A_powerful_and_wise_practitioner_of_spirituality_the_o_0.jpg]
However, no one would dare to laugh at the man's appearance. Despite his looks, he was still the Principal of the Spiritualist Academy and also one of the strongest Spiritualist in the entire city. Principal Rachil Menei was a Tier 3 Spiritualist, and everyone knew that the cat ears on his head were his passive Spirit Beast that allowed him to hear. He himself was actually deaf and could only hear thanks to his Spiritual Beast.
If someone felt out of place with the appearance of their Spirit Beast, the only way to change it would be to break the contract and find another Spirit Beast.
Much to the frustration of many Spiritualists, they cannot control the appearance of their beast or know in advance what they will look like. The only way to know what attributes and insights such a beast will have is if they have already had a contract with someone and the former Spiritualist has provided information about it.
Will watched the Spiritualists work with folded arms and spoke to Principal Rachil. "How much longer is this going to take?" he asked.
Rachil raised his hand and scratched a finger under the purple-eyed cat's muzzle. "About five to ten more minutes. If the High Spirit shows up, I'll stop it so as not to disturb the others," he replied.
Will nodded in understanding. "I'll send you the contract later."
"Sure. After all, it was only because of your information and assistance that we were able to act so quickly and secure this place. Plus, it came at a really good time," the principal smiled a little.
"I thought so," Will agreed.
"Certainly, as one would expect of a businessman of your quality. You'll find opportunities for profit anywhere," Rachil actually praised the business mind of the head of the Stragos family.
"It's just about time for the Spiritualist 2 Tier final exams. Killing or capturing a feral Higher Spirit is a great way to fulfill the qualifications for Tier 2," Rachil added. Although he would have to change the rules for becoming a Tier 2 to reduce the possibility of death as much as possible, but this was perfect.
The cursed Sinerman mansion would become the test ground.