“Ah!” Ivy let out a cry, her foot that had been on the petal pulling back and letting the car slow down.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We forgot to tell Miss Alma or Rosita that we were going!” She cried out.

“Hmm… that is a problem…” I responded.

Although the life of Lana, and possibly other people as well, were on the line, we had committed to help with the dance. Abandoning our volunteer work in the middle of things without a single word was simply bad manners.

“What should we do?” She asked uncertainly.

“Don’t worry about it,” I stated. “I will send Rosita a message.”

“Ah… good.” She let out a breath and then shot me a glare. “Wait? When did you get Rosita’s phone number?”

I rolled my eyes. “She forced it on me when we were bringing up the chairs.”

It hadn’t been an event I thought was notable, so I hadn’t cared much about it. It seemed to be enough to calm Ivy down though. I pulled out my phone and quickly typed her a note.

We left the school. Ivy and I are driving up to Climax Peak. We’ll return when we’re finished.

There, that should clear up any confusion. I closed my phone and put it away while Ivy finally seemed to relax and start picking up the pace again. The sun had already set, and the number of street lights began to dwindle. The road leading up the mountain had no lighting at all except for the headlights. Ivy had stopped for a moment, staring into the dark incline surrounded by forest.

“This place is scary. Do guys take their dates here?”

“I’ve heard that people’s minds find it difficult to separate the response of fear from the response of love. A slightly dangerous drive would increase the heart rate and breathing, putting the couple into the ideal state for fornication.” She turned and gave me a look, causing me to clear my breath. “So, I’ve heard. I’ve never done something like this.”

“It’s my first time too…” I raised an eyebrow in her direction and she turned flustered. “I mean, it’s my first time driving up one of these places with a boy… not that we’re doing anything. I didn’t mean that. I mean… um…”

“Perhaps, we should get a move on. I don’t know how fast the current Lana is. She might have already reached the peak and found a target.”

“R-right!” Ivy quickly hit the gas, but she had no choice but to slow down.

She leaned forward as the street turned into a slim dirt road that was heading up. Her car engine strained to move at this angle. The trees squeezed in around us, branches occasionally striking the roof or side with a thump. We remained in a bumpy silence for a few minutes, but Ivy seemed to be growing stressed and couldn’t stay quiet.

“What happens when we find her?” She asked. “Lana, I mean. Do you know how to do an exorcism?”

“I do not.”

“Then…”

“This isn’t the first malignant spirit I’ve dealt with,” I explained. “This one caught me off guard, but that is all. There are many ways to deal with them besides exorcism.”

“Such as?”

“Trapping it in the body and killing it.” I shrugged.

“Oh… we can do that… wait, isn’t it trapped in Lana’s body! Do you mean kill Lana? We can’t kill Lana!”

“It was just one example,” I muttered, turning away as she glared at me. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

It wasn’t like I wanted to kill Lana either. However, malignant spirits tended to grow. At best, usually, an entire family fell to a malignant spirit before it could be purged. At worst, I had seen entire towns descend into darkness. The problem was that it was usually avoidable. People tried to save their families and friends, and that’s what allowed it to spread. Ivy herself had almost become infected by it. If she hadn’t had a form of protection on her, she would have already been no better off than Lana.

Priests from my world rarely ever went to the effort of trying to exorcize the spirit. It was too much hassle. The ways they could hide made them an extreme pain to remove, and their risk of spreading violently was high. Besides, the simple act of being infected with malice made someone unclean in the eyes of the goddess Asana. They usually just locked everyone in a building and burnt the building down while letting out prayers for their poor souls. That was Asana’s mercy.

Stolen story; please report.

Of course, such things were not regularly announced. The only thing the church did better than killing those who had done nothing wrong was managing their public relations. It always became a harrowing story between good and evil, where valiant priests and paladins fought off the darkness. Unfortunately, none of the poor citizens survived, but there was nothing the church could do. This is why all citizens must remain vigilant and report to the church as soon as any suspicious activity appeared, lest everyone in the village dies. Well, not everyone.

They would pick out a few uninfected children who had potential and indoctrinate them into the church. After all, a new generation of pious zealots needed to be produced to inherit the will of their predecessors.

“We’re here!” Ivy turned sharply enough that I nearly fell into her.

I had allowed my mind to wander back to some dark times in my life. The village I had grown up in, the one where I had built my first wizard tower and with whom I had a crush who went on to have children with someone else, had ended up being purged of evil in such a manner. I only found out about it after I was on the run. They claimed it was my fault. I had cursed the village. In truth, it had been to send me a message.

“Aiko… c-can you please move?” Ivy asked.

I pulled myself out of her lap and glanced around. We were on some kind of cliff that overlooked the mountains. It faced away from the city, which made it exceptionally dark. The only lighting came from the stars and other nearby cars idle. There was a parking lot here, and at least fifteen other cars. At least one of the cars was dark and rocking back and forth. The other cars closest to us were difficult to see into. There appeared to be steam blocking the windows.

I turned back to Ivy, noticing her face was completely red, and she was distinctly not looking at the other cars.

“I suppose I can guess, but this is Climax Peak?”

She nodded, her face turning even redder. “Are we sure Lana will be here?”

“No.”

“What?” She gave me a surprised expression.

“The malignant spirit would be attracted to hormones. This was only a potential place she could end up. We took a gamble by coming here.” I explained.

“Well, is she here?”

I raised an eyebrow. “We’ll need to look.”

“For Lana?”

“Or bodies… only if we’re too late.”

Her eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. “B-bodies…”

“You don’t need to worry about it. We’re probably on time.”

“Probably?” Her voice was even higher.

“Look, just give me a call if you see anything suspicious and I’ll come running, alright?”

“R-right!” She seemed to shake herself out of her moment of shock.

I sighed and got out of the car. Ivy turned off the car, and the headlights went out. The only light I had to look around was from my cellphone. I considered using a light spell. Had this been the previous world, I wouldn’t have hesitated. However, mana was scarce here, and I couldn’t afford to waste what mana I had on frivolous spells, especially if I was going to have to deal with this spirit.

I raised my cell phone and went to the car closest to mine. There were sounds and movements inside, but the windows were completely fogged.

“Is it an unusually humid died?” I wondered, realizing the fog was on the inside of the car.

“Th-that’s not it.” Ivy’s voice was somewhat strained.

I knocked on the glass with my flashlight pointed at the window. “Oi, open up.”

“Sh-shit, it’s the cops!” I heard someone on the inside cry out in panic.

There was some fumbling, and a moment later the care lights turned on. I went to knock again, but the car pulled back away. I could see a boy with his shirt off while a girl was ducked down low as they backed away in a hurry. They peeled off down the road before I could say anything else.

“I guess that wasn’t Lana…” I spoke helplessly.

“I-it wasn’t!” Ivy agreed nervously.

“It’d be faster if we split up,” I said. “You check the cars to the left, and I’ll check the cars to the right.”

“Ah… y-yes… okay.”

I wasn’t a complete fool. I had gotten enough of a look in their car to reason out what Climax Peak was. It appeared like young men and women came up to these woods to fornicate. Naomi had been correct. It was an ideal hunting ground for the malignant spirit. I had only heard the name before, so I hadn’t known the exact nature of this place. In my world, such places couldn’t exist. It was too dangerous to leave the villages. There could be beasts, bandits, or monsters outside the city limits. Furthermore, there was nothing so convenient as these cars. That didn’t mean there weren’t places the youth went to fornicate, I just never went to any of them.

I let out a sigh as I headed to the next car. “Perhaps, I should have sex.”

I had been given a second life. Even though I died a virgin in my last life, that didn’t mean I had to remain a virgin in this world. I was even in the body of the playboy Aiko. I had to be able to successfully reel in the interest of at least one girl. Since Ivy had such an experience, I wondered if she’d be interested in trying it. After this was over, I had to remind myself to ask her.

I looked in to see a couple. The girl had her head down in the guy’s lap and her head was moving up and down. Her hair wasn’t Lana’s color, so I moved on. I knew what they were doing. Even if I was a virgin, it wasn’t like I didn’t work at a porn store. Furthermore, I had been around my demons, who had engaged in countless depraved acts in front of me. Such a sight wasn’t enough to make me blush anymore.

“Hey, get lost you fucking pervert!”

The next guy shouted at me before I even got close to the car. Since he didn’t seem distressed, I avoided his car completely. The final car was empty of anyone. As my eyes scanned the car, they landed on a purse sitting on the seat. It had been knocked over and the wallet had fallen out with a little devil keychain attached to it.

I felt something familiar about the purse, and more particularly, the wallet. Why did I feel like I had seen those things before? As I wracked my brain trying to connect the dots, there was a scream. It was in the direction that Ivy had gone. I abandoned my thoughts and quickly ran across the parking lot toward the scream. When I reached the end of the parking lot and the last car, I ran into nothing. Ivy was no longer there.

I looked around the clearing of Climax Peak, and I was completely alone. It was at that moment that I also remembered where the purse had come from. That purse was one of Skylar’s purses. I had seen it at work. The wallet was also her wallet, I recognized the little keychain she kept on it, as they sold it at our store. Why was Skylar here too?