That night, I closed my eyes on my bed, focusing on my mana-garden. I walked to the tree where my half-complete spell lay and waved my hand, dispersing the bonds around the tree.

The tree snapped to its full height, its branches shooting out and filling the secondary area. There was a crack in my spirit as the spell finished mastering into Crow’s Shade Messenger, and I took a deep breath.

I didn’t need every single spell to be ingrained in order to open my second death gate. In truth, I didn’t need any of them to even be mastered, though that’d be a bit stupid. But I felt like once I had my Vampiric Senses spell mastered, I’d be in a good place to break open my second gate.

Then I’d need a second gate mana source for death magic, but that was a bridge I’d cross when I got there. I could already see the advantages of a nascent truth, though I truthfully didn’t think I’d be well suited to one.

I spent a while longer working on my garden, trying to prune out some of the negative effects of the rive, before I eventually went to bed.

The following morning, I headed out to the Wyldwatch. My monetary situation was awful right now, and I wanted to have a little bit of cash for my date on Solsday.

The best paying missions all took several days, of course, but there were still a few that were around the city. One of them actually caught my eye a little bit.

It was rather similar to the very first Spiritwatch mission that I’d ever taken. Someone’s ghost had been found wandering the alleyways of the city, and they needed someone to track it down and figure out where they’d died.

Unlike the first mission I’d taken, this was more than just tracking. The ghost had attacked a few people, so it had likely died in a violent manner. Combat skills, especially defensive ones, were recommended. They’d provide a spirit trap for the ghost, and I’d have to dump it in a graveyard, then return it and let them know where I’d set it up and what I’d learned.

It paid well though, and right now, that was my goal, so I marked the mission, picked up the spirit trap, and set off.

This time, instead of having to walk to the part of the city where the ghost had died and climb onto the roof of a nearby bodega, I just flew. My broom wasn’t the best in the world, but it still beat walking by a country mile.

Despite the fact that I hadn’t significantly cultivated my mana to raise the walls in my garden, the ingrained status of my Analyze Death spell made the cost of powering it so much lower that it almost didn’t matter.

Where before, I’d taken hours to track down the ghost, needing to stop and let my mana refuel itself, I was able to track down the poltergeist in thirty minutes.

According to Internal Pocketwatch, it was thirty-two minutes, but I figured I could round off the two.

Dusk’s presence was another change from the first mission I’d taken. She was having fun playing with the air currents that streamed around us as we flew, and she urged me to go faster, though I didn’t listen – not in the middle of a city, at least. The last thing I needed was to have a broom collision.

I floated down and landed in the alleyway the ghostly death energies were most concentrated in and put my hands on my hips. That gave me a brief flash of dysphoria, so I shoved my hands into my pockets after a moment.

“I know you’re out there,” I said. “I can see your energy. Come out, I just want to talk and get you to a graveyard.”

The energy swirled through the air and the garbage in the street began to stir. Newspapers rustled, and then shot towards my face with the speed of a combat spell.

Before they could touch me, I split them in half with a lash of Briarthreads.

“I can do this all day. That took a chunk of your essence to manage, didn’t it. C’mon, let’s just talk.”

The ghostly shape of a middle-aged man, balding, with a bit of paunch appeared in the alleyway.

“I will not go to a graveyard!” the ghost shouted.

Their voice was ethereal, and seemed to reverberate oddly in the alleyway. Not an echo, but… Something.

The ghost flicked their hand, and the detritus began to shift again before a bag of garbage the moldmongers hadn’t gotten yet threw itself at me.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I split it apart with Briarthreads again, causing trash to explode everywhere. I wrinkled my nose as I was hit with the smell, and sketched out my smell blocking ungated spell.

“She deserves to die,” the ghost said as he stared into the sky, almost seeming to not realize I was there. “She deserves to die. She deserves to die. Shedeservestodie. Shedeservestodie. ShedeservestodieshedeservestodiiiiiIIEEEEE!”

As his screams began to blur together and grow louder, the ghost grew more solid. In his shirt, there was a bloody ragged hole. It almost looked like he’d been stabbed.

I gagged. I’d had a bit of violence thrown my way before, and I’d done plenty of sparing, but this was my first time seeing something like that on a human.

Well. Maybe not a human, but something that had once been a human.

The gagging almost cost me dearly. A bloody knife coalesced out of death energy, sliding out of the ghost’s chest, then flew down the alleyway at me.

My new protective pin’s aura slowed the attack just long enough for me to counter it in midair with a Pinpoint Boneshard.

It wasn’t enough to stop the garbage on the ground from wrapping around my legs and sending me toppling to the ground.

Dusk let out an annoyed sounding peep at having her perch – which was to say, me – suddenly hit the ground. She pointed her finger at the ghost, and mana spilled out of her, seeping into the world.

I rose to my feet, staring. I didn’t know what Dusk was doing, exactly, but it was forcing the ghost’s power back. Each time a tendril of the ghost’s death energy lashed out, it was met by the power of Dusk’s mana.

I wasn’t sure if this was an effect of both being spiritual entities, or if it was something to do with her being an astral plane. Maybe both, maybe neither.

But whatever it was, she was winning. She looked over at me and let out an annoyed wind-rustle.

Right. She was winning, but she was burning through her power quickly. I hopped to my feet and picked up the spirit trap.

I had been expecting the spirit trap to be a bottle. In most of the novels I’d read, they were bottles. Apparently, the bottle type traps did exist, but they were too expensive for use in mass production, especially when dealing with ghosts who weren’t extremely powerful.

This one seemed plenty powerful to me… but then again, Dusk was first gate, and she was beating him, so what did I know?

Instead of a bottle, the trap was a simple, rough hewn wooden box. I drew it out from Dusk’s realm with a thought, and charged the ghost.

It sent its ghostly knife and two garbage bags at me, but the combination of Briarthreads, Pinpoint Boneshard, and my defensive aura kept them off of me.

I reached into the space where the ghost was and opened the box, then fueled it with a burst of death mana.

The ghost let out another wail, screaming about its wife, then it was sucked into the box. The world returned to normal, and the death energy filling the alley began to quickly dissipate.

Dusk let out a tired sounding huff and asked me for some Mana Shock.

“I’m not sure a spirit should have an energy drink,” I said truthfully. “How about you just take a few drops of the elixir Kene gave us instead.”

She let out a teasing whistle that I only said that because Kene had been the one to give it to me, and I stuck my tongue out at the tiny spirit before uncorking the bottle and using the dropper to feed her two droplets.

Her body was so small that the droplets were more like large drinks than they were droplets, but the elixir worked by mana-weight, not physical size.

Once she’d gulped it down, I tucked the box back into her realm, and we set off towards the nearest cemetery. It was a small affair, only a few dozen graves, but the wards to stop the violent dead from leaving were solid. I was actually glad it was so close – the spirit trap could only hold a first gate spirit for thirty minutes, and the last thing I wanted to do was release the thing in the middle of a street full of innocents.

When I entered and picked up the spirit trap, a shade floated out from one of the graves and over to me. The shade was tall, at least six feet, if not a little bit more, with a long, fluttering robes – or perhaps a cape – and a shadowy staff clutched in its hands.

The difference between shades and ghosts was a bit opaque to me in the technical sense, but I knew it boiled down to shades having more magical power and active thought, while ghosts had more physical power and memory.

The power this ghost gave off was considerable. Third gate, but old and well settled, like the difference between Ed and one of his managers.

“I’ve got a poltergeist,” I explained to the shade, tapping the box. “I need to keep him contained in a graveyard until the Watches can sort out his death and put the spirit to rest.”

The shade studied me, and I felt its mana senses sweep over me, then plunge into my spirit.

I let out a gasp and shuddered, but then the ghost was pulling back, and nodded its head slightly. Still shivering, I opened the spirit trap.

The ghost came out thrashing wildly, but the shade, who I could only assume had appointed itself as guardian of the graveyard, slammed its staff into the earth, and a wave of death mana rippled out, pinning the ghost down. I nodded my thanks to the shade, then quickly left the graveyard and flew back to the office.

It took me a bit longer than normal to fill out the reports and collect the rewards, since I needed to put in what the ghost had said, without putting down the conclusions that I felt were obvious. But apparently, that could color the investigations too much, so I had to leave it off.

Even with the longer reports, I still managed to get the mission complete in under two hours. Considering how much more magic, skills, power, and equipment I had now, that shouldn’t have been surprising, but a part of me couldn’t help but still imagine me as a powerless kid.

That part wasn’t loud enough to stop me from clearing three more missions that day, of course. None of them were anything crazy – I had to help a shopkeeper that was dealing with some electric rodents, trap a greed based Asomatous that had manifested in the bank, and relocate a handful of magical plants without letting them get hurt.

It earned me just over a hundred silver, once Orykson took his slice, along with a free lunch from the shopkeeper, and a packet of alchemically enhanced plant nutrients that Dusk absorbed, so I counted the day as a success.