After about an hour of picking up stuff, I had a clearer picture of the stuff we had gained. I still didn’t have access to the back room. If there was a key, the original owner took it with him. They probably had hopes that one day they would return to this city and regain their supplies, and this never happened. Lydia had Thief, so I wondered how many levels she’d have to gain before she unlocked some kind of lockpicking skill. No, it’d be easier to just pry it open when we had the time.

The cash register was similarly empty. I still had my debts to pay to Figuro, regardless of my relationship with the people of Chalm. I had hopes of finding some money in the shops here. It looked like whoever lived here had also thought to clear out the till before taking off. Their lives might have been in danger, but money is money.

“Ink and paper, Master,” Miki said, pulling out a pile of stuff.

Some of the ink was dried up, but those that were wax sealed still seemed to be good. We also managed to find firewood. It was in the back, and there were piles and piles of it. We managed to find oil too. There was a town map, which was useful. Beyond that, there were various odds and ends. We gathered up everything we wanted to take on this trip. I had left the contents of my bag at our home base, so the bag was completely empty.

We managed to fill it to the brim, and still had more stuff to bring. We quickly realized we could only just carry it all if we all pitched in. Furthermore, Miki had the most trouble, and would never be able to make the distance with max capacity. That also ignored the possibility of the ghosts causing trouble.

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“M-master…” Lydia said nervously as she looked out the window.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ghosts… lots of ghosts.”

I looked out and sighed. “More dolls, huh?”

Lined up a distance away from the shop was a row of dolls. In fact, there seemed to be about twice as many as the last time we had fought them. It looked like the creatures of this town wanted to ambush us again while we were away from home. However, this time they were smarter. Even standing at the edge of the magic circle, they were outside my sanctify ground range. I’m not sure a fireball from Miki could hit them either. In other words, all of our strongest weapons were useless. These monsters were learning, apparently.

Miki joined us, and then gasped, her expression turning white.

“No… Master…” Lydia’s voice was shaking, “The dolls are a small part of the army.”

“Small part?” I said, but then the more important word popped up. “Wait, army?”

I switched to my heat vision and then looked outside. Although the ghost’s individual shapes couldn’t be seen, even I could see the black hole of cold spread out in front of us. Hundreds and hundreds of ghosts had gotten together and were now waiting outside just for us.

“So, they’re going for broke, huh?”

“Master, there is no way we can fight that off,” Lydia said tearfully.

“My Spirit Fire couldn’t handle that much,” Miki added.

I shook my head. “No… they’ve drawn a line in the sand. If we back down or flee now, besides being very difficult, we’ll basically be throwing away our chances of taking this city. This is our chance. We have to go forward.

“M-master… what are you saying?” Lydia asked, her voice shaking unsteadily.

“We’re going on the offensive.” I declared. “We’re going to make these ghosts realize their time left in this world is limited!”