Chapter 112 - Hide and Seek

Subject number one soon reached the entrance hall and halted, maybe even confused, having lost its target. After a while, it started circling Vern's last position endlessly in a loop.

Vern watched all of this from behind a shelf on the second floor. His physical eyes were mostly useless, given how it was so dark, and he had long switched off his lamp.

He didn't want to attract any unwanted attention to himself. Yes, he called them experiment subjects, but he didn't mistake them as harmless for even one second.

The terminology was just his way of giving himself a semblance of control where there was little.

Shaking his head, Vern focused back on the situation at hand. It seems they have a tendency to wait for their prey to come back instead of going out to search for it.

That could work in his favor. However, before he was ready to introduce more subjects within this experimental environment, he wanted to test out the limits of their senses.

He picked up a small glassy toy sitting on the shelf and threw it in an arc, aiming for it to land on the other side of the room from number one.

Crunch

The trinket shattered the moment it landed on the floor, its sound echoing everywhere. Yet, number one didn't react to it at all.

Vern furrowed his brows and picked up another bottle of perfume, aiming it right in the middle of the last throw and number one.

Clink

The shape in his perception seemed to shift its head a little, but it didn't stop circling his last position on all fours.

Hmm, their hearing is only so-so.

Having a controlled environment really allowed him to find their limitations like this. He didn't expect they would have so many.

When they were rushing at him like a monster, they didn't give him much time to think, but right now, he was slowly peeling back their inner workings—layer by layer.

Picking another small makeup mirror, he aimed it as close as possible to number one. He didn't need to be an arc shot expert to do this. He just had to be close enough.

He launched it with a whoosh

GRRRR

However, before it could even hit the ground, the entity jumped and opened its mouth—

Crynch

The mirror shattered into small chunks, which Vern had to work even harder to stabilize, making sure not to let his enemies gain any semblance of omniscient sight from the fragments.

He stopped his hand from moving to his notepad to write this down. It 'saw' the trinket just a second before it would have fallen on its body.

Is their sight subpar as well?

There was some logic to that. He'd seen the insides of their head. It was a pale imitation of the human body filled with that weird liquid, and there weren't any nerves either. The eyes seemed more for form than function.

The best way to confirm this would be to inch closer to the entity step by step and pinpoint where it started noticing him.

No. That would be too risky.

He couldn't confront them prematurely. If he did, he might be forced to cleanse it to save his own hide, which might as well become a tipping factor that made the other spirits avoid Cedric's suggestion and just leave this place for good.

For now, it's good enough to know that they do have physical sight, but it's nothing to write home about.

Vern stopped messing with number one for now. Sound was essentially the only sense he could test without wasting too much time or effort.

Smell wasn't worth worrying over too much because if they were good at it, he should've already been found out. Also, he didn't have any good ideas on how to go about testing that.

Vern rested his forehead on the counter's edge and processed all this, further refining his plan. Soon, his already glowing eyes narrowed as he stood up.

Time for subject number two.

He was ready.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Vern walked to the other end of the second floor, taking the stairs that took him down to the stocking room where number one had emerged from.

While he was standing in the corridor, just looking at that mirror completely removed any corruption that had appeared when number One had emerged.

Taking a deep breath, he stopped stabilizing another large mirror a few rooms ahead of him alongside a small piece of the big mirror inside the stocking room.

One to show them where he was and another to let subject number two out.

Srrr

As if a sigil branded on the iron, the small section of the mirror in front of him became riddled with inky noise, and at the same time, a bigger shape emerged out of the other room.

The moment the corruption retreated after failing to materialize from the small opening in front of him, he stabilized it again and left the room for good, heading back upstairs.

He stood behind the door atop the stairs and waited until another full humanoid shape of darkness fully surfaced out of the other mirror.

However, Vern didn't even wait for its legs to be fully out before he started forcefully stabilizing the mirror. He didn't want to leave anything up to chance.

What if the spirits learned from the last time and were prepared to jump out the second this one was done? It'd be too late by then.

Yeah, no.

The entity still managed to pull out his feet, but the mirror's shade became a perfect white the instant it was out on the ground.

Not bothering with anything else, subject number Two crept out, heading straight for Vern's last position in the corridor connecting this room to the stock room.

When it got there and didn't find Vern, it repeated the same routine as number One—circling around it like some predator. Yet the disproportional form of this one made it far more eerie to look at.

Interesting. Vern ran his hands through his hair.

One hadn't moved at all from the entrance hall and was still circling the same point round and round.

This meant the spirits that were already out of the mirrors couldn't communicate with their peers. Because if they could, number One should have headed for his latest position at the corridor, too.

Maybe they needed to be inside a mirror to communicate?

"This is good. Really good," Vern muttered to himself, cracking his neck. He could see it all coming together.

The sense of imbalance within his thought space hadn't gone up by much, but that was okay. He had time to engineer that, too.

Vern took a deep breath and descended to the ground floor yet again. These stairs ran from the room left to the entrance hall, allowing him to avoid getting too close to number one.

He strategically planned to drop each new subject in a fashion that maximized the distance between each of them and himself.

Starting two rooms away from the far end of this left-side corridor of the emporium, Vern repeated the same method.

One big mirror as an entry point, and one for them to peek at his current position.

The moment subject number Three was out of the mirror, Vern quickly retreated two rooms back. When Three moved out into the corridor, Vern ceased to stabilize the same mirror once again.

Using a small part of the glass lamp on his left to give them a peek at his new position, he continued retreating.

Four came out right behind Three, who was slowly making its way toward the first spot Vern stopped at.

Vern then escaped out of the corridor back to the second floor, focusing on the interaction between Three and Four.

Vern's last known position for Three was closer to the room it'd come out of, whereas, for Four, it was farther ahead.

That meant Four would have to cross past Three to get to the desired position. Vern wanted to know how they would react to each other's presence.

Soon, Three halted and started circling, the shape of its head trembling violently. This little detail reminded Vern of how disturbing they looked up close.

Luckily, everything was so dark, and he wasn't using his physical eyes anyway. He couldn't have relied on them even if he wanted to—not when these spirits had the ability to darken their surroundings.

Shaking away the disturbing imagery from his mind, Vern focused. As if right on cue, Four reached right behind Three, ready to run into it any moment.

However, as if with some tacit understanding, Four pressed its right limbs onto the wall and skittered past Three without even a thought, soon stopping and circling around—its limbs still rotated awkwardly.

Hmm, so they avoid each other, huh?

That was fine, too.

Averting his focus from the two new subjects, Vern massaged his forehead and veins around his eyes. Every second of doing this was taking quite a toll on him.

There were just too many glassy objects in this emporium, and he was starting to feel the fatigue of keeping all of them stabilized. Luckily, his representation was still doing fine.

He even wondered if he had too much of it. Compared to when he used to go out of commission after a single use of his Vision, this was insane.

He still had about a third of his total representation, and that's when he was also slowly pouring some of it into the amulet gripped within his fists.

I can't keep this up for too long.

Clenching his fists tighter, he made up his mind, "Time to speed this up."

He only had a few more zones where he could safely access the first floor and be able to retreat back to the second in time.

The second floor had four sets of stairs connecting it to the ground floor. One on either side of the entrance hall through adjacent rooms, the third one lead to the stocking room, while the last one linked it to the forge.

Unfortunately, there was no basement for him to further spread his enemies. However it just hit him that, even if there was one, it might not be the best idea to use it.

It would mess with the next and most important aspect of the plan—bringing them all together.

With silent steps, he crossed to the other side of the second floor and descended from the right-side staircase. The emporium had a symmetric design, this corridor exactly the same as the one where numbers Three and Four were prowling.

The positions of items were a little different, but he easily improvised. Deciding to go bigger, this time, he started just one room away.

He stopped stabilizing the largest mirror and small chunk around him. However, this time, he didn't close the 'portal' after just one entity.

Backing away from the last known position, he perceived number Five coming out of the mirror.

Then Six. Then Seven—

All his focus was on these entities, so when his leg hit something, it was too late.

Thump

Vern's heart tensed before he remembered that sounds didn't matter much—

GRRRRR

However, subjects number Five to Seven turned the shape of their heads straight towards him, scrambling out of the room.

Vern's heart dropped and he bit on his tongue, barely swallowing his scream, What the fuck!?