Katie didn’t respond. Instead, she took out her phone and logged into ShadowNet.
She opened the mission briefing.
She came here because a father put up a mission on ShadowNet. $100,000 to anyone who can find his son.
Duncan Fox.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the time stamp of the mission.
It was from three weeks ago.
“When did you come here?” She asked, barely able to cover a smile.
“What do you mean? What the fuck do you mean?” Duncan repeated zealously.
The other three were calmer.
“We came here a couple of hours ago. What’s wrong?” Brian asked. Suddenly, he tapped his forehead. Something felt off. “Wait...I don’t...”
“You came here three weeks ago.” Katie said, flipping her phone in her hand. “What happened next?”
“What do you mean? What do you mean?”
“We...we entered the school...you weren’t here…” Brian whispered. Katie could barely hear him. Slowly but steadily, his memory was returning to him. “I...of course! How could I forget that? We got to room D200!”
“And then what?” Katie said slowly. Her voice was like the whisper of a demon, beautiful yet deadly.
“Then...then Ashley...oh my god!” Brian glanced at Ashley.
“I...I fell.” Ashley suddenly felt something warm on her forehead. She reached out and touched it, feeling something wet. She looked down on her hand and saw blood.
All the memory returned to her. She tripped and fell and cracked her skull on some sort of nail. She was killed instantly.
Katie smiled. The moment she saw the four teenagers, she noticed they weren’t quite right, at least not by the standards of a normal human being. She considered four teenagers with fatal injuries leisure, but not everyone would agree with her.
Ever since then, she was excited to see how things would turn out.
“Of course! Ashley fell and died. We...we were horrified. We ran!” Another part of Brian’s memory came back to him.
“I...I remember falling. I must’ve stepped on something...” Nicci was in a similar situation.
Katie glanced at the two fractured legs of the girl, or rather the spirit. “The school’s floor was outdated. Some of them were too weak to handle your weight. When you walked over them, they cracked and you fell, to your death, apparently.”
“I don’t understand! How did I die?” Duncan seemed to have recovered a little as he tried to recover his memory, but at the heat of the moment he couldn’t sort through all those memories easily.
Katie glanced at him. His neck was twisted in an unnatural angle.
“I’m not sure, but I think you slammed into a wall. Either that or you fell off the stairs and broke your neck.” She turned to the last member.
Brian’s face was purple. He was breathing heavily. As the first person to recover his memory, Brian realized what happened completely.
“I died from exhaustion, didn’t I?”
”From the looks of it, you had a stroke or something. CVD history?”
“Yeah.” Brian smiled weakly and sat down on the ground. Spirits didn’t really need to be afraid of dirt. “What went on back there? I remember going into the building with you.”
“It was some sort of hallucination.” Katie tilted her head. “None of you realized you’re dead. Maybe it’s something about the brain blocking out truths too tragic for the body to handle. Maybe it’s some sort of supernatural bullshit. I don’t know and I don’t care, but you forgot your death. You were simply stuck reliving this event again and again for the past three weeks. When I came here, your supernatural hallucination involved me. Fascinating!”
“Now what?” Nicci frowned. So all four of them were dead. Now what? Do they just keep living like this or do they rise to heaven or fall to hell or what?
“Why! Why?!” Beside her, Duncan repeated loudly. His head was lowered.
“Why what?” Katie questioned, trying to recover from the excitement of the reveal. She expected something good, but four dead people who didn’t realize they were dead? That was awesome!
Suddenly, Duncan looked up. His face, tilted due to the strange angle of the neck, was red from rage. His eyes were filled with blood.
“Why do you get to live and we have to die?”
Hearing the wrathful demand, Katie suddenly smiled.
“Cause I’m not a dumbass who went to an abandoned high school ten PM in the night and got himself killed by accident? I mean...what sort of idiot gets killed by stairs?”
“Ahhh!” Duncan screamed. All his pain and fear and anger were transformed into pure negative energy, giving him the power he needed to strike. Acting based on pure anger, he leaped forward at Katie. His arm reaching out, ready to rip the girl apart. If he had to die, then why should she live?
His effort was cut short when a blade came out of nowhere and severed his arm.
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“Hands to yourself, bro.” Katie commented casually as she controlled the blade to circulate around her. She could easily behead Duncan and end his second life with a single strike, but she didn’t. Where’s the fun in that?
Duncan fell back and screamed. While he no longer had a physical body, the duplicate blade was enough to damage his spirit form.
The wraith screamed for two more seconds. Suddenly, Duncan reached out and grabbed onto Ashley, who was shocked by the turn of event.
Under Katie’s curious eyes, and under the paralyzed eyes of Ashley and Brian, Duncan ripped Ashley’s spirit form apart and started stuffing the pieces into his mouth.
Katie could've stopped him, but she didn’t.
Duncan ate quickly. Before long, Ashley’s scream disappeared, and what was left of her entered Duncan’s body, making him stronger, larger, and faster.
Brian and Nicci fell back in horror.
Duncan’s eyes turned even redder. His severed arm grew back. He stared at Katie with nothing but fury.
“You will die…”
“Wow. Wraiths can consume other spirits for food? That’s impressive.” The girl cut the wraiths off. “Now, when I tortured the last wraith I met I didn’t have the equipment. This time, however…” She reached out and grabbed onto her blade before turning to Duncan.
“Have you heard of death by a thousand cuts?”
----------------------------------------
Twenty minutes later.
Duncan collapsed. His entire body was covered by cuts. Not a single piece of full skin could be seen on him.
“So,” Katie licked her blade and was slightly disappointed to taste no blood. Spirits didn’t have blood. “that was fun, but all good things come to an end.”
Duncan tried to get up but couldn’t. He raged and fought and charged for the better part of the twenty minutes, but it was useless. As crazy as the girl sounded, she was an impossible foe. She literally couldn’t be defeated, and her blade was a product of magic. As far as Duncan could see, whatever weapon she was using struck like a lightning, too fast to be seen and too deadly to be ignored.
He landed countless blows on her, enough strikes that could kill a grown man ten times, but it only turned her on.
His energy was exhausted healing himself. That was how he lasted twenty minutes. But now he was out of power. Even the boost he got after consuming Ashley was used up. If he could get more energy, he might stand a chance, but the girl would never give him the opportunity...right?
No one in their right mind would feed a fallen enemy and help him get up again.
Which was why Katie did exactly that.
The duplicate blade struck out again. Only this time it wasn’t at Duncan. It was at Nicci and Brian.
Both collapsed with disbelief in their eyes. Katie didn’t kill them. She merely severed their legs and rendered them immobile.
Turning back to Duncan, she smiled warmly.
“I hope you still have some appetite because I don’t know if I can force feed spirits into other spirits. I can try, though.” She tossed her weapon up and down and smiled when it formed a cut on her fingertip.
“What are you doing?” Brian demanded, trying to hold back a scream.
“Having some fun. Isn’t it obvious?” Katie smiled widely before grabbing onto Brian and tossing him in front of Duncan. “Bon appetit.”
Duncan was obviously taken by surprise, but he wasn’t going to give up a large meal just because it was offered by his enemy. He reached out and tore Brian apart before ingesting him. Both were spirits, but Duncan was a wraith, violent and deadly, and Brian was simply a spirit, wounded and frightened.
Just a minute later, Duncan stood back again with fury in his eyes.
This time he will really make this bitch pay...
Ten minutes later, he collapsed again. The new consumption of energy didn’t return him to his prime, and when he was dissected once again, he fell much quicker.
“Oh.” Katie noticed that as well as she turned to Nicci. “Look, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but then again, I don’t give a damn.”
“Why are you doing this?” Nicci said as she desperately looked around, trying to find a way out. “He’s going to kill you!”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.” Katie shut the spirit up with a dagger to the heart before throwing her to Duncan. The wraith glanced at her before biting down on Nicci. The girl screamed and struggled, but there was no result. Before long, the girl was consumed.
Duncan regained some strength. He stood up and stared at Katie. Just when she thought he was going to fight, and just when a smile crawled onto her face, Duncan turned and ran.
“What the hell? You’re a wraith, god damn it! Show some courage.” Katie screamed and ran after him.
Duncan fled without even looking back. Sure, he was a wraith, but that girl was a demon. All the hatred he had was turned to fear by all the torture he just went through. The feeling of being cut open piece by piece for more than half an hour was enough to break him. Despite being killed, he still had his former memories and thoughts, and he was never a brave person.
Katie groaned in frustration. The wraith’s nature allowed him to get past obstacles like trees and rocks with ease while she had to dodge. She could choose not to dodge, but as comforting as a cut on her leg felt, it was slowing her down.
Her duplicate blade returned to her body, and she gripped onto the handle, channeling the power the blade absorbed to flow through her.
Katie used her supplicant blade to maim two spirits already. She killed neither, but Katie was happy to discover even if she merely wounded the spirits, the blades took a piece of the spirit’s energy and stored them inside the crystal at the end of the weapon. Now, it was used to strengthen her.
Red energy lit up her veins on her arm and then her body. She groaned and ran even faster. Larger obstacles, like trees, she had to dodge. Smaller obstacles, like rocks, she merely smashed her way through. With enough strength to back her up, the pain only made her much faster.
The two made their way onto a highway. Duncan was getting slower and slower. The energy he received by consuming Nicci was getting burnt up. His fear of Katie forced him to extract every inch of energy within him to make himself faster, but it wasn’t enough.
Finally, he got slow enough for Katie to behead him with a single slash from the duplicate blade.
Seeing the wraith fade away, Katie glanced at her blade, which has flown back to her after delivering the kill. The crystal, as well as the energy it fed into Katie, felt slightly stronger.
Rubbing her index finger on the blade, Katie suddenly felt the urge to hold on the blade forever. In fact, she wanted to charge into a city and kill everyone in her way. The blood...the screams...the death...it would be a feast.
“You would like that, won’t you?” She whispered.
The blade resonated and passed a pleasant feeling into her.
Katie nodded before suddenly sending the blade against a rock a meter away. The blade resisted slightly out of self-preservation, but Katie’s will was too strong and the resistance crumbled.
The blade smashed into the rock, leaving a deep mark. As it retreated, Katie could see a scratch on the blade’s surface.
A trail of red blood flowed down her nostril.
The duplicate blade was damaged, and since Katie and the duplicate blade were connected, that damage was reflected onto Katie.
The blade vibrated, begging, pleaing.
Katie smirked before smashing it again. And again. And again.
When she finally released the blade, the weapon was battered. Its tip was dull. Its crystal was darker than before the fight.
Katie wiped off the blood on her face with her sleeve. “I am the master, not you. Do you understand?” She put the blade next to her mouth and whispered. “Try to influence me again, and I will snap you in half. Seeing what knocking you around did to me, I look forward to see what will happen if I completely break you.”
The blade shook in submission.
Katie finally smiled and returned it back into her sleeve.
She was a maniac, but she would never allow herself be turned into a mindless killer.
After all, where’s the fun in that?