Chapter 14 The Haunted House

Although he didn't know if that "Mister" would truly be interested in accepting a commission to forge a spider implant, at least he had confirmed that there was indeed such a master in the outer city.

Suren was also a bit surprised; the black market truly was full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers.

As for the identity of that mysterious Mister, he guessed that he was most likely from the inner city.

After all, combat-oriented professionals could still comprehend advanced skills through fighting, but a profession like this that required a massive amount of specialized knowledge could only be cultivated in places with complete heritages, like the inner city. For example, the Black Tower Alchemy Academy, or large organizations like the Alchemist's Guild...

Suren guessed that it was probably another powerful figure with a shady background.

But for him, that was even better. Shady meant the connection to the inner city was more distant, and it would be safer to deal with them.

...

Suren came out of the black market early. He rode his motorcycle back to Green Street and plunged straight into the arena.

Recently, there had been professional-level deathmatches, and he was back just in time to catch the final few main events.

He harvested another wave of corpse experience, and during that time he and Kai and the others dealt with a few brawls. The night passed just like that.

Early in the morning, Suren rode his motorcycle to Ginkgo Street.

He bought bread for breakfast and suddenly thought of something. He stuck a note behind the mailbox at No. 14 Ginkgo Street, outside Bellman's Bakery.

Suren wanted to contact that mysterious alchemist again to buy some more special potions. He thought the Distortion Monster Repellent that had saved Reina last time was very useful.

He wanted to stock up on some, as they might come in handy in the future.

After leaving the note, Suren didn't go far, watching people approach the mailbox from a distance.

Sure enough, after a while, a young boy appeared. He found the note behind the mailbox, looked around, and then tore it off and ran away.

Suren, munching on his bread, suddenly became interested and followed him.

Although the boy was cautious and looked back several times, and even darted into several deserted alleys, showing some anti-tracking awareness, Suren's Advanced Tracking Skills and the steel cable in his mechanical gauntlet allowed him to follow with ease.

Finally, the boy circled back and appeared on Camellia Street, four blocks away from Ginkgo Street.

This was a working-class district in the outer city, with dilapidated gray buildings and "iron box houses" made of shipping containers and steel frames lining the streets.

Suren leaned against a three-story building with dark red tiles, calmly watching the boy who had taken the note dart into an alley, where he met up with several accomplices.

In the sewage-filled alley, a pale corpse that had been dead for who knows how long lay in a pile of garbage. A dozen large gray rats were gnawing on the corpse, making "squeak, squeak" sounds. They weren't afraid of people, and stared at the humans at the entrance of the alley while they ate.

"Hey, Luke, aren't you supposed to be 'working' on Ginkgo Street today? Why are you back?"

"Don't block me, I have a mission from Big Brother Danny. I got the letter!"

"Oh? Is someone buying potions? I really hope that customer buys a lot, so we can have money to buy bread."

"Beta, don't say things like that. It makes Big Brother Danny feel bad..."

"..."

Listening to their conversation, Suren roughly figured out the alchemist's name.

The boy darted into a dilapidated building and didn't come out again.

Suren didn't follow him inside. He had just had the whim to follow them to see where they went, and didn't have any other intentions.

He was just afraid of losing this connection, in case he needed any special potions in the future, so he could find the place.

Having found the place, he returned the way he came.

...

Not long after, Suren returned to No. 88 Ginkgo Street, and hired someone to move several large boxes into the small building.

No one noticed that one of the boxes, which looked like a cello case, contained a large black scythe.

A new resident had moved into the "haunted house." Perhaps feeling it was unlucky, none of the neighbors came to say hello.

Suren was happy to see this.

After the movers left, he carefully checked the entire house for the third time, and found nothing unusual. Then he set up some small alarm mechanisms on the windowsills, the roof, and the doors, and closed all the curtains.

Having done all this, he plunged into the basement.

He put up a few shooting targets on the basement walls and moved down the sandbags and training equipment.

After a little arrangement, the training room was a bit more presentable.

He had prepaid half a year's rent, so this small building would be his home for a long time to come.

Suren knew that although his Death Harvester talent allowed his skills and knowledge in various aspects to improve rapidly, his weakness was also obvious: the talent provided almost no enhancement to his physical body.

If he wanted his body to adapt to the explosive increase in skills in his mind, he had to train hard himself.

However, there was a lot of black technology in this world, and there were approaches he could take to physically enhance himself.

In the large boxes was a steam-powered cryogenic therapy device to help muscles recover quickly, and a neuromuscular bioelectrical stimulation device to accelerate muscle growth...

These were good things he had found at a mechanical shop in the black market before.

These iron lumps had been smuggled out of the inner city's decommissioned armory and sold to the black market, probably to be dismantled for parts.

After all, few people in the outer city knew what these devices were used for.

But after Suren extracted the memories of the Black Tower Academy assistant instructor in the underground cave, he learned that these devices were "military-grade equipment" used by the training departments of large inner city organizations for their recruits.

Although the models of the devices were a bit old, they were indeed good tools for assisting physical enhancement.

If these two devices were used well, they could increase a person's training efficiency several times over.

Suren fiddled with the devices. They seemed to be working normally, so he didn't pay much attention to them.

...

After simply arranging the basement, Suren walked to the corner and took out the black scythe.

Such a powerful weapon, if it was just used as something to gamble with against enemies, he thought was a bit of a waste.

He wanted to try to see if there were other ways to circumvent the curse backlash on this scythe.

As a Puppet Master, his first reaction was to use puppets.

Then, he actually controlled a puppet to hold the scythe and draw a small spatial rift on the wall.

He didn't dare to make it too big, just a rift the size of a fingernail.

Lest the backlash instantly kill him.

An hour later, Suren, who was stripped naked and standing in front of the mirror preparing to give himself first aid, suddenly felt a chill in his butt, and a stream of blood shot out.

It was an embarrassing spot, but fortunately it wasn't dangerous.

"As expected..."

Suren sighed softly and sprinkled medicinal powder on the wound on his butt.

The failure was expected.

If it were so easy to exploit this bug, Suren thought that the previous owners of this black scythe would have used it to slaughter everyone.

"Ordinary puppets are useless. It seems the curse characteristics of the scythe trace back to the user. The most likely targets are 'living things', 'energy sources', or some other targets with vital signs..."

Suren roughly figured out some of the principles behind the scythe's curse backlash, but he hadn't completely lost interest in experimenting.

He analyzed further: "High-level enchanted puppets have Substitute Puppets that can transfer the injuries of the main body. Maybe that would work. Or I could just use steel wires to control the limbs of other people and have them wield the scythe. That should be able to avoid the curse backlash..."

As a Puppet Master, he immediately thought of these two methods.

But as it stood, his level wasn't high enough to create a Substitute Puppet. And he still had a long way to go before he could control others to use the scythe. His puppet control skills had only just begun, and he was far from being able to control them at will.

Thinking of this, Suren's fingers twitched frequently, and the two enchanted dolls in the room cheerfully danced and twirled, habitually practicing puppet manipulation.

He suddenly thought of something, and muttered to himself, "If I could dissect a few Puppet Master corpses, my manipulation skills would probably improve quickly... Too bad Puppet Masters are rare to begin with. You might not even be able to find a few in all of Old Lunden."

...

The skill of multitasking allowed Suren to focus on other things while his hands were controlling the puppets.

Since he couldn't free up his hands to do anything else anyway, his thoughts suddenly drifted away.

Looking at this house, Suren wasn't sleepy. He instinctively thought of the fact that people had died in this house.

Based on his experience watching eight hundred horror movies, a "haunted house" where people had died continuously definitely had problems.

And as soon as this thought arose, Suren's mind started working: "Let me think, assuming there's something wrong with this house... Then what are the possible reasons besides Dark Spirit Energy causing distortions?"

In that instant, countless horror movie scenes flashed through his mind, and Suren's eyes gradually deepened.

Then, he quickly analyzed several possible causes of death.

No. 1: The landlord pretends to rent the house, but actually lures tenants in to rob and kill them.

No. 2: The house contains a hidden and undiscovered "dangerous source," like radiation, that causes death invisibly.

No. 3: The house contains something that only appears under certain conditions, like a "ghost species," a supernatural power.

No. 4: Other reasons, such as thieves committing random crimes for money...

The first possibility was almost instantly ruled out.

Before renting the house, he had already revealed his identity as a member of the Cross Society. It was unlikely that the landlord would dare to do something like that.

And since he possessed the All-Seeing Eye, which could see body data panels, negative magnetic fields and the like couldn't be hidden from him, so the second option was also basically ruled out.

As for the fourth, it was possible, but unlikely.

Then, Suren used the process of elimination to leave the last option.

Thinking of this, he suddenly felt a slight pain: "If there really is something wrong with why people have died in this house, does that mean there's a 'ghost species' in the house? It shouldn't be that coincidental, right..."

...

When it came to matters of life and death, Suren never took chances.

After thinking about this issue, he immediately went to the landlord, Old Grangert, and used both coercion and enticement to ask about the previous tenants.

Only then did he discover that three tenants had actually died in this house in the past year or so.

The first two were pretty normal, probably dying from distortions. One died from a tumor growing on his head, and the other went mad from growing distorted spots on his body.

But the third one, the blind man, was very strange.

From Grangert's words, Suren caught a few unusual things about the blind man: 1. He had a mysterious background, wasn't from the Southern District, and was suspected to be from the inner city; 2. He seemed to be investigating something; 3. The doors and windows were sealed, and the blind man suddenly disappeared without a trace, no body was found; 4. The blind man was very powerful and could identify things by sound;

When Suren asked about this information, he immediately felt that this house was probably not as simple as a "haunted house."

The third blind man had just left without saying goodbye. Perhaps he wasn't dead?

Or perhaps he was dead, and the body was missing?

Whether it was random speculation or the instinct of caution, Suren would always look for clues and reason about the suspicious points of an event when he encountered such bizarre things.

It was like playing a puzzle game. He wouldn't give up until he cleared it.

"That blind man came to this house to investigate something... to find someone? There aren't any living people, but there might be a ghost species."

"Or maybe there's a treasure in this house?"

Returning to the basement, Suren looked at the surrounding concrete walls, and a thought in his mind became clearer and clearer: "If he was looking for something, the All-Seeing Eye hasn't found anything unusual. Could it be that this house has a cursed object that can only be seen (triggered) under certain conditions, or even... a sealed item?"

"Assuming the blind man died and the body disappeared. Either he was eaten by a monster, or the murderer took him away, or the body is still hidden in some interlayer of the house. Oh, this is a transcendent world..."

"Maybe... this house is a man-eating monster?"

As soon as this thought arose, it was as if he had given himself a psychological suggestion, and Suren felt more and more that there was something "strange" in this house.

His gaze unconsciously focused, scanning the entire basement.

And just then, suddenly!

Information appeared on the basement wall that the All-Seeing Eye had scanned several times without detecting anything.

Havier's Lament Mortuary

Details: It only exists when you realize it exists; when you think of it, it will appear before your eyes;

...

"I actually guessed right..."

Suren watched, his eyes twitching.

Looking at the changing scenery around him, he felt for the first time that his love of wild speculation was a sin.

This wasn't a game. Solving puzzles was fun, but it could also trigger some incredible things. Old Lunden was an ancient ruin, and even now, "bizarre events" still suddenly popped up from time to time in the city.

But all I did was think about it... and it triggered it?

It wasn't the "ghost species" he had guessed, but it was even more outrageous than that.