Apocalypse Cultivation 2, ch 36

Jake woke up and nothing around him had really changed, which was surprising.  He really should have died while he was defenseless on the ground.

The Dead City was cold, uninviting, dangerous, alien…but he was still alive to be oppressed by it.  His soul was still intact, too.  A little bruised and wounded, but still there.

He got up slowly, painfully, and began cycling his cultivation base.  That action was calming, but also hurt like hell.  His body, mind, and spirit were damaged.  He only had a few moments of complete lucidity before the whispers and confusion began to start again.  In that time, he did some quick thinking.

Jake really needed to achieve a Reforged Body, but it was probably more important that he escape.  The two issues were both pressing, but he decided that discretion was the better part of … he lost his train of thought.  Escape.  Yes.

Then he stumbled forward, moving forward steadily to return to the portal.

And even through his muddled thoughts, he finally realized he was completely, hopelessly lost.

Jake sat down for a minute, putting his hands on his head.  Panic had been welling up, but fear was a mindkiller.  He rubbed his thumbs on his horns, trying to think.  Cycling his cultivation base still didn’t help and even trying to do so was hurting worse than before.

He didn’t recognize the street he was on.  The street sign had long since fallen down or been pulled off, and even if it hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t recognize it.  He aws in some sort or residential area and

Several ideas came to mind, and the most straightforward was to climb up a building to get his bearings.  He could feel it was a bad idea, but it wasn’t until he remembered the giant death machines on the highway that he thought of some reasons why.  There was a reason he’d been keeping to the middle of the road, too.  So far he’d been ripped to shreds eternally and had to basically eat pure, distilled death energy just to stay alive, and that was after running into two locals.  What would happen if more woke up?  What if all of them did?

He shivered.  If Jake was forced to honestly assess himself, he’d reluctantly have to admit that he could be brave.  But the Dead City was a different kind of danger than he’d ever faced before.  Walking was difficult, even thinking was difficult, and he could absolutely wind up worse than dead.  How could he even make brave or cowardly decisions if he couldn’t trust his own mind?  Even his senses were starting to go bad on him.  He was hearing things, seeing things, even feeling things.  Gooseflesh covered his back as he felt two fingers caress his arms before disappearing.

This had been a bad idea.  Fucking Slim, he thought.  He immediately felt guilty for that thought, though.  Slim had tried to warn him.

The low light of the Dead City was definitely starting to grow dimmer.  Jake reasoned that maybe as night fell outside in the Murim world, the Dead City had, “night,” too.  That was probably bad.  No, it was definitely bad.  He really needed to leave.

Thinking was getting harder.  His mind felt like he was floating, and he could feel himself slipping into a fuzzy haze but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.  Whenever he felt himself growing frustrated or scared, he tried to center himself.  Negative emotions would likely just make things work.

Jake turned a corner and blinked in astonishment, then confusion, then dread.  Up ahead, standing in the middle of the road was a woman wearing a red dress.  She had to be a spirit, but Jake wasn’t sure anymore if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  The woman had dark hair and her dress was decorated with white, embroidered birds.

She drifted closer and Jake was guarded at first.  He almost reached for something.  A weapon?  He thought he should have a saber, but maybe not.  The claws on his hands were a comfort as the spirit woman got close enough to talk conversationally.

Up close, the spirit was definitely a ghost.  Probably a strong one.  She’s pretty, he thought.  Yes, the ghost had to be powerful.  She seemed as solid as a real person.  Only someone paying close attention would notice any whispiness or anything unnatural at all..

Jake felt a wave of goodwill.  She was not attacking and instead held her empty hands out to her sides in a gesture of peace.  Maybe this spirit wasn’t so bad.  She smiled and said, "Traveler, be careful to keep your charm, your protection, or the dead might eat you!"

Jake absently nodded and touched his Pendant of Insight.  “Is that your charm?” she asked.  He nodded again and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

A flash of something through his mind made him feel uneasy, but he dismissed it.  He’d been feeling awful for so long, it was nice to have a break.

“There was the presence of a revenant nearby recently.  You should be very careful, young man!”

He nodded.  Revenant.  That sounded bad.  He felt like the word should mean more to him and even shivered but couldn’t place it.  “Why aren’t you scared? Ima monster,” mumbled Jake.

“No, I can sense your human soul.” The ghost woman smiled.  “Are you not feeling well?”

Jake shook his head.

“Of course you aren’t!  There are side effects with the type of protection charm you have!”  She put her hands out as if to tell him, but stopped, like she couldn’t quite reach him.  “What is your name?”

“Jake.”

“What about your full name?”

Alarm bells rang in the back of Jake’s mind but everything was so fuzzy, so dull, he couldn’t quite focus on them.  He answered, “Jacob Hessian Mazzariello.”

“I see.  Okay Jake, you probably feel heavy and confused right?”  Jake nodded.  “Well, you’ve been here for too long, but maybe I can help.  Do you need to find your way home?  To return to the living world?  You have a way?”

Jake had to think about the question for a while but nodded.  His thoughts were so slow.  So very slow.

The spirit smiled and her lovely eyes sparkled.  Jake distantly noted that what he mistook as makeup before was just part of her face.  Of course.  Ghosts don’t wear makeup.  He chuckled at himself.

“I can’t just let you go like this with a good conscience, Jake.  I’m going to help you, okay?  Your charm, the one around your neck, all you need to do is make sure it’s not touching your skin, okay?  You have been wearing it for too long and the energy is mixing with the energy here, and slowly poisoning you.  So you just need to take it off for a short moment, just to reset, and put it right back on.”  She smiled helpfully.

That sounded good to Jake. Something was nagging at the back of his mind again, but by this point he was so full of death energy that his energy was doing all it could just to fight it off from contaminating his dantian.  He slowly reached down and put the pendant on top of the necklace that Lady Brima had given him, not only breaking contact with his skin but intentionally breaking contact with its effects to.  The physical act had been symbolic to help facilitate terminating the connection.

He immediately felt a hand on his wrist, cold as liquid nitrogen but not so bad.  The ghost was touching him.

Night deepened, and he became more confused.  His thoughts slowed even further, and he began to hear the whispers of the dead more strongly, so loud his bones vibrated.  The spirit in the red dress was at his side, speaking softly.  Her words were nice.  They were like water on a dusty ground. All of Jake’s worries and stress were gone.  He felt like he should be doing something, but if it were important enough, he’d remember, right?

The ghost gave him instructions, and he followed them, cutting his finger and feeding her a drop of his blood.  It felt like the ground was moving.  His consciousness felt like it was starting to float away.

Suddenly, the ghost screamed and fell back, her hair writhing and her skull visible through her skin, like she'd been struck by lightning.  "What did you do!" she shrieked.

Clarity hit Jake like a cube of ice thrown into hot oil.  He binked once, disoriented, but then stared coldly at the twisting spirit.  Several facts had come smashing down on Jake’s mind all at once and he got himself up to speed in record time.  "You tried to steal my soul," he stated as fact.  “Not eat it, not kill me, you were trying to…own me.  Forever.”  The words felt true logically but also spiritually.  Jake’s skin crawled but he stood firm, dealing with the situation, processing everything that had just happened to him, and figuring out what was going on now.  He could deal with all of this later, if there was a later.  If the ghost attacked in his current weakened state, he wasn’t sure he could fend her off, especially not without drawing his saber.

Now that his mind was working properly again, he could assume that the boy revenant had scared off all the other dead for a while, similar to smaller fish fleeing a great white shark. This ghost must have been one of the most powerful spirits in the area to be the first to find Jake afterwards.

"There is no way I should have failed!" wailed the spirit.  "The only way to avoid being possessed without the protection of a charm touching the skin is to have already been possessed within a day, but that is not impossible!  You would no longer have your soul!  It’s there!  I felt it!"

Jake briefly thought about the revenant that had metaphorically chewed on everything that made Jake, Jake, before spitting it all out.  It had been the most painful, violating experience of his life so far, but in this moment, he felt lucky.  This ghost had likely intended far worse.  "What happened, spirit," he demanded.  “How am I not your slave right now?”

"My possession technique reversed."  Her hate-filled eyes bore into him from the ground, but they had no power anymore.

Nothing Jake had ever dealt with as a cultivator could have prepared him for this situation, but luckily, his mage training could help fill the holes."So now I own you know as thoroughly as you were trying to own me?"

"...Yes."

He eyed the evil creature before him.  “And now you must answer me honestly too, right? You already had that built into what you were trying to do to me?"  He could feel threads binding him to the vile thing before him.  The spell she’d tried to cast had almost perfectly rebounded and reversed.  Jake wasn’t sure about the Murim world, but it was rare for mages to experience anything like it back on Earth.  In fact, it almost never happened.  In this case, the spell had probably reflected instead of dissipating or exploding because the bindings had already grown so strong before it was actually attempted.

"Yes."  The spirit bared her teeth at him, all past attempts of seductive behavior had been abandoned, but now that she was powerless, Jake wasn’t phased.  The surrounding city was still a huge danger, though.

“What else did you have baked into what you tried to do to me?”

“General loyalty and goodwill. No rude speech or actions without pain.”

Thorough, thought Jake.  If his feelings toward the ghost had been cold before, now they were freezing.  He needed more information, though. “Why can I think so well right now?  Why is the death energy not affecting me anymore?”

“This bond connects us, offering protection for you,” grated the spirit.

“Why?”

“Because if you had died too quickly, my effort to enslave you would have been wasted.”

Jake narrowed his eyes.  Rage from what the ghost had tried to do with him was postponed for more pressing concerns.  "Do you know where the portal is that I came here through?"

"No."

That’s interesting, though Jake.  Maybe it’s hidden from the dead.  For the first time, Jake looked around and noticed he was in an alley.  He didn’t remember how he got here or what direction they’d come from.  His instincts were telling him that he was in great danger.

Suddenly, another thought occurred to Jake, another way to further tighten the binds on his malevolent would-be captor.  "Spirit, what is your name?"

"In death, I am known as Corner Spider."

"What were you known in life?"

"I do not know."

“So you have no proper name?”

“No.”

"Fine," Jake said.  "I am going to call you Fantasma Morto."  He smirked at his own joke.  “That is your full name now.”

"Do what you will," said the spirit, her empty, evil eyes flat.  She strained in place, but could not move, bound to Jake’s will by her own power.

“So Fantasma, can you help me backtrack to where you met me? Or can you bring me to a place with a higher vantage where I can safely get my bearings?”

“Yes, but you should not do that now.”

Jake frowned. “Why?”

The spirit squirmed, her mouth pressed shut but after a few uncomfortable moments of silence she said, “Night has almost fallen in the Dead City.  It grows far more dangerous, as some of my kind sleepwalk, and some come out to roam.  During the night, our senses are less restricted, too.  If all the dead here had their full senses intact, you would have likely already died within seconds of coming to this place.”

“Lovely,” muttered.  “Fantasma, is there a place nearby that I can hide and wait out the night?”

“Yes. I can lead you there.  If you do not wish to die, we should go now.”  It was obvious that she wasn’t exactly too upset about the idea of Jake dying, but was also being compelled to assist him not to.  It would have been kind of funny if the situation were not deadly serious.

“I see.”  Jake did some quick thinking.  It felt glorious to be able to actually think again.  He vowed to never take it for granted in the future.

Everything that had happened so far since he’d become a Champion flashed through his mind.  He couldn’t escape the Dead City just yet and he hadn’t forgotten the reason he’d come here in the first place.  Jake didn't want to get his hopes up, but he asked a question that had crossed his mind.  "Is there any treasure hidden nearby that the living do not know of?  Or maybe a special place with unique properties?"

"Yes to both, but the dead are forbidden from telling the living.  It is one of our natural orders, the pact of the Fighting Time Dead City."

“Yes to both?” Is it one place or two?”

“...One.”

After folding his arms and tapping a finger on his arm in thought, Jake asked, “If I could theoretically go to this place, would I be safe for the night?”  He was starting to actually hear more activity in this version of San Antonio.  There were weird growls and screamings coming from the distance now.

The spirit lifted her lip and showed her shark-like teeth as she said, “Probably.  But I am not allowed to show you the way. I am compelled not to.”

Jake nodded but asked, “Is that place near enough that I could reach it before night completely falls?”

She glared.  “Yes.”

Jake’s eyes glowed and even as the deep night fell, wails and screams of the dead coming louder and more often around him, he grinned.  "You will take me there, Fantasma.  Lead me to the treasure, protect me, and warn me of any harm, this I command you."

The ghost fell to the ground, writhing, fighting against his control one last time, but she had fashioned her own prison too well, binding herself completely.  Her body flashed several times and her head became nothing but a skull burning with unholy light as she fought.  Finally, she stood shakily, half floating.  Her hair blew with wind that Jake could not not feel and she grated, "As you command.  Master."