The Creaking Door, a Ghost’s Lament, and the Necromancer’s Gambit

A persistent creaking, scratching, grating sound echoed.

Even the steady spray of water couldn’t entirely mask the faint, irritating noises emanating from above.

‘Perhaps a small animal is scurrying across the roof?’ Chen Ran mused.

‘Surely, there couldn’t truly be anything… unclean, could there?!’

He had told himself countless times to abandon such superstitious thoughts.

Chen Ran attempted to divert his attention.

He began to reflect on the past month, noting that with September drawing to a close, he had managed to allocate the final points to his “Spirit” attribute, pushing it to 15, just two days prior.

Now, he would need to accumulate reward points to either upgrade existing skills or acquire new ones, a process that would likely consume another month.

Otherwise, he considered, the Spirit attribute seemed somewhat ineffectual.

Currently, without actively employing skills, the other benefits derived from “Spirit” appeared negligible.

‘Or perhaps entirely absent?’ he pondered.

‘Then again, it might be useful in certain contexts, simply in ways I haven’t yet perceived…’

“Did you buy the strawberry milk and come back?”

“??!”

Just as Chen Ran’s thoughts were meandering, a woman’s soft, murmuring voice drifted into his ear.

“Did you buy the strawberry milk and come back?”

Spinning around abruptly, Chen Ran found himself confronted by a colossal dark silhouette pressed against the steamy bathroom glass door.

With a sound that set his teeth on edge, the glass door slowly, inch by agonizing inch, began to slide open.

“Did you buy… the strawberry milk… and come back?”

“…”

****

“A remarkably powerful evil spirit dwells here.”

Within the pitch-black hotel room, a stark, pallid candlelight flickered, casting a small, illuminated circle upon the table.

The sickly man Chen Ran had noticed earlier on the bus—the one with the ashen face and top hat, seated in the corner—now cradled a black human skull in his hands, speaking in hushed tones.

His eyes were closed, as if he were engaged in some arcane ritual, while his right hand continuously stirred a viscous, uncoalescing mass of blood on the tabletop.

Opposite him sat several burly men in suits, their faces devoid of expression and their wills clearly subdued.

Leading them was Chen Ran’s familiar acquaintance, Saburo the Scarred.

“You all,” the sickly man commanded, “go and pinpoint the location of that evil spirit.”

“Yes, Master,” the burly men responded in unison.

They rose unsteadily, then lumbered out of the room.

Simultaneously, several bone-white rats scuttled out from beneath the sickly man’s clothing, trailing Saburo and his group, seemingly acting as living surveillance.

“To think, to actually think,” Ugudu, the pale man from another world, murmured to himself, “that such a formidable evil spirit exists in this realm! This is undeniably the first step in my conquest of this world.”

He hailed from a world where both heroes and demon kings had vanished; the legendary hero had disappeared after vanquishing the demon king, whose whereabouts also remained unknown.

Ugudu had simply awakened one day to find himself transported to this new reality.

Lacking inherent magical energy, he was forced to rely on various mediums to cast his spells.

Fortunately, this posed little hindrance to him as a necromancer, for their art primarily hinged on ‘mental power’ to command the undead and weave enchantments.

However, a necromancer bereft of undead servants was utterly worthless.

Thus, after a brief acclimatization to this world, Ugudu had embarked on a relentless search for evil spirits he could subjugate.

His initial inquiries had led him to a street known as “Linzhou City,” rumored to be haunted.

The very men he now controlled were among those who had encountered the ghost there.

When he first encountered these individuals at the hospital, they were in a state of extreme mental vulnerability, utterly terrified of the supernatural, and remarkably susceptible to his influence—he had merely concocted an identity as an exorcist, and they had believed him without question, hehe.

This ease of manipulation was precisely why Ugudu had so effortlessly controlled them with his “brainwashing spell.”

Yet, to his surprise, the evil spirit in Linzhou City, according to these men, appeared to be the subordinate of another necromancer…

‘Could this world also harbor necromancers?’

Ugudu decided it would be prudent to exercise caution, refraining from rashly venturing to that particular street.

Instead, utilizing a local invention known as “the internet,” he had located the haunted hotel before him.

He had initially dismissed such widespread rumors as having low credibility.

However, to his astonishment, upon his very arrival, he had stumbled upon a “major catch.” The evil spirit before him was unequivocally extraordinary.

Within the inky blackness of the corridor, Saburo continued his walk.

One by one, the subordinates who had been at his side inexplicably vanished, as if they had each stepped into entirely different passageways.

Both sides of the corridor were lined with tightly shut doors and impenetrable, dark windows.

The corridor’s distant end was swallowed by a dense blackness, and looking back, the same impenetrable void greeted them.

They all seemed to be trapped in an endless labyrinth, unable to find their way out, merely circling in place.

Observing this through his bone-white rats, Ugudu realized they had likely entered the evil spirit’s domain.

Evil spirits, by their very nature, possessed the ability to distort reality, drawing individuals into a hallucinatory world suspended between waking and dreaming.

In this regard, their capabilities were akin to those of an illusionist.

However, Ugudu had gravely underestimated the formidable power of the evil spirit before him.

Its strength far exceeded his initial expectations.

“Such an expansive domain! This is absolutely no ordinary evil spirit!!”

“How, precisely, did she come into being?” he wondered aloud.

“Was she the sole survivor after bandits or goblins massacred her village, left to starve to death amidst despair and corpses?”

“Or a s*ave who endured relentless torment, ultimately meeting a gruesome end?”

“Or perhaps a once-kind soul, ceaselessly betrayed, who became a fool whose family was utterly destroyed, leading to their demise?”

Ugudu’s excitement surged.

He struggled to fathom the true nature of the evil spirit he had encountered, but one thing was certain: she represented the critical “first step” in his grand scheme for world domination!

‘With this as my foundation,’ he thought, ‘I shall forge a formidable undead army. In this world devoid of heroes and demon kings, I, a necromancer from another realm, am destined to become the King of the World!!’

Ugudu’s mind raced with overwhelming exhilaration.

He found himself almost unable to comprehend the depth of resentment that must have fueled the evil spirit’s tragic death.

And what a terrifying, dreadful entity she must be.

****

Meanwhile, on the other side…

…

“So, then,” Chen Ran began, sitting at the foot of his bed, addressing the female ghost who had retreated behind the television set nearby, her head vaguely peeking out from one side.

He spoke with a weary, almost listless tone.

“Because your colleagues, classmates, and friends all found good men and got married, while you yourself had always declared you’d be a DINK (TL Note: Double Income, No Kids, referring to a couple who chooses not to have children) and remain single for life, your mother was extremely worried about how you would live alone before she passed away from illness.”

“You assured your mother that everything would be fine, yet shortly after, during a hotel trip, you suddenly suffered a leg cramp and drowned in the bathtub.”

“You thought that if you had a boyfriend or husband, you absolutely wouldn’t have died such a bizarre death, and you had even boasted to your mother before she passed away.

If you had listened to your mother and married earlier, this wouldn’t have happened, and your mother wouldn’t have died with such deep regrets.”

“Furthermore, you hadn’t experienced anything at all before your death, feeling utterly wronged and too ashamed to face your mother, thus transforming into an evil spirit…”

As he articulated these words, Chen Ran couldn’t help but feel that his own sanity was teetering precariously.

Yet, the most preposterous aspect was his undeniable ability to communicate with the female ghost before him.

Regardless, whether it was the encounter with an evil spirit or the utterly strange circumstances surrounding this entity’s formation, it was all simply too bizarre, wasn’t it?!!