Chương 101: Haunted by a hobo ghost

"Dennis," the voice rasped from below.

"Dennis…" Below the ground, in the complete darkness, something stirred. Hidden under a pile of papers–comic books? –it moved, slowly. A hand reached out toward him from underneath. He tried to move away. He couldn't. The walls were closing in. The smell of mold was suffocating. Action figures were falling from the shelves, breaking into pieces in an unending stream of plastic. The sound of clacking was constant, filling his ears with noise.

The only things he could hear aside from it were his breathing and the voice.

"Dennis…" the voice choked, buried under the mountain of comics.

"Why didn't you come back…"

"Dennis…" it tried to grab him. He dodged. He always knew how to dodge. But the stench of unwashed enlightenment was inescapable.

"There's mold in my lungs… I've had better living conditions when I was living under the bridge…"

"I'm sorry," Dennis choked.

"I didn't know…"

"Where is the bathroom, Dennis?" The callused hand elongated, moving through the darkness like a snake, trying to bite him with unclipped fingernails.

"WHERE IS IT?!"

"It's upstairs!"

"THERE IS NO BATHROOM UPSTAIRS!" He opened his eyes with a gasp, instantly sitting up, heart hammering in his chest. The mattress creaked in an unfamiliar way only rich mattresses cracked. He could hear birds singing outside. The room had too much gold everywhere. Fake gold. Probably. It was still too shiny for his unadjusted eyes. The windows were too big, letting in too much light.

"Holy shit," he whispered under his breath.

"There's a hobo living in my basement!" Soul: 2 -> 3 Kriya Shakti 2 -> Kriya Shakti 3"This stuff just grows now, huh?" he muttered, finally waking up for real and realizing where he was. In his new room. The one he picked yesterday at random. Judging by the light coming in from the window, it was already morning. As usual, he had no idea which part of 'morning' it really was, his sleep patterns best described as 'absolute chaos' even at the best of times. Could be seven AM, could be two PM. It was a mystery.

He got up, yawning, a part of his mind noting the comforting presence of Muramasa on the nightstand next to the bed. Good. He took the sword with him and went to the bathroom, the annoying chore of having a real body rearing its ugly head. To have a separate bathroom for every guest room in the house was just ridiculous. The shower was nice though. It was one of those luxury fancy ones, with lots of space, and water falling on him like it was raining without the need to hold a shower head.

He stood under the steaming water for a while, feeling his mind drift. His sword was propped against the wall nearby. Just close enough to grab in a moment in case of… whatever. He honestly had no idea where the habit of keeping it close came from. It was just comforting to have his sword nearby, no matter how dull, broken, and in dire need of maintenance the thing was by this point. It was his sword. Four grand, and all that. Was there a reason for the new Soul point?

He didn't think he was doing anything noteworthy lately. Just walking around and talking to people. There was no concrete clue to point at and say – yes, this was the reason it was growing. The only pattern he could notice was that he was usually getting the notifications after sleeping. Same thing usually happened with both Strength and Constitution, come to think of it. Kriya was even more confusing. He wasn't even using the skill that much. At least, the fate manipulation part of it.

He didn't touch the 'squeeze mana' button either. The thing just grew, same as his Soul. Was it somehow connected to his Soul? Were the skill and stat somehow resonating and empowering each other? The skill was still too small to hear what it represented, or why it grew. Another mystery. He didn't really feel any different. If there was any difference between two and three points – it was way more subtle than the gulf between zero and one. He just felt fine. Same as yesterday, even.

He turned the water off, mindful of the fact that hot water was probably a bit more of a luxury than it was before the end of the world. Wouldn't be nice to use it all for himself, if it turned out to be a limited resource. He needed to talk to El'el. Or Ellie? He was the only one who called her El'el nowadays. Had she decided to use a more human-like nickname that he missed the memo about? The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The mansion was a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, but there was a sure way to find people – they were either in the kitchen, or in the common room. Or in their own rooms, he guessed, but he didn't feel any presence coming off from El'el's– Ellie's room. Lily's signature aura was also missing, and that one was a hard thing to miss if you knew what to look for. He found everyone except Sydney and the elf in the kitchen. They were eating pancakes.

"Hi, Dennis," Lily chirped while pouring ungodly amounts of syrup on her plate. She was creating an art named 'diabetes on a plate', like she was straight out forbidden from eating sugar for her whole life or something and now had to compensate.

"Hey," Mary said weakly from nearby. She seemed a bit unhealthy. Slightly pale, and the smile she gave him was clearly forced.

"I wanted to wake you up but Lily convinced me that it was a bad idea." She glanced at the girl in mock suspicion." Without using her very alarming skill, I hope."

"I– I didn't!" the girl started to protest. It was easy to see how flustered she was in his mind if he didn't use his eyes to look at her or his ears to try to discern her tone.

"Have you tried convincing this clearly sixteen-year old girl," Mary continued prodding her, though Dennis couldn't hear any malice in her words. That didn't stop Lily's cheeks from burning in shame, if he didn't look.

"–to stop her emotionless robot act?

'It's okay,' she said. Can you believe it? Someone spends her every waking moment fighting with herself and magically suppressing all her expressions to the point she blasts them in the air anyway, as if expressing herself is a grave sin! It's not an 'act' to laugh when you want to laugh! And it's not healthy to keep doing that! Ugh… Dennis, help me out here…" Wasn't Mary a bit too cranky today? There was a sort of subtleness about her that he didn't notice until it was gone.

She was still nice, but way more direct. Blunt, even.

"Well, that's…" he glanced at the girl. Lily felt a spike of fear at the idea of him siding with the overly helpful larper.

"That's probably something to ask Ellie about. Lily's skill is a bit… um, tricky to manage, and not healthy to have in general, I think. Though with how skills fit people, it's more like whatever is going on in her head is not healthy, and the skill just makes it worse. Cut her some slack, okay? This is probably better than when she was high on magical drugs."

"Right," Mary narrowed her eyes, watching the girl whose pancakes were floating in the syrup.

"Magical–""Mary is hungover!" Lily blurted, pointing the half-empty bottle of syrup at her in accusation.

"She came back drunk yesterday, and collapsed on my bed! Dennis, that's evil! Villainy! She imagines herself as some kind of parental figure, and yet her 'parenting' is just nagging me because her head hurts!" The girl continued, waving her arms.

"That's basically child abuse!" Mary winced from the noise." Child abuse?! I don't–" she tried to say.

"I don't imagine myself as some kind of parental figure. I'm just worried…"

"Weren't you spying on a secret meeting or something?" he asked, sitting down and grabbing a plate.

"I was…" she admitted sheepishly.

"It was Sydney's fault. She got too drunk and blurted that I was probably spying somewhere nearby, and Mark managed to find me with his skill, and then…"

"You got invited," he summarized.

"And then you got wasted. At a 'secret elite meeting'."

"Yeah." The pancakes were delicious. Where did they get the flour? Ah, right. Magical farmers.

"What was it about?" he asked. She chuckled.

"About you guys, of course," she said.

"Most of the time Mark and Sydney were calming everyone down because you scared a bunch of people. Also, they were really curious about Ellie–""Do you know where she is? I kind of need to talk to her, and she isn't in her room." Lily chocked on her pancake." You want to talk with someone?!" she shouted– no, he still wasn't looking or paying attention to the sounds. It was more or less the same thing anyway.

"What happened?!" Dennis shrugged, stealing the bottle of the syrup in the process.

"There's a hobo living in my basement," he said. This time, it was Mary's turn to start coughing while Lily groaned.

"I need to figure out what happened to him, and if there's a way to help the dude."

"Y-your basement?" Mary asked carefully.

"In the Echo," Lily said.

"He means that we left a guy in the Echo. In his basement. Which is a skill space. He was one of the people wandering there like you guys were, but he didn't figure out the magic to reinforce himself. Or couldn't." Dennis nodded.

"Yeah," he said.

"So I need to find out if Ellie brought the people who weren't stuck floating in the sky back to Earth. And if she didn't, I need to figure out a way to go back."

"Absolutely not–""No–""Leaving him there is not an option, you know?" he said calmly.

"I know I can't save everyone. Hell, I'm not even helping as many people as I could. But I promised. And– I can't just forget about him now that I've remembered." How the fuck did he manage to forget about the hobo in the first place was… not really a mystery. It was always easy to get distracted by the next shiny thing, and anyway Gareth wasn't in immediate danger so it wasn't as time-sensitive as his usual problems.

The nightmare was still a nasty reminder on just how harmful his supposedly 'superior' skill at managing priorities could be. To outright forget about someone, even if it was just for a few days… That struck a particularly painful chord. He didn't want to be that kind of person anymore. If Soul was supposed to let him become a hero the right way – well, not forgetting about Gareth felt right. He had to start somewhere. Saving the hobo was a good place to start.

"And anyway, it wouldn't be like the last time," he continued.

"Ellie must know both how to get in and out. And, once I'm there – it'll be a question of minutes until I get the guy. If he's still there, he's slowly dying from nothingness. That'll proc my skill. I'll just get him and get out." He glanced at Lily.

"And you can hijack my skill so I can come back. Really, it won't take more than an afternoon. When I'm fast, everything is close by."

"That's–" Lily glanced at Mary, worried.

"I guess you're not wrong…"

"Your skill lets you have superspeed to save people, right?" Mary asked. He nodded.

"You know…" she continued, speaking slowly.

"I guess I didn't think about it, but it's a really nice skill to have." She paused, as if trying to find the right words.

"I mean, not in the way that it's powerful." She looked him in the eyes.

"Your skill is about saving people. That's… Damn." She chuckled.

"Talk about not judging a book by its cover. I'm glad I was right." Dennis wasn't sure how to react. Of course his skill was about saving people. What was so weird about it?

"You wouldn't budge on this, would you?" she asked quietly.

"I can't even think about going back there without getting shivers, and you're… Just ready to go back there, because you need to save a guy."

"Of course," he said, still not really getting what she was so hung up about.

"So, where's Ellie?"

"She's out explaining magic and stuff to some guys," Mary said.

"With Sydney?" he guessed.

"No, Sydney is dead asleep. That woman drinks like a fish. I doubt you'd be able to wake her up." Dennis hummed.

"Is it okay to let her do that alone?" he asked.

"I've got a miracle with them," she said.

"They're just talking. Though…" She looked up, at nowhere in particular.

"I guess they're getting a bit heated… Um…" Mary's expression got more worried as she tried to listen to something he couldn't hear.

"You know, I think…" His skill pinged.