Cheat Awakening

"This time, I will do my best to persuade June to move away from this damn place once and for all. Only God knows what concoctions her parents feed her to keep her that she didn't want to leave this wretched place."

After getting out of the portal, the first thing Myne did was complain as always before quickly activating his Soul Eyes skill and surveying the cemetery.

The scene remained largely unchanged from his previous visit a few months ago. However, the strange black smoke clinging to various graves had solidified and become more prominent, as if the hooded figure hadn't had time to eat it for who knows how long. Other than that, everything appeared the same.

The absence of the scary hooded figure, who wielded a shovel and subsisted on the black smoke, was undoubtedly a good sign. Although Myne had previously encountered the hooded figure many times before, who clearly was a ghost since no one could see him with normal eyes, but perhaps due to his closeness with June or his disinterest in the living, it had never bothered him.
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This indifference was a key factor in Myne's continued visits to June's house despite his deep-seated fear of ghosts.

"Phew, tonight seems lucky. No encounter with the old fellow," Myne sighed in relief, a smile gracing his lips as he knocked on June's door.

"I wonder what kind of reaction I'll get. Hopefully, she won't yell for disturbing her sleep. Maybe I should've come tomorrow... Sniff, sniff... Ugh, what the hell is this smell? Sniff, I think I've smelled it before, but where?"

Myne, who suddenly gets assaulted by an extremely foul odour, fanned his hand in front of his nose while looking left and right to figure out the source of the smelly mess. But everything around the house appeared normal, although it looked like nobody had cleaned the yard for many days. Given June's lackadaisical attitude towards household chores, it would be more surprising if the yard were clean.

Knock-Knock!

"Strange, where could she be at this hour? Did she overwork again and fall asleep so soundly she can't hear the knocking sound?" With his mind full of suspicious doubts, and a knot of worry tightened in Myne's stomach, he hurriedly came to the window of June's bedroom. The window was closed, but it was no problem for Myne.

He used Etheric Marionette, a remarkably useful skill that allowed him to manipulate objects within his field of vision through sheer thought. With a mental command, the window creaked open.

As the window opened, the darkness, dust and a thick, overwhelming stench reminiscent of a rotting fish market flooded the room as the window opened, greeted Myne, who recoiled instantly, covering his nose in disgust, and quickly moved away.

"F*ck! What the hell is going on in there? How can anyone live with such a disgusting smell? Wait, I remember now, that's the smell of decaying corpse flesh! f*ck! I hope nothing has happened to June.

Damn it," cursing his bad luck, Myne quickly took out his handkerchief from his inventory and wrapped it around his nose tightly before entering June's bedroom.

Everything in the bedroom was the same; stingy June, as usual, hadn't splurged on any new furnishings. However, this wasn't what Myne wanted to see. When he saw dust and spiderwebs covering the room, which was a clear indication that no one had used this room for many days, a hint of unease and panic started bubbling in his heart.

He swiftly approached the door and flung it open, only to be met by a stench even stronger than before, forcing him to cough repeatedly. If not for Alban's special training and months spent alongside rotting zombies were the only reasons Myne wasn't already vomiting.

Thanks to his night vision skill, Myne didn't have to worry about lighting problems, and he could see everything perfectly in front of him. Now, however, he wished he'd simply gone home instead of coming to June's house in the middle of the night.

Before him lay a scene of unimaginable horror, three decomposing corpses in various states of putrefaction. Their grotesque appearances spoke volumes of their brutal demise.

The first man's eyes bulged grotesquely, his arms ripped from their sockets and flung carelessly aside. His stomach cavity was riddled with fist-sized holes in which now dozens of worms were festering delightfully.

The second man's end was even more horrifying. The killer had literally ripped his jaw apart, causing the upper half of his face to hang loose, half of his brain was laying out of his skull. Judging by his body posture and minor injuries on his legs and feet, it seemed the entire process was likely unfolding excruciatingly slowly.

Only this poor man knew what kind of suffering torture he went through.

The last man, who seemed the youngest, seemingly, had been the first victim. His demise appeared simpler. His crotch area was completely missing, leaving a sickening sight. His corpse was displayed on the wall pinned by multiple old-looking crucifixes which seemed to have been dug out from a graveyard. Whatever had done this clearly knew how to kill people in creative ways.

All three bodies were in varying stages of decay, suggesting they'd been dead for days.

"What the f*ck is going on here?! Who are these men, and where is June?" Myne, whose Phasmophobia started showing its effects, started trembling in fright.

Although he had seen a lot of colourful things full of horrors thanks to Alban's hard work, this didn't mean that his fear of those creepy things like three rotten bodies, killed inhumanely, appearing in front of him, especially in the middle of the night, could be controlled.

Even a courageous man who didn't care about ghosts, seeing such a horrific sight, would put his courage aside until seeing the sun the next morning.

"I should better get out of here and investigate the matter tomorrow," Myne muttered, forcing his trembling legs to cooperate. "This entire situation is getting out of hand. Damn you, June. F*ck, if only that idiot had listened to me and moved to the centre of the town, this kind of thing would have never happened.

F*ck, why Why are all women so stubborn?" He after controlling his trembling legs by complaining about June, attempted to take a deep breath to calm down, only to have the putrid stench assault his senses and trigger another coughing fit.

After coughing, just as Myne turned around, preparing to retreat to June's bed before opening the portal back to his own home, when he saw a three-meter-tall colossal figure, completely covered in a dark smock, radiating an aura of icy coldness as if it was made of pure ice, standing right behind him just a few centimetres away.

For a fleeting moment, Myne felt like his soul was leaving his body. Two ethereal doors materialized: one bathed in a warm golden light, the other a chilling blood red. His soul, a twisted grin plastered on its face, seemed drawn to the red door, almost reaching out in a farewell gesture. But then, an invisible force violently jerked him back into his body.

"Ahhhhh!!!"

screamed at the top of his lungs, collapsing onto the floor. Panic surged through him, but his survival instincts kicked in. He scrambled away from the shadowy figure, his hand accidentally brushing against the putrid flesh of one of the corpses. Recoiling with a high-pitched girlish squeal, he leapt to his feet and bolted towards the main door.

However, even after running for a few seconds and not reaching the door, which was just 3 meters away from him, Myne finally realized he wasn't getting anywhere. He glanced down to see himself levitating several centimetres above the ground, his legs churning uselessly in the air. The sight might have been comical to an observer, but the one experiencing it and the one doing it didn't think so.

In a desperate situation, Myne, who had no other choice, quickly opened the portal in front of him, and the destination was Fenrir's cave. Since she was the only one Myne could expect to have the capability to deal with an entity like a ghost, as a divine beast, she surely had a few skills to fight with spirits.

Although Myne's plan was quite reasonable, however, overlooked a crucial detail. He was currently under the influence of the shadowy figure's magic, unable to control his own body and floating in the air. How could he possibly enter the portal in this state?

This realization dawned on him quickly. He was about to use telepathy to summon Fenrir so she could enter the portal from the other side to help him when the figure shrouded in darkness materialized before him. The swirling smoke surrounding the figure contorted and solidified, completely engulfing the portal, and forcefully severing the connection with Myne.

Now, unless he removed the fog or created another portal, there was no way Fenrir could come to help him.

For the moment, however, Myne's focus wasn't on escape. He gaped at the figure before him, a wave of terror washing over him as he recognised it. It was the cemetery ghost, the one who always lingered amidst the graves, feasting on the shadowy mist, holding a shovel and lantern in its hands. While Myne had seen it numerous times before, he had never been this close.

The spectral figure appeared different today. Though it still sported its usual attire – a long robe and hood that concealed its body – and hovered ominously a few centimetres above the ground, its most unsettling feature was missing. Today, it lacked its signature shovel and lantern. Most unsettling, the air surrounding it crackled with dark energy as if it had just perpetrated a horrific massacre.

Myne gulped down his saliva with great difficulty and glanced at the three dead bodies around him, and understood who was the culprit behind their such creative cruelty. As he finished examining the bodies and turned back to Mr. Ghost, his attention was caught by a smear of blood on the floor. Confusion twisted his features as he followed the trail of blood, leading him to a horrifying discovery.

Beneath the hem of the ghost's robe, a skeletal hand grasped a small, pulsing heart – which seemed like the heart of a child.

Tears welled up in Myne's eyes. He had always known, in some dark corner of his mind, that his little brother would be the cause of his demise. But he never imagined it would happen so soon or in such a nightmarish way.