Chapter 375: Haunted House (3)

In the mansion surrounded by ominous fog, one of the rooms was filled with a thick scent of blood and rotten trees. Translucent wraiths roamed the room.

[Ah... Aahh.]

[Kill, kill, kill.]

[Rip off the ears, pull out the eyes, cut off the nose, crush the tongue.]

[Kill, kill, kill.]

[Giggle, giggle.]

The wraiths roamed around the room while singing a chilling song as they danced and laughed. Despite being translucent, they could not be any more hideous. Their heads were split in two as their brains trickled down, their eyeballs were dangling out of their eye sockets, and their tongues reached all the way down to their collarbone.

They did not possess sharp claws or fangs. They were made purely to instill fear into humans; fear of the unknown, of beings that were between the boundary of life and death that the living had never experienced. Hence, these beings were far more terrifying than any demon or demonic beast.

"A-Aaaahh."

A young man was tied to a wall in the room where the wraiths were dancing. He was trembling uncontrollably, fear having taken complete control over him. His eyes were missing from his sockets, his ears had been forcibly ripped off, and his nose had been cut off by something sharp. The rest of his body was not fine either; forget fingernails, none of his fingers were present.

"K-Kill... me."

The young man no longer wished to live. He simply wished for death that would end the excruciating pain and endless fear.

[Giggle.]

[Giggle.]

The wraiths laughed as they danced around the young man.

"P-Please!! Pleaaaaaase!!"

He struggled frantically. Although he could no longer see because he had no eyes and couldn't even hear properly because his ears had been ripped off, he could tell that these wraiths would not kill him.

"A-Aaaaaaahhh!!!" he cried out in madness.

His head was filled with the wraiths' laughter.

[Fun, fun, fun.]

[Scream more for us.]

[Be even more afraid.]

They sang while dancing merrily.

[Your ears were ripped off.]

[I guess you won't be able to hear!]

[Your eyes were pulled out.]

[I guess you won't be able to see!]

[Your nose was cut off.]

[I guess you won't be able to smell!]

[Giggle. Giggle. Giggle.]

[Let's not cut off his tongue.]

[Let's not, because he has to scream.]

The man's mind was being slowly broken down as the wraiths roamed around him and giggled. Something flowed out from the man; a thick black energy. It was negative emotion. The wraiths absorbed the materialization of extreme fear.

"A-Aaaaaaaaahhh!!"

The man's screams filled the room. He was not the only one. A total of twenty-eight humans were tied up in the room as they screamed in fear while surrounded by wraiths.

[Giggle. Giggle.]

The wraiths laughed inside the room filled with despair. Just then, one of them raised its head, and the other hundreds of them followed suit.

[People have entered.]

[Kill, kill, kill.]

[Who will it be this time? How will they scream this time?]

The wraiths danced while laughing in joy. They moved to search for their new prey.

[What should we cut first this time?]

[What should we rip off first this time?]

Their giggles were full of malice. Once the wraiths flew to where their prey were...

[Huh?]

Squelch.

The hallway was filled with green tentacles, and sticky mucus covered the floor, walls and ceiling. They had never seen such a realistic manifestation of nightmares before.

[What? What? What?]

[What's this?]

The wraiths trembled as they instinctively felt fear. They stopped dancing and singing.

Squelch. Something came out from between the green tentacles.

"U-Uuuurrrrhhh."

It was a young man with black hair, the prey that the wraiths had been waiting for. The man who had escaped from the green tentacles raised his head and stared at the wraiths flying around the hallway.

[A human has come.]

[Prey has come.]

The wraiths started to sing and dance again once they saw their prey.

"Kyaaaaaaahhh! My king! Gh-Ghosts! Ghosts have appeared!!"

The green tentacles filling the hallway fiercely squirmed as a woman's screams were heard from somewhere. The man was sucked back into the tentacles after having barely escaped from them.

"Urgh, urggggghhhh."

The man was being squished between tentacles with just his right arm exposed, which was frantically shaking. He scratched the floor with his right arm, but then it lost its strength and flopped on the ground. He used what remained of his strength and wrote a message on the ground with the pus on his fingers.

- The culprit is Lili—

"Kyaaaaaaaaahhhh! Th-They're coming this way! The ghosts are coming this way!"

However, his desperate efforts were cut short by the woman's screams. Even his right arm was sucked in between the tentacles. The wraiths stopped dancing and tilted their heads in wonder.

[What's going on? What's happening?]

[Could it be a comrade sent by the Constellation?]

[Who? Who?]

The wraiths approached the monster that was hunting the human.

"Kyaaaaahhh! Ahh..."

The shrieks of the woman suddenly stopped as if she had fainted. The green tentacles filling the hallway stopped moving and flopped to the ground.

Squelch. The man that had been sucked in between the tentacles slowly stood up and lifted his head with blank eyes.

[The human came back out.]

[He's still alive, he's still alive!]

[Let's capture him and kill him, kill him.]

The wraiths danced joyfully again after finding out that the prey they had thought had been stolen by another monster was still alive.

"So it was you guys," said the man with sharp eyes. "You... did all this."

The fear that the man should be feeling from coming face to face with the wraiths could not be felt, only blazing fury. The wraiths tilted their heads in wonder, unable to understand.

[We didn't do anything though?]

[We haven't done anything yet.]

They haven't laid a finger on the man in front of them, at the very least.

"You didn't do anything... you say?"

The man's voice shook. Darkness so thick that it couldn't even be compared to the evil energy of the wraiths filled the hallway.

Rumble. The entire mansion shook. The man slowly walked toward the wraiths.

"You... sons of bitcheeeeeeeeees!!" the man roared like a beast.

The wraiths trembled after being exposed to suffocating demonic energy. Overwhelming fear took control over them.

[What's wrong? What's wrong?]

[We haven't done anyth—]

"Do you have any idea?!"

Boom! The man shot forward and grabbed the head of the wraith closest to him. It was impossible for a physical being to grab the body of a wraith, but the man grabbed it with ease.

[H-Huh?]

[Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!]

Before the wraiths could even figure out what was going on, the wraith that had been grabbed shrieked. Black energy invaded its translucent body and ripped the wraith apart from the inside out.

"How hard I worked?!"

The man ran at the speed of sound to grab more wraiths and ripped them apart mercilessly.

"To get away from those tentacles?!"

A horrifying massacre ensued. Although there was no spillage of flesh and blood, the bodies of the wraiths were most certainly being ripped apart. The remaining wraiths quickly began to run away.

[No, no.]

[We haven't done anything.]

[We haven't done anything wrong.]

They made excuses while frantically running away, but it was pointless.

"Raaaaaaaaaaahhh!"

The roars of a wounded beast echoed throughout the mansion. True hell had fallen on the haunted house that had been made to instill fear into humans.

***

[We're sorry. We're sorry.]

[We were wrong. We were wrong.]

The wraiths trembled in fear. The devil wearing human skin was walking toward the wraiths that had been driven into a corner.

[Gyaaaaaaaahhh!!]

A wraith was ripped apart with every step the human took. The wraiths that had been created to instill extreme fear into humans were dying while stricken with fear.

[Monster. Monster. A monster has appeared.]

[Spare us, spare us.]

The wraiths ran away in fear by going through the walls. A few wraiths managed to survive the Demon King's rage and escape the mansion. Kang-Woo did not go out of his way to chase after them, since he had more or less managed to vent his anger.

"Fuuu, haaa." Kang-Woo took a deep breath in and out. He slowly looked around the destroyed mansion and saw that there were no more wraiths.

"Ah." He only managed to return to his senses now. He frowned and scratched his head. "I should've captured a few of them."

He needed a few of them alive to figure out how this mansion came to be.

'Though it's weird to think about capturing wraiths alive.'

Kang-Woo looked around. He had killed all the wraiths that he could see while blinded by rage, so not a single wraith remained. He thought about chasing after the ones that had escaped, but he could no longer sense their presence, possibly because they were spirits.

'Shit.'

He belatedly regretted his decision, but what was done was done. None of his hundreds of Authorities had the power to resurrect an annihilated soul.

"Ngh." Kang-Woo clicked his tongue.

"H-Hyung-nim! What was that sound just now?!"

Likely having heard the roars that Kang-Woo had made while massacring the wraiths, Kim Si-Hun and Layla quickly ran to him.

"Oh, umm..."

Kang-Woo scratched his head awkwardly while thinking of a way to explain this. He couldn't tell them that he had gotten so enraged about being subjected to Lilith's tentacles because of the wraiths that he had killed them all.

"Wraiths suddenly attacked us all of a sudden," Kang-Woo mentioned.

"Wraiths...?"

Si-Hun looked around while wide-eyed, but wraiths were unable to leave a corpse since they had a spiritual form. All that he could feel were subtle traces of deathly energy.

"Did you defeat them all, hyung-nim?"

"They weren't that strong," Kang-Woo replied.

Honestly, he did not know; he had massacred any that he could see, so he had not properly gauged their strength.

'Well, even so...'

He was sure that they would have been no match for Si-Hun and the other party members.

'It didn't seem like they were specialized in combat.'

They did not have any weapons. They were extremely hideous and were exuding chilling, deathly energy, but that was it.

"I... see," Si-Hun remarked.

"Let's look around a little more."

Although all the wraiths had disappeared, they could still acquire some information from the mansion itself. Their expectations were met soon after their search.

"A-Arghh."

As they searched each room along the hallway, they heard a voice. It was clearly that of a person, completely different from the voices of the wraiths. Kang-Woo forced open the door.

"This is..."

He frowned aggressively as soon as he saw what was inside. Although he was used to seeing horrible sights, he couldn't help but feel unpleasant at the sight he had to behold.

"What the..." Si-Hun muttered.

Since it was hard to watch even for Kang-Woo, it was worse for Si-Hun. He was gripping the holy sword extremely tight with eyes wide open.

"Oh Gaia." Layla shut her eyes tight and prayed to Gaia.

"A-Aaaahh."

Kang-Woo stared at the people who had become ragdolls as if they had endured gut-wrenching torture. There were twenty-eight of them; there was no need to even think about who they were.

'The missing townspeople.'

The townspeople had been dragged into this mansion by the wraiths and been tortured.

"Hyung-nim."

"Just a second."

Kang-Woo bit open his thumb and healed one of the people using the Authority of Regeneration.

"E-Ehehe. K-Kill me. Kill me. Please... Kill me."

"It's too late." Kang-Woo shook his head as he looked down at the person he had treated.

It was not a physical issue; their minds had already broken beyond repair. Nothing but fear could be seen in the eyes of those who had been captured by the wraiths.

"Kuh!" Si-Hun clenched his fists in frustration and stomped his feet.

Layla approached the panting Si-Hun and held his hand.

"Si-Hun..."

The two of them bit their lips while staring at the horrifying sight miserably.

Kang-Woo narrowed his eyes.

He could not afford to wallow in his emotions like the two of them, nor did he have a reason to. What he needed right now was information.

'Why?' That was the only question he had in his mind. 'Why are they still alive?'

Kang-Woo stared at the missing townspeople tied to the walls. They had been hideously wounded; their eyeballs had been pulled out, their ears had been ripped off, and they had been sliced all over the place. Despite all that, they were still alive.

'They were forcibly kept alive.'

They had not been kept alive so that they could be continuously tortured; their wounds were so severe that it was actually a wonder why they hadn't died. They were screaming and trembling in fear, but they were still alive. The wraiths had used some sort of means to prevent the people they had kidnapped from dying.

'But why?'

Kang-Woo couldn't understand. It was too difficult to figure out. It was understandable that kidnapped people could be tortured; wraiths being cruel and merciless made sense.

'But...'

This was a completely different situation. The wraiths had kept dying people alive. They had prevented people who should have died from dying.

"Umm... Kang-Woo," Layla said.

Kang-Woo turned around.

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