Chapter 13: Anomalous Spiritual Body

They called it getting used to working together, but in truth, it was merely letting the rookie reapers who formed a two-person team get to know one another.

Therefore, Mikado and Belladonna, who already knew each other, could simply skip this step altogether.

Having received the assignment instructions, the two people and two birds wasted no time and began rushing toward the mortal realm.

Promptly scouting the location to familiarize themselves with the target spot and the surrounding situation was the right thing to do.

As a side note, the only ones actually being proactive here were Belladonna and Hydra.

Mikado and Finny had originally intended to slack off for two days and idle around, but they were forcefully dragged away by the other side…

This task was to investigate the situation of a supernatural incident while simultaneously resolving it.

Unlike the second assessment, which was a simple investigation, this time required working together in coordination to troubleshoot and eliminate the problem.

“Do you understand now? I looked at your first and second assessments, and your luck is almost too good—you barely encountered any conflicts at all!”

To straighten out her teammate’s attitude and prevent herself from being dragged down and failing the assessment, Belladonna put forth a hundred and twenty percent of her energy to lecture the universally acknowledged problem student beside her.

However, a part of it was genuine irritation, too.

Setting aside the hidden parts, Mikado’s two assessments practically had the word ‘walkover’ written all over his face.

The first assessment was similarly to reap the soul of a newly deceased person.

On Belladonna’s end, after finishing her announcement, the other party flatly refused to cooperate.

Yet that was actually the normal situation.

Who would willingly cooperate and accept it after learning that their personality, will, memory… everything representing their self and life would be erased without a trace?

So in Belladonna’s eyes, a soul that obediently accepted reality and was harvested without any resistance?

Holy crap, even if you brought those senior veteran reapers here, they would only tell you that even in your dreams you couldn’t have it so easy!

Back then, Belladonna chased the opponent through almost half a district of the city.

In the end, she even engaged in a fight with her scythe raised before successfully subduing the other party.

And such developments were commonplace for reapers.

Once a soul became familiar with the rhythm of freely switching between intangible and physical states in their spirit form and started weaving through various obstacles, the task of hunting down souls would become extremely difficult.

As for the second assessment, it seemed even more abstract to Belladonna—what on earth did ‘everything is normal’ mean?

No, wait, out of the forty-some candidates I know, every single one had trouble to deal with.

How did it turn out that when it came to you, a problem student, it directly ended with ‘nothing happened’?

“My second assessment… Argh! I don’t even want to talk about it! How could there be a creature with such bizarre mechanics hidden so deeply! I almost lost my life there!”

Recalling the mysterious, mechanics-heavy monster she had investigated, a certain young lady felt her head throb.

That was simply not something a beginner could handle, so how on earth was it put into the rookie assessment!

If Belladonna’s overall caliber hadn’t far exceeded reapers of the same age and seniority, she would have had the honor of becoming the first reaper of this batch to die in the line of duty during an assessment—a tragic reaper dying before completing her training.

[No, no, no, the second assessment was only meant for you to investigate. The moment you confirmed the thing existed, you could have already ended the task and reported it, right?]

The little sparrow listening to the story couldn’t help but interject with a mock, while Hydra beside her didn’t dare to take up the conversation either, turning his head away in embarrassment…

It could only be said to be the young lady’s mindset of wanting to do everything to perfection.

Belladonna had managed to misunderstand the purpose of the investigation entirely and took her raven partner directly deep behind enemy lines.

As a result, the reapers who officially took over the task later probably had their faces twisted with laughter.

Conditions for appearance, points of attention, weaknesses, mechanical patterns… This flawless report was, quite frankly, a start that had never been so wonderful.

To give a relatively simple analogy, it was as if while others were solving elementary school math problems, you stubbornly applied advanced calculus knowledge to them.

It was impressive, sure, but those burned brain cells were hardly worth it.

[Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, you’ll get extra points… Doing it like this guarantees that the top evaluation ranking for this year belongs to you guys, although it doesn’t really mean much.]

Flapping her wings, Finny’s words weren’t quite clear as comfort, but the amusement of a spectator sparrow was quite evident.

“Then, a question! Scissors problem student! Do you know what an anomalous spirit is?”

“Oh-oh! Answer! Big cat loli honor student! It is a mutated spiritual body, a public enemy in the common perception!”

“Don’t call me by that nickname!”

“Didn’t you start it first?!”

Ah, as expected, they started arguing again…

The little sparrow used her beak to preen the scraps of meat on her bones.

Her action caused the dark green spirit raven next to her to get a bout of goosebumps.

[Ah, you don’t need to look at me like that, I don’t mind. I was originally hoping someone would lecture that kid. The issues on him are too big and too many.]

No, no, no, I just think your action of picking out scraps of meat is creepy… creepy for a bird to an exaggerated degree, that’s all.

Of course, the highly educated Hydra would not speak such impolite words out loud.

Meanwhile, on Mikado and Belladonna’s side, after a brief exchange of bickering, the lecturing continued.

Knowing full well that someone’s usual scores weren’t even close to the passing mark—stepping on the answer sheet with a footprint would probably yield a higher score than Mikado’s test—Belladonna couldn’t care less about whether he claimed to know or not.

For the sake of her own assessment, knowing that the opponent lacked common sense, she did everything she could to forcefully cram all kinds of knowledge into him.

“Listen up, things like anomalous spirits are different from the souls inside our living bodies. They are born out of nowhere in the natural environment through specific conditions and reasons!”

Living beings possess souls, and the soul itself holds a power called spiritual energy.

Living beings in the mortal realm are unlike those in the underworld; they cannot suppress spiritual energy inside their bodies very well.

It frequently happens that spiritual energy leaks out to a greater or lesser degree.

And this overflowing spiritual energy, when combined with traits such as consensus, will nourish some peculiar pests.

For example, an ordinary ghost story on a school campus, combined with the overflowing spiritual energy, will gradually spawn the corresponding anomalous spirit from the legend over time.

At first, it might just be a clump that can only scare people a little.

However, as the legend deepens in detail and its image becomes established… the form and power of the anomalous spirit will grow increasingly complete.

“That’s why there are so many supernatural incidents, ghost stories, urban legends in the mortal realm… host to anomalous spirits at work for the most part.”

To put it simply, the so-called ghosts are very likely real.

Those ghosts and monsters are precisely the anomalous spirits in the understanding of the people from the underworld.

“And these anomalous spirits, as they grow, can even break their shackles… breaking the iron rule that spiritual bodies cannot interfere with mortal matters.”

That is why they are called mutated spiritual bodies—because of the mutation, they are anomalous.

Because of the anomaly, these spiritual bodies ultimately even possess the capability to harm people.

And eliminating these anomalous spirits happens to be an important part of a reaper’s job.

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