Chapter 14: Reapers Are Workers Too

Broadly speaking, the main duties of the reaper profession consist of reaping lost souls and handling supernatural incidents.

Among these, dealing with supernatural incidents is further divided into several situations that require different judgments and approaches… The very first step is to investigate the supernatural incident itself.

The official term for supernatural incidents in the underworld is “anomalies,” and investigating an anomaly usually yields only one of three results.

First, pure rumors or joke messages; although absurd, this kind of situation is not uncommon.

Second, trouble caused by lost souls; generally speaking, even rookie reapers can resolve this on the spot, so it is nothing worth boasting about.

The third type is the troublesome one: after investigating, it is discovered that the incident was caused by an anomalous spirit…

Apart from tasks where the objective is merely to investigate, allowing one to simply return and report the presence of an anomalous spirit, how to choose what to do next serves as a test of a reaper’s capability.

If reapers lack confidence in their own abilities and believe they cannot handle it, they can return directly to the underworld to report, handing off the assignment to other reapers to handle.

Alternatively, they can continue the assignment, investigating the type and development scale of the anomalous spirit, and subsequently subduing and purifying it.

“Unlike the previous assessment, the anomaly we received this time is confirmed to exist, with absolutely zero possibility of being a rumor or a misunderstanding.”

Belladonna raised a finger as she explained to Mikado while introducing the specific details of this mission; simply put, the location was an unfinished, newly built office building whose interior was still under renovation.

It was originally a normal construction site, but personnel began mysteriously disappearing, and after a brief investigation by a reaper who had been assigned there, a report was quickly submitted to the underworld.

“Is it really confirmed to be a supernatural incident? Meaning there’s an anomalous spirit…”

In that case, was he about to have the first fight of his reaper career? Thinking of this, Mikado felt a bit excited, rubbing his hands together in eagerness to show off his skills.

“Not necessarily, because that senior reaper only confirmed that the matter wasn’t man-made or a rumor… As for what specifically caused it, we still have to investigate and find out.”

“Wow, not doing the job thoroughly! That’s what you call irresponsible!”

Hearing this part, the little sparrow on his shoulder felt like rolling her eyes at her partner—guys who had zero understanding of a reaper’s common sense and mission scope were like this; that person’s task originally stopped right there, okay?

Although reapers enjoyed a very high degree of freedom in their work, beyond the assigned mission requirements, whether to proceed with the task afterwards and to what extent were entirely up to individual discretion.

Reapers were not mercenaries; it was impossible for them to work only when assigned a task from above and hide at home whenever there wasn’t one.

“Take out your scythe… err, scissors.”

Realizing halfway through her sentence that the person beside her was an oddball, Belladonna hurriedly corrected “scythe” to “scissors,” wondering what was going through this genius’s head to craft such a weapon.

Following her instruction, Mikado summoned the scissors, and following the direction of the young girl’s pointing finger, he discovered that a brand-new pattern had appeared on his beloved blade at some unknown time.

“When we reapers guide lost souls or harvest and subdue anomalous spirits, a portion of their spiritual power becomes engraved onto our weapons made of underworld iron.”

“And these things you’re looking at that resemble patterns…”

Belladonna suddenly gave a smirk and flashed her giant scythe, the two prominent patterns on it catching the attention of the boy beside her.

“Are our performance metrics~”

Yes, that’s right, performance metrics. Reapers received extremely generous benefits and salary, so to prevent people from slacking off, a work quota naturally had to be set for you.

“We reapers have an annual quota every year, and if you fail to complete it, it accumulates to the next year; if you still haven’t completed the accumulated quota after another year, your weapon will be confiscated, and you’ll be fired.”

That was why reapers couldn’t just stay at home waiting for assigned tasks; aside from those with powerful enough connections who scored long-term patrol duties and didn’t have to worry about quotas, every reaper had to go out and find performance metrics on their own.

Whether you went out to subdue anomalous spirits yourself or guided lost souls, as long as you completed the required work quota, it was fine; don’t go thinking that just because the name “reaper” sounded grand, you weren’t a worker bee.

“If you exceed the quota, you can even get extra bonuses, as well as some other resource and treatment rewards…”

“In short, someone had better work hard, lest one day when I want to do a team mission, I find out my teammate was actually fired, okay?”

The words sounded harsh, but they were indeed a well-meaning reminder; based on Belladonna’s understanding of Mikado, the problem student, he definitely didn’t know about this and would inevitably run into trouble by slacking off at home.

These performance metrics couldn’t even be transferred, completely cutting off any possibility of slacking off in the reaper profession.

“Alright, back to the point: what we need to do is investigate, and first we must determine whether it was done by an anomalous spirit.”

“For real, honor student? People have already gone missing, so if it’s not an anomalous spirit, what else could it be? Lost souls can’t physically interfere with mortal matters anyway.”

Even with a good upbringing, someone’s naive statement truly tested Lady Belladonna’s composure, causing her to disregard her image and roll her eyes at him.

“Setting physical interference aside for a moment, even if it’s just mental interference, one can still guide others to do many things, okay? It’s just relatively more troublesome.”

In fact, many reapers needed to exert pressure through mental interference in their work to facilitate gathering information and carrying out tasks; what on earth did this kid read when he was in school?

“In short, the first thing we must do is use artificial bodies to enter the mortal realm and get in touch with relevant tasks to gather information…”

“Infiltrating with artificial bodies again? Can’t we just go directly to the place, charge in, and slay that anomalous spirit?”

[Haha, if you want to play like that, then I’ll go help collect your body in a couple of days, and enjoy your funeral feast while I’m at it.]

Before Belladonna could say anything, the little sparrow on his shoulder was directly amused.

It was also fortunate that the chattering sounds of birds were incomprehensible to the two reapers; hearing these words, Hydra found it difficult to maintain a straight face.

[Wait… isn’t he your partner? How can you curse him like that?]

[Good words are hard to persuade a ghost set on dying; when it comes to people seeking death, I always drop the urge to help and respect their choice of destiny.]

Shaking her wings, as if unable to rest until her words shocked everyone, Finny’s next sentence almost caused Hydra, who was flying mid-air, to crash.

[Besides, as a partner, I should naturally support my partner’s decisions; I fully support him going to seek death, so that there’s entertainment to watch.]

His flying movements twitched slightly; a problem reaper plus a raven that didn’t care about its partner’s safety—this weird combination of partners truly left Hydra, a traditional and conservative raven, utterly baffled.

Just what was going on with this pair of partners?

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