“Son of a bitch!” Mark shouted as he glared at the book in his hands. “Small little update my ass! This fucking book now has three fucking sections with three fucking systems for the same shit i already knew!” he roared.

He was incredibly annoyed because it had taken him a long time to train just the tiny basics he already knew but now he had to do three different systems to be able to fight not only ghosts but also mortals and mythical beings.

The reason why mortal and mythical beings were separate is because mythical beings possess spiritual energies of their own.

Also it explains in depth the energies of different beings. For instance, humans have three major energies that affect spirits and mythical beings. The first is mana and it is exactly as one would expect it to be, it is used by mage and wizards.

The second is Chi or Qi depending who you ask. It is internal energy which strengthens the body directly.

The last is called spiritual energy but humans call it mental power. It is similar to the energy ghosts use because it originates from the soul.

Spirits have two major energies, Spiritual energy and Dark force.

Dark force is the energy produced by evil spirits after being corrupted. This energy is harmful to all life including the evil spirit himself as it makes them crazier. Some people from the IEO have the tendency to call it Demonic Energy but that is false because true demons use a different type of energy.

Lastly Mythical creatures are the most varied depending on their breed and species. For instance, a unicorn would absorb the unique reflected energy of the moon which is basically sunlight which has become more gentle in nature than direct sunlight.

Another example are vampires who use something called blood energy which comes from the power of their blood to be able to do the mystical things they do.

Still after a short read of these he gave up learning all this right now and instead skimmed over it until he found the display of the talisman.

“Talisman of spiritual purity, effect: cleanses foreign energy attached to the physical corpse of any being both positive and negative no matter the type of energy.” Mark muttered.

He looked at the talisman and carefully stored it like a bookmark where it would be most preserved and put his clothing on.

The distance to the house was very far and he didn’t have the money to travel there so he would have to walk. The only thing to be thankful for is that stamina is not a worry for him so he simply put on his things and left in the dead of night and started to walk in the direction heading out of the city. He only felt some regret that he would definitely draw police attention for walking on the highways.

He didn’t really mind though and walked on.

As dawn light rose the next morning, he was already on the highway and more than once he had been stopped by a cop and had to try and talk his way out of being taken to the police station for having no ID or anything.

What he was thankful for was that a truck driver was leaving a gas station on the roadside and offered him a ride. He found it strange when he spoke through writing but didn’t mind since there are many people with countless difficulties.

As for why he didn’t remove his clothing, Mark gave a half assed explanation saying that he was albino and that his skin could not receive direct sunlight or it would cause blisters and he would get burns.

The truck driver was a rather calm and talkative man which kept the awkwardness low. Still Mark was able to communicate rather well with him.

Finally after a few hours the truck driver stopped at a highway road which opened up to a dirt road.

“Welp, here is the place you were going towards.” he said as the truck came to a stop.

“Thank you for the ride, it is a huge help, really.” Mark wrote down.

“Nah, it’s no sweat off my back since I was going to get a job three cities down from this road so no problem. That said, you have a problem when going back home, kid.” He laughed.

Mark just displayed a sulking mannerism before waving and closing the door.

The truck revved up and soon took to the road once more.

Mark turned to the road and walked down.

As one would expect from a dirt road at this time of year, it was completely covered in snow and was very annoying to walk through but he thankfully had no trouble going on anymore as no cops would willingly come here without a call and since this area was mostly for summer vacation, there was nobody around.

After about an hour of walking he finally came upon a familiar frozen lake and a decrepit house that was all too familiar to Mark.

What was amazing was that his little buggy was actually where he left it and it made him raise his brow. “I wonder why nobody took this away.” he muttered and rubbed the snow off it and scowled. The weather-beaten car looked even worse than it did five years ago and he didn’t know if it would even start up. He lifted the back hood and checked the motor, mostly the oil and such.

Naturally the key wasn’t in the ignition as it had been on his body. He walked towards the house but unlike the first time, there was no creepiness that it had. At most it just looked like an old house and not a haunted one.

Pushing the door open, which had been unlocked already, he instantly looked down and sighed as he saw the skeleton of himself.

He remembered clearly that it had been at the door that he died. Still he did not begin as he walked around finding several other skeletons.

“Poor fellows, they died such a cruel death really. I am glad I told that exorcist about this ghost though or else I would have no way to get my body back.” he said and walked back to his skeleton and took out his book of exorcism and opened to the bookmarked page with the talisman.

He looked at the instructions before placing the talisman down on the skull and began to move his spiritual energy and chant the needed mantra and infuse it into the talisman.

The spiritual energy was needed to identify the ownership of the body and remove any external interferences.

When he completed the chant, the talisman successfully activated meaning the body was actually his and a bright energy came from his bones which was invading energy. Beyond that, a dense black negative energy came which had been firmly stuck to his bones and even the exorcist hadn’t been able to remove that.

It had a very familiar ‘feeling’ to it and Mark soon felt it down to the core of his soul. He realized this was a huge amount of the ‘Sin’ he had accumulated in life being removed from his body.

He sighed as he saw how much negativity his body had accumulated. Even Karma might not be able to fully remove all this. He was thankful that it didn’t all return to him as it might instantly overwhelm his soul.

It took hours for all the invading energies to be removed, mainly due to the time it spent exposed to the negative aura of the evil spirit.

When it was finally finished, the talisman burned up and an orb of energy was formed before it compressed everything down and formed a tiny marble.

“So this is an orb of negativity.” he muttered but didn’t touch it directly.

This was a very toxic item to ghosts without bodies. These are made when all the negative energy is removed from a dead corpse through the talisman.

The energy, although negative, is not exactly worthless. In fact, it is one of the first items which bring newly formed ghost money to live off of, if they could get the instructions and had a body to regain of course.

Soul Society has a special process which can remove the negative energy and make it pure and neutral to use in different processes.

Using some paper and his old ragged clothing, he put it on the side so that it would not roll around.

“Finally I can have a solid form again.” Mark exclaimed as he looked at his bones.

He breathed deeply and picked up his book and went to the section about forming a solid body.

It was a very strange process which changed material into immaterial and merged physical and spiritual.

The story of ghosts with physical form comes from this exact technique.

It would leave Mark extremely weakened as it used quite a lot of spiritual energy but after it was done he would have a protective ‘shell’ in the form of a semi-ethereal body which did not need spiritual energy to touch material objects.

He started by touching the skull. He began to change and his body began to turn transparent.

The bones began to make sounds as they hit each other as a very weak energy began to flow down the spine and put it all together like an undead skeleton was slowly forming.

Soon the ribs attached once more followed by the bones that headed to the arms as did the waist.

One by one the bones connected under a mystical force while Mark felt his body getting weaker but he pressed on. When the hands finally reformed he was nearly see through.

After rebuilding the flow of his body he needed to merge his soul and body once more and so he continued the process after a short moment.

The remaining energy instantly broke down his soul form and everything was transported down his arm until it all entered the skeleton.

His consciousness gathered into the hollowed brain cavity and he awoke in the skeletal form but he didn’t move. This was a very important step to not remaining a skeleton for the rest of his existence.

He started the next process and he felt a huge resistance as the material bonds of his body resisted breaking down but the thing about spiritual energy, it can circumvent the common laws of nature. Well, at least those known to mortal men. This process would not be possible if it did not conform to some kind of mystical law of the universe.

Once it finally surpassed the resistance in one point of his body, it rapidly spread like wildfire and bone by bone began to glow as it seemed to slowly start to melt until it reached the skull which melted as well.

A large ‘wind’ suddenly blew bringing with it a cloud of dust which lifted up the glowing matter and it gathered into a single orb.

Mark was almost having an eupheria moment as he underwent the process that had become natural like being reborn.

Slowly the energy ball took the basic format of a human and slowly expanded to his original size. This included the fat which actually reduced the amount of matter he could work with.

In his mind, after reaching this shape, he saw the impracticality of it’s form and instantly his instinct removed it and his shape began to compress once more turning into a thinner version without the layers of fat. He also was not muscular because he never saw himself as such.

After getting the basic form, his body finally formed a solid form and his skin, eyes and hair reformed but it was all but a shell controlled by his soul.

As he opened his eyes, he looked down and saw his own thin body as opposed to the fat form he once had.

He was, naturally, naked as well and after a moment of feeling his body, of which he had little feeling at all, he noticed the chill in the air.

It wasn’t uncomfortable because he barely had feeling but the exposure soon woke him up and he put on the winter clothing. It was then that he realized that he didn’t have any feeling inside his body.

“Huh? I can’t feel anything.” he muttered as he rubbed his hand over the silky coat but barely felt the solid texture.

He quickly went to the book and saw if he messed up and sighed when he saw that it was supposed to be like that.

The thing about this is that his body was reformed using purely his bones. He didn’t have any original organ so he had just a basic shell of semi material matter forming his body. He would need to train his spiritual energy and eat to be able to slowly reprocess physical matter, aka food, into a solid and complete form.

It was what Billy had done for 70 years and had completed yet he still trained his body to constantly make it stronger.

Seeing that his problem wasn’t one, he calmed down and looked at what remained of his remains. He took the remaining clothing and searched his pockets. He took out his wallet and car keys and saw the book he had when he came.

This was actually a copy he had made which is why his soul did not bind to it unlike the original. In his heart, the original was much more important.

Thinking a while he decided to burn it, knowing the content could lead to more people's death.

He took the quartz crystal beads and the original vajra and stored it along with the other pair he had.

He put one ring of beads on each wrist and stored each vajra in his pockets.

Going outside he put down his items and after looking inside, he took some matches and burned his clothing and the book.

Finally resolving the final problems of his death, he turned to his possessions and checked his wallet.

He was happy to find that he still had several bucks inside, his ID and more.

Nothing had been taken out by the exorcist so he was very happy. He gave a look around the house but found nothing of interest before returning to his car and trying to make it work.

As one would expect, the old buggy, which was already coughing five years ago, would not even start up, much less in the cold with the oil cold and the battery possibly dead.

He kept trying, in hopes of the oil heating up and circulating and after 10 minutes, his prayers were answered when the old rusted engine coughed and started up but much louder than before.

“Damn, this piece of crap is almost blowing up. I will probably only drive it to the nearest town and end it there. If my bank account still works I might be able to withdraw some money and be able to get on a bus.” He muttered.

As he pushed the old buggy he had a frown on his face as he began to think about what he would do with his life from now on.

He was sure to have been either labeled dead or disappeared for years already and not to mention he had debts to pay like the old man from his apartment and such.

Billy had said he would deal with the consequences of his death so he wondered how that would work.

After about half an hour he finally got to the highway and hit the road. The old buggy could barely hit 100 km/h anymore and after reaching the nearest town, he found a random area near a junkyard and left the old pile of junk there.

He went to the bank and tried to access his bank account and to his shock, it still worked. What was amazing was that his old fingerprint had actually formed on his new mortal shell so he actually had access through the fingerprint scanner.

He marveled at the abilities of the Soul Society but withdrew his money as he had planned and headed to a bus station and bought a ticket to the nearest large city.

With time to spare, he enjoyed a long awaited meal and studied the method to process food into energy and energy into his mortal shell.

It was a strange process which really weirded him out but he felt his skin become more realistic and he gained a very minor but stronger feeling in his hands.

Naturally without any senses he didn’t taste anything so he had no enjoyment in the process.

At last he got on the bus and decided to rest for the duration of the trip as the day had been mentally exhausting for him especially since a huge part of his spiritual energy was now in his body.