In an unknown place rich with a powerful vibrancy in the air, a smiling cowboy walked with a guitar case in hand. He looked no different from your average man besides probably being a country man. He had come back from doing his job over the last weeks.

As a ghost inspector, he had a direct line to the big men who could feel the presence of new phantoms and it was his job along with countless others to find these ghosts.

The location he was in was the HQ for soul society, it wasn’t a place that mortal men could enter and it wasn’t entirely on earth, just like the ability to distort a common house into a huge tavern, the people behind this dimension were not nearly as weak as the ones in that city.

Soul Society was run and supported by Spirit lords, true 10,000 year old phantoms who date back to even before the first truly written history was established.

With a smile he eventually reached a large room with countless screens and upon entering some women stood and bowed, “Welcome back inspector!”

“Howdy ladies, how have the files been compiling?” He asked.

“They have transmitted perfectly.” one of them said.

“That’s good.” He said.

“Sir, we are happy to say that the exorcist spirit you found has been fully settled down and has his mortal shell so we are likely to have another patron soon.” one of them said.

“Oh, that chubby fellow is already settled down. I’m surprised he was able to move around so quickly despite his body being so far away. Which tavern did he go to and where did he get put down?” Billy asked.

“He went to Louisville, Kentucky and is just an hour drive south of Elizabethtown. He was put in the Mansion estate near there.” she said.

Billy paused for a moment as he thought about the localization before snapping his finger, “Ah that big ass abandoned farm estate. I’ll be damned, you guys put him in one hell of a spot. How is he gonna take care of that massive house alone?” He asked.

“Well… unlike other spirits who get their mortal shells early and try to farm expensive crops, he decided on wisp and poltergeist training and decided to farm Midnight flowers instead. The tavern keeper also left him spirit tea bush seeds so that they can get more local tea compared to the expensive long distance one they tend to get.” One lady explained.

“Ah, that old man is at it again. How is he doing, how long has he been at the house?” Billy asked.

“Well, he got there about three days ago and for the most part, he trains roughly three fourths of the day and the rest he spends reading about the plants he was given seeds for. His training time has been getting slower as his max capacity has gotten higher.” She said.

“Three days means that there were at least 5 days in which he was in contact with training knowledge so he has at least already increased his spiritual power by several fold but even that will be barely enough to sprout a few midnight flowers. Spirit tea is harder to sustain with just that amount of energy.” He said.

“From the conversations we caught of him talking to himself, he’s also noticed and is why he hasn’t started planting. He is probably thinking about only starting as a wisp.” One of the ladies said.

“Smart lad, how are the other two exorcists?” He asked.

“Not as good because their bodies were already buried after their deaths so although they are already at their bodies we’ve had to send a small bit of aid through manipulated grave robbers to dig their bodies out for them.” one said, sighing.

“Ah, that is such a pain but I guess it can’t be helped. Continue to watch out for them and properly settle them down. Did any of the others find more?” He asked.

“Over the last month there have only been 20 new exorcist phantoms. Although it is the sum of the last six months at once it isn’t much.” one of the women said.

“Well, exorcist phantoms are rare already so getting 20 at once is a good start, if even 5 aren’t stupid and have good ambition they can become strong support.” He said. “Well for now it doesn’t really matter, unless they start working the contracts just leave them be. Just make sure to get them some means of contact.” He said.

“Yes sir!” they said and went back to work.

Billy walked to a screen and began to pull up information on most of the phantom’s movements and just shook his head at the sorry state of 95% of them. “It is a shame that 90% of exorcists can’t even support themselves until another can provide support or even outright take them in. There are just too few ghost dimensions for hiding so many of these phantoms who can’t even protect themselves from the negative energy in the cities.” he thought and just found it depressing.

As for an afterlife, sadly there is either heaven or a void which roughly 80% of souls completely go to, others are broken up and fill the world. After years they finally break any connection and are reborn in an infant as a new soul after being pieced together by the world. The rest are the problem honestly because the pieces gather only parts and become the problem spirits.

There are substantially more dark spirits than spiritual ghosts.

He sighed at the fact that not all ghosts had the capacity to be exorcists.

“Are there any more phantoms that have awakened?” He asked.

“We’ve got the next packet of contracts as well as the pay for the one you just completed.” An operator said and went into a room before coming and giving him those small cards that he had used to gather information from Mark and he took the packet before the operator formed a huge pile of money that he took.

He then started looking through the new files and their locations and nodded. “Well damn… half of them are criminals in jail.” He said.

“Yes, for some reason we’ve noticed quite a number of sentient phantoms appearing. We need to reach them before they start trying things they shouldn’t.” He said.

“Am I permitted to beat them up if they start doing shit?” he asked.

“Yes, if they begin to turn irregular then you can directly break their souls again.” he said.

Billy sighed and put the cards in the inner pocket, “I’m going to get something to eat before heading out again. If anything happens I hope you will inform me.” he said.

“Of course sir!” he said and Billy took his guitar and headed to a massive open plaza within this place filled with countless ghosts and spirits of different shapes. Those that develop naturally have a tendency to get stranger shapes while those who actively train from phantom and have their mortal shell retain their human shape through it all.

He turned towards a large tower within this area which contained the best food and ordered himself generous servings before picking up his things and leaving once more to continue his work.

***

In his complete ghost form, no longer training but with energy to spare after resting, Mark was moving his spiritual power around and finally his body lost its bondage from the ground.

“Finally! I was wonder why I couldn’t fucking fly despite being a weightless ghost!” he exclaimed happily as he figured out how to levitate and he started to move around and found that this feeling quickly became a second instinct.

Soon he was able to will his movement instead of having to focus and with this in mind he looked around and outside and finally floated through the walls and frowned at the ghosts.

He flew over and looked at one close up and even poked them. As a ghost it worked but like an object floating through space, they just moved around to his poke without any reaction.

“What are these?” He muttered and thought a while and began to take close looks around before he noticed something strange.

“Huh? Aren’t several of these the same person?” He muttered.

He blinked confused and grabbed the one he was looking at and took it to the front before floating around and grabbing all the similar ones until there were 9 and he linked them up and examined them and it was true.

“Wait, could these be the fragments that Billy said made up the soul?!” He exclaimed.

He felt extremely confused but after some thought he grabbed their hands and stuck it out and made them touch but there was no reaction until he noticed the eye of one of them tremble at his touch.

He separated it and thought of what to do with it and moved its arm and touched other parts but there still wasn’t much to go on but he did notice another piece reacting to the touch. Two parts and he finally knew what it was.

He put the first piece in the middle and then put the two parts that reacted and made their arms touch and it finally reacted.

The other parts all looked at it and they all lost their features and rapidly gathered into an orb with the first one at the center becoming one body.

The hovering body collapsed to the ground like a cut puppet and was completely out of it but there was no negative reaction.

That said, moments later, a dark light passed unimpeded through the barrier around this place and hit the spirit and seemed to complete something and Mark knew it was the sin piece of her soul.

When it did her body shined momentarily and she shot up ‘breathing’ as if she had been suffocating until now.

“W-what, where…” she said and looked around until she looked at Mark who floated next to her and screamed.

“Calm down lady.” He said and dropped to the ground.

“Y-you were just floating!” she said.

“So where were you a moment ago.” He said.

“What happened? Where is this… wait this house… the color is different but i remember it! I was working here and… and then there were a lot of gunshots after that strange thing happened and then…” she said.

“You died. A lot of people had died, it was originally a haunted mansion, I don't know the scale of the haunting but it had been haunted for quite a while from what I heard.” Mark said.

“So… I’m dead? But… you…”

“I’m also dead. I’m a ghost that woke up naturally but you are different. Tell me, do you see those.” He said pointing at a ghost fragment.

“What… the clouds.” She said.

“So you really can’t see them. Your… soul was in fragments, I had found 9 similar looking parts and only when I put them touching each other they formed into… well, you.” He said.

He opened his book and took out a folded page which had been what Billy had shown him and he explained the soul of a ghost.

“This… this is so strange.” she said looking at her hand.

“Yeah I bet.” Mark said and helped her up and had her follow him inside and went to his room where he picked up his phone and took out the card from the tavern and called.

“Hello Mr Black, how may we help you?” a woman’s voice said.

“Yeah well… How do I explain this? It was something I had forgotten to ask about… well it’s like this, I can see a lot of blank mindless ghosts all over in the air and when I finally figured out the trick to flying I checked it out and found lots of… copies. When I gathered one group of 9 I found three parts that reacted and when all three touched, suddenly all the ghosts combined into one and a dark part representing Sin shot down from the sky and now a phantom is beside me with full cognitive thought.” he said.

The other side was silent.

“Hello.” he said.

That said the sound of the phone going on hold sounded for a moment before the voice of the old man came through but his voice was tens of times more serious than when Mark had first met him.

“Mr Black, I listened in and what you said is an extremely serious situation, I will be over in a few minutes and we can properly talk about it.” He said and the phone clicked off.

“Minutes?” He said and then thought about what the young woman had said and realized that the old man was very likely not something so weak like a simple walking dead and he clearly wasn’t stiff meaning he was very likely an earthbound spirit. If he didn’t train then he was at least over 500 years old already.

The woman looked at him confused about what he was doing.

“What is that?” She asked.

“This is a phone, what year did you die?” He asked.

“Year… uh… 1986, the last time I checked.” She said and looked at him, “W-what year is it?” She asked.

He forced a weak smile, “2020.” He said.

If she had blood, her face would definitely have been drained of any at this point.

He helped calm her down by making some tea which filled her with the warmth of spiritual power which was very useful for stabilizing her soul and strengthening her consciousness, wisdom and intelligence. She did have to hold one of the quartz but after a small bit of teaching how to channel just a bit of energy she could barely hold the tea and drink it. Thankfully the drink reacted to her spiritual body so he was able to teach her how to change material to energy but she was only able to extract energy before the rest leaked out of her body and he just found a towel and whipped it up telling her it was nothing and she would get better.

Not even ten minutes after the call the elder appeared at the door from the air completely unhindered by the barrier and was very serious when Mark finally got to him.

“Sir, this is the woman.” he said showing her and he looked and nodded. He took out a phone and quickly got in contact with the soul society and asked for an update and after speaking a bit he looked and took out a blank card and looking at the screen he used spiritual power to update what was being picked up.

“Alright, miss, you will have to answer a few questions so that we can properly register you as an awakened phantom instead of a wandering ghost.” He said and asked questions that inspectors did and filled out the holes and half way he had to use hypnosis to bring out the information.

Her name was Agatha Moore and had been a farmer on this estate but a raid from someone trying to take over the farm lands had killed all the men, women and children but because of a lot of resentment from the two sides killing each other, it had led to the place being haunted.

“Alright, this part is done and there is no problem on the legal part but now…” he said looking at Mark, “What you did is extremely serious.” He said.

“What exactly happened?” he asked.

“What you have is a special ability called the soul's eye. It is an exceptionally rare ability which rarely appears even once every millennium. Ghosts that have this capacity are capable of seeing the fragmented souls of the dead that have scattered. If you are capable of gathering the conscious, wisdom and intelligence fragments, all the other fragments will pinpoint it as long as no more than 5 decades hadn’t passed yet at which point the bond of souls break down and they tend to join the countless energies of the world and are reborn as a new piece of a new soul. In essence, if you looked hard enough, you could create an immense number of phantoms as long as you can find the three central pieces. However, you had best not try this anymore, not unless you have all nine pieces gathered up.” He said.

“Oh… that makes sense.” He said.

“There is nothing wrong in making them if you have all nine parts but if you are going to do it at least do several at once and inform us before so we can be here to quickly fill the information out unless they are regarded as irregular.” He said.

“Okay so what happens now?” He asked.

“She is free to do as she pleases. From what I see, she has no actual bondage to this land or even an item holding her. In fact she could move on otherwise her soul would have rebuilt itself long ago.” He said. “Do you sense any regrets?” He asked.

When asked she thought, “Well… dying and seeing my children murder but… besides that.” She said sadly.

“Exactly, it requires but a thought from you and you will move on to the afterlife if you so desire.” he said.

“What is that like?” She asked.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there, it would depend on heaven, most people are sent to the void, a land where all souls sleep and their memories are cleared within the darkness and once they are pure they will be reborn. Those who get chosen to enter heaven will go there in the afterlife.” He said.

Her face turned to one of intense fear when she heard what the afterlife was like and shook her head and he smiled, understandingly.

“Alright, well i guess i will give a small introduction to the society, however i don’t think you will be able to do a great deal of work initially and despite being able to use the quartz to channel spiritual power, it might still be hard for her to achieve active growth.” He said.

“Is it hard?” Mark asked.

“Yes, the first step is condensing her body to a small size, this sounds simple but isn’t. She can try, but I doubt she will be able to even achieve that. The best option for her is working smaller jobs under you and just naturally growing. It might seem monotonous at first but if you piece people back together then you will soon be able to make a small community to help with your farms.” he said.

“Are there any spirit plants that phantoms can grow without an active injection of spiritual power?” He asked.

“No, that is why many of them work different jobs to get money to buy a proper medium tool. You should also buy something better than quartz. There are many materials better than that.” He said.

“I’ll see that some other time.” he said and looked at the woman. “What do you plan to do?” He asked.

“I… I don’t know, I don’t know how the world is, It’s been nearly 40 years already, I… I think it is better to stay here until I can adapt even just a little.” She said.

“Alright, we can work out a deal afterward.” Mark said.

She nodded and the elder took the time to borrow some post it paper and do like Billy before writing up a large page of information with all the required questions he had done.

“Whenever you awaken someone please have them fill out all these questions, those that can't answer the inspector that comes will be able to draw out the answer.” He said.

“Yeah… but I will try to avoid doing that until I have stable pay.” he said and just left it at that.

The elder nodded and looked at Agatha before turning into a light that shot into the air like a rising meteor and vanished as soon as he crossed the barrier.

Together Mark scratched his head, “Uh… I guess we will be living together, I hope we get along.” She said.

She just nodded before taking off the beads.

“I hope you don’t mind me wanting to stay alone.” She said.

“Sure but just a warning there is metal fencing all around which holds up a barrier, unless you have the key to the barrier you can’t cross safely.” He said.

She thought it was strange but nodded and walked off. It was at this moment that Mark noticed her feet were unformed like an actual ghost you see in movies, but just the area below her knees were transparent and he wondered if he did something incorrect in remaking her ghost.

Still there were too many unknowns about what he can do with this but for the moment he looked up and began to go through the ghosts and finding pairs and pushing them into bundles but never fully making the ghosts.

For the rest of the day when he had light he did that and actually found five full sets of ghosts and organized over 60 different groups.

“Hmm… did the haunting the ghosts caused here keep all these from moving on.” He muttered as he headed inside and turned on the lights and made himself some tea to finish topping off his spiritual power before going to train. He left Agatha to her own thoughts since it was a sudden thing suddenly reviving as a ghost after a traumatic death while being nearly 40 years into the future.