A week quickly passed and the two phantoms fell into a calm training routine but what was shocking was that this week caused them to drink through a full 100 packets and open one of the other boxes.

Agatha had grown but only a little but she could finally break down matter into energy and could fully absorb a cup of tea and retain the energy but her growth was like droplets in a bucket.

Instead, Mark was more like being forged in fire and having his container rebuilt to support more power. The difference is pretty obvious when explained like that.

Those watching him daily have already recalculated how fast he could achieve the transformation into a wisp by using special technology to check his mortal shell.

The simple fact that the skin was solid already showed a lot to them and the constantly reforming bones and the reshaping caused by his skin and bone synchronizing showed just how much he was actually growing.

The new estimate was dropped from 2 month's down to 3 weeks after his arrival. In this case he would become a wisp in 2 weeks if it continued.

The location he was currently in was the forest in the surroundings of his mansion and after training for a week to get accustomed to the new rug and he currently had the bead necklace around his neck and lifted his hand.

Unlike the rest of the area, the forest wasn’t monitored but would become so after developing and opening the land where he had to install piping and more.

At this stage he felt much more comfortable to properly start doing exorcist work but the first and most important part is to see the full capacity he could pull from the axe.

He felt it in his chest, the connection had grown immensely and after a moment it shined out of his hand and quickly grew into a hand axe that looked like it was made by primitives.

“It really does look simple.” He muttered, “Now let’s see how much I can pull out of you.” he said and grew serious.

A moment later the beads began to react and lightly glow and the green crystal head of the axe began to radiate light and when it capped out Mark muttered, “Huh?!”

He felt a barrier and turned the axe as if looking at it.

It was strange, he felt like there was a wall there yet the wood and jade were both charged.

He let his spiritual power flow through it naturally as he felt that barrier and eventually he noticed something.

“Wait… despite everything, the spiritual power can’t reach the depths of either. Is that why the full power can’t come out.” He said and looked at the weapon and thought about it.

He looked at the base of the axe and put his left palm at the bottom and tried to push it at the center but it just went around it to the outer layers proving the point even more.

He then looked around and sat down on a collapsed tree and examined the axe in detail.

This time he looked at all the lit and unlit engravings on its body and the crystal blade, even the rough exterior.

After some time of looking he pulled out most of the excess energy before he released the energy again but this time didn’t push it in directly and instead initially just coated the top first all the way to the blade’s edge and smiled as he felt something trying to pull it and the locations were all the rough grooves which eventually fed into the engravings.

He channeled his spiritual power into the grooves and they began to light up until they were full and the axe began to change.

The hand began to crack as the filled areas sealed that power completely out of his control and slowly the wood began to fill those areas as it converted his spiritual power but it also seemed to improve the flow as the runes were starting to light up.

The handle slowly went from dull gray almost black to an ash gray as it started to crack and grow.

It started to thicken as well and after thirty minutes and almost half of his power feeding into just the handle, the length had turned into a curved handle of a two handed axe but the head was currently still the same and slowly the last of the surface level cracks were filled and the main handle shined brightly as it firmly held that shape but instantly the next level tried to suck it up but there was a barrier but the head of the axe had full suction and he guided his remaining spiritual power to the head and filled the rough areas and rocky cracks.

Like the wood, the rough areas slowly sucked it up and closed up before raised areas got pulled back into the body while expanding, increasing in size significantly.

He was huffing as the amount of energy the single head absorbed was almost equal to what the handle had absorbed but it head formed a long sharp pointed tip to the back side that could work like a pick while the head formed like a proper and beautiful axe and the last bit was the part that made the blade and it extended a good bit until it reached the tip and like the handle a new barrier formed on the head.

Finally he couldn’t hold it and the much heavier axe fell down under its own weight and Mark was left with 5% of his energy and was extremely fatigued as he looked at the weapon in his hand that his hand could not pass and grinned.

“This was never meant to be the weapon of a weak person.” he said. “No wonder the smith was the only one to be able to show its true form. He knew the secret but didn’t tell and only someone with a keen eye and senses would notice.” he said.

After catching his breath he examined the depth and it had been the same and didn’t know if it had more layers but it was clear that there might be two or even more layers but his own power could not support that amount of strength but at the moment he had achieved the true ‘100%’ of this axe.

He stood up and lifted it from the ground and no dirt was able to remain stuck to it and he looked at a nearby tree.

He walked over and with his tired body he just swung with physical strength and instantly the axe was buried half way into the thick tree making him grin.

He pulled it out and thought about the small form and surprisingly the axe shrank down into a one handed form but it was clearly much better, like a forged hand axe, compared to the very primitive form it had before.

It was quite beautiful as well and he gauged that this small form was around 40% of its power.

Finally he called it back and when it entered his body it instantly released quite a powerful reaction as it sat at the center of his being making him feel much more comfortable.

He went to relaxe and restore his energy while at the same time he took out his supplies and began to premake talismans to work with. He needed money to get better equipment but he needed to work to get that funding so even if he wasn’t a wisp, he knew he had to get money. There was a lot of work with problem specters that he could resolve and he was extra sure with the axe in his possession now.

Like that he spent the next two days training and preparing before looking at the bounty board for areas that needed to be taken care of before picking a small town of less than 2,000 people with some abnormal graveyard movement beyond actual graverobbing.

He headed out in the morning and talked with graveyard keepers.

“Yeah, some real weird shit’s been going on honestly. It isn’t shit graverobbers would usually do.” He said. “Well… some items from different graves have moved to different ones and it is usually always the same four graves. It’s been bugging us but who are we going to look to resolve this. A notice of this has already been submitted to our bosses but who among them actually cares. The most they’ve done is hire some random priest to shout while throwing that water on that ball they normally do and that is it, nothing else.” He said.

“Yeah, sounds about right. It’s extremely rare for authentic exorcists to actually appear.” he said.

“Authentic, right.” the gravekeeper said.

“Oh those do exist, the problem is that there are more fakes than real ones because everyone want’s a profit off something people don’t understand.” Mark said and looked up at the graveyard which had a thin dark mist spread out. “Is it fine if I take a look around.” He said.

“Sure, the graveyard isn’t closed since people would want to visit their family. It’s become a little more hectic with the recent new virus that’s appeared but that’s about it.” he said.

With a nod he asked which of the four graves were the ones and after getting his bearings he headed into the graveyard.

The keeper looked at him strangely, clearly thinking he was a quake like many others.

He soon reached the first and he could see the dark mist coming from it and it was clearly the source of some grudge and he looked at where the smoke headed and it was all on many different items.

He ran his hand through and suddenly felt a spike in greed. Ideas about taking everything entered his mind as quickly as it appeared after he passed through.

“This is a greedy fucker.” He said with disgust and looked around.

He took out his sealing talisman and pushed it on all four corners of the grave and on top before heading to the next one and felt the same thing, it was all greedy men so he sealed them all and returned to the first where he kneeled down and with one hand over it he began to chant.

After a bit a shout came from inside and the dark mist began to move inside trying to push but it was a specter and it wouldn’t be able to escape like this and despite it struggling so much couldn’t escape as he chanted and after a while he felt his power gather into the opening and felt the soul break to run but there was too little space and they were all sucked up leaving no fragments to survive from while the spin dispersed into the mist of negative energy.

With a sigh he finished and looking around he took a moment to check and all he found in the concrete grave was the coffin.

Pulling his head back he quickly fixed up his clothing and then sighed, “They are still breaking up trying to escape. What am I doing wrong?” he muttered as he headed to the next grave and he repeated it four times and one of them he had to go into the grave and drag one final very persistent piece to the opening and complete the job.

Finally he submitted the job and waited for an inspector to come and clean up the negative energy.

“Thanks.” he said after paying him and they both headed out.

“Why are graveyards being left alone, you would think something like this would be more well guarded.” He said.

“Numbers are just too low.” he said as he nodded and went on his way and Mark sighed as he pulled up the bounties and picked a couple of houses near each other and headed over but annoyingly their doors were locked.

Thankfully his ghost hand reaching through could unlock it but it was really annoying.

At the end, he cleared another 6 houses before noon ending up with 10 specters and demonstrating to himself his level of money gain after earning nearly $2,000 in just the morning.

He checked his supplies and had enough to last but he was questioning himself, “Why are there so many specters? Those in the house were easy to deal with because they all were weak and rebuilding their souls with clarity was enough to send them on but is human negativity the cause of so many?” he muttered as he went to a larger town where he was going to work next and went to a buffet so that he could get sufficient food to convert into energy for him to continue.

In the afternoon he went around purifying several specters in local zones such as restaurants or shops.

Amazingly there was even an ice room which had several animal corpses from poorly butchered animals which had been more torturous and those didn’t have another way around it than bringing out the axe to destroy their souls directly.

After it was broken and dead as a spiritual thing he could purify what remained so that it did not reform with time.

At the last one he had to ask, “Why are there so many specters?”

“Too many beings being born, too many creatures dying and too few people to resolve all this.” the inspector said as he drained the large fridge of negative energy.

“Is it totally impossible for normal phantoms to train to become exorcists? Wait, before that, isn’t there some kind of hell or anything?” Mark asked.

“That is our job.” He said as he finished up and took the pearl. “You’ve seen your own workload, this area has only 2 exorcists. Both are walking corpses and they have many more things they are required for so we always hope for new people to deal with all this.” He said.

Mark frowned as he heard that and sighed.

At the end of the day he earned over 5,000 spirit dollars with amazing ease showing just how much growth potential he had with just a day’s work.

He didn’t feel good about it though, he sat in his car looking at the huge list of paranormal activity and what little he did didn’t even make a single dent in the activities. They had all been specters and they aren’t the serious dangers.

That said, he became serious once he looked and pinpointed his home before getting the circle of paranormal activity from that and decided that he will work outward going from the closest to the furthest making sure to basically clear all the jobs of any one town at a time before going to the next.

His regret was to become the most well known exorcist in the world but it was also an obsession to help as many departed as he could and it irritated that this ‘savage’ method was the only way he could achieve that.

He lacked too much power, money and influence to change anything like that though. He didn’t even know where to start from so he could only try doing hard work for himself and maybe he would encounter more help and figure something out.

Returning home, he rested and ate something before going to train with much more dedication just to get the words of the inspector out of his head.

For the rest of the month Mark didn’t dedicate to solely training, the night time was he used for training the day time he dedicated almost entirely to either preparing material one day to use for several days and the other times he would go to the nearest towns and any bounties were resolved until none were left and he moved on.

This quickly caught the attention of soul society who began to monitor his amazing hunting pace.

There was a reason for this naturally, maybe because he now had a way to see countless bounties for ghosts, Mark had forgotten a very basic thing related to exorcism that made it so attractive in the first place. By helping spirits move on, it produces a positive karma.

Karma is very similar to sin but of the opposite spectrum. It has the capacity to cancel out sin allowing people to live longer but in mortals it goes beyond and is one of the reasons millionaires and billionaires donate money to charities despite not needing to. It creates a defensive field around them against dark spirits and has a good effect in prolonging life and brings good fortune.

For a ghost who actively trains in exorcist methods, the effect didn’t immediately show but after nearly a month of hard work, it began to show. At the center of his soul flame as he trained, a shining ball of yellow light was gathered and weaved alongside his soul flames and after training for nearly a month it finally reached the apex.

The forces began to release powerful soul waves and spiritual power from the soul flame and when it got to the limit, both the light and the flame erupted outwards before spinning and blending to form a golden soul flame that spun around the center.

It was bright and very concentrated and grew larger as the separate energy and soul flame fully mixed into a bright yellow flame that radiated a faint righteous aura.

It finally began to gather at a single point which both energies were erupting from and slowly condensed into a large orb that slowly compressed until only a hovering orb remained.

All the soul flame and the karma energy that had gathered until it was even visible had perfectly blended with the soul to produce a yellow soul. A normal soul was white or blue but this one was dull yellow and was likely to grow more and more yellow as time went by.

Indeed, Mark had achieved the first step and fully awakened spiritually as a phantom wisp.

The orb was like a drain and it was sucking up ambient energy like there was no tomorrow and remained there for a while until finally it hovered up and moved away from the rug and spiritual waves spread out before a solid form appeared.

It formed broad shoulders, a strong frame and was clearly a strong body. Mark looked down at his body that had completely perfected itself. His body was still not complete however and now 80% of his being was condensed into the wisp but his physical form was now much stronger. Still his bones were still in an energy state but they had taken form now and his ‘shape’ had fully stabilized.

“I look leaner than I expected I would be.” he said, moving around and he realized he had a lot more feeling in his hands and body than he had before.

He put on his clothing and was happy to have bought bigger clothing because they still fit him just fine.

“Karma is really amazing, it had just gathered despite all the training but when I reached the peak it blended with my soul. It’s such a warm feeling to have and the pressure of sin is gone like all the sins were washed away.” he said happily. His mood was quite good and he put on his clothing and even his necklace.

He called out the axe and it formed as it was before but he could already feel the pull for the next section and the barrier was clearly weak meaning it could be developed even more.

“I’ll do this later.” He muttered and put it away before looking around. “I’m finally a wisp, which means that I can fight vengeful spirits now. Still… I feel like I’m lacking a lot of knowledge and knowledge is power. These tens of thousands I've stored up over the last month are definitely going to be vital to fixing this. I need to learn about different types of vengeful spirits, upgrade my talismans, techniques and everything. Then I need to finally look into planting those flowers. Agatha should be strong enough to sustain a few of them and it would be helpful to her to do that after I sprout them but I should probably look for more people.” He said and groaned, “I also need to finally fix all the fields, pump, pump house. Oh man this is going to be a headache and a half.” He complained as he packed his things and took a look around before heading up the elevator to deal with his things.

***

As Mark fell under the surveillance, instantly the people watching him at the soul society HQ were alerted about his rise in rank and it was sent up to higher ranked personnel.

“Hmm… slower than the prediction of 3 weeks since starting.” He said.

“Yes but that is honestly more impressive because he would only train at night and do possibly the biggest mass purging we’ve had in years.” the operator, who brought the information to this man, said.

“True… update his shopping clearance, he is going to need that for updating his knowledge base. Add the location of all local ghost libraries and include him among the listed to notify when the phantom market will open in the USA. Keep a watch however because wisps tend to release large spiritual waves when they use spiritual power. The next person to go deliver to him had best warn him of this and the danger it holds.” He said.

“Affirmative.” she said and the screen turned off.

The man looked blank faced before checking the status of all the recent exorcists and groaned by how their efforts were so weak. “Why must the fighting depend on such…” he paused and sighed before looking at the immense list of constantly growing dark spirits and then looked at Mark’s name.

He soon paged in one of the operatives, “Get a scan of Mark Black’s soul waves and see the condition of his soul. Him clearing out over 500 specters had to have an effect upon becoming a wisp and I want to know the depth of it.” he said.

He waited and after a while it came in and he looked and knew what had to be done and updated him with wisp level bounty clearance in hopes that he would start working even harder. It might produce one extremely powerful righteous soul but it was better if it was someone who was excited to do this job instead of someone who did it out of survival requirements.

Mark clearly didn’t do it for money and his unique sight made his clearance several times cleaner compared to anyone else. It was hard to compare when the core of his capacity was something that appeared from 1 in a millenium. Even among them, they had to make sure it was an exorcist who did it or it wouldn’t work out.

In the end he could only sigh and wait for Mark to get to work.

He didn’t have to wait long for him to access the computer to get a clearer picture of his updates and thus began the massive spending of over $60,000 spirit dollars to repair the house and fields. He then purchased tier 1 talisman ink and a high quality calligraphy kit to upgrade his talisman production but talisman paper wasn’t useful as it sounded, not for low quality talisman.

That barely put a few hundred dollars into the purchase not counting the labor put into it but the next order did just that.

“Well… I can't say he isn’t rushed.” the man said as Mark put the 1st of many purchases to build the underground ley line vent cavern. A whooping 25,000 plus another 10,000 to build an elementary altar at the vent which could sustain him from wisp to achieve the transformation into a walking corpse.

He spent the hour after that purchasing ‘cheap’ furniture and housing decor while the rooms were outfitted for houses with different forms of sleeping spots such as ghost lanterns or hidden altars.

“So he’s preparing for the workforce. He is likely to house ghosts that will help sustain the plant’s he sprouts.” he muttered.

It ended up as another 5k for his entire house. The items weren’t rich items, he didn’t think much on wealth and instead comfort.

Finally with roughly 20k he began to purchase wisp level knowledge. New talismans, new charms, new techniques. These were basic things he could get and what he could get, he did get. It was all limited though but he did use 5k to upgrade the knowledge base before looking through the apps to find the libraries.

The man had the camera open when he heard Mark talking.

“They really should label the sizes of these libraries. I can’t even tell if one is a bookstore for phantoms or a library for walking corpses.” he complained.

The man blinked and thought on that and indeed found that the apps lacked this function and just gave localizations just like maps would.

After a while Mark was able to find a single snapshot of the interior and guessed the size of a reasonably sized one he could visit to get the more advanced things he needed.

“Alright, that should just about do it. Now I just need to wait. After everything settles down, my work efficiency is sure to go up. It’s going to be annoying clearing out every specter bounty in Kentucky though but my strength has gone up and it’s definitely going to improve.” he said.

The man almost choked as he heard, “What did he say! All the specters! What is this brat thinking?! He should move on to wisps! Wisps are real threats, stop focusing on the small flies!” he shouted at the screen, losing his temper.

Sadly Mark wasn’t an official member of soul society, otherwise he would smack him for that comment and would have sent him on a difficult mission afterwards but they could only act as middlemen now.

He cursed the heavens for giving this amount of talent and luck to such a stupid man if even half of what he could do was split in dozens of parts and given to the others to be able to achieve that would have been the ideal world but even after settling down they are very slow in the uptake like many phantoms and it drove him crazy seeing Mark so casual about ghost hunting like it was a hobby.

The first deliveries were naturally the small things like information but all the other purchase required a few days to gather the material and transport it to the mansion and reopen a sufficient passage to transport everything down to the vent while the furniture and farm improvements would require digging out the dirt to replace the entire system and that would require machines.

The man looked irritated at this but he couldn’t do much as he watched until the delivery arrived and the man gave all the warnings he had ordered and checked the time. Mark happily got into his car and headed out to the library.

The man at the HQ was filled with irritation and decided to take a break and while doing so met a high ranked member and complained about Mark.

“Ahaha, it’s been a while since a newbie has pissed you off like this. Still, a wisp going after specters… in all honesty, I hope he never stops and nips the supply line of dark spirits in all of the US on his own. That would cut down the constantly growing number of dark spirits but I doubt he could succeed. The nucleus of dark forces in major cities like New York, Washington and other big cities is too much for a single exorcist to clean out.” this man said.

“That isn’t the problem, if he just aimed for specters, even if he just got a droplet of karma for clearing thousands, he would eventually achieve karmic evolution through sheer number alone. The last time we even saw anything like this was the European dark ages when we couldn’t care for what we purged, we just had to clear them out.” the man said.

“That is true, China in the 1300s was also a tough time peroid and it would constantly move to another part of the world. There would always be a few but to think there is someone who would aim for it through specters in peaceful times.” the other man said.

“I doubt he even knows, he probably only knows that doing this reduces sin and promotes fortunes.” the first man said.

The other one laughed and checked out Mark’s record. “549 specters, did his soul incorporate karma?” he asked.

“Yes, it is dull yellow but it is blended.” he said.

“Oh boy, I wonder what those mortal pricks are going to think when their ‘holy’ magic fails against him if they ever enter in a large confrontation.” the man said.

The first one snorted, “They have lots of different ways to use their powers, it is unlikely that it will stop at just one attempt once he is found.” he said.

“Well… he looks quite different from his original form already so it is fine. Want to bet on his speed of reaching poltergeists?” the second man asked.

The first one fell into thought and checked the specific purchase for the underground he had made. “A year and a half at the latest taking into consideration his considerable hunting habit he seems to want to put into practice.” he said.

“Oh, then I will bet in 1 year. The one with the closest guess wins.” the other man said.

“What is the bet?” he asked.

The other man thought and laughed, “What about if i win i get your Yin hell spring.” he said.

“No.” the man said instantly. “I can bet the liquid but not the spring.” He said.

“Then leave that… What about a Ghost life fruit.” He said.

The man scowled, “You want to rebuild your reproductive function? Whatever, if that is the case then I want your 50 orbs of Iron Phantom Essence.” He said.

This time the man frowned in thought, “40.” he said.

“Fine.”

Like that behind the scenes two men made a bet with Mark even knowing that he had caused this headache for many parties.