At home, Mark was looking at his phone and on the computer that had a google maps screenshot of Elizabethtown and he slowly found the bounties he had completed that had the fragments and he put a dot over the 15 he had found and when he put the last one he grinned.

He didn’t stop there as he started drawing circles growing further until he found a point that passed all the points with no divergence and smiled and took out the bounty of elizabeth town and followed the line and put down all the bounties and saved them to bounties he was going to do and after he was done he found 180 points. Basically every 2 degrees on a circle had one bounty and then he looked at the center and pinpointed that spot and searched up on the actual map that location but it was basically the center of the city.

“Should I do this?” he muttered while tapping his finger on the desk and sighed before saving the image.

He set up to make materials for the job for the rest of the night and in the morning he left to the closest place to the highway he started on the guesses and after clearing it he actually found it and shook his head.

“This might cause a lot of headaches. I should also check the ones I’ve gone through already in case.” He said and like that he kept clearing out and the investigator did the same plan as the day prior for convenience and he also passed by the houses he had gone to and frowned when he found a new but weak spector and a new stone.

“This is clearly intentional.” He said and took the stone since it was basically there for grabs despite having known it was already taken once so he visited all the houses that had it and he gained an extra 15.

For the whole day he worked clearing the 180 houses and at the end he got home with the 180 stones, which was more than a massive fortune. A 10 stone unit caused 100 million, it was unknown what this huge store would cost. The strange part was the books, he had no idea what they were for. Maybe it might have been just to prop up the stone so that it didn’t draw from the earth instead.

To say nothing else the money from 180 houses was still quite generous but at Soul society HQ a higher up member was frowning as he was talking with an earthbound spirit.

“Sir, with the recent rise in the Covid crisis, we might have to move someone big here.” He said.

“Just because a wisp hunted in a circle?” he asked.

“Sir… we drew a circle following the outline and among them are a few houses where we found a Book embryo and a Stone Fragment of Spirituality in each.” He said.

The man stopped, “Wait, that means this wisp has 180 fragments?” he said.

“Our investigators naturally noticed them but our regulations prevent us from taking spiritual treasures found by exorcists.” He said.

“Right. I can see now why you want this to move. Someone that can replace 15 stones so casually isn’t small. Among dark spirits only a reborn dead would have the intelligence to recognize treasures. This kid took all of them so he is likely to have a fit. Dispatch walking dead and stiff corpse units around Elizabethtown and call two other earthbound spirits beyond myself. If this scum is reborn dead then it is dangerous but also an opportunity, it must have a massive store of stone fragments of spirituality. The spirit lords would love this huge store and it could enhance the power and size of the domain.” He said.

“And the parts the boy took?” the first man said.

“Leave it, we can’t take it due to our own regulations.” He said.

The man nodded and walked off to inform the divisions and earthbound spirits.

***

In Elizabeth town, the undead was resting after having placed his stones but as night arrived his eyes opened and he looked around and saw that all 180 openings were slowly weakening.

“WHAT SCUM DARES! RUIN MY FORMATION!” he roared in anger. It goes without saying that although he sat upon a vein of stones, he wasn’t unlimited. “It seems they don’t think highly of a reborn!” He growled in anger before turning and roaring towards an opening.

From the darkness, movement started and creatures that were straight out of horror movies appeared.

All of them had blacked out eyes while this man was very human but his figure started to shift as his form grew more disgusting and warped with an upside down head and his size increased.

He roared upwards in anger but it didn’t reach any normal mortal’s ears but every phantom and specter felt it and every phantom felt their heart beating extremely fast.

The walking dead that controlled those gathering places scowled as they ran to the windows and saw the starry sky get covered by dark clouds growing more wild.

“Shit.” they all said and each of them activated an alert that began to blast at the HQ while they activated spiritual barriers against the walls and perception block over every building making it impossible for specters from noticing but making phantoms go towards them and enter even through the walls and many of them came out in the open.

That said, that wasn’t the only beings that heard it, Magical creatures and spiritual humans all heard this from Elizabethtown and the surrounding county.

Mark was already back home but even he heard the echo from the roar and it made his skin crawl at the anger.

“What the hell?” He muttered and quickly looked that way as did all the phantoms and ghosts before they looked at one another.

The walking dead frowned, “That shout was filled with anger… could it be a reborn dead? If so then someone must have really pissed it off to ignore its self preservation.” One of the builders said.

“It is scary to think something like this could be so close.” Mark said.

“True.” those in the surroundings said. “Let’s go men, we can’t do anything about it, this is a fight that 100% has to be dealt with by Soul Society HQ.” one of the ghosts said.

The men looked that way and got back to work but Mark didn’t feel good because he was sure that it was him that did this.

He went back to his office and looked at the recipe for the Book of Ghost Registry.

“A book embryo is the base material but the theorized material are at least 10 extra books to act as proxies and every book requires a specific spiritual forging presented below.” it continued on to show the spiritual forging process to create the ‘mother’ book and the ‘child’ books.

That said the problem after that came with building a system and powering this immense system and there were many lacking things.

He checked his funding and purchased spiritual forging techniques and knowledge up to the wisp level but then he also upgraded that with tier 1 and tier 2 knowledge. He wanted to be able to make his own artifacts eventually but at the moment he needed to learn the basics. For more book embryos he had found that putting active stones on top of a book would eventually produce them so making source materials isn’t going to be a problem even if he doesn’t fuse the stones.

After that he sold 30 books for 30,000 each meaning he got almost 1 million out of it and instantly switched it over for spiritual runic knowledge. He was going to get this so that he could spend, even years if needed it was a rare opportunity for a weakling to access a lot of knowledge. It was 300,000 thousand spirit dollars and with 600k left he purchased walking corpses and stiff corpse training methods to complete the knowledge base further for himself.

In the end he had only 90k left from the 900k from the 30 books. Not counting the 18k he got from clearing the 180 houses and what he had prior so he had roughly 110k in store so he still had money to continue using but he would need funding to pay ghosts for their work as well.

“For the time being I just need to be peaceful. I’ll avoid Elizabethtown for the time being and continue clearing out small towns. The covid problem is getting annoying though and there are too many deaths. I hope it doesn’t cause too big of a disaster.” He groaned.

After that he waited for the delivery and saw his book expand extensively and he headed inside to start training to produce ghost flames and learn about spiritual forging so that he could eventually do what he wanted.

***

As for Elizabethtown, dark spirits came out like rats in a flooding sewer and soul society combat divisions began to move in but at the same time humans were rushing. IEO were naturally informed and after about an hour, large transports began to appear and many people of different classes.

Among them was a familiar face for Mark. Josh, a young but promising priest, jumped out but he wore a strange suit as did all the others who were ready to fight spiritual beings.

“Alright! This is the first field test for our spirit defense suits. When powered up they should produce sufficient coverage from spirits attacking your body directly and not distract you but remember that there is limited power. Don’t think this is a field trip, we’ve gotten word that this is a demonic spirit surge and it is likely to be led by a reborn undead.” He shouted.

“Sir, is there going to be backup to fight something like that?” One of the younger members said.

“Yes, an elder is flying from central but we are here to deal with the fodder not the main threat. Leave that fight to the people who can deal with it.” He said.

Josh raised his hand, “Sir… this event is too big for ‘them’ to ignore. How do we treat their forces?” he asked.

“For the time being, the biggest threat is the demonic spirits. Leave them for another time, there are roughly 30k in population but it goes up if you count the surroundings that could become affected. If this threat is big enough it might even cause natural disasters so avoid making it a 3 way war and just focus on the main threat.” He ordered.

“Yes sir!” They shouted.

In another part of the city, three earthbound spirits hovered in the air and looked out at the disaster brewing with tens of thousands of specters that have accumulated over the centuries and even gathered from other cities.

One of them looked towards the IEO group. “The humans have arrived and it seems they’ve designed a new suit for fighting.” he said with sharp eyes.

“They aren’t likely to be enemies. From the feeling, there are no members who can actively fight the leader so these are probably first responders. The real fighters are likely to come later but the problem is how many there are going to be and the dark spirits as well.” he said.

“From the looks and movements, it would seem that it also wants to cause as much trouble and expand a demonic domain over the city and possibly kill the civilians.” one of them said.

“He is likely accessing the power of the stones to try and achieve this so that spectors solidify and can cause damage. It’s quite a good plan but… it’s a bit immature.” the leading one said and nodded.

They each split up and form a triangle over the city and together they begin to chant and produce charms which force dark force to diffuse above ground instead of gathering up. Although it spreads this energy over a large field, it prevents the quantity the reborn dead desires for his plan and he instantly noticed when he couldn’t gather the capacity overhead.

“Don’t think that is my only plan.” He said and took one stone from under him and making them touch, he started to combine them and they started to react and one by one they started to gather while he infused it with dark force until it was tainted black and began to beat like a heart and release clouds of much denser dark force into the reborn dead.

It also started to absorb ambient spiritual power and convert it, making him grin. It was just a shame that he didn’t have all the pieces. As the parts completed fusion the capacity for production grew more until it became like a heart and he tapped it into the formation and from the 180 openings, this dense dark force began to spread out, shocking the three men.

“He has pieced together the stone! He wants to make this a ghost town!” one of them shouted and instantly saw the formation in the ground come to life as the sickening dark force started to seep out.

If Mark were there he would see all the fragmented souls cry out in pain and suddenly many parts began to gather rapidly but never all the parts. Some would rot away completely like the conscious and the rest that were in the process would piece together and be instantly corrupted into a specter and was hungry and angry and they instantly noticed.

“Shit! The soul fragments are starting to awaken and grow the number of specters!” one of them cursed.

After a moment, from the center, a dark and cold wave spread out and instantly covered the entire city and the clouds parted to reveal the full moon tinted blood red. The dispersing dark force rapidly gathered up and filled the land as the specters shouted as their bodies gained more solid density.

Mortals that were more sensitive to danger woke up or looked outside to see the red moon and felt a chill in their stomach.

The three earthbound spirits frowned and one of them took out a red talisman and infused it and it burned up and just fluttered away but this instantly activated a massive alarm right in the training room of the nearest earthbound spirits and Nature spirit.

In the Nature spirits a message cried out, “A reborn dead has pieced together a dark heart from an unknown number of Stone fragments of spirituality! It’s expanded a dark domain over Elizabethtown and I think it might be close to becoming a disaster spirit!”

The spirit’s eyes instantly opened and narrowed his eyes and got up and took to the air and vanished before appearing in the air like an immortal being and his bare figure formed garbs made of spiritual materials and with a staff before they shot towards the far off town.

The earthbound spirits didn’t wait and began to gather as fast as possible.

“Phantoms! It is your time! Kill any dark spirit, smash it to pieces and purge!” the leaders shouted.

And so, the first major spiritual confrontation that was openly seen by mortal man happened in the 21st century after many years of such things being hidden from sight.