Looking at his phone, Mark looked up at a building that had taken quite the ride to reach.

It was old and decrepit and was exactly as you would expect ghosts to live in. An abandoned hospital.

Traveling all the way to Maysville, Kentucky, Mark was sitting in his car looking at the Hayswood hospital. A building dating back to 1915 and officially became a hospital in 1923.

It closed in 1983 due to a larger facility being built nearby leaving it abandoned and to nature.

A place where death occured commonly, it was obvious that this was a hot spot for ghost sightings.

Mark’s face was showing irritation because he saw another car with a person inside who faintly radiated an aura of spirituality but not a ghost.

Where he had learned to control his surges of power as a wisp, something he had to be careful of so that he would not attract unwanted attention, as a poltergeist with a mortal shell, he didn’t have that worry. If he was a normal poltergeist then he would have already left but his mortal shell contained the excessive wavelengths.

He called the operators and asked about it.

“Sorry but as a hotspot, it is a regular place that IEO priests come. However the dark spirits are instinctively adverse to their presence making it hard for them to spot and purge them so most of the time they would cleanse the dark force. Their techniques though only clear about 40% of the energy.” the operator said.

“That’s a pain in the ass. You guys commissioned this because you picked up a dark specter and wanted me to test myself against one but how am I going to explain it to these IEO guys?!” He said.

“Please, don’t be mad. Trained exorcists of Soul Society sometimes work with them. If it is to complete the same objective then it usually ends up benefiting both sides to work together.” the operator said.

He groaned, “So what, do I just go up to him?” he asked.

“That… is probably for the best.” she said timidly.

Mark sighed, “Do you have any idea who it is?” He asked.

“Sadly no, whoever is sent is totally random and never the same person.” she replied.

Mark sighed deeply, “I’m just saying that if they even think of trying to attack, I won’t hold back and am likely to make him just another ghost I purge.” He said and turned off the phone and felt a headache from the irritation.

He reached into his pocket and took out his Soul Society ID and got out before getting his tools, bag and hid his book in his coat before going to the car and knocked on the wind of the driver seat.

It was tinted but they pulled a small bit down but didn’t speak.

“Soul society, commissioned exorcist.” Mark said simply.

Instantly a quiet curse came from inside and the door opened and to Mark’s surprise, a familiar face stepped out.

“Fuck me, I have the worst luck.” Josh said. “What are you here for and who are you?” He asked in a rather condescending manner.

“Nice to see you again.” Mark said, putting the ID in his pocket.

“Who are you, I’ve never seen your face before.” he said.

“We have. You tried to exorcize me last year.” he said and took the book out from his coat.

Josh’s eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. “You’re that fat ghost! But… your body is radiating the aura of a poltergeist!” he said.

“Yeah… I’ve worked quite diligently. However, since we are both here, we might as well do our job.” He said.

“So you actually joined those guys.” Josh said.

“I’ve not joined them as an employee, more like a mercenary but they did help me settle down. What were your plans for this? Just another dark force cleansing?” He asked.

Josh scowled at the comment clearly knowing Mark had heard about the effort here.

“Most of the time we can only get ignorant ghosts.” He said.

“Yeah… in Soul society registry, there is a Dark Specter in this place.” He said.

“Huh…” Josh said.

“Did you not know?” Mark asked.

“How do they know?” Josh asked.

Mark looked at him before shaking his head, “If you don’t know then it isn’t important.” He said and turned but just as he turned to look he swung his hand and suddenly an axe appeared and grew and he swung, meeting, with a loud ‘clang’ against the glowing cross sword in Josh’s hand.

“I got into some real trouble because of you, you bastard.” He growled.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing in broad daylight you fucking asshole!” Mark said, maintaining his firm position.

This just irritated Josh even more, “I’m going to finish the job from back then! I’m going to purge your fucking ass and than demolish this fucking building until the specters desperse!” He said.

Mark felt disgusted by this idiot.

“Only an idiot would get rid of the thing containing the spirits. That is like helping a Dark specter rapidly advance into an evil spirit by breaking the thing that binds them.” He said but Josh didn’t really care.

“You don’t know anything about spirits! We’ve researched demonic spirits like you and all the others for millennia!” He shouted and Mark took a moment to look around and let the sword clash with his axe and he used the momentum to send himself back to the building’s door.

His movement was quick as he pulled out a talisman and smacked it on the wall beside it before quickly jumping and putting another few next to the windows of each floor before stopping in the air and looking down at him.

“If you want to fight, then do it on your own time.” He said and rushed off around the building, putting the talisman on all building surfaces to make sure that there were no blindspots and this included on the roof.

Josh clenched his fist as he walked over to the door and checked the talisman.

“The source comes from the original house seal but he is actually using post it paper for this?” he said and his eyes started to glow while a point on his head shined as he scanned it with more spiritual energy. “The ink is more special and the main conduite, it is meant to keep common ghosts and vengeful spirits inside only. It isn’t designed for anything stronger.” he said and snorted.

Without him noticing, Mark was on the inside with his ears barely poking out, catching his muttering.

He smiled as he heard him say that because it meant that he was starting to underestimate him.

The Dark specter talisman was the one on the roof, it wasn’t meant to be used alone. It was actually a formation that contained 12 talismans in a circle and another 12 in a smaller circle and was activated to seal an entire building.

These were just decoy, it just took a bit of time and he had just set up the vengeful spirit portion to make sure that when Josh started clearing out dark force, the ghosts couldn’t escape.

With a snort, he went back out through a window, silently, and started to build the true formation to keep the dark specter in.

He kept checking and found that Josh just returned to his car making him roll his eyes and he soon completed the formation before taking out his phone and calling the operator and chewing them out for the idiot that had come and what he had done.

“What! In broad daylight!” the operator said, shocked.

“Yeah, the idiot was the one that had originally gone to exorcize me when I had just woken up and hadn’t even met Billy yet. Now the idiot is throwing a hissy fit because he got in trouble for letting me go.” He said, scoffing.

“Urg.” The operator groaned, “Let me contact the superiors. They really want this dark specter cleared so that this area would stop generating so many specters.” He said and the phone went on hold while he walked over to near the edge and looked down while looking and waiting.

After about ten minutes the call returned.

“Hello sir. Our superiors have tried to reason with the IEO but they don’t really care. As such, the higher ups have authorized you to kill if he attacks you again. Just a warning, he is a human with a strong soul and karma from purging phantoms and specters. He is likely to instantly awaken as a wisp instead of just a phantom.” He said.

“Yeah… I would assume so.” Mark said and shook his head. “I’ll be heading in then, from his lack of movement, he is probably waiting for night time when dark force is strongest.” he said.

“Yes, humans cannot force a lot of dark force out of an area without it being in its active state so please try to deal at least with half of the ghosts and maybe all the vengeful spirits.” the operator said.

“Yeah.” he said and shook his head before going to the door on the roof and his eyes instantly started to shine unlike ever before but the light wasn’t like flashlights or like what humans use to see ghosts.

It was his spiritual power and after an initial shine, it went to normal while only a tiny point in his pupils was left which was unnoticeable but now, his view had transparent dark force visible in the daytime and even vengeful spirits hiding in plain sight were exceptionally visible.

He took out his axe and sealing talisman from his bag and left it in his pocket and gave a look around the corridor and instantly saw several specters and one hidden vengeful spirit.

He just walked on through and the specters were muttering and he just sealed them, making them fall like dolls until he was halfway to the spirit before he gathered his spiritual power and used a new technique. It was like a martial arts movement but was a ghost technique.

As soon as he stepped, he felt the world change and into negative colors like an old film camera for only a single moment and he swung his axe as the world returned to normal and he was right next to the spirit.

It couldn’t react before its neck was cleaved through. The body collapsed and the head fell with a thump.

He put a seal on both before starting to seal up the specters remaining and then checked a room and gathered them all.

He examined all their faces and pushed anything that was distorted as far back to normality as possible before he spent a moment purging the spirit and took his normal clothing off and spent some time flying around and gathering soul fragments. It took a while to find a few of them though through the masses before he purged all in this single corridor.

As you can probably guess, it also caused the dark force to rip off from the walls and get sucked up but it was a drop in the ocean since most of it comes from the dark specter but this was all in hopes of making it come out of hiding.

It was still early so he headed room by room and caught the specters and vengeful spirits in a very systematic manner. Eventually he had all the spirits in this floor of the ward and took the time to purge them before moving to the next corridor.

It was a full clean up job but he made sure to constantly display below average skill. How did he know it was below average well… before coming, he was shown what mastery of any of these skills he was using was like and he did his best.

They said he was still quite a novice and if he could do any of his skills even a little worse, it would make it more convincing.

In truth, he could actually cover the distance of an entire corridor with his movement but he avoided that and left it at half a corridor and he ‘created’ a lag time for himself. The lag was where his mind finally registered he had arrived.

Dark specters were instinct based but instincts also tell a creature if they are capable of beating something or not. The weaker you show yourself the more likely the prey will think it is the predator.

Surprisingly though, the dark specter didn’t show up even once despite Mark working for nearly 5 hours already and having cleared half of the hospital, most of that time being spent on finding the soul fragments to send the specters away properly.

The quantity of dark force had dropped and on the top floors it was almost empty meaning it was on the lower floors.

He looked down and felt his face clench, “Right, the morgues are all below ground.” he said but looked outside and saw the sun was already setting and shook his head. I’ll need to finish the rest at night but let’s get dinner first.” he said and packed his things and walked out just to see that Josh was already getting out and saw him and reached for his necklace.

As Mark was passing he pointed behind him, “I’ve cleared the three floors of the north and west wings. You shouldn’t waste your time in those areas.” he said and walked to his car.

“Are you giving up halfway?!” He shouted.

“Why would I?” Mark said as he opened his door and put his bag inside. “I’m hungry and going to get a bite to eat. You can start if you want.” He said and got in the car and drove away.

Josh felt extremely constrained by the nonchalant mannerism. He looked at the building and activated his own spiritual sight to see dark force and he naturally monitored the area. He saw Mark come out many times and come back before the dark force shifted and decreased.

He sent his own call and informed them of what Mark said.

“They contacted us to tell you to not hunt it but we naturally turned them down, purge it if you need. However they did tell us a special fact about this particular spirit. He possesses Soul Eyes so what you witnessed was him putting the final soul pieces in specters during the process of sending them to the afterlife. It is a rare occurrence that only such people can achieve and those with no actual regrets will draw dark force into the passage alongside them. It only works for specters though. This is dangerous to our supremacy as the spiritual superpower. Deal with it if possible.” the person on the phone said.

He frowned and looked at the way the car had gone. “What of the hospital?” he asked.

“Clear it as you were told. Drain the dark force and clear any spirits you find. Make sure to check all the areas the spirit went through to make sure he isn’t hiding anything there. Also, he said there is a Dark specter meaning he also has a house seal adequate for it, find it and so we can study the construction.” he said.

The man on the phone cut off making Josh frown and look at the building. “It is like we are scavengers pecking from the leftovers.” he said and put the phone back in his pocket as he took the seal at the door. Mark can replace it for all he cared but he had to follow orders.

He took this one just to compare it with the one in their database and then walked into the building where he looked through the wards Mark had specially told him there were no ghosts.

His sword was shining like a light for him, making his intention obvious.

Each floor he would go through each room absorbing dark force similar to investigators until he reached the roof and found the circle of talisman.

“This is a new one.” He said and walked around carefully and from his bag, took out small things that looked like flood lights but were hand sized and stuck them all around and powering them with his energy.

They lit up and he soon could see.

He jumped up high to take a picture before landing and then took a picture of every talisman close up before carefully taking them out and staking them in order of removal and then took the inner circle as well.

He stored it away but not without seeing Mark already standing there at the door with his arms crossed.

“And here i thought you were ‘the leading group of spiritualists’, seems you still got stuck behind the knowledge that was developed by Soul Society.” he said. “Can’t blame you, kinda hard to identify a walking corpse that has regained its original mortal shell. They are much harder to notice after all.” he said, jokingly.

“How long have you been there?” he asked.

“Just arrived actually. I saw my talisman missing from the front so I put a new one on and then felt the barrier getting ripped out from the roof and came to see you taking out the thing that was reinforcing the dark specter’s bondage. Good job with ruining the thing that is keeping it from further breaking out.” he said and reached into his bag and began to rebuild the barrier that was taken out and directly removed the remaining talisman and put new ones since their formation had been broken.

He glared at Josh, “Try to not destroy this one or I’ll make sure to report you as the one that allowed the dark spirit to evolve into an evil spirit.” He said and looked at the curious lights and walked inside. “I’ll be busy clearing out the remaining areas of the hospital. You can do what your order generally makes you do and get rid of more dark force.” He said and walked down.

Josh frowned and quickly picked up the talisman that Mark had removed and his lights before running down stairs and finding him just casually walking.

“How are you not cautious of the Dark specter?” he said.

“Because they are clearly in the basement floors, aka the morgues. Why else do you think the dark force density is so much higher in the first floor compared to the 3rd.” he said and took out a pack of seal talisman and he frowned.

“You are already a poltergeist. Your spiritual power should put you on par with me as a foundation builder! Why are you still using post it notes?!” He said.

“Why? Because it would be a waste of excessive money to use talisman paper for such mundane talismans. You saw the dark specter seal right? It was proper talisman paper because it has to be but these are seals for specter and vengeful spirits. The only thing special is their design and the ink, anything else is wasteful use of money.” he said and just randomly swung his hand and put it against the wall before pulling and shockingly a specter came out of the walls and collapsed where it stood.

Josh’s eyes turned into pinpoints as he saw that and looked around before focusing and noticing the bundles of dark force.

He raised his necklace, “Oh come on, if you didn’t notice them already stop being so overly cautious. I’ve already got them all in my sight.” He said and continued to walk down and seal all the specters.

“It’s your Soul Eyes.” He said.

“Oh? Is that information public? Whatever, no it’s not. My eyes let me see soul fragments freely, not ghosts. Also let me touch them but that is it. I’m using a technique like you but the difference is that I’ve been focused on looking while you’ve been focused on interrogating me.” Mark replied and suddenly vanished and he heard thumps and looked at him half way across and a head falling down.

He sealed the head and the body before moving like a shadow and four more thumps came out and started to walk from the end of the corridor and back to Josh. The corridors were littered with ghosts.

“Shocking isn’t it, the thing you’ve all been leaving behind.” He said and opened a door and took one look and shot in and got another vengeful spirit. “Come on, help me pull these specters and spirits in here and line them up.” He said and started to drag them in and line them up like corpses and push their distorted parts back to normal.

“What are you doing?” Josh asked.

“Just trying to figure out what they looked like originally. Rebuilding the soul is a far better solution for them as well because all of the soul goes into the afterlife.” he said and continued to pull in specters.

Josh looked at him weird and at the specters with a frown. He didn’t move to help and watched him line up the specters before pulling the vengeful spirits in and instantly start purging them forcefully.

“You don’t do that for them?” Josh asked.

“Whatever parts were missing from a vengeful spirit rot away. I’ve found a specter almost at the point of being a vengeful spirit that had been split in half and was literally rotting and just lacked maggots to show that.” he said and continued with the chanting and cleared them before going into every room in the hallway and sealed the specters and purged the vengeful spirits until all that was left was specters.

“How many have you purged already?” Josh asked.

“Vengeful spirits? Uh… probably a few hundred but I’ve got about 4,000 specters and over 6,000 fragmented souls that have all been pieced together and moved to the afterlife so that they did not become specters or be stuck in the world as regretless phantoms.” He explained. “There, all the vengeful spirits on this floor are done, if you want to clear out all the dark force you should take the opportunity because a lot of it is going to be sucked up.” He said and went into his ghost mode and flew through the walls.

Josh looked at his things and moved to look through it but when he bent down, a long axe blade appeared next to his neck, “I’m a pretty chill person but I hate people openly touching my bag. Try it again and there will not be a warning.” Mark said.

Josh felt his back get covered in sweat because he had not felt him appear at all.

He stood up and distanced himself from the bag as he felt genuinely terrified of the thought of suddenly getting his neck cut without time to even react.

It also made him feel extremely weak despite being such a promising individual in the IEO. This ghost was breaking all his confidence because he could innately do things that all of them wished to do.

He just set up the cleansing formations through every room while he saw Mark come back several times and when he finished, Mark looked and ‘grabbed’ something in the air and put it against a specter and began to chant the purging chant.

The specter began to glow. The piece of sin came down and opened a visible portal and a peaceful expression was on the ghost’s face when it appeared and thanked him and entered the white glowing portal.

“Was that glow for heaven?” he asked.

“Who knows, the afterlife is unknown for us as well. All I know is that 80% of soul go into a void where their memories are whipped, the rest just break up into fragments and the tiny leftovers go to heaven. Who goes and who doesn’t I don’t know.” He said.

“Then what happens about paying for their crimes?” Josh askes, “What about hell, where the condemned go to?” He asked.

“I don’t know. Mythical creatures do exist. If we are talking about demons and devils and the sort I believe those would be fallen angels expelled from heaven. They should be just evil phantoms.” He said.

“Huh?” Josh said.

“What? Did you think every ghost is a demonic spirit? You’re stupid. You should be well aware of the two divisions but sentience also gives space for humanities regular sins. The question is how to combat that effect. I’m quite sure a powerful being like an angel would know how to do that and ‘Hell’ as you call it, is nothing more than a Phantom domain created by powerful demons. It isn’t a real underworld unlike heaven is for the souls of great virtue.” Mark said.

“How do you know that?!” Josh asked.

“Because I’ve studied about Phantom domains. Although I’m not an official of Soul society, exorcists are very important in our society. Pays quite good, roughly 5,000 dollars for resolving specters at their cheapest, of course we’ve got our own currency that is much more valuable.” He said. “I am still capable of purchasing knowledge, how do you think i went from second rate exorcist techniques to having knowledge that you need to take back to examine.” He said.

When he finished he continued piecing the souls until the room was empty.

“Perfect, floor is done.” Mark said and gathered his things and Josh reluctantly followed but he was also looking for moments where Mark wasn’t on guard but there was never one. Mark was always on alert towards him, especially when purging. He never gave his back.

In the end, the entire hospital was cleared on the surface before midnight and he looked at Josh, “So are you going to leave? I was asked to deal with the Dark specter.” He said.

He looked and snorted, “Of course I’m going, I’m not some chump that can’t fight against it. I’ve already purged some Dark Specters alone.”

Mark snorted and walked to the stairway down and kicked it in, causing waves of dark force miasma to come out.

He took out his phone and called, “Hello, Mark here. I’ve cleared the three surface levels and have confirmed that the Dark specter is in the morgue below ground. I need a dispatch to clean the negative energy pumping out from the basement. The IEO priest has been clearing part and I’ve done my part when dealing with the specters.” he said.

“Alright, we already have two inspectors waiting for the call and will arrive soon however they will deal with it from the outside where the specter cannot reach them. They are not combat personnel.” the operator said.

“That’s enough, dealing with the abundant excess energy is more than enough.” he said and shut the phone.

“Investigators?” Josh asked.

“I thought you knew about soul society.”

“Shut up.” Josh said.

Mark chuckled, “Investigators are people soul society exorcists call to drain negative energy and dark force from a location. They also watch over it depending how deeply entrenched the energy is and leave it incapable of making new specters.” He explained. “From what I've seen, most of them are walking corpses.” He said.

Josh’s eyes widened when he heard that.

“Are there a lot?” he asked.

“As if I would know. When I clear out large numbers of cases, I tend to get the same guy for several small towns within the same area.” He said.

They waited until suddenly that dark force began to move like a living creature and energy came from the walls going to two different areas.

“Alright, they’ve started.” He said and took out his axe and put his things down.

“You’re not going to take anything?” Josh asked.

“Most of the combat things I have made only a big bang. I didn’t prepare much else, you aren’t prepared yourself.” Mark said.

Josh snorted and pulled his collar and his spiritual power began to flow through his clothing and it suddenly tightened and formed a combat suit and he took the necklace and formed the glowing sword. “Any case may turn bad so we are always ready.” he said.

“Oh, if you say so.” Mark said as he made the axe assume it’s third level small form looking like a one handed double headed battle axe.

“Your axe is weird.” He said.

“Yeah, and so is your clothing.” Mark retorted and walked into the mist and the two descended towards a much graver threat than each other.