To his surprise, the reaper could speak.
That wasn't all: the voice was unmistakably female.
‘Monsters talk?’
If he closed his eyes and just listened to the voice, it sounded like it belonged to a fairly off-white woman.
And what was that urgent cry, as if to intercede?
Osian swung his starlight sword, and the reaper ducked its head in surprise.
The horizontal slash sliced through the air.
It didn't miss completely, but it did cut off the hem of the robe the Reaper wore on its head.
[Ouch! You swung again! You swung again!]
"You're lucky you dodged."[If I didn't dodge, I'd be dead!]
"You're already a dead skeleton."
[I died once so I don't want to die again!]
Osian's reaction was disconcerting, as he was expecting a fierce battle but in the end, Osian had no choice but to stop chasing the Reaper.
[Phew. You're finally going to listen to me.]
Osian swung his sword wildly.
The Reaper was surprised and dodged again. This time, it dodged properly.
[Why are you suddenly swinging your sword again?]
"No, stop it."
It was even more troublesome when the skeleton with the scythe spoke in the voice of a clear, clean woman who had never breathed a breath of dust.
It was one thing to have a mismatched appearance and voice, but this was a step too far.
Osian stared at the Reaper.
He was trying to determine if it had something up its sleeve.
‘It has no face, so I can't read its expression.’
Where the pupils should have been, there were just black holes, so it was hard to feel any emotion.
That alone should have made him suspicious and wary, but Osian could strangely sense no danger from the reaper.
The lack of response from his sense of danger meant that the reaper was, in fact, at least not hostile to him.
"So, who are you?"
Osian asked as he unsheathed his starlight sword.
[Are you just now asking me that.......]
As Osian attempted to summon starlight to his blade once more, the reaper replied in anger.
[My name is Muerte, and I am a spiritual being in whom the concept of curses is embodied!]
"A curse materialized?"
[I guess you could call me a summon, just to make it easier to understand.]
Muerte's voice was casual as she introduced herself as a summon.
Osian stared at Muerte and upon closer inspection, she didn't seem to have any of the creepiness or awkwardness that a Ghost-type monster should have.
That didn't mean he didn't feel the ominousness of the curse.
"I am Osian, a fixer."
[Do fixers draw light from their swords these days?]
"Enough with the chatter, what was your purpose, and what the hell were you thinking, trying to kill Dyke Goldiron?"
Muerte's shoulders slumped at that.
[What? Kill him? I've never killed anyone!]
"The mansion was haunted after Dyke Goldiron was knocked unconscious. And it fits the eyewitness testimony."
[Testimony!]
"A scythe in hand and the form of the Grim Reaper in robes. Isn't that you?"
[......Well, when you put it that way, I don't know what to say]
Muerte shook her head vigorously and exclaimed.
[I've never touched a human......but it's not my fault that Dyke Goldiron is unconscious!]
"Maybe you're lying."
[I'm telling the truth! Today is the first time I've ever been to this mansion in the first place!]
"Today?"
No way.
The ghost sightings at the mansion are a few days old.
If Muerte's first visit is today, what does that mean about the ghost sightings before that?
‘No, more than that.’
I don't feel any sign of the people who were following me earlier.
Could they have gotten lost along the way? The mansion was large enough that it was possible.
But strangely there was something about the place that tugged at Osian's senses.
[What's going on?]
"Quiet."
Osian said, and Muerte fell silent.
Of course, being a skeleton, it was hard to tell.
There was silence for a moment and only then did Osian realize that there was a battle in the distance.
"A battle?"
Muerte's here, and there's a fight, or is this just some kind of nervous breakdown?
[What's going on? Excuse me, I need to know!]
Muerte asked, but Osian ignored the voice and headed toward the source of the disturbance.
The closer he got, the louder the noise became.
As he rounded the corner of the hallway and reached the scene, something black came flying at him.
Osian instinctively dodged it.
Rolling across the floor was a human head with a familiar face.
It was one of the physically enhanced mutants from the [Supreme] who had quickly chased after him as he moved through the darkness.
Red flames filled the entire corridor.
The flames that pushed back the darkness were artificial. More precisely, they were magical.
It was a chain detonation of the 3-star fire magic.
Sparks from thin air exploded into spheres, engulfing the entire hallway.
The windows shattered, the carpeting in the hallway burned, and the exterior material of the walls melted in the heat.
The caster of the spell was a four-star mage with a certain arrogance.
He was indeed proud of his skills, and his magical power was quite extraordinary.
Of course, to Osian, who had fought with the Blood Brotherhood, it didn't seem like such a great level.
This was rather weak compared to Daver, a member of the Blood Brotherhood.
He wasn't called Daver the Burning for nothing, as he specialized in burning people to death.
However, by normal standards, the mage's skills were also quite outstanding.
"That's it!"
The fellow wizard backing him up exclaimed in delight, then turned grim as he saw the enemy that had emerged after the heat had subsided.
What emerged from the red flames was a frosty blue, the opposite color of the flames.
His pale blue robes, chilled with cold, fluttered in the windless air.
No face was visible and if Muerte was a skeleton, this one was only a jet-black shadow beneath the hood of his cowl.
In his eerily long hands he held a scythe that glowed in a bluish color as if it were no ordinary scythe for harvesting something.
Even though it was floating in the air without legs, it looked more than two meters tall, and the scythe it held in its long arms was more than four meters long.
Around the ghost were two men lying on the ground.
One was a corpse whose head had just been blown off, and the other was a mutant who had been slashed diagonally from collarbone to waist.
He was also one of the mutants from [Supreme].
The wounds, presumably from a scythe, were not bleeding.
The wounds had been frozen with frost along the cross-section of the cut.
Osian remembered the frost on the fountain he'd seen in the daylight.
‘That's him.’
The real ghost that the high priest's exorcism hadn't worked on was right in front of him.
Meanwhile, the ghost lunged at the four-star mage who had cast the spell.
The legless ghost floated through the air and swung the scythe in its hand wildly.
The blue scythe sliced through the mansion's walls and around the perimeter.
It sliced through the interior of the sturdy building as if it were butter.
"Thud!"
A 4-star mage used magic to stop it and a wall of hot flames erupted in front of him, scattering dazzling lights around him.
It was a two-star magic, a flare shield but despite the scorching flames, the ghost was not frightened at all.
The scythe swung wildly, slicing through even the fire barrier as a bluish coldness scattered across the flames.
That alone showed that the coldness in the scythe was not ordinary.
Just as the wizard was about to fall into danger, two shadows leapt out from behind his back and lunged at the ghost.
It was a skeleton in uniform.
The two skeletons, summoned by Elise Denarova with her command spell, each wielded a spear, and each took aim at the ghost.
The wraith targeting the mage recovered its scythe and parried the two spears.
The spears used by the skeletons were no ordinary spears.
They were already imbued with a great deal of black magic, and the black energy tried to spread through the handle of the scythe to the ghost.
But as the ghost emitted more cold from its body, the black energy was pushed back and oxidized.
The four-star mage, who had barely managed to stay alive in the meantime, looked at the bone-masked Elise and bit his lip in shame.
"Damn it. Getting help from a warlock."
"......."
It was a very cheeky thing to say on the subject of receiving help, but Elise didn't reply.
Her mind was focused on the blue ghost.
"Dangerous."
Elise muttered to herself.
The way he'd defeated two mutants in one fell swoop, the way he'd been hit by three-star magic, the way he'd been unharmed.
That ghost was no ordinary guy.
The ghost also looked at Elise and sheathed his scythe.
She couldn't see its face, as it was only shades of black beneath its robes, but it was easy to tell that it had turned Elise into its target.
Just then, from behind her, Homer called out.
"Dante! Argo! You son of a bitch!"
Homer stretched out his right hand toward the ghost.
The skin of his right hand popped open, and a stream of red blood shot out like a bullet at the ghost.
The ghost grabbed the scythe with both hands and swung it lightly as a blast of cold air from the scythe froze all the flying blood.
Homer gritted his teeth at the sight and drew more blood.
The blood in his hand turned into a whip, bubbling and boiling.
The whip moved like a snake, tracing red trails.
Seeing that, the ghost was about to swing the scythe again when someone grabbed him from behind.
"Homer, finish him off!"
It was Argo, the mutant whose upper body had been sliced open by the ghost's scythe.
Unusually, he hadn't been killed by the previous blow.
Suddenly, he grabbed the ghost from behind but a chill radiated from the ghost’s entire body.
Frost formed on Argo's skin, and he froze in place.
The ghost lightly brushed his shoulder and the frozen Argo shattered like a statue, scattering to the floor.
The blood whip that followed was cut down as easily by the scythe the ghost wielded.
Homer's lips twitched at the realization that the opportunity his companion had sacrificed had been wasted.
Elise's skeleton lunged at the ghost.
Moving with a swiftness that belied their bony bodies, the two skeletons attacked the ghost from either side at once.
Spears stabbed from both sides but the ghost ducked low, held its scythe horizontally, and spun 360 degrees in place.
The blue trajectory drew a perfect circle around the ghost and the two skeletons caught in it fell, their upper and lower bodies separated.
But that wasn't the only thing the skeletons did.
-Click.
Between the torn clothes the skeletons were wearing a time bomb secretly hidden inside went off.
-Wham!
The bomb was packed with a lot of gunpowder, and its power was enough to shake the mansion.
The explosive magic even caused a section of the outer wall to crumble away but the ghost was still intact.
In the blast, he had created a shield of ice around himself, minimizing the heat and shock of the explosion.
Even Elise's best weapon, a bomb, had misfired, but she was not surprised.
It was merely a decoy to draw the ghost's attention.
In reality, it was the man's that the ghost did not see turn.
"Now."
Elise said.
The darkness-slicing starlight sword swung wildly toward the ghost's back.