F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!!

Chapter 329: A Dangerous Ghost

I spent about two weeks wandering through this city to learn more, trying to find new things and the soul I’m searching for. I discovered a lot of new things about this world, quite a few interesting bits.

Apparently, people themselves don’t know much about ghosts. They only know that something bad happens if they don’t use amulets, but many don’t believe in ghosts, though they understand that amulets protect them from something.

As for people who hunt ghosts, they exist in droves, but most can’t see anything beyond the weakest ghosts, and a rarer, select group can see every type of ghost.

The people who can see them all are the ones who can see me, and it really is something these people are born with, so seeing strong ghosts is a "talent."

Besides that, almost everyone who saw me had the same reaction: pure terror. Which is a problem because the "Lesser exorcists" who can’t see me have been spreading rumors about me after seeing how afraid their veterans are of a "mysterious ghost."

"Haa..." I sigh as I look at the girl in front of me. She’s an adult woman with red hair, and she stares at me with a gaze that tries to hide her fear. Over the last three days, exorcists have started hunting me.

Most of them don’t say much, maybe because pure fear makes it hard to speak. The woman in front of me swallows dryly, and she clearly wants to run away from here.

"Come to try and kill me?" I ask, but I get no answer as the girl pulls a talisman from her bag. It’s quite different from the others; this woman seems experienced.

"..." She raises it, getting ready to advance on me. From what I’ve noticed, exorcists are much stronger than normal humans.

"If you attack, I will kill you." I give my first warning. She takes a step forward, ignoring my warning. She takes another step, probably thinking she can kill me with that piece of paper.

"The moment your attack touches me, I swear I will take your life." I give the final warning. I don’t want to kill people, nor do I like it, but I’m also not patient enough to let people attack me, so I’ll kill anyone who does.

’They’re spying on me...’ There are people watching me from a distance, probably trying to study me.

"..." The girl ignores my warning and lunges. She’s fast, but to me, it’s like she’s in slow motion. And keep in mind, I’m weak. At this pace, if Esther were here, this girl would look like she was standing still.

I let her touch the paper to me. It glows black and red, but soon catches blue fire and vanishes. A shocked look crosses the woman’s face, and her terror intensifies. She tries to retreat, but as she takes one step back, her body is dismantled into several pieces by my threads.

A pool of blood and deformed flesh appears on the ground. It was an instantaneous death, so she felt no pain, but it was still a visually violent and bloody end.

I can’t use magic properly, but since I can use my nymph powers, I can generate threads of "spiritual energy" to shred physical things, even though my body can’t touch physical things directly.

’Haa...again...’ They won’t be able to kill me. I’ve already understood that the strongest ghosts and the strongest exorcists are far below my power. I understood this because of my nymph power.

Because I’ve been using my nymph powers so much, I’ve started to feel emotions better. Fear, sadness, despair, anger, joy, love—it’s like a "banquet" to my eyes. Now I understand why Nymphs like to see the emotions of living beings.

Watching emotions is fun, and fear and despair are something you can almost taste, which is practically despicable from my perspective, because I don’t like killing, but seeing and feeling this "taste" is strange.

At least with this, it’s easier to find a person with the requirements I want. I just need to search for the saddest soul with the "Best flavor" I can find. That’s why I’ve been roaming the streets and killing whoever attacks me.

"Hmm, I wonder when they’ll stop coming after me." Considering my passive posture of just wandering the city and only killing those who attack me, and with prior warnings that I’ll take the life of the person who strikes me, they’ll probably start ignoring me soon.

As a risk that poses no problems to civilians but is too strong to be destroyed. Anyway, at least they seem to understand me, even though they don’t try to communicate with me.

’Seven...out of the seven, I can ignore four...’ I’ve already found seven girls suitable for me to take the soul and put in my marionette, but suitable doesn’t mean compatible. This world is quite chaotic because of the ghosts, which, from what I’ve found, do consume vitality, but they also affect people’s minds by clinging to their bodies.

And I found seven girls with "talent," but their talents attract more ghosts, and they have bad life situations. So, they are full of ghosts stuck to their bodies, and they have pretty shitty lives.

However, of those seven, four of them are no good to me because of their attitudes. But among the seven, one caught my attention the most.

"Maybe I should stay near that girl to watch her life..." It’s not as easy as I expected, since I needed something very specific, and in the whole city, I only found one girl who seems to be what I’m looking for.

"Well, I guess that’s it... I’ll keep an eye on her. I have time and found nothing else." I murmur to myself as I start moving across the buildings, using threads as platforms and stairs to walk through the sky instead of having to fly with my wings.

Her name is Shizuka Kasumi, 19 years old. She’s a girl with long black hair and heterochromia, with one black eye and one pink eye. She has a thin, small frame, obviously malnourished.

Her feelings of sadness are the most delicious. Ironically, because of my increased perception, I can also taste my own sadness, which happens to be louder than Shizuka’s because my sadness comes coated in pain and violence.

It seems Esther is a little bit worse for my mental health than I’d like to admit, but that’s not the focus right now.

"Well, let’s see what this girl’s life situation is."

...

...

...

"And so? What is that thing?" The chief of the exorcist coalition asks me in a tense tone. Lately, 29 of our best exorcists have been killed trying to exorcize a single strange, anomalous ghost, and they couldn’t even damage her, regardless of the talisman’s form.

"Daddy, I’m not sure. She doesn’t ’fit’ in my sight. Actually, she has strange tones of purple." Ghosts, to most people’s eyes, are 100% black, but people with extreme affinity can see white, gray, and black.

And then there’s me, with special eyes that can see the "true" colors of a ghost. Most are still black, white, and gray, but there are special ghosts whose forms from before they were ghosts I can see, with their real colors.

"She has wings, horns, and a tail, along with many shades of purple and an elegant dress." I describe the real form of that thing I could observe from a distance when it wandered through the city.

"Okay, and its real form?" My father asks, as if I hadn’t been talking about its real form.

"...Th-That is its real form."

"...What? Impossible! Spirits and ghosts are born from us humans and from animals. It’s impossible for a ghost to exist that doesn’t have a normal physical form. If it’s a humanoid, its real form should be a human!" My father stands up, agitated from his chair, since we’ve never seen this before.

"Uh... I don’t know what to say, Daddy... I just know that thing is strange. I don’t think that’s a dead human or spiritual remnants from humans."

"B-Besides, that thing speaks, and so far, it hasn’t tried to latch onto a human to steal vitality. Not to mention, its real form really does have horns, a tail, and wings!!"

"Daughter, are you sure? As far as I know, there’s never been a human with horns, a tail, and wings. The closest we have of humanoids with that representation is the religious devil."

"D-Daddy, don’t talk like that, or I’ll get scared. And I’m being serious!! I’m absolutely certain about the real form of that thing! Besides, it really killed the best of the best with extreme ease!!" A true anomaly, in my view.

"It seems very passive... for now, let’s stop sending exorcists after that thing and just keep it under observation... and daughter, don’t get too close to that thing. I would be very worried." My father speaks in a serious tone.

"I-I know... obviously, I wouldn’t do that." I don’t tell Daddy everything. It’s not just the true form of that thing; what’s more unsettling is the power it has.

If I had to put it into words, the strongest exorcists can destroy a district, which is already considered absurd!! After all, we’re human. But that thing? In my conception, it’s like an atomic bomb taking a walk.

I hope Daddy doesn’t do anything foolish. That thing might be passive now, but if someone angers that "ghost," I don’t know what could happen to our city.