The city didn't resist me when I stepped back into its depths.
That alone felt wrong.
Normally, the fog thickened when fear gathered. Spirits stirred. Whispers leaked from the walls. But tonight, as I moved through the narrow streets with Lumo drifting silently beside me, everything felt… muted.
As if the city was holding its breath.
"This is a bad sign," I murmured.
Lumo pulsed once, cautiously.
I chose my target carefully a weak wandering spirit lingering beneath a broken archway. Its form wavered, half-formed, its movements erratic. In the past, this would have been an easy harvest.
I activated the refined circuit.
Fear flowed inward smoothly, quietly, like water entering a sealed channel. No surge. No spike. No scream.
The spirit froze.
Its eyes widened not in panic, but confusion.
"What—what are you doing?" it whispered.
I stiffened.
Spirits didn't talk during harvests. They screamed. They lashed out. They broke.
This one didn't.
The fear drained from it gently, steadily. Too steadily. Its form dulled, edges blurring as if something essential was being taken away not violently, but thoroughly.
And suddenly, the spirit collapsed.
Not dispersed.
Not destroyed.
Collapsed.
It hit the ground like a discarded shell, empty and still.
My stomach turned.
"That's not…" I stepped closer, pulse quickening. "That's not supposed to happen."
I cut the circuit immediately. Fear energy rushed back into me, obedient and intact. Efficient.
Too efficient.
The spirit didn't recover.
It didn't regenerate.
It didn't exist anymore.
I staggered back, heart pounding not from fear energy, but from something colder.
"What did I just do?" I whispered.
Lumo hovered near the fallen shell, its light flickering anxiously. A faint, unfamiliar sensation pulsed between us.
Regret.
Fear, when screamed, left remnants. Trauma. Echoes.
But fear when silently extracted?
It erased.
I clenched my fists. "So that's the cost."
My refined circuit didn't just harvest fear.
It emptied it.
Spirits were made of fear. Drain it completely, and there was nothing left to sustain them.
I looked down at my hands.
This wasn't control.
This was annihilation.
The fog around me shifted uneasily. Distant whispers rose not panicked, but wary.
The city had noticed.
Not because I was loud.
But because something had gone missing.
"I need limits," I said aloud, forcing my breathing steady. "Rules."
Games had rules for a reason. Without them, systems broke and so did players.
I turned away from the lifeless shell, unease settling deep in my chest.
If Spirit Warriors saw this…
If intelligent spirits learned this…
The consequences wouldn't just be dangerous.
They'd be catastrophic.