The blue window practically vibrated in Jack's non-existent face. Level up. Again. Did he even have a level in his status screen?
He was a ghost, sure, but this felt like some messed-up MMORPG. He eyed the three options, floating there like spectral appetizers.
[POLTERGEIST'S TELEKINESIS], [TUYUL'S THEFT MASTERY], [TIYANAK'S CRY].
'Such a list of amazing choices,' he muttered sarcastically. Nobody could hear him though.
Jack ran through the mental archive of horror lore he'd built up back in his corporeal life. Back when he was a human.
[Poltergeist's Telekinesis]. Poltergeist. The classic. Noisy ghosts, throwing things around, generally being a nuisance. Usually tied to a repressed kid or some unresolved trauma. The thought of chucking furniture at the opponents definitely had appeal. Direct, effective, cathartic.
Then there was the [Tuyul's Theft Mastery]. A Tuyul? Seriously? That was some deep-cut Southeast Asian folklore. Basically, a creepy, bald baby ghost used for stealing.
Jack frowned. He wasn't about stealing wallets. He was about cosmic justice, or at least, his version of it.
Still, the thought of pilfering important documents from, say, a powerful industrialist's safe… now that had possibilities. Imagine the chaos he could unleash with the right bit of pilfered evidence.
Finally, [Tiyanak's Cry]. Another one ripped straight from Southeast Asian nightmares. The Tiyanak. A freaking baby vampire. It mimicked the cries of an infant to lure people into the wilderness, then… well, then it ate them. Or worse.
Jack shuddered. The Tiyanak was pure evil distilled into a deceptively innocent package. Could he really see himself mimicking a baby's cry? Even for the greater good?
Nope. Absolutely not. That crossed a line, even for Faceless Jack.
He considered his current arsenal. His [Nightmare Shapeshift] was potent, targeting visual sense. [Banshee's Requiem] was amazing, targeting auditory sense. He needed something more… physical. More kinetic.
Poltergeist's Telekinesis! He decided, choosing the first option.
The blue window shimmered, then vanished. A wave of energy coursed through him, not painful, but present. He felt… lighter. More connected to the objects around him.
He focused on a loose cobblestone in the alleyway. He willed it to move.
Nothing.
He frowned. "Come on, you stupid rock!"
He focused harder. He remembered a technique he'd read about in some new-age meditation guide – grounding. Visualizing roots extending from himself into the earth.
Replacing "earth" with the ethereal plane, he focused on the cobblestone, pouring his will into it like liquid energy.
Slowly, agonizingly, the cobblestone trembled. Then, with a surge of effort, it lifted. Just a few inches, but it was enough.
Jack grinned, a feeling that didn't quite register on his non-existent face.
"Alright," he whispered. "Let's cause some chaos."
Lotogear City was about to get a whole lot more haunted.
...
Faceless Jack drifted through the grimy brick walls of Lotogear City. The perpetual smog clinging to him like a shroud.
The city was a symphony of steam and shadow. It was a twisted reflection of the world he knew.
He was still getting used to being dead. A ghost. A faceless anomaly. A supernatural being with unfathomable power.
Currently, he'd been drawn to St. Narmaila Hospital. It was a hulking gothic monstrosity that dominated the skyline. Even in a city steeped in the uncanny, this place radiated a disturbing aura.
He wasn't sure what it was. Curiosity? Boredom? Or maybe just the morbid fascination that used to fuel his old YouTube channel. Whatever the reason, Jack was here. He phased through the heavy oak doors, unseen and unheard.
The interior was a labyrinth. It was full of dimly lit corridors and echoing chambers. The air hung thick with the cloying scent of antiseptic.
And something else… something metallic and vaguely rotten. Definitely nothing like modern hospital.
He floated past rows of beds. They were occupied by patients, pale and gaunt. Their faces were etched with a silent suffering that resonated with Jack on a primal level.
He felt a pang of something akin to sympathy. It was a foreign emotion for a man who'd made a career out of exploiting fear.
Then he saw him.
Doctor Samael Guarnier was a caricature of medical authority. Tall and gaunt, with a meticulously groomed mustache. His eyes gleamed with unsettling intensity.
He moved through the ward with an oily charm. His voice was a soothing balm that somehow felt like a violation. Jack instinctively distrusted him.
He watched as Guarnier stopped at the bedside of a young woman. Her face was gaunt, and she was coughing feebly.
"And how are we feeling today, Miss Aleistra?" Guarnier cooed. His smile did not reach his eyes.
"Worse, Doctor," she whispered. Her voice was barely audible. "The pain… it's unbearable."
Guarnier chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "Nonsense, my dear. Just a touch more… treatment, and you'll be right as rain."
He gestured to one of the two nurses. It was a hulking woman with a sinister smile. She approached with a syringe. Its content was a cloudy, viscous fluid.
Jack watched, a knot forming in his spectral gut. The nurse plunged the needle into the woman's arm.
Miss Aleistra let out a strangled gasp. Her body convulsed for a moment before falling still. A strange stillness. Too still.
Guarnier checked her pulse. His face was impassive.
"Another failed one," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "Such a shame. But progress demands sacrifice, wouldn't you agree?"
Jack's blood ran cold, or rather, where his blood used to be. He followed Guarnier and the nurse as they moved to another patient.
They repeated the same ritual of false comfort and lethal injection. It was methodical, cold-blooded, and horrifyingly efficient.
He listened to their hushed conversations, piecing together the truth. Guarnier wasn't just a doctor. He was a butcher. He was experimenting on his patients. He tested new and dangerous treatments with no regard for their lives.
The nurses were his accomplices. They were ruthless and unfeeling, complicit in his depraved endeavors.
"Did you adjust the dosage like I said?" Guarnier asked the short, sour-faced nurse as they wheeled away the latest corpse.
"Yes Doctor Guarnier," she replied. "Though it barely extended the time of the subject. Perhaps the next dosage should be increased?"
"Perhaps," Guarnier tapped his chin. "We will increase the the dosage of Etherine gas next time. If that does not at least double the subject's duration, then we'll move on to the next subject. What of Subject 221B?"
"Still showing signs of resisting the treatment. Should we just terminate it, doctor? It's wasting resources and we have other subjects that are proving to be more useful in this trial."
"No absolutely not!" Guarnier raised his tone. "I invested too many resources into acquiring Subject 221B for us to simply terminate it. We will simply have to increase the dosage and force it to comply by any means necessary."
Jack seethed. He used to build his content on exploiting the macabre. He edited the fictional horrors that lurked in the shadows of the human imagination.
But this... this was real. This was a monster hiding in plain sight. A devil cloaked in the respectability of his profession.
A wave of icy rage crashed over him. He was Faceless Jack. He was a ghost tethered to this world. A ghost more humane than these people. But he was still a ghost, a being thriving in chaos and nightmare.
And he would not mind at all causing all those chaos and nightmare toward these people. As for getting experience to level up because of this? He scoffed. He didn't care. Leveling up is good. Not leveling up is fine. This was personal.
Jack focused his will. He drew on the nascent power that thrummed within him.
Closing his eyes, he pictured the young patient, Aleistra. He visualized her... face contorted in pain, eyes wide with terror. He reached into her memory, into the last moments of her life. And he extracted the essence of her nightmare.
Jack combined this essence with other fears and nightmares suffocating the place. He activated his [Nightmare Shapeshift].
The ward plunged into darkness. The gas lamps flickered and died. It casted long, distorted shadows that danced across the walls.
Jack combined the [Nightmare Shapeshift] with [Banshee's Requiem]. A low, guttural growl echoed through the room. It grew louder with each passing second.
And it was accompanied with a creepy music, one with dissonant and distorted sounds. The air crackled as if it was filled with an invisible energy.
Guarnier stopped dead in his tracks. His face paled beneath his manicured mustache. The nurses gasped, their eyes widening in fear.
From the shadows, something emerged. It was Miss Aleistra. But it was the twisted, grotesque version. Her skin was stretched and translucent. Her eyes were hollow pits of despair. Her limbs were contorted at unnatural angles. A trail of viscous fluid dripped from her mouth.
"This is your treatment?" The Nightmare-Aleistra spoke with an ethereal voice, a distorted one. "This is your progress?"
The Nightmare-Aleistra lunged at Guarnier. He screamed, backing away in terror. He tripped over a discarded medical chart.
The sour-faced nurse tried to intervene. But Jack, fueled by a righteous fury, used his [Poltergeist's Telekinesis] to send a tray of surgical instruments flying at her. It pinned her against the wall.
The hulking nurse with sinister smile tried to run. But the full blast of demonic scream exploded right beside her ears. She fell down in a peculiar daze.
Then, Guarnier's nightmare began.
The Nightmare-Aleistra didn't attack physically. It was far more insidious than that. It whispered things in his ear. It mocked his past, his failures, his deepest, darkest desires.
It showed him visions of his other victims. Their faces were gaunt and accusing. Their eerie screams echoed in his mind. And then, it reversed the situation.
The nightmare placed Guarnier into the role of a victim. His victims now were the doctors and nurses planning to experiment on him.
Fear overloaded Guarnier's mind. But he did not pass out. Jack would never let him faint.
Jack watched, a grim satisfaction washing over him. He wasn't killing Guarnier right away. He was not that kind.
He was torturing him. He was forcing him to confront the consequences of his actions. He was forcing him to experience the same fear and despair he had inflicted on his patients.
He then turned his sights on the short nurse, still pinned against the wall, and the hulking nurse, down on the floor. He didn't bother with the elaborate nightmare.
He simply focused his power, channeling the terror that radiated from the patients they had just killed. Their fear, their pain, their silent pleas for help…
He amplified them. He focused these terrors on the nurses until they were a pair of gibbering messes.
Jack didn't stop. He targeted all three people altogether.
He layered the sound of the ghostly scream with the insane symphony of demonic orchestra. The requiem of the banshee entered the nurses' and doctor's minds. They did not stop until their ears bled.
The symphonic nightmare continued for what felt like an eternity. Finally, Guarnier and the two nurses collapsed, broken.
Guarnier's eyes were wide with terror, his face streaked with tears. He was no longer the arrogant, self-assured doctor. He was a scared, broken man confronted with the enormity of his sins.
The two nurses were pretty much in similar situation.
Jack considered finishing them off, but something held him back this time. He wouldn't shy away from murder. He had killed two men after all.
However, he calculated that leaving them in this broken, insane condition seemed to be a better approach. It, very likely, would leave more terrifying impact. And, it would draw people attention to this hospital more.
Jack observed the messed up corridor. Among the scattered clutters, he spotted a blood pack. Bingo!
He used his [Poltergeist's Telekinesis] to bust it open. Blood sprayed like a ruptured artery. Still with the telekinesis, he smeared the crimson mess across the wall, scrawling jagged letters: "Vengeance is watching..."
Afterward, he released the Nightmare-Aleistra, letting it fade back into the shadows. The gas lamps flickered back to life. It casted a pale glow over the ward. Guarnier lay on the floor, a broken shell of a man. The nurses remained on their spots, similarly broken.
Jack drifted away, leaving the scene of his spectral vengeance. He felt a twisted sense of satisfaction. He had punished the guilty. He was Faceless Jack. A stranded ghost. The harbinger of vengeance.