Arc 2: 2.2

Nineteen blinked his eyes several times to determine that he wasn't hallucinating. He slowly walked toward the objects. When he was a meter away from the target, the target made a sudden movement of turning around. 19 was startled and took a step back from where he intended to stand.

An expressionless handsome face of a man turned to look straight at 19. The deep blue eyes stared at him indifferently, and somehow he got a feeling that he was familiar with these eyes. But he shook that idea off because the man in front of him seemed to be the rumor 'Nether Emperor' who wearing gold color outfits all the time. 19 recovered his calm state and bowed down to the Nether Emperor when he heard the cold voice of the man.

"Who lets you in?"

"Ah! No one, your majesty!"

"Then how can you come in?"

"I was just strolling around and somehow ended up here without knowing. Please pardon me!"

"Alright, leave!"

After he heard the command, he turned around to leave quickly as fast as possible without turning to look back. If he turned back, he would see the frown on the expressionless face of Nether Emperor, who had been staring at the tiny shadow.

"How? Unless!" the Nether Emperor muttered these words several more times. Then, a crystal globe, which 19 didn't detect its presence the whole time and it actually wasn't far from where the Nether Emperor stood, began to brighten up. The Nether Emperor was surprised by the crystal's reaction, then he showed a rare smile on his face, which was regret because no one was here to see it.

19 went back to the path that he was on. He was thinking about the event a moment ago. It was quite a scary experience he had there. Now, let us stopped thinking about it, he should think about changing his work to something else that didn't require to face directly those mess-up faces of the dead spirit. He swore that he couldn't look at them for more than 2 seconds. Although, when he was a human in his last life, he didn't believe in ghost 100 percent, he believed it 50 percent in spirit and ghost.

And now he met them face-to-face, the others 50 percent had filled up so that made him scared 100 percent. He sighed at his misfortunate that he got this world. Would there be a scarier world than this ghost world? He wished it didn't have.

He had asked his system to find the dead spirit that was supposed to be his boss to talk about changing the job to another one. When he went to talk with him, he got told to go to 'Transfering & Promoting Dept' because they only supervised the work progress, no authority to do anything else.

As he got the information, he followed the path his system showed him. He arrived at one of the buildings in the area which had the wood frame above written 'Transfering & Promoting Dept'. He guessed that this building did the work as their name applied, transferring, and promoting.

He walked into the building and was shocked at the line of the dead spirit that was queuing. He was thinking about whether he went to transferring or promoting. As he was thinking, his system suggested going to the helping center, which was located in the middle of the building's floor.

He proceeded to the middle of the building and saw a rather good-looking woman was waiting for him. However, her voice betrayed the appearance of a feminine girl, a rather big and manly voice spoke out.

"How can I help you?"

"Well, Can you help me find a work that doesn't require me to meet directly with the ready-to-go dead spirits? If there is, I want to ask whether it is the transfer one or promote one. That's all. Thank you!"

"Okay, please wait a minute!"

After he finished his request, he just stood there, looking around the building. He estimated that whether he would be in transferring or promoting, he needed to queue quite a long time until his turn because there was a lot of dead spirits.

At last, he got told that there was one post available at the promoting section, and his merit points were sufficient to promote to that post and he should be hurried. Just the sentence ended, he sprang his way out to the promoting section on the 3rd floor of the building.

Barely arrived at the destination, he saw there was another dead spirit in front of him talking about promoting to the position that he was told was available. This made his heart trembling with anxiety, he didn't know whether the position would be snatched from him at this moment.

The man in front of him was negotiating with the staff of the promoting section, talking rather in a loud voice.

"What do you mean that I can't be promoted?"

"You don't have sufficient merit points to be promoted."

"I just count it yesterday."

"Maybe you count wrong. Now, please leave. Don't cause any ruckus here. Guard! Take this man away!"

After that, the dead spirit that worked as a guard rushed forward and pulled that man from the counter, and threw him outside the building without any mercy. 19 stepped forward to the counter and the man's voice spoke to him.

"Report your ID and state the position you want!"

The voice was rather loud and strong, maybe because he was angry a moment ago.

"ID is WO1 19896712345012, wish to promote to the document errand dead spirit."

"Alright, wait a minute!"

The waiting was quite long, 50 minutes had gone by already. Right then he heard the voice from the counter.

"Your merit points are sufficient to promote, now you will a document errant dead spirit of Netherworld. You will get the work when you go to report today. Congratulation! This is your promotion card once you go to report and show the card, it will disappear right after, and you will the official working dead spirit in the running errand dept."

"Thank you!"

He took his hand to receive the card that handed out to the staff and walked out of the building. He looked at the card and saw on the card there was his ID, his last job, and his current job. Right, after he promoted, he would get to be WO2 (Chief Warrant Officer 2).

He wandered around a little bit in this area and proceeded to the Running Errand Dept. He stepped into the building and immediately a wave of dead spirits rushed out nearly knocked him over. Luckily, he stepped aside from the path and let those dead spirits ran past him.

He huffed a sigh for his fast reaction, otherwise, he would be trampled by them. Although they didn't feel any pain, he could still know that being stepped over didn't feel good at all.

He went to report his work and saw that the card really disappeared as they said. His first task was visiting the Administrative Dept. to get the document that needed to send to the others Dept. and lastly sent it to the Nether Palace.

Wait, what?? How come he could deliver the document to the Nether Palace?

These questions were in his head the whole time when he went to the Administrative Dept. to get the document all the way to the other Dept. What 19 didn't know was that the task that he got because of a certain Nether Emperor sent out the command directly to the Transferring and Promoting Dept.

19 still felt unreal because he knew that he was just a normal dead spirit in the Netherworld. From what he heard, the one who delivered the document to the Nether Palace was all high rank such as WO5 and higher.

Now that he thought about it, he accidentally met the Nether Emperor one time at that place. Did he hold a grudge against him for stepping into his territory? But he didn't anything else that made him dissatisfied, did he?

Now that he was here in front of the gate of Nether Palace. Should he go back? But if he went back, would he get punished for not delivering on time? His mind was messed up right now. Hw woke up from his thought when he heard the gate guard shout at him to be hurried up.

He hurried to say sorry to the gate guard and walked inside the gate. A magnificent castle was in his sight. The castle was huge, made of stone and wood, and the design was similar to the ancient European castle's style mix with the Chinese royal palace's style.

He suddenly wondered how much did the Nether Emperor spend on this building. Did they use the merit points or what? He followed behind one of the dead spirits that worked in the castle to the study room of the Nether Emperor.

He asked them why didn't they get it from him, no need for him to give directly to Nether Emperor. What they answered him was this 'I don't know'. No matter who he asked along the way to the study room, all they got was 'I don't know'. That was freaking frustrated.

After a while, he arrives in front of the study room of the Nether Emperor. He heard the one in front of him knocking on the door, and the voice inside command them to come in. He shook his head indicated that he couldn't go inside, so the only choice left was he, alone, went inside the room.