Ghastly basement

After checking which ghost, they were dealing with, they both quickly retreated from the basement.

They then went to what probably used to be a dining hall and put two overturned chairs on their legs.

After sitting down, Finn started to think about their next move.

"So, how do we exorcise a B-ranked ghost?"

Sophie asked because everything depended on Finn's knowledge of ghosts, and she was clueless about what to do.

"Well… If it was a C or D rank, then I would buy some ingredients and create a special potion. With it, I could pour it into the basement, and because the ghosts have a hierarchy, when they feel the aura of the potion, they will run away because the potion imitates the aura of a B-ranked ghost."

He explained but then looked down, depressed.

"But if we pour this potion near a B-ranked ghost's territory, we will just anger him, and he will turn aggressive."

"Oh… But that doesn't answer my question. How do we get rid of it?"

"…"

Finn looked up at Sophie with an expressionless face and his eyebrows twitching.

"Do you think I know everything about ghosts?"

"You don't?"

"...Haaaa..."

He released a long sigh from his mouth.

"…I know how to deal with a D or even a C rank, but a B rank is much harder to deal with."

"So, you are saying that there is a way."

Sophie's face brightened up while she looked at Finn, like she was telling him to just say it.

"Yeah, you have to kill it."

Finn nodded, but his expression was still very dark.

"…How do you kill an incorporeal being?"

Sophie asked because they probably weren't supposed to slash the ghost's head off when it didn't even have a body.

"Well, the ghosts, like golems, have a core. It is called a cursed object in their case, and you just have to crush it into dust."

"Then let's go destroy it."

She was wondering why Finn was acting like this when they just had to destroy this object.

"Easier said than done. For a D-ranked ghost it can be a large vase, for a C-ranked ghost it can be an entire room where he had died and for a B-ranked…"

"The entire mansion."

Sophie understood what Finn was trying to say and finished the sentence for him. He then continued with a frown.

"Now turning the mansion into dust is extremely difficult, but it is not impossible."

He paused for a second and then continued.

"The ghost is not that active during the daytime, so we might be able to slowly chip the mansion away, but the problem is that we bought the mansion because we needed a building, and if we destroy it, then there will be no ghost, but there will also be no mansion."

"Can't we just rebuild the mansion after?"

"With 500 coins, Sophie?"

Finn looked at Sophie with a questioning gaze while raising his eyebrows, and she looked down.

"But there is another way."

He spoke, and she lifted her head.

"B-ranked monsters and up can gain intelligence, and they acquire the ability to speak to people. Meaning that if we ask nicely, it might let us stay inside the mansion."

"You want to ask a ghost that might kill you in your sleep to live with you?"

This time, it was Sophie who was looking at Finn with a confused expression.

"There is no other choice but to do this."

Finn also didn't like the idea but he didn't have anything else.

"…Fine."

Sophie just shook her head in defeat because she didn't have a better plan in mind.

After that, they looked around the mansion for any valuables, but they discovered that the previous tenants had already emptied the mansion, and after selling anything valuable, they ran away.

So, Finn and Sophie stayed in the library, reading some books while waiting. The books were probably too worthless to be sold, so they were the only things that were still there.

In those, Finn had learned about the names of the original noble family that ended up dying, so he remembered them, hoping that they would be of use when talking to the ghost.

He knew it was just one ghost because there was only one mansion, and if there were multiple ghosts, they wouldn't have any cursed objects to reside in. After all, one ghost could only use one cursed object.

Once the sun finally set and the moon took its place in the sky, it became dark, and Finn could hear screams coming from the basement.

He grabbed the lantern, and together with Sophie, he left the library and went towards the basement.

While they were walking, the screams kept getting louder, and Finn could discern some words.

"NOOO!"

"STOP! IT HURTS!"

Suddenly his arm got hugged by Sophie, who was walking beside him, and because he thought it was the ghost, he almost shat himself.

"AAAHH! ...S- Sophie don't tell me you are scared of ghosts that don't even exist."

He quickly tried to mask the fact that he screamed with a question.

"N- No and look who is talking. You are the one shivering."

Sophie was normally fearless, but she hated the dark, and if you add a person screaming while being tortured to the equation, she just instinctively grabbed Finn, who was also really scared.

"Whatever, let's just go meet that ghost."

Finn was too frightened at the moment to tease Sophie, so he just continued walking towards the basement.

He didn't find horror films scary at all, but actually hearing someone get tortured in reality made him pretty terrified.

Soon they arrived in front of the stairs, and they could hear the screams coming from below.

"Do we need to go down there? Maybe we can just sell this mansion for profit and find a better building."

Sophie started to get cold feet because, when she looked into the basement, all she saw was darkness.

"No, we can't sell it. We already paid for it, so let's try to fix the issue. The worst thing that can happen to us is that we will die and respawn outside the mansion."

Finn's reasoning made Sophie nod, but the reason she chose to continue walking with him was because she didn't want to let go of him and risk getting ambushed by the ghost.

With that, they began descending, and the screams were now so loud that they thought someone was next to them, screaming into their ears.

"NOO! DAD, DON'T EAT ME PLEASE!"

"DARLING, PLEASE STOP!"

"IT HURTS, DAD! IT HURTS!"

Finn didn't know if he was the one shivering in fear or if it was Sophie, because they were both terror-stricken at that point.

They slowly descended the stairs while shaking in fear, and soon they entered the room that had scratch marks on its walls.

There were red stains on the ground, but they had been there for a long time now, so they had already dried.

The room itself had wooden tables with shackles on them, and all those tables also had what looked to be dried blood on them.

Finn tried to shine the lantern around to see if he could find the ghost, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly something tapped his left shoulder, and his body shook.

"S- Sophie! Please don't play pranks on me right now!"

"P- Pranks? What do you mean I didn't do anything!"

Sophie, who kept tightly holding on to him, whispered in fear.

"It was you who tapped my left shoulder, right?"

"No! How could it have been me when I am holding your right arm with both of my hands!"

She shook her head and buried her face into Finn's clothes because her logic was that if she couldn't see the ghost, it couldn't see her.

"W- Wait, then, who was it…"

Finn slowly turned around, and when he did, he saw a young boy who was probably around fifteen.

He only had a small cloth covering his nether region, and his naked and anorexic body was filled with bitemarks.

The boy was missing an arm and a leg, and he was floating in the air.

A part of his face looked like it had been bit off, and when Finn turned around, the boy opened his mouth and a ghastly voice left his half-eaten lips.

"Have you come to finish eating me, father?"

"KYAAA!"

When Sophie heard that the ghost was right next to them, she shrieked and hugged Finn even tighter, refusing to let go of him.

Normally he would be happy to get hugged, but at that point he was so scared that his brain stopped working and he remained standing without blinking.

"Hmm? You didn't get scared. You are an interesting human."

The boy started floating around Finn, but Finn was still like an unmoving statue.

"So why are you in my house, stranger?"

The boy's body suddenly recovered its missing parts, and he was now wearing normal clothes. He had short, curly hair and a round head with a cute face.

When Finn saw this, his fear level dropped a little, and he forced himself to open his mouth.

"W- We bought this mansion."

"Hmm? Of course, you did. Everyone always does, but then runs away because of me. Why are you telling me this? Are you stupid?"

The boy tilted his head while holding his chin.

He kept floating in the air around Finn and Sophie.

"We want to live here, so can you please stop screaming at night?"

Finn managed to force a request out of his shaky lips.

"Hmm? No. I refuse. Scaring others is fun, and besides, I don't want a stranger to happily live in a house where my family was tortured to death."

The boy shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows, which made Finn tremble.

He was facing an extremely strong monster, and even if he had a high level, he would still most likely not be able to defeat it.

If the monster chose to torture Finn forever, then it was free to do so because the monster wasn't tied down by the system's rules, only players were.

Finn remembered from a book he read in the library upstairs that going by the boys' looks, he was probably the late owner's ten-year-old son Rex, and he probably changed his looks as the years went by to look like he was fifteen, but he was still a dangerous monster.

"Th- Then is there something we can do for you, and in return, you will let us live here?"

What Finn was doing was a technique where he asked the NPC for a quest because not every NPC would give their quest by themselves.

The quests also weren't predetermined, so if the NPC decided, it could create an entirely new quest just because it felt like it.

Of course, he was taking a risk here because not every person or intelligent monster in this game was willing to give quests to other people, so he might just be rejected and anger the boy even more.

Luckily for him, the boy's eyebrows eased, and an evil smirk appeared on his face.

"Bring my father here, and I will allow you to live here."

"Bring him here? But isn't he dead already?"

Finn's eyebrows raised, and a confused expression appeared on his face.

"How am I supposed to know that?! You wanted to fulfill my wish, so move your ass and do something!"

'So unreasonable…'

Finn remembered that Blue Whale mentioned that the father of the family was arrested, but he wasn't sure if he was executed or if he was just rotting in jail.

But this was a game where even if the NPCs created a new quest, it could always be somehow completed, so he accepted.

"If we are to work together, we should at least introduce ourselves. I am Finn, and this is Sophie."

Finn pointed to his girlfriend, who was still clinging to him.

"Rex. Now, will you go and find my father already?"

The ghost impatiently looked at Finn, who nodded.

"Alright, we will bring your father here, but before we do, can you tell us what actually happened here?"

Finn asked this because he knew that the father's future would be very bleak if he brought him here, so he wanted to know if he actually deserved to die or not.

At that point, even Sophie stopped cowering in fear and looked at the ghost with eyes filled with curiosity.

The boy frowned as if he were remembering a painful memory, and after a few minutes, he nodded.

"I understand. I will tell you exactly what happened. How my father suddenly changed and what exactly happened in this accursed basement. It all started when…"