"Oh well." Standing inside the house of the Emersons, watching the colorful wallpaper, the mostly intact furniture and the rather peaceful scenery outside the window, Wu Xiaoming couldn't help but scoff and shake his head.
It was not easy to find a place to burn the half a rag doll head without raising suspicion - but he did it. He bought some firestarter liquid and a lighter from a convenient store, soaked the paper and the rag doll head with it, and burned it in a dried canal under a bridge. To make sure that the head would burn fully, he even gathered a lot of dry leaves and grass and used the entire bottle of firestarter liquid. He almost burned his clothes when the fire erupted from the extremely flammable pile he made. He stayed by the fire until everything turned to ash. A police car drove by but no one came to stop him.
Yet the house still pulled him into this illusion when he approached again. Apparently burning the head to ash in the physical realm was just not enough.
Without hesitation, he walked upstairs to the child's room. Before going in, he said to himself: "Shield", then ran his left hand over the entire spiked mace head of his morningstar to coat it in golden light - this method was indeed quite helpful when a fight was afoot.
He kicked over the box of toys, then just as the damaged toys poured out, he located the rag doll and swung his morningstar at it.
One sharp spike punctured the body of the rag doll, releasing black smoke just like the last time. A shadow shot out from the rag doll's body. Its slender arms and claws shot out from its sides and swung at Wu Xiaoming's shoulder and waist.
Already prepared, Wu Xiaoming darted backwards and roared: "Attack!"
The tips of the creature's claws glazed through Wu Xiaoming's body, cracking the energy shield up slightly but eventually bouncing off. The energy blast from Wu Xiaoming hit the creature on the neck area, cracking its skin up and pushing it back.
He swung his morningstar again, this time at the creature's face. The creature crossed its arms and took the hit. Then it screamed and shoved both its arms forward. The morningstar almost flew from his grip, and he was forced back by a few steps. Another swing of the wooden arms, his energy shield was broken and he was bashed in the chest.
Wu Xiaoming was thrown out of the room by this strike. His hands on the handrail on his side prevented him from falling down the stairs. Meanwhile the creature pulled its entire body out of the doll and charged at Wu Xiaoming, screaming and wailing its arms. Wu Xiaoming turned and jumped over the rails onto the ground floor. The creature grabbed onto the rail and flung itself over, but just in time for Wu Xiaoming's morningstar coming right at its face.
"Bang!" The mace strike was true and loud. Wu Xiaoming did not have time to re-coat it with golden light, but it carried enough force to throw the creature off the staircase and handrails, almost through the backdoor through which he came in.
"Attack!" Wu Xiaoming charged at the creature while barking.
The energy blast blew off the left hand of the creature, while the morningstar collided with the creature's right arm. Its slender tree branch of an arm snapped, with only a bit of thin bark connecting two parts. A beam of golden light shot from his left hand middle and index fingers, landing right on the creature's waist.
The creature screeched. A small fire burst from a small burn mark created by the light. Its right leg thrashed Wu Xiaoming right in the waist. This time the attack landed straight and true, throwing Wu Xiaoming into the air. It appeared that golden light was not as effective against corporeal enemies as against ethereal creatures like ghosts and spirits.
"A - attack!" Suppressing the urge to vomit, Wu Xiaoming roared, focusing on the general direction of the creature. His feet bumped on the ground, he had to adjust his posture so that he would not twist both his ankles. This made him fall backwards and hit his back on the wall behind him. His morningstar dropped and rolled into a corner.
The energy blast launched without proper focus and aim only cracked a bit of skin on the creature's chest. It continued its charge at Wu Xiaoming, with its wooden mouth with sharp spikes for teeth opening wide.
Wu Xiaoming rolled to the side, pulled his other morningstar out and swung upwards. The mace head struck the creature in its left armpit, the spikes sinking in its wooden body. The very next moment he bounced up from the ground and launched a kick at the creature's waist.
"Fuck you! Fuck you!" As the creature was forced backwards, Wu Xiaoming lunged forward and wailed at it. His fury seemed to have instilled fear in the creature, as it could only scream and back off while struggling to defend itself.
"Slash!" He launched another roar focusing on the creature's legs, its two legs flew off just from this simple attack. This caused it to fall forward at him, just in time for him to swing the morningstar right into its face.
"Bang!" The creature was sent into the air, its face almost completely turned into splinters and smithereens.
"Boom!" A wave of fire exploded from the furnace room before Wu Xiaoming could follow up with more attacks. He had to cover his face and neck to shield himself from the heat and shockwave. Fortunately, it was not a big deal at all, he felt a light push on his body and a flash of heat on his skin, then he was able to move without much trouble.
But for the creature, it was different - the walls near it and the ceiling above it all caught on fire. Its entire body was ignited, even though the fire from the furnace did not touch it at all.
The creature screeched and struggled, its already broken body was swallowed by the flames in almost an instant. Eager to take the "last hit" and unwilling to let go of this opportunity, Wu Xiaoming charged forward at it.
An energy blast from a roar of "attack" and a full force swing of his morningstar struck the creature on its chest and stomach area at the same time, completely obliterating its entire body. The rest of it scattered from the impact and explosion, swallowed by the fire almost instantly.
The illusion faded the very next moment. He came back into the house, ethereal-realm-style. He found the first morningstar in the short hallway below the child's bedroom and the home office on the ground floor.
Current currencies: 18883 Spirit Fragments, 101 Vision Slivers. This time, he gained a total of 600 Spirit Fragments and only 1 Vision Sliver. Also - no item drops. The reduction in rewards could be due to this being a second kill. In a lot of action RPGs, the replayable bosses would have a "first kill reward" mechanism, where the first time a player character defeated them would grant the player additional rewards, there was a good chance this was at play here. But there was no way to tell, but to come here next time.
Coming out of the house, Wu Xiaoming pressed on forward - towards the Sproutlinger Hotel. It would still be beneficial for him to be familiar with the path, even though he was slightly underleveled.
The next part of the path in front him was a long and wide road - maybe it should be called boulevard? He had no idea what to call different kinds of streets here. But somehow, being in the wide open just gave him a bad feeling. He immediately found the side of the road and went along the feet of different buildings. There were too many of them, there was simply no time to check out each one, might as well do some window shopping for potentially useful items.
Just as he walked by a four-storey building that looked like a shopping mall, something on the ground floor caught his eyes. From a distance it was hard to tell what it was, but it was glistening in light green and blue. It was a weak glow, but in this grim dark environment, it was bright like a torch.
Wu Xiaoming knelt by the window and fixed his eyes on it - the light was coming from the foot of a distant interior wall, on the side of a pillar. To go in and check it out, he needed to go through this window, go past at least five shops through a curved walkway. The visibility inside the shopping mall was low, and from where he was he had quite a hard time making out if anything was inside the shops along the way.
After a few moments of consideration, he climbed through the window and began moving in that direction. He had plenty of Spirit Fragments, he could afford the risk.
But before he could move very far, a shadow the size of a dog crawled out from the shadows in the middle of the hallway and ran towards the glistening object. Its body was too dark and its speed too quick for him to tell what it was, all he could identify was it had two short wings on its back and a long tail.
The shadow zig-zagged along the hallway a few times before darting towards the light. It took only around twenty seconds for it to make it all the way.
A slimy, fleshy tentacle or tongue shot down from the ceiling and locked the shadow down on the ground. The shadow struggled for only a brief moment before it could not move anymore. Its tail drooped, twitching helplessly. The tentacle or tongue squirmed, swallowing the shadow as it retracted back onto the ceiling.
Wu Xiaoming crawled back out of the window.