Goddess Kaleidoscope

Seeing all this familiar yet distant stuff, Lud suddenly felt a slight moisture in the corner of his eye. But before he could immerse himself in the emotion, the computer screen on his desk suddenly lit up by itself, and as soon as it was turned on, a media player automatically popped up and entered full-screen mode.

The player displayed the ruins of an abandoned sewer system. A woman dressed like a maid stood in the center, her long, flowing hair completely obscuring her face. This scene felt eerily familiar to Ludwig, a scene straight out of a classic horror movie!

At this moment, the long-haired female ghost in the picture began to approach the screen, as if passing through an unclosed window, her body leaning directly out of the screen, and her full breasts were particularly eye-catching due to her bending over.

Lude was immediately filled with a deep-seated fear. This computer was a high-end product he had recently acquired before his transmigration, with a specially designed 32-inch high-definition curved screen, making it large enough for the female ghost to easily pass through.

Just as the female ghost had crawled out with half her body, Lu De suddenly had a flash of inspiration. He rushed forward with lightning speed and did something completely unexpected by the female ghost.

He pressed the ESC key... and exited full-screen mode!

In an instant, the player's screen shrunk from a full 32-inch display to just one-third of its original size, barely touching the female ghost's waist. The ghost screamed and struggled violently.

"Ouch! Ouch! Oh no, I'm stuck..."

"..."

As the female ghost screamed in panic, Ludd's fear vanished. Just then, the dream world shook violently and collapsed rapidly as if an earthquake had struck. Ludd heard Hume's voice in his ear.

"Lud! Lud! Wake up!"

Struggling to sit up from the covers, Ludwig found himself back in the temple room, with Hume clutching his pajamas collar, his cheek throbbing slightly.

Before he could ask Hume what had happened, a dark shadow suddenly crawled out from under his bed, trying to slip away, but Hume, with quick reflexes, stepped on it.

"How dare a mere ghost touch my people!"

Although she had lost most of her power, Hume was still a goddess. So with a roar, the shadowy figure under her feet revealed its true form, which was the long-haired female ghost who had been trapped in the window in Ludwig's dream.

Hume's foot landed squarely on her chest, rendering her immobile.

Soon, the others also heard the commotion in Lude's room and rushed over one after another. Luoye was carrying a huge double-edged battle axe, but because she was currently in her original form as a little sister, the axe appeared exceptionally large due to her petite body.

When the crowd saw the female ghost on the ground, no one said they were scared. Instead, they all crowded around, touching and tugging at her, as if a group of mischievous children visiting a relative's older brother had discovered his treasured limited-edition Gundam model.

Thus, the intense fear instantly shattered the female ghost's fragile psychological defenses, and she lay on the ground and burst into tears, leaving Lu De speechless.

"Who is the ghost here?"

End of this chapter

The dead are something that truly exists in this world.

Theoretically speaking, after the physical body perishes, the soul of all living beings has a certain probability of naturally transforming into an undead. Moreover, the stronger the soul and spiritual power of an being in life, the easier it is for them to transform. Therefore, magicians have become a high-risk group for undead transformation.

Some magicians think this is a good thing, because becoming a ghost means they can break free from the constraints of the physical body, and continue their research without sleep or death.

However, some magicians only want to completely sever their ties with the mortal world after their death and do not want to cause trouble for other living people, so they will prepare special sealed coffins in advance to avoid turning themselves into undead.

In Lud's view, the dead are a far more incomprehensible existence than gods. Because once a living soul transforms into a dead soul, it will truly exist forever unless it is destroyed by someone using professional exorcism tools.

Hume once told Ludwig that she had met several ancient spirits who had existed for thousands of years, older than the gods, and who could achieve immortality without eating, drinking, or needing mortals to provide faith.

However, becoming a spirit also has risks and drawbacks. First, during the transformation phase, the soul may be damaged or lost, thus becoming a fragmented soul with incomplete memories and personality. Some people die unhappily, either murdered or with regrets in life, so they carry extremely strong hatred and obsession during the transformation, and become crazy vengeful spirits after death, thus causing harm to the surrounding area.

Of course! Even if the transformation is complete, after being a ghost for a long time, one may slowly go insane, or become tired of this "immortality" and actively seek a priest to give them a release.

In addition, becoming a ghost will bring many inconveniences in life.

Some spirits fear light, while others suffer from "blood addiction" and will actively attack living beings. Moreover, all spirits possess a passive skill called "soul corruption." Souls that are not strong enough will gradually weaken and eventually die from the disease if they are in contact with them for too long.

Therefore, in many human settlements, once a spirit is discovered, regardless of who it was in life, people will do everything in their power to eliminate it. This task is often undertaken by the local priests, because divine magic is the most effective force against the undead in this world.

That's why, when Rudd discovered that he had been "attacked" by a ghost while sleeping in the temple late at night, he was not only shocked but also incredulous.

These days, even mice dare to jump on a cat's face!

The ghost, caught red-handed, was now being watched by a group of goddesses, crying her eyes out in a standard "duck sit" position, proving that ghosts do have tear ducts too.

Seeing her pitiful, wronged look, Ludwig felt a pang of sympathy.

"Hey, Miss Undead, could you please stop crying?"

Hearing Lude speaking to her, the semi-transparent female ghost timidly raised her head. Seeing that her long hair almost completely covered her face, Aina reached out and brushed it aside. Her divine body allowed her to easily contact the spirit.

To everyone's surprise, the female ghost was quite pretty and had been a lovely young girl in life.

"What's your name? Why did you come into my dream?"

“I, my name is Elaine, Elaine Carter. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just want you to give me back my bones.”

"Your bones?"

Upon hearing the female ghost Eliven ask him for bones, Lud suddenly remembered that when he was cleaning the ruins of the temple's underground sewers, he had collected a skeleton, which must have been Eliven's.

Is it the one underground?

"Yes. That's me."

The female ghost pointed to herself with her little finger, then looked around tremblingly. The relationship between the dead and the living is one of mutual restraint; whether humans fear ghosts or ghosts fear humans depends on which side has stronger vitality and yin energy.

Therefore, in Elijah's eyes, everyone in the room was a giant like a little sun, while she, a newbie, was trembling in fear, surrounded by powerful figures.

She knew very well that with her meager strength, she was no match for these "ghosts who feared her," so she pitifully begged the big shots to spare her life, considering that she had never harmed anyone.

If a living person said this, Ludwig would certainly not believe it.

He was a policeman in his past life. He remembered his first day on the job when a senior colleague handed him a stack of photos and asked him to identify how many murderers were in them just by looking at their faces. Lu De looked at them for a long time and said he wasn't sure. Then the senior colleague smiled and told him a shocking fact.

These five photos belong to a notorious criminal gang that operated in northern China during the 1990s, specializing in murder and robbery on highways, leaving no survivors. By the time they were all arrested, at least thirty long-haul truck drivers had fallen victim to their crimes. Judging solely by their appearance, no one would imagine that these seemingly honest and unassuming farmers could be so ruthless in their killings.

However, just as Ludwig was about to use his professional skills to carefully interrogate the female ghost in front of him, Hume whispered something to him.

"It seems you weren't lying; didn't you notice how clean her scent was?"

"Smell?"

Seeing Ludwig's puzzled expression, as if he truly didn't understand, Hume told him a common knowledge known to almost every priest in the world except for himself: the more evil a spirit's thoughts are, the stronger the smell of decay on its body, and the more ferocious and terrifying its appearance will become.

If it weren't for her semi-transparent body and messy long hair, you would probably find it hard to believe that Elijah was a ghost.

Realizing that Hume was right, Ludd suddenly found himself in a difficult situation.

If the person before him were a malevolent demon wreaking havoc on humanity, Rudd would have no hesitation and would have immediately unleashed a holy light to obliterate her soul. But since the person before him was a benevolent demon, Rudd found it difficult to bring himself to do it.

It's definitely not because she's cute and has big breasts!

"How about... we perform a ritual to help her pass on to the afterlife?"

What does "deliverance" mean?

"..."

Seeing Hume's puzzled look, Ludd suddenly remembered that this world was different from Earth; there was no such thing as "reincarnation." When a person died, they simply died, either vanishing into nothingness or becoming a spirit, which would then be vanished into nothingness by the priests or exorcists who came upon hearing the news.

It was precisely because of this "imperfection" that Ludwig was momentarily at a loss as to how to deal with the pitiful female ghost before him.

End of this chapter

Instead of immediately dealing with the female ghost, Eliven, Rudd continued to interrogate her, asking questions such as what she did in life, the cause of her death, and how she had endured the years since becoming a ghost.

It's easy to tell from her surname that Elaine must be of noble birth, yet she wears clothes that resemble those of a maid.

Furthermore, as Hume previously stated, the ability to go without sleep after becoming a spirit is not all beneficial, because time itself is a torment, and many spirits eventually suffer mental breakdowns because they cannot bear the endless loneliness and solitude.

Although Elijah in front of me looked incredibly timid, her eyes were very clear, and her speech revealed a normal way of thinking.

Faced with Lud's questioning, Elijah said that she was born in a kingdom called Manas, and her father was a viscount. Because she received a good noble education from an early age and was a well-known genius girl in the kingdom with an extraordinary memory that could be described as photographic, she was selected to serve in the palace at the age of fourteen as the queen's secretary.

Becoming the Queen's secretary was a source of pride for Elizabeth, as she was the youngest secretary in the country's history, but little did she know that she would also be the last.

When Eliven was nineteen, the raging war of the gods finally reached the Kingdom of Manas, which had previously claimed neutrality. Faced with a powerful enemy nation that brazenly invaded under the absurd banner of "fighting for the gods" but was actually just coveting their land, the weak Manas was powerless to resist and was destroyed in less than a year.

After the capital was captured by the enemy, Elijah narrowly escaped death and did not die at the hands of the enemy. The Queen could not bear to leave these young court ladies here to be buried with her, or even to become toys for the brutal enemy, so she evacuated the people in the palace in advance.

She herself stayed behind with several court magicians, preparing to unleash a super spell to perish together with the enemy army that had invaded the city.

After fleeing the capital, Elijah intended to return to her hometown to find her family. However, when she finally returned home after many hardships, she only saw charred ruins.

When Elijah first saw this scene, she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. But when she carefully examined the ruins, she found that there was no body among the wreckage, and on the stone tablet in the center of the town, she saw the sarcastic declaration that her father had left for the invaders.

"Not a single grain of food will be left for you, you bastards!"

Seeing the familiar handwriting, Elijah breathed a sigh of relief; her family and fellow villagers should be alright. The burning of the territory was part of their scorched-earth policy, and they had probably already moved to a safer place.

Relieved, Elijah decided to spend the night in the best-preserved temple in town and continue her search for her family the next morning. However, that very night, a small squad of enemy soldiers suddenly broke into the town ruins. They were also looking for a place to spend the night and had their eyes on the temple as well.

Unable to escape in time, Elijah discovered a secret passage connecting the temple's back chambers to the sewers in her haste. She rushed in, only to find that the sewers were filled with poisonous miasma. Poor Elijah didn't go far before she died in this unknown corner from inhaling too much poisonous gas.

She didn't know how much time had passed, but when Eliven regained consciousness, she was already an undead. Her body had decayed, leaving only a skeleton. The ruins of her hometown had turned into a wasteland overgrown with weeds. Only the temple remained, thanks to a trace of remaining divine power.

Many years passed afterward, and Eliven, now an undead, remained hidden in the temple until a group of settlers returned to the land. Eliven knew she was an undead and that contact with living beings would harm them, but she didn't want to abandon her remains, so she could only hide underground.

Then Ludwig came and occupied the abandoned temple, establishing a new sect there. Elijah had intended to scare him away, so she deliberately shook the cabinets to make noise while he was tidying up the storeroom.

Lud was indeed startled by her, but he quickly reinforced the cabinet blocking the secret door of the tunnel, so the frail Elaine could no longer shake it.

Left with no other choice, Elaine had to accept the situation and hide in the sewer ruins every day, only daring to go out for a walk at night. This peaceful coexistence was fine until, about two weeks ago, Lud suddenly led a group into the sewers, scaring Elaine into fleeing. When she returned after hiding for a few days, her body was gone.

This really worried Elijah, so even though she knew those guys above her were not to be trifled with, she gritted her teeth and used the only necromancy skill she knew on Lud—Dream Intervention.

This skill allows the undead to sneak into the dreams of the living, but Eliven is too weak and has limited ability to interfere with dreams. She can only induce Lud to recall things he finds terrifying in his dreams, which led to the scene where Eliven cosplays as Sadako and crawls out of the computer screen.

Elijah swore repeatedly that she truly had no intention of harming Ludwig; she only wanted him to return her remains, which were not only a trace of her existence in this world but also her final resting place.

This is precisely why, despite being a lonely ghost for the past three hundred years, Eliven hasn't developed any mental problems. Eliven possesses an ability that would drive other undead mad with envy—sleep!

For the past three hundred years, Eliven, who has become an undead, has actually been sleeping most of the time. It was only in the last few days, when the settlers from Pine Village came to the vicinity of the temple, that she woke up a little more often.

Sometimes, when Elijah was really bored, she would even go to the fields late at night to help the villagers drive away the wild animals that were harming their crops.

After listening to Elijah's account of her experience, Ludwig tentatively believed her and told her that her remains were currently in the village cemetery, and that her grave was an inconspicuous little mound in the southeast corner.

If Elijah promises not to harm the villagers, Lud will allow her to live on the edge of the village and will even erect a proper tombstone for her when he has time.

Elaine shook her head, saying she didn't want to live in the wild, and that villagers would occasionally approach the cemetery, which she was afraid would frighten them.

Of course! The main reason is that the undead are contagious. If someone in the village dies and their body is buried in the cemetery, there's a high chance they'll also become an undead if they're too close to her. So, if Ludwig allows it, Eliven would prefer that they be isolated and housed below the temple for everyone's benefit.