Evil spirit

Everyone around Xu Le looked as though they couldn't get away from him fast enough.

Xu Le felt helpless. I didn't even do anything, okay? Could you stop looking at me like I'm some kind of monster?

Xu Le glanced around and confirmed that no one here was willing to help.

He could only steel himself and walk up to Li Mo.

"Hey, let me help you up."

Li Mo looked up at Xu Le, his eyes filled with either regret or fear.

"Bro, don't kill me. I just want to go to school in peace."

"Are you sure you don't need help?"

"I'm sure. Go do your thing, bro. I'm fine. Oh, right, here's five dollars. It's half my living expenses for this month. Please don't mind that it's not much."

Xu Le looked at Li Mo's forehead, which was still gushing blood, then at the money in his hand, and fell silent.

Whatever he said now, no one would believe him anyway.

He got ready to leave without taking the five dollars. Of course, it wasn't because he'd suddenly turned over a new leaf.

Rather, in the instant greed stirred within him, Xu Le had felt something.

If he took those five dollars, something would happen.

"This is beyond ridiculous!" Xu Le muttered to himself.

"Take care, bro."

When he reached the center of campus, he glanced at the clock tower. There was still some time.

He still wasn't sure what the Red Moon Calamity was, or whether it was the same thing as the black tide.

But he did know how the black tide worked.

Countless oddities assaulted human strongholds. Their target was the tower in the deepest part of Lighthouse.

So even if something slipped through the city walls' defenses, residents who stayed in the Lower City weren't in much danger.

With firearms and cannons so powerful now, the black tides of recent years had only occasionally made the news when stray oddities killed civilians in the Lower City.

They no longer left much of an impression on people.

Lighthouse University was also a priority defense zone for the Lighthouse City-State. Staying here would be safe enough.

"I should head back to the dorm first. There should still be some things there."

Just as Xu Le was about to head toward the student dormitories, a piercing noise came over the loudspeakers.

It sounded like the scraping noise made when someone grabbed a microphone in a great hurry.

"Zzzzt. Attention, all students. Attention, all students. Please proceed immediately to classroom zones A, B, and C to gather for centralized defense and protection. There may be changes to tonight's Guyinduo tide of darkness. All students must follow the announcements and protect themselves."

The campus announcement kept playing, and the students nearby immediately looked toward the loudspeakers.

Most of their eyes held confusion, disbelief, or disdain.

Only after the person making the announcement took several deep breaths did she speak again.

"Students, this is Vice Chancellor Mo Lan. Everything I just said is true.

Please remain calm. According to the Lighthouse Council's monitoring, this Guyinduo black tide may develop beyond our control.

Everyone must proceed to the classrooms in zones A, B, and C as soon as possible and establish defenses with the teachers on duty.

Lighthouse University is Lighthouse's hope. We will not abandon a single student.

So I also hope you will value your own lives and follow these instructions.

May Lighthouse's light shine upon you forever."

Vice Chancellor Mo Lan's words sounded frightening to many of the students. As university students, they understood the situation well enough.

It wasn't that the black tide wasn't terrifying. The Guard and the Night Watchers simply kept it outside the city.

Now that even the vice chancellor had come forward to say something was wrong tonight, there really was a serious problem.

The announcement began repeating, and the students, wearing all sorts of expressions, started hurrying along.

Xu Le pondered for a few seconds.

"Have Lighthouse's higher-ups noticed this so-called Red Moon Calamity too? Forget it. Whatever's going on, I'll get my things from the dorm first."

Xu Le hurried along, but stopped abruptly when he saw a male student sprinting beside the women's dormitory.

"What the..."

His body tensed. He could clearly see a phantom nearly two meters tall pressed close behind the student.

[Level 1 oddity, Five Heads, ghost.]

This so-called Five Heads had five animal heads: a horse's in the center, with a sheep, an ox, a chicken, and a dog beside it.

Each head held a weapon in its mouth. It had no arms and looked utterly unnerving.

It hovered behind the student, the scythe in its horse head's mouth almost touching his neck.

Looking at the scene before him, Xu Le couldn't decide whether to shout a warning or pretend not to notice.

Just as Five Heads was about to reap the student's life, Xu Le somehow remembered Gan's words again.

"One good deed each day keeps one calamity away each month."

He couldn't help shouting.

"Hey! Watch out..."

The student froze. Xu Le's shout seemed to have worked.

But Five Heads behind him paid Xu Le no attention, and the horse's mouth didn't pause in the slightest.

It simply swept the blade across.

There was no spray of blood, no wound, and no sound.

The student fell straight to the ground, as though he had fainted.

But Xu Le knew that his soul had been severed!

Under normal circumstances, one of the students passing by would have stopped to check on him.

After all, helping one another was the guiding principle of the Dark Age.

But now everyone was hurriedly gathering their things and heading to the classrooms to set up defenses.

They were preparing for the possible black tide crisis ahead. No one had the time or inclination to go out of their way to check on him.

Just like that, Five Heads had killed the student.

Watching Five Heads devour the dead student's soul, Xu Le didn't know whether he should keep calling out to warn the others.

While he hesitated, Five Heads seemed to sense something, and its gaze began sweeping in his direction.

It seemed to be looking for new prey.

Xu Le's scalp prickled, and sweat broke out along his back.

He knew that if he ran now, he would definitely be noticed.

Instead, he did the opposite. Lowering his eyes slightly, he walked forward with a numb expression, his fingers tightening again and again.

Beneath his fingers was the Golden Toad mark.

Golden Toad could kill beings with ghost form. The ghost Zhou Ke had been level 1, and Five Heads before him was level 1 too.

Golden Toad could definitely deal with it.

Just as Xu Le was preparing to act, Five Heads glanced at him, showing a hint of hesitation and a hint of disdain.

Then, as though answering some sort of summons, Five Heads flew into the sky.

Xu Le breathed a small sigh of relief. He could sense Five Heads moving away.

But he didn't dare look up. He was afraid that if he raised his head, he would meet Five Heads' eyes. That would be disastrous.

The odds of that happening were tiny, but it happened all the time in TV dramas. Xu Le didn't want it happening to him too.

"It should be fine now."

Leaving the women's dormitory area, Xu Le hurried to the men's dormitories.

He slipped past the crowds and quickly ran to his room, 202 in Building 18.

The Night Watchers had already confiscated his dagger and firearm. Whatever the body's original owner had left in the dorm might be the last valuables he had.

After making sure the room was empty, Xu Le lifted his bed board.

A bundle and a sheathed longsword were tied beneath it with strips of cloth.

This was a genuine Standard-Issue Guard Sword, bought with two years of scholarship savings.

The original owner had even considered enrolling in swordsmanship courses and buying books, but those plans had all been shelved after he obtained the Warlock Manual.

Besides the weapon, the bundle contained two lumps of phosphorus fire.

Phosphorus fire was a by-product of Alchemists' work. Put simply, it was something Alchemists didn't need: garbage.

But even garbage that Warlocks didn't need could be a useful treasure in an ordinary person's hands.

Phosphorus fire was extremely unstable and ignited explosively with ease.

With phosphorus fire as the core, small pieces of flint tied around it, and a wrapping of sand and gravel, one could make a simple explosive device, something like an improvised grenade.

With the weapon and phosphorus fire in hand, Xu Le breathed a small sigh of relief.

Only now that he had a weapon did he feel a little more secure.

Looking at the people coming and going downstairs, Xu Le thought of Five Heads, the ghost-form oddity he had encountered on the way.

To ordinary humans, a spirit like that was practically invincible.

Even though the original owner had done some research into oddities, he still had no way to deal with ghost forms.

"Ghosts are too hard to deal with."

Just as Xu Le sighed over this, a notification suddenly appeared.

[There is a corpse within the safe zone. It has been dead for over 4 hours. The corpse will turn into a level 1 oddity in 15 seconds.]

Xu Le: ...