Inside the ruined wooden house.
The black shadow, wrapped in bitter cold, surged toward Ian with thick, rolling mist.
"Damn it! How did it escape so fast!" Constantine, whose body was shielding Ian, paled and quickly raised his hand, trying to pull out some kind of artifact from his trench coat to ward off the evil spirit.
However, the shadow's speed was too fast, too fast for anyone to make any effective reaction. It was like a large truck, directly smashing and sending Constantine flying.
Constantine's body arced through the air and heavily crashed into Charles, who was running toward them with a water bottle. The two were thrown in a heap against the flimsy wall.
"Come! Become my sustenance! Delicious child!" The evil spirit seemed to covet a pure boy like Ian. It crashed straight into Ian's chest and passed through him.
"Constantine truly is an unreliable burden of a jinx!" Ian only had time to curse. In an instant, he felt the entire world begin to spin.
At the same time.
The System in his mind sounded with feedback.
[Invaded by a special soul, Berserker profession EXP +1]
With this prompt, Ian successfully completed the upgrade of the [Berserker] profession. He could clearly feel that all his abilities had corresponding enhancements.
Strength: 3.5 ---- 5.6
Constitution: 3.0 ---- 4.5
Intelligence: 2.3 ---- 2.4
Spirit: 2.7 ---- 2.9
[Upgrade Reward: Profession Skill Point +1, Rank Weight has increased]
This should have been a moment worth celebrating a few times, but Ian couldn't bring himself to be happy. He didn't even have the mind to think about what the so-called Rank Weight has increased meant.
"Where is this?"
Behold.
When Ian's vision became clear again, he found himself standing in a strange room. The temperature in the bizarrely eerie room was even below zero degrees Celsius.
Black veins crawled all over the walls, wriggling with a strange rhythm. Outside, the darkness was thick like unmixed ink, boundless, as if it didn't exist at all, yet oppressively heavy, as if everything had been swallowed. This was clearly not a space belonging to reality.
Ian couldn't even open the room's windows. The windows were like they had been 3D printed onto the wall. Smashing hard against the glass only resulted in a dull thud, like hitting brick.
The tactile sensation was completely wrong.
"The dimension of thought and soul?"
Ian looked up at the ceiling. Scarlet droplets, like fresh blood, seeped out from the crevices of the ceiling, drip after drip, slowly and heavily falling to the floor.
...
Ian wiped the liquid that splashed onto his forehead. It was very viscous, and the air seemed to be filled with the smell of rust. The blood seeping from the ceiling quickly gathered into terrifying puddles on the floor.
"So scary."
Ian felt he should be afraid, but his body seemed to have entered its rebellious phase early. Not only did it fail to make him feel fear, but it was also raising his anger.
This might be the professional characteristic of the [Berserker]? In any case, Ian believed it definitely wasn't his fault. While he had some psychological issues, he surely hadn't reached this level of perversion.
"I'm a pure boy who always admired the innocence of Teletubbies and In the Night Garden!" Under Ian's gaze, the translucent long bar in his bottom right corner, [Anger Value], was slowly rising.
At the same time.
Ian's four-dimensional attributes were also receiving corresponding boosts.
The effect of [Reverse Blood Furnace] was still working in this world of thought and soul, which likely proved that Ian was continuously under attack from the evil spirit attacker.
"Mental attack?"
Ian looked around.
The room's only wooden door slowly opened with a creaking sound.
A black shadow stood in the darkness.
It was an evil spirit dressed in tattered nun's robes. Its pale face was completely twisted and deformed, its mouth ripped open to its ears, and pus and blood continuously streamed from its pitch-black eye sockets.
It flashed an overtly malicious, gruesome smile at Ian. Blackish-brown blood dripped from its two rows of fangs. Even from a distance, Ian smelled a nauseating stench of decay.
"How many years has it been since it brushed its teeth?"
Ian swallowed.
His anger value increased slightly again. Just then, the light in the room suddenly began to flicker. The rapidly alternating light and darkness immediately intensified the atmosphere.
Behold.
With every alternation between light and blackness.
The nun evil spirit standing by the wooden door would move closer to Ian.
It was like it was blinking.
In the blink of an eye, it appeared directly in front of Ian, extending its withered, skeletal hands and gripping Ian's neck tightly, choking him with great force.
"Suffer, and wail!"
The nun evil spirit's voice was piercing and shrill, full of momentum, viciousness, and malice. However, the atmosphere, which should have been terrifying, now felt strangely awkward and stiff.
There was no helping it.
Ian wasn't cooperating by struggling.
"Are you stupid?"
Ian's expression was odd. He raised his fist and slammed it hard into the nun evil spirit's face. "Do you think I need to breathe? We've both escaped the bondage of the weak flesh now!"
Punch after punch.
Ian hammered the evil spirit back repeatedly. Its already ugly face was immediately indented. Pus and blood splattered, and fragments of flesh flew. More than half of its head was smashed into pieces.
"What is going on!"
The evil spirit looked astonished.
It seemed utterly unable to imagine being so weak. Soon, after Ian kicked it onto the floor, it seemed to finally understand what was happening.
"I didn't absorb your fear! Impossible! Where is your fear! Where is your terror!" The nun evil spirit let out a piercing shriek, its roaring voice filled with confusion and incomprehension.
It tried to escape and hide.
But Ian rushed forward and stomped on its head.
"That's right! Where did you hide my fear and terror! Give it back!" Ian turned the tables, his fists raining down ceaselessly.
The nun evil spirit's entire head had been smashed into a pulp. However, it was tough. Despite the horrific state, it still screamed at Ian with malevolence.
"This is just your final struggle! In the dimension of reality, your life is rapidly fading! No human body can withstand my corruption!"
"Five minutes! Your life will only last five minutes longer!" It clearly intended to use this to trigger Ian's fear, and its bloodied, mangled body burst into maniacal laughter.
"Hmm?"
Ian's fists did stop because of this.
However.
The evil spirit oddly found that it still couldn't absorb the power of the other party's fear.
"I have to eliminate you within five minutes, huh?" Ian did feel a sense of urgency. His startling intelligence, which was already at 2.4, operated rapidly.
He was definitely better off trusting himself than the Constantine outside.
Five minutes.
How could he save himself?
"Human... you cannot destroy the likes of me..." The evil spirit laughed heartily. However, its boastful and mocking words abruptly stopped. Instead, the nun evil spirit was the first to panic.
"Ah!!! What are you doing!?"
It wasn't just panic.
It was extreme confusion.
Its wailing echoed throughout the entire world of thought.