章 18: 2.2

The thing about waiting for certain death?

It's not very good for one's mental health.

Jia Hyson knew this fact like how most sane people knew this fact. However, it's like knowing that space is vast and endless or the ocean is filled with weird and wonderful creatures or that sex feels mind-numbingly fantastic - just knowing doesn't compare to experiencing the real thing first-hand. The fear, the anxiety, the waiting, it was a thousand, no, a million times worse than the moment before your exam results are revealed or sitting on the surgery table.

On his lap is the doll he'll be possessing. On the ground is the binding ritual circle paved in blood. Above him is an identical circle paved in blood. Around him are chanting cultists. Behind him is the open fire oven he'll be burnt to death in.

Jia Hyson doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. No, wait. Cry. Clearly the answer was to cry.

Wuwuwu he was a bit of an M he admits but he's not into pain play or wax play and they want him to roast? That's too hardcore! Fuck!

Bebe: '…Why must host always bring up perverted things?'

Jia Hyson: 'Shut up! It's a defensive mechanism you ignorant fuck!'

He's so legitimately angry at the situation. And it's only gotten worse as he reads the story again, more thoroughly this time. It's not like he had much else to do at this point anyways. And crying was really tiring.

This world is focused around an online novel with 2.7 stars called 'The Demon House.' Jia Hyson already knew this story was going to be shit just from this information alone. He wasn't wrong.

It was a generic horror story about a house. Haunted by a demon. Except the demon is only mentioned at the end of the story. There are also ghosts. A bunch of teenage kids go in on some sort of dare and spend the night. Obviously, someone, in this case, the main female love interest, touches something they really shouldn't have and provokes the house.

Now, at this point if one follows the basic bitch storyline of horror movies, the group either become trapped in the house or one of them gets possessed and in the last act they must go back to the house to solve the problem. While rather repetitive, there's a reason for why these sort of plots can still be sold to the public despite its overuse. However, this turn of events didn't occur in this story.

While Jia Hyson loves originality in a story it was provided that it was interesting which this author had failed to achieve. Not only did nothing seem to happen once the main female love interest, Nalan Chyou, accidentally cut herself while admiring herself with an antique mirror found in the basement's locked room- a dumb fucking thing to do in itself- the group of teenagers had gotten scared and left a few minutes after midnight. After this, the other people who dared them found out they didn't stay in the haunted house from sunset to sunrise as promised via a hidden camera at the entrances of the house and forced them to try again. This time the ghosts present were at least somewhat active before the teenagers fled again.

Such a turn of events can only be used once, before it becomes ridiculous. You couldn't stay for the whole night? Understandable. The bullies force you to properly fulfil the bet so you're forced back in despite your worries? Okay. Fine. But then the story repeats itself, again and again. The group flees in terror, the bullies force them back, the ghosts scare them. Wash, rinse, repeat. Really, the only way Jia Hyson could even identify that the plot was moving forward was that the ghosts slowly become more and more present in the house. Also between being scared off by ghosts and bullies, the mirror - which Nalan Chyou inexplicably decided to bring back home- also does some weird but ultimately unharmful shit to further freak everyone out.

Jia Hyson wants to scream at everyone in this damned novel. Ghosts what are you even doing?! Nothing! The answer was nothing! Protagonist where is your bravado? How come you have the guts to face the supernatural but when a few assholes tell you to jump, you jump? Can't you people say no? Or tell your parents, a priest, anyone, really!

Finally, it is revealed that the bullies were using the group to provide negative energy to the house in order to revive a demon that had been trapped in the house. Why? Who the fuck knows.

Suddenly the so-called smart character finally lived up to his stereotype and somehow figured out a way for the protagonist to destroy the ritual. Which wasn't very hard since the ritual hinged on having seven sacrifices during a solar eclipse, therefore all they had to do was survive till the eclipse passes. The mirror suddenly reveals it is possessed not by a ghost but by a fairy that had actually been trying to help warn them about the bullies since the beginning despite the fact that it really could have told them itself right in the beginning but whatever and magically breaks everyone free through magic. The protagonist takes it on himself to distract the bullies and gets stabbed for his trouble while the others escape and successfully ruin the ritual. The protagonist managed to survive thanks to the fairy mirror and they all celebrate in the hospital.

Jia Hyson, as both an author, a reader and someone who is about to die for the sake of this story, cannot even begin to describe the sheer resentment he feels after reading this and realises not a single person in this so-called horror story dies. Not even a little bit maimed. Even the antagonists barely suffer anything. At most, one of them earns a few broken bones after falling from a staircase and everyone is probably psychologically scarred by the incident but that was it. How is this horrifying? Isn't this just an over-glorified haunted house scam at this point then?

If he had his hands free he would use them to massage the stress headache building up in his temple. "What are the reviews like?"

"The reviews are as follows:

'One word. Boring.'

'What is this? Is this horror? Because it's not.'

'I think this is the first time I have hated the protagonists, the antagonists, the love interest AND the supporting characters. Seriously, that Bo bitch is such a white-eyed wolf the fact she isn't dead is the real horror here.'

'It's not bad… definitely not good either…'

'Shallow character design and it's clear legit no thought has been put into the story. Gave up reading half-way, the premise of going into the haunted house for the fourth time is too ridiculous or maybe it's just the characters are too stupid, its hard to tell. Would not recommend, waste of time.'

'The only thing that died in this story was my will to read it.'"

Jia Hyson sighs. It was as he expected. The lack of death was one thing, but the author didn't produce any feelings of tension and intrigue, not to mention no one could sympathise with such two-dimensional, and frankly annoying, characters. Without these elements, it would be difficult to elicit a sense of trepidation or fear in a reader, and without the horror in a horror story what's the point of even picking it up? The only saving grace it had was that the writing itself was decent and the plot, while unimaginative with a terrible sense of pacing, was still somewhat believable in terms of dialogue and character interaction. Also, the use of imagery was decent. He appreciates a good simile.

Other than the whole burning to death bit, it seems his job was rather easy. First he has to establish his revenge and get a terrible reputation as a haunted doll. To produce a sense of intrigue it would be better to narrow his target victims to something related to his death, that can be decided later. He needs more competent ghosts in the haunted house he eventually ends up in so he'll gamble with the butterfly effect there. And hopefully, establish some contact with one of those bullies to provide a reason for the demonic summoning in the first place. No one likes to read such obvious plot holes, especially ones that could be easily filled after all.

Of course, no one likes burning to death either but hey, some things just aren't optional aren't they?

Bebe: 'Bebe gets it, Host is going to die horribly, please get over it.'

Jia Hyson: 'If you want me to get over it go fuck off and build a bridge for me.' (งಠ_ಠ)ง

Bebe: '...Why can you never let me win in anything?'

'Bebe,' Once again remembering what will happen to him in less than a few days, Jia Hyson forces himself not to beg to leave this world just yet. To be honest, while he's utterly terrified for what's to come... he's really looking forward to turning into a vengeful ghost and ripping them to shreds. The resentment and eagerness to play seemed to momentarily overshadow even his own fears at the thought. He's not sure if it's because of the skill notification or his character's own lingering feelings but Jia Hyson could sense that his negative emotions had become easier to stimulate while the little numbness ever-present in his chest called apathy had seemed to grow stronger. 'Show me my new skill page.'

A digital blue screen only he could see appeared in front of him, revealing his character's name and the skills and special skills he had. When Jia Hyson saw it, he truly felt like the world was against him. As Adrian, he noticed that despite getting the temporary golden finger of adding his own skill points to the character's, there wasn't a huge change in capabilities as other than his appearance and cooking, the rest of his skills were fairly average or below average.

This made sense. After all not everyone was born equal, especially when you consider the phenomenal heaven-defying genius existences of protagonists and antagonists present in these worlds. To be honest, by including these outliers into the calculations, the so-called 'average' talent for a skill increases, skewing our perceptions a little. For example, in martial arts, there are always geniuses and prodigies that cannot be judged against normal fighters. They would generally rank at around 90 to 100 points.

However if this was a world with a protagonist trying to be the king of martial artists who must overcome one of those genius godly antagonists, they would immediately wreck the curve with their golden fingers and redefine the skill range so that when the gap between the genius and protagonist becomes wide enough the latter's ability would rank at around 84 to 95 points. When a normal person is compared to an amateur, they must bow to them. When an amateur is compared to a professional they must bow to them. When a professional is against a genius they must bow to them. But a genius against a main character must kneel and be stepped over! This is the beautiful unfairness of the world!

If these abnormal existences sitting at the top 1% were disregarded, the individuals valued at around 35 to 45 skill points would probably have been considered the real average of humanity and those at 50 would be regarded as above average. That is the disparity between normal people and leading roles.

Jia Hyson only learnt this while chatting with Bebe in the safe space. He had also been informed that once a skill valued at 75 points, it logically becomes more difficult to rate higher, therefore more than one skill point is needed to increase the value past this point. However, this means nothing to him right now.

Because Bai Li Wei's skills had practically all 0 points across the board!

Well, that's a little exaggerated but it was true that out of his top ten skills, six of them were in the single digits. To have no talent in sewing or even gardening, he can more or less understand. But why is balance at 9?! A toddler learning to walk probably has higher points! Even if you add that value to Jia Hyson's slightly below average value of 26, it still wouldn't even guarantee him a good mark on the balancing beam in a grade school.

The only thing Bai Li Wei had was his stunning good looks that got him in this mess in the first time which had almost maxed out when coupled with Jia Hyson's stats, resulting in a whopping value of 98 points. His IQ was pretty good too, after all, he did have a scholarship to a university… of course, the professor at the university was a sick cultist pervert but hey, that does not belittle the fact that his math results were off the charts. Memory and eye for detail were also above average at around 49 and 51 respectively. Given Jia Hyson's own memory and laziness, the combined total did not improve much.

Still, other than some book smarts, it really did look like Bai Li Wei was mostly a pretty face which was quite unfortunate. Then again, with his background, there is a strong chance he had a talent somewhere but never gotten a chance to nurture it which was fairly depressing to think about.

Luckily for Jia Hyson though, it wasn't like any these skills were going to help him after death. Of course that also means he has no skills applicable so maybe he wasn't very lucky at all. 'Bebe what do you recommend?'

After a moment Bebe promptly replies, 'Host, it would be best if you improve your mental fortitude and spiritual sensitivity for now. When you become a ghost, only then would the ghost based skillset would be open for you to invest points in. When that happens I recommend strengthening your spirit's stability and energy absorption to quickly improve.'

Jia Hyson considers it and nods. As expected, even though his system is beyond useless in so many things, it is at least competent in these sort of matters at the very least.

Bebe: ...Did you have to add all that extra stuff? Can you not hurt Bebe this way? ಥ_ಥ

Jia Hyson right now can rearrange 20 skill points and add 15 skill points to his character data. He adds 10 points to mental fortitude to produce a value of 88. It should be noted that 61 of those points came from Jia Hyson's own traits which really says a lot about Bai Li Wei. After some thought he doesn't use the final 5 points, keeping his spiritual sensitivity at a value of 20 points. Adding any more wouldn't have changed much in his opinion. Besides, the value was more or less fair since most people would have low sensitivity to ghosts, especially Jia Hyson who (presumedly) lived in a non-supernatural world. When he dies he'll use the last 5 skill points and reallocate the 20 skill points from less relevant skills into the ones Bebe recommended.

Once finished, Jia Hyson looks at his screen with some dissatisfaction. It wasn't great but he really couldn't do much. By the time all his pondering and preparation was done it had only been about forty-five minutes at most.

Jia Hyson: '...'

Fuck, I've been so productive and now there's nothing to do but cry again.

Now that his mind has come back to reality, his body begins to take this chance to voice their complaints. See, what television doesn't tell you when a hostage gets tied up for long periods of time, is the sheer pain your body gets into. At first, it's not so bad... for being a tied up hostage. But soon Jia Hyson could feel how uncomfortable his chair is, how stiff his lower back feels, he wants to roll his shoulders and stretch his spine so badly it's almost torture in itself. Worse still, he can't drop the doll on his lap causing his legs to go unpleasantly numb. Also, also he needs to pee. And despite being tied up with human intestines he had an intense craving for noodles right now.

Ah, wasn't he meant to be beautiful moonlight to these freaks? Why are they treating their male goddess like this? No wonder they all had to resort to trying to fuck human dolls.

After a few minutes of this discomfort, he's already considering asking Bebe to knock himself unconscious. He's not sure he'll be able to fall asleep by himself and Jia Hyson has a feeling none of these cultists are willing to stop their chanting to help out with his problems. However he quickly dismisses the idea. While he couldn't afford to buy a decent demonic soul cultivation book (3000 p) it's not too difficult to deduce that a stronger malevolent soul required a vast amount of negative energy for its strength. Therefore, the more despair and resentment Jia Hyson would feel before his death would provide a strong foundation for him in the future.

Gritting his teeth, he suffers through the night.

Soon the time for bathing in the moonlight with his future doll body had passed and the covered in clay part of the ritual began. Jia Hyson's gag was thankfully pulled off at the time and he was given some water and food. He had been forced to eat and drink from everyone's hands, and even a few mouths, making him furious and disgusted.

They were going to ruin his body and soul, did they have to ruin his kinks too?! Bondage, pet play, imprisonment play, hand-feeding, it's all been tarnished! This was really too cruel!

If they were all handsome maybe Jia Hyson wouldn't be feeling so wrathful, but everyone insisted on wearing cloaks and face masks, only their hands were revealed. He doesn't have a hand fetish!

Bebe: ಠ_ಠ '...Now Bebe wants to vomit for other reasons.'

Once fed, they provided a bottle for Jia Hyson to relieve himself with. As someone who is thin-skinned with strangers, this was truly distressing for him. If they were one night stands it would be different but since they weren't, he could feel himself burn with shame that wasn't even remotely pleasurable. He felt even more repulsed as he watched them bottle up after he's finished, treating it like some sort of precious trophy. How come other hosts of systems get to become powerful kings or cultivators and he gets to piss in a bottle for perverted cultists? Isn't the gap between them too big?

Once done, Jia Hyson dully watches as the cultists leave, neither accepting or rejecting the reverent forehead kisses each cultist presses onto him behind they go. Only the leader, Professor Shen Wu, lingers behind, revealing his bare face to him. As expected, the professor is old, but Jia Hyson could tell that he was in fairly good shape, he had clearly been a healthy and handsome man when he was young. However, his personality had been similar to Bai Li Wei's quiet and a little reclusive which was probably why Bai Li Wei felt so comfortable around the man, treating him sincerely as both a mentor and a father figure. Even now Jia Hyson could feel Bai Li Wei's lingering feelings of disbelief, hurt, betrayal, fear and malice.

"Bai Li Wei..." Professor Shen calls out softly, his genuine concern and affection making his skin crawl. Jia Hyson knows his stalkers, he's groomed two and dated three, so he knows roughly where the tipping point before obsessive stalker and delusional murdering psycho is. And this Professor Shen has gone so far off it's a wonder how he can still teach classes with all the crazy in his head. "Are you okay?" Jia Hyson shudders again. There's nothing scarier than a murderer who truly doesn't understand their wrongs.

Jia Hyson couldn't help but feel a little amused that his experience in handling stalkers was going to be so useful here. For the really delusional ones like Professor Shen, it would be best to work with the man's delusions. Breaking it by being hostile and aggressively crude may turn the old man violent or even worse. Biting his lips he looks up at the man pitifully, "Professor," he hoarsely calls out in a small trembling voice, "Professor I'm scared,"

Professor Shen sighs, looking heartbroken over his beloved student's state, gently he caresses his cheeks with the back of his hand. "I know Li Wei, if there was any other way I would take it immediately,"

He tries to hold back his disbelief at this man's words. Wasn't the professor an esteemed man of science? Was he serious? Jia Hyson had to hold himself back from spitting on this asshole. Instead, he forces tears to surge up in his eyes. Despite crying for hours and sitting in a chair tied up by slowly rotting intestines, he still looks ethereally beautiful. Jia Hyson had Bebe take a photo of himself and even he had been entranced. Professor Shen really had no chance as he bore the weight of that tragic yet stunning gaze.

Unfortunately, for people like Professor Shen, what he felt was not guilt but a deeper need to follow through with the plan. He firmly believed that such purity and loveliness should not be given a chance to be ruined by the world, to stay beautiful forever. While it hurt him, he truly felt that in the long run, he had made the best choice. Jia Hyson wasn't aware that he had strengthened the old man's resolve, he was used to being the source of obsession and manipulating the twisted emotions of love and desire to eventually bend to his will. However, what the professor was interested in was beauty, not the person itself.

Before Jia Hyson could even say his piece, a flash hit his eyes, disrupting his thoughts. For a moment his mind went blank, then he became enraged. Professor Shen ignored Jia Hyson's ugly expression as he was too busy waiting patiently for his polaroid camera photo to finish drying out. Looking at the resulting photo, the old man's eyes light up and his breath quickens."Gorgeous," He breathes out before glancing at Jia Hyson again. By this time he had already wiped the agitation off his face, however, the fierce hatred and humiliation in his eyes couldn't fade completely. Professor Shen doesn't seem to notice or care, smiling at him like a proud teacher. "Li Wei, don't worry, I assure you that I wouldn't let you become anything less than a masterpiece."

"Sir, please- mphh!" Jia Hyson gags as the man's lips press onto his own for a moment, similar to the forehead kisses but far less chaste, before Professor Shen leaves with a shy expression that truly didn't belong to an old crazy person like him. Jia Hyson waits until he was sure that the man was gone before spitting furiously and trying to wipe his lips furiously on his shoulder. "Fuck!"

At this point, maybe burning to death wasn't so bad right now.