Jin’s POV
   Sure enough, the spirit of the old cafeteria lady welcomed them with open arms he moment they stepped into the cafeteria. It would have been a normal view if it weren’t for the facts that the old woman was already dead, and the apron she’s wearing is covered with bloodstains.

   “Welcome, children. Are all of you hungry?” she asks while smiling in a friendly manner.

   Jin looks at the girls. Estyshana aside, both Wakaba and Watanabe have gone completely pale.

   “We are. We would appreciate it if you could cook us something.” he tells her.

   “Gladly. It might take some time though, so please take a seat and wait like the good children you are.”

   The four of them did as they were told.

   “Why did you go and tell her that?” Watanabe asks Jin quietly. “We just ate our dinner, and I for one am definitely not interested in eating my enemy, if I have one.”

   “Would you rather piss her off and become the new ingredient?”

   “Now what?” Wakaba asks Watanabe without raising her voice.

   “I don’t know. I didn’t expect her to appear for real. Should we try to use salt on her?”

   “Don’t. It’s bad if it doesn’t work. Best not to agitate her unless it’s the last resort.” Jin tells her.

   “Then what should we do then?”

   “Well-”

   Before Jin could continue, the old woman appears right next to them without a single warning.

   “I’m sorry young man, but I’m seems to be in a predicament right now. Is it okay if you follow me to the kitchen?” she requests from Jin.

   “Don’t do it, Minase-kun!” Watanabe hisses softly to him.

   “It’s not like I have much of a choice, right?” he whispers back.

   He gets up from his seat and smiles at the old woman.

   “I would be happy to help you.”

   She beams happily at him. “Thank you, my dear. Now please follow me.”

   Wordlessly, Jin follows the old lady to where the kitchen is while the girls watches on.

   “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Estyshana asks him through telepathy.

   “Don’t worry. I do.” he assures her.

   She suddenly lets out a light gasp.

   “I-It’s not that I’m worried about you, okay? I’m the one who’s going to kill you!” she stutters.

   “Wow. I can’t believe I’m hearing the lines of a typical tsundere coming out of your mouth.”

   “What even is a tsundere?”

   “I’ll explain it to you when there’s time. For now, I have a dead old lady with psychotic tendencies to deal with.”

   Jin has never been inside the kitchen of the cafeteria before, nor will he be ever given permission to do so under normal circumstances. The circumstance right now, of course, is far from normal.

   “Now then, how should I offer my assistance?” Jin asks the spirit of the old lady.

   “I’m being faced with two problems right now, you see. I have next to no ingredients to work with, and even if I do, it’s only enough to serve the young lady with the red hair.” she replies with a troubled expression.

   “What kind of ingredients do you need, ma’am? I could get them for you provided that they’re nothing rare.” Jin offers.

   “Thank you kindly for your offer. However, it’s not something you can get at all since they don’t exist.”

   “Um, I hate to be rude, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

   “I don’t blame you if you’re confused. You see, whenever someone drops by, I tend to serve them food using the flesh of the person they hate the most. Their enemy, if you will. You and the other two young ladies have no such person, so I’m afraid I can’t cook for you.” she tells him apologetically.

   Now that surprised Jin. He always thought he hates Kajiwara. Apparently, his hate wasn’t enough to consider the incompetent manager as an enemy.

   “I see. What about Estyshana? You know, the girl with the red hair?”

   “Ah, that young lady is a different story. You see, the person she hates the most in this world is you. In other words, the least I can do is cut you up and cook your flesh so that she could be fed.”

   Estyshana’s hate, on the other hand, doesn’t surprise Jin. And it’s perfectly understandable.

   “I know you’re scared, but it would be over in an instant. Don’t worry. I’ll give you some time to mentally prepared yourself.” the spirit continues to tell him.

   “Is it okay if I have one last request before I surrender myself to your knives?”

   “What is it?”

   “You see, one of the regrets I have is not learning on how to cook. Is it okay if you give me some pointers?”

   “Oh, is that it? Of course I can. That’s the least I can do for you.”

   She starts to rummage inside the refrigerators in the kitchen. Whatever she uses for tonight, the staffs who work here are going to find some shortage when they do a stock check.

   “Let’s see what we have here. Ah, they have this too. Good, good…” she mutters to herself while looking around.

   The spirit teaches Jin how to make a basic soup stock. She tells him about the common mistakes people made when they’re cooking egg rolls. She teaches him that while recipes are important, but the feelings used when cooking are even more important. Her old age gave her lots of experience in cooking, and she tries to teach some of the most fundamental things to Jin with what little time they have. Overall, she’s one good cooking teacher. Jin was so moved by her lessons he started to help out halfway through it.

   By the time the lesson is over, the two of them are looking at a pile of delicious-looking food. Jin tries some of them. They taste absolutely heavenly. Even though he just ate his dinner, his stomach is asking for more and more of them.

   “These are literally the best food I’ve ever ate.” Jin compliments from the bottom of his heart.

   She smiles at him. “Thank you. I’m glad that you enjoy them.”

   It was then when some tears appear from the corner of her eyes.

   “Um, is something wrong?” Jin couldn’t help but ask.

   “Oh, it’s nothing dear. It’s just that I’ve forgotten on why I became a cook in the first place. To make people smile. That’s all I ever wanted.”

   All of a sudden, the spirit is being engulfed by a bright light.

   “...Well, I guess this is it for me. I’m sorry for trying to murder you.” she tells him.

   “That’s okay. Please rest in peace.”

   And then she was gone, hopefully to a much better place. Jin is very glad that his Plan A worked. Even though he’s a sociopath, there are still lines that he absolutely won’t cross. Thrashing old ladies, alive or no, is one of them. And then, the girls came charging inside.

   “What happened, Minase-kun?” Watanabe asks.

   Jin told them about everything, minus the part about the spirit wanted to use him as an ingredient.

   “...And that’s where all these food came from. All of you should try some. They’re delicious.” he encourages them.

   Estyshana digs in without raising so much of a fuss, but Watanabe and Wakaba were hesitant at first. Watanabe, especially, has a haunted look on her face. Soon, they finish eating everything. They did the clean up and tried their best to make it look like nothing has changed inside.

   “...We’re leaving. Right now.” Watanabe announces once they leave the kitchen.

   “Are you sure? There are still five more mysteries left.” Jin asks.

   “It doesn’t matter anymore. Spirits exist for real. It might have gone very badly for all of us. Let’s leave while we’re still in once piece.”

   Jin shrugs. “If that’s what you want.”

   Before they do, they went back to the supposedly cursed locker so that Watanabe could retrieve her coin. As expected, it was still there just like how she left it. After that, they go to the other side of the entrance, and Watanabe locks it with her set of keys. Next, they climb over the gate again.

   “Say, Chifuyu. Is it okay if I crash at your place?” Watanabe asks Wakaba while still looking a bit disturbed.

   “Of course. My mum would be delighted to see you again, even if this was kind of impromptu.”

   “Thanks.”

   She looks at Jin next.

   “I’m sorry for tonight, Minase-kun.”

   “Don’t worry about it. It’s kind of fun to do this every once in a while.”

   “What’s so fun about getting involved with spirits?”

   “Hey, I got lots of cooking tips from her, and we were treated with delicious food. I’d say we hit the jackpot.”

   “But things could have gone very wrong!”

   “Well it didn’t. And that’s all that matters.”

   Watanabe could only laughs awkwardly at that.

   “You’re going to get into lots of trouble with that mindset of yours. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

   He shrugs. “I’m not very bright, so I’ll have to learn things the hard way.”

   “Let’s hope it’s not too late for you. Well, see you.”

   “See you, Minase-kun.”

   “Yeah. I’ll be seeing you girls tomorrow.”

   Estyshana give him a look which is probably supposed to be unapologetic, but she totally failed to hide her real emotion.

   “I’m not going to apologize for what happened just now. In fact, I was kind of disappointed that you didn’t lose you life.” she says with telepathy.

   “Well, all I could say is better luck next time.”

   With that, the two girls and the she-demon leave the school and presumably head to Wakaba’s house.

   Jin, on the other hand, can’t decide on what to do next. If he was a normal Hero with enough compassion, he would head straight back to the school and do something about the rest of the spirits before someone gets hurt. The issue here is that he’s no ordinary Hero. He’s a selfish jerk who only cares about himself. He couldn’t care less about what happen to idiots who choose to sneak inside the school late at night for whatever reason. Even if they ended up dying, he won’t lose sleep over it. Then again, those spirits might cause him problems in the future if he doesn’t do something about them now. And so, he reluctantly heads back to the school again.

   Jin doesn’t even need the original key to open the lock so that he could pass through the door. First, he takes out a few coins from his wallet. He then transmutes them into a key which would fit the lock using simple alchemy. He even clapped his hands once even though it wasn’t necessary. And with that the door is opened. Jin doesn’t bother to take out his phone for the torchlight either. His visions are enhanced by magic, and he could see clearly in the dark without the help of a light source. All he did was activating his Eye of Truth once again.

   Now then, he’s detecting four spirits or whatever thing they are within the school. This means that one of the Mystery was a fake rumor as well. Even so, five out of seven is still bad. Jin wonders what’s going on in this school. Well, enough wondering and time to wrap this up. The nearest one is at the courtyard, which is where Jin heads to next.

   The source of the disturbance turns out to be a pond. Jin remembers hearing someone said that this pond used to be full of carps until they kept on dying. He could indeed sense that there’s something wrong with this pond, but he can’t wrap his head around it as he’s not seeing a thing even after staring at the pond for more than a minute. Time to rely on the internet, then.

   Let’s see, Yokosuka High School pond… Yup. There are lots of hits. He chose a result at random.

   It’s nothing complicated. Rumor has it that this pond allows people to summon the dead. There were some instances mentioned on the website where a few students did attempt to do it. Some were successful, only to die a horrible death themselves. Meanwhile, some failed and continued with their lives like nothing had happened.

   It’s clear as day that there’s one or more condition that must be fulfilled in order for the ritual to be successful. The comment sections are filled with comments debating about it. Not that Jin cares. He just wants this pond to stop functioning.

   Jin creates a tiny block of ice on his palm and drops it into the pond. It’s not just any block of ice, though. One of the properties of ice magic is to act as magic sealer. By using the ice cube, Jin has successfully sealed the magic inside the pond.

   Now then, to the next Mystery. Jin searches the internet some more and manages to find out about the rest of the Mysteries. The last four are titled ‘The Female Ghost at the Music Room’, ‘The Abandoned Classroom’, ‘The Gardener’, and ‘The Library Book’ respectively. He search for more info on ‘The Gardener’ first. Now that he’s outside, it’s probably somewhere nearby.

   The really short version of this ghost tale is that a guy in his mid-thirties who has the brilliant idea of making his plants grow better by using human corpses as fertilizers. He got his just deserts when one of his victims fought back and killed him. According to the additional information found in the forum, his spirit was sometimes seen near the flower field. Yup. He’s nearby all right.

   Jin has never been to the flower fields ever since he got enrolled into this school. The reason is that he finds flowers to be completely pointless. They give out fragrance and that’s it. Why can’t anyone ever plant something much more useful like tomatoes, cucumbers and other edible plants? Obviously, the school doesn’t care about poor students like him who went hungry most of or all the time. After a few minutes of walking and passing through the back door of the school, Jin is finally at the flower fields.

   And there he is with his back facing Jin. The gardener whose name Jin doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know. He’s dressed up in a typical gardener outfit: straw hat, gloves, boots. He’s also holding an oversized garden shear. He notices Jin and turns to smile at him.

   Jin swings his left hand horizontally. Felfarthen appears and disappears on quick succession. By the time it disappeared, so did the gardener.

   Next.

   The music room is close from where Jin is right now, so that’s where he plans to head over next. According to the rumor found in the internet, there’s a spirit of a dead female student practicing her singing in there. If you ever happened to hear her singing, you’ll be cursed.

   Cursed? The people who wrote the article has no idea what being cursed means. After coming back from Ifezan, Jin can’t even remotely go near a karaoke place or anywhere that people gather around and sing without having a terrible flashback about the princess’s horrible singing. He did it once, and his knees got softer than jellies in an instant. Now that’s a curse. Anyway, he digress.

   The music room is located at the second floor of the school building. When he got closer, the curse kicks in, and his knees start to become weak. Come on, just a little bit more…

   It was then he starts hearing a terrible singing voice. That said, it’s so terrible the proper word to describe it hasn’t been invented yet. Instead of attracting birds, she might end up killing those nearby. After listening for a while, Jin realizes that she’s singing the school anthem of Yokosuka High. He could barely recognize the song, though. The tone is off and out of tune, and she’s singing too quickly at times. Jin isn’t one to talk, but he’s confident that his singing is at least better than hers. Once again, Jin got reminded of the princess’s singing. This time, however, something inside him snapped. His knees become strong again. He dashes towards the entrance and opens the door.

   “WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THAT HORRIBLE SINGING?” he demands really loudly.

   “Eek~!”

   The spirit of the female student cowers in fear when Jin barged in unannounced and yelling at the top of his lungs. Instead of the usual blazers, shirt and short skirt worn by the female students of Yokosuka High, this spirit is wearing a black sailor uniform and a skirt that reaches until her knees. Jin recognizes that uniform. It was worn by the female students of this school before they introduced the current uniform.

   “ON YOUR KNEES! NOW!”

   The spirit did as she was told while looking completely freaked out. Jin then starts yelling at her. All the pent up stress inside Jin made him explode in anger, and he took everything out on the spirit. By the time he was done, his throat became a bit sore.

   Now that all his anger has been vented out, Jin realizes that he has overdone it. The spirit is so depressed she’s openly weeping, and her head is close to the ground like she’s grovelling.

   “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.” he apologizes to her.

   She slowly shakes her head, her tears still not stopping.

   “No. You have every right to be angry. I know my singing is plain horrible, so I had been practicing it even after I died. Unfortunately, I could never improve no matter how long I tried to be better at it.”

   Wow, her normal voice is completely, well, normal when she’s not singing. Just like a certain someone.

   “Well, um, let’s start with some self introduction first. I’m Minase Jin.”

   The spirit raises up her head.

   “My name is Yoshino Ririko.” she says a bit hesitantly.

   “Yoshino-san, is it? Um, I’m really sorry for earlier. You can get up now.”

   She gets up and wipes away her tears.

   “So, Yoshino-san. Do you have any idea why you didn’t get to rest in peace after you’ve passed away?” Jin asks her.

   “I think it’s because I still have some regrets over not being able to sing normally like everyone else.” she laments.

   Jin is not going to ask her how she died. He’s not that insensitive.

   “I would love to help you with that. Unfortunately, I’m not good at singing either. If only I know someone who is…”

   “Um, does that mean you’re not going to exterminate me?”

   “To be completely honest with you, I was planning to if you turned out to be a malicious spirit. But you’re not, so I won’t.”

   She lets out a sigh of relief.

   “Thank you. I know that I shouldn’t be here, but I wanted to do something about this regret of mine before I pass on.” she says to him gratefully.

   “By the way, how did you managed to tell that I have the power to exterminate you?”

   “Well, you’re not afraid of me, for starters. I’ve been here for more than forty years, and you’re the first person to not run away from me in fear. I figured that you must have some extraordinary power to be that brave.”

   “You’re right about that, I suppose. Enough about me. I guess we have to come up with a way for you to sing better before someone comes here with the full intention of exterminating you.”

   “You don’t have to try too hard. It’s true that I want to pass on peacefully by being able to sing. Even so, I know very well that my presence scares people. If I was forced to pass on before that, I won’t have any complains either.” she tells him sadly.

   “Even so, I’ll try my best to help you out.”

   “Thank you very much for going through the trouble.”

   “No worries. There’s just one thing. Please don’t mention a word about I have supernatural powers to whoever that I might bring here.”

   “Of course. Your secret is safe with me.”

   “Thank you. Now then, I still have another place that I need to visit. Please excuse me.”

   “Yes. Good bye.”

   They bid farewell to each other, and Jin left the music room. On his way to the library, Jin starts to think that the way he offered help to the spirit without expecting nothing in return is really out of character for him. Then again, he guess that it’s fine to work for free every once in a while.

   Just like the main entrance to the school, the library door is locked as well. Again, it poses no problem to Jin. He created another key with the same method he created a key for the main entrance. He manages to get inside without any difficulty.

   The book in question has no title or any known function to speak of. The only thing people on the forum is sure of is that this book is dangerous. Well that’s not helpful at all. Whatever. He’ll look through the book and find out how dangerous it is. He goes directly to the shelf where the book is and takes it out.

   The book is surprisingly normal on the outside, aside from the fact that it has no title. The cover is made of black leather. It’s the same size as the notebook Jin uses, and based on its thickness it has around four hundred to five hundred pages worth of papers. Jin opens the book to look at a random page.

   “WAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU-”

   Jin dumps the book on the floor and starts to step on it.

   “OW! OW! OW! OUCH! HEY, QUIT IT! OW!”

   “Will you promise to behave?” Jin asks.

   “Yes, I promise. So please, stop stepping on me.” the book begs.

   Jin bends down and picks up the book.

   “Now then, what on earth are you?” he asks the book.

   “I’m a grimoire.” the book whimpers.

   Jin flips through the pages. Sure enough, there are spell formulas written on the pages. However, unlike the regular spell books Jin read at the Royal Library back at Ustadel Kingdom, most of the spells written in this book require costly price on the part of the caster to be cast, such as his or her blood, memories and even part of their soul.

   “...So you’re a book that teaches dark magics.”

   “That’s right. The spells of the strongest grade, all available by paying hefty prices.” the book confirms.

   No wonder this book is considered dangerous. Maybe some students have tried to cast the spells inside it and had their lives changed forever for the worse.

   “Yup. You’re getting iced.” Jin concludes.

   “What? Wai-”

   Before the book could continue any further, Jin turns it into a block of ice and stores it inside the Vault so that no one can gain access to it.

   “Well, might as well check on the last Mystery just in case.” Jin mutters to himself.

   According to the online forums, the classroom that was forbidden from being used was cursed with a vengeful spirit of a high school student. He was constantly bullied by his classmates and had to suck it up. One day, he finally lost it and lashed out, killing all his classmates and even their homeroom teacher. He then took his own life. The blood from all the victims were never been able to wash off after extensive cleaning that lasted for two whole weeks.

   Turns out it’s a false rumor. When Jin got to the classroom, there are no bloodstains all over the place, no trapped souls of the killed students and teacher, no spirit of a bullied student who’s looking for a new victim. Nothing. Well, it makes Jin job easier.

   Finally, he gets to go home.