POV: Chloe

We've now searched the whole room but aside from all the graves and two new exits, there's nothing here. No traps, no monsters, nothing. Just a lot of creepy graves and an eerie atmosphere.

"I got nothing. Maria, Elly, did you two find anything?"

Elly scoffs, "If you're in need of graves, I've found lots of them. Only most of them are still in use. Got an enemy you want to disappear? Here's your location for the occasion."

"Yeah, no, I'll pass on that. I only want to dispose of monsters, and those don't leave anything behind. Maria?"

The other spirit replies matter-of-factly, "I don't have anyone human I want to kill anyone either. Oh, uh, you meant what I found. Sorry, got nothing as well. Though I noticed that some of the graves bear names of people that died recently, but given that everyone only has first names and no surnames I can only assume that is a coincidence."

"Yeah, probably. And either way, it is nothing we can change anyway", I sigh, "Well, that leaves just Lucia, maybe she found a clue."

Well, time to move on, there's nothing here, unless Lucia found something. Where even is she?

I need a moment to find her but she's still standing around the area where she left us. Seems like she just lazed around the whole time. Great, just what I expected from her.

"Hey, are you done staring into the distance, Lucia? We want to finally move on."

"Yeah, yeah, you d-", she stops herself and clears her throat, "I mean... ugh, forget it. Where's Elly? I need her for a moment."

I frown, "What are you up to this time?"

She scoffs at me, "None of your business. Now, where's Elly?"

I point in the direction, "Back there."

She smiles, "See? Was that so hard? Thanks."

'Thanks'? That's a first.

We walk towards where Elly is. She's still checking out some of the tombstones.

"I take it you still didn't find anything interesting, Elly?"

The winged spirit nods, "Yeah, nothing to make sense of. Just a bunch of graves and only a handful of them have still decipherable writing on them."

Lucia interrupts her, "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Elly, I need you to have a look at something, so come back, please."

"Wha-", Elly tries to protest but gets unsummoned before she can finish.

I scold her, "What are you up to now that you have to yank Elly around like that?"

But Lucia just ignores me and spaces out again, staring off into the distance.

"Tuc tuo taht esnesnon!", I hear a different voice shouting in the distance, one I know.

I look around to see where it came from.

Smack

"Uoy'er em! Daed ro ton! Os tuhs pu dna tser, resol!"

Smack

Crumble

There is Lydia, she's just destroyed one of the graves. From what I can see, she looks sad.

Ghastly Screams

I leave Lucia to her own business and walk over to the dejected pile of ooze, "Hey, Lydia, where have you been!?"

She turns around and looks at me, seemingly considering running away.

While waiting for a coherent response from the pile of living goo, I check the grave's remains, I can still make out a name: Eila. Was that a person she didn't like?

"Was that someone you knew?"

"Sey. Taht saw em. Ym dlo, namuh fles. Nac uoy evael em enola won? I... evah ot kniht."

I wish I knew what she said, so I could maybe try to help her, but as it is, I sadly can't. I feel pity for her.

Eventually, Lydia stops wobbling and deliberating when we hear yet another voice calling out to us, Anna's.

The little cat girl cheerfully shouts, "Chloe? Is that you, Chloe? Hey, Geoffrey, we finally found them!"

I take the little girl into my arms and hug her as a greeting, "Hey, how have you been doing? You don't know how happy I am to finally have you two back."

Maybe they can help me keep Lucia in check... yeah, wishful thinking.

Anna and Geoffrey tell me and Maria what they have been up to while we wait for Lucia... to be done with whatever she's up to right now with Elly.

With that, Iris, Marca, Jared and Ephran are still unaccounted for. With how long we've been here, I don't have the highest of hopes that all of us will make it through this... but we were just reunited with half of the missing people, so maybe I'm just needlessly pessimistic.

A while ago, Lucia said that she is somehow in contact with Jared and that he has my boyfriend with him, but I don't think I want to trust her about that.

Don't give me hope just to shatter it once again...

I feel that would be something she would do just to be mean to me again. There are limits to how far you can take a prank, and this would be way too far. Please don't do that Lucia, please...

After a while, Elly breaks out of Lucia again, "Girl, you're nuts. None of this makes any sense whatsoever but... well, what's done is done, I guess. Just don't come crying to me when Jared is unhappy with what you've done..."

Lucia grins creepily, "Don't worry, you've been plenty of help."

I scratch my head, "So what shady business have you two been up to?"

Elly sounds defeated, "I guess it would be faster just to show you... Lucy?"

Lucia nods, "Yeah, yeah, I agree. Chloe, meet... uh, Eclair."

She waves her hand and then a second Lucia appears before me, except with blond hair.

This is getting out of hand, "Now there's two of you? I already knew that you could create additional spirits, so what's the big deal?"

The blonde Lucia answers, "It is kind of a long story but, uh, I'm not fully a spirit. I'm at least in part made of what remained of the original Lucia before she became a vampire. So to avoid confusion between us we just decided to be", she air quotes, " creative and spell the name backwards for me. So with that, I'm now called Eclaire. Well, it'll take a while to get used to my new name... Anyway, it is a pleasure to meet you. Hope we'll get along."

I don't know about you, but the blonde one seems nicer at least.

And there's the voice again... trust me, I've been around the vampire Lucia too much to trust someone with her face.

...we'll see about that, Chloe. We will see about that.

I can honestly pass on that, thank you. But maybe you're right, she deserves a chance of her own.

"L-likewise, uh, Eclaire. I'm Chloe. We can really use all the help we can get."

She glances toward her vampiric version, "Yeah, now if only someone had chosen a better class than Grave Cleric for me..."

Urgh, this better be not a setup for a stupid pun...

Lucia whistles innocently, "I see nothing wrong with it. Just be careful where you point that [Expel Undead] skill."

"I thought spirits can't use magic?"

The blonde Lucia shrugs, "Don't ask me, it doesn't count. Other me said that a certain undead problem taught Jared what constitutes a 'spell'. And this one misses all the marks. It costs neither MP nor uses MAG nor has some form of arcane, spell or magic in its name or description. Arbitrary but hey, it works to our advantage, I guess."

We have a quick round of introductions with her.

While we do so, Lydia creeps up on the vampire Lucia and tugs on her dress, "Nac uoy od gnihtemos rof... ym dlo fles? Nruter em ot reh?"

Lucia is taken aback by the goo girl, "Huh? Uh, sorry, I can't do that again, I can't bring your friend back. I'm... out of relevant resources..."

I'm surprised, "What, you understand her?"

She brushes it off, "Not in the slightest, but given the circumstances, it is kinda obvious what she wants, isn't it?"

I have to agree with her, "Yeah, I guess so."

"Don't worry, your friend isn't even here. That grave was empty, trust me, I checked", Eclaire tries to comfort her, "Ouch, touching you hurts! Maybe you should work on that sometime..."

3QGN73

If you're like me and need a refresher, "spell" was defined in Ch. 72.

I'm still not sure which idea would've been better:

• vampire!Lucia getting ghost!Lucia as a stand summoned spirit
• ghost!Lucia leaves and later Jared has to fight monster!Lucia for some drama
• six Lucias (human, vampire, ghost, spirit, monster, glitch) somehow have a class reunion, Jared walks in, sees the mess and just walks out without saying a word

Well, since I didn't want to introduce an important character just to kill them off five seconds later, I went with the former.

And Lucia <-> Eclaire might make more sense in their native language, we're just getting the translated version.

Didn't make a poll in a while, so here goes: [Summon Spirit] says the limit is on created spirits, not owned spirits. So which of the 4 spirits does actually count as "created"?

• Elly is a given, up to then it was normal
• for Maria only the body was created, the intelligence wasn't; that existed as a leftover from Elly's shenanigans
• Lydia was created from a glitch, the intended spirit creation failed
• Eclaire is basically the same as Maria