Chapter 236: Maddy’s Justified But Traumatic Approach.

The room plunged into a suffocating, unnatural darkness.

"Who’s there?!"

The mother shrieked, her voice high and thin, no longer commanding. She scrambled backward, clutching her shivering son against the bedframe.

"It’s not real... it’s not real..."

The darkness in the nursery became absolute, a thick, oily void that felt like being buried alive. Then, in the center of the room, Hoppy appeared. She wasn’t just standing; she was hovering, her body twitching with the unnatural energy of Undead Endurance.

She drew in a breath that sounded like wind howling through a graveyard and unleashed a scream so powerful it shattered the remaining light fixtures. The sound waves hit the mother like a physical blow, the sheer frequency of the shriek causing the woman’s ears to leak thin trails of blood.

The mother collapsed to her knees, clutching her head, but she couldn’t look away. Hoppy’s form began to melt. Pieces of grey, sloughing flesh dripped onto the expensive rug, and the Grave Rot Aura reached a suffocating peak. The room smelled of stagnant sewer water and the sweet, cloying stench of a month-old corpse. It was so cold that frost began to crystallize on the mother’s eyelashes.

Hoppy’s voice emerged, a hollow, distorted rasp that seemed to come from every corner of the room at once.

"You took my father. You took my life. Now... I take everything from you." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Driven by a cocktail of pure terror and a desperate need to reclaim control, the mother’s fear turned into a frantic, ugly rage. She grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from the nightstand and lunged forward.

"Get away from us! You’re dead! You’re nothing! You were always a parasite!"

She screamed, swinging the metal with all her might at Hoppy’s head. The candlestick whistled through the air, but there was no impact. Because of the ghost’s Incorporeal Body, the brass passed straight through the ghost’s head as if it were smoke. The mother stumbled, the momentum of her swing nearly throwing her to the floor.

"Why... won’t... you... DIE?!"

The mother shrieked, swinging again and again. Hoppy began to use Shadow Step, appearing everywhere at once. One moment she was in the corner, the next she was right behind the mother, then hanging from the ceiling.

The mother spun in circles, hacking and slashing at the air, her face a mask of insanity. She smashed the vanity, shattered the wardrobe mirrors, and tore the silk curtains to shreds in her blind, useless assault.

The room was being pulverized, not by the ghost, but by the mother’s own hand as she tried to kill a shadow.

Finally, the mother fell to her hands and knees, gasping for air, her fine hair matted with sweat and her expensive gown ruined. She was broken. Her mind had snapped under the weight of the haunting, her "perfect" composure replaced by the whimpering of a defeated animal.

Maddy walked down the middle of the street, the deep shadows of her hood masking a face that had gone completely void of emotion. The screams of the merchant’s wife were distant now, muffled by the stone walls of the estate, but the work was finished.

In the silence of her mind, a cold, mechanical chime broke through.

[System Notice]

[Congratulations! You acquired a skill: Advanced Dark Element: Malice Recursion]

[Advanced Dark Element: Malice Recursion: A forbidden psycho necromantic technique that extracts and weaponizes all negative emotions within a target, including fear, hatred, guilt, grief, and resentment. These emotions are given form as autonomous manifestations that recreate the victim’s most distressing experiences with perfect sensory fidelity.

Each manifestation adapts to the target’s psyche, taking shapes tied to their deepest emotional scars and darkest thoughts. The target is forced to relive these experiences in repeating cycles, with each iteration reinforcing the intensity of the original emotion.

Once activated, the process continues independently, requiring no further input from the user. The victim remains trapped in an endless loop of their own negativity until the effect is dispelled, interrupted by an external force, or until their mind collapses under continuous exposure.

Effect scales with the depth, variety, and intensity of the target’s negative emotional state, as well as the stability of the manifestation.]

Maddy continued down the street, her footsteps silent against the stone. This new magic was her final gift to the family that had let Hoppy die. She had no intention of ever returning to that house; she didn’t need to. The loop was set.

The "Hoppy" they saw, the thing now lurking in the corners of their vision, wasn’t just a ghost. Maddy had woven her own undead traits into the manifestation. She had used the mindless hunger of a Zombie, the chilling presence of a White Spirit, the grasping darkness of a Shadow Spirit, the relentless clatter of a Skeleton Soldier, and the suffocating authority of a Lich.

It was a twisted irony. Maddy had always been terrified of ghosts, but for Hoppy, she had become the very thing she feared. Maddy asked internally, her voice hollow:

"Is it enough?"

[It is the most efficient resolution,]

Lucy responded, her tone devoid of its usual clinical coldness.

[Direct physical retaliation would have been brief. This ensures the weight of their choices remains with them. It is a more... complete justice.]

Maddy tightened her hood. Hoppy was dead, and no amount of haunting would bring her back to life. But as the girl’s essence flickered within Maddy’s own shadow, she knew they would never be alone again. The merchant and his wife wanted to forget; Maddy had ensured they would spend the rest of their lives remembering.

Inside the merchant’s estate, the cycle had already begun, but she wasn’t finished with the thought of them.

"This skill will make sure they feel every second of what Hoppy felt. No... it will be even more painful. I’ll make sure of it."

She had planned this with a cruel, surgical precision. Before the [Malice Recursion] took over as a permanent loop, Maddy had spent those final moments in the house physically manifesting the horror. She didn’t just want the spell to work; she wanted the foundation of their trauma to be so vivid and visceral that there was no room for doubt.