[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapters 334 & 335. (Patreon)

Chapter 334: Frey has a bad feeling.

That very night, I tossed and turned and cringed at the memories that would just not go away. It reached the point where Cake, who was sleeping on my bed, got up and went to lay on my desk chair instead, far away from me.

But come on! What got into me that would make me say something like that? Dissing someone else’s guitar skills as a comeback and going ‘it’s not a threat, it’s a warning’ all menacing-like. I even tried to push the intimidation factor with muscles! I’ve never hit anyone before! I don’t even know how to throw a punch! It felt right in the moment, but looking back I couldn’t help but be embarrassed. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were rumors about it the next day. Julian would no doubt tell people I tried to threaten him, all while making me look like a clown.

UGH! Begone shame-filled thoughts and let me sleep!

Thankfully, it didn’t take as long as other times. Maybe the… excitement of the day exhausted me. I realized I’d fallen asleep when I opened my eyes to the sight of a shadowy spirit floating in front of me, spinning in place clockwise with arms and legs crossed. I’d seen this once before.

I sat up on my dream bed and turned to Frey. “What are you thinking about?” I asked her.

“I’m conflicted!” she said. Her shadowy face looked like it was frowning and pouting.

“On?”

“You stood up for yourself today, so I’m kind of feeling like a proud mother. You also intimidated the piss out of that jerk, which is just cum in the pussy, or icing on the cake as you humans say it.”

I decided to pretend like I didn’t hear that distasteful saying. “I think I just embarrassed myself.”

“Even if you did, which I disagree with, it doesn’t matter. You told the guy to fuck off, and that takes courage. Sure, sure, there are times when the bigger man keeps quiet, but there are also times when you have to kick assholes down a peg or two.”

I sighed heavily. “Whatever. I’d rather not think about it.”

“But we have to,” Frey said. Her shoulder drooped and she stopped spinning, but she kept her arms and legs crossed. “I’m hopefully wrong, but… Oliver, did I ever tell you how spirits like me possess humans?”

“If you did, I forgot.”

Frey became bashful all of a sudden. She scratched her cheek and rotated her neck as if buying time. “We… Well… The human psyche is strong, see? So for a spirit to possess a human… It needs to find an opening in their state of mind, a weakness. Frustration, deep-rooted desires, anger… lust.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah. I possessed you in a moment when you were feeling deeply horny and frustrated. A moment of weakness where you wished you could have any woman who crossed your path. Hell, I remember you wishing you could have like 20 women.”

My face burned with shame.

“Spirits like me take advantage of those feelings. We make them stronger to guide our hosts to do what we want them to. In my case, I wanted you to have sex, so I made you hornier than usual and aided you with subtle, pheromone-like magics along with the body enhancements. It was a bet that took everything I had left in me but paid off in spades.”

“I get it, I get it. So? What’s your point with this?”

“Oliver, I told you before. I’m not the only spirit out there capable of possessing people. Nor are spirits limited to be sexual in nature.” Frey sighed. “Those who know about the supernatural call my kind Spirits of Lust because we’re succubi or incubi who have become spirits. Of course, there are other kinds of spirits, like… those who take advantage of people’s envy.”

I blinked. Realization slowly began to dawn on me. “W-Wait. You’re not saying that…”

“If that jerk, Julian, is as envious of you as I think he is, then it’s possible he could become a prime candidate for possession by a Spirit of Envy.”

A knot formed in my throat. I swallowed hard to make it go down, but it wouldn’t.

“I’m mostly being cautious here. Just because you feel some jealousy doesn’t mean you become emotionally weak enough to be possessed. Like I said, the human psyche is fairly strong. Besides, spirits as a whole are extremely rare, and Spirits of Envy even more so. The chances that the jerk would be possessed are ridiculously low, but… if there was one of them around, they may at least be paying attention to him.”

“And… You think if one possessed Julian, he would use whatever powers he gained to do something against me?”

“Bluntly, yes. I’m not the best mind reader around. I can barely manage it sometimes with the girls with whom you’ve formed a sex link with, or when someone has very strong sexual desires. However, I’d like to believe I’m good at reading people without those powers. Julian is jealous of your relationships, but I’d say he mostly envies your guitar skill and the way people see you. People like that often take one of two paths. They either work towards becoming better than the one they envy, or they try to bring them down and ruin them. What do you think the jerk would do?”

There are times when I choose to believe in the good inside people’s hearts, but I’m also not THAT naive. If Frey was reading this correctly, Julian would definitely try to get back at me. Hell, he was already trying and he didn’t have magic powers yet.

The first thing my thoughts went to were my girlfriends. If someone wanted to hurt me, that was where they should aim for. Either them or my friends and family.

“Is there… Anything we can do to prevent this?”

“You could try to become friends with the guy and try to make his envy go away.”

“I mean… I g-guess I could… try?”

“Oh wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you make such a disgusted face. It’s pretty funny, actually.”

“Sorry, but my gut feeling is telling me that wouldn’t work. Besides, I kinda hate the guy. I’d rather not have anything to do with him.”

Frey nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t banking on that plan, either. Anyone with emotions strong enough to get possessed by a Spirit of Envy wouldn't let go of them so easily.”

“So? What can we do? There has to be something. Now that you’ve told me, I’m not willing to risk anything.”

“Hey, I’m with you, okay? We both have a pretty good thing going on here. I don’t want to lose it any more than you do.” Frey sighed. “If we can’t prevent him from getting possessed, then we’ll have to take defensive measures.” She groaned and scratched her head with both hands. “Dammit! This’ll take some time, but worse than that, it’ll take all the energy I’d been saving up!”

“Please, Frey,” I begged. “We can always start saving energy again, but I… We can’t risk anything happening to them.”

“I know.” Frey sighed again. “And even if nothing happens, having that defense system in place won’t hurt. Ugh. It’s at times like these that I wish I was as strong as Lady Ishtar…”

I tilted my head. “Who?”

Frey flinched, then immediately waved dismissively at me. “A very strong Spirit of Lust. Don’t worry about it. It’ll take me three days to get everything ready, so stay on guard.”

Frey was always like this. She really didn’t want me involved in the supernatural world more than I had to be. She only ever told me very basic things or let something slip once in a while, but it was becoming clear to me that she knew a lot.

Honestly, I still couldn’t decide if I wanted to know more or if I was okay being kept in the dark.

************

Chapter 335: Worrying good news.

I woke up with a vague feeling of unease, one that I knew was unrelated to my embarrassment of the things I’d said the day before. I felt like I had to be aware of anything Julian might try to pull, which wasn’t so strange in and of itself, really. What was I looking out of, though?

Anyway, Isabelle and I walked together to school. I had my bass with me again, so when we got to the club room I sat down to practice immediately while she sat down to scroll down her phone and check her social media.

“...Huh?” Isabelle exclaimed.

I let out an exasperated sigh and asked, “Okay, what happened now?”

“Apparently something good for once,” she said, grinning. “I’m reading some posts here and lots of people are complaining about yesterday's drama being a big nothingburger. And these are from last night, too.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it seems like nobody believes the rumors anymore. Either that or someone proved them false. Did Grace and the others do anything?”

“If they did, they didn’t tell me.”

So weird. Was everything fixed all of a sudden? Why?

We understood what had happened later that day during the second recess, after Grace and Thomas had done some more digging around.

“It was Eric,” Thomas said, leaning back on the chair beside me and balancing on its two back legs. “Apparently he told people that Abigail was just looking for clout and that she lied to him and others. Considering the parties involved and that this comes from one of the people who started the original rumor, this was easier to believe.”

“Eric?” Mila asked. “But why would he do it? Isn’t he Julian’s friend?”

“Friends? I’m not so sure about that.”

“I have no proof, but my instinct tells me he got scared,” Grace said. “Eric doesn’t have the stomach for this stuff. He was already close to pissing his pants when I talked to him. It’s possible the threat of retaliation made him backtrack.”

My mind went back to yesterday’s encounter with Julian. Eric was there, and he also looked scared of me. Was that…? Oh, there’s the embarrassment creeping back again.

“Hm? Did you… do something, Oliver?” Noelle asked me, tilting her head.

“Yeah, what did you do?” Sarah asked, smirking.

Of course they could tell something had happened. Sometimes this connection could backfire on me, huh?

I had to tell them. I tried to be vague about it, but they insisted I told them what happened word for word. I think they were enjoying seeing me flustered.

When I was done, Alice came up to me and hugged me from behind, kissing the top of my head. “I’m glad it didn’t escalate further than that. Still, good on you for telling him off.”

“I’m telling you, Oliver can look scary when he wants to,” Thomas told her, smirking. “I think it’s the bangs, really.”

“I would’ve liked to see it,” Isabelle said, nodding in agreement with Thomas. “I mean you being angry at someone other than me for once.”

“Ugh, I would’ve paid to see Julian’s face,” Sarah said. “It’s like Mike Tyson once said. Social media has made everyone too comfortable disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

Noelle giggled. “I’m sorry, but I can’t picture Oliver punching anyone.”

I nodded in fervent agreement with her. “Right!? I don’t know what got into me.”

“I could see it,” Mila said, though she had a sad smile. “I just hope you never have to.”

Grace nodded solemnly. “Yeah. You don’t need to get your hands dirty.” That I should leave that to her was left unsaid.

The news spread even more during lunch break. Some acted like that was it and moved on, while others, most of them being my classmates, came up to me and apologized for believing the rumors.

I smiled sheepishly and told them, “This could be made up, too, you know? Maybe I’m just trying to make you believe I didn’t cheat.”

They looked at me with astonished expressions until Sarah elbowed me in the ribs and Mila smacked me in the back of the head, making me bend over, mostly in laughter than in any pain.

“Don’t ruin it, you idiot!” they scolded me. It got a laugh out of the rest of the classroom.

“Man, is this how it goes every day?” Mark asked me. “They drag you around all the time?”

“Pretty much, yes,” I told him, nodding blankly.

“Man, I don’t envy you one bit.”

“Are you actually a masochist, Oliver?” one of my other classmates asked me teasingly.

The atmosphere had completely changed from yesterday. No, not just from yesterday, but even from before that. Our class had twenty people in it and now… even those I’d never talked to before were looking at me with casual friendliness. And even more importantly than that… I could talk back to them. I could hold a conversation. It was still somewhat scary, but my chest didn’t hurt from the nerves and my throat didn’t close and prevented me from speaking.

I found myself smiling.

This was it. This was… growth. When you’re working out, you can see your progress when you weigh yourself, when you see your body changing, when you can lift more than you could before. For things as vague as personal growth, it’s hard to identify your milestones, but at that moment, I saw one. It made me think that it was worth it to continue pushing myself.

However, there was an unsettling feeling in the back of my mind that prevented me from truly enjoying that moment. I turned towards the classroom door and saw Julian walking away with heavy steps.

What would he try next?

When I turned back to look at the girls, I saw them scowling towards the door as well. I wasn’t the only one on alert. It helped me feel like we’d be alright no matter what he did.