Chapter 50: Spell Introduction

Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Spell Introduction

Chapter 50: Spell Introduction

A few days later, the previously sleepy little town near Crystal Lake had become more crowded than anyone could remember. Federal vehicles, temporary research tents, police cruisers, news-hungry locals, and people wearing identification badges from agencies nobody in town had ever dealt with filled the streets. The supernatural disaster had ended, but the bureaucratic disaster was only beginning.

The night Chief Woody received Axel’s call, his supposed solution for keeping Axel away from trouble immediately collapsed. Several dozen deaths, an infected outbreak, destroyed property, and events outside Miami’s jurisdiction were far beyond something Woody could quietly handle himself. After developing what Axel imagined was the worst headache of his career, the chief pushed the case up the chain.

The first office to receive the report apparently read it twice before deciding it sounded like the plot of a cheap late-night horror movie. They forwarded it to another authority, which found the account equally unbelievable and escalated it again. For several days, different departments passed responsibility around until people connected to the government’s stranger investigative programs finally became involved.

The FBI was among the first recognizable agencies to arrive in force. Several agents in suits stepped from their vehicles, looked at the dried biological residue and scattered remains left across the damaged streets, and immediately turned various shades of green. Judging from their expressions, someone at headquarters had described the assignment with far less detail than it deserved.

Federal crime-scene teams sealed off the worst areas and began collecting samples. Because Axel Vance already had limited contact with the government’s supernatural apparatus and could provide a coherent account of what happened, his statements carried considerable weight. Lionel Cosgrove was treated primarily as a surviving victim and witness rather than some criminal mastermind, which was fortunate because Lionel looked nervous enough around federal agents without anyone threatening him.

Axel’s first concern was the blue-green residue left behind by Vera’s infected. If anything remained capable of spreading the outbreak, allowing investigators to casually handle it would create another nightmare. He prepared some Holy Water and tested a contaminated patch under controlled conditions, but nothing supernatural happened.

The liquid remained nothing more than foul biological waste.

"That’s interesting," Axel muttered while watching the Holy Water run harmlessly across the pavement. Whatever spiritual corruption had animated Vera and the infected apparently vanished when they were destroyed. What remained seemed biological rather than supernatural.

Axel briefly suggested washing the contaminated streets thoroughly, only for several locals to stop him immediately. The town had no modern storm-sewer network capable of safely carrying everything into a treatment system, and most roadside drainage eventually emptied toward nearby streams and low ground. Dumping unknown infected material into the local watershed was obviously worse than leaving it for specialists to collect.

The federal teams therefore brought in containment equipment and started removing the residue themselves. Researchers received tissue, fluid, and preserved samples for examination while Axel happily stayed away from the laboratory side of things. After fighting Vera personally, he had absolutely no desire to learn what her cells looked like under a microscope.

Several days later, an expedited preliminary report created a new problem. The researchers believed the agent behind the outbreak behaved like some bizarre rabies-related or rabies-like pathogen, although its effects were so abnormal that nobody was willing to call it an ordinary disease. In this world, apparently even virology could become horror-movie material.

That tentative finding attracted the attention of agencies that had previously wanted nothing to do with the case. DEA representatives appeared and argued that anything capable of radically altering human behavior or physiology might someday be weaponized or incorporated into a dangerous illicit product. They wanted preserved samples before something similar appeared on the street.

Before the FBI finished arguing with them, representatives from a private pharmaceutical company arrived in expensive cars. Lawyers and executives somehow negotiated access through an emergency research arrangement surrounded by enough paperwork and political pressure to make Axel’s head hurt just watching it happen. Whatever money was changing hands behind conference-room doors, nobody seemed eager to explain it to the local police.

Then researchers from a state university arrived.

Professors brought graduate students, temporary laboratories, equipment cases, and enough enthusiasm to make the ruined town look like an academic field trip. Tents appeared on the outskirts, and students began cataloging everything from environmental contamination to unusual tissue samples.

Eventually even federal health and regulatory officials joined the circus. Their concern was simpler: if the unknown biological material reached streams, food production, medication supplies, or commercial products, somebody needed to know before it created another outbreak. By then, nobody in town could remember which agency had technically taken charge.

The locals loved it.

People who normally complained that nothing ever happened in town suddenly spent their afternoons watching federal investigators argue with scientists. Some residents stopped working entirely and treated the investigation like a county fair with worse smells.

Axel took advantage of the crowd in a different way.

The children staying at the Crystal Lake camp helped him set up a small lemonade stand near one of the busier observation areas. Between ranger patrols, checking the camp, and making sure nobody wandered toward any newly restricted areas, Axel occasionally sat behind the table while children enthusiastically sold lemonade to exhausted researchers. It was probably the only profitable part of his vacation.

His remaining free time was dedicated to something much more useful.

Axel and Lionel regularly visited Paquita Sanchez’s grocery store, where Paquita’s grandmother had begun teaching them the occult craft she understood. After everything involving Pamela Voorhees, Vera, Jason, and Lionel’s unnatural condition, Axel had decided that relying only on Holy Reading and Holy Water left too many gaps in his supernatural arsenal.

Paquita’s grandmother was not exactly a professional instructor. She openly admitted that much of what she knew came from lessons learned decades earlier, scattered notes, and years of occasionally practicing simple blessings and protective rites. Terrified that she might accidentally teach them something incorrectly, she stayed awake most of one night drawing an improvised instruction booklet by hand.

The result looked terrible.

Axel stared at one of the crooked diagrams while the grandmother tapped it with her finger. "The basic principle is creating a bridge between physical material and spiritual energy. This mark represents the direction vitality is supposed to flow through the object."

Axel tilted the page sideways.

Then he turned it back.

"Are you sure?"

The old woman’s eyes narrowed. "What is that supposed to mean?" Axel wisely chose his words and replied that the diagram was slightly more artistic than he had expected.

"I stayed up all night drawing that."

"That explains it."

She glared at him.

Lionel lowered his head to hide a laugh.

The grandmother slapped the table lightly and continued before either student could make another comment. "Forget the drawing for a moment. Close your eyes and try to feel the energy moving through your body."

Lionel obeyed first.

Within seconds, his expression changed.

"I can feel something warm," he said. "It’s moving through my chest and down my arms."

Paquita’s grandmother nodded approvingly. "Because of Vera’s binding, you are unusually sensitive to that kind of vitality now. Your body is already operating through a connection most people never experience consciously."

Then she looked toward Axel.

"Your turn."

Axel closed his eyes and concentrated.

Several minutes passed.

Nothing happened.

He finally opened his eyes and shook his head. "I don’t feel what Lionel is describing."

The grandmother frowned while Lionel looked mildly pleased about succeeding first. Axel ignored him and considered the obvious problem: the energy maintaining Lionel’s abnormal body was not the same power Axel used.

His own strength came through the system.

More specifically, his supernatural abilities relied on Psionic Power.

Axel closed his eyes again and recalled exactly what happened whenever he created Holy Water. Instead of searching for Lionel’s warm vitality, he followed the familiar internal sensation connected to Holy Reading and the flow of Psionic Power through his mind and body.

This time, the result came almost immediately.

Axel sensed a distinct current.

It felt sharper and cleaner than the energy Lionel had described, moving through him along a completely different pattern. Axel opened his eyes and nodded.

"There it is."

Paquita’s grandmother visibly relaxed. "Good. For a moment I thought my instructions were completely wrong."

Axel stared at her.

"That is not reassuring."

She ignored him and turned the page.

"We’ll begin with a simple protective blessing."

The grandmother placed a small cloth pouch on the table and emptied several symbolic craft materials beside it. There were small bone tokens, dried plant fibers, and a handful of colored stones, all ordinary enough that Axel would have assumed they belonged in a craft store rather than an occult lesson. She began arranging them while explaining that the materials served as symbolic anchors rather than sources of power by themselves.

"The intent matters as much as the material," she said. "You’re giving the object a purpose and then using your energy to establish that purpose." Axel watched her hands and privately decided the entire lesson looked suspiciously similar to arts and crafts with supernatural consequences.

The grandmother stopped.

She slowly looked at him.

"You’re thinking something disrespectful."

Axel blinked. "I didn’t say anything."

"You didn’t have to."

Lionel failed to suppress another laugh.

Axel raised both hands defensively. "I was only thinking this looks more like making a charm bracelet than casting a spell." The grandmother slapped the table again and demanded whether Axel had expected a staff, lightning, and dramatic magic words.

"Not exactly."

"Then stop complaining."

Axel immediately became an obedient student.

The grandmother continued assembling the small charm and explained each symbolic component without lingering on unnecessary details. By the time she finished, the result was a simple handmade amulet that looked completely mundane to anyone without supernatural perception. "Now make your own."

Axel and Lionel copied the general structure using the materials placed in front of them. The physical construction was uncomplicated, and both finished quickly despite Lionel needing occasional corrections. Paquita’s grandmother inspected their work and nodded with guarded approval.

"Now comes the important part," she said. "Infuse the object with your energy while holding the blessing or purpose clearly in your mind." She leaned back rather than demonstrating and rubbed her lower back with a pained expression.

Axel raised an eyebrow. "You’re not showing us?"

"I spent half the day working on your Jason-bone artifact."

She glared at him.

"My back is killing me."

Axel immediately stopped asking questions.

He held the amulet between both hands and focused on the current of Psionic Power he had just learned to perceive consciously. Instead of forcing it outward like an attack, Axel guided a controlled thread into the object while keeping the idea of protection fixed in his thoughts. The small colored stone embedded in the charm gave off a faint flash.

The system reacted immediately.

[Host has successfully created an occult artifact through spirit-binding methods.]

[New Specialization Activated: Spirit Binding]

[Spirit Binding Lv.1 — 50/1000]

[Specialization Bonus: Psionic Power +0.1]

[Spirit Binding: Craft occult artifacts by combining symbolic materials with spiritual bindings. Effects vary depending on materials, intent, and Psionic Power.]

[Psionic Power: 1.8 → 1.9]

Axel stared at the amulet with growing satisfaction.

"It worked."

Another specialization meant another path he could train without waiting for a supernatural killer to appear. Better yet, Spirit Binding could potentially turn the strange materials he collected from future cases into useful equipment instead of leaving everything locked inside evidence rooms.

Axel turned toward Lionel with a smug smile already forming. "How did yours—" The rest of the sentence disappeared when he saw the young man beside him.

Lionel was slumped heavily in the chair.

His face had gone deathly pale, fine beads of cold sweat covered his forehead, and his lips trembled as though he had suddenly developed a fever. Even breathing seemed to require effort.

Paquita’s grandmother immediately leaned forward.

Axel’s satisfaction disappeared.

Lionel looked as though completing one simple charm had hollowed him out from the inside.

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