The Lesser Spirit Codex updates, unlocking the 'Spirit Resonance Map' feature, allowing Leo to perceive spiritual signatures in a wider radius.
It happened late one night, in the quiet solitude of his bedroom.
Leo was poring over the Codex, trying to decipher a particularly dense section on feline agility enhancements.
Milo was, of course, asleep, curled into a perfect, furry circle on his pillow.
Suddenly, the book in his hands grew warm.
Warmer than usual.
A soft, golden light emanated from between the pages, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
Leo's heart skipped a beat.
The mundane cover of the 'Basic Pet Care Guide' began to shimmer, the letters blurring and reforming.
For a moment, ancient, untranslatable symbols flickered across the surface before settling back into familiar text.
System Update Complete. New Feature Unlocked: Spirit Resonance Map.
The book hummed, a silent, spiritual resonance that vibrated in Leo's very bones.
He turned the page.
The familiar text and diagrams were gone.
In their place was a glowing, ethereal map of his neighborhood.
It was like a satellite view, but rendered in faint, shifting lines of light.
And overlaid upon it were blobs of color.
They pulsed gently, like distant heartbeats.
A large, sleepy blue blob was centered on his own house—his menagerie of supernatural pets, no doubt.
But scattered across the map were other, smaller lights.
A faint green flicker from the park.
A soft yellow glow from the direction of the local library.
A tiny, angry-looking red spark from two blocks over.
Leo stared, mesmerized.
He could see it.
He could see the hidden world, painted in abstract colors across the mundane grid of his city.
This was a game-changer.
His eyes darted to the angry red spark. It pulsed erratically, a tiny beacon of spiritual distress.
Anomaly Detected, the Codex helpfully supplied. Classification: Minor Aggressive Fluctuation. Potential Source: Canine Territorial Dispute.
Two dogs barking at each other.
Leo let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
He then noticed a much larger, more intense blob of color hovering over the house next door.
It was a pulsating, vibrant purple, radiating waves of what the Codex labeled 'High-Energy Excitement.'
Mrs. Henderson's house.
Leo's blood ran cold.
A powerful spiritual entity? Right next door? A poltergeist? A rogue spirit?
He imagined Elara's reaction. She'd probably declare it a Class-5 spectral nexus and try to exorcise the entire building with salt and incantations.
He had to investigate. Discreetly.
He crept out of his room, the glowing Codex hidden under his shirt, and tiptoed to the window that faced Mrs. Henderson's property.
He peered through the blinds.
The purple blob on his map was pulsing frantically.
He scanned the yard, his heart pounding.
And then he saw it.
A tiny, fluffy, white… chihuahua.
It was vibrating with such intense, yappy energy that it seemed about to achieve liftoff. It was chasing its own tail in a furious, dizzying circle.
Leo stared.
Then he looked back at the map.
The massive, intimidating purple blob was centered perfectly on the tiny dog.
Is that a powerful spiritual entity, or just Mrs. Henderson's particularly energetic chihuahua?
This map is about as clear as my future finances.
He let out a long, weary sigh.
Of course. The map didn't measure size; it measured spiritual output. And that chihuahua was a tiny, furry nuclear reactor of pure, unadulterated excitement.
He returned to his room, feeling slightly foolish.
This new feature was incredible, but it clearly came with a learning curve.
He spent the next hour just watching the map, cross-referencing the blobs of light with his knowledge of the neighborhood.
The faint green flicker in the park? A cluster of ancient trees that had started to awaken.
The gentle orange glow downtown? The antique shop, filled with objects retaining the spiritual residue of their former owners.
The world he thought he knew was alive with these hidden whispers, these secret songs.
And now he had the sheet music.
But as he expanded the map's radius, the sheer number of signatures became overwhelming.
The city was a galaxy of tiny, pulsating lights.
A sudden, angry red flared up over the public library.
Anomaly Detected: Acute Intellectual Frustration.
Leo blinked. Someone was probably having a very bad time with the Dewey Decimal System.
He couldn't go running off every time a student got stressed during finals week.
Then, another alert.
This one was different.
It wasn't a bright, pulsing blob.
It was a faint, sickly green shimmer emanating from a manhole cover three blocks away.
Anomaly Detected: Slow-Drip Spiritual Contamination. Source: Unknown.
Leo stared at it.
A glowing manhole cover.
What was he supposed to do about that? Call the city? "Hi, yes, I'd like to report a supernatural sewer situation."
They'd have him in a padded cell before he could say "ectoplasm."
He felt a strange mix of excitement and exhaustion.
He had been given a god's-eye view of the world's hidden secrets.
But he was just one guy.
One guy with a cat that was a bottomless pit, a dog that chewed holes in reality, a goldfish that thought it was a water god, and a spiritual rescue who could turn invisible.
He couldn't be a hero for every single blip on the map.
He had to learn to prioritize.
To distinguish between a genuine threat and a spiritually angsty librarian.
Between a Collector outpost and an over-excited chihuahua.
This wasn't a game anymore. It was triage.
He had to filter the noise, focus on the real problems, and avoid chasing down every weirdly glowing piece of public infrastructure.
The map occasionally picks up faint, unusual spiritual activities in distant, mundane places, forcing Leo to mentally prioritize and avoid unnecessary 'heroics'.