And again Kamikiri saves the day, but i didn't expect him to actually be a "Sacred God" type entity (like, he had already become a fourth level evil entity when Shinonome found him lol).
I don't think he was actually 4th level in the first chapter. He sorta looked the part because his deal (even at 0th level sometimes) is having twisty eyes and extra mouths and whatnot, but the the kid he captured was able to hear him talk, so lower than level 4. He and the kids he was controlling both looked happy for most of the chapter (he looked sorta angry when he was chasing the kid down) so he was probably only 1st stage.
Kamikiri and the matroshka ghost make me think that the stages are less a measure of strength and more a measure of how likely a ghost is to straight up kill a man. The matroshka ghost progressed from stage 0 to stage 4 as it was opened, and Kamikiri killed it without changing his expression at all, which suggests that he didn't get weaker when he became stage 0.
Interestingly, most of the successfully recruited ghosts were stage 1 when they first appeared, with the exception of Abby (stage 3 when she showed up in the monk dude's apartment), the doll ghost (2-3), and Suzu's ghost (I wanna say 3 since it was crying?) She can apparently scare off a stage ??? ghost but we've yet to see her win over one that's over level 3.