Chapter 18: A killer or a liberator?
The wind had died down, and a deafening silence quickly followed. As the debris settled, Mikel fell through the still air and landed with a thud, knees bent to absorb the impact.
For a moment, he didn't move—his head hung low.
"So that's how the Grimoire works."
He touched the right side of his face, brushing against a warm trickle of tears spilling from his right eye. His left eye—the one that saw Doom—remained dry as a desert.
Despite exorcising and neutralizing the threat, there was not even the slightest hint of triumph in his heart—only heaviness.
Just moments earlier, when he opened the Book of the Dead to exorcise the ghost, Mikel had glimpsed the life of Lawrence Gatsby, the person the skeletal creature was before it was corrupted. He recognized it as the same ghost from the fake shaman's shop—the foul-mouthed spirit that spewed curses in every sentence.
Now he understood why the ghost couldn't cross over. It wasn't just because of the ghost's foul mouth, but also because of his regrets, reluctance, and anger toward himself that tied him to this world he had to leave.
And this only made Mikel realize that these monsters weren't all just monsters. They were people; humans once. They had their own lives—each a protagonist in whatever story life had given them.
Doom, however, was unmoved.
[Threat Neutralized.]
[Congratulations on learning exorcism and purification, Master.]