The following days became a constant cycle of preparations to purify the creature that had put Komachi's life at risk.
Before all of this happened, I had divided my time between my sister and my work as a fortune teller at the club.
But after what happened, divination took a back seat.
That didn't mean I had abandoned it. I still practiced every day, but now I had to do it alongside my preparations for ritual magic.
After failing to protect my sister, I didn't want to go through the same thing again.
That's why I gave Komachi my Light Crystal.
Before giving it to her, I covered it with a barrier made from my own spirituality to prevent the side effects it normally produced.
She wouldn't have to endure that suffocating heat that wasn't actually there, nor would she have to worry about unpleasant encounters with ghosts. As long as she carried the crystal with her, they should stay away.
If any spirit came too close to my sister, it would simply be vaporized.
At least the weaker ones.
I still didn't know how well it would work against stronger entities.
That was precisely the problem.
I wasn't strong.
I could do a few things thanks to my spirituality, but if I really wanted to face something dangerous, I needed preparation, knowledge, and rituals. Anything that could increase my chances of coming out victorious, even if only slightly.
And now that I had given my Light Crystal to Komachi, all I could do while preparing the ritual was observe.
I returned several times to the places where the incidents had occurred.
I observed the routes.
The buildings.
The locations where the accidents had taken place.
I tried to piece everything together and determine which locations could serve as anchor points for connecting the ritual.
I had also asked for permission to be absent from the club for a week. Hiratsuka-sensei understood the situation, as well as the rumors going around about some kind of illness or dangerous chemicals at my old school. She also knew about my sister, so she understood why I was worried.
And it wasn't much of a problem anyway.
After all, I was the only member.
The one thing I always carried with me whenever I wandered around my old school was the knife I had purified for my rituals.
It wasn't exactly a weapon.
But having it with me gave me a comforting sense of security.
Although, from an outsider's perspective, the situation probably looked quite different.
If someone saw a student walking around a school with a hood and a hidden knife, it wouldn't exactly look like he was conducting a spiritual investigation.
It would look more like he was some criminal about to commit a crime.
Thankfully, none of my former classmates saw me or recognized me.
Not that I had known many people back then anyway.
I hadn't even bothered to disguise myself.
As the days passed, even the slightest sign of outside help disappeared.
I hadn't seen anything unusual.
No church.
No specialized organization.
No group dedicated to dealing with the supernatural.
Nothing.
I was beginning to think those things simply didn't exist.
Or perhaps they didn't exist in this era.
But then...
How could I explain all those myths about witches and black magic?
The stories about rituals and sorcery that supposedly still existed in certain parts of Africa?
And what about the stories of purification and healing associated with different churches and religions?
I couldn't simply dismiss all of it as superstition.
I knew that things existed which ordinary people couldn't perceive.
I had Spiritual Vision.
I could see things that weren't supposed to be seen.
And sometimes, I could hear things that weren't supposed to be heard.
Yet, to everyone else, those incidents were still nothing more than unexplained accidents.
The authorities responded by sending police investigators, doctors, and scientific specialists to determine what had happened.
But none of them could find what I was seeing.
Meanwhile, more and more students were suffering injuries and accidents without understanding how they had happened.
Some of them didn't even believe the rumors.
Perhaps it was easier to believe everything had been a coincidence.
Until it happened to you.
Komachi told me that the situation had gotten so bad that they were even considering suspending classes if the incidents continued.
And that meant I was running out of time.
If I wanted to protect my sister, I had to finish my preparations before things got any worse.
"Damn... it still itches."
If someone looked closely, they would be able to see the charred skin on certain parts of my arm and hand. It still hadn't completely healed.
Those were the consequences of using sunlight on my own body and making my spirituality act as a filter.
At one point, I considered going to the hospital.
But I'd have to give them explanations.
Personal information, questions about my parents, and all that crap.
Tsk.
For now, I was getting by with medical gauze and some creams that helped repair the damaged tissue.
The problem was the itching.
It was unbearable.
If it weren't for my self-control, I probably would have made the wounds even worse from scratching them so much.
That's why I wore long-sleeved shirts and, sometimes, a bandage around my hand to make the injuries look like nothing more than a simple cut.
I didn't want to worry my sister too much.
I wanted her to stay focused on her studies and get good grades.
For now, that was enough.
At that moment, I was in an abandoned construction site that had been shut down because of legal problems.
I had followed the ghost's aura here.
Its movements were fairly predictable.
During the day, it stayed here completely motionless, like a statue.
But as afternoon approached, it left this place and headed toward the areas near my old school.
Then the accidents would begin.
How did I know all this?
It was quite simple.
Spiritual Vision.
Seriously, this thing was useful.
I wasn't in any danger for now.
There were still a few minutes before school let out.
And that gave me some time.
I crouched beside one of the points I had selected and finished marking it.
Then I checked the distance between this point and the others again.
I didn't need anything complicated.
Just a spirituality barrier capable of enclosing everything within its area.
In theory, it was a simple ritual.
In theory.
The difficult part was preparing it correctly.
Each point had to be connected to the next.
If even one of them failed, the entire structure could become unstable.
That's why I had spent several days observing this place.
I couldn't afford to make another mistake.
This time, I wasn't preparing a ritual just to experiment.
I was preparing it to protect my sister.
And perhaps to prevent any more dangerous incidents.
But that didn't make me a hero.
"I'm not a hero... and I never will be."
I might think someone like Batman was cool.
Or admire Superman's strength.
But sacrificing myself for other people, carrying their problems on my shoulders, and putting my life on the line for just anyone...
That's not who I am.
If I can save someone and they can wait for help, then I'll leave it to someone else. The only people I truly care about are my own.
I'd probably be called some kid with serious issues for thinking that way.
If my future self ended up becoming someone different, he'd probably be embarrassed when he looked back on this.
On my way home, I bought a can of ice-cold soda and leaned against a wall.
In front of me, the train rushed past while pedestrians continued walking along the street.
A completely ordinary scene.
Every now and then, I felt a small disturbance in the air.
It was my spirituality.
It warned me whenever a ghost passed through the nearby area.
Bon.
Bon.
Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps.
They didn't sound human.
Each step produced a deep, heavy noise, as if something weighing hundreds of kilograms was being lifted and slammed against the ground over and over again.
Two steps.
I activated my Spiritual Vision.
But I didn't move.
I remained leaning against the wall, calmly drinking my soda.
There was no reason for me to attract its attention.
A few seconds later, a grotesque figure nearly two and a half meters tall entered my field of vision.
It was a purplish-gray color.
Its body was deformed in a way that was difficult to describe.
Multiple mouths protruded from different parts of its body, opening and closing without any apparent rhythm.
Instead of a normal face, it had a distorted mass that constantly leaked a thick, black liquid.
The drops touched the ground...
And disappeared.
At the center of that face was a huge, amorphous mouth.
It remained open.
A tongue protruded from inside it, moving slowly and swaying with every step the creature took.
Then the sounds began.
"Wuaaahh... Wuaaahh..."
"Whyyyy... whyyyyy..."
"Youuu seeee meee... You seeee meeee..."
"57... 54... 51... 48... 45... 42... 39..."
The laments overlapped with one another.
Whimpers.
Incomplete words.
Meaningless sounds.
Everything came from those multiple mouths at the same time.
Even inside that enormous mouth, I could make out different ethereal forms floating in the darkness.
Silhouettes.
Some looked human.
Others didn't.
All of them moved slowly, trapped inside that abyss.
I continued drinking my soda.
I didn't make any sudden movements.
The creature kept walking.
I simply watched it pass in front of me.
"Yo..."
I'm frozen.
Honestly, I don't know what to say.
Fear is taking over me, but I can still keep my body under control.
But that thing...
How did it change so quickly?
The last time I saw it, it wasn't like this. It was smaller, and its presence was far less imposing.
My spirituality...
I can feel it weakening.
I can feel it being drained simply because that thing is passing beside me.
Part of what little I have left is slowly disappearing.
I steady myself and step aside, calming my mind as I gradually enter a brief meditation.
Behind me, I hear its footsteps stop.
I keep my gaze forward and continue walking.
But what I see almost makes my eyes widen.
That thing's face is right in front of me.
For a moment, I feel like my heart stops.
I grip the knife hidden beneath my clothes.
"Youuu seeee meeee..."
It keeps repeating the same thing.
But I ignore it.
I walk past, my heart pounding hard.
When it realizes I'm not paying attention to it, it retracts its long neck back into place.
But before doing so, it catches an unfortunate ghost and devours it without hesitation.
Crunch... crunch...
The sound of ethereal flesh being torn apart and the chewing, mixed with its laments, echoes behind me.
I can only grit my teeth as I walk farther and farther away.
Glug, glug.
I take a sip of my soda to calm myself down, and shortly afterward, I sit down in a nearby park.
I let out a long sigh.
What the hell happened back there?
Even remembering it makes my stomach churn.
I know those things are restless souls or ghosts.
But even in their ghostly laments, they can't find peace.
Being devoured by a creature straight out of a nightmare when you can't even rest because of your own regrets...
It's pretty damn miserable.
That thing is like a corrupted spirit.
I even heard laments that sounded like babies, similar to the ones people mentioned online about what happened during the Blood Moon.
I shudder.
I can only think of two things.
Corruption.
And madness.
Two things I learned practically from the moment I started studying ritual magic.
Corruption is everywhere, and it can take all kinds of forms.
I'm in no position to explain it.
But I know it's real.
And madness...
Don't even get me started.
If you don't have a strong emotional anchor, you might as well forget about everything.
One day, you might simply fail to wake up as yourself.
And end up becoming a lunatic capable of doing all kinds of horrible things for no reason at all.
I want to take a step back.
The fear of death this thing inspires in me is screaming at me to do so.
But whenever I think about what happened to my sister, something keeps my feet firmly on the ground.
Just imagining myself fighting that thing makes my entire body feel sick.
I feel as though all my strength has left me.
"My plans..."
Apparently, I'll have to change them.
I can't rely on something simple anymore.
I'll have to risk entering the spirit world again and find a way to create another useful object.
I'm too weak right now.
And I'm not talking about everything that happened before.
My spirituality is barely a thin layer of what it used to be.
The barrier around the house and the one maintaining the Light Crystal's lack of side effects are constantly consuming my spirituality.
Apparently, I have a large reserve, and it has grown as I've progressed as a Seer.
But constant use always comes at a cost.
If I faced that thing right now, I wouldn't even know how I would die.
And I'd leave my sister alone.
Getting involved in this world was never part of my plan.
But I'm already in it, all the way down.
If I back down because of a few difficulties, I wouldn't be any different from a coward.
Although, thinking about it, it's not like I've ever cared much about my reputation.
"Ah... I'm contradicting myself again."
I'm still stubborn as hell.
And I admit it.
You know what?
I'll leave all of this to my future self.
To hell with it.
You deal with the consequences of your actions.
Tomorrow is Gokou's meeting.
A small break before the difficulty I'll have to face afterward.
Whatever happens, happens.
It's already decided.