As for what Wester had done at school, Everly had no informants and wasn’t clear about it.
However, the next morning, while she was tutoring Misha in math, her phone suddenly rang.
Seeing that the caller was Rebecca, Everly didn’t think much of it and tapped to answer. Unexpectedly, the voice that ca through the receiver wasn’t Rebecca’s energetic tone, but a sowhat familiar, low male voice.
“Is this Everly Minas? Hello. Perhaps you’ve heard of . My na is Wester, an exorcist. Regarding the ‘Lucky Relief’ case at Katak High, there are a few things I’d like to ask you about. I wonder if you’re available?”
Everly: “……”
In disbelief, she pulled the phone away slightly to double-check the caller ID. No mistake—it really was Rebecca. So how was it that Wester was the one speaking?
That confirmation made her response a little slower.
Seemingly sensing her confusion from the prolonged silence, Wester continued, “No need to check again. This is Rebecca’s phone. By tracking down the hacker who infiltrated the school network back then, I found Rebecca, who had hired him to make the post. From her, I got your na. I’m quite curious, Miss Everly—what exactly was your role in this incident…”
Before he could finish, Rebecca’s shout suddenly cut into the line: “Hey! Hey! Little Miss, it’s ! I’m sorry—I didn’t an to! This guy played dirty—he used a truth serum on and snatched my phone! I only slipped up because of that, mmph—”
A burst of clattering noises followed, sothing very suspicious sounding as if objects were being knocked over. Then Wester’s low voice ca on again, asking Everly to et him at Rebecca’s fortune-telling shop.
Everly felt that the other party must have suspected her. After all, she had been especially active in the early stages of the incident—not only digging into Berlin’s “scide” case from ten years ago, but even spending a large sum to hire a hacker to post online. No matter how one looked at it, she didn’t seem like an uninvolved bystander.
However, Everly had nothing to hide. She had acted uprightly and honorably—at most she’d been a little cautious, a little enthusiastic, and a little rich. None of that was a cri. She wasn’t afraid of being investigated at all, and she genuinely hoped the chaos at school would settle down soon.
After removing the banshee’s eyeball and carefully hiding it in a cabinet, she packed a few self-defense items and took a taxi alone to Rebecca’s fortune-telling shop.
She pushed open the smoke-gray glass door plastered with stickers and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind her, the bell hanging on it swaying and jingling with a clear jingle-jangle.
Under the dim lights of the small shop, a man and a woman seated around a round table both looked up at the sa ti and turned their gazes toward Everly.
From the clattering sounds she’d heard over the phone, Everly had assud Rebecca had been beaten by Wester. But when she arrived and saw for herself, although Rebecca’s cheeks were puffed up in displeasure and her expression full of annoyance, her clothes were neat, her wolf-cut hair sticking up flamboyantly as ever, and she looked completely unhard.
In contrast, Wester, sitting beside her, had several rather suspicious scratch marks on his face.
“…Ahem. I was just too scared, okay? Who told him to snatch soone’s phone without a word? He’s so big—I had to resist!”
Noticing Everly’s gaze lingering on the scratches, Rebecca scratched her cheek, an embarrassed look appearing on her face.
Everly nodded in understanding, then walked over to Wester and, like a little adult, extended her hand toward him.
“Hello, Mr. Wester. I’m Everly.”
“Hello.”
Wester stood up and shook her hand.
Sixteen years had passed since she first t this man. The exorcist who had once been just over thirty now inevitably bore faint lines at the corners of his eyes and brows. Even so, the marks of ti hadn’t diminished his handsoness. Instead, they made Wester resemble a blade that had been tempered again and again—his aura sharper than ever, a re glance enough to make one feel intense pressure…
—provided there weren’t those few scratch marks on his face.
The scratch marks on his face, like cat whiskers, looked a little comical. They subtly weakened the oppressive aura Wester naturally carried, which in turn made Everly’s attitude more relaxed as she answered his questions.
Everly hadn’t done anything wrong to begin with, and everything she said was the truth. Her logic was airtight. After several rounds of questioning, Wester ruled her out as a suspect and inford her that she was free to leave.
Would Everly actually leave just like that?
Of course the answer was “no.”
“Mr. Wester, actually, instead of suspecting , I think you’d be better off dealing with ‘Teacher Berlin’ at the school as soon as possible. Look—according to the tiline, I sorted the photos students posted on the forum of Berlin. As the number of plaster figurines he consud increased, his appearance in the photos grew more and more lifelike. I believe he must have gained power from those plaster statues, gradually transforming from a ghost—or sothing similar—into a physical entity. If he continues to grow, the situation will definitely beco more serious.”
Turning the tables, Everly took out her phone and showed Wester the photos she had gathered over this period.
Wester glanced over them casually and gave a slight nod. “I’ve already noticed what you’re describing. Thank you for the reminder. I’ll keep an eye on it.”
As expected of one of the top exorcists in the United States—reliable indeed!
“Then may I ask what information you’ve gathered so far? Could you share so of it with ?” Everly pressed.
Grade 11 material was already getting difficult. Even she found it a bit challenging to study solely from the textbooks. Everly was eager to resolve the trouble at school as soon as possible and return to classes.
Unfortunately, Wester had no intention of revealing the progress of his investigation. No matter what Everly asked, his reply was the sa:
“No comnt.”
Originally, Everly had wanted to ask Wester whether he would be willing to sell her a few magical tools. But seeing his world-weary, coffin-lid expression—and considering his exorbitant fees—she figured he probably wouldn’t care about her small amount of money. Not wanting to invite rejection, she dropped the idea.
After leaving Rebecca’s shop, Everly returned to Misha’s house and continued staying indoors.
Wester moved fast. In the morning, he had still been questioning the “suspicious person,” Everly. By afternoon, when Everly logged onto the school forum, she saw a shocking announcent:
The school’s Academic Affairs Office had issued a notice. All students who possessed plaster figurines and had perford the luck-borrowing ritual—if they did not wish to die by turning into plaster statues—were required to bring their respective “Lucky Reliefs” to the school auditorium at 8:00 p.m. on the night of the next new moon to participate in a curse-breaking ritual.
Good grief—he was already breaking the curse? Was Wester really that capable?
Everly had read quite a few books on mysticism. She knew that a “curse-breaking ritual” was a concept in occult studies. Simply put, it ant conducting a ritual that was the complete opposite of the original one—from ritual tools to inscribed symbols—in order to nullify the effects of the previous ceremony.
Although the luck-borrowing ritual circulating at school did not require a formal magic array and wasn’t particularly standardized, judging from the incantation, its essence was a pledge of allegiance to Paimon, offering oneself as a sacrifice in exchange for borrowing his power. Therefore, to break the curse, one only needed to fundantally negate that process.
Paimon is one of the seventy-two demons of Lesser Key of Solomon. According to legend, God once bestowed upon Solomon a ring with miraculous powers. Through this ring, Solomon could not only speak with animals, but also command demons and summon angels.
Before his death, Solomon feared that he would no longer be able to suppress the demons he had controlled. So he made a pact with God: he would offer his soul to God after death, ensuring that the demons would remain forever bound by Solomon’s seal.
As for the incantations Solomon used to seal the demons, they had long been lost over the course of history, and his miraculous ring had likewise vanished without a trace. Therefore, in theory, undoing the pledge of allegiance to Paimon made during the luck-borrowing ritual would require invoking God—that is, the power of the Church.
As the most famous—and most controversial—exorcist in the United States, Wester had extensive connections and had long maintained good relations with the upper echelons of the Arican Church. Through the Archbishop of the Dwight Diocese, he contacted the church in Micano City. They promised that on the night of the next new moon—January 1st, New Year’s Day—they would dispatch five local priests and eight acolytes to assist Wester in carrying out the students’ curse-breaking ritual.
This was truly a massive undertaking.
Aside from those who had already turned into plaster statues and “disappeared,” Katak High still had a total of 283 students enrolled. Everly didn’t know how many required the ritual, so she estimated roughly 250. That would an each priest would need to handle at least 50 students—reciting passages from the Bible to them, sprinkling holy water, striking the sinners’ backs with a whip, and asking whether they admitted their wrongdoing and were willing to return to the Lord’s embrace…
Even moving efficiently, the full confession process would take at least five or six minutes per student. To complete all of them would likely stretch past midnight.
And this was overti on the very first day of the New Year. The fact that the Church was willing to send thirteen clergy mbers to help on New Year’s Day showed just how much influence Wester truly had.
Naturally, the students were overjoyed by the news.
The speed at which a person turned into plaster was related to how frequently they used Paimon’s power. For example, Gina and Bright—the first to beco plaster statues—not only were the earliest to use the “Lucky Relief,” but also regularly participated in exams and competitions, using it at high frequency. anwhile, Darcy, a tenth-grade club mber who had perford the ritual at the sa ti as them, had shown no signs of petrification so far—largely because she was rather lazy and rarely put the ritual to use.
Thus, although the luck-borrowing ritual could only be perford on nights of the full moon, the rate at which students turned into plaster varied from person to person. Almost every day, soone would transform into a plaster statue in full view of others. This further intensified the growing panic. By now, no one clung to the intelligence and honors brought by the “Lucky Relief” as they had at the beginning. They were desperate to get rid of the little plaster figurines and return to being their ordinary, unremarkable selves.
Where so rejoiced, others worried.
Just as the luck-borrowing ritual had to be conducted on a full moon, the curse-breaking ritual had to be held on a new moon. The Academic Affairs Office issued its notice on December 22—ten days before the next new moon.
Ten days might not sound long, but it wasn’t short either. So students could grit their teeth and wait it out. Others, however, had already begun to show signs of plastering and simply couldn’t hold on that long.
One of Misha’s close friends fell into the latter category. She was a mber of the school team and had recently been preparing intensely for the “Physics Bowl” competition. The high frequency of daily problem-solving had accelerated her plastering far beyond that of others. Feeling that she might not last much longer, she took a desperate gamble. Together with several classmates in similar situations, she decided to ambush “Teacher Berlin.”
“They seem to think that as long as they eliminate the source of all this disaster—Teacher Berlin—they’ll escape the plastering. Or at least slow it down,” Misha said, her brows tightly knit.
And so, on December 23—the day after the Academic Affairs Office issued its notice—a team of fourteen students, without informing any adults, brought firearms and ammunition stolen from their hos, along with silver, crosses, garlic, and other supposed anti-evil items, and launched an assassination attempt on Berlin, who was wandering around the school.
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