Chapter 154
Gerard, who had been waiting outside the door, took Bessie’s hand and carefully asked me.
“How is it going?”
“Elonen is looking for a way.”
Gerard seemed to have noticed that things weren’t going well, and he clicked his tongue briefly.
“Alright. I’ll look after Bessie.”
Leaving behind Bessie, who was looking at me anxiously, I went back inside the foul-smelling house. Elonen was crouched on the narrow room floor, doing something.
“What are you doing?”
Perhaps because he had been concentrating and hadn’t even heard my footsteps, Elonen flinched in surprise and raised his head.
“Ah, I think I can use this doll to stop the curse from spreading further.”
It seemed he had found some kind of method. Interested, I crouched down beside him. Elonen had seated the doll on the floor and was sprinkling holy water in a circle around it.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to trap the doll inside a blessing and guide it to absorb the woman’s curse. But this is only a temporary measure, and it isn’t a complete solution.”
Because the doll came from the Land of the Dead, it held the same cursed energy as Macy. Therefore, Elonen explained that if he purified the doll, it would absorb the cursed energy nearby.
Elonen seemed flustered because he hadn’t found a proper countermeasure, but inwardly, I admired him for coming up with an astonishingly clever idea in such a desperate situation.
“What should I do?”
“If that woman moves like earlier, could you hold her down?”
When I remembered the terribly chaotic scene from just before, my stomach turned. To think I had to witness such a sight once more.
“The purification will be quite a painful process. It will be a great help if someone as bold as you, Lysian, stays beside me. However, if suspicious energy starts pouring out from this woman’s body, you have to step back. You must not touch it.”
He suddenly added an ominous condition at the end, which made me uneasy. Still, I latched onto the words that I could be helpful and quickly said I understood.
“Then I’ll begin.”
Perhaps nervous, Elonen wiped his hands, wet with holy water, once on his pants, then raised both hands.
A dazzlingly bright light poured out from his hands and covered the sleeping Macy.
“Ugh…!”
And at the same time, her eyes rolled back as she let out a groan. Once again, a terrible scream swept through the room.
But I saw a sight different from before. The dark red energy pouring out from her body was flowing into the doll.
On stand-by not too far away, I followed Elonen’s words and stepped far back so I wouldn’t touch that dark energy.
“As the doll is purified like this, it draws in Macy’s curse from nearby. Then the blessing will seep through that opening and stop the curse from spreading more severely.”
Elonen calmly spoke while lightly wiping the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. Just as he explained, I could see the dark red evil energy and his bright light clashing fiercely.
“But as I said, this isn’t a proper solution. We need to find the Black Flame Dragon, then take her to the Grand Temple on our way back.”
For now, there was no better method we could find. It wasn’t a method that would miraculously make her better right away, but the most important thing was that she wouldn’t get worse.
“Is that person named Sal the one responsible for this village?”
“Probably.”
“Then it would be best to isolate this house so no one else can enter. This curse isn’t transmitted through simple contact, but if someone touches the energy being exposed outside because of the purification, they could become infected.”
Elonen spoke while pointing at the dark red energy being sucked into the doll. It seemed the roof would have to be repaired another time.
“It looked like Bessie had been taking care of her mother’s meals until now. What should we do about that?”
“Right now, the curse and blessing are coexisting inside this person’s body. It means she is neither alive nor dead. So going a few days without eating won’t determine whether she lives or dies.”
It was somewhat difficult to understand, but Elonen was the expert, so I only nodded.
“Then let’s go outside and explain what happened.”
