chapter 49

In a small shop in Niah.

Bright sunlight shone through the windows and cast a glow over the dolls and toys on the wooden shelves.

The clown dolls had big, red noses. Some dolls had blond hair and wore princess dresses, and the rest of the collection was all cute animal dolls.

The signboard above the shop entrance easily drew people’s attention: Doll House.

That was true. This was a shop which sold dolls.

Sitting behind the counter, Thulhu was extremely bored. He never expected Garein to in fact be a craftsman who made dolls!

The dolls were indeed exquisite, but they were also very expensive. The cheapest one still cost a silver eagle at least. Therefore, Thulhu usually had only a very few customers every day.

They hadn’t found a suitable shop assistant to take care of this place, so Thulhu had to stay here.

He was actually also waiting for the next mission from the church. Taking missions was still their main source of income.

Thulhu had taken on a few more missions with Roald, and everything had gone quite smoothly.

Thulhu not only collected a fair amount of money from the missions, he also gained valuable fighting experience.

So far, most extraordinary cases weren’t too hard or dangerous to deal with, maybe because this was just the beginning of Dawn.

That was Thulhu’s guess.

There was one case that really left a deep impression on Thulhu. There was a guy who called himself a servant of the demon, but in fact was just a liar who swindled money out of his growing number of followers.

No extraordinary powers had been involved in that case at all; the so-called evil rituals were all made up by that guy.

But honestly speaking, Thulhu was kind of jealous of the money that the guy had made out of it.

Thulhu had become more familiar with his power through the missions, and he could now finally call himself a qualified spirit medium.

Different extraordinaries had different specialities. A spirit medium was good at dealing with spirits, but could be very vulnerable when facing another extraordinary; a demon hunter was very skilled at fighting demon subordinates, but could be greatly limited in power when the target wasn’t a demonized creature. According to Roald, he would be able to make permanent items using special demonized materials when he reached rank three, [Demon Hunting Expert], and he would be able to customize the items once he reached rank four, [Demon Hunting Master].

However, Roald was still far from reaching even rank three.

Thulhu was well aware that the higher one’s rank, the harder it was to make further progress.

He basically had nothing to do every day now except look for Kila Gails and Beatrice.

Unfortunately, he was still totally clueless so far.

He took a quick glance at the front door of the shop. Then, he took out an old, black notebook and started reading the information on demon hunting.

The notebook had been passed down from the ancestors of the Botley family, and was very useful for giving Thulhu a deeper understanding of the occult and the demon.

The page that Thulhu was reading said:

“Cursed spirits are special. They can be benevolent or evil before death, but are completely transformed by some unknown curse power after that!

“Cursed spirits don’t want to stay in the spirit world. Instead, they are driven to spread death and fear in our world.

“It’s impossible for us to completely eliminate them or drive them away; this most likely has something to do with their roots. As long as the root exists, they’ll keep coming back to spread disaster throughout this world.”

One of the family ancestors had written this in the notes.

He wrote this down after surviving an attack by an extremely dangerous cursed spirit.

“Take note! A cursed spirit can be defeated, but it will always come back. It can be heavily restrained, but one can never completely eliminate it. I think it’s because of the demon’s power!”

The ancestor left this very serious comment at the end; the tip of the quill pen had even scratched the paper.

Thulhu understood cursed spirits as ferocious ghosts and evil spirits.

He turned the page and found some notes left by someone else. “Finally, Hamilcy hung himself with his belt, which was exactly what happened to the cursed man thirty years ago. Hamilcy thought he could escape his doom, but it was just a matter of time.”

The handwriting was neat, while the words were extremely cold.

From the notes, Thulhu could tell that his ancestors had already been on the verge of going insane when they wrote down the words.

Thulhu’s [Demon Hunting] had now increased to level 4!

Thulhu finished reading the entire notebook. Level 4 should be the highest level he could reach in [Demon Hunting] with his family’s inheritance. Thulhu’s understanding of the demon might have already surpassed Roald’s.

Thinking this, Thulhu was very interested in the “cursed spirit” mentioned in the notebook.

As a spirit medium, dealing with all kinds of spirits was what he was supposed to do.

Of course, the last thing he wanted to do was confront those cursed spirits. Thulhu was all for studying spirits as long as he didn’t have to risk his safety.

At that moment, Thulhu heard the sound of footsteps.

He put the notebook aside and put on a professional smile, ready to welcome the customer.

Then, his eyes opened wide with huge surprise.

“Thulhu, I’ve finally found us a good helper. He knows how to read, count, and prepare report sheets! Hey… you okay?”

Roald walked in, followed by a young man. He saw the surprised look on Thulhu’s face.

“Thulhu!”

The young man walked up to Thulhu excitedly and punched him in the shoulder lightly and familiarly. “I thought you were traveling!”

“Shawn, it’s really good to see you again.”

The smile on Thulhu’s face became a bit awkward. He turned to Roald and asked in a low voice, “What happened?”

Thulhu couldn’t believe that a graduate would choose to work in a doll shop, although in his last life, people had joked that there were more graduates than dogs.

“You two know each other?”

Roald explained expressionlessly, “He found me. I interviewed him in a cafe.”

“Then what about you?” Thulhu turned to look at Shawn.

In White Eagle Union, a bachelor’s degree was quite something. In Thulhu’s view, Shawn should at least be able to find an office job in a big company.

“Oh man… It was really tough…”

Shawn’s voice trembled and he almost burst into tears. “I went for dozens of interviews, and finally got a position in a trade company. But the company soon went bankrupt! So, I thought I should further my university studies. I need to take an exam to get back into the university again, so I need a quiet place to study and a job to support myself. Then, I saw the ad that your brother posted in the newspaper.”