Chapter 16 - End of the Assessment

Kai found a file in Mayor Turner's office that contained everyone's information.

Briefly reading through them, he found the relationship of Chris and Gio with Micah. As expected, the two had been clients of Micah.

The first one, Chris was a sadist who liked torturing his partner in bed. Due to no one wanting to be his partner for long, he had to resort to going to brothels.

However, his extremity in doing things made the prostitutes he slept with always end up half-dead, causing him to be banned every time.

Four years ago, Micah was one of those who suffered from his hands. Due to her nature of never complaining and silently enduring, she suffered more than the others. If not for her finally collapsing, no one would know what she had been going through.

On the other hand, Gio was the culprit who infected Micah with AIDS.

The guy had been infected himself when he went to a brothel and was unable to accept it. He was ashamed and full of hatred. He blamed all the prostitutes. Carrying the disease, he went around sleeping with them.

Kai also found a black book containing the record of the town as well as details about the festival.

It seems due to the deity's evil nature and to suppress its raging dark energy, according to the book, the deity asked the town to offer male sacrifices to the shrine every once in a few years.

This is what's currently known as the Wallux Town Festival.

When the mayor at that time received this request, he vehemently refused, saying how he could sacrifice his people.

The deity was enraged. As her representative, the mayor was supposed to be the one supporting her, how could he refuse? And so with her power, she replaced the mayor and made him the very first sacrifice.

But this in turn made the previous mayor's family and their descendants lose their faith in the deity. They want to leave the town but leaving without the deity's permission will cause them to suffer from a deathly curse.

As a result, they had no choice but to stay.

Kai looked at the names of every resident of the town listed in the book and found that Andrew was actually part of the previous mayor's family.

This must be why he took this opportunity to help the mayor. With the mayor being the deity's representative, she must have had some authority in her hands to make his family able to leave the town without suffering the curse.

The book has a bookmark inserted into it. Turning to that page, Kai saw some sort of magic circle drawn on the page along with two small balls and one body.

Was this the method the mayor used to make Micah possess Charlie?

[ Sub-task no. 1 in progress. ]

[ Plot completion: 99% ]

Looking at the competition rate, it seems he's right. But what is this remaining one percent? What is it that he had yet to figure out?

Kai recalled all the clues he gathered from the first day and suddenly remembered Mrs. Simpson's words during their discussion.

Mrs. Simpson said she found a ritual room in a hidden corner of the mayor's residence before when they toured. Will the last clue be there? But where is it?

He walked around the first floor, scanning every corner in the hope of finding this hidden corner. He still had a little less than one hour in his free pass. He still had to go back to the attic which might take ten minutes. He had to hurry.

Going down the stairs, Kai made sure to remember the route before going around the first floor of the house.

Mayor Turner's residence is five thousand square feet. Although it wasn't too big, Kai still had to exert some effort to check all the rooms in it.

He briefly scanned every room one by one, careful not to miss anything.

Unfortunately, forty-three minutes had passed but he was still unable to find any hidden corner. With only a little more than ten minutes in the free pass, he can only run back to the attic.

As he walked towards the stairs, a conversation entered his ears.

"— We go get Charlie now? Mayor said to bring her down before twelve right?"

"Why are you still calling her Charlie? That's Miss Micah. Charlie was already in the ritual room and about to become part of the deity."

"Ah, you're right. She doesn't act like Miss Micah at all so I find it hard to associate them."

"That's because there wasn't enough energy to supply the ritual when it was first done. Wait later, Ms. Micah would definitely come back. "

"Yeah. Then should we go open the ritual room now so we can take Miss Micah there directly?"

"What do you need to open it for? It's not like we're going to knock the Miss out. The ritual room's door is not heavy. Just open it once we go down."

The two people seemed to be standing guard at the stairs. Hearing them talk about the ritual room, Kai abruptly halted his running feet, almost bumping into the wall.

From their words, it seems the ritual room was only a few distances away from them.

Kai thought for a while then decided to look once more, setting his eyes behind the stairs and dashing towards it.

There were only fifteen minutes left on the timer which means he only had five minutes to look for clues.

Fortunately, he finally found the ritual room. The ritual room wasn't big but it was dim with only two candles lit on what seemed like an altar.

Kai unlocked Charlie's phone which he was still holding despite everything, turning on the flashlight and scanning the room.

As he moved the phone's light to one of the corners, something was reflected in the dimness, making it shine.

Kai hurriedly went to check the object and found that it was a half-moon necklace with rhinestones in it, looking very familiar as if he had seen it somewhere.

The timer was ending. Kai grabbed the necklace and hurried to the stairs.

As he walked, he unlocked Charlie's phone, checking the gallery again.

Finally, in the camera album, Kai found the half-moon necklace on Charlie's neck. Charlie's last picture was three days after she learned about the pregnancy, during which she still wore the necklace.

Charlie said she went to the town last month to have an abortion which didn't happen due to her changing her mind.

However— Kai looked at Charlie's bare back and the necklace in his hand. If that's really the case, why did she come back to the town a few days later?

Thinking of how Stephan said Charlie's whole personality suddenly changed as if she became a different person a few days after she came back from the town, adding to Micah's possession of her body, Kai was now certain Charlie had been lying.

In fact, she might not have come to the town to do the abortion at all. She was probably aware of the evil deity the town worshiped and came to Mayor Turner or Mayor Turner found her and suggested she do the ritual for possible revenge.

Charlie must've been hesitant to do the ritual or had reasons so she didn't agree immediately and waited for a few days to do the ritual.

Mayor Turner then took out Charlie's soul from her body with or without her knowing and let her daughter's soul take over, causing the sudden change in Charlie's character as well as the events that followed.

However, as the men said, there wasn't enough energy to supply the ritual so Micah wasn't able to take full control of Charlie's body and they had to do the ritual again tonight.

[ Ding! ]

[ Congratulations. You have successfully cleared your sub-task, complete the plot and main task, find the ghost. ]

[ Time Taken: 3 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, and 2 seconds ]

[ Task Difficulty: S ]