Zeres continued scrolling down with the utmost interest shining from his eyes. There was just no way that this could be explained away as coincidence! It was just too spot on for the things that he was looking for.
’This book contains a spell that could bring you back.’ The long-haired man in the drawing said and in the next frame, he was drawn to be squatting down before the spirit who was slumped over on the ground.
Zeres did not even notice that the drawing was becoming less detailed as he scrolled further down. His attention was focused to one thing and one thing only. The dialogues. He scrutinized and read every single word, not leaving any off in case he missed some important detail.
He scrolled down again. ’You will bring me back? At what cost?’ the spirit replied and the long-haired man which was not even coloured in now replied and said, ’nothing fancy, you only need to marry me.’
The dialog made Zeres crease his brows at the realization that this story might be categorised in one of those genres that the humans called boys’ love (BL). Shaking his head a little at that twist in the story, he continued scrolling down. Part of him started to question himself on what the hell was he even doing, scrolling through a comic strip in another person’s house. But he could only continue on for now and hope against all odds to find something valuable from this.
’What. Don’t tell me you don’t want to follow my conditions? Choose now my poor little rabbit, death or me?’
Zeres had to crack his neck and release the tension building in him before he could force himself to continue reading. He felt somewhat weirded out at what he was doing himself, but a part of him just told himself to persist in it for a while longer.
’I don’t even know if you’re telling me the truth.’ The drawing was only a rough sketch now. ’Why don’t you do it first before you make me choose? Who knows if you’re bluffing?’
’What a sly little rabbit.’ The long-haired man who was thankfully not reduced into a doodle was illustrated to be opening the book. ’But oh well, it’s not like I will ever let you go once I brought you back. Once you’re back to life, you’re mine!’
Then the long-haired man whom Zeres could not even quite recognize anymore as it had been turned into a mere stick figure now said in a speech bubble. ’Prepare yourself, as I’m going to start the ritual now.’
Zeres found himself getting more intrigued now, hoping that this drawing would tell him more about the details of the spell inside the book, but...
When Zeres scrolled down to the next page, there was no more content. He found himself staring at just a white blank page and no matter how hard he looked and searched around for the continuation, he just could not find it. To be more precise, there was nothing that was continued. The story seemed to have stopped there for now.
He half bite on his lower lip in frustration and his head whipped towards the sleeping girl on the bed. Tsk, it seems like he really did not have a choice now but to wait for the girl to wake up. She was a human girl, and he could not use the mind reading spell on her unless he did not care if her mind breaks under his onslaught. Doing that to a human was the same as killing them. Their bodies were just not made to withstand the forceful examination of the mind reading spell.
Sighing, Zeres started to search her table, hoping to find more clues while waiting. Or probably, the book might be even here, and she was basing her story on it.
He picked up the books there and scanned through them quickly. After looking, he could only pinch the skin between his brows because all the books on this table contained various drawings of men, all being in fully naked or semi dressed state and also being intimate with each other. This girl...
Eventually, Zeres gave up and left her desk. He looked at the ancient books everywhere and wondered what if the book he was looking for was just slotted among these books in here?
Using a magic spell, Zeres tried to look for a book that would react to magic. Usually, books that contains spells will emit some amount of magic as they were usually written with the help of magic.
But time ticked by and not even a single book reacted at all. He was not extremely disappointed though. Somehow, Zeres had expected that the book was not written with magic at all. Because it would be very easy to find it by any witch. Meaning, if that book was indeed in here and was written by hand, then he had to search through the content of this place and wade through these thousands of books to find it.
He sighed at the thought of that, but he still moved and picked one of the old books piled on the floor. He chose the one at the very bottom and when he opened it, he realized that no one might have ever opened these books for a long time. He slumped on the floor and leaned against the wall tiredly.
The last thing he wanted to do right now was go back to his apartment and get disturbed by his own miserable thoughts. And when he fell asleep, he would most probably dream of that woman he had just killed. That always happens to him. No matter how much he tells himself that he killed them because they fully deserved it, Zeres would still be haunted by their ghosts in his sleep. This was why if it was a woman, Zeres would always resort to f*cking them and giving them what they wanted rather than torturing them.
It has been a while since he had killed someone, so he knew that this would definitely haunt him if he fell asleep tonight. And that was why he was more than willing to just stay here and look through these books one after another, hoping again that he would find something before the girl wakes up.. Because as much as possible, he did not want to involve anyone else in this, most specifically if the person was just a helpless little human girl.