Ethan dug through the thick stack of files on the desk and pulled out a reference book titled A Beginner's Guide to 100 Dark Creatures.

  Its author, Augustus, was said to have been a veteran demon hunter. He had lived during the Fourth Epoch, when the Old Gods were at their most active, and people had called him a walking encyclopedia.

  Tragically, Mr. Encyclopedia died while trying to document the one hundred and first dark creature.

  He was forty-three.

  For cannon-fodder monsters like werewolves, the book offered a surprisingly detailed breakdown.

  Ethan quickly found the section he needed and read aloud, "Werewolves are followers of Cynthia, the Goddess of the Hunt. Cynthia is one of the seven middle gods."

  "Half good, half bad, right?" Ivy replied without even looking up.

  "But the Temple of the Hunt has been dead in all but name for years. The dark creatures that follow her keep showing up, though."

  "That's because of the way her followers practice."

  Ethan had read every book in town that had anything to do with the gods. No one had ever truly seen what a god looked like, but all signs suggested the gods were real.

  They were the key to stepping onto the supernatural path.

  Most scholars believed divine power was far beyond human understanding, which made arguing over a god's moral alignment basically pointless. So in the end, people sorted the gods by whether their followers leaned good or evil.

  The term middle god did not refer to power level.

  It meant followers of the Goddess of the Hunt could become righteous demon hunters, or fall into becoming man-eating dark creatures like werewolves.

  Ethan skipped over the stories and case studies in the book and boiled it down to a simple explanation.

  "Followers of the Goddess of the Hunt believe humans can gain power from beasts, even monsters. From that belief, they developed the principle of imitation. By copying the habits and lifestyle of beasts, they can acquire some of their abilities."

  He paused, then continued.

  "But eventually a disagreement formed within their ranks. Just how far were they supposed to take that imitation?"

  In theory, the more complete the imitation, the faster someone could enter the supernatural realm.

  On that point, demon hunters mostly agreed.

  But on one crucial issue, the two schools split hard.

  "For example, should they eat humans the way beasts and monsters do?"

  Over the past two years, Ethan had read a great many books on the occult, and almost every mystical tradition seemed to share one quiet point of agreement.

  Once you ate a human being, something irreversible happened to your body and soul.

  The only difference was how people defined that change.

  Some called it punishment or a curse. Others called it growth or evolution.

  "So werewolves are basically followers who crossed that line and ate people."

  Then, because he was trying to be precise, Ethan added, "That applies to the original werewolves. According to the academic research, though, werewolves can reproduce. They can have werewolf pups."

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  Ivy looked thoughtful.

  She unfastened the collar and held it up against her pale neck as if checking how it looked. A faint green glow shimmered in her eyes as she casually asked, "Do you think this collar looks good on me?"

  The tuft of blond hair on top of her head reacted immediately.

  It started flailing at Ethan with dramatic little gestures, as if trying to send him one clear message, can you please take that stupid collar away from her?

  Ethan got the message and kept explaining.

  "If we're just talking about raw strength, werewolves are definitely much stronger than demon hunters of the same tier. The downside is that they gradually lose the ability to think like humans and end up ruled by instinct."

  Ivy froze.

  Then she tossed the collar aside like it had shocked her.

  "You mean werewolves get stupid?"

  "More accurately, they lose the ability to think at all."

  Ethan had struck right at the weakness of a follower of the God of Truth. They would rather die than lose their intelligence.

  The little tuft of blond hair seemed extremely pleased.

  It nodded several times, then gave Ethan a thumbs-up.

  Ethan steered the conversation back on track.

  "From the standpoint of imitation theory, werewolves can't really be trained. Even if you forced one into a collar and tried to domesticate it, you'd just end up with a husky."

  "A husky?"

  "It's a creature I read about in an old book. A dog with incredible destructive power. They can tear a house apart with ease, so back in the Second Epoch, they were even used as siege weapons."

  "I have heard the theory that dogs are wolves humans managed to domesticate."

  "If you suspect someone captured a werewolf and kept it on the mountain like a raised monster, then that person seriously lacks theoretical knowledge. The moment a werewolf puts on a collar, it goes against imitation theory. At that point, it almost stops growing."

  But Ivy was still sneaking glances at the collar.

  Her actions perfectly captured the phrase not giving up.

  "Based on my guess, this collar can turn a person into a dark creature."

  Ethan felt a jolt go through him.

  If the werewolf in the mountains had been created by a cursed object, then that meant it had never had a family to begin with.

  But at least... the thing that sent it off had been a warm Fireball.

  At the very end of its life, it had seen its grandmother.

  And now Ivy looked almost eager, as if she really wanted to test the collar for herself.

  Ivy was a pure-blooded follower of the God of Truth, the sort of strange woman who would see a red button on a wall and immediately want to press it just to find out what it did.

  "This is a cursed object. It twists the body, damages the soul, and my estimate puts it above Tier Three."

  Above Tier Three.

  No wonder she looked so tempted. Something like that was not exactly common in a frontier town like Willowbrook.

  Ethan glanced at the dismantled collar lying on the desk.

  It looked so ordinary, yet its rating was apparently higher than Ivy's own.

  Ivy looked visibly uneasy.

  "I'll send a letter to the Bureau of Containment. If all goes well, a containment team should reach town in three days. For now, I still need your help."

  All Ethan could do was think back to another parchment volume he had once read, The Encyclopedia of Cursed Objects.

  Its author had been the previous director of the Bureau of Containment, a rising star who had become director in his early thirties and personally handled more than a hundred cursed objects.

  He died at thirty-three.

  Containment failure.

  In the book, the director laid out his theory on cursed objects. Most curses required a user in order to unleash their full threat, so curse ratings were based on a combined assessment of the creator and the object's danger level.

  From that, Ethan concluded Ivy's estimate of above Tier Three probably referred to the level of the collar's creator.

  He silently searched his memory for the relevant details from the book.

  Once a Tier Three cursed object activated, it could cause massive harm to a town and often left dozens dead or injured.

  Then Ivy suddenly said, "Go get some paper and a pen."

  Ethan could tell they were moving into formal evaluation now. To make transport and containment as safe as possible, they had to record every property the cursed object might have.

  [Werewolf Collar, provisional name. Estimated curse rating, above Tier Three.]

  Taking the paper and pen, Ivy began writing the opening lines with great seriousness. Then she went over the details of how the collar had been brought back to town.

  "The three hunters noticed nothing unusual while transporting it. But after meeting you, the urge to put it on started fading. From this point on, every answer you give matters, Ethan. When you first saw the collar, were you drawn to it too?"

  "Not at all."

  If anything, Ethan suspected that from the moment Ivy got her hands on the collar, the little tuft of blond hair on her head had been cursing her out nonstop.

  Honestly, he was beginning to wonder whether that tuft of hair might itself be some kind of cursed object.

  Ivy nodded and kept writing quickly.

  "The level of influence appears linked to the number of people accompanying it, while showing no obvious connection to supernatural rank. Recommended transport personnel, no fewer than two."

  "Next comes the object's actual effect."

  She bit the pen lightly between her teeth, then suddenly brightened.

  "Ethan, why don't you try putting it on?"