In rereading some chapters to find the citation for Akane's fiance, I came across something else that may be relevant to this chapter. Chiaki, Akane and Kogane's mom, once (chapter 43) told Goro, "There is no need for a human to force himself to fight against non-humans, okay?" Zanma-sensei has been pretty consistent in this message, and has even shown that Goro doesn't have spiritual power and trying to give him some would court more problems than it solves (chapter 69 [nice]). We've been told humans shouldn't fight non-human battles, but Kogane's curse shows us that non-humans shouldn't fight humans, either. Maybe Goro's role as "Guardian" is not to suddenly develop superpowers, but to use his humanity and his own skills (salaryman lvl 100) to protect Kogane and the other friendly non-humans he's formed bonds with. And, overseeing all of this are gods like Mogami- and Ukano-sama, who have the ability to interact in both the human and non-human world. No wonder Mogami-sama is such a good middle-manager! Anyway, just some thoughts I had.