Chapter 48 : Chapter 48
Chapter 48. You May Have Lost Your Father...
An obsessive admirer from the enemy camp?
Leo did not notice Logaris' astonishment at all and simply continued speaking, his tone filled with indignation toward the Holy Church.
“Those old fossils in the Holy Church do not understand how great your theories are at all.”
“They only know how to cling to dogma from thousands of years ago and treat everything beyond their understanding as ‘blasphemy’!”
“This so-called Holy Light Envoy investigation group was sent by them to cause trouble for you!”
“Knight Helena... she is a good person, but her mind is too rigid.”
“She was misled by those bishops and truly believes you are conducting some kind of evil human experiment!”
The more Leo spoke, the angrier he became.
At last, he took a deep breath, as if he had made some sort of decision, and spoke to Logaris with solemn determination.
“Professor!”
“I... I may only be a minor priest attached to the delegation, but my father is one of the Holy Church’s cardinals...”
“I can be your informant and provide you with the investigation group’s internal movements!”
Logaris looked at the young man standing before him, his face full of sincerity, actively asking to defect, and he almost wanted to laugh.
An intelligence agent delivered right to his door?
And the son of a cardinal, no less?
This was far more interesting than any alchemical experiment.
“Very well.”
After casting a high-tier mind-probing spell, Logaris gave a brief and direct reply.
He did not entirely trust this young man named Leo, but in an information war, any piece on the board had its value.
“Helena.”
Logaris repeated the name.
“Is she difficult to deal with?”
“Very.”
Leo’s expression immediately turned serious.
“She is upright and incorruptible, impervious to persuasion, and her faith in the gods borders on fanaticism.”
“She is the kind of stone that is both foul and unyielding.”
Leo lowered his voice and added, “And she is the inheritor of the Sword of Holy Judgment.”
“That is a sword art created specifically to judge heretics.”
“The power of Holy Light it wields is extremely domineering and can directly scorch a person’s soul.”
“You must be careful!”
“I understand.”
Logaris nodded, indicating that he could leave.
Having received acknowledgment from his idol, Leo bowed excitedly and disappeared back into the shadows.
Logaris stood alone in the empty backstage area, inspecting the final node of the defensive rune formation.
Helena.
The Sword of Holy Judgment.
Things were becoming more and more interesting.
...
The next day, at the first light of dawn.
For once, Logaris was not holed up inside the alchemy workshop but had stepped out onto the streets of Winter City.
He was on his way to visit the Northern Territory Enlightenment School.
Those children he had lured in with “scholarships” were the first seeds he had planted for the industrialization of the Northern Territory.
He could not allow them to grow crooked.
The morning in Winter City was already lively with pedestrians.
The scent of baked bread and wheat porridge drifted through the air.
The clang of metal rang out from the blacksmith shops, while patrolling guards wearing new-model equipment strode along in high spirits.
Everything looked so full of life.
However, the peaceful atmosphere was instantly shattered when Logaris turned a street corner.
A squad of temple knights clad in silver-white full plate armor and carrying cross-shaped longswords happened to run directly into him.
Their armor shone with a cold gleam beneath the morning light, and the breastplates bore the blazing sun cross emblem of the Holy Church.
At their head stood a female knight who was not wearing a helmet.
She had hair as red as flame, tied neatly into a high ponytail.
Her emerald-green eyes were sharp, and her face was so exquisitely beautiful that not a single flaw could be found.
Logaris halted and recognized them as members of the Holy Church.
Without revealing anything, he released a thread of magic to probe them.
The pure and overbearing Holy Light power inside her body had clearly reached the level of a fifth-tier Holy Knight.
Leo’s words from the previous night flashed through his mind in an instant.
So that was it.
This was the “foul and unyielding” Holy Light Envoy, Helena.
While he was still thinking, the female knight’s cold voice rang out, as chill as the wind of the Northern Territory and devoid of even the slightest warmth.
“Logaris West?”
Helena’s gaze swept over Logaris as if she were inspecting some heretical object that needed to be purified.
Logaris stopped and looked at her with mild impatience.
“What is it?”
“By the order of the Holy Church, I have come to investigate the crimes you have committed in the Northern Territory!”
Helena’s voice was stern and severe.
“You toy with life and fabricate miracles.”
“Your actions have gravely trespassed upon the authority of the gods!”
The knights behind her all stepped forward at once.
A powerful wave of Holy Light energy instantly spread through the area, pressing down so heavily that even the air seemed to grow dense.
The passing civilians scattered in fright, staring at the scene in terror.
But Logaris seemed not to feel any pressure at all.
In fact, he found it rather boring.
The same old rhetoric again.
After dealing with the Holy Church for all these years, they always repeated the same few lines.
He could not even be bothered to argue.
He merely watched Helena quietly, curious to see what new variation she might come up with.
Amid the standoff, Helena’s gaze grew even sharper.
She spoke one word at a time, her voice suppressing some intense emotion.
“Beyond blasphemy, I also came here to settle a personal grudge with you.”
“Five years ago, in the royal capital, you personally killed a bishop.”
“His name was Valerius.”
“He was my father.”
The moment those words fell, it was as if the air itself froze solid.
Even the wind on the street seemed to stop.
The knights behind Helena erupted with killing intent.
The fingers gripping their swords turned white from the force of their grip.
The hatred of a murdered father.
So that was the reason.
A hypocritical face instantly surfaced in Logaris' mind.
Bishop Valerius.
He remembered now.
A sanctimonious hypocrite.
During the period when the Holy Church had placed a full bounty on him, that man had sought to use Logaris' head as a stepping stone for promotion within the Church.
In the end, Logaris had killed him instead.
Even as he died, the man had still been cursing him in the most vicious terms, saying he would fall into the abyss.
Logaris had never expected that he would have such an outstanding daughter.
At that thought, not only did Logaris feel no guilt whatsoever, he found the situation even more amusing.
The vicious streak in his personality, long suppressed by scientific research, was completely stirred awake in that instant.
He looked at the breathtakingly beautiful Holy Knight before him, burdened with blood-deep hatred and filled with killing intent, and a playful, wicked smile slowly appeared on his face.
“Oh?”
“So that is who you are.”
“You are that man’s daughter.”
“That is right, I killed your father because of certain unavoidable reasons... and yet you still hold a grudge to this day.”
“How should I put this?”
His airy tone made Helena’s body tremble violently.
That tone did not sound as though he were facing an enemy.
It sounded more as though he were speaking of something utterly trivial, something he had never once taken to heart.
Yet what came next shattered her even more.
Logaris stepped forward and dramatically spread his arms wide, like a stage actor taking a final bow.
In a clear, ringing voice tinged with theatrical flourish, he loudly declared,
“You may have lost your father, but you still have me!”
A false smile of compassionate sorrow hung on his face, but his voice was full of mockery.
“I could completely become the guide in your life and give you the same care a father would!”
Helena’s breathing stopped for a moment.
Her mind went blank.
In the next second, blood rushed to her head, and her face flushed scarlet.
Humiliation.
This was humiliation in its purest form.
“You... are courting death!”
The last thread of Helena’s reason snapped completely.
Golden Holy Light erupted violently from her body.
Her longsword let out a clear, ringing hum as it flashed from its sheath in an instant, carrying flames of purification.
However, just as the blade was drawn, Helena’s hand was seized in an iron grip.
It was Leo.
At some unknown moment, the young priest had rushed forward and thrown himself between the two of them, using all his strength to hold her back.
His face was filled with terror.
“Knight Helena! Please calm down!”
“This is Winter City!”
“We represent the Holy Church!”
“If you attack the Princess' chief advisor in the middle of the street without any investigation, it will cause a diplomatic incident!”
Leo’s words were like a basin of cold water, finally restoring a sliver of clarity to Helena’s mind.
She stared at Logaris from close range.
That vile smile was still hanging on his face.
Her chest rose and fell violently.
I will kill you...
I will definitely kill you!
Helena clenched her teeth so tightly that she forced each word out through the gaps between them.
In the end, she still withdrew her sword.
The Holy Light slowly faded.
“We are leaving!”
Helena spun around sharply and led her knights away without looking back.
That departing figure was filled with resolve and killing intent.
And the instant she turned away, the fingers of Logaris' hand, which had remained tucked inside his pocket, gave an almost imperceptible flick.
A tiny Listening Rune, glimmering with a faint eerie light, silently traced a trajectory too quick for the naked eye to follow and precisely attached itself to the metal clasp at the back of Helena’s armor, right where it joined at the nape of her neck.
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