Chapter 167 - 162. The Knight’s Duty
The room was filled with coughing sounds then, and as the others tried to calm the Elder, Zein and Bassena looked at each other in palpable confusion.
"Alright, sorry for calling you that," Bassena, as the one who uttered the phrase, raised his palms in apology, although his tone sounded more confused than apologetic.
Zein, who was similarly confused, voiced it out to the middle-aged man. "But then, what are you? All channels of information networks call you a cult."
Before Senan could make a reply, however, a sound of a harsh clicking tongue could be heard from the window. "Tsk!" Zein turned his head and saw the youngest-looking esper standing with a clenched fist. "This is why I said we should do something about it from the start!"
"Arlo, shut up!" another member, female this time, looking not far in age from the young man, slapped the esper’s chest with a frown.
"Sorry, I get where you’re coming from," Senan sighed and brought Zein’s attention back to the table. "The circulating information indeed seems to regard the Templar of Arms Master as a cult."
At that point, someone came inside the room with a tray of warm tea, and they waited until the cups were served to the two guests before the middle-aged man continued.
"And while we are not a cult, we--the old generation--indeed, were to be blamed for this misconception."
"What do you mean?"
Senan let out another sigh as he intertwined his fingers and started to tell them the story that they already knew; about how the organization was split at some point. And it was this faction, the traitorous one, who glorified the second coming of Setnath and wanted that power for themselves, who made the Templar known to be a cult.
At the beginning of the fracture, the orthodox faction, which consisted of the main clan members of House Ishtera, was too weak to surface. They were in hiding, still recovering their power, and coming out to clear that misconception wasn’t something they could afford to do.