Vylian finally left. Before leaving, she went back to her room, probably to take away all the clothes she had temporarily stored.
Anlis didn’t specifically go to check; she only knew by guessing.
Really.
This time, there was no cheer.
She was genuinely scared, worried that that person might pull a surprise return, and then she wouldn’t be able to think of any excuse.
Sigh… She could take the opportunity to practice the sword art she had in mind.
Anlis, who had temporarily given up on fieldwork and returned to the yard to practice, suddenly froze. For some reason, a possibility suddenly popped into her mind.
A dignified Level 999 Demon King would certainly not rely solely on her eyes to monitor someone.
If she thought she could let loose just because the other person wasn’t present, that would be underestimating her.
Didn’t a max-level Demon King have magic that could spy on people?
Perhaps, in some unknown corner, a small, dark thing was currently hiding, watching her every move.
Better safe than sorry.
Thinking this, Anlis’s heart tightened again. If she let her guard down, she would likely die without a burial place.
Thinking, Anlis casually swung her sword a few times, then soon shouldered her farming tools and went to the fields.
Her guess was correct. Of course, Vylian was monitoring Anlis. Leaving Anlis unattended like this was hard to feel at ease about. So she simply left a little trick.
This kind of magic was extremely covert; ordinary people couldn’t possibly detect it. Vylian was quite confident about that. As a dignified Level 999 Demon King, coupled with the strong concealment of the [Corruption] concept, if the magical fluctuations it produced were so easily detected, she would be too embarrassed.
Dividing some attention to observe the image transmitted by the magic, seeing no anomalies due to her absence, Vylian’s focus returned to the present.
The three landed from the air and arrived at the cathedral inside the city. Glen then spoke, “This place is remote; there isn’t actually any urgent internal affair of the Holy Order that requires your completion. But precisely because it is remote, the Holy Order’s control here is much weaker than elsewhere, so there are always some guys from other forces who dare to infiltrate.”
Hearing Glen’s words, Vylian couldn’t help but tighten her heart.
She thought that maybe she or Kakaki had already been exposed, and this was a trap set to lure her in. But Glen didn’t do anything else; he remained serious.
“Therefore, His Holiness the Pope’s assessment for you is to find the heretics hidden within the Holy Order in this area and eliminate all the heretics hiding in this region. Meili and I will evaluate and score your actions, and finally report to His Holiness to determine your assessment.”
After listening, Vylian realized she was overthinking and followed his words.
The assessment was certain. Obtaining a God-given class didn’t mean everything was fine; as the Saintess of the Holy Order, one’s own solid strength was extremely important.
But the content was actually to have her purge heretics?
Report: There’s a heretic right in front of you! And the biggest one at that!
Ahem.
“Is that so? I understand. I will do my best.”
She couldn’t refuse either; no matter how much Vylian hated troublesome matters, she had to do it.
Seeing her unnatural expression, Meili thought Vylian found the assessment too difficult. Instead, she smiled slightly.
“Don’t worry, Lady Saintess. The difficulty won’t be too high. To avoid infiltration, the Holy Order actually has a mature set of procedures.”
Saying so, she pulled out a short staff from her pocket. “This is also an item bestowed by the gods. With just a slight contact with the target, it can detect the sincerity of their faith in the gods. Those infiltrators’ faith in the gods is bound to be low. To deal with them, you just need to tap them on the head and let them feel divine punishment.”
So there was such a thing. Vylian took it from her. The moment she touched it, the Power of Corruption within her completely enveloped it, forcibly suppressed this divine artifact, and used the Power of Corruption to disguise it as pure sacred power. Vylian, being a fake saintess, naturally had no piety towards the Holy Order’s god.
“As expected of the Saintess, you are so pious towards the gods. Seeing this light, we truly feel inferior.”
Vylian smiled slightly and didn’t say much. A divine artifact was indeed a divine artifact; even she had to put in considerable effort to suppress it.
“Lady Saintess, during the purge, you may mobilize all the forces of the local church at will; that is your right. We have also collected some intelligence earlier, which you can review in your office.”
“I understand. Since it’s an assessment for me, I prefer to complete it myself.”
“Of course.”
Afterwards, there was a session to introduce herself to the other congregation members of the church, which didn’t take long.
After Vylian had been busy with the two Archbishops for a while, she went to her own office.
In the tidy room, two rows of bookshelves were filled with various scriptures.
On the desk directly opposite was a pile of so-called important intelligence. Vylian flipped through them casually for a moment and got the gist.
These were all information about heretics. Clearly, the Holy Order’s desire to purge heretics wasn’t a whim; instead, she seemed to be getting a backdoor pass for gilding. Most suspicious places and suspicious people within the Viscount Territory were recorded in this intelligence. The rest was to confirm and clean up.
“It seems the Pope simply wanted to see how my combat and command abilities are.”
“The Church of Life? A cult that gains power by sacrificing lives or biological organs to pray to the gods. They really should be eliminated.”
Wait, a church named [Life], which sounds full of vitality and love, actually has such evil and terrifying acts? That doesn’t sound right at all. But actually, positive doctrines like revering life are also in the Church of Life’s ideology. Unfortunately, nowadays these people still show the mad side to the world.
If the concept of [Life] dominated the main theme, its believers would be blessed by the god and gain freakish regenerative abilities.
Sacrificing organs would bring pain but would be negligible to them. Now, with the god’s power greatly diminished, it has evolved into needing to sacrifice lives and organs of other sufficiently superior bloodlines to obtain powerful blessings.
Vylian pondered, then suddenly remembered some historical records she had read recently.
Legend has it that long, long ago, this world contained hundreds of rule powers, large and small.
Each rule evolved and gave birth to a god, and under each rule were groups of people who believed in and practiced that rule.
But the world was small, unable to accommodate so many gods. The accumulated contradictions exploded, triggering a Holy War that involved all the gods of the world.
Rules devoured each other. For two rules that couldn’t be devoured, they would kill each other’s believers, spread their own faith, weaken the other’s power, and strive to become the absolute main theme.
The brutal Holy War left the world riddled with holes, and in the end, only about a few dozen rules survived, dividing the world among themselves.
Among these few dozen rules, the ultimate winning group was the alliance formed by [Sacred] and [Radiance].
Due to the nature of their concepts, they naturally occupied the grand cause of [Justice].
[Hero] could also be considered a derivative concept acting on behalf of the two, essentially a differentiation of the gods’ power concepts.
What about [Corruption], which Vylian belongs to? Naturally, it was the loser group kicked into the Abyss, unable to crawl out. Sad.
If [Corruption] were truly invincible, then the world would now be a purple-black, rotten stench.
So there is indeed a basis for the Hero being destined to defeat the Demon King.