Satahia clutched her assaulted head, eyes wide.
“Isn’t that a bit too much, Demon King? That’s a spiked club!”
“So?” I narrowed my eyes and assumed a rather improper baseball batting stance, though there was absolutely no doubt about the force behind it.
“Wait, something’s wrong!” Satahia suddenly looked as if she’d had an epiphany.
So she did notice after all.
Looks like even an idiot can still spot the more obvious inconsistencies.
I sighed and was just about to stash the weapon back into my inventory.
But the very next second, I abandoned that idea.
“How can a mage equip a warrior’s weapon?”
“…Because I specifically created a warrior template for you!”
Trusting this idiot in the first place made me the real idiot.
Bang.
Although the weapon looked terrifying, it was really just a Level 10 white-grade item.
And while in a party, teammates couldn’t actually deal real damage to each other anyway.
At most, it just hurt a little.
Even so, it was enough to jog Satahia’s memory somewhat.
“Demon King, I’ve got it! We can find it by following the resonance!”
Alright.
Looks like I really hadn’t hit her hard enough to knock some sense into her.
I rolled my eyes and pushed through the crowd.
“I don’t have time to waste slowly. Follow me.”
Perhaps the earlier display of violent loli energy had been a bit too stimulating.
Most of the surrounding players’ gazes now carried a hint of fear, no longer looking at us the way one would at a mascot.
They even took the initiative to clear a path.
As for the few who instead looked even more interested, those could probably be categorized as masochists.
“Although the quest objective doesn’t specify a concrete target, the earlier description used personal pronouns.”
As we passed through Naldun’s commercial streets, I took out the Radiant Chapter from my bag and explained to Satahia.
“And Syl mentioned before that there are blurred patterns on the quest item, likely a family crest.”
“Combining these two points, the quest target we’re looking for should be a key individual from a certain family.”
The flame demon beside me nodded thoughtfully.
“If you keep thinking about irrelevant things, I’ll just activate skills directly.”
Like Heavy Strike, Crippling Blow, Skull Shatter, and so on.
Satahia jumped in fright and hurriedly voiced her doubts.
“Why are you so sure it’s a family crest, Demon King? It could just as easily be the emblem of an organization or faction, right?”
“Then that organization would have to be of considerable renown.”
“And generally speaking, faction emblems are relatively simple, usually composed of fewer than four symbols, with flexible designs.”
“Family crests are different. They’re more complex and harder to imitate, with strict structural rules.”
“There’s even a dedicated field of heraldry.”
“They’re usually symmetrical overall, and the choice of motifs is deliberate, divided into ornaments and charges.”
“Ornaments are purely decorative elements, while charges are derived from a family’s history and achievements.”
“From a family crest alone, you can tell what kind of standing that family holds within the empire.”
After such a long-winded explanation, Satahia looked dizzy, but she still stared at me with her mouth open, eyes filled with admiration.
“As expected of the Demon King, you know so much.”
Cough.
Well, um.
I blushed slightly and guiltily closed the Epoch background lore page on the forums.
Even after narrowing down the general direction, there was still a troublesome problem.
Satahia propped her chin up.
“But there are quite a few families in Naldun, right? Are we supposed to check them one by one?”
Although it couldn’t compare to Vantiento, Naldun was still a fairly large city.
Large and small families combined, there were at least thirty of them.
On top of that, the patterns on the Radiant Chapter were already blurry.
I could only tell it was a family crest, with no idea which family it belonged to.
Even so, there were still clues to follow.
“This parchment was found in the secret chamber of Lobranch’s mage tower.”
“It should be over a hundred years old.”
“That means it doesn’t belong to a newly risen family, but an old-established one with several centuries of inheritance.”
I organized the family data distributed throughout Naldun using Epoch’s game materials.
After applying these filters, only five families remained.
That alone showed just how influential Naldun was within the Constanterna Empire.
“Five families. Checking them one by one should be manageable,” Satahia said, apparently satisfied with the result.
…That’s true, but—
“We don’t know the resonance range of the Radiant Chapter. It could take quite a while.”
“So we still need to narrow it down further.”
I shook my head and looked at the remaining families.
“Satahia, when you hear the name ‘Radiant Chapter,’ what do you think of?”
Satahia thought for a moment and hesitantly replied,
“Holy light?”
“Exactly.”
“It must be related to holy light.”
“And that means the target is—”
Our gazes landed simultaneously on a name in the documents.
“The Lawrence Family, home of the Holy Knight Enzo.”
Holy Knight Enzo was one of the heroes active during the Lothar Era over three hundred years ago.
Together with other holy knights and clergy, he led the church’s forces and once pushed all the way to the mountain pass of the Mana Mountains—
The closest military fortress to Herentis.
One could say that Holy Knight Enzo had countless distinguished achievements in the war against the Dark Faction, earning immense merit for his family.
Because of this, the Lawrence Family rose to become one of the three great knightly families, holding immense power and prestige within the Constanterna Empire.
Of course, that wasn’t the most important part.
The important thing was—
“We’re dealing with people of the holy light again…”
I couldn’t help but rub my temples.
The bunch at the Radiant Monastery had already given me a headache.
Now I had to get tangled up with a holy knight family too.
I could only hope they wouldn’t recognize my true identity.
And that there wasn’t some kind of hermitic order involved.
Even Satahia beside me looked conflicted.
“Demon King… holy knights are usually pretty big, right?”
“There are exceptions.”
Her words reminded me of a certain squad.
Kai barely passed, but the other two were clearly dragging down the monastery’s average.
“At a time like this, and you’re thinking about that?”
“Ow!”
Although the Lawrence Family no longer possessed the glory of its peak, it clearly hadn’t declined much either.
The vast and magnificent manor within the city spoke volumes.
“The Radiant Chapter is reacting. Looks like this really is the place.”
I glanced at the parchment in my hand, now faintly glowing, then looked toward the heavily guarded manor entrance in the distance and frowned.
“So… how do we get in?”