Bella’s expression turned strange.
“The Voidnir created a religion? What does that mean?”
“Now, we know there are Voidnir that mimic human form, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s make an assumption. Think of yourself as one of them. And say your goal is to raise a Voidnir army and conquer this continent. What do you think you’d have to do?”
Bella stroked her chin.
“Hmm…… I would have to go around planting Gongha Trees, or I do not know the method, but I would have to keep making and hiding queens somewhere. All of their forces come from there, after all.”
“Well, good. Let’s say you go around doing roughly that kind of work. But no matter how secretly you move, can you really avoid being seen by other people?”
“No.”
“Then people will ask. What exactly is that, and why are you going around doing it? Then what should you say there?”
“Hmmm…….”
It seemed nothing immediately came to mind in response to the question.
Eugene did not bother waiting and spoke.
“Whatever you say, you can’t say it’s to destroy the world, right?”
“That is only natural, is it not?”
There was no need to go around advertising that one was everyone’s enemy.
Eugene spoke eerily.
“So they attached one. The justification called religion.”
“Does attaching religion to it accomplish anything?”
“Believers of the Sun God pray toward the east every morning. Why do you think they do that?”
“Well…… Is it not because the sun rises in the east?”
“Right. Devout believers do not place their heads toward the west even when they sleep. They believe it brings impurity.”
“That is true. Monica cares about that as well.”
“What matters is that we understand it. We don’t know what meaning it has, but we let it pass for now. Even if the ritual acts religious people perform are somewhat irrational, people let them pass.”
“I see.”
Bella nodded. She seemed to understand Eugene’s words now, and her eyes sharpened.
“So the mimicking bastards are using religion to justify doing strange things.”
“Yeah. And if that works well enough to bring in ordinary believers too, even better. They could spread Voidnir seeds all over the continent through human hands.”
Hearing that, Bella looked disgusted.
It was something she herself would never be able to think of.
“For now, this is still only a guess, so don’t worry too much. Just know that such a possibility exists.”
Eugene said that, but Bella was already leaning toward believing his guess was true.
Because if so, it explained many things.
The existence of the altar before their eyes, and how the likely limited number of human-mimicking Voidnir could have raised great armies across the entire continent.
“Anyway, let’s search nearby for similar symbols or patterns.”
As the two searched the inside of the canyon like that, they soon managed to retrieve a piece of clothing caught on a branch of a Gongha Tree.
It was a cloth garment torn in half, and in its center, a strange symbol had been drawn.
Eugene looked up at the sky.
Quite a bit of time must have passed while they were searching, because the moon had already tilted considerably.
“Let’s head back soon. I’ll have to investigate using this symbol as a clue.”
“Are you going to leave that altar alone?”
“Why not? There’s no reason to destroy it.”
With Eugene and Bella’s firepower, it would be possible to bury an entire canyon like this. But Eugene did not do that.
Because the two’s purpose right now was not to eliminate the Voidnir before their eyes.
It was to uncover the identities of the human-mimicking Voidnir lurking in the shadows and working behind the scenes, along with their conspiracy.
And to make all humanity join forces to oppose them.
If that was accomplished, a single colony like this could be erased as much as they liked.
So there was no need to stir up trouble in another country’s territory.
After finishing the search like that,
Eugene and Bella returned safely to their quarters.
The two decided to discuss the rest once they returned to the mansion in Alframe, then separated and returned to their duties as Dragon Knights as if nothing had happened.
After that, they once again handled the last remaining Verde Wolf remnants together with their comrades in the Order.
That noon.
“Kyaeng-!”
The final wolf fell to the mana bullet Eugene fired.
Stone, who had taken the air team duty today, descended to the ground and patted the rookies on the shoulders.
“Well done. This must have been your first away mission. You worked hard.”
Eugene took a pocket watch from inside his clothes, checked the time, and asked,
“If we go report to the mayor like this, eat lunch, and head back, the timing should be just right.”
By calculation, if they did that, they would arrive slightly late, but they should reach Alframe by evening.
But Yung Percival, hearing those words, grinned.
“No. We will sleep here until today and return tomorrow morning.”
“Pardon? Is there a need for that?”
When Noan asked without reading the room, Eugene poked him in the side.
Noan flinched, and Eugene whispered to him.
“It’s been a while since they had an away mission, so they’re saying we should slack off a little. If we count today as working to the maximum and include tomorrow’s return time as working hours, we can gain about two days of free time.”
Why would Stone be Stone?
No particular distinguishing features.
Luohan was simply a detached person with no presence, and Yung Percival was someone who preferred going thin and long over short and thick.
He was a sincere person, but in order to maintain that sincerity, he had the flexibility to know there were times when one had to be lazy.
But stiff-necked Noan did not seem to understand that.
“No, such immoral……”
“Be quiet.”
Eugene clamped Noan’s mouth shut.
Henri wore a face saying anything was fine as long as he could lie down and roll around, and Bella seemed displeased, but she did not nitpick over such a minor matter.
When it seemed all the rookies had accepted it like that, Yung clapped his hands and said,
“Good. I will submit the report, so you all eat lunch and rest on your own. And in the evening, let’s have a drink at some good tavern.”
Thus, the three Dragon Knights returned to Hamutz City.
They ate lunch and came out, but it was not even one o’clock.
There was still half a day left until evening, when they were supposed to drink.
Eugene said,
“This worked out well. Let’s use this chance to find out about this. People in this region should know at least about a religion that’s popular nearby.”
Eugene tapped his chest.
Bella knew that inside his clothes was the scrap of cloth they had recovered from the canyon last night.
“Looking into it is fine, but…… how are we going to do that?”
“How else? We just grab anyone and ask.”
In that way, the two began wearing out their feet.
Starting from city hall, they followed the central road leading to the market, stopping people passing by one by one, pointing at the scrap of cloth, and asking.
Have you seen this before? Do you know about any religion that’s popular lately? And so on.
Naturally, the questioning was Eugene’s role.
Bella, who was shy with strangers despite how she looked, merely crossed her arms and watched from behind.
After conducting inquiries for about two hours like that, a problem arose.
The women blushed and gave understandable answers such as, yes, no, or, sorry, I do not really know.
The men, on the other hand, mostly unified their answers into a single phrase.
‘I don’t know.’
Then they slipped away.
Eugene began to wonder whether these bastards truly did not know, or whether they were simply finding it bothersome.
So he turned back and handed the scrap of cloth to Bella.
“You try asking once.”
“……Me?”
Bella immediately made a face of refusal.
But Eugene knew very well how to persuade her.
And very easily at that.
“I’ve been asking until now. Are you going to keep just watching?”
He sighed deeply, making his expression look as pathetic as possible.
If he scratched her pride just a little like that,
“I will try.”
She immediately stepped forward.
Bella snatched the scrap of cloth from Eugene’s hand as if telling him to watch carefully.
Then she strode toward a man approaching from afar.
Eugene whispered from behind.
“Don’t act stiff like usual. Ask gently. Hey, do you know what this is? You can’t ask coercively like that.”
“I know. Do I look that stupid to you?”
“As long as you don’t do anything strange, it’s fine. Even if you just ask calmly, most men will spill everything as if their fingernails had been pulled out.”
“Do not turn other people into strange bastards like you.”
Grumbling like that, Bella stood before the man coming from the opposite direction.
“…….”
The man, who had been glancing at Bella’s beauty from a distance, suddenly stiffened as she approached him, perhaps from nervousness.
Bella cleared her throat.
‘I truly do not normally do things like this, but…….’
She did not want Eugene, of all people, to treat her like a failure.
This girl can’t do anything except fight! Unless she showed results right before the eyes of that bastard who would smile slyly like that, she would not be satisfied.
She steeled herself and carefully parted her soft pink lips.
“Excuse me, do you perhaps know about this symbol?”
A voice like a jade bead flowed out.
It was the exact opposite of her usual voice, which was slightly low and had a heavy resonance.
Eugene, standing behind her, stared at Bella with a dumbstruck expression.
The man became blank-faced for a moment, as if he had failed to understand Bella’s words.
“Eh…… yes?”
“This symbol. I was wondering if you perhaps knew anything about it.”
Like the women who had faced Eugene, the man’s face turned red.
It was understandable.
A slender figure, glittering silver hair, and ruby-like red eyes.
A woman with a truly magical appearance was asking him a question in an unbelievably pleasant voice.
He flustered about as if he did not know what to do, then barely came to his senses and looked at the scrap of cloth Bella handed him.
And his eyes widened slightly.
“This is…….”
A reaction different from all the others until now.
Bella and Eugene’s eyes changed. The man said,
“It seems like…… the emblem of the Espacio Order.”
“The Espacio faith?”
“Yes.”
Eugene stepped forward.
“Do you know much about that order?”
The man looked at Eugene with an awkward gaze, then soon shook his head.
“No, I do not know it well. It is not a very famous order.”
“Then do you know any believers of that order nearby, or someone like that?”
“I know a few.”
Not one person, but a few.
That meant it was not an extremely rare religion. This time, Bella asked,
“Would it be possible for us to meet them?”
The man seemed to think for a moment. In practical terms, it was no different from some random man and woman whose origins he did not know asking him to introduce them to an acquaintance.
Still, the fact that he was thinking about it meant there was a possibility.
Behind her, Eugene lightly tapped Bella’s heel with the tip of his foot.
‘Hurry! Do something more!’
Then Bella hesitated, but thrust her face forward as if pleading with the man.
When her statue-like beauty came closer, the man flinched as if overwhelmed.
‘He’s almost fallen! Hold his hand or something! His hand! And make a pitiful expression!’
‘Shut up and stay still!’
Eugene urged her with the tip of his foot.
Bella resisted with her heel. The two fought by bumping their feet against each other, but it did not matter to the man before them. He was already dazed by Bella’s transcendent beauty.
Bella ground her teeth inwardly.
“~~~!”
Trying to do something she normally never did made her feel like her face was itching to death.
But if this continued, they would lose the clue they had nearly caught.
If that happened, she would have to hear all sorts of humiliating remarks from the ill-bred bastard clinging behind her.
She could not allow that.
Bella scraped together every bit of patience and, as Eugene had ordered, put on a pitiful expression and mixed a nasal tone into her voice.
“Please.”
“Y-yes! I will tell you!”
In that way, the two succeeded in learning from the man the residence of someone said to be a priest of the Espacio Order.
The man grew distant.
Watching his back, Bella let out a long sigh and stroked her chest.
Eugene grinned at her.
“Well done. Even a stone wall has improved a lot.”
It was pure praise, without mischief.
Hearing that, for some reason, the annoyance she had felt until now dissolved in an instant to a strange degree.
Bella laughed, ha.
“How impertinent. You are still far too lacking to evaluate me.”
As she said that, she lightly tapped Eugene’s shoulder.