The Knight Hates Rofan Events (4)

It wasn't funny.

No—if he was going to be precise, it was so absurd that a laugh had slipped out of him anyway. But if anyone mistook that laugh for amusement, they were either hopelessly dense, or they wanted to die.

"Someone suddenly started pounding on the door, so I thought it was the maid, or you, Instructor. People don't really pass through here, do they? I figured it had to be someone I knew and opened it, and there was this strange man just standing there. Then, out of nowhere, he started preaching at me. I was flustered, and I couldn't even tell what was happening... it was pretty unsettling."

"Why didn't you throw him out from the start? Did you learn magic for show?"

"Th-that's... even so, using magic on a priest is a little..."

"......"

"Ah, I'm not really a devout believer, but my parents were Chris—tians, no! There were a lot of devout people at the orphanage where I grew up, so it felt wrong to treat a religious person carelessly... I'm sorry. Still, thank you for helping me."

"...Ha."

And what, exactly, was he supposed to do with this half-baked little mortal?

Lee Han wanted to smack his own forehead. The girl was impossible to place. She understands every power she has in the most half-assed way imaginable.

Consider, for a moment, the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty known as Irene Windler. The girl was the adopted daughter of the Duke of Galahad—of Duke Blake himself, current head of a great house that even the royal family dared not handle lightly. To take Irene Windler for an easy mark was to slight Galahad, and both the royal house and the temple would have broken into a cold sweat over it. Put bluntly, if Galahad declared independence tomorrow and named the temple an enemy, the kingdom could split in two.

Unlike Lee Han, they were not one man. They were a vast power, and unlike the present royal house, which had settled into a symbiotic relationship with the temple, they might well be the only force capable of actually standing against it. That the adopted daughter of such a power had no idea of the authority and station she held was the first thing driving his blood pressure up.

And yet.

What she has isn't only Galahad.

The next spike came from the genius mage who didn't know how to use her own strength. The girl had force. Overwhelming force, more than enough to protect herself. She was a prodigy of the magical world, born with the talent of an Archmage. With gifts that had not even fully bloomed, she had already threatened the Ghost King, and even Lee Han—who despised magic—had to grant her that much ability and skill. If she had simply made up her mind, driving off a priest would have been easy, and she would never have had to hear filth like what she had just endured.

And still, after taking in every word of it, all she could do was look awkward.

Goddamn it. She really is a rofan heroine.

He couldn't say what genre the others belonged to, but this little mage chick was, without question, a romance-fantasy heroine. Lee Han clicked his tongue where no one could hear it. Immense power, and she still behaved like a pushover—a half-finished rofan possessor who couldn't even bring herself to use the strength she had.

Truly...

Top-tier dead weight.

For a rofan heroine, it was the highest praise he had to give.

Thud!

"........."

The interns learned, in their own flesh, what it meant for a disaster to arrive without a sound or a rumor. And well they might.

"Confess. Quietly. It'll go easier on you."

Was an irresistible disaster not already bearing down on them? Cold sweat ran down their backs.

Then one of the interns gathered a truly heroic amount of courage and asked.

"E-excuse me, c-could you please explain what on earth this is suddenly about? I-I don't understand what's happening..."

Out of nowhere the man had dropped an unconscious priest on the floor and ordered them to confess, but the intern who had spoken didn't even know who that priest was. He had no idea what the man had done to the monster to end up in such a state, and he understood even less why the sparks had jumped to the rest of them. In a sense the question was reasonable. It was a plea of innocence.

"Cowards."

The eyes that received it were endlessly cold.

"You—or someone among you hiding what they really are—are a cowardly, vicious bastard. I'm sure of it."

Blank confusion answered him.

"What did this priest do, you ask? He went and preached at our next-door neighbor."

The confusion only deepened.

"He openly insulted Galahad, picked a fight over her being born a mage, and ran his mouth like a sewer."

Shock hit them all at once.

The thought Isn't a little preaching allowed? had barely formed before the words that followed turned the interns white, and they immediately glared at the unconscious priest as if they meant to kill him. What the hell did this crazy bastard do?

There were two powers even the temple dared not oppose lightly. One was Galahad, guardian of the lake. The other was Lionel of the North, where savage blizzards howled without end. They paid no mind to the royal house or the temple, and if the mood took them they could break away from Pendragon whenever they pleased. They also had the strength to smash the temple flat, no matter what the people might say.

And this man had insulted that Galahad?

It was no different from begging to be killed.

Crazy bastard. What is this guy? A heretic, maybe...?

The interns—no, the heresy inquisitors they truly were—studied the unconscious priest with vicious eyes. Their judgment was simple. Because of this man, the temple itself might ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be in danger.

But then—

"You know what? Almost no one knows my neighbor is Irene Windler. So how did that lunatic know, and how did he get all the way here?"

Their throats closed.

At the words that followed, their faces had no choice but to turn grave. Anyone who couldn't grasp the meaning would have to quit the inquisitor's trade.

"Coming out to this tucked-away forest? Sure. That could happen. But that bastard showed up certain the chick was here, preaching kit already prepared. Which means he was certain the chick lives in that house. So I'm 'certain' one of you sold our chick's information."

He was, at that very moment, certain they had handed Irene Windler's information over to the temple. Wronged looks rose on their faces as they scrambled for excuses. It wasn't them!

But—

Crunch!

Lee Han's huge palm swallowed one inquisitor's face whole, and then—

Crack. Crunch.

"Gyaaaaaah!!"

A scream of agony tore out of him along with the sound of something being crushed.

The pressure that blasted from Lee Han's body came before the inquisitors could even think to stop him—and even if they had seen the lunge coming, they could not have stopped it. A terrifying presence poured off him, and they shook like sheep standing before a wolf.

"You dare play dumb in front of me and try to deceive me? Did I look that funny to you?!"

Craaack!!

The harder he squeezed, the deeper the knight's fingers sank, warping the face beneath them. It looked like someone trying to burst a balloon, and the knowledge that a human head would crush like a tomato if this continued drained the color from every face in the room. They were the same inquisitors who had rushed him the day before and been broken past all hope, but the presence he gave off now belonged to another dimension entirely. If what he had shown them then was a blade of wind, what poured out of him now was the heat of a furnace.

Their breath caught of its own accord.

Then—

"Perhaps you ought to calm yourself."

"......"

"I wouldn't mind if you killed him. But I doubt you want the smell of blood in the house."

"......"

"And torture will draw out far more information than killing him, won't it? Allow me to demonstrate an inquisitor's methods."

"...You've gotten better at running your mouth."

"Thanks to you."

She did not yield a single word. Judia Pierre laid out her opinion and her advice without flinching, then bowed her head in thanks as the strength gradually left his hand.

Catching a liar was easy for Lee Han. He had always been on the level of a lie detector, and after Bone Reforging he could seize even the information a detector would miss. If anything was slightly unexpected, it was that the person he had originally suspected was not that nameless traitor, but the woman standing before him.

"You have probably already heard that I met with someone connected to the temple."

She stated, without a hint of shame, exactly what she had been doing. She had to know she herself might fall under suspicion and die for it. Whether she simply had no fear, or still believed a god would solve everything, Lee Han couldn't tell. He sat in a log chair he had made himself and stared straight at her.

"...Please ease your presence a little. My body hurts."

Under his gaze she remained expressionless, but her body was shaking. His presence was pouring onto her in a concentrated stream, and even she could hardly endure it.

"You're laying it on thick."

"......"

It shouldn't have been possible, and yet she seemed to wear a wronged look.

"...It's probably not an act, you know?"

"Huh?"

"The ground. Look at the ground."

Derek, who had been hiding his presence, slipped closer with a bitter smile and pointed down. What was he supposed to look at—

"...What the hell? Why's it like this?"

The grass was dying off to the last blade, and the handmade table he had built was creaking as cracks ran through it. While he stared in surprise at the surroundings, which had abruptly begun turning into a desert, Derek offered his advice.

"Instructor, please don't let your presence out carelessly anymore. No—I think you need to practice controlling it, too."

"?"

"It's because your level rose so sharply."

"That again?"

Taechang whispered it like classified intelligence, and Lee Han was dumbfounded. Level? He wasn't actually a game character. What—

...Huh?

Wait.

"You're saying I've climbed up to the same grade as those monsters?"

Lee Han tilted his head. He had grown, that much was true, but even so he was still endlessly lacking beside the fine gentlemen Taechang had called Lv. 9.

To that—

"That's right. You're not at that level yet, Instructor. But your level has definitely risen. Your current level is, no less than..."

"......"

"8.3."

"??"

...Why did a level have a decimal point?

Lee Han cocked his head.

"To put it simply, experience is stacking. Even after you reached Lv. 8, you fought without resting, and fought again, and fought and fought, and did nothing but fight like a madman, didn't you? Of course your level went up."

Put that way he sounded like a maniac for battle, but he had no rebuttal. He really had fought an absurd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠amount. And without rest, at that.

"...But is raising a level that easy? I've already gone up by 0.3."

He tossed it out lightly, as if a little more effort might carry him all the way to 9.

"Tur—that is, that Archmage—was level 8.9. If you fought and beat opponents of about that level just six more times, it would probably go up."

"......"

The dead-serious answer left him with nothing to say. Being told to fight a monster like that six more times and win was no different from being told to survive a skydive with no gear at all. To say it again: he had been lucky, and victory had come only because one circumstance had piled onto another. That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠monster had never been weak.

And then—

"For reference, going from 8.9 to Lv. 9 isn't a matter of experience. You have to clear an epic quest."

"...Though I imagine that's still a long way off."

"Mm. So you're saying it's a long road from the Harmony Realm to the Profound Realm..."

"......"

"Why?"

"...Isn't the Harmony Realm a bit unfashionable these days? The recent trend is that after Transcendent Peak, saying Divine Entry or Absolute Master has a lot more style..."