Chapter 193
Chapter 193
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: EP.44 – The Knight Hates Romance Fantasy Events (4)
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It's not even funny.
No, correction: it's so absurd that it almost makes me laugh.
But if anyone thinks I'm laughing because I'm amused, they'd have to be incredibly oblivious or just suicidal.
"Suddenly someone knocked on the door, so I thought it was the maid or the instructor. Honestly, no one passes by here, right? So I figured it was someone I knew and opened the door, and suddenly there's this weird old guy? Then that old guy starts proselytizing out of nowhere, so I was flustered, wondering what the hell this was... it was pretty embarrassing."
"Why didn't you chase him off from the start? Did you learn magic just for show?"
"W-Well, even so, using magic on a priest is kind of..."
"......"
"Ah, I'm not a devout believer myself, but my parents are Chris... no! The orphanage I grew up in had a lot of devout people, so it was hard to be rude to a religious person... sorry. Still, thank you for helping."
"...Hah."
......How should he handle this half-baked layperson?
Lee Han wanted to smack his forehead.
She was just such an ambiguously tricky girl.
'She has a vague understanding of the power she possesses.'
Let's take a moment to review the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Irene Windler.
For starters, the girl was the adopted daughter of Duke Galahad.
The current head of the Galahad family—a great house even the royal family couldn't touch lightly—Duke Blake's adopted daughter, no less.
So, treating Irene Windler lightly would be an insult to Galahad, forcing even the royal family and the temple to break out in cold sweats.
In the worst case, if Galahad declared independence right now and branded the temple as enemies, the kingdom could split in two.
Unlike Lee Han, they had built up massive forces—not as individuals, but as an organization—so they might be the only faction capable of truly opposing the temple, unlike the current royal family that coexisted with it.
And yet, the adopted daughter of such a powerhouse didn't even realize the authority and status she held. That alone was enough to raise his blood pressure.
However...
'The power she has isn't just from Galahad.'
What raised his blood pressure even more was that this genius mage didn't know how to properly use her own power.
The girl possessed martial might.
Overwhelming might that could protect her.
A prodigy of the mage world with the talent of an archmage.
Even with talents not fully bloomed, she was a powerhouse who had threatened even the Demon King, and while Lee Han hated magic, he acknowledged her abilities and skills.
In other words, if the girl had willed it, chasing away the priest would have been easy, and she wouldn't have had to hear that rude nonsense from moments ago.
Yet the girl only wore a troubled expression after hearing all that...
'Damn it, she really is a romance fantasy heroine.'
He didn't know about other genres, but this fledgling mage was definitely a romance fantasy heroine, Lee Han thought with an inward click of his tongue.
Possessing such immense power yet acting like a pushover, unable to properly wield the strength she had—an ambiguously romance fantasy-possessed type.
Truly...
'A top-tier trash-tier one.'
It was the highest praise for a romance fantasy heroine.
Thud!
"........."
-The interns personally learned what it meant for a disaster to approach without a sound.
And rightly so.
"Confess obediently. It'll be better for you."
Irresistible disaster was upon them, wasn't it?
They broke out in cold sweats.
At that moment.
"Um, excuse me, c-could you please explain what exactly is going on here? I d-don't understand what this is about..."
One of the interns mustered great courage to ask.
He had just set down the fainted priest on the floor and commanded "confess," but the intern asking didn't even know who that priest was!
Nor did he know what wrong that priest had done to the monster for him to end up like that, and he couldn't fathom why the fire was spreading to them too.
...The intern's question was reasonable, in a way—a plea of injustice.
"-Cowards."
But the eyes of the one who received the question were endlessly cold.
"You, or whoever among you is hiding their true intentions, are surely cowardly and insidious scum."
"?"
"What did this priest do? He went next door proselytizing and got his ass handed to him."
"??"
"He openly insulted Galahad and nitpicked her for being born a mage, spouting all sorts of nonsense."
"!!!"
The moment the doubt 'Isn't proselytizing fair game?' arose, the interns paled at his following words and glared murderously at the fainted priest.
As if asking what the hell this mad bastard had done.
...There were two forces even the temple couldn't recklessly oppose.
One was Galahad, guardians of the lake, and the other was Lionel in the north, where fierce blizzards raged.
Forces that ignored the royal family and temple, capable of declaring independence from Pendragon whenever they wished.
Forces with the power to destroy the temple regardless of public opinion.
And this guy had insulted Galahad?
...It was no different from begging to be killed.
'Mad bastard.'
'What the hell is this guy?'
'Is he a heretic...?'
The interns—no, the inquisitors revealing their heretical interrogation faces—eyed the fainted priest with vicious glares.
Because they judged that this guy could put the temple in danger.
However,
"You know what? Only a tiny few know that my neighbor is Irene Windler. So how did this lunatic know and come all the way here?"
"━━."
...At his following words, they soon had to wear serious expressions.
If they couldn't understand what that meant, they should quit being inquisitors.
"Coming to this remote forest? Fine, that could happen. But this guy came prepared to proselytize, certain that the fledgling lived there. That means he was sure she lived in that house. On that note, I'm 'convinced' that one of you sold out our fledgling's information."
He was convinced right now that they had leaked Irene Windler's information to the temple.
They made aggrieved expressions, trying to protest.
It wasn't them!
However.
"-Yeah, it's you."
Krunch!
Lee Han's massive palm completely covered one inquisitor's face, and then.
Crunch-crunch!
"Gaaahhh!!"
With the sound of crushing, he let out a scream of agony.
Whoosh!
Before the inquisitors could intervene—no, even if they knew it was coming, they couldn't stop it—the terrifying presence poured from his body, making them tremble like lambs before a wolf.
"You dare try to deceive me by pretending you know nothing in front of me-? Do I look that much like a joke to you?!"
Krunch-crunch!!
The more strength he applied, the deeper the knight's fingers dug into the opponent's face, distorting it.
It looked like popping a balloon, and the thought that if it continued, the man's head would burst like a tomato turned their faces pale.
He was clearly one of the inquisitors who had challenged him the day before and been overwhelmingly crushed, but the presence he exuded now was on another level.
If yesterday's presence was a sharp blade wind, today's was the scorching heat of a furnace.
......They found it hard to breathe.
At that moment.
"-Wouldn't it be best to calm down?"
"......"
"You could kill him without issue, but you probably don't want the house smelling like blood."
"......"
"Besides, torturing yields more information than killing, doesn't it? Allow me to demonstrate the inquisitor's interrogation techniques."
"...Your skill at loosening tongues has improved."
"Thanks to you."
The woman who didn't yield an inch, asserting her opinion and advice.
Judia Pierre bowed her head in thanks to him as he gradually released the strength from his hand.
Catching a liar was easy for Lee Han.
He'd always been like a lie detector, but after his complete transformation, he could even detect information that detectors missed.
The slightly unexpected part was that it wasn't the nameless betrayer he'd suspected, but the woman in front of him.
"You probably already know that I've met with temple contacts."
...She boldly revealed what she'd been up to.
Even though she must know she could be suspected and killed for it.
Whether she had no fear or still believed the gods would handle everything, Lee Han silently stared at her from his handmade log chair.
"...Tone down the pressure a bit. It hurts."
But under Lee Han's gaze, though her face remained expressionless, her body was trembling.
Even she found it hard to endure his focused presence.
"You're exaggerating."
"......"
...It was unlikely, but she somehow looked aggrieved.
"...It's probably not an exaggeration?"
"Huh?"
"Look at the floor, the floor."
"?"
Derek, who had been hiding his presence, slyly approached with a wry smile and pointed at the floor.
What the hell am I supposed to see-.
"......What the? Why is this happening?"
The grass on the floor was all dying, and the handmade table he'd made was creaking with cracks forming.
As he marveled at the sudden desertification around him, Derek advised.
"Instructor, stop recklessly emitting your presence. No, you need to practice controlling it."
"?"
"Your level rose sharply."
"That again?"
Lee Han was dumbfounded at Taechang's whispering explanation, as if sharing a secret.
Level? As if he were a real game character or something—what the.
...Huh?
Wait a minute.
"I've reached the level of those monsters now?"
Lee Han tilted his head.
He had grown, sure, but compared to those guys Taechang mentioned as Lv. 9, he was still sorely lacking.
To that.
"Right, you're not quite there yet. But your level has definitely risen. Your current level is a whopping..."
"......"
"8.3."
"??"
......Why does the level have a decimal?
Lee Han tilted his head.
"Simply put, experience is accumulating. After hitting Lv. 8, you didn't rest—you just kept fighting, and fighting, and fighting like a maniac, right? Of course your level would rise."
...It made him sound like a battle-crazed lunatic, but he had no rebuttal.
He'd fought like hell, relentlessly.
"...But is leveling up that easy? It's already up 0.3?"
Lee Han joked that a bit more and he'd hit 9.
"Tyr, that archmage, was 8.9. Beat opponents of that level six more times, and it'll probably go up?"
"......"
He was speechless at the serious response.
Fighting and winning against that monster six more times without gear was like skydiving without a parachute and surviving.
To reiterate, he'd won through luck and overlapping circumstances, but that monster bastard was no weakling.
And.
"By the way, to go from 8.9 to Lv. 9 requires not experience, but clearing an epic quest called [Enlightenment]... That's still far off, though."
"Hmm, so like going from Harmony Realm to Enlightenment Realm is still a ways away..."
"......"
"What?"
"...Isn't Harmony Realm a bit outdated these days? The current trend after Super Peak is to say Entering the Divine Realm or Absolute Expert—that sounds cooler..."
"Hah...!!!"
Boom!
The living Jianghu martial world in Lee Han's heart roared like a lion.