Origin Knowledge-Sequence: Knight-Justice

Three-Star Hidden Objective: Personally participate in the "Westminster Supreme Conference—Formulation of Restrictions on Extraordinary Individuals" [Incomplete]

Game Rating: Two Stars

Countdown Refreshed: Current Death Countdown—"Fifteen Days," timer stopped

Item Obtained: Origin Knowledge—Sequence: Knight—Justice

Reward Ability Obtained: Firearms Mastery (Handgun-Type Weapons)

Special Settlement Reward: None

Note: Natural justice is an agreement that guides people to avoid harming one another and to benefit each other.—[Ancient Greece] Epicurus, "Fragments of Writings"

To prevent the Chief Player from experiencing mental confusion, Origin Knowledge would be automatically imparted after sleep.

This game was over.

Su Wen stretched lazily.

Then he picked up the phone on his bed and checked his messages.

In a game that concerned his life, he did not want to get distracted by his phone and die an untimely death, so he had set it to Do Not Disturb mode.

The top private message had arrived an hour ago.

It was from Jiang Menghan:

"Are you free tomorrow? Let's find somewhere to prepare for the Spiritual Energy Physics competition hosted by Yunzhou University."

True to his principle of never passing up a free lunch, Su Wen immediately replied:

"You're treating?"

Jiang Menghan replied quickly:

"I'm treating.

As for who pays... oh, right, I suddenly remembered that your prize money from the last competition is still in my account."

Su Wen replied:

"???

Watch your manners."

Below that,

Miss Jiang sent an innocent, adorable emoji.

It was hard to imagine the aloof Jiang Menghan doing something like that.

After all, the two had known each other since high school.

They could not have been more familiar with each other.

Su Wen knew that she merely sounded cold when she spoke; in reality, she had teased him plenty of times.

He had no choice. What if she picked some Four-Star hotel and ordered foie gras, abalone, and oysters? Half of his prize money would probably go toward the meal. He could only silently accept his fate:

"I suddenly think that street noodle shop from before would be fine."

Elsewhere,

Jiang Menghan leaned against her desk, clutching her phone. She gently tucked her hair behind her ear, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of her lips.

Her expression remained as indifferent as ever, but if Su Wen had been there, he probably would have been able to tell that she was in a fairly good mood.

Then,

the girl put down her phone.

She picked up Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy from the edge of her desk again.

Night fell.

Su Wen dreamed of a parchment scroll slowly unfurling.

The story within told of a witch hunt that had taken place in the Middle Ages.

He was a knight commander standing at the center of a Court of Judgment in medieval Europa.

But he could not control the scene and could only watch through a first-person perspective.

On both sides of the Court of Judgment,

stood commoners in worn linen clothes from the Middle Ages. They wept, screamed, and cursed:

"The Black Death was brought by the witch."

"Burn her! Burn her!"

"She's a demon!"

On the other side,

the witch, tied to an execution rack and covered in wounds, said weakly:

"I was only trying to save people. I did not bring the plague."

After that, the lengthy investigation process and case files continuously surfaced: history, disease, transmission.

The next second,

"he" slammed the judge's hammer in his hand down hard.

"I believe what she says. From Messina in Sicily to Florence in Italy,

what we need to find is not some pitiful scapegoat, but a way to defeat the plague."

Then,

the brief story came to an end.

Just as history repeated itself again and again,

in the fourteenth century, during the Holy See's witch hunts, only one Court of Judgment knight had declared the accused innocent.

Afterward, he was bound to an execution rack by the enraged crowd and burned alive with the witch amid roaring flames.

Several decades after that trial,

someone recalled the past.

He had once seen, within the fire, Raphael, the pure white guardian angel recorded in the Holy See's documents.

In an instant,

the dream shattered.

After waking up, Su Wen saw a notification appear on his computer:

The witch hunts of the Middle Ages arose from humanity's ignorance and fear of power. After the Origin Era, was the fear of extraordinary power any different from before?

Origin Knowledge—Sequence: Knight—Justice has been successfully recorded.

Origin Ability Obtained:

Condemnation: Based on the selected target's order deviation value, grants a bonus to your next instance of damage against them (0–500%; requires knowledge of the enemy's crimes, with the damage multiplier increasing according to the severity of those crimes).

Please Judge Me First: Select a target and bear part of the damage she receives next (damage ratio: 50%–95%).

Player Extraordinary Rank has advanced.

Current Rank: Extraordinary Rank One

Extraordinary Sequence: Knight

Su Wen felt a power unlike anything he had ever experienced filling his body.

Thanks to the Origin Origin Point bonus brought by the hyacinth, both his health bar and spiritual energy bar were exceptionally long.

"With this health bar, paired with the Justice branch Knight's second skill, if there's another game requirement like protecting Duke Reinhardt, it'll be a piece of cake."

Su Wen, who always liked choosing heavily armored warriors in games, was very satisfied with his current build.

Even though most of it had been randomly assigned.

He looked at himself in the mirror, at his well-proportioned body and eight-pack abs.

He could not help nodding to himself,

and then...

Su Wen spent a full thirty minutes admiring himself in the bathroom before putting on his white shirt.

"Moderate exercise attracts the opposite sex; excessive exercise attracts the same sex. That really does make sense."

He did not waste much time.

After all, he had arranged to discuss the competition with Jiang Menghan at a café.

Miss Jiang was very serious about her work. Every time, she arrived exactly as agreed and had never acted petulant with him when it came to proper matters.

As for the competition prize money, she had only said that in their chat. She had never embezzled the portion that belonged to Su Wen.

Precisely because she was lonely,

she possessed the pride of the lonely.

Su Wen felt that in this regard, the two of them were actually somewhat alike.

Twenty minutes later,

he arrived at their meeting place, the food street on the fifth floor of Coastal Mall.

But then he received a call from Jiang Menghan.

There was a trace of urgency in her icy voice over the phone:

"Su Wen, leave now. An extraordinary individual here has lost control."

"Where are you? Tell me your location."

Su Wen asked.

If it had been a day ago, he probably would have been the same as before, unable to save anyone, including himself.

But starting today, everything was different.

Beep, beep, beep.

The sound of the call disconnecting came from the other end.

She was really too stubborn.

Su Wen knew Jiang Menghan did not want him to be dragged into danger by her misfortune, so she had not told him where she was.

But the crowd in the shopping street before him was already fleeing in panic, and naturally, they were running away from wherever the danger had appeared.

Wait for me.

Su Wen silently said.

The Spiritual Energy Vortex within him instantly boiled.

Empowered by his extraordinary physique, he vaulted over the elevated railing and ran against the fleeing crowd without the slightest fear.