Saint Grand Fort

"Whew..."

Watching the four vicious-looking mercenaries leave, Orn, Reilo, and the knights could not help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Orn extinguished the fireball in his hand and sighed. "The title of magician really is useful, isn't it? Much more intimidating than scholar. We finally scared them off. I don't want to die on the way to the Grand Natural Sciences Academy!"

"Angartulakrelina Yesusa..."

The elven girl came before them, speaking Elvish with tears in her eyes. She stood there helplessly, as though the tears might fall at any moment.

Seeing Reilo still wearing a stiff expression, Orn teased, "Hey, it's fine, they've already left. Give me back my notebook. I'll see if there are any books on Elvish in the Space Box."

The knights dismounted one after another, removed their helmets, and wiped the nervous sweat from their foreheads.

Looking at the elven girl, beautiful as a painting and utterly helpless, the female knight was filled with sympathy. She turned to Orn, who was rummaging through the Space Box for books on Elvish, and said, "More than Elvish, she needs clothes and food right now!"

"Huh?"

Orn suddenly realized. "I forgot!"

Reilo had only just recovered from the tense standoff, but the Space Box in Orn's hand left him stunned once again.

Orn took out a box the size of a makeup case. When he opened it, he somehow pulled out dozens of books and all sorts of miscellaneous items. It was as if the box contained endless space.

After a while.

After drinking some water, eating some soft bread, and putting on clothes, the elven girl looked at everyone gratefully and kept speaking in Elvish. Orn sweated profusely as he translated, but he could only barely make out a few words, and even those he was not certain of. This also let Reilo see a more genuine side of Orn.

"Um... I know some Elvish."

Reilo, who had remained silent all along, suddenly spoke softly.

Everyone fell silent and stared at Reilo in amazement.

Seeing everyone looking at him that way, Reilo blushed and said, "When I studied at The Church before, I aspired to become a Missionary, devote my life to the great God of Light, and spread the light in remote regions. So I learned some Elvish, though only the most basic parts."

"Why didn't you say so earlier? You made me embarrass myself!"

Orn complained as he put away the Elvish book he had almost never read.

But Reilo seemed deeply shaken. In a low voice, he said, "Because... I have lost my faith."

As everyone watched in disbelief, Reilo took out the Brocade Badge and Evolution's Profound Meaning, then looked at Orn. "My father gave me this."

"A contribution badge from the Grand Natural Sciences Academy!"

Orn recognized the badge in Reilo's hand at a glance. After freezing in disbelief, he suddenly reacted and said in astonishment, "A fellow student?"

The group had been stunned by Reilo again and again. They had never expected that this commoner they had casually joined up with by the roadside was actually a scholar heading to register at the Grand Natural Sciences Academy!

Reilo sighed. "Pioneer Antonio said that the progress of knowledge lies in constantly questioning oneself, while Pious Faith requires one to constantly reaffirm oneself. The two can never coexist. I... betrayed my faith."

There was some desolation in Reilo's voice.

Orn, however, said excitedly and dismissively, "If I believed in the God of Light, I would have had my father donate all the gold coins he spent supporting my studies and experiments over the years to The Church in exchange for a noble title! Rather than believing in the God of Light and reciting the Festival of Light day after day, the endless challenge of achieving the Mathematical Foundation excites me far more! They pity me for having no faith, but I pity them for their ignorance! Hahaha!"

For a time, Reilo, rather than the elven girl who should have been the center of attention, became the protagonist.

Orn continued, "Wonderful! We'll be fellow students from now on! Since you have a contribution badge, the academy should assign you an introductory mentor after you arrive. Are you planning to study Evolution's Profound Meaning?"

Looking at the enthusiastic and excited Orn, Reilo replied, "Uh? I don't know either. But we should talk while we travel. It would be bad if those mercenaries came back, and we can also ask this elven... lady what exactly happened."

"Yes, right!"

Orn answered as if suddenly enlightened.

After packing up the camp, Reilo and the elven girl followed Orn into the carriage and continued onward under the escort of four knights.

As the sun gradually rose, the thick fog in the forest slowly dispersed.

Along the way, Reilo kept communicating with the elven girl in his clumsy, almost never-used Elvish. Together with hand gestures, he finally learned her background.

"My name is Krelina. I come from the Moon Tree Tribe. When I went out to gather honey, those bad people captured me and brought me here. Sob, sob... I was so scared..."

Sure enough, she had been captured by those mercenaries to be sold as an elven slave!

"Captain Basse guessed right. Those heartless mercenaries sell elven slave girls for gold, building their happiness on the suffering of others! They capture innocent elven girls and make them slaves for those rotten nobles, satisfying their filthy desires and damaging the Grand Duchy's reputation!"

The female archer outside the carriage gritted her teeth. Through the curtain, she kept patting the elven girl's shoulder to comfort her, while looking at Orn with eyes full of admiration for his rational sense of justice.

Orn said, "Those mercenaries are hateful, but the truly hateful ones are the rotten nobles who keep elven slave girls! I have long heard that some decayed nobles appear to worship the God of Light devoutly, yet secretly do filthy and despicable things. They are as evil and corrupt as the Witchers of the Dark Age!"

Reilo opened his mouth. Hearing the word Witcher, he did not know what to say.

The Dark Age, when Witchers ran rampant, had long become history. This was an era ruled by The Church of Light, and at least on the surface, humanity maintained a beautiful facade.

As the only true god worshipped by humanity, the God of Light had completely saved mankind from those years filled with the fear of death. The Witchers, along with the Black Death they created, had vanished forever upon blazing Execution by Fire. Only a few remnants remained, no longer capable of stirring up trouble, trembling as they hid in shadowed corners and struggled to conceal themselves.

Not noticing Reilo's abnormality, Orn solemnly said to the elven girl, "I swear upon the honor of the Ridge Family that I will safely send you home. On behalf of the Grand Duchy, I offer you my sincere apology. Please believe that those filthy, corrupt nobles are only a minority. Most humans living on this land possess hearts that uphold light, justice, and goodness!"

"Th-thank you!"

At that moment, the elven girl finally relaxed completely. Looking at Orn, who was filled with justice, at Reilo, who struggled to translate, and at the sympathetic female knight outside the window, she shed tears of gratitude.

Two days later.

To the clip-clop of horseshoes striking bluestone pavement, Reilo and the others finally arrived at Saint Grand Fort, the capital of the Grand Duchy.

Among the countless human city-states established around the Aurora Empire of Light, there were only six duchies large enough to be called major duchies. The Grand Duchy was one of those six great duchies among humanity's many states.

Lake Onyx Town lay in the heartland of the duchy. Reilo had taken less than three days to reach Saint Grand Fort, while Orn's journey had taken a full eight days. This showed just how vast the duchy was.

Only such large duchies possessed enough wealth to build Royal Academies of Natural Sciences, establish Royal Academician Committees, create Mercenary Associations, and so on, offsetting some of The Church's ruling influence and granting the Royal Family greater secular power.

As for the many tiny states, their beliefs were often extremely harsh. The ideas of freely pursuing truth had never truly been enlightened there, atheists were all heretics, and the so-called King mattered far less to commoners than The Church. Naturally, such places had no ability to build academies or produce so-called magician scholars.

Dong...

A majestic bell rang out.

Through the carriage curtain, Reilo gazed past the richly dressed pedestrians lining the streets of Saint Grand Fort and toward the distant Saint Grand Cathedral. He could not help murmuring absentmindedly, "It's truly magnificent."

The white marble cathedral with its domed roof stood a full hundred meters tall!

From afar, the cathedral seemed shrouded in golden clouds. That was Holy Light, formed from the prayers of countless devout believers and nearly condensed into substance, gathering atop every inch of that cathedral, all of which could be called art.

As the bells rang, passersby stopped what they were doing and adopted prayerful postures. Even the young knights escorting Orn were no exception.

"It truly is great. The God of Light has always loved miracles."

Only the middle-aged knight leader echoed the sentiment.

Reilo noticed that although the man gave a slight bow, he did not pray.

Sensing Reilo's gaze, the middle-aged knight leader's eyes beneath his metal helmet still shone with the rational light of independent thought. He calmly said, "I believe in the Goddess of Wisdom."

The Goddess of Wisdom was one of the many subordinate gods beneath the true God of Light.

Then the middle-aged knight leader looked at the elven girl beside Orn. A trace of tenderness appeared in his stern gaze as he continued to Reilo, "After you and the young master register at the academy, we will take responsibility for bringing her to the Mercenary Association and posting the appropriate mission to ensure she returns safely to her homeland."

"Mm."

Reilo said nothing more.

On the other side of the carriage, Orn held an illustrated book as he looked through it with the elven girl. It appeared to be an illustrated guide to ancient Magical Beasts. The elven girl read it with great interest, her long, fair fingers constantly turning the pages and her narrow lashes fluttering, temporarily forgetting her sorrow.

Orn glanced at the Saint Grand Cathedral outside and said rationally, "According to mathematical logic, even the Creator of Light is not omnipotent, because he can never create a stone he himself cannot lift. Therefore, the Law of Truth must stand above the Creator of Light, existing beyond his influence."

Reilo froze and stared at Orn in disbelief, as if he had received an unprecedented enlightenment of wisdom.

That's right!

If the Creator of Light could create such a stone but could not lift it himself, how could he be called omnipotent?

And if he could not create such a stone, then he was even less worthy of being called omnipotent!

In that instant, the fear in Reilo's heart toward the Creator of Light, born from his Witcher bloodline, receded greatly. He also became filled with confidence in the Law of Truth that Antonio, who published Evolution's Profound Meaning, had always pursued, and the Law of Truth for which scholars had been burned at the stake for centuries before the Aurora Grand Cathedral of Light.

The Creator of Light was by no means omnipotent!

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