A Minor Trouble

"?" Though Adam was somewhat puzzled, he still nodded in agreement.

As he carried the spellbook out of Reflection Tower, the central tower outside happened to toll five times. It was already five in the evening.

"It's a bit far. I'll have to run faster." Hugging the book, Adam ran toward the Boku Family residence.

Along the way, he thought about Alva and Anthony.

After entering Reflection Tower, both Xilin and Anthony had said that no one had come by in a long time. Anthony's occasional flashes of loneliness made that even clearer.

Anthony had probably been in Reflection Tower for a very long time.

"Anthony Ratu Fernandes... that follows the format of a noble name." Adam recalled the full name Anthony had given when introducing himself. The name Ratu stood out in particular.

Generally speaking, nobles placed their noble name in the middle, and Alva's full name was Alva Ratu.

"Are they related?" Adam guessed, but the names did not quite fit. Though Alva lived in the noble district, he clearly was not considered a noble.

"Did he lose his noble name because of lost achievements or a lost noble crest?" When some nobles were stripped of their noble names, they chose to discard their family names and make their noble names their new surnames.

Alva's name seemed to be an example of that.

"The Holy Sound Three Heroes." Adam murmured that title once more. The Holy Sound Kingdom was a land where divine authority reigned supreme. Since Holy Sound Church was part of their title, the three of them should all have been priests back then.

And now, Xia Ya, who had once worn a gloomy expression, had become the head priest of Roa South District Church. Alva, whose smile had been especially brilliant, had become a slovenly painter. Anthony had become a spellcaster, hiding in Reflection Tower and refusing to go out, even unwilling to let others know he was still alive.

"Jin might know something." Adam thought of this, but he did not intend to tell Jin everything, at least not yet.

Jin was undoubtedly kind toward him, but even now, Adam did not understand why Jin held him in such high regard. Instinctively, he felt that Jin was hiding something.

If he told Jin about Anthony, it might trigger some serious trouble.

On the other hand, the intentions of the Holy Sound Three Heroes were fairly obvious, even though none of them had explained much to him.

Head Priest Xia Ya recognized his aptitude and wanted to guide him onto the right path, so he had wanted his old friend Alva to teach him.

Alva and Xia Ya held different opinions on this matter. For some reason, Alva had passed the task on to Anthony, who was hidden in Reflection Tower.

Though Adam had been involved in this series of changes, they had not happened because of Adam. Rather, it was because of past entanglements among those three that things had turned out this way.

"It's just that Alva will be my spellcaster teacher in public. Is Alva also working as a spellcaster?" Adam could not quite understand it.

Meanwhile, in the grand cathedral of the South District, the head priest stretched his old back and signed his approval on a document awaiting review.

Then he turned to Raven, who was still somewhat unaccustomed to things, and asked, "What do you think of that child Adam?"

Raven scratched his red hair, looking a little embarrassed. The head priest had neither rejected nor approved his application to change professions. Instead, he had told Raven to stay by his side and study for a while before awaiting his answer.

Thinking back on his interactions with Adam, Raven answered truthfully, "Adam is great. He's polite, well-liked, hardworking, and smart."

"That's good." The head priest nodded, then asked, "Then what kind of person do you think I am?"

"Head Priest, you are the person I respect most. You are kind, friendly, tolerant, and selfless. You possess virtues comparable to those of a saint." Raven said, his face flushing red, but every word came from the heart.

Ever since the head priest had taken over the South District Church, he had spent decades following the glory of the gods and teaching generation after generation of priests. He was widely recognized as Roa's finest priest.

"That's hard to say. When a man grows old, it is inevitable that he will have selfish motives." Xia Ya looked at the approval document before him. From the moment he signed it, Adam had become a registered spellcaster of the Church, subject to its supervision.

"For Adam, perhaps the best path would be to study at the Divine Academy and become a priest." The head priest muttered to himself, then began teaching Raven once more.

"Raven, remember this. The face a person presents and their true face are often not the same. Sometimes, that true face may be especially ugly."

"But we must remember the teachings of the gods. Even when facing the divine enemy that was a gathering of all evil, the gods offered counsel twice." The head priest said earnestly, "We are not gods, and cannot redeem alien divine enemies. But for those who have not sunk too deeply into ugliness, we should extend a helping hand, let them regain the light, and attain redemption."

"I am old. One day, I will return to the embrace of the gods. In the future, the Church should belong to young people like you." The head priest rose to his feet and handed Raven the duplicate approval documents. To Raven, who seemed to want to speak but held back, he said, "File one copy away. Take the other to the Boku Family and give it to Adam."

"Yes." Raven committed the head priest's words to heart, took the documents, and left to carry out his instructions.

After receiving the approval document, the priest in the archives raised his brows slightly. He silently took note of it, copied it onto another sheet of paper, and when he left the church, casually slipped it into a carriage.

After receiving the paper, the carriage quickly departed. Beneath the evening sun, the coachman saw a youth running by, but paid him no mind.

Adam turned his head and watched the departing carriage. The coachman's gaze could not escape his senses. Such glances were nothing unusual; in everyday life, people's eyes always wandered over others. What concerned Adam was the faint feeling that there was something in that carriage connected to him.

After committing the details of the coachman and carriage to memory, Adam continued running toward the Boku Family residence.

After some time, the carriage entered the noble district.

Before long, after passing through several hands, the paper arrived in the hands of someone Adam had encountered several times that morning.

Doug accepted the paper and narrowed his eyes, carefully analyzing the intelligence upon it. Calling in favors to obtain information from the Church had cost quite a bit, but now it seemed to have been worth it.

"He only became Alva's disciple in the path of spellcasting today?" Doug tapped the table, took a sip of water from a cup bearing the emblem of the Floating City, then gave Walker an order behind him.

"Send someone to make contact. Bring some gifts. It's unlikely, but if we can obtain the longevity medicine from him, then this small investment will be nothing." As a viscount, Doug had always lived by the principle of making more friends and fewer enemies.

For instance, this time, he had used another noble's quota for having a painting made to meet Alva, who had not welcomed him.

If not for the fact that several of his descendants were disappointments and he was truly in urgent need of longevity medicine, Doug would not have chosen to fall out with Alva this time either.

"Understood, my lord." Walker nodded, then took a small iron basin from the side.

Though everyone knew that nobles and priests colluded in certain dealings, everything had to be done in the shadows. No evidence could be allowed to surface.

When purchasing this information, the nobles and priests had laid down strict rules: the contents could not be copied, the original had to be destroyed after being read, and no one would be held responsible for the contents afterward.

A match lit the paper, which burned into ash in the iron basin. Naturally, someone would clean it away afterward.

What Doug did not know was that the servant responsible for clearing away the rubbish met someone else afterward.

"Father burned something?" The man looked middle-aged and bore some resemblance to Doug. He waved the servant away and began to think.

"That old bastard doesn't have an illegitimate son outside, does he?" The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. That old bastard had not liked him for a day or two, and no matter what, he refused to pass the crest on to him.

Over the years, he might have done a few things that had not gone particularly well, but he was the eldest son. If the crest was not passed to him, then who would it be passed to?

When that old bastard died, it might even cause even more chaos.

"No, I need to investigate who that old bastard has met recently." The old bastard thought he still controlled the entire family, but everyone knew he had coughed up blood some time ago and nearly died. There were plenty of people now willing to work for him.