Michelle frowned at his words. "Today's incident has already blown up this badly, and you still want to go back to the Riser Family and be your young noble master? Impossible."
Benjamin asked, "Why is it impossible?"
Michelle stopped walking and glanced around. Seeing that the place was secluded enough and that practically no one would pass by, she turned to Benjamin and said:
"An entire squad of Purifiers has died. The Church will never let this go. Even if the Church has an agreement with the nobility that prevents them from interrogating nobles, they will definitely find some way to get to you and read your memories. You're already a mage, so the Church's method of reading memories no longer works on you. Once that method fails, they'll discover that you're a mage."
...What did you say?
After hearing that, Benjamin felt as though his entire worldview had been overturned.
Never mind the agreement between the Church and the nobles—just the claim that the Church could not read a mage's memories. If the Church really had no way of reading mages' memories, then how had Benjamin's memories been read twice before? Was this a joke?
Yet, hearing the solemnity in Michelle's voice, Benjamin felt that she was telling the truth.
Then... what exactly was going on?
"I think she's right." The system suddenly popped up and spoke. "The first time your memories were read, it was the original memories of this body that were extracted. The second time, I submitted fabricated memories. Your real memories have never actually been read, so that method truly does fail on mages."
Benjamin froze.
Thinking it over carefully, that really did seem to be the case...
Once he understood this, many of the previous events suddenly made sense. No wonder the bishop had