“Or perhaps, a lone wolf mercenary?” Erica curiously pointed out.

  Marcus scoffed.

  “I’m not that either.”

  “Then what the hell are you?”

  “Something…”

  “Something? That means nothing!”

  Stella, on the side, who had largely only revealed the surface about Marcus’ origins and arrangements with her, sighed.

  “Sir Marcus is simply quite secretive,” Stella said. “But what’s true, though, is that he’s quite powerful.”

  “How intriguing.” Erica placed a hand on her chin. “Then does that mean that, perhaps, his name is also fake?”

  “Hey, can we get our payment?” Marcus asked, now annoyed by this line of questioning. “I honestly don’t care what you designate me as.”

  “Well, I do care,” Erica said, placing her hands on her hips. “Stella was my student back in Sordale. While I don’t sense any hostile intent on your part, it’s quite clear that you have ulterior motives in taking her as your student.”

  Well, I do have an ulterior motive.

  I want to use her as my superweapon against the Death God should he return.

  But that wasn’t something he’d easily spill.

  “I’m not going to harm her,” Marcus said, bluntly. “But she’s very likely to get harmed under my wing. My enemies are quite the vicious bunch, after all.”

  “Ah…I see.” Erica turned to Stella with a concerned look. “You know, ever since you went to the Holy Church, you’ve been in quite a lot of trouble.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t say much more other than I’m working with them. Not at the moment, at least.”

  “I see. It feels like I’m being left behind in the dark at this rate,” Erica lamented before she went to her desk to take some things. “Anyway, about that mission you completed.”

  She placed multiple bags brimming with coins on her table.

  “That hydra subjugation quest was actually issued by none other than me,” she smiled. “Originally, it was an exploration mission to investigate a dungeon beneath that cave. But now, it’s nothing but a revenge mission for my sake.”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow as she inspected each bag.

  “Why so?”

  “It was my son and his party that originally fought there. Suffice it to say, he found his end there at the hands of those monsters.”

  Erica took a deep breath.

  “So thank you. I know it’s callous of me to issue that mission anyway after the hydras were found, but I wanted revenge for my boy. I know it sounds selfish and stupid, but I wanted it.”

  A mother’s wrath surely was scary, Marcus thought. But still, had he not completed it, it was likely that a lot more adventurers would have died on a revenge mission, under the guise of trying to find a new dungeon.

  She then handed the bags to Stella and Marcus.

  “That’s all. Thank you, thank you for satisfying my thirst for vengeance before things went haywire. Unfortunately, I fear that I’m getting too old for this job.”

  “Lady Erica…” Stella seemed worried.

  “You're welcome,” Marcus curtly said; he didn’t have anything to add.

  “That’s why, if you two have any more requests,” Erica smiled tiredly. “I’ll gladly meet it. Say, is there anything you two need before you depart Almarche?”

  Marcus and Stella looked at each other. Then, Marcus looked at the annoying bags of coins in his hand. He immediately whispered something to Stella, and her eyes widened before she nodded in agreement.

  Man, having connections sure is nice.

  Marcus looked at his new ID card issued by the Almarche adventurer’s guild. It included most of his information—well, the ones he wanted added anyway—and, of course, a rank.

  He was now a silver-rank adventurer. Adventurers were given ranks based on their recorded achievements, starting from bronze, iron, silver, gold, platinum, and finally diamond. He was now, therefore, someone with a similar rank to Stella.

  Most importantly, he managed to use this ID card for official business, opening an account in the Continental Astrea Bank under his name while being assisted by Erica.

  Depositing nearly three thousand gold coins’ worth of money, Marcus only needed a single bag of holding to keep the remaining one thousand gold coins on himself.

  It was good. It was useful. He was now a documented citizen of Sordale. Of course, that was a forgery, backed by a Sordalian princess, but hey, so long as no one tracked his paper trail and found nothing, he was golden.

  With the day winding down, Marcus and Stella returned to their hotel. While she went out again to eat dinner outside, Marcus began writing down his detailed assessment of her.

  He jotted down her strengths, weaknesses, and areas to be improved, and to what degree. In the end, he basically had a four-page document microanalyzing and nitpicking her abilities.

  By the time Stella came back and gave it a thorough read, her shoulders slacked and the previous life in her amethyst eyes died out.

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  “Sir Marcus…” she whined as she presented it to him. “What does this mean?”

  “It means that if you encounter any form of fully determined opposition, it’s over.”

  Her head hung low in shame. It was the look of a [Saint] who had somewhat given up on her life. Marcus crossed his arms and sighed.

  “But that’s why I said I’ll train you,” Marcus said. “We’re going to fix that. My estimate is it will take a year or two, give or take.”

  Light returned in her eyes as she looked back up to him, hope surging in her face.

  “Wait, for real?”

  “Depends. How diligent are you?”

  “Extremely!”

  “How long did it take you to finish your formal education?”

  “Eight?”

  “And when do noble children start their formal education nowadays?”

  “Um, at the age of twelve?”

  Thanks. Now, adding one or two years of experience in the Holy Church, she should be twenty-one or twenty-two.

  Marcus grinned internally. He didn’t break the rule his mother said about not asking women’s ages, so he just calculated it.

  His face didn’t show any outward changes, though. It remained dead neutral.

  “And how long do students take to finish their formal curriculum on average?”

  “...Eight?”

  “I see.”

  “Is that supposed to imply something?”

  “Nothing. But I am adjusting my estimates to three or four years.”

  Her shoulders sagged again as she looked down, her soul dying internally again.

  “I know I’m no prodigy,” Stella admitted. “And I’m mostly just…riding on the coattails of my blessed class, but…”

  “Raise your chin,” Marcus commanded, and she followed it immediately. “Straighten your back. Stand straight.”

  When she finished doing all that, Marcus leaned his back against the wall.

  “Look, my standards are just ridiculously high,” Marcus said. “But you already surpassed most of the [Saints] that I knew who fought against the demon horde ages ago.”

  “...Really?”

  “To be fair, it’s peacetime, but again, it’s not like you’re doing bad.” Marcus narrowed his eyes. “You just need to do more.”

  “I see…”

  “That, and even at your current capabilities, if you’re utilized well, you’ll be quite a hyper-lethal asset on the battlefield.”

  “Why do soldiers always refer to people like they’re tools…?”

  “Pardon my lingo then. I can’t help it. But, the point is, it’s not hopeless yet.”

  His voice boomed again.

  “Fight. Fight. Fight. As long as you keep marching onward, as long as you keep fighting, defeating your enemies, and improving—you’ll be someone. And when you are someone, you are living.”

  Marcus looked back at himself and his comrades. Sure, it was just him that survived; that was who he became.

  But all of his comrades who didn’t lay down their arms became better and stronger, and they did their part. For every battle won, every discovery made, every demon lord eliminated, the people who took part in that, even if they died—they became someone.

  Even if their paths ended in the underworld, they walked the path they chose for themselves. They all had their own stories.

  “When I say that if you fight, you’ll live, I didn’t mean that in a literal sense,” Marcus said. “To live is to assert yourself in this world, actively, under your own conviction and resolve. No matter what happens, so long as you fight, even if you die and are defeated, you live. Isn’t that what you want—to live as the [Saint]? Then keep your chin up. You still have a chance to be that person.”

  “Sir Marcus,” she smiled a bit. “I feel like…you’re speaking in front of a hundred soldiers.”

  His eyes widened.

  Indeed, he almost imagined his last company, the last unit he commanded for the final operation, all of them standing behind Stella.

  But it was only her alive now, his new and first subordinate in this world.

  Even then, as he said, all those dead men and women, the phantoms standing behind Stella—they all lived. Just like Marcus.

  “Maybe I am.” Marcus didn’t deny it. “What I said to them may also apply to you. After all, I stole this idea from someone else who wanted to hype me up.”

  And after that, I became someone who defeated the Death God. That was my story, because I fought.

  She’ll have hers too so long as she keeps fighting.

  Marcus walked past her, done with his speech.

  “Anyhow, you should retire for the night now. Ideally, we will leave tomorrow before noon.”

  Her reply was soft as he went to his room.

  “...Roger that, Sir Marcus.”

  “Impossible…”

  Archbishop Selena vi Lusbeck, the leader of the Ministry of Wholesome Love, collapsed on her knees after seeing the carnage inside the Parish of Unseen Eventualities.

  It was where the Ministry of Fervent Service, led by Archbishop Hector Langley, was headquartered. She saw his body, cold, dead, and rotting.

  Her men, members of the Death God Cult, continued searching through the remains of their fallen comrades inside. Meanwhile, her red eyes bulged, her hands pulling her pink hair, causing her to draw blood.

  “It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be! My Hector, my, my, my beloved Hector? Who took him from me? My dear Hector? He was soon to be mine, so why, why, why?!”

  Her knife-like ears trembled as one of the masked cultists under her employ whispered a report in her ear. Suddenly, in a snap, she stood up, her gloved hands aimed at the forest.

  “Find their trails then! I cannot, cannot, cannot overlook this! To break our budding romance, that little boy, he was mine, mine, mine! Why was he taken away? So coldly, so cruelly, so spontaneously?!”

  She screamed, angry at the perpetrator of this cold-blooded massacre.

  “Let them learn our wrath, my dearest boys! Teach them! Teach them the consequences of interfering with us and our love! I want their heads, their fresh corpses, their organs, and their innards, and I want to bathe myself in their blood!”

  The cultists circled her, all of them kneeling as she gave her commands.

  “They shouldn’t be too far! Seek them, and bring them to me!”

  As she looked at the moon at night, tears streamed down her cheeks while the cultists charged forward, though, strangely, instead of clear fluids, the tears that went down her face were pink. Her doll-like beauty was utterly ruined by it, as she now looked more like a crazed madman.

  “He was one of the strongest human boys I’ve met. Was I mistaken? Was he weak? No, that cannot be. If he were, then he should have accepted my advances, and then he wouldn’t have been killed! But he didn’t! I could have been his muse and guardian angel! Stupid, stupid, stupid Hector! Now you’re dead, dead, dead!”

  She planted her face in her hands as she continued sobbing.

  “You should have accepted me; instead, all you did was focus on the gospel’s demands.” Her tone turned soft and longing. “But no matter, no one takes away those whom I love, even if they don’t love me back.”

  She looked back at the abandoned cave, her voice trembling.

  “Yes, I’ll make sure you are avenged, my love. You can count on your most dearest mistress.”