Chapter 73: The Sane Man Among Madmen

Chapter 73. The Sane Man Among Madmen

I glanced toward the previous servant, who was somehow still standing near the doorway with the expression of a man desperately wishing he’d never asked his employer about mysterious bloodstains.

"There’s no dagger. Leave."

"Yes, My Lord."

That alone made him disappear.

Fast.

The moment the door closed, my attention returned to Mira.

"Speak."

Mira approached the table. Her expression remained professionally calm, but I noticed the slight stiffness in her shoulders.

"I just received a new order from Saintess Elia. She wants me to bring you to the Light Temple."

I lowered my hand. "Do you know why?"

"They didn’t give me many details, My Lord." Mira paused. "But they mentioned that the Holy Relic would take care of the rest. My only instruction is to bring you at least as far as the Holy City."

My expression didn’t change.

Inside my head, however, an entire research department immediately woke up.

The Holy Relic.

That narrowed their intentions considerably.

Either they wanted to examine me...

Or...

My thoughts returned to Seris’s report yesterday.

The Light Temple wanted to control me.

If they couldn’t control me, they wanted me dead.

It made sense.

The powers I’d displayed during the hunt were nothing like Rey’s original magic. Black flames. Strange water. Voidwind. Obsidian earth. Eclipse Light. Abyssal Darkness.

Then there was the monster evolution.

"Apart from bringing me to the Holy City, anything else?"

Mira shook her head. "No, My Lord. But I need your answer. They want to know when you’ll leave and where you’ll arrive so preparations can be made."

"I’ll tell you later."

Mira bowed. "Yes, My Lord."

She turned and left.

I watched the door close behind her.

Then I casually picked up another piece of pastry and took a bite.

I chewed slowly.

My face remained calm while my brain abandoned breakfast entirely and entered researcher mode.

The Holy Relic.

Now that was something Evan Veyr knew very well.

Or rather, I knew what remained of it thousands of years from now.

The Light Temple still possessed the relic in my era. It was one of their most sacred artifacts, protected inside the central sanctuary behind enough barriers to make stealing it slightly more complicated than declaring war on a small country.

Ordinary visitors could only see it from afar.

Even nobles had restrictions.

Researchers?

Normally also no.

Fortunately, I’d been extremely annoying.

Persistent too.

Eventually, after months of applications, recommendations, arguments, academic credentials, security checks, and one truly ridiculous meeting where three priests asked whether scientific examination could somehow offend an inanimate object, my research team received permission to study it at close range.

I remembered the first time I’d stood beside it.

The mana pressure had been incredible.

Pure Light Mana.

Ancient.

Dense.

Stable.

The Holy Relic had been categorized as one of the surviving Sacred Artifacts from this era.

Its most famous function was detecting corruption.

Dark Lord’s power.

Corrupted mana.

Foreign contamination within the soul or mana core.

The Light Temple’s records claimed the relic could never be tainted because its Light Mana continuously purified itself.

Which was fascinating.

Also incorrect.

Because Evan Veyr had discovered something extremely inconvenient.

The Holy Relic could be corrupted.

Not easily.

But under the correct conditions, its self-purification cycle could be overwhelmed, reversed, and eventually contaminated.

I had measurements.

Mana-frequency readings.

A simulation model.

Naturally, I’d brought my findings to the modern Light Temple.

They’d been thrilled.

By which I meant they wanted me to shut up.

Apparently telling a religious institution that one of its supposedly incorruptible sacred artifacts was, scientifically speaking, very corruptible wasn’t considered polite conversation.

Who knew?

I’d argued that denying the weakness made the artifact more vulnerable.

They argued that publishing the weakness would undermine faith in the Temple.

I argued that Dark Mana didn’t care about public confidence.

They stopped inviting me to meetings.

My research had a strange habit of making important people angry.

Now, thousands of years earlier, the same artifact was waiting for Rey Valen.

Except it was far younger.

Possibly stronger.

Definitely less degraded.

I took another bite.

In this era, the Holy Relic wasn’t merely ceremonial.

It was part of government security.

High-ranking officials and nobles entering sensitive royal positions were examined by it first. The procedure was intended to prevent the Dark Lord from planting corrupted agents inside human governments.

Even the Five Heroes had undergone examination before beginning our journey.

All five had stood before the relic to prove none of us carried Dark Lord corruption.

Rey had passed.

Obviously.

That had been before the final battle.

Before Rey absorbed the Dark Lord’s corrupted power into himself.

Now?

I slowly stopped chewing.

There was the problem.

If they put me in front of the Holy Relic now, it would almost certainly react.

My Forbidden Energy had originated from the Dark Lord’s curse.

The system converted it.

Refined it.

Changed it.

Made it mine.

To the relic, I might look like a walking corruption reservoir wearing a handsome human body.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t completely inaccurate.

The bigger question was what they planned to do after it reacted.

Detection alone wouldn’t require Mira secretly bringing me to the Holy City.

They could simply summon me officially.

Send priests.

Request royal cooperation.

Instead, they were using a planted servant.

Quietly.

And according to Mira, once I reached the Holy City, the Holy Relic would "take care of the rest."

I didn’t like that sentence.

It had the same energy as a researcher saying, ’Don’t worry, we’ll see what happens after injection’.

Those words had preceded some of Evan’s most expensive laboratory accidents.

"You shouldn’t go." Nia’s voice finally pulled me from my thoughts.

I turned.

She had moved closer while I was thinking. Her playful expression from earlier was gone, fox ears standing alert while her tail had stopped its lazy swaying.

"They’re trying to trap you."

"I know." My answer came casually.

Too casually, judging by the look she gave me.

Nia leaned forward. "Rey."

"I said I know."

"And you’re smiling."

Was I?

I touched the corner of my mouth.

Apparently I was.

A slow smile had appeared without permission.

Nia stared at it suspiciously. "That is not your normal smile." Her eyes narrowed. "That one means you’ve found something dangerous and now you’re curious."

Damn.

My wife knew me too well.

Because yes.

Now I actually had the chance to experiment on the Holy Relic and confirm something Evan had only proven thousands of years later.

That supposedly incorruptible thing could be corrupted.

And unlike modern Evan, who had needed permissions, research proposals, temple supervision, seventeen signatures, and enough paperwork to murder an entire forest, Rey Valen possessed something considerably more convenient.

Actual Dark Lord corruption.

Inside him.

But there was another opportunity here.

A much bigger one.

Before the others smeared my name further and successfully branded me as the next Dark Lord, I wanted to continue the plan I’d already started yesterday.

Turn the table.

The hunting-ground incident had given me the perfect opening.

Ironically, I’d been the one accused of insanity for months, yet yesterday I had somehow emerged looking like the most reasonable person among the Five Heroes.

There was an old problem with sanity.

Put one sane man in a room full of madmen, and if all the madmen agreed he was crazy, eventually everyone outside the room started wondering whether they were right.

That was basically my situation.

Except now the madmen had started punching each other in public.

Of course, the factions backing the other four heroes wouldn’t suddenly believe me. The Holy Knights would listen to Darius. Assassins Valley would believe Raven. The Iron Vanguard would defend Garr, and the Light Temple would naturally side with Elia.

Trying to convince those organizations directly would be pointless.

So I wouldn’t.

I’d convince everyone else and corner them.

Nobles.

Merchants.

Officials.

Soldiers.

Common citizens.

People who had no reason to blindly worship one particular hero.

Yesterday had already planted doubt.

Now the Light Temple wanted to drag me into the Holy City and test me with their sacred artifact.

I slowly leaned back.

If they wanted a public demonstration of whether Rey Valen was corrupted...

Why should I refuse?

Better question...

Why should I let them control how that demonstration happened?

Because the Light Temple thought they were preparing a trap.

I was starting to wonder whether I should help them build it.