36. Am I really like a villain?

It seems that the “father” has grasped my abnormal “relationship” with Nilu from various angles, and the other characters, likely his lackeys, are being quite aggressive. Their goal is simple: to coax and deceive, to frighten and manipulate, so that all the other saint candidates, except for his precious daughter, withdraw from the second round of selection on their own!

Nilu is just one of them, and the means they are using is to threaten me with my “relationship” with Nilu! Although I’m not pleased, this method is indeed effective. Even without any regulations, in the eyes of the followers, the saintess should be a pure and noble maiden. No one would want to see a scene like “the saintess hugging a man’s arm to get elected.”

The threat made Nilu look over at me in a state of “panic.”

“What… what should we do?”

“What else can we do? Isn’t it because you insisted on dragging me off to be all lovey-dovey that day? Now we can only give up, right?”

After softly “scolding” Nilu, I turned to the father, who seemed to think his threat had succeeded, lounging in his chair, waiting for us to “make demands.”

“We’ll give up, but we want compensation! Otherwise, we’ll spill the beans!”

“Not a problem. We will provide you with enough money to live comfortably in another country. However, I trust we don’t need to remind you again? You are not to say a word about today’s events in the future, or else…”

“Am I worried that you might leak it? Do you think anyone else knows about what you’ve done!?”

“Hmph, do you think we’re fools!? Of course, no outsiders know!”

As he spoke, the father tossed a card over to us and waved his hand to shoo us away. “Take this ticket, go to the church’s relief center to get some money, and then get lost!”

“Really, no one else knows? Really, really?”

“Enough already! I said no one knows! Why are you so nagging like a woman!?”

The father nearly threw the teacup on the table at my face.

But hey, don’t be angry, lackey brother. I’m asking so many times just to confirm, right? After all, on crucial matters, I have to double-check until the script appears.

[No one outside the scene knows about the father driving away the saint candidates.]

The script appeared, and the content was incredibly clear. Since no outsiders know what happened here today, then…

There’s no need to hold back anymore!

I stepped forward, thinking I was going to take the money and leave with Nilu, but the man, who I assumed was the father, showed a hint of disdain in his smile and had no intention of acknowledging me again. Then…

I yanked his head down and slammed it onto the table with a loud “bang!”

As his scream echoed, I turned to Nilu, “Nilu, as long as this man is who we’re looking for, the rest doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, I’ll take care of it right away, Wang.”

The fiery fairy, Jias, immediately flew out. The father’s lackeys hadn’t even had time to react to what was happening before they all fell to the ground, unconscious, having been hit by the “command.” When they wake up, their memories of everything that just happened in the room will be altered by Jias, and during this time, Nilu and I have important matters to attend to.

That is… the identity of this father, who I had just slammed down, blood streaming from his nose, leaving him dazed. He was the reason I had been pretending to be deaf and mute for so long, waiting until I was sure no one else knew what had happened today before I turned the tables.

“Who… who are you!? How dare you…”

“Enough with the nonsense.”

I delivered a punch to the top of his head, knocking some sense into him, and said, “I know you want your precious daughter to enter the final selection. We’re not really interested in this ‘New Saintess’ business; you can choose your daughter if you want. However, we came to find you for one thing…”

As I spoke, I approached the father, using a tissue to stop the blood from gushing out of his nose, so it wouldn’t make “cleaning up” later a hassle, while I looked into his panicked eyes.

“Which ‘faction’ do you belong to in the church?”

“!”

The matter of factions seemed to be of great importance to these church folks. The father, who had just been panicking, tensed up like a wound-up toy upon hearing my question, and immediately began to resist violently!

“Someone, come quickly…”

Fortunately, Nilu was quick to react and wouldn’t let him call for help. With a wave of her hand, the father’s entire head stuck to the table as if glued with super glue!

“Although your daughter boasted a bit before, it seems there’s some truth to it after all.”

“You… who are you!?”

“You don’t need to know that. You just need to understand: weren’t you just enjoying scaring the saintess candidates? Now it’s our turn to scare you. If you don’t reveal your identity, I’ll knock you out so you won’t remember anything today, and then… everything you’ve done to the other saintess candidates, all the threats and deals, will be exposed. By then, don’t say your daughter has no chance of becoming a candidate; your whole family might be wiped out.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I sounded like a villain saying this, but… whatever, the script is what matters. Besides, Kefer couldn’t see me, so she definitely wouldn’t hate me.

“However, if you honestly confess, I will treat it as if nothing happened. You can continue to manipulate your daughter in the shadows, and we won’t stop you. I’ll give you ten seconds to think. 10, 3, 1.”

“Wait, wait! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!”

In a panic, the father quickly raised his hands in surrender: “I… I’m a member of the church responsible for gathering important mission intelligence.”

“Name?”

“Our faction is called ‘The Eye of Order.'”

【The Eye of Order, a faction within the church responsible for collecting information and tracking specific individuals.】

The script appeared, gathering intelligence, grasping clues, the church’s ‘eyes’—well, the name does have a certain elegance to it. Moreover, the script had already emerged, and the father indeed wasn’t lying to me.

So…

“What does it mean to select a new saintess? What is her identity, where does she operate? Since you collect intelligence, you must know the information about the personnel within your church, right?”

However, this time, the “eyes” before me were not very useful.

“I… I don’t know.”

Nilu clicked her tongue and seemed ready to use Jias to “command” him, but I stopped her because the script indicated that the father really didn’t seem to know.

“Those big shots in the church, something like the Blade of Order, they are responsible for…”

“Nilu, that’s enough, clean it up.”

“Yes, my king.”

I didn’t bother with the father anymore; after all, what he said next would surely just be some nonsense already laid out in the script, and it was better not to waste time.

Yet, going around in circles, should I say it was inevitable? We found ourselves facing that nun, who claimed to represent the goddess, the pure white nun Urasilu, a member of the “Blade of Order.” This new saintess selection must surely be her directive.

Thus, it was pointless to keep questioning a mere informant here. Ensuring he wouldn’t pose a threat to us again, then the “plan” could move on to the next step.

“Nilu, the opportunity has come. Next, Jias, go ahead and ‘command’ this man according to my words.”

Glancing sideways, I felt as if Nilu was just about to kneel respectfully before me. I shook my head, not wanting to dwell on why that was.

“Then we can go back to that nun,”