Gold coins were loaded box by box onto carts and transported to the underground treasury.
Two teams of fully armed high paladins were moving them.
Joen hadn’t been practicing magic for long and had never received a systematic magical education.
The variety of magic arts he knew was limited, so he used an extremely simple and crude method to keep watch.
He took advantage of the narrow slit in the holy knights’ helmets for vision.
By judging the blind spots of all the knights, he always stayed outside their field of view.
From an omniscient perspective, this scene was quite bizarre.
A tough guy was clearly in the room, yet no one noticed him, as if he were invisible.
Strange as it was, it was certainly effective.
Joen not only listened in on the entire conversation of the older knights but also remained completely undetected.
As he followed, one old knight grumbled.
“Gold Kuron… damn, that stupid rookie is really loaded.”
“Dumb rookie.”
“But hey, are we really turning all this money in? Not leaving a single Kuron for our Old City District Church?”
After moving the last box, a middle-aged knight with his back to Joen sighed.
“This is heavy!”
Another middle-aged knight, also full of resentment, asked the old knight with curiosity.
“Shh—keep it down. The Gold Kuron in this box isn’t being shipped to the Cardinal’s side. The last batch of donations was just sent. This batch… no rush.”
“Then where is it going?”
“To find a very powerful underground agent of order. People call him Xiao Lage. We’re delivering this batch of gold coins to him.”
“Huh? Xiao Lage? Isn’t he the local gang boss?”
“Don’t ask about things you shouldn’t. Bishop Icot gives the orders; just follow them. Asking so many questions—what, are you going to report him?”
“How could I? Heh heh… The Bishop treats us so well. He gives out big annual bonuses and occasionally hooks us up with some pretty demon collaborators. I’d never betray the Bishop.”
“Good. Just don’t become a traitor.”
The holy knights gradually moved away, but Joen stood there, still a bit stunned.
Bishop Icot was obviously a bad person and most likely embezzling, yet these knights supported and defended him so much.
Commander Haran was clearly a good man, yet everyone only thought of him when they were in trouble, begging for his help, while usually keeping their distance and ignoring him.
This contrast made Joen gradually feel how pale and powerless the things he once believed in truly were.
Liya naturally didn’t have all these complicated thoughts like Joen.
She dangled her little legs, sitting on Joen’s shoulder, hugging his ear like a teddy bear.
She watched the knights’ retreating backs with curiosity, many questions surfacing in her mind.
“Xiao Lage,” she knew him.
Doing business in the Empire Capital, it was hard not to know the king of the city’s dark order.
But well… this “underground godfather” was just a nice title.
In reality, in a place like the Empire Capital, where hidden dragons and crouching tigers abounded, as a gang boss, he could only keep his tail between his legs.
He was a pure pushover, bullied from all sides, afraid to offend anyone.
The Church and the gang had never had any dealings, not even the slightest connection.
So Liya was quite curious.
That Bishop Icot was transporting the Church’s donations to a gang boss… what was he trying to do?
Embezzle public funds to invest for profit?
But from what she heard, the church donations were settled at the end of the month.
In just a month, what could he invest in?
“Let’s follow them and see~”
Liya’s little face pressed against Joen’s ear, the tip of her nose rubbing affectionately, then she used her soft, sweet voice to coax.
“Okay.”
Joen’s ear tingled slightly, but the tickle also pulled his heart out of the gloom.
He stroked Liya and couldn’t help but agree.
After the holy knights left the underground treasury, they circled to the back door of the church.
Before going out, they deliberately took off their standard holy knight armor and disguised themselves.
This forced Joen to give up his ghost-like trailing and keep a bit more distance.
After all, without helmets, a person’s field of vision was quite large, making it hard to find a blind spot that could hide a “big guy” like Joen.
He followed all the way.
As expected, the holy knights transported the gold coins to a quiet, hidden upscale apartment in the civilian district.
After handing over to the apartment steward, the holy knights collected their reward and left contentedly, discussing where to have fun tonight.
Joen passed by them with a blank expression.
“Next step is to infiltrate this apartment and look for clues, right?”
Liya asked.
“Mm-hmm!”
Liya nodded to herself.
Infiltrate…
Joen thought to himself that he hadn’t learned any magic related to rogues.
Well, he’d just try.
He felt a little nervous.
The infiltration process went surprisingly smoothly.
After activating “Super Speed,” the entire apartment entered a time-stopped state, so naturally no one could find Joen.
There were many rooms, so he couldn’t search them all one by one.
But fortunately, Liya had sharp eyes and recognized the study that was the most elaborately and expensively decorated.
After searching inside, they indeed made a discovery.
It was a secret correspondence between Bishop Icot and Xiao Lage.
“I never expected the church bishop to have such close ties with a gang boss.”
“Let me see what this letter says.”
“Dear Mr. Xiao Lage, the twelve women with Demon-God Affinity you ordered have been delivered to the usual place. Happy Autumn Wave Festival.”
Slap!
Liya slammed the letter, which was wider than her own body, heavily onto the desk.
She was stunned for a moment before coming back to her senses.
“Wow, an unexpected bonus!”
The Church had no human trafficking business.
The women Icot sold to Xiao Lage clearly could only be his own private deal.
He couldn’t possibly be selling nuns.
So there was no need to guess who these “women with Demon-God Affinity” really were.
And to ensure a steady supply, the knights would naturally have to step up their efforts, creating plenty of wrongful cases, framing carefully selected innocent citizens as demon collaborators and arresting them.
“What’s going on? What’s going on?”
Joen looked at the letters with great curiosity.
“Hold on, let me look through these and sort things out.”
Liya pulled out many letters exchanged between Bishop Icot and Xiao Lage and began quickly flipping through them one by one.
Soon, she roughly understood the relationship between the two.
In short, about twenty years ago, for some unknown reason, Xiao Lage needed a large number of humans with Demon-God Affinity, especially women.
So he naturally approached the Old City District Church at the time, wanting to buy the demon collaborators and black magicians who were scheduled to be burned at the stake.
The previous bishop sternly rejected the deal, considering it a blasphemy against the Goddess and justice.
But at that time, Icot, who had many brothers and was a smooth talker, got some crooked ideas in his mind when he heard this.
What do you mean disagree?
This was a good thing!
It was both recycling waste and making money.
At that time, the Church was short on funds, and the knights could barely afford to eat meat.
Why should the bishop make autocratic decisions and stop everyone from living a better life?
With the tacit approval of others who also had selfish desires, Icot visited Xiao Lage late at night and finalized the cooperation agreement.
Part of the gold coins went into his personal pocket.
The other part was invested back into the Church to improve the knights’ daily lives.
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