John broke out in a cold sweat at Reina’s question.
He knew that she was a senior nun.
Of all people, I had to get on a senior nun’s bad side. My luck is fucking terrible.
Only women—nuns—lived in churches.
That naturally left them highly vulnerable to crime, yet crimes targeting nuns were surprisingly rare.
That was because every church had seven senior nuns assigned to it.
They might have been women, but none of them could be underestimated; every one of them was at least knight-class.
To John, who had done nothing more than grow up in a rural village, senior nuns were objects of fear.
"Ptooey. I said I wanted to rape the bride because she turned me on. So what?"
"K-Kaelen?!"
Kaelen, on the other hand, was different.
He ruled Entiel like a king, and having worked as a mercenary in the city for a while, he took great pride in himself.
Most of all, he believed women ought to serve as men’s footstools. There was no way he could cower before a mere nun.
"What, are you going to punish me over this? Fuck, can’t I even say whatever I want?"
Thinking the nun, who was far smaller than him, would be intimidated, Kaelen continued swaggering arrogantly.
"Kyahaha, this is fun."
But rather than being afraid, Reina laughed.
"Fun."
"Huh?"
Her chilling smile left Kaelen considerably flustered for a moment.
Senior nuns were certainly knight-class, but in terms of combat ability, they were weaker than knights.
Kaelen himself was knight-class, so he had no reason to fear one senior nun.
But Reina was a candidate for sainthood—in other words, a superhuman-class talent.
And her martial prowess was not merely limited to performing miracles.
Thanks to Ian, she had replenished the mental strength she had once lacked, and now she could wield holy power more freely than ever before.
Put bluntly, even if there were a thousand Kaelens, the current Reina could slaughter every last one of them within minutes without taking a scratch.
"Excuse me. Do you want to die?"
As golden holy power pressed down along with Reina’s words, Kaelen was unable to resist and fell to his knees.
Instinctively, he realized something.
The nun standing before him could crush him whenever she wanted.
H-help me.
All traces of his earlier confidence gone, Kaelen panicked and begged John for help with his eyes.
"I’m sorry!"
John promptly slammed his forehead against the ground.
"My friend drank in the daytime, and nonsense just slipped out of his mouth. Please forgive him!"
Only at his shout did the people nearby begin turning their attention toward them.
John smiled inwardly at the murmuring crowd.
Let’s settle this peacefully. Even a senior nun has to care what the believers think.
He thought Reina would let it go for the sake of appearances.
But Reina was not such an easy woman.
"Twenty gold coins."
"Pardon?"
"That is the price of an indulgence. If you committed a sin, you must pay the proper price. You dared to say, in front of a nun and during the Ceremony of Light, when we give thanks to the goddess, that you wanted to kill the groom and rape the bride. Did you really think a single apology would make it all go away?"
At Reina’s words, the people around them began to stir.
"I didn’t hear that wrong, did I? The bride may be beautiful, but did he just say that about a bride who is literally getting married right now?"
"Those men are villagers. They don’t have holy symbols around their necks."
"After what happened yesterday, there must be something wrong with this village."
John’s face turned pale at their whispers.
The crowd’s sympathies had already shifted to Reina.
"If you do not pay, I’ll break your arms and legs right here."
"W-wait a moment!"
Yet John could not readily answer Reina’s proposition.
Even as the village chief’s son, twenty gold coins was an enormous sum.
Kaelen, you fucking idiot.
John’s patience was nearing its limit because Kaelen kept ruining things every time just to protect his pathetic pride.
Still, he could not abandon Kaelen like this. He absolutely needed Kaelen’s fighting strength for his plan.
"I-I’ll pay. Please give me some time. Twenty gold coins is far too much money."
John replied while desperately wracking his brain.
"I’ll have it ready by next month."
Through Daevon, John remembered that the church would soon withdraw.
He intended to set a deadline, then skip out on the indulgence payment after the church had left.
"Fine. Put your thumbprint on this indulgence certificate."
Smiling at John’s answer, Reina took out a document she had kept tucked inside her clothes.
As though she had known this would happen and prepared for it in advance.
Do nuns normally carry things like that around?
John found it strange for a moment, but since he never intended to pay anyway, he pressed his thumb to the document without a trace of suspicion.
. . .
After the wedding ended, Isabelle and I went around greeting people.
"Haha! With that bearing, you are unquestionably a nobleman, yet you say you are a hunter? Who are you trying to fool?"
"You flatter me. Compared to the dignity you exude, great merchant, it is nothing at all."
"You’re an amusing fellow. Do I, a man who merely runs a single trading company, look like a great merchant to you?"
"At least to my eye, you were born with the fortune of wealth, great merchant."
"Hehehe, you are not as easy a target as I expected."
A potbellied middle-aged man laughed heartily.
He looked like one of those breeding-obsessed old men commonly found in erotic games, but he was not someone to take lightly.
To think I would meet this man here.
He was the slave trader who appeared in [A Defeat-Addicted Female Knight’s Circumstances].
"My name is Garon. I run a small trading company."
"A small trading company... As expected, perhaps a great merchant born with the fortune of wealth sees it as small."
"Oh? You know of me?"
"I am a hunter, so I have sharp ears. I have only heard rumors."
"Hehehe, what an honor. To think the man acknowledged by Seraphim would know of me."
"The honor is mine, to meet a great merchant such as yourself."
My flattery delighted Garon greatly, and he acted almost excessively friendly toward me.
He is after me, not Isabelle.
At first, I thought he had approached me to make Isabelle his slave.
Given Isabelle’s beauty, he could make an enormous amount of money from her.
But seeing how unexpectedly friendly he was toward me made me reconsider.
Considering Garon’s greed, he would not start something for such pocket change.
As the wife of the man acknowledged by Seraphim, Isabelle had the [Mark of Love] engraved on her lower abdomen.
Because of that, the Church of the Sun regarded her as a symbolic figure.
Selling her as a slave?
Garon was a great merchant. With no way of knowing how the Church of the Sun would react, he did not seem likely to take such a risk merely to earn a little money.
He probably wants the symbolic value I carry.
For merchants, the most important thing was credibility.
No matter how large a trading company was, securing a city’s trade rights required a great deal of investment.
And the most efficient way to build credibility was to use religion.
You would think a slave trader had no need for credibility, but those with the dirtiest secrets are the ones who stake their lives on it more than anyone.
As though my prediction had been correct, Garon immediately offered to recruit me.
"What do you say? Work with me. With your symbolic value and your way with words, even nobles would like you."
"Thank you for thinking so highly of me. But I have no intention of leaving my wife’s hometown."
"Hmm, what a shame. I was planning to offer you rather generous treatment, too."
"I appreciate the thought. Instead, I will repay you by giving you some useful information."
"Useful information? A hunter like you is telling me?"
"I am a hunter, but I am also an honorary believer."
"You are an honorary believer?"
"The head priest thinks highly of me."
Unlike ordinary believers, one could only become an honorary believer through the church’s official recognition.
It was no more than an honorary position, but what mattered now was that it demonstrated the credibility of my information before Garon.
"I heard that an Inquisitor will be visiting here today."
"A-an Inquisitor?!"
At the mention of an Inquisitor, Garon leaped up.
His seemingly heavy body even sprang into the air.
The more you have to lose, the more afraid you are.
If a merchant was branded a heretic, all of his property would effectively be confiscated that very day.
That was how powerful religion was, and there was a reason even nobles watched their behavior before the Church of the Sun.
"Do not be so alarmed. The Inquisitor is not visiting to investigate heresy."
"Then tell me why they are visiting."
"For a regular report."
"A regular report? Does a mere church have anything to report to an Inquisitor?"
"You must have wondered why a church was built in such a rural village."
"Indeed. Normally, churches are built in cities or large villages governed by nobles. Even if it was for proselytizing to rural folk, constructing a church in such a tiny village does not make financial sense."
"On the surface, it is indeed for missionary work, but there is another reason."
I let Garon in on part of the information regarding Angel’s Rest.
More specifically, I told him about the lake that had turned into holy water—not about its pseudo-elixir effect.
"Hoho, there is that much holy water?"
"You may as well think of the entire lake as holy water."
The holy water here was not merely salt water like holy water in the real world.
It was the genuine grace of God, imbued with holy power.
It was especially effective for beauty treatments.
"So this village has potential for development. That is why they built a church here early and claimed their place."
True to his nature as a great merchant, Garon weighed the profits and losses.
Perhaps he would use this information as a basis to sponsor Entiel Village.
If even one trading company establishes itself here, the village’s development will accelerate dramatically.
However, Garon was not an easy mark like the village chief, who was nothing but greedy.
"Since you brought this up, you must be looking for my sponsorship."
"As expected of your outstanding insight."
"I could sponsor it. If I can secure the trade rights to the holy water, I could amass enormous wealth."
Garon deliberately dragged out his words. It was one of his usual tactics.
He made the other party anxious and steered the flow of conversation however he wanted.
Of course, I was not about to let him do that.
"Garon, how about this?"
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