Lenna rubbed her eyes and let out a yawn. Still a little sleepy, she lifted the white blanket.

Sunlight spilled into the room through the gaps in the glass and curtains. Fine dust drifted in the light. It looked like afternoon had already come. She sat on the bed in a daze for a while, then reached for the black lace-trimmed underwear on the shelf beside her and slowly, carefully put it on.

This was the second day since Morris had left the Church. Alex had already gone crazy. He’d been howling through the church, telling everyone to get lost and eat shit while searching like mad. The royal family seemed to have learned about it too. The news had been locked down fast, but only enough to keep the lower-ranking loyal believers from finding out that their Pope had run away. And the reason was merely to go look at different girls’ boobs.

At that thought, Lenna felt a little dissatisfied. She lowered her head and cupped both sides of her chest with her hands.

How strange. What exactly was there about her that wasn’t enough for him to look at?

She sighed, lay back down again, hugged the pillow, and buried her face in it, breathing in deeply.

“The smell’s faded.”

After only a short moment, she silently pulled the pillow away. A clear look of disgust gradually appeared on her face.

“Morris’s scent is gone.”

What replaced it was her own body fragrance.

She didn’t like that smell.

“Holy Maiden, Your Highness? Holy Maiden?”

A knock came from the door. Lenna frowned, because she recognized the voice. It belonged to the Grand Elder Linses, the one who was always provoking Morris.

“What is it?” Lenna asked coldly.

“You haven’t come out for two days. I know the Pope’s departure has made you very sad, but you must take care of your health,” Linses said outside the door, rubbing his hands together and swallowing. A desire to shove the door open and walk in kept rising in his heart, but he forced it down. There was something more important. “Also, the royal family has proposed a marriage alliance—”

The door suddenly flew open in front of Linses.

Caught completely off guard, he took a hard hit straight to the nose. The old man toppled backward at once, clutching his nose and crying out. When he pulled his fingers away, he found a faint smear of blood on them.

“You—!”

He looked up in fury, only to find the room already empty. Just then, a note drifted leisurely down from midair.

Blankly, he reached out and caught it. There was only one sentence written on it.

The world’s so big. I’m going to find Morris and take a look.

“…What the hell is this?” Linses couldn’t help shouting.

“It’s not ‘what the hell,’ my elder,” Alex said.

He slowly walked over from the corner at the end of the corridor and stopped beside Linses. He reached out, took the note from his hand, and glanced at it. The irritability that had lasted two full days finally settled at that moment. He looked with relief toward the wide-open window in the room, where white curtains fluttered in the wind—

“She’s finally willing to go look for Morris.”

“Former Pope Alex,” Linses said, still covering his nose, unable to hold back, “Morris is nothing more than a replaceable genius. Even if he really never comes back, we only need to find another one. Why make such a huge fuss over it?”

After hearing that, Alex’s expression gradually turned indifferent. He looked at Linses’s arrogant, ugly face. Even that little mustache he was so proud of now looked messy and ridiculous.

“That’s why, Linses, this is as far as you’ll ever go in your life.” He smiled soundlessly. “You actually think Morris can be replaced.”

Linses froze. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what Alex meant.

“This is the solution you and the count came up with after staying up all night?” Alex flicked his wide robe sleeve aside and walked toward the church hall with disdain.

“You’re just like the others. You have no idea how terrifying that child really is.”

Out on the wasteland, Morris suddenly shivered. He looked around warily, but thankfully didn’t see any familiar figures. Sif sat down beside him and handed him a cup of hot tea. He thanked her and took it, sitting by the campfire in front of the tents. The sky had already dimmed. A crescent moon had quietly appeared. It was time for dinner.

“Hey, little bro, we heard about you,” two men said as they came over laughing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. After reaching Morris, the red-haired one got straight to the point. “Are you really a seventeen-year-old Artificer Tier wizard?”

“Are you doubting me?” Sif frowned at once.

“No way, no way,” the man said quickly, waving both hands. “We trust Sif-chan completely!”

Morris’s expression changed. “That’s not the issue. Wuli trust hen no chick!”

“…Huh?”

“In any case, it’s true,” Sif said, shaking her head at the two of them. “I’ve already seen his Artificer certificate with my own eyes. It even had the Pope’s seal on it, not the Church’s. Don’t be overly suspicious.”

Morris thought, If you knew I’ve got thirty-something similar IDs on me, you’d probably strip me on the spot, call me a fraud, hang me from a tree, and beat me.

“I see,” said the other man, dressed in white. He smiled kindly and patted his companion on the shoulder, signaling him not to continue. “We were just curious. After all, a seventeen-year-old kid being in the same tier as two adults like us, both twenty-three... our talent is already considered pretty good among wizards.”

“Eh, it’s just talent. Besides, I’ll be an adult in two weeks,” Morris said with a shrug, taking a sip of hot tea. “For a wizard, the most important thing is hard work.”

The man seemed angered by that and wanted to say something, but the man in white stopped him and nodded.

“I’ve been taught.”

“If you keep progressing at this rate, little brother Morris, maybe you’ll become Pope someday?” The man in white smiled and sat down beside Morris, while the red-haired man sat next to Sif with a very fake attempt at looking casual.

“What’s so great about being Pope? Join a religion, get an inheritance, then become the whole Church’s puppet?” A middle-aged man by the fire curled his lip. “Only an idiot would go be Pope.”

Morris agreed from the bottom of his heart, yet somehow also felt offended. For a moment, he could only swallow the loss in silence.

Of course, no one else knew what the boy was thinking. Who could’ve guessed that this young man beside them was actually the current and sole supreme Pope of the Lunhai Holy Church?

“Then what do you think is best, uncle?” the red-haired man couldn’t help asking. Around the fire were only Sif, Morris, the two men, and the middle-aged man sprinkling salt into the soup pot.

“If possible, the best choice is still becoming a Saint,” the man said quietly. “Though compared to the Pope, Saints have a more divided reputation.”

“What’s a Saint?” Sif widened her eyes. “I’ve never heard about any of this.”

“There are twelve Saints in this world,” the man said. “Each one controls a deadly sin, and one trigger for the world’s destruction. Their very existence is the greatest threat to the world. But without their control over those sins and triggers, the world would become even more chaotic and uncontrollable. That’s why they’re called Saints.”

He tossed a dry branch into the fire. A faint smell of meat drifted from the soup pot hanging above it.

“Saints are human, but they’re also Arcane Source Wizards. It’s just that as Saints, the structure inside their bodies is already extremely close to the Arcanum itself. Compared to ordinary humans, they’re far more fused with the nature of an Arcane Source Wizard. To keep the Saints from becoming enraged, every western empire has specially built altars to worship these twelve Saints. In their respective countries, each Saint also possesses their own territory and authority even greater than that of ordinary nobles. Most commoners will never come into contact with matters at this level in their entire lives, so it’s normal that you wouldn’t know, Sif.”

The man let out a heavy sigh.

“This is the age of Arcane Source Wizards.”

Morris suddenly found it a little boring, so he set down his cup and said, “Sorry, I need to go to the bathroom.”

Sif nodded. After watching Morris disappear around a corner among the tents, the red-haired man smiled slightly.

“Well, that’s true. And for an ordinary Artificer Tier wizard like me, that’s already enough to live out my life in peace.”

As he said that, his gaze couldn’t help drifting to Sif’s smooth, silky thighs. He turned to the girl and said, “So, Sif-chan—”

“Ah, little brother, which squad are you with?”

The middle-aged man quietly added some minced meat to the soup pot and spoke to him.

“If there’s nothing else, I suggest you return to your own squad first.” He ladled up a spoonful of hot soup and blew on it. “A mercenary group doesn’t feed freeloaders.”

“He’s right,” the man in white said, stopping the red-haired man who was about to get angry. He stood up and looked at him. “What do you think?”

“…Tch.” The red-haired man flicked his hair and followed the man in white into the distance.

Sif nodded to the middle-aged man and withdrew the hidden blade beside her right index finger.

“I thought there’d be blood tonight.”

“The more you can hold back, the better,” the man said with a smile. “Tomorrow, when Lord Thulaken leads us to challenge the Wasteland Wolves, with all these people around, there’ll be no need for you to go up there and risk your life.”

“Yeah.”

Sif answered brightly, but in her mind appeared the shadow of a boy. She muttered softly,

“That guy’s a little pervert too...”

Night fell.

Not far away, Morris leaned quietly against a tree branch, taking everything in.

“As expected, things are getting more and more interesting.” He suddenly sneezed, then rubbed his nose and muttered, “Stop thinking about me, Lenna. What’s the point of that? You’d be better off thinking about what to eat tonight...”

He rolled the name Saint around in his mind, and the more he did, the funnier it seemed.

“What’s the point of a Saint anyway? It’s not like they can date...”