All morning, Hale could feel that gaze on him. Faint, but constant. Bitter, with a trace of resentment and a little anger.

It was Siman.

Honestly, he could more or less understand her temper. At least, in the original story.

Siman was the type of female knight with a built-in sense of justice.

Except her sense of justice was a little too much.

Back when people played the game, plenty of them complained about how rotten the Papal Dominion was. Yet Siman still obeyed everything. In most of her routes, she never even learned the truth of the world before the game ended.

She was the short-route heroine type.

And a lot of her endings left players with chills the more they thought about them.

One ending that Hale remembered especially well came from a clear screenshot another player had posted online. The ending text read:

Years later, Siman brought her girls north to Katerin. On the summit of a snow mountain buried with dragon bones, they gazed up at a dreamlike violet-red sky. Beneath that wondrous sight, they embraced to their hearts’ content and made vows to each other, as if the world would remain frozen in that moment forever.

At first glance, it looked sweet.

But that same violet-red sky had also appeared in the bad ending of the Saintess Apocalypse route.

So a lot of people in that thread made a bold guess. They said Siman’s so-called happy ending on that route was probably a total party wipe. It just wasn’t written out directly.

The game had a lot of hidden plot threads like that, carefully buried under the surface.

Otherwise, that yuri-skinned heretical game wouldn’t have had such insane buzz and sales.

That was also one of the reasons he absolutely had to get out of Saint Louis.

Who knew what weird trigger he might set off? Yesterday, Yafman suspecting him of being a western spy was already absurd enough.

“Young Master Hale, I heard the Inquisition Bureau came looking for you yesterday. Want to tell everyone what it was about?”

Lenny’s voice suddenly rang out by his ear.

The whole class, already preparing to head to lunch, turned to look.

The students here were either noble sons and daughters, or top-tier grinders who had clawed their way out of small towns through sheer study. Some had high status. Some had heard of the Inquisition Bureau. Some had even bragged about how powerful it was.

But in the end, they were still just eighteen- or nineteen-year-old kids. If the Inquisition Bureau really came knocking, they’d treat its investigators like monsters from a flood or plague, desperate to stay far away, terrified deep down.

So once they heard Hale had been questioned, they all felt there had to be a huge story behind it.

At first, Siman thought making a private matter public wasn’t a good idea.

But then she thought, maybe this was fine too. If Hale kept acting like nothing mattered...

Soon enough, all of Saint Louis would have no place left for him.

It was time he learned a lesson.

So she said nothing and only watched.

Hale didn’t answer right away either. Mainly because he didn’t really want to bother with Lenny.

He remembered this guy.

One of Siman’s pursuers.

He liked using petty tricks, and in various routes, he often ended up being a key assist that helped the other heroines capture Siman.

Usually by messing things up.

Which only pushed the other heroines closer to winning Siman over.

If Siman hadn’t been captured yet, Lenny’s actions wouldn’t stop. Not until he got desperate and did something that threatened Siman’s life. Then another heroine would personally kill Lenny, and Siman would completely fall for her. Only then would it end.

Truly, a shining light of the evil route.

Still, the reason Lenny could target Siman so successfully wasn’t just because of his own efforts. It was mainly because Siman’s family held military power over the eastern part of the Papal Dominion, so political enemies were constantly targeting them. Once the player started settling accounts through the heroine, killing him and checking his profile card would reveal that Lenny was only early-stage elite mob level.

His aptitude was low too. His level cap was only fifty-three.

Level cap was a major setting in this world. Unless you used some extremely special, ultra-rare items with terrible drop rates, it could never be raised.

The main heroines all had level caps above eighty-five.

Even the secondary female characters were mostly above seventy.

As for Hale, he was special.

Aside from some early setup, no player had ever unlocked this character’s in-game profile card. All the information about him had been pieced together from dedicated strategy threads.

But judging from some of his feats in later storylines where he survived and even killed a Demon King’s retainer...

His level cap was definitely above ninety.

“Siman was there too. Ask her.”

Hale packed up his textbooks and the notes he had made that morning for his Saint Louis escape plan, then got ready to leave.

Because of that one sentence, everyone’s attention shifted to Siman at once.

Lenny felt a little awkward.

Of course he knew Siman had been there. But after watching the atmosphere between Siman and Hale that morning, he knew Hale had definitely upset her.

That was why he had decided to put on a little show.

And then this guy just tossed it back at her.

Faced with everyone’s searching eyes, Siman had no intention of saying it outright. This matter really shouldn’t be blown up.

But if it wasn’t blown up, how was Hale supposed to learn his lesson?

“Can’t you say it yourself? You committed the act yourself. Don’t you have even a shred of responsibility for it?”

Siman’s voice was cold.

Lenny felt wonderful hearing that.

Right. He knew Siman had dreamed since childhood of joining the Inquisition Bureau or the Holy Light Knights and serving the Papal Dominion.

As long as someone had broken the law, Siman would never be nice about it. Even if Hale was her cousin.

He had disliked Hale since they were kids.

Back then, Hale had been absurdly popular with girls. He was also the only son of House Faxius. At every gathering, he was the brightest little boy there. Adults would come over to greet him, and girls would come over to play with him and chat with him.

As for Lenny, he was basically just background decoration. He had to suppress his emotions just to squeeze into the conversation.

That was when he started envying Hale. He wanted nothing more than to grind this guy into the dirt.

In elementary school and middle school, he and Hale attended the same school. He had seen countless girls walking with Hale along the paths in the back garden.

Then one day, Hale’s scandal broke.

A girl anonymously sent a letter to the school news club, saying he was a scumbag. She said he had clearly promised to let her be his girlfriend, had done certain unspeakable things with her, and then dumped her, and so on.

At first, people didn’t really believe it.

But later, more and more girls came forward with similar stories about Hale.

Once the wall started to fall, everyone pushed. During that time, Lenny had even pretended to be a girl and written an anonymous letter himself, just to add fuel to the fire.

From then on, Hale fell from his pedestal. His reputation grew worse and worse, and all sorts of details people had once ignored were endlessly magnified and reinterpreted.

Lenny had originally thought Hale was finished for life.

But on the very first day at Sanctum University, he discovered they were in the same class again.

And this bastard had even written an enrollment paper titled My General Father.

That had really gotten under Lenny’s skin. He was only the son of a count, after all. It made him furious.

This time, once he heard the Inquisition Bureau had sent out someone like Yafman, a newly famous investigator, then Hale had definitely committed some major crime.

He was absolutely going to make sure Hale could never recover from this.

Hale, meanwhile, had no interest at all in whatever emotional storm Lenny was going through. He only felt Siman was taking her assumptions way too far. Was he really supposed to say on the spot that the second son of House Faxius was a spy?

Family matters should stay within the family.

Once this spread from one person to ten, then ten to a hundred, even something false could become true among the public.

Even with the risk of being affected by the heroine buff, this cousin of his still needed to be knocked down a peg.

Just as he was about to speak, though—

He suddenly saw a pure-looking young girl appear at the classroom door. She wore a black-and-white nun’s habit and a veil, her whole bearing so restrained it was almost ascetic.

Maria?

He remembered her.

A very important secondary female character.

Because she...

“Is Baron Hale here? Lady Christine has sent me to invite you to share tea with her this afternoon.”

“?”

“?”

“??????”

The entire classroom instantly erupted with gasps and envious looks.

Because Maria’s master, Christine, was the one in the Church with the greatest chance of winning next year’s Saintess election.

Among women, only someone like Siman, the daughter of a grand duke and general, qualified to be invited to share tea with her.

As for men, the number she had ever invited of her own initiative was still zero.

But surrounded by all those stares, Hale had only one thought in his heart.

Something was very, very wrong.