Eleanor’s sincere confession was genuinely touching.
When a girl is so direct about liking you, who wouldn’t feel something?
Besides, Eleanor herself was very beautiful.
If it were anyone else, they might have agreed on the spot.
But Anderson was a loyal man.
In his view, he needed to let go of that certain someone in his heart first, so he wouldn’t end up treating Eleanor as a substitute.
In the truest sense, he could devote himself wholeheartedly.
More importantly, if he didn’t find Ainola first, he couldn’t cure the poison in his body.
As a man, he cared deeply about that particular function.
If Eleanor ever found out he was impotent, he’d rather dig a hole and bury himself.
Especially when he imagined Eleanor’s shocked and stunned expression, followed by what might be an angelic smile.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”
If she said that, it would be even more devastating.
After a moment of wild thoughts, Anderson stopped walking, untied the blindfold from Eleanor’s eyes, and said.
“We’ve arrived at the Shrine. Don’t look around, and don’t touch anything you shouldn’t.”
“I know.”
Eleanor nodded.
Of course, she wouldn’t touch anything here—she wasn’t that idle.
Her target was the Eye of Wite.
That item wasn’t considered a very high-level Sacred Relic among the Temple Knights, so it wouldn’t be displayed prominently.
It was likely stored in a cabinet or chest.
But the Shrine was huge.
Ransacking every box and cabinet would be as hard as catching the wind.
The best approach was to seek the help of the all-purpose little Sprite—Spark.
Spark understood Eleanor’s thoughts.
She scanned the interior of the Shrine at full power, and her Shielding Spell began taking effect.
The Magic Instruments here were gradually losing their function.
The effect wasn’t instantaneous—it was like slowly boiling a frog.
By the time the Temple Knights realized something was wrong, it would be too late.
Eleanor would have already vanished.
“Found it. It’s in the red chest on the east corridor. But… with you following Anderson right now, it’s inconvenient to move.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
After investigation, Eleanor roughly knew the steps of the Baptism Ceremony.
There was one step where the recipient had to remove their clothes and immerse themselves completely naked in the Holy Spring.
Since it was a completely bare stage, she could act alone during this phase.
Eleanor planned to strike then, grab the Eye of Wite, and immediately retreat.
She had even meticulously planned a route that not only let her escape through the Secret Passage but also trapped those assassins inside the Shrine.
Let them attract attention for her.
It was killing two birds with one stone.
***
While Eleanor was participating in the baptism ceremony at the Shrine, inside the Archive Room of Wording City—
A Temple Knight was tirelessly flipping through files.
That person was Lewis.
As Anderson’s loyal subordinate, he had spent the past few days investigating Eleanor’s background.
He needed to ensure her background was clean and transparent, confirming she wasn’t a foreign spy or an internal threat, before he could feel at ease.
To find the truth, he had gone from the Temple Knights’ personnel department all the way to this place.
Eleanor’s file seemed completely normal, but Lewis discovered a detail that everyone else had overlooked.
That was—this girl had no record of ever leaving Wording City.
Normally, if she had fled here, there should be a route registration for the cities she passed through, but… Eleanor’s file had none.
It was as if she had appeared out of thin air in Wording City.
“Not a single trace.”
Suspicion grew in Lewis’s heart.
As a royal guard, he had the highest level of access to files.
Even top-secret classified files, Lewis could inspect and view.
So, he picked up the registration file for foreign nationals entering the country.
According to Wording City’s records, Eleanor claimed to be a refugee from the desert.
Logically, her name should appear in the foreign entry registration.
Yet, to Lewis’s shock and confusion—
Nothing.
There was no record of Eleanor entering the Glory Empire!
Whether she had sneaked in or infiltrated, her movements were highly suspicious.
If that was the case, why were her other files so complete, with only the foreign registration missing?
The more Lewis thought about it, the more unsettling it became.
He seemed to understand something.
Someone might have modified Eleanor’s records but forgot to alter the foreign entry registration.
With that thought, Lewis frantically searched for Eleanor’s residence records.
Soon, he found her previous address and rushed over without pause.
When he arrived, he found the rental house door wide open, the interior in disarray, as if someone had broken in.
This scene was nothing like the reason Eleanor had given—that she couldn’t pay the rent.
More importantly, there were scratch marks from swords or blades clashing inside the house.
From these marks, it wasn’t hard to deduce one thing.
“Assassins…”
Lewis checked the files again and again.
After his realization, the more he looked at the seemingly perfect records, the more wrong they felt.
A bad suspicion formed in Lewis’s mind.
To verify it, he began searching for any trace of evidence.
Wording City’s Magic System acted like surveillance, so he could use it to track Eleanor’s activity range.
And upon checking, Lewis found that Eleanor had almost no outdoor activities.
Her life was confined to a two-point line between home and the Temple Knights.
Too clean.
In this situation, it only bred more suspicion.
Entering the house, the Temple Knight began rummaging.
In truth, Eleanor had been cautious.
Before leaving, she had repeatedly instructed her contact to erase all traces here.
But on this matter, her contact Winona hadn’t done a thorough job.
When Lewis entered Winona’s room, he found a fragment of Living Corpse Armor.
The presence of such fragments meant the Fengting Association had been there.
And there were quite a few fragments, indicating they had stayed for a long, long time—maybe even lived there.
This was a two-person rental.
No matter which room was Eleanor’s, it was enough for Lewis to repeat his guess in his mind once more.
“Could it be… Eleanor is an assassin from the Fengting Association?”