“Heretic? May I ask what you mean by that, Lady Saintess?”
Greg's heart began to hammer wildly. He couldn't help but wonder if his true identity had somehow been exposed.
Meanwhile, Nightmare was already in an uproar inside his mind, screaming, “Get ready to fight! Get ready to fight!”
Veronica slowly opened her eyes, which had remained closed until now.
They were as beautiful as the stars—clear, bright, and seemingly filled with an endless radiance.
But the moment Greg's eyes met hers, he felt an invisible weight of pure pressure bearing down on him.
“Playing dumb won't work.”
Veronica's voice was still soft, but her tone carried an absolute, undeniable certainty.
“Because right now, I am absolutely certain that you are no ordinary student.”
Greg forced himself to calm down, maintaining a confused and innocent expression on his face.
“Lady Saintess, I truly do not understand what you are talking about. I am merely a second-year student from Glory Cael Magic Academy. I participated in the preliminary defense and submitted my answer sheet, only to be summoned here by you. If you believe there is an issue with my answers, please, do clarify.”
Veronica stared at him in silence for a moment before she slowly spoke.
“There is nothing wrong with your answer sheet itself... In fact, it was so exceptional that it defied common sense. But it is precisely that exceptional quality that exposed you.”
She stood up, walked slowly to the window, and turned her back to Greg as she continued.
“The optimization plan for mana conduction loss you proposed in your preliminary defense involves several ancient, secret pieces of knowledge that have long been lost to history.”
“In today's surface world, only the high-ranking members of the Church of Light have the authority to access such knowledge. An ordinary second-year magic academy student could not have possibly come into contact with those details under any circumstances.”
She turned back around, her gaze landing on Greg once more. Her star-like eyes held the chilling, analytical calm of a predator sizing up its prey.
“Therefore, the only explanation is... you do not belong to the surface. You came out of the dungeon.”
“!?”
Greg was stunned.
Only then did he realize that his summoning was actually a massive misunderstanding—all because the knowledge compiled by the veteran players of the community was simply too hardcore!
Those answers, verified and optimized countless times, contained a wealth of hidden knowledge that only the high-ranking members of the religious order in this world were privy to.
And because he had mindlessly dumped all that information onto his paper without changing a single thing, he had ended up in the spotlight.
He hadn't anticipated such a massive information gap at all.
At the same time, however, he caught a crucial piece of information from Veronica's words: people actually lived inside the dungeons?
This had never been explicitly mentioned in his memories of the original game. He had assumed that the civilizations of the dungeons had long since perished, but it seemed things were far more complicated than he had imagined.
“Talk about a lucky blunder...”
This unexpected revelation shocked Greg, but it also allowed him to breathe a small sigh of relief.
At the very least, he could be certain that Veronica didn't know he was a believer of Nightmare, the Goddess of Night... Or rather, it was a relief she didn't know he was technically half a God of Night.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be any peaceful conversation right now; they would have skipped straight to a battle sequence.
However, Greg's thoughts quickly picked up on another discrepancy.
In the original game, he had also submitted this exact same answer sheet using Victoria.
Yet, aside from receiving an exceptionally high score, Victoria had never been summoned by Veronica for a private meeting because of this knowledge.
So, what was the difference between his current self and Victoria back then?
“Aside from gender, there is also... identity.”
Unlike him, certain high-ranking members of the Church of Light knew of Victoria's identity as the Hero. They knew she carried the will of the world and was the Chosen One.
Thus, it wasn't surprising to them that she possessed such knowledge. As the Hero, she was blessed by the world, so it was only natural for her to be privy to certain secrets.
But in the eyes of the Church of Light and Veronica, he was currently just an ordinary student.
An ordinary student possessing ancient knowledge known only to the high-ranking members of the religious order was bound to raise massive red flags.
Once he connected the dots, an idea flashed through Greg's mind.
If he could give himself an identity that would make possessing this knowledge make sense, wouldn't that solve the problem entirely?
“Speak. Why have you only now left the dungeon to come to the surface?”
Veronica's voice interrupted his train of thought.
A faint light-attribute magic had already lit up in her hand. The glow was soft, yet it carried an underlying threat. “What is your ultimate objective?”
Greg took a deep breath, raised his head, and spoke in an earnest, solemn tone:
“Lady Saintess, I believe you have truly misunderstood. I do not hail from the dungeon. The reason I possess this knowledge is because I am a Heroic Spirit! A Heroic Spirit who once followed Lady Serafina in ancient times and fought in her name!”
Greg paused briefly before continuing:
“Perhaps because this world is about to plunge into crisis once more, my soul only recently awakened. That knowledge consists of fragments left behind from my past life's memories. It did not come from any dungeon.”
This explanation wasn't out of place in this world.
For there existed a concept known as 'Holy Spirits' in this world.
These Holy Spirits were a select few individuals who possessed exceptionally pure souls in life, were chosen by the gods, and were granted the ability to return to the mortal realm under specific conditions after death.
The souls of Holy Spirits were pure and noble, and their memories would be partially preserved through reincarnation. Thus, it was entirely reasonable for them to know some lost ancient knowledge.
Veronica listened quietly to his explanation before speaking slowly, “It seems you can't even come up with a decent excuse anymore.”
Her tone remained calm, but that very calmness carried an even more dangerous undertone:
“I know you are merely trying to talk your way out of this. While the reincarnation of Heroic Spirits is indeed a known phenomenon, you have absolutely no evidence to prove your identity. If a mere claim were enough to prove one's innocence, the Inquisition would never have executed so many heretics!”
Greg's palms began to sweat, but he had already known that words alone stood a very low chance of convincing this woman.
It was time to play the trump card he had spent a fortune to acquire.
Greg took a deep breath, looked straight into Veronica's eyes, and spoke in a steady, resolute voice:
“If you truly refuse to believe me, you may summon Headmistress Olivia of Glory Cael Magic Academy right now to personally testify on my behalf.”
Rate on N.U.
