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To be honest, I was actually quite happy to meet a familiar face in a distant land, especially since he owed me money and even promised to return it with interest…

[System: Have you had enough of this topic yet? Will it ever end!?]

Cough, let me get to the main point. I finally didn’t need to swindle those gnomes to earn a living anymore. After all, they weren’t exactly dumb, and they weren’t easy to deal with.

The gnomes’ hard efforts, however, had another effect, which was that the Law God Wumianzhe’s belief system was spread far and wide.

Of course, it was impossible to think about relying on them to actually propagate religion. Even if the concept of Law was very useful to the gnomes who were individually weak, they were a group that would do anything for money, always on the border between legal and illegal. Why would they ever do something so troublesome as spreading religion?

What they spread for Wumianzhe was something else, but it was something that belonged to one of his concepts—Contracts.

This Divine Obligation that Wumianzhe obtained at Auland wasn’t widely accepted in human society yet, but the gnomes were happily making use of contracts. That “insurance” was obviously a type of contract, and the gnomes were quite welcoming of this new concept that would protect the “weak” and was supported by the power of a True God.

There was just a small problem.

“Venerated Insurance God, Bushuizhe, please listen to my prayers, and help me sell some extra insurance today.”

Forget about getting the God’s name wrong, the Insurance God wouldn’t be the Merchant God either, but why would he have to help you succeed in sales—cough—I meant… What’s with calling him the Insurance God!? There was actually no divine punishment for this? Was Wumianzhe such an easygoing God? That was impossible.

“Luckily, the gnomes got the God’s name wrong, so the prayers would be ineffective. Otherwise…”

Alright, somebody had already stated the truth. A prayer like this, which got the God’s name wrong, was just like a wrong number phone call—completely meaningless. However, this would definitely anger anyone in a divine job class related to the God in question if they witnessed something so blasphemous.

Yet, sometimes, even the wrong could have the same effect as the correct. If certain wrong concepts gathered to a certain degree, it really would have the power to affect a True God’s Divine Obligation. In order to prevent Wumianzhe from being addressed by incredibly uncool names like the Insurance God or Bushuizhe in the future, I intended to have the Church of Law take action right after I returned to the mortal plane.

At the very least, I couldn’t allow the gnomes to act as they pleased like this anymore. Perhaps it was time for me to attempt trying my hand at something as profitable as insurance.

Right now, the contracts under the name of the Law God were doubtlessly far better than the contracts with demons. Furthermore, in order to give these contracts greater effectiveness, those miserly gnomes actually even constructed a Temple of the Law God in Karo City, and Wumianzhe’s statue was even golden… yep, gold paint only, as they would never want to spend their lovely gold on something as useless as decoration.

Although I greatly objected to the fact that more and more gnomes were treating Wumianzhe as the Insurance God, I had to admit that they were rather helpful in expanding the Law God’s Divine Obligation and Divine Domain even if they had selfish objectives in spreading contracts and insurance. I suppose it counted as doing good while having bad intentions.

“Perhaps I should have a discussion with the gnomes and sign an overall contract with them, adding a clause for them to spread the complete religion of the Law God. With their abilities to even come to other planes and be merchants, I’m certain that they could be effective.”

As I was thinking to myself, I suddenly imagined a scene of a gnome wearing a gentlemanly hat and a suit, politely knocking on someone’s door and handing that person a name card.

“Hello! Do you happen to know about Wumianzhe? You don’t? That’s great… whoops, I mean that’s really regrettable. Our Church of Wumianzhe… if you join us now, we’ll even give you a free present! Three years’ worth of accident insurance… for free! If you pay one hundred gold coins, we can even give you VIP membership and add on explosion insurance for no extra cost.”

Just imagining this scary scene becoming a reality made me feel like all the divine job class members of the Church of Law would be equated with common salesmen. I decided to give up on this idea of mine so that Wumianzhe wouldn’t turn into the Advertising God of Dandruff.

But the most important thing right now was…

“Ahhh! When will the System return my ‘world’ to me?”

While I did activate a Legend Quest, which would indeed give me a significant amount of points, the surprising part was that it wasn’t about killing off Emordilorcan. Instead, it was a choice between “The Battle of Two Dragons;” I could choose between helping either the Bardi Empire or the Mage Country, and improve my reputation in one of the two countries.

Obviously, if I chose the Mage Country and dragged them into this affair with me, then it would be quite useful to improve my reputation through this battle against Emordilorcan.

The reward was the large number of Fate Points that I needed, and if I chose the method of killing Emordilorcan in order to improve my reputation, then there would also be a significant reward of highest quality earth element materials for constructing my “perfect world.”

But I wasn’t happy about this quest at all, because this quest’s choice implied something obvious.

“The Mage Country and Bardi Empire are at war?”

At hearing this, Kaid nodded with a bitter expression.

“Although it hasn’t broken out into all-out war yet, over a hundred conflicts have erupted on the border in the past month. Every day, we capture several hundred spies. It’s also quite obvious with their military movements. It would seem that it’s only a matter of time before Bardi formally declares war.”

“Just what is Orloss XIII thinking? Having his mega-level empire begin a war right before the Holy War? Did a demon devour his brain!?”

I didn’t even have to ask the reason, as I understood the Truth Research Society quite well. As long as their system didn’t change, they would have little interest in things like reputation or expanding their country. The Mage Country hadn’t changed its boundaries in the past several thousands of years, and it was basically impossible for me to believe that they would start a war of their own volition.

As for the Bardi Empire… to be honest, the human mega-level empires were all the same, incredibly arrogant, and if any mental nutcases arrived that believed themselves to be some legendary once-in-a-thousand-years king, the countries next to them would suffer for the next hundred years. The biggest issue of all was that all these empires happened to have incredibly solid foundations, and it would be quite difficult for any other country to deal with them. Thankfully, there were numerous small countries between the major countries as a buffer zone.

But I had heard of that Orloss XIII before. He had already been the Bardi Emperor for thirty-plus years, and was always a warmonger through this entire time. He kept fighting wars with other countries, and he recently beat the Moon and Horn Thirteen Countries Alliance into submission and forced their surrender, which directly removed the buffer zone between the Bardi Empire and the Mage Country.

“I doubt that he’s insane; he probably saw that all the other countries were busy preparing for the Holy War, so they could take this opportunity to expand.”

“Hmph! They really believe they’ll be spared in the Holy War? Foolish.”

Kaid shook his head at hearing this.

“Bardi is an interior kingdom. There’s basically no other species but humans both inside their borders and in the nearest countries. This Holy War really might not affect them too much. Our Mage Country is too much of a big target, and they’re probably targeting our technology. It really is rather bothersome.”

I opened my mouth, but didn’t say anything in the end. After all, it was impossible for me to explain how I knew about the fact that the Undead Plane had a portal that would open right in the Bardi Empire’s capital. If I casually let it be known, it would cause me an endless amount of trouble, and there was no way for me to prove that “history” and “the future” would be repeated.

It should be worth mentioning that when I had Reyne use the name of the Eastern Mist Communal Country to warn the human countries about how the undead would soon invade, basically nobody believed it, and the only response was disbelief and ridicule.

“Those northern hicks say that an Undead Calamity is about to arrive? Hehe, it seems they’ve already been scared witless by the remnants of Xiluo’s forces. Let the Undead Calamity come! Even the Yongye Calamity from approximately a hundred years ago couldn’t do anything to us, so why would this be any different?”

“East Mist? That Roland from the legends? Warning us about a new Undead Calamity like Yongye? Oh my, isn’t this the rat warning the cat about a robber? Are you sure that this isn’t just a joke?”

Alright, I did what I could, and I couldn’t control things if they weren’t willing to listen. But now, it was obvious that I had to make a decision.

“The Mage Country! There’s no need to even think about it. I’m already sick and tired of foolish emperors, those bastards.”

And after I made a choice, that evil System of mine actually gave me something useful, allowing me to temporarily borrow my “world” up to three times. It even gave me a progress bar.

[11.7%, -3421]

The second number was the number of Fate Points I owed, which kept increasing in no apparent pattern. The first one was incomprehensible.

No matter what or how I asked, the system remained abnormally silent. And the moment that progress bar increased in number even a little, my debt would grow tremendously—not at a 40% interest rate at all.

I could only helplessly experiment one time with my “world,” which instantly helped me understand, and then I instantly regretted it… I had wasted one of my few chances that were difficult to come by.

My “world” was still empty as it started out, and the air in it was still frosty, but something seemed to be new within it. At the very least, it seemed far more stable than before.

“My system has changed its ways? It’s decided to become a tsundere[1]? It actually helped me out? If my guess is right, it’s helping me complete and stabilize my ‘world.’ It’s even allowing me to go into debt.”

When it came to receiving payments, the system was quite reliable. It was always adamant in not doing anything for me unless it was paid, never working for free at all and keeping true to the “principle” of working only as hard as the amount it was paid. This time, the fact that it was willing to allow me to go into debt while helping me out was rather astonishing.

The system fell into an abnormal state of silence. Not only did it ignore everything I asked it, I couldn’t even open up anything in its menu except the progress bar. It was basically like a computer that had overloaded itself and crashed, but from another aspect, it also meant how important the “world” was—important to the point where the system abandoned everything else and focused only on perfecting it!

But not being able to use the system didn’t mean that I had nothing to do. It was rather the opposite. In order to improve my reputation for the quest, as well as prepare for the necessary upcoming battle, I did many “small things.”

Karo City’s arena was typically the place where other species would take care of their personal grudges, and the “wise” mages would never enjoy such a barbaric stage. Yet these days, the arena was filled to the brim with mages.

Currently, a silver-armored warrior was dueling with an archmage. The archmage kept creating walls in an attempt to prevent the warrior from getting into melee range, while he also controlled some earth elemental warriors as fodder for blocking the silver warrior.

*Boom!*

The earth wall that would have been sufficient to block even a giant was actually demolished, and all that silver warrior had to do was lower his head and guard himself with his shield and he could completely ignore the low-level earth elementals his opponent summoned.

*Boom!*

This time, a newly created earth wall was directly destroyed as its earth element wasn’t solidified enough yet.

It was unexpected; the archmage was still in the midst of an incantation when the silver warrior’s sharp sword was already in front of him. He hurriedly rose his hand in surrender as his face was already pale with fear.

“Winner, Roland! Congratulations for seventeen victories in a row!”

I took off my helmet and smiled my #59th Style Holy Knight Standard Smile, which I was out of practice with these days, and waved my hand at the observers, causing many to shout out in excitement and joy.

“It seems that I still have it in me.”

As a Holy Knight who used to specialize in being the pretty face to attract sponsors, using my face to improve my reputation was basically a piece of cake for me. But just this alone wouldn’t be enough.

And, so, I was all smiles as I reached out my hand to the archmage that just lost to me. I pulled him up and began explaining to him about the battle just now.

“Using well-prepared earth wall traps to slow down a high-speed-type warrior is indeed a good idea, but sometimes it’s just too obvious. If only you placed a small trap for tripping someone under the earth wall. As long as it succeeds in making your opponent lose balance—even for just a short moment—that could be fatal. And all you focused on was creating walls, can’t you dig a pit trap with earth magic behind the wall? Since your opponent’s vision will be blocked by the earth wall anyways, when a high-speed-type warrior breaks through the earth wall or jumps over it, he’ll have too much speed to stop, and it’s highly likely that he’ll fall directly into the pit.”

“Ohhh!”

Not only was this archmage not unhappy about losing, he was nodding with an expression filled with gratitude. The other spectator mages also took out their notebooks and kept writing in them. These types of combat techniques and practical experience all came from a strong warrior’s experience and couldn’t be learned in any classroom.

“Scholarly academic mages always have a bad habit of preferring to use extravagant high-level spells to crush their opponents. To tell the truth, high-level spells have too long of a cast time and are too obvious; they aren’t actually all that threatening to high-level warriors. As long as you hit someone in a critical area, even the lowest level ice arrow can be fatal. A simple combination of low-level magic spells is the best combination to deal with high-level warriors.”

Yep, I was teaching them after every battle, and this was the method I chose to try improving my reputation. After all, in the mage society, there were plenty who could teach magical knowledge, but there were pitifully few mage teachers who could teach combat experience and practical techniques.

Yep, I was now a mage teacher. Even though in combat I typically performed the role of a warrior job class, I had appeared in front of them as a magical swordsman who practiced both swordsmanship and magic, which was why they could accept me as one of their own.

Since it was a “mage” defeating them, they could accept it even if they lost, but a warrior defeating mages continuously would doubtlessly give me a lot of unnecessary trouble.

As a former student who was senior to even their highest-ranked archmage Kaid, I naturally counted as their teacher in their eyes as well, which further reduced any enmity they may have had. And since I was considered an ancient oddity who had lived for several hundred years already, no matter how ridiculous I acted, they would treat it all as normal.

“May the Holy Light forever be by your side!”

A blinding Holy Light descended and began healing the archmage that had just lost to me. His skin began glowing pink, but all the spectator mages didn’t react to this. This obviously wasn’t the first time.

“This is the thirteenth time he’s used holy magic to heal his opponent! Could this senior of ours even have the job class of a Legend Holy Knight?”

“Inconceivable!”

Without a doubt, the good reputation of Holy Knights would also make it much easier for me to gain reputation. At the very least, the story of my adventuring that I had made up was already being treated as real.

And if everyone else was just somewhat surprised, Kaid was shocked to the point of his jaw dropping on the ground.

“The greedy, perverted, narrow-minded, vicious, evil, grudge-bearing (30 adjectives have been skipped here for convenience) Roland was actually able to become a Holy Knight? Are the rumors of the God of Holy Light going blind actually true?”

Alright, so you think I’m greedy, perverted, (34 adjectives skipped here for convenience)? Yep, Kaid, you must have a really good memory as well. Yep, in two days, I shall allow you to witness just how grudge-bearing I’m capable of being.

“Good work. Those youngsters are really impressed with you.” (Kaid, just keep being happy for the time being. I’ll help the whole city learn that you’re actually a lolicon.)

I was intending to tease him with that, but suddenly, a messenger came in on a horse galloping at top speed. Judging by how the messenger was waving his hand at me, it seemed that the letter I had been waiting for all this time had finally arrived.

“Kaid, it seems that the time has come. Our plan is about to begin.”

Note:

1. According to Wikipedia, Tsundere is a Japanese term for a character development process that describes a person who is initially cold and even hostile towards another person before gradually showing a warmer side over time.