Giselle read Sched’s determination from his instantly calmed reaction.

“Don’t think of anything foolish. Those who help heretics are also heretics.”

Afraid of what he might do, Giselle warned him.

Then his violet eyes slowly turned towards Giselle’s desk.

On the desk was a letter stamped with the Pope’s seal.

“…So what are you planning to do with Louise?”

A cautious and deliberate tone, like a predator assessing the state and habits of its prey.

Giselle realized the essence of the cold attitude that possessed Sched.

It was not reason, but instinct.

Not actions derived from logical reasoning and calculation, but judgments based on instinctive intuition.

If she showed even the slightest gap in front of him, he would not hesitate to bite into her weakness and take what he wanted.

“God is not merciful to demons.”

Giselle did not want to give him any loose ends.

Even if she had not yet written a reply to the Pope’s letter.

Then Sched glared at Giselle again, suppressing his boiling excitement.

“Louise saved everyone.”

“…But everyone saw her power.”

“Damn it, it’s thanks to her that you can spout that nonsense now. Don’t you know?”

Sched breathed out with difficulty and rebuked.

Everyone here owed their lives to Louise.

Giselle was no different.

Sched recalled the moment he confronted Dietrich.

He had never anticipated defeat once in his life.

Even when defeat was imminent, he looked for ways to win, not reasons to lose.

That’s how he earned the nickname “Undefeated Hero”.

But the moment his sword clashed with Dietrich’s, he sensed defeat for the first time.

That the end of this fight would ultimately be the death of a mortal.

Aura and divine power were useless in the face of his endlessly regenerating form.

Moreover, he had a force that was constantly being created.

Those who lost their lives resisting in Paradel. They became undead again and sided with Dietrich.

The longer the battle went on, the more advantageous it was for Dietrich.

People would be killed again by their families and comrades turned undead, and Paradel would be ruthlessly trampled and reduced to ruins once more.

Only Louise, with the power of immortality, could face an immortal.

Louise saved everyone here, Paradel, Ideana, and the Empire.

Then Giselle clenched her white hands tightly.

She could not deny Sched’s words.

That was why she had not been able to write a reply to the Pope’s letter.

However, as the Acting Pontiff, she could not dare to step forward and defend a ‘demon’.

“Yes, I acknowledge that merit. But crime and merit are separate things.”

“Crime…? You’re saying Louise has committed a crime?”

Sched’s lips twisted as if in disgust.

“She was just a victim…!”

Veins bulged on his neck.

Giselle frowned at his words in disbelief.

“A victim?”

Could the word victim be attached to a heretic?

There could be no such a contradictory statement.

Then Sched approached her with staggering steps, but maintaining a large stride.

Though he was merely walking with a battered body, his appearance was at first glance like that of a starving beast.

Without realizing it, Giselle clenched her sweaty hands.

Even though he had lost weight and become emaciated, he was still large enough to dominate the air in the room.

“Follow me.”

Sched roughly grabbed Giselle’s wrist.

It was the first time he had taken the initiative to seize the Acting Pontiff.

His huge hand brutishly dragged her.

“What are you doing, Sched!”

“…See for yourself. What happened while your temple was immersed in negligence. What sins you committed against Louise.”

Sched spat out his words in a voice boiling with anger.

It was time to remove the veil that covered the eyes of the incompetent temple.

They dug deep underground, like a tomb.

A tunnel twisted like a labyrinth inside a historical monarch’s tomb.

As soon as they entered the passage, a damp, musty smell and the stench of blood assailed their noses.

“Where on earth is this place…?”

Giselle and the priests, holding torches, headed towards the innermost part of the maze-like path.

Giselle anxiously followed behind Sched, observing his condition.

With his unwell body, he walked through the long and dark space.

Giselle spotted blood droplets on the floor.

Judging by the clarity of the darkly dried stains, they seemed to be recent.

Could it be that the undead buried underground had broken through this path?

The moment she continued her speculation, a wide open space appeared at the end of the tunnel.

Sched, Giselle, and the priests’ steps halted.

Rusty iron bars, strange ancient letters written on the walls and floor, various research materials piled around an old desk.

Blood, animal bones, unidentifiable vials, tools that looked like they were used for torture, strangely blooming flowers.

The air filling the dark space was unpleasant in itself.

It wouldn’t be surprising if an undead suddenly sprang out from the wall.

“Under Paradel, there’s a space like this…”

“This, this is all blood… isn’t it?”

A priest standing to one side shuddered at the sight of a hardened black lump at his feet.

Sched turned to Giselle and met her eyes.

“Look. The sins you have committed.”

Giselle could not organize the confusion in front of her and scattered her gaze here and there.

“What on earth is this place for? Why is there a space like this under Paradel…?”

The existence of this unfamiliar space was too sudden. And eerie.

“Can’t you tell by looking? It’s Dietrich’s laboratory.”

“D-Dietrich?”

Upon hearing his name, the priests trembled in horror.

Turning their gaze, they saw a bookshelf revealing Dietrich’s obsessive tendencies.

The shelves were filled with notebooks, from old and tattered ones to new ones that looked like they had been used recently, all neatly arranged in a row.

The documents on the desk also appeared random due to their sheer quantity, but they were clearly organized neatly according to some criteria.

Sched took an old notebook from the shelf.

“Read them all.”

He held out the notebook to Giselle.

An old notebook with a heavily worn leather cover, several pages torn off from age.

Giselle took the notebook, which she found repulsive even to touch.

And when she opened the first page, she realized.

‘…He left all of this behind?’

Surprisingly, the meticulous and thorough Dietrich had compiled and stored all his research to date.

‘Even though he would certainly be put to death as a heretic if caught, he left such evidence under the temple…’

It was blatant proof of his black magic research.

But Giselle thought she knew why he had left these research journals.

He must have valued the worth of the research materials more than the risk of his crimes being exposed.

He had always been a man who became excessively obsessed with one thing.

Dietrich could not bring himself to dispose of his historically significant research materials.

Perhaps he thought these records would become a great legacy that could change the course of human history…

‘That bastard must be quite insane.’

Giselle thought as she traced back to the earliest date in his research journal.

And the moment she saw the first record marking the beginning, a sigh of dismay escaped her lips.

“Ah…!”

The records had started more than a decade ago.

Right when the Ideana family had begun to seriously research black magic.

Giselle read through the contents of the heinous experiments Dietrich had conducted alongside Felix.

With each turn of the old pages, the shock deepened.

There were months-long gaps at times, and periods when Felix’s solo experiment reports were attached, but the records continued meticulously and consistently until recently.

At the same time, the questions she had harbored were gradually being resolved.

‘He volunteered to become the high priest of Ideana…’

Why he knew so much about black magic, why he took the lead in exterminating the Ideana family and heretics.

‘He stepped forward himself to cover up his own crimes.’

Giselle turned the pages of the experiment journal with trembling hands.

It was the same when the Ideana family was annihilated.

He volunteered as a holy soldier for the heretic trial and came to Ideana.

Worried that other priests might find traces of the experiments.

And he directly falsified and manipulated the reports on the Ideana situation.

Giselle recalled that the report on the death of Louise Ideana had passed through his hands.

For a long time, he had meticulously hidden his tracks.

Giselle read the next volume of the notebook, and then the next, by the light of the torch.

And finally, she could understand how Dietrich had resurrected the forgotten heretical sorcery.

‘Changing the circuit of divine power flowing through the body…?’

They attempted the insane act of completely remodeling the body.

It was a process inevitably accompanied by pain akin to death, and they had to plunder the life force of countless individuals to obtain the energy to change the circuit.

Nevertheless, they carried it out.

On numerous test subjects, and…

‘On Louise Ideana…’

Giselle’s gaze stopped at the end of that name.

‘Then all these experiments were done to her…’

Dietrich had wanted to become a ‘demon’ from the beginning, but he was too afraid to be the first one to undergo the experiment himself.

So before applying it to himself, he created countless deaths as a confirmation process.

The various horrific experiments forced upon the test subjects.

And the end of all those experiments was directed at ‘Louise Ideana’.

Felix Ideana believed that Louise was the final, perfected product.

But to Dietrich, Louise was nothing more than the final confirmation stage of the last clinical trial.

The victim of a terrible experiment.

That was the process by which Louise Ideana gained the power of heresy, and the reason she had lived desperately hiding her power.

“…See for yourself. What happened while your temple was immersed in negligence. What sins you committed against Louise.”

Giselle’s lips trembled.

The foolishness of not knowing for more than a decade.

The temple could not escape responsibility for this matter.