Grita hurriedly checked on Eve, who was cradled in her arms.

“Waaah!”

Fortunately, the child was unharmed, but startled by the sudden accident, Eve burst into tears.

Grita soothed the frightened child and glared toward the carriage.

To drive a carriage like this in the square.

Who would have thought there would be a senseless person driving a carriage at high speed in a square where people walk.

Grita looked at the pattern drawn on the stopped carriage.

A brazen golden star.

It was the holy symbol of the temple.

At that moment, the carriage door flung open.

“What are you doing suddenly stopping the carriage!”

A priest stepped out of the carriage, his voice highly agitated.

The coachman fidgeted and turned his eyes toward Grita and Eve.

“I apologize, Priest. The child suddenly ran out there…!”

Grita frowned deeply at the coachman’s excuse.

Driving the carriage like that and then blaming the child?

“Child?”

Upon hearing the coachman’s excuse, the priest’s gaze also turned to Grita and Eve.

Grita knew the priests of Shedron well.

She originally did not like priests very much, and she especially disliked the newly appointed priest in Shedron recently.

Generally, the priests appointed to Shedron were particularly fond of money compared to priests in other regions.

No, perhaps it was those who loved money that requested to be appointed to Shedron.

Because of this, the priests of Shedron had many problems for generations, and the newly appointed priest was even more troublesome, giving Eclas a headache.

The middle-aged man in white priestly robes walked toward the two with a noble gait.

The gold chain around his waist and the decorative holy objects jingled.

The priest, who stopped in front of the two, stared intently at the sniffling Eve.

Grita knew well that it was not good to get on the priest’s nerves.

Although Shedron was Eclas’s territory, the church was a completely independent group that even Eclas found difficult to deal with.

Grita made Eve stand upright and tightly held her small hand.

“Did you run in front of the carriage?”

The priest asked Eve in a benevolent voice.

Eve, frightened by the stern-looking man’s question, stopped crying, sniffled, and nodded.

Smack! The priest’s hand struck Eve’s face.

“!”

The tiny body limply collapsed on the square’s pavement.

It was a moment too quick for Grita to react.

“Where did you learn to nod your head so insolently.”

Eve, startled by the sudden slap, couldn’t even burst into tears and gasped for breath.

“How dare a little runt block the path of the temple’s carriage, how impious!”

The priest scolded Eve as if a strict judge was shouting at a sinner.

Unable to endure it any longer, Grita helped Eve up and made her step back behind her.

When Grita stood up properly, she was more than a head taller than the priest.

A fleeting look of bewilderment flashed across the priest’s face.

However, that bewilderment soon transformed into a face tightly knotted with pride.

“You, as a mother, don’t even have a word of apology?”

The priest rebuked the woman who had been silent since earlier, his chin raised.

Grita clenched her teeth.

She had no desire to apologize to such a bastard.

However, she was with Eve now.

Problems could not be solved with simple emotions.

“When uneducated fools like this run rampant, sin is prevalent in the world! It’s deplorable!”

At the priest’s insult, Grita clenched her fists.

If she could, she wanted to shoot back at the priest.

The words she couldn’t spit out boiled hotly inside her.

‘I have to endure it.’

The first priority was to take Eve and leave this place.

The priest’s violence could be repaid in other ways later.

Of course, it would have to be repaid generously with interest.

Grita, enduring it, knelt to protect Eve.

Since she couldn’t speak, the only thing she could do to defuse this situation was to show it through action.

More actively than others. Perhaps more humiliatingly.

As Grita knelt and bowed her head, the priest smirked and raised the corner of his mouth.

With his nose in the air, he tapped her knees with the tip of his white shoe.

“You think just kneeling is enough? The carriage stopped suddenly and I almost hurt my back. What if my back or neck had been injured!”

Even though Grita knelt, he continued to find fault and insult her.

Then Eve hugged the kneeling Grita with both arms as if to protect her.

“Auntie did nothing wrong! It was Eve!”

Eve shouted at the priest in a tearful voice.

Grita’s eyes widened as she was embraced by the small, delicate arms.

The priest frowned at the little one who intervened shouting.

“What?”

At the priest’s cold response, Eve trembled and tightly closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry! Eve was wrong!”

Eve brought her tiny hands together in front of her chest.

Eve was scared.

What if that scary man hits Auntie too?

What if I do something wrong again and upset Mom, Dad, and Auntie?

Eve knelt down next to Grita, frightened.

“Eve was wrong! Please forgive me…”

As Eve pleaded with tears, Grita’s eyes trembled.

The child, not knowing anything, was begging the priest out of fear.

The small hands pleaded fervently until they became hot.

Anger boiled inside her.

She regretted kneeling to avoid escalating the situation.

Because she knelt, the innocent child believed everything was truly her fault.

Grita tried to make Eve, who was kneeling on the cold ground, stand up.

However, Eve shook her head and stubbornly knelt down again.

Even though her knees were hit on the uneven stone pavement of the square, she paid no heed.

The priest, who had been watching the two, opened his mouth.

“The child is better than the mother. Doing wrong and then shutting up like a mute…”

“My aunt is not a mute!”

Eve, who had been sobbing, shouted with squinted eyes.

“What?”

“Take back what you said about being mute! They said that’s a bad word!”

When Eve first read the word ‘mute’ in a book, both her mother and father said it was not a good word to use.

No one on Janna Island called Grita a mute either.

It was the first time Eve saw someone actually using the bad word ‘mute’.

And she got angry.

But to the priest, it was an absurd point.

“Are you trying to teach me now? A commoner brat who’s not even dry behind the ears?”

The priest looked down with threatening eyes, but the precocious child retorted, moving her small lips without being intimidated.

“Eve already said she was wrong, so you apologize too…!”

As Eve opened her tear-filled eyes wide, the priest raised his hand again.

“Mister? This little wench…!”

As the large hand was raised, Eve instinctively closed her eyes tightly out of fear.

At that moment.

“Ack!”

Someone pulled the white priestly robe’s collar from behind.

And, bam!

With a loud impact sound as if bones were shattering, the priest collapsed to the ground.

Everyone at the scene froze at the tremendous sound.

Eve also slowly opened her eyes, clutching her pounding heart, unexpected by the sound.

Then, in front of her eyes, stood a person larger than Aunt Grita.

Eve knew that person.

“Villain Mister…?”

He looked extremely strong, with a scary and rugged face.

Beautiful purple eyes that didn’t match him, like jewels.

The villain mister she had met in the hallway was looking down at the priest sprawled on the ground, cracking his wrist.

The priest covered his twisted jaw with his hand and flailed one arm.

When the coachman rushed over from behind and aligned his jaw, the priest gasped for breath on the ground.

“H-how dare you lay a hand on a priest’s body!”

The priest’s anger had a whistling sound, perhaps because his jaw still hurt.

“I regret it too. I should have used a sword, not my hand.”

“Wh-what?”

“I left my sword behind or something.”

Sched muttered in annoyance, touching his empty waist.

Because Eclas was so vigilant, he didn’t carry a sword in the city of Shedron.

But today, the empty waist was quite regrettable.

“To dare strike a priest, you will be punished for heresy…”

“Heresy?”

At the word heresy, Sched’s eyes became even more murderous.

“Go and report to that great church. That Sched Lester, who went out to hunt heretics, was a heretic himself.”

“Sh-Sh-Sched Lester?”

Upon hearing his name, the priest hurriedly pulled himself together and stood up.

Come to think of it, with purple eyes and an unusual build.

Plus, black leather boots and a silver-crafted belt that ordinary Lupus would have a hard time wearing.

“L-Lord Lester, why are you here?”

The priest, who had been extremely arrogant until just now, asked in a softened tone as if he had learned to be polite.

“Do I have to report even that to the temple?”

“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant…!”

The priest shook his head.

Sched Lester was different from Eclas Bitel.

He had distinguished himself in the heretic hunt a few years ago, and was someone the temple could not treat carelessly.

Moreover, he was originally a famous hero, and with the victory in the war against Blancas added to that, he had now risen to an unapproachable position.

If there was someone recording history, they would undoubtedly choose Sched Lester as the most important figure of this era.

Therefore, he was a power figure that the official priest of Shedron could not possibly challenge.

“I’ll give you a choice.”

Sched parted his lips toward the priest, whose cheek was starting to swell up.

“Will you quietly back down like this? Or would you prefer to get hit on the other side too for balance and then disappear?”

He asked leisurely while rubbing his wrist.