Blake was worried and doubting himself. The former wasn’t an odd or unusual thing, especially since his friends seemed to always get into trouble. But it was rare for him to doubt his own decisions. He was the kind of guy to fully commit once he made up his mind.

He had convinced himself that there was enough work at the capital that he couldn’t put off everything and go visit Rowan. But every moment of crouching in the shadows of an alleyway was putting that decision more and more in doubt.

“Hey there, I’ll help with that,” Blake said as he stepped out. It only took him two steps to cross the street and arrive in front of a grandmother struggling with a crate of apples. “Where do you need this to go?”

“Over there.” She pointed at a shop in the distance.

“Sure thing.” Blake slowed down to walk at the same pace as the grandmother. As he strolled at what felt like turtle speed, he tried to convince himself that staying in the capital was better. He had, after all, written a letter and slipped it into the official scroll of royal notice. He hoped it would not be needed, but sometimes, it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Right here is okay,” the old lady said. When Blake gently placed the crate down, she took one of the apples and offered it to Blake. “You’re a real gentleman, you know that?”

Blake smiled. “As long as I keep getting treats like these, I’ll keep being a gentleman.”

He bit into the apple as he strolled away from the shop. The fruit was bland, almost bitter. It was a horrible taste. But he kept chewing and swallowed before taking another bite. He wasn’t about to discard her appreciation by throwing it away, no matter how much he wanted to.

This would be the kind of thing that Rowan notices. Everyone else sees me as an ever-on-the-move guy, happy to just rush into things without much thought. Only Rowan knew that I care about one thing, helping people.

Blake was not the kind of guy to overly worry about whether people liked him. He just liked helping people. Or, in Rowan’s words, Blake was the type of person who had a hero-complex.

But look at where we are now. In an entirely different world and heroes of a kingdom. Look at how things played out for good ol’ Blake.

“What are you doing?” A hiss rang out to his left from one of the alleys and the hero gave a friendly little wave. “You do realize that we are waiting for the signal to kick off an extremely important secret mission?”

“I know,” Blake muttered when he managed to swallow the bitter fruit. “But that’s no reason to be rude or not to help someone in need.”

“Really?” the voice hissed back.

“It’s better than…” Blake gestured at himself. He looked more like a rogue or some disgusting assassin than a hero blessed by the light goddess Sarina herself. Blake sighed, rubbing the front of his armor that was covered in a thick cloak. His disguise covered all emblems of Sarina and he even dimmed their glow by cutting off the flow of divine energies to his armor, something that made him extremely uncomfortable.

The radiance started when he got his rare class and only intensified when he advanced to epic tier [Holy Paladin]. He already missed its reassuring warmth and the presence of his goddess bolstering his will in the back of his mind. He genuinely felt partly crippled without that connection.

“How much longer do we have to wait?” Blake asked, eyes already roaming the streets again.

The old lady had been an excellent find, but an unfortunately small number of people needed help so late at night. He perked up for a moment when he saw a group of men stumbling along with a woman between them but then overheard her scolding them for drinking too much.

Just a group of friends making their way home, not an attempted kidnapping or worse.

Blake sighed.

“We’re all in position. Well, most of us,” an Inquisitor of Sarina whispered, glaring at Blake meaningfully. “We’re just waiting for… confirmation for when the illegal gathering starts.”

Blake nodded, pleased. Confirmation was indeed important. He had stepped in just the other day when a group of inquisitors had been a bit too eager to perform their duties.

Protecting the sanctity of the light was all well and good. Terrorizing citizens was not.

He could forgive them for their errors, however. He had the reassurance of a god’s will burning inside of his chest. Even though he wasn’t a [High Priest], his class and blessing afforded him a genuine connection to his goddess. In fact, he was better than a priest. The church had said that he was the closest person to Sarina they had seen in generations. And he would bring down the justice of his goddess’s wrath on anyone who deserved it.

Blake felt his energies reach out for his armor and quashed them. He wouldn’t be the one to jeopardize the mission.

“How many of the participants have we managed to identify?” Blake asked, looking for the next best distraction.

Stolen novel; please report.

The man hesitated, much to Blake’s ire. “Unfortunately, none so far, other than the host of this meeting. They’ve been exceedingly careful, and we can’t risk alerting them before the time to strike comes.”

Cruel, brash, and incompetent. Blake’s estimation of the man’s character had been plummeting for some time, but that was the one final nail in the coffin. I’ll have a chat with the [High Priest] after this. This must not be the quality of Lady Sarina’s servants.

Even without their connection at full power, he felt a trickle of amusement and approval from his goddess. Immediately, the night seemed just a tiny bit brighter and the wait more bearable.

By the time the light in one of the windows of a building across the street turned on, Blake had a small smile on his face.

And just like that, Blake had a purpose in life again.

He threw off his cloak and charged through the gates of the small yet opulent building they had been keeping an eye on. By all accounts, the building was a ‘gentlemen’s club’ meant for the gathering of the capital’s elite. In other words, a place to drink, gamble away money, and make secret dealings.

Blake hated it.

He relished the chance to break down the front doors, sending the nearby guards literally flying with the explosion of his radiant aura. Already, a glowing shield adorned his left arm, and a long sword hewn out of pure light was clasped in his right. He was a true vision of divine might and fury, and the way his goddess sang to him through the warmth in his chest only reinforced that notion.

Unfortunately, he was instructed to spare every evildoer he came across, so they could be properly detained and questioned. Blake blunted his sword so that it wouldn’t send any limbs flying and began swatting away at the men and women dressed in finery and wearing thick masks. He took great care in disabling each and every one of them so they couldn’t run.

As he ventured deeper into the building, the infidels managed to mount some minor resistance. They were actually halfway competent combatants and one of the women resistors might have managed to draw blood had his glowing aura not stopped her blade. It hung just a fraction of an inch from his jugular and Blake might have been a bit rough when he backhanded her across the room.

“Our main target is deeper into the building. We have reliable information that they’re having a much more clandestine meeting there. Main supporters only.” A voice whispered in Blake’s ear. He was much too focused on not murdering the fool trying to stab him through the eye with a rapier to respond.

For all his power and toughness, healing from that kind of an injury would still be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.

The man suddenly sped up and his blade ignited in black energy. Every strike began shearing through Blake’s aura. There was a good chance that the man had synergetic cards that weakened or nullified healing. So Blake tried his best to dodge.

Unfortunately, dexterity really wasn’t Blake’s main stat. He needed far too much wisdom and strength for that to be possible. After one particularly close call, Blake decided enough was enough. He burned through an immense portion of his mana pool to charge at the man in a corona of golden mana.

Blake slammed into the man and the ridiculous expenditure worked. His opponent’s blade almost bit through and cut his skin but before it could go further, its owner was launched into the ceiling with a loud squelch.

Blake winced a little, hoping they could find him a healer in time to prevent death.

Finally, though, he was through and staring at a heavily warded door.

“We’ll need a couple of minutes to take down the wards,” the inquisitor said, but Blake was far too upset to properly listen. There was no guarantee that the people on the other side of that door weren’t fleeing already.

Blake fell to his knees, his weapons unraveling into light as he clasped his hands in prayer. “My Goddess, please open the path for your servants, so that your will be done and your enemies cleansed.”

The prayer wasn’t something the clergy was likely to approve of, especially since it was short, sincere, and to the point.

However, if his goddess was displeased, she didn’t show it.

A halo of light erupted around Blake and immediately stepped forward, pushing on the warded doors. The wards sparked and tried to devour him, but he was more than just mortal. In that moment, he wasn’t mere flesh.

He was the partial avatar of his goddess, and such trickery was beneath him.

The ward was undone and imploded inwards, blasting the doors open and even damaging the walls of the room. The shudder of the building might have worried Blake if he didn’t know his goddess was there with him every step of the way.

Blake strolled into the room confidently, only to freeze at the sight within. At the very back of the room, a massive portrait of some ancient noble was pushed to the side, revealing the gaping hole of a tunnel heading into darkness.

Most of the people in the room were already in the tunnel with only two men behind guarding the passageway. One of them was almost purposefully unremarkable. His features seemed average on every count. The other, however, was much more distinct. The man’s golden hair glittered under the light of the chandelier and his forest green eyes glared at Blake with a kind of barely tampered anger typically reserved for one’s worst enemies.

The man’s fingers were tightly clasped around a sword and Blake had a moment to note how odd they looked before he stumbled.

It was like someone had hit him over the back of his head with a baseball bat. Everything was spinning around him and he almost bent over to puke. Even the support of his goddess was thrown into disarray and that was the very first time such a thing had ever happened.

Blake lost track of the two men as he tried to get his headache under control.

“Hero Blake are you okay?”

“Why are you asking after me? Go chase…” Blake paused as he saw the wards enveloping the passageway the two men had escaped into. He pushed aside the inquisitor and tried to bull through those wards. But without the goddess’ support, he could only take several steps into the tunnels before his mana was burned out and he was launched back, painfully. Someone had taken the time to layer ward after ward on every single inch of that tunnel.

“We’re working on it, but the complexity of the ward network…” The inquisitor cringed when Blake turned his eyes on him.

I’m definitely purging this entire group of inquisitors from the order.

“Record this,” Blake said. “One of the leaders had some kind of identity concealing artifact, or just a deck based around subterfuge. Can’t offer much about him past the fact that he was male. The other, platinum hair, ice blue eyes. Built as thick as a house. Should have seen his hands, like bricks, really.”

“We’ll track down someone with that particular description,” the inquisitor offered.

Blake just sighed, desperately wishing his party members were with him. They could have caught the back-room participants. But the unfortunate side effect of having a princess and two daughters of high nobility as your party members was that they were weak-willed. And rather fond of their beauty sleep.

Well, that and it was ‘politically insensitive’ to take them along.

Especially when the infidels are nobles. There’s no other explanation. A commoner organization couldn’t have wards this intricate or manpower this strong.

Oh well, he’d just have to do better next time.