The more they oppose, the more it shows that I am doing the right thing

Chapter 24 Experience the Bounty of the Mother Goddess!

News of this morning's events had already spread throughout the border city.The "Seaside Daily" was the first to report, with a nose for news sharp as a dog's.

It removed yesterday's headline "Eliminate Violence, Preserve Peace! Holy Knight Kavensis's Secret Witch-Hunt,"

and replaced it with the latest sensation: "Shocking! For the first time in sixty years, the Church goes home empty-handed, all because of him?"

Other newspapers followed with reports like "The unnamed hero, the dark knight guardian of the border city,"

"The Big Reveal! The true face behind the nameless hero,"

and "Why has the border esoteric religion mysteriously disappeared? Why is the person of light silent? Is all this a distortion of human nature, or a loss of morality?"

Various bizarre rumors, spiced up by the media, grew wildly throughout the border city like weeds after spring rain.

It seemed that the public was indeed very interested in these news stories.

And that was only natural.

After all, the image of a mysterious and powerful hero of the night who leaves no name is most adored by young girls and idealized by young boys.

Plus, he doesn't charge money.

When the Church sets out to eliminate esoteric religions, they would levy a tithe tax on the common people.

The sudden appearance of a hero who silently solves problems without charge was bound to be popular.

Now, the burning question on everyone's mind was, what is the name of this heroic figure?

As the fervor continued to brew, Holy Knight Kavensis's blunders from the previous night, along with his unbecoming conduct as an almost-saint, spread as well.

The next two days turned out to be anti-climactic.

With the initial setup of An Su's industrialized sacrifice of cultists, the sacrifices began to operate like an assembly line.

The next day, he collected 90 life points and 60 faith points.

The area he cleaned expanded from a ten-kilometer radius to fifteen kilometers.

The Church usually wouldn't thoroughly clean their surrounding outposts.

After all, they needed to leave some seeds, waiting for the spring breeze to blow life into them again—a sustainable overfishing of sorts.

But it was different with Brother Xianzong.

Adhering to the principle of thorough eradication, he spared no one—cleaning one place and moving to the next was fine, as An Su wasn't going to stay in the border city forever.

What could be guaranteed was that child kidnapping cases in the border city would drop by at least half for the upcoming year.

An Su's cleaning was exceptionally thorough; not only did he have Enya mop the floors, but he also became more excessive afterward.

This scoundrel even planned to remove the cultists' altars and dig up the grass.

Preparing a large wagon, he loaded up various ritual artifacts—things like severed heads and skins, tainted sacrificial items, taboo books—and hauled them off to bury them himself somewhere else.

As An Su put it, "Since I'm already here,"

who knows, they might be useful later on?

Meanwhile, his other secret identity gained even more popularity in the border city, becoming the hottest topic.

The media dubbed him "The Dark Night Hero," "The Nemesis of the Esoteric Religion."

The entire city was on the lookout for these heroes.

On the third day, the harvest wasn't as good as the previous two days.

Perhaps because he had been too active the days before, the cultists caught wind of the infamous Nemesis, and even those who normally laughed in the face of death became timid.

Maybe take a break this year?

The cultists had been slaughtered into taking a holiday.

The third day's harvest was only 20 life points and 15 faith points that were unconverted.

So, the total income for the three days was 170 life points and 115 faith points.

He spent 40 faith points on the first day to exchange for four magic points, becoming an intermediate-stage magician.

As an intermediate-stage magician, the exchange rate became 20:1.

An Su then spent sixty faith points, boosting his total magic power to 13.

And the remaining 25 faith points, he planned to use to exchange for a few low-level Holy Light magic spells for complementary purposes.

Life points were exchanged for a plethora of magic: several low-level magic books, an intermediate-stage dark magic book, and a high-level dark magic book.

Among those low-level magic spells, there were also some non-dark magic books since the Mother Goddess wasn't solely associated with the dark aspect.

As a Child of the Curse, when he used dark magic, its mana cost was halved, so he could use intermediate spells as low-level ones and high-level spells as intermediate ones—barely enough for practical use.

With the remaining 10 life points, he added them all to his physical attributes.

Thus, his Light and Dark Priest System was initially formed, reaching the first stage.

On the third day, quite early, before he even really got started, An Su's grand enterprise encountered an unexpected accident.

An Su and the Holy Knights from the Church bumped into each other.

To say it was the Church's Holy Knights was a bit of a stretch.

Because there was only Kavensis.

It looked like they were operating separately.

An Su had heard that he had a bit of a disagreement with the knightly orders.

After two consecutive days of fruitless witch-hunts, Kavensis stated angrily that he must find the trickster behind the scenes and declared that he would duel him honorably to reclaim his honor.

In fact, the border Church also had quite an issue with An Su,

first for stealing the Church's targeted prey, second for undermining the Church's authority, as the common folk were now all worshiping this "Dark Night Hero," who paid taxes to the Church anyway.

Kavensis's priest father also issued secret orders to find the troublemaker and dispose of him.

When they encountered each other, the blood moon was red, and the pale clouds were spread across the leaden sky.

An Su was driving the wagon when he spotted the Church's Holy Knight from afar and decisively retreated, dropping the title "The Newborn" and adopting the newly acquired "Gradual Dawn." He then told Enya to hide, in case her identity was uncovered with Scouting Magic.

Kavensis rode on his beloved horse, squinting slightly as he watched the suspicious carriage before him.

What was a carriage doing on the desolate plain at this time?

Moreover, he sensed the smell of blood coming from inside.

Years of intuition told Kavensis that the man before him was the one he had been

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