Receiving awkward praise like, ‘I believed in you! You’re the village’s hero!’ Alon headed for the south gate where the Ronobelli Jungle was.

The moment he arrived, the explorers there praised him too.

He even got free directions to the explorer camp from some tout.

And he was able to grasp, at least vaguely, why this was happening.

“You’re truly amazing, my lord. How in the world did you gather mercenaries and knights like that and sweep away the dark clouds over the Allied Kingdoms? I can only admire you.”

“......Is that... so?”

“Yes! Thanks to you, Marquis, life’s become so much easier these days!”

“That’s good.......”

As Alon answered awkwardly to the explorer laughing and admiring him sincerely, Evan, walking beside him, quietly said,

“......Is that for real?”

“Do you really need to ask to know?”

“No, I just asked in case.”

“You’re the one who filed the official notice.......”

“Ah.”

Evan let out a small exclamation.

Penia, who had been following behind the whole time, kept furrowing and relaxing her brow with a baffled expression like she couldn’t understand, then finally opened her mouth.

“......So it’s like this, right? The marquis just posted an official notice to accept Divine Land citizens without thinking, and people misunderstood it however they wanted, and that’s how we got this situation?”

“Exactly.”

“......This is it?”

“Not a single bit off.”

“......And it turns into this kind of situation?”

“.......”

Just what kind of rumor had even spread?

While Alon muttered hollowly, Penia glanced at the explorer.

Clearly, he was doing the work for free, but he was smiling from ear to ear like the mere fact that he could help Marquis Palatio made him happy.

Can you really be that happy working for free? Penia thought for a moment.

Then she continued.

“......Well, isn’t this still a good thing? Even if it’s distorted, if it’s a good rumor, it doesn’t matter.”

At her words, Alon nodded.

She was definitely right.

A good rumor didn’t harm his image.

But still. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

“With someone like you around, my lord, it feels like the Allied Kingdoms are still running. Hahahaha—!”

It stung a lot.

Mostly his conscience.

‘Why would such an absurd rumor even spread?’

Even while he kept worrying about that, he had no intention of confessing his conscience to an explorer who was cheerfully chattering away.

He’d already received a ton of applause and celebration back in Caslet—if he said something now and the truth spread that it was all a misunderstanding, it felt like it would be hard to endure the cold stares that would follow.

So instead of correcting the wrong rumor, Alon chose to stay quiet.

And because of that, by late that evening, Alon was able to reach the explorer camp comfortably.

And—

“Marquis Palatio is here!”

“Why is the marquis here?”

“No way—”

Even after arriving at the camp, Alon got hit with ‘You’re the village’s hero!’ again, and he couldn’t even bring himself to lift his head.

‘......If I really had that intention, wouldn’t I be proud instead of embarrassed?’

The next day, after that odd thought brushed through Alon’s mind.

‘......I still hate it here.’

He drew the extremely humid air deep into his lungs.

[Kyuu—]

[Mm— good.]

Blackie shook themself over and over as if they hated the humidity, and Basiliora, maybe because they’d come back to their hometown, enjoyed the dampness with a fresh expression—while Alon looked ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) on lazily.

“Marquis.”

“What is it?”

“Only now that we’ve come this far did it occur to me. Are we forgetting something?”

“Forgetting something?”

“Yes.”

“......What would it be?”

“Blue-Eared One. Weren’t we supposed to bring Blue-Eared One with us?”

“Ah.”

Only then did Alon recall the existence he’d forgotten, and he let out a quiet exclamation.

“......I completely forgot.”

“Well, Blue-Eared One looked happy there, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

“......That’s true too.”

While Alon recalled the very happy-looking Blue-Eared One he’d seen last time, Penia, who had been listening quietly, asked,

“If we don’t have that Blue-Eared One kid, how are we supposed to get to where Ryang-a is?”

“Oh, that’s true too.”

Evan immediately chimed in.

But Alon—

“Don’t worry about that.”

said calmly.

His memory was getting hazy now, but he still remembered about where the White Ghost Gang boss was.

‘......Besides, you just go to the deepest part of the forest in the first place.’

Thinking that—

“Then let’s move. It’ll probably take time, so it’s better to move a little faster.”

They prepared to leave, and set out in earnest toward the forest where Ryang-a was.

As Alon hurried his steps through the forest, he overlooked two important facts.

The first was that Ryang-a—the White Ghost Gang boss—was farther than he’d expected.

But that part was fine.

He already knew the location of where she was, so as long as he reached her without getting lost, it wouldn’t take that long.

The problem was the other fact.

On the path Alon had to take to meet Ryang-a—the White Ghost Gang boss—there were countless mutants scattered everywhere.

Of course, at this point, mutants weren’t a major threat to Alon.

He had the strength to deal with them easily, even if a pack of them came.

But the problem was sustainability.

Alon could handle mutants.

Even if mutants came in a swarm, if he didn’t consider provoking nearby mutants, he could wipe them out.

But the number of times he could do that was clearly fixed.

And this forest had a lot of mutants.

If you compared it to a game, it was like you met mutants once every five tiles you moved.

So when he entered the forest and met mutants for the first time, Alon briefly regretted, inwardly, that he should’ve used the game’s system, ‘Offering a tribute,’ in advance.

......Until an unknown being suddenly appeared and blew apart the head of a mutant that was about to pounce on Alon.

A girl with long white hair that fell past her waist, wearing a dokkaebi mask on her face, smashed the mutant and then disappeared on the spot.

And after a few more minutes of walking—

when mutants appeared again, the girl reappeared too, blew another mutant’s head apart, and vanished.

After that, it happened about five more times.

......Naturally, Alon knew all too well who the being was who kept saving them out of nowhere, then vanishing as if nothing had happened.

“......Marquis.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Ryang-a, right?”

“......It looks like it.”

“That... you mean the friend who saved you last time, right?”

“Yes.”

Of course, Penia had also noticed Ryang-a’s existence immediately.

......Honestly, it would’ve been strange not to notice.

This wasn’t some world out of a comic.

Not recognizing someone just because they wore one ordinary mask that wasn’t even an artifact was nonsense.

So.

When she took down another mutant—

“Ryang-a.”

Alon called out to Ryang-a as she was about to vanish.

“Hwugaeak—”

Ryang-a made a weird sound.

The way her limbs stiffened up like she never expected to be found out gave Alon a strange feeling.

“......I, I’m not Ryang-a, though?”

‘That’s Ryang-a.’

‘That person.’

The whole party had the exact same thought as she denied it without even changing her voice.

But maybe Ryang-a was determined to hide herself until the end.

“Hm— ahem— If you cross this forest and go over toward that hill where you can come out around there, you might meet a person with beautiful white hair, maybe??”

Saying that in a shameless tone, she disappeared again.

“......What is that.”

“For now, I think we should follow.”

At Penia’s words, Alon nodded and moved his feet.

Marti.

He was currently a soldier of Divine Land made by Marquis Palatio, but—

his true identity was an operative belonging to Caliban’s ducal unit, an agent who had infiltrated after hearing Marquis Palatio was creating Divine Land, in order to spy for information.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was doing anything in particular.

He had no mission beyond purely obtaining information.

In the first place, infiltrating Marquis Palatio’s Divine Land itself was already a high-risk situation.

And yet, even so, the reason his superior had insisted on inserting him as an operative was—

because they thought Marquis Palatio might be planning something.

The marquis was a person with the power to do exactly that.

So Marti had joined the mission under extreme tension, but at first, he’d thought his superior’s and his own assumptions were wrong.

Because even though it was intense from the moment Deus began training the soldiers—

other than that, there hadn’t been any movement worth worrying about.

......Of course, as time passed, the expressions of the free-spirited knights would become extremely profound after having one-on-one talks with Deus, but that was really the end of it.

Afterward, even when Marquis Palatio gathered soldiers and knights under the pretext of gathering Divine Land citizens, Marti didn’t think much of it.

The mercenaries and knights had come after hearing distorted rumors, and—

it didn’t take long to realize Marquis Palatio hadn’t actually said anything like that.

But from the moment Kalannon—no, Kalannon’s saintess who served Marquis Palatio—entered Divine Land—

“.......”

Marti realized things were taking a dangerous turn.

Knights and mercenaries who had gathered because of distortion—who should have left and scattered—

started, one by one, to sincerely melt into Divine Land because of the saintess, and Divine Land began to truly expand.

And that wasn’t all.

Distorted rumors were already spreading out in the world.

In that situation, when Divine Land’s mercenaries and knights completely purged the bandits, praise for Marquis Palatio began to be heard everywhere.

Marti thought that maybe this situation might have been intended.

Rumors usually don’t flow in a good direction like this.

No matter how right the marquis’s actions were, rumors inevitably twist and distort.

But for it to be like this—

it was like someone was manipulating the rumors spreading among the Allied Kingdoms.

And if the rumors really were being manipulated by someone’s will, just as Marti suspected—

the one controlling them could only be Marquis Palatio.

Of course, there was still a question.

Marquis Palatio was a person who had everything.

It wasn’t as if having public sentiment would be bad, but would it really be worth consuming this much money to manage it?

Absolutely not.

No matter what anyone said, he was still only a marquis of the Ashtalon Kingdom.

In other words, to Marquis Palatio, public sentiment was useless for now.

So as Marti kept thinking about what the intention could be, before he knew it, one hypothesis formed in his mind.

......One terrifying hypothesis.

But once he set that hypothesis up, Marquis Palatio’s intention made sense.

Why he obtained this enormous Divine Land and gathered knights and soldiers.

Why he spread distorted rumors to gather mercenaries and knights.

Why he used the saintess to settle knights and mercenaries and recruit troops.

Why he spent such huge sums to manipulate public sentiment.

‘Marquis Palatio— intends to become the sky itself......!’

As he reached a conclusion that might as well have been fact, Marti felt shivers and goosebumps rise across his entire body.

......He’d always found it suspicious, but he’d never imagined it would be like this.

‘I have to tell them—fast!’

Waiting for night so he could report the truth he’d deduced, Marti clenched his magic orb tightly.

......And at that moment—

“......Why do my ears feel so itchy these days?”

“Maybe someone’s badmouthing you, Marquis?”

“......I don’t think I’ve lived so badly that I’d deserve to get cursed out.”

Alon rubbed his inexplicably itchy ear and passed through the forest.