“Gloves? What are you talking about? So it’s because of your so-called gloves and those shady little deeds that you stabbed me in the back just now??” Caron latched onto the point like he had no intention of letting go, continuing to pester him relentlessly.

“I said it wasn’t me.”

“You said it? With what guarantee? Your character, or your reputation?? What a joke, Vinny. In the entire Kingdom of Camella, in the entire Church of the Dawn, who doesn’t know what kind of person you are? What kind of things you’d do??” Caron snorted coldly.

As he spoke, his eyes flicked, almost imperceptibly, toward Fennia and Amisha at the side.

“From how loud you’re still shouting, you look fine to me.” Vinny raised a brow. “You’re wearing under-armor. If it didn’t hit anything serious, then pull the dagger out already. You’ve been walking around with it stuck in you like some kind of porcupine.”

“Vin—ny!” Vinny’s calm, thick-skinned composure infuriated Caron so badly he choked on his words.

“So what you mean is, because I’m wearing under-armor, it’s no big deal that you stabbed me, is that it?” But Caron quickly gathered himself again.

“No—why are you so hard to deal with?” Vinny laughed. “I already told you it wasn’t me. When we ran, I had both hands over my mouth and nose. Where was I supposed to find a third hand to hold a dagger? And now you’re playing word traps, huh?”

“Even with under-armor, this dagger still pierced through it and cut me.” Caron’s expression darkened. “And it’s poisoned.”

“It’s poisoned?” Vinny frowned. “I’m not carrying any antidote potions or healing potions. Do either of you have any?”

As he spoke, Vinny looked at Fennia and Amisha.

“Pah! Quit pretending here.” Caron glared at Vinny. “That dagger is exactly what you stabbed into my back in the chaos earlier—what are you still acting for? Do you think everyone here is brainless idiots and blind fools? Who are you trying to fool—yourself?”

“Senior Caron, why are you acting like a little girl?” Vinny lifted his brows and folded his arms. “Let’s solve the problem first, then we can argue about who stabbed you, okay? You’re the one who got poisoned—aren’t you the least bit panicked?”

“Of course I need treatment if I’m poisoned. But what’s more important is pulling out the hidden poison thorn first,” Caron said pointedly, looking at Vinny. “So it doesn’t hurt any more intact flesh.”

“So you’re saying you have to make trouble for me today.”

“It’s not that I want trouble, Vinny. Danger is right in front of us, and you still did something like this.” Caron’s voice went cold. “I already knew you were always a brainless, extreme, despicable little man—but I didn’t expect you to be this incapable of judging time and place.”

“I can’t believe you. You just won’t trust me?”

“Trust you?” Caron sneered. “Vinny, think about what you’ve done in the royal capital. Throwing knives at people in the middle of a banquet is one thing—but you even put poisonous bugs into someone else’s wine. Are those things not your doing??”

Vinny pinched the bridge of his nose.

Throwing a knife in public—that was something the previous Vinny did. And back then, that Vinny never even intended to stab anyone; he only wanted to scare off the nobles who kept crowding Mirexia. Who would’ve thought that while he was walking with the knife, some bastard would trip him.

Even more ridiculous—the knife had been a table knife.

As for putting poisonous bugs into wine, Vinny had no memory of it at all. It was entirely possible he hadn’t done that either.

“This kind of behavior isn’t your first time. Crude and completely illogical—doesn’t that match your usual style of doing evil?” Caron mocked him icily.

“And you know that too?” Caron kept making noise without actually solving anything. Vinny couldn’t be bothered to keep swallowing it down.

“How would I not know?” Caron said harshly. “I grew up with you in the royal capital of Camella. What you were like as a child, what you’re like now—I know perfectly. And you still ask if I know? It’s because I know exactly what you are that I can bite down and say it’s you.”

“Fine, then what do you want?” Vinny said impatiently.

“I can’t trust you. I don’t dare trust you. And I don’t dare put my back in your hands again—your kind of madman and dangerous element.” Caron enunciated every ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) word, then turned toward Fennia and Amisha.

“And I definitely can’t hand these two junior girls to you either—so you don’t cook up more wicked ideas!”

“Someone who can ambush a classmate in a place like this—what can’t you do?” Caron stared at Vinny. “I’m telling you, Vinny. When we get back, I’ll report this to the academy exactly as it happened. They can decide your guilt.”

“Guilt?” Vinny tilted his chin up. “Interesting. But too bad—I don’t like being someone’s scapegoat. If I didn’t do it, I won’t admit it. Especially not some charge that insults my intelligence.”

“Whether you admit it or not isn’t up to you.” Caron panted, still looking strained. Then he faced Fennia and Amisha with a solemn expression.

“You two junior girls may not know his character well, but I can tell you responsibly: his character is infamous in the royal capital of Camella. A rotten man among rotten men. Taking advantage of crises to ambush companions and use poison—those are daily habits for him.”

“For your safety, you’d better stop following him—”

“Senior Caron, please stop with those rude and boorish words.” Amisha, who had been silent until now, suddenly cut him off.

Caron froze. He hadn’t expected a delicate-looking girl like Amisha to speak up and confront him directly—much less that a student with Church ties would defend Vinny.

How could this be? It shouldn’t be like this.

By all logic, students from the Church of the Dawn should have negative favorability toward Vinny. Most of them loathed him to the point of disgust, believing that this shameless impostor had sullied the Dawn Goddess and every past Saintess. The more extreme ones even wished he’d meet an accident and die sooner rather than later.

That was exactly why Caron chose this moment to speak—to isolate Vinny.

After all, Vinny had run into other students, and both of them had Church backgrounds. One of them—Fennia—had even openly confronted Vinny in public and dueled him.

In Caron’s plan, Fennia’s dislike should only have deepened. As for Amisha, since she was Fennia’s closest childhood friend and also had a Church background, there was a ninety-percent chance she disliked Vinny too. Even if she was kind-hearted and didn’t hate him, she should at least be indifferent.

So in Caron’s eyes, this should have been the smoothest step. Vinny’s reputation was known to everyone in the Kingdom of Camella; people elsewhere had heard of it too; and the Church mocked him most of all. If anything bad happened, he was the first suspect. Isolating him should’ve been effortless.

What Caron never expected was that, at this key step—the one that should have gone smoothly—he got stuck.

“Senior Caron, when the poison gas burst out and we ran, I clearly heard the crisp sound of a dagger falling to the ground.” Amisha’s voice was soft and sweet, yet it carried calm, unyielding conviction. “That obviously wasn’t something Student Vinny did. And Student Vinny couldn’t do something like that.”

Those words left Caron momentarily speechless, his face turning ugly.

He had never imagined that two students with Church backgrounds—people who even had grudges with Vinny—would take Vinny’s side and speak for him.

Not just him. Even Vinny hadn’t expected Amisha—this fragile-looking girl—to step out at a time like this and speak for him, declaring unconditional trust. He couldn’t help feeling moved.

To be honest, from the past to the present, Vinny had almost never experienced kindness from strangers. Especially after people learned who he was, even if they didn’t spit on him, they would keep their distance, unwilling to get tangled up with him.

And because he had never experienced it, the emotion it brought was all the deeper—something that carved itself into memory.

If he could see a favorability bar, then Vinny’s favorability toward Amisha would have shot up by a huge amount right now.

“Yes, Senior Caron. I’ll stake my character on it—Student Vinny wouldn’t do something like this.” It wasn’t only Amisha. Even Fennia, at the side, spoke up in support.

That was even more unexpected for Caron. Fennia wasn’t like the others—she was someone who had publicly argued with Vinny, even openly rebuked him and dueled him. Even though she lost, Caron had assumed she would hate Vinny even more, which was why he’d spoken without restraint.

So where had it gone wrong? At which step?

Caron couldn’t understand why these two not only weren’t joining him to push Vinny out, but were instead pushing back against him for Vinny’s sake.

With Vinny’s reputation, and with the two of them having reasons to dislike him, isolating Vinny should have been easy.

Caron ground his teeth quietly.

“I think there must be some misunderstanding here, Senior Caron.” Fennia said. “Amisha has recovered a bit of mana. We were rushed this time, so none of us brought recovery potions—but Amisha can treat you.”

“I’ll pull the dagger out for you.” As she spoke, Fennia moved behind Caron and carefully drew the dagger out.

“Senior Caron, unity is what matters most right now, isn’t it?”

“...” Caron understood it too. At its core, what Fennia was really saying was that she didn’t believe the dagger came from Vinny either.

Caron couldn’t figure out what kind of spell Vinny had cast on the two of them in such a short time. Or—had Vinny repaired his relationship with Fennia somewhere Caron didn’t know about?

Was that even possible? With a Church knight who had a personality that stubborn?

Amisha released golden healing light—but it lasted less than two seconds before it vanished.

It was obvious: Amisha truly had no mana left at all. Completely drained.

That was normal. Amisha was only a high-tier Sorcerer-class, and earlier she had fought for a long time against monsters that resisted light and resisted water. Running dry was unavoidable.

Fennia wasn’t in much better shape. Seeing that Amisha had no mana, she stepped in and released green healing light to treat Caron.

“Senior Caron, do you feel better?” Fennia asked.

“Yeah. Better.” Caron seemed to calm down, then fell silent for a moment. “Fine. You’re right. Unity matters most right now.”

After that, Caron glanced at Vinny with a meaningful look.

“So can we finally calm down and talk about the problem now?” Vinny looked toward the altar behind them, where poison gas was no longer pouring out.

“So who did it, then?” Vinny glanced at the dagger lying on the ground. “Before, other than us, were there any other footsteps?”

Amisha shook her head. “No. Only four sets of footsteps. I’m sure.”

“You were paying attention to footsteps on purpose?” Vinny looked at Amisha in surprise.

“Student Vinny, Amisha has been sensitive to subtle changes like that since she was little,” Fennia answered for her.

“That’s impressive, Student Amisha.” Vinny didn’t hold back his praise.

“It’s nothing.” Hearing Vinny praise her, Amisha lowered her head slightly and shook it again.

“Then if there weren’t extra footsteps, the possibilities are endless.” Vinny rubbed his chin. “This place—anything can happen.”

As for whether Caron might’ve stabbed himself, that was a possibility too.

But Caron was still the son of the current Dragon-Knights commander. No matter how deep their grudges were, couldn’t he settle it outside? Why put on a farce like this here?

Besides, Vinny had no evidence. Unless he found something decisive, saying it out loud would only damage unity.

Most importantly, Vinny truly didn’t want Caron to start making trouble at a time like this—not for anyone else’s sake, but because there were other people in the group. He didn’t want his argument with Caron, that idiot, to spring a leak in the boat and drag everyone down with them.

If possible, he wanted to think of people in a better light—especially knights. After all, they had sworn a knight’s oath.

But that was probably just wishful thinking. As things stood now, that boat was likely already on the verge of breaking apart.

Still—at the end of the day, he was a knight. No matter how big the grudge was, surely it wasn’t about leaving a classmate’s life trapped here forever. Otherwise there was no way to explain why Caron was putting on a performance like this.

Vinny knew Caron was awful in private, but ultimately, he was still the son of a knight commander. Surely he had some baseline as a human being, right??

The four of them carefully returned to the center of the altar. They found that the spot where the keyhole had been had sunk inward, forming a small pool of water.

None of them understood what the pool was for. Vinny hesitated for a moment, then looked at the snake-tongue dagger in Fennia’s hand.

“Student Fennia, throw that dagger in and test it.”

“Huh? Throw it in? Okay.” Fennia didn’t hesitate. She tossed the dagger into the pool.

At the side, when Caron saw that, his expression shifted again.

That was enough to prove that, in some way, Vinny had already become the backbone the two of them relied on.