Inside the church of Silver Star Town, holy sunlight streamed through the stained glass and fell upon the sacred statues of the Nine Holy Spirits, before the magnificent marble lectern, a blonde female knight was delivering an impassioned speech, while rows of various people sat before her.

“We are the blades of the Church, the vanguard that protects the citizens, the lances that slay demons! Now, the forces of the Abyss have already infiltrated every household in the southern Empire, therefore we need everyone’s help to investigate demons and root out heretics! Let us work hard for the Church and for the Empire!”

““Yeah!””

Lisea and the other church knights applauded and cheered, for Lisea, as a novice adventurer, just being able to assist the Church in purging demons was already a blessing earned through years of good deeds, not to mention the generous rewards offered by the knights.

What made him even happier was that Lady Xidis, who usually disliked the Nine Holy Spirits, had stepped forward for the sake of the town and its people, coming to the church to listen to the knight’s speech.

At this point, what reason did he have not to accept this job and work hard for it?

Of course, completely different from the hot-blooded Lisea, Xidis currently had not the slightest trace of a smile on her face, her eyes hollow and devoid of light, after all she had only wanted to extort a pile of candy from Count Kavier, how had things suddenly turned into investigating demons?

This was far too strange!

No, to prevent her peaceful life from being disrupted by the Church knights, Xidis decided to do something to stop this investigation, so she raised her hand expressionlessly, not caring whether the female knight allowed her to speak, and directly said.

“Um, I’d like to ask, Silver Star Town has always had good public security, the only monsters left are weak ones like goblins and slimes, what evidence do you have to prove that demons exist here?”

As soon as Xidis said this, everyone including the count inhaled sharply, Rong’an even reached out to shake this clueless foster mother, practically on the verge of lecturing her on the spot.

After all, in the Empire, the Church held absolute authority in many aspects, when had commoners ever openly opposed the Church like this.

The female knight was clearly offended by her behavior and was about to scold her harshly, but unexpectedly, Count Kavier beside her directly nodded in agreement with Xidis.

“That’s right, my territory has always had good security, where would demons come from?”

“Yeah, everyone in our town is kind, it’s hard to imagine anyone being a follower of the Abyss.”

Even Lisea, who had been fired up earlier, was awakened by Xidis’ words, the crime rate in their town was frighteningly low, it could be called a model town of the southern region, there hadn’t even been a murder case for years, insisting there were demons was indeed hard to believe.

“I acknowledge the opinions of the three of you, Flora, what evidence do you have?”

“Wait, Commander, even you...”

Only when Commander Filin stepped forward to question did the female knight’s anger subside for the moment, she cleared her throat, took out a stack of documents and explained seriously.

“The facts are indeed as you say, Silver Star Town can be considered exemplary in the south, but that does not mean it cannot be infiltrated by the Abyss, recently our priest detected three instances of powerful soul fluctuations, based on experience, at least three King-level demons have descended here.”

Xidis felt a chill run down her back, she wanted nothing more than to drag out the idiot who summoned those demons and kill them, so it was you who brought the Church here!

A few days ago she had indeed sensed Abyss rituals and later dealt with a few Demon Kings, but the problem was that King-level demons were no different from stray dogs in front of a Throne Demon, she had even assumed they were just the byproducts of some mage practicing summoning.

‘So it was actually this serious…’

“Although the demons have not caused actual damage, they still pose a huge threat. If we do not eliminate this threat, we are disregarding the lives of all residents of Silver Star Town!”

Since the female knight’s words were reasonable, those who had opposed her earlier sat back down and did not continue arguing.

“Then Knight, what should we do? Since the Church is paying us adventurers such high wages, the job can’t be simple, I’m already prepared!”

This time, when the Church knights recruited from the Adventurers’ Guild, only Lisea and Rong’an met the requirements, if Xidis were included then there would be three people, it was hard to imagine what kind of troublesome task matched such high standards.

Sure enough, after hearing Lisea’s words, Flora clapped in approval and then explained the workflow.

“Very spirited! To work for the Church, you need this kind of passion and determination, if all adventurers were as enthusiastic as you that would be wonderful! The job is indeed troublesome, we have already gathered various records and activity logs of the town’s residents over the past year. What you need to do is review the documents together with the Church knights and identify suspicious individuals! The reason we require high qualifications is mainly because auditing accounts is also an important method of dealing with Abyss followers, by carefully checking various expenditures, we can always uncover them!”

Since the religious reforms of the previous emperor, the Church’s methods of dealing with Abyss followers had changed from capturing and killing entire villages to conducting exhaustive investigations, as long as the investigation went deep enough, heretics would eventually be found.

This reduced wrongful cases, but the only problem was the enormous workload, which could exhaust even extraordinary individuals to death.

At this point, someone raised an objection, Filin raised his hand and said calmly.

“Can we just randomly arrest someone to deal with this, I don’t want to check accounts.”

“If you continue saying things that disgrace the Church, I will report you to the Cardinal.”

“Then I’ll shut up—”

After personally suppressing the commander who wanted to slack off, Flora ordered the knights to bring out stacks upon stacks of documents, then clenched her fist and instructed everyone.

“For the safety of the townspeople, be prepared for a life-and-death struggle against the Abyss... but rest assured, before arriving we had already done sufficient preparation and compiled a list of suspicious individuals, we only need to focus on investigating these people. Generally speaking, those without clear identity backgrounds, unknown origins or unclear income are the most suspicious, so we have compiled a suspect list.”

The knight personally distributed the suspect list to everyone present, but what the highly motivated Flora did not notice was that with each list she handed out, one person lost their smile.

“Are you sure there’s no mistake?”

“I suddenly feel that Commander Filin’s suggestion was actually quite reasonable.”

“Should we reconsider?”

Filin, Lisea and Count Kavier all raised objections to the list, while Rong’an looked at Xidis with an extremely complicated expression.

“There’s no need to reconsider! Bring this major suspect named Xidis Byronvis here immediately! I will conduct a strict investigation!”

‘I... have to be investigated too?’

Having lost the light in her eyes, Lady Xidis would never smile again...