Not All Heroes From Earth Are Bad [EN]: Chapter 243

“Hero… I feel nauseous…”

Rachel, slumped on his shoulder, said in a weak voice.

Choi Hyun-seok frowned and lifted her up.

“If you’re going to throw up, go somewhere else.”
“I won’t. What do you take me for… Ugh…!”
“Hey, hey! Go over there and do it!”

“Uweeek-!”

Rachel finally vomited everything she had inside.

Startled, Choi Hyun-seok desperately tried to drop Rachel.

“Hey! It’s splashing on my fingers!”

“Uweeek!”

“Are you doing this on purpose!? Hey!”

The dedicated fairy, thoroughly emptying her stomach, and the hero, utterly disgusted.

Park Hyun-ah watched them with a look of utter disdain.

“How many loops have we been through to still not be able to handle that?”

After shaking off Gatren’s pursuit.

Park Hyun-ah didn’t go straight to the hideout.

The coordinates could be traced by the lingering magical energy.

To shake off the pursuit, it was necessary to confuse their destination as much as possible.

Continuously moving around unrelated places.

She even teleported to the same place three times.

By now, the pursuers must be racking their brains and suffering.

“By the way, where is this?”
“A hideout I made when I fought Gatren before.”

After roughly tossing Rachel into a corner.

Choi Hyun-seok looked around the hideout they had barely reached.

A forest located somewhere on the continent.

The solitary cabin felt strangely familiar.

“Have I been here before? It feels familiar.”
“This is the first time. Maybe it’s a hideout similar to this one.”
“You seem to have many hideouts like this.”
“I had hundreds. But now there aren’t many left.”

While speaking, Park Hyun-ah sat down on a chair.

Now that there were no interferences, she intended to share the stories that had happened in the meantime.

Choi Hyun-seok noticed the signal and sat opposite her.

“So. What have you been up to for the past six months? It doesn’t seem like you’ve been playing around…”

After staring at Choi Hyun-seok for a moment, Park Hyun-ah continued.

“What did Sarah Dunphy do?”
“Did you notice?”

“I’m not sure, but if it’s that undead, I think she could do anything.”

Park Hyun-ah seemed to have already realized that Sarah Dunphy had given him power.

Choi Hyun-seok nodded and explained.

“Sarah left behind magical energy. I couldn’t move for a while to make it my own.”
“Wait a minute, ‘left behind’ magical energy? Not ‘passed on’ but ‘left behind’ means…”
“Yes. Sarah disappeared that day. With a unique magic prepared in a remote cave. I continued to gain power from that cave.”

Her head became complicated by the incomprehensible phenomenon, and her brow furrowed involuntarily.

Leaving magical energy in a cave and having him continuously absorb it.

It was too far outside common sense.

“Keueung…”

After pondering for a long time, Park Hyun-ah eventually surrendered.

“I don’t know! It’s not like I haven’t been unable to understand that undead before.”

Sarah Dunphy’s magical knowledge was on a different level from the current era.

Park Hyun-ah prided herself on having some of the best magical knowledge on the continent, but the difference in level was so significant that it was embarrassing to compare her to Sarah Dunphy.

So, even if she used magic that couldn’t be understood with common sense…

If the subject was Sarah Dunphy, she had no choice but to accept it.

“How was… the end?”

Park Hyun-ah asked, resting her chin on her hand.

Her gaze was directed out the window.

“She left with a smile.”

“That’s a relief.”

Park Hyun-ah’s eyes, looking out the window, were calm.

They seemed to capture the scenery of the forest.

Or perhaps she was looking at the past.

“How have you been, sis?”
“I’ve been living like a dog.”

Park Hyun-ah chuckled.

She briefly explained what had happened over the past six months.

Leaving the Mariette Kingdom, recovering her body, and then fighting Gatren.

There were many things, but it didn’t take long to explain in words.

Choi Hyun-seok nodded after hearing the whole story.

“So, Abelson and the Mariette Kingdom are safe.”
“Damn it… They say raising a son is useless. This older sister did all the hard work, but that disciple of mine is just~ a womanizer. All he thinks about is women.”

Choi Hyun-seok scratched his cheek with an embarrassed smile.

“Why do you say such things? It’s because we’re meeting and talking like this, sis.”
“Forget it. Forget it. I’m so sad! Old people should just die quickly.”

Park Hyun-ah leaned back on the backrest and joked.

At that moment, Choi Hyun-seok suddenly made a serious expression and leaned his face in.

“Sis. Can I ask you something?”
“Damn it, you startled me! Why are you shoving your face in my face instead of just asking!?”

Choi Hyun-seok’s impression wasn’t very good, so she was often startled when he suddenly became serious.

Even as Park Hyun-ah calmed her surprised heart, Choi Hyun-seok continued to maintain a serious atmosphere at his own pace.

“It’s a really important story.”

“What, what is it…”

“How old are you really?”

Park Hyun-ah’s expression crumpled at the sudden age question.

“Do you want to die? Are you supposed to ask a lady her age like that?”
“Could it be… are you over 100 years old or something?”
“What nonsense are you spouting!?”
“No, I mean, legends sometimes rejuvenate, don’t they? So I was wondering if you were like that too…”

He had asked Park Hyun-ah’s age before.

At that time, Park Hyun-ah brushed it off, saying she was much older than him, but when she called herself old, he was curious about her exact age.

‘She definitely looks younger than me.’

Looking at her appearance alone, Park Hyun-ah looked younger than Choi Hyun-seok.

It was true that Choi Hyun-seok looked older because of his sturdy physique and face.

Even setting that aside, that was the case when looking purely at Park Hyun-ah’s appearance.

At most, late 20s.

She had an appearance that would be believable even in her mid-20s.

“I’m not a hundred years old. What does that brat take me for, an old hag.”

“So it’s less than that?”

“Would it be more!?”

“Hmm, then is it seventy? Sixty?”

“No!”

Suddenly, Park Hyun-ah jumped up from her seat.

“If you have the energy to talk nonsense, prepare to leave.”

“Where are we going?”

“Now that you’re here, we need to move more aggressively.”

Suddenly moving.

It was clear that she intended to change the subject of the conversation.

Choi Hyun-seok decided to back down at this point, knowing that.

If he pushed too hard at once, the backlash could be strong, so he planned to pry little by little.

‘I will definitely find out.’

That’s how humans are.

The more you hide, the more you want to know.

In the past, he had to endure because he could have died if he misspoke, but not anymore.

Someday, he would reveal Park Hyun-ah’s age!

Hiding these inner thoughts, Choi Hyun-seok asked nonchalantly.

“So. What do you mean by moving aggressively?”

It was a topic thrown out to avoid the age story anyway.

He didn’t think there would be anything particularly important, but what came out of Park Hyun-ah’s mouth was something he didn’t expect.

“Let’s go get a Cardinal.”

***

Cardinal.

A being who holds the position next to the Pope in the Deusis Order [a powerful religious organization].

Everyone on the continent knows how great they are, without needing to explain it.

Because depending on the situation, they wielded more power than the kings of ordinary kingdoms.

“Cardinals are the type of guys who flaunt their preciousness, so it’s hard to run into them. Most of them are holed up inside temples and don’t come out.”

Cardinals were mysterious beings in many ways.

In the first place, it was rare for them to come out of the temple itself.

Even Park Hyun-ah, who had been fighting Gatren for a long time, had only clashed with cardinals a handful of times, as they did not show themselves.

“Then what do we do?”

“Since they don’t come out, we have to go find them and take them down.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“If you go far away from Gatren’s capital, there are cardinals who reign like kings in each region. First, we’ll take down those guys.”

Park Hyun-ah immediately used space-time magic.

It was less than an hour after she came to the hideout to rest.

Rachel, who was still dizzy, whined that she could never go, but what could she do.

The dedicated fairy had no choice but to follow the path the hero took.

“Uweeek…!”

A moment later.

Leaving Rachel, who was emptying her stomach on one side of the forest.

Choi Hyun-seok looked at the city far away.

“Is it there?”

“Yeah. Cartesia, the capital of the Carton Territory. There’s a guy named Cardinal Maurizio there.”
“It looks quite noisy.”

Choi Hyun-seok narrowed his eyes.

Even though they were quite far away, he could feel the city’s commotion.

Was something happening in the middle of the night?

“Today is the Cardinal’s granddaughter’s birthday. So they’re having a party.”

“Yes?”

Choi Hyun-seok’s eyes widened.

The Cardinal’s granddaughter’s birthday?

Can cardinals even marry?

No, more than that, it’s not like it’s a lord or a king, but they’re having a party for the Cardinal’s granddaughter’s birthday.

No matter how he thought about it, it was a far cry from a religious figure.

“I told you. Some cardinals are no different from kings. The people of this country tremble more at the Cardinal’s words than the king’s. The higher-ups are busy trying to please the Cardinal.”
“It’s hard to understand.”
“Well, there’s no need to think deeply about it. After all, they’re just playing along with each other, squeezing the blood out of the lower ones. Just think of them all as trash.”

Park Hyun-ah said somewhat cynically.

She seemed used to this situation.

Choi Hyun-seok, who was clicking his tongue next to her, suddenly snapped his fingers as if he had a good idea.

“Sis. If it’s a banquet, is it held in the temple?”

“Probably.”

“Then can’t we just blow up the entire temple with magic?”

Park Hyun-ah shook her head.

“Magic attacks won’t work.”

“Why?”

“The defenses are too good.”

Cardinals mainly stay in the capitals of kingdoms or large territories.

Like Cartesia, which is visible now.

Naturally, there are tremendous defenses in such large cities.

“Even if you launch a surprise magic attack, it will be blocked primarily by the city’s defense barrier, and then the priests and cardinals within the city will deploy a barrier. No matter who it is, they can’t break through it.”

There’s a reason why Park Hyun-ah hasn’t been able to deal with the cardinals all this time.

Cardinals possess immense divine power, and the protective magic that they and the priests cast together was difficult to break through no matter what they tried.

Basically, divine power itself is specialized for defense, so it couldn’t be helped.

“If we can’t break through with magic, we’ll have to lure them out.”
“That’s impossible too. The Cardinal won’t come out no matter what. Especially not in times like these when guys like us are causing chaos.”
“Then what do we do?”

They can’t break through the defense magic.

And it’s impossible to get the Cardinal out of the city.

Then isn’t there no way to attack?

“If I were alone in the past, it would be a hopeless situation, but it’s different now.”
“Looks like you have a plan.”

“Of course.”

Confidence could be seen in Park Hyun-ah’s confident expression.

Choi Hyun-seok swallowed hard.

An impregnable city!

What is the plan to hunt down the Cardinal who has hidden inside!?

“What is that plan?”

At Choi Hyun-seok’s question, Park Hyun-ah grinned.

“What else? We’re just going to charge in and take them down.”

“Yes?”

***

Knight Jacob was very upset.

“They just keep coming endlessly.”

The lined-up carriages.

All of them were goods to be presented to Cardinal Maurizio.

Today is the Cardinal’s granddaughter’s birthday.

To commemorate it, guests and tributes were flocking in from all over the kingdom.

“What is the world coming to…”

Knight Jacob sighed deeply.

In fact, the purpose of today’s banquet is not simply to celebrate the granddaughter’s birthday.

That’s just an excuse.

The reality was an extension of the banquets that were held almost every day.

According to rumors, high-ranking nobles and priests gather inside the temple to hold banquets soaked in pleasure.

Among the tributes here, there will be plenty of drugs that enhance the human spirit, as well as alcohol.

“My head hurts…”

To be unable to do anything even after seeing the hotbed of corruption right in front of his eyes.

He wanted to practice justice as a knight, but he was powerless.

As mentioned earlier, he was just a knight.

No matter how corrupt they were, knights were beings who swore allegiance according to their oaths.

That’s why they do their best in their assigned duties.

That was the only belief that kept him a knight in this chaotic world.

“Hmm…?”

Knight Jacob frowned.

Ignoring the lined-up queue, two men and women were approaching him.

“Stop. Identify yourself.”

At Jacob’s words, the men and women stopped.

The woman walking ahead looked at Jacob and spoke casually.

“Today is the Cardinal’s granddaughter’s birthday party, right?”
“Yes. Are you here to attend the banquet?”
“Well, you could say that.”

Even though their appearance was shabby, Jacob did not ignore them.

The fact that they ignored the waiting line.

And judging from their confident attitude, it was clear that they were high-ranking nobles.

Knight Jacob said in a polite voice.

“Excuse me, but please show me your identification and invitation.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Then you cannot enter.”

“Why?”

“Because we cannot bring someone into the city whose identity has not been verified.”

“Even with this?”

The woman took something out of her arms and held it out.

It was a shining gold coin.

Knight Jacob clenched his fist tightly.

“What are you doing…?”

“Toll [bribe].”

“You are committing a crime right now.”
“Okay, okay. I understand. Okay.”

The woman waved her hand as if she understood everything and took out another gold coin from her arms.

“Is this enough?”

“You! I am a knight! What do you take a knight for….”
“Tsk, this guy is being difficult.”

The woman scratched her head irritably.

Then, this time, she held out her entire pouch.

Looking inside, it was full of gold coins.

Jacob stared blankly at the shining gold coins as if he were possessed by something.

‘How much is all that…’

Money that he might not be able to collect even if he worked as a knight for the rest of his life.

It was enough money to buy a mansion in Cartesia right away.

“Then I’m going in.”

The woman forcibly entrusted the pouch to Knight Jacob.

“Uh… you can’t do this…”

Knight Jacob, who had received the pouch in a daze, rolled his eyes around.

‘I really can’t do this…’

He is a knight.

Even in this kind of world, the duty of a knight…

‘How wonderful.’

The shine of the gold coins dominated his mind.

Looking back, the man who came with the woman had already passed him and was going inside.

Watching the two leaving, Knight Jacob bent over at a 90-degree angle.

“Have a safe trip!”