After choosing to leave, they regretted it.

Then he turned to Rosaline and responded with a serious expression:

"Yesterday afternoon, a case occurred in the city that was believed to be caused by a Faceless Man, specifically the Faceless King, one of the Thirteen Leaders. I suspect he's most likely infiltrated among your followers, so I'm bringing a team here to investigate. Do you mind?"

Through the two corpses with destroyed facial features, the Faceless King has arrogantly and clearly declared his existence.

In this case, concealment is of no value.

The best option is to make Rosaline realize the seriousness of the matter as much as possible and have her cooperate with his actions - although Aize is very skeptical about this.

Keeping a smile on her face, Rosaline walked slowly through the crowd with the holy staff in her hand, and came to Aize. She tilted her head to look at the soldiers behind him.

Then he smiled and said:

"Haha, that's really strange. Lord Aize is taking great pains to protect the city, and he's also willing to take care of my safety. How can I not cooperate? Please do as you please, but try not to disturb the believers."

Aize nodded, turned around and waved his hand, and his subordinates immediately understood and began to act.

The guards quickly occupied every corner and entrance and exit of the area to ensure that if a fight or chaos broke out, the situation could be controlled immediately.

Several combat magicians from the Imperial Army worked with Villian to test everyone present to look for possible Faceless Men infiltration.

And the result was as expected.

After a few minutes, Villian, who had completed the extensive scan, shook her head.

"Aize, nothing was found."

The Faceless King's special ability allows it to be immune to detection by known spells.

Knowing this, the reason why he still made this seemingly useless effort was to ensure that no other Faceless Men would act with him.

While being prepared for any eventuality, it can also collect information to help determine the enemy's intentions.

However, Rosalin, who was unaware of this, seemed to have a more complacent look in her smile:

"Needless to say? The purity and steadfastness of the faith I sense is no different from before, so how could there be a Faceless Man among them? Haha, I didn't expect Lord Aize to make mistakes. Is defending the city too tiring?"

In the past, Rosalyn's words were always vague and uncertain. Her seemingly gentle and friendly words always gave people an elusive feeling, whether it was threats, hostility or some other emotion.

It often takes a lot of effort to get a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of their true feelings.

But this time, she showed obvious sarcasm right from the start, which was very rare. This made Aize open his eyes in surprise.

As for the sarcastic remarks themselves, all I can say is that they need to be more aggressive, which is totally irrelevant.

Aize looked around again, pointed at the believers who were still motionless, and asked:

"What are they doing?"

"Of course I'm praying."

"Prayer? The church has clear regulations for this kind of large-scale prayer activities. What I'm seeing now, from the timing to the layout to the format and other necessary elements, none of them meet the standards."

He paused and met Rosaline's gaze.

"Those standards themselves are irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether they exist or not. But that's not the case for you, is it? Having organized countless prayers in various places, would you make such a mistake?"

The nature of the Faceless King remains unknown, but based on previously observed behavior, it can be assumed that he possesses some kind of possession-like ability.

So, the first thing to consider, of course, is the possibility that it directly possessed Rosaline.

With the mental and abnormal state resistance provided by the Divine Protection of the Brave, this was theoretically almost impossible to achieve. However, the unusual and strange current situation forced him to consider this worst-case scenario.

In response, Rosalyn just smiled:

"Haha, by the church's standards, this is indeed a bit outrageous. But please don't blame them. The form of spontaneous prayers performed by believers is not important; the faith itself is what matters most."

"...What, spontaneously?"

"Yeah, spontaneous!"

The White Saint nodded, raised her hand and pressed it against her chest. Her eyes remained empty, but the lines formed by her facial muscles clearly showed her pride.

"To be honest, I was unable to function normally yesterday due to some unforeseen circumstances. Everyone in the sect spontaneously prayed for me so that I could recover as quickly as possible. That's why I can stand here and talk to you. Otherwise, haha, I might still be lying in bed right now."

"...You said it started yesterday? And it hasn't stopped yet!?"

Aize's pupils trembled because of the unexpected remarks.

Turning his head and looking around more carefully than before, he found that a considerable number of believers had turned extremely pale, with cold sweats pouring out and even their bodies and limbs trembling visibly.

It's a state where it wouldn't be strange to fall down at any time.

Not eating, drinking or sleeping for a whole day, and having to maintain this extremely awkward posture without moving, is like torture. It is normal for the body to become in poor condition.

But the problem is that even after this, no one speaks out or makes any move.

This completely unreasonable situation made even the experienced Aize feel uncomfortable.

Was this also done by the Faceless King?

Logically speaking, yes.

But given the power it demonstrated in Jarlsberg, could it really do this? And how could it alleviate Rosalyn's discomfort simply through prayer?

This is simply...

(I didn't expect to see you again so soon, Brave Aize. It's been such a short separation.)

"Tsk——"

A creepy inorganic voice suddenly rang in his mind, causing the unsuspecting Aize to shudder subconsciously.

The Faceless Man's telepathic ability was exactly the same as before in Jarlsberg. It was almost certain that the eerie figure must be here.

Aize looked around.

But apart from the smiling Rosaline, there were still only believers praying everywhere, and there was nothing worth paying attention to.

There is no other way but to respond directly:

"The Faceless King, huh? Where are you?"

"Aize? What did you say?"

Rosalyn looked confused.

After all, telepathy is a one-on-one communication with a single individual and cannot be heard like normal language communication.

But Aize didn't have time to explain to her right now. He focused all his attention on the conversation in his head:

(Where am I? Is that even necessary? Of course, I'm in the body of a believer. Or maybe, I'm directly in the body of the Hero Rosaline. It's hard to say, right?)

"Hmph, possessing the body of a hero, if you had that ability, you would have accomplished something great long ago. Why did you stay so obscure until now and only stepped onto the stage today?"

(…You’re right, though it’s a pity.)

"Pursuing such an outrageous murder case and deliberately luring me here is not the Faceless Man's style. What exactly do you want to do?"

The voice in my head was silent for a moment, as if it was thinking about how to respond.

then:

(If I said I couldn't bear to see the lovely hero, Miss Rosaline, suffer, so I came all the way here to help, would you believe me?)

Aize scoffed in response.

(Don't believe it? Well, there's really nothing to believe in it. It's a good joke, but maybe it's the truth? After all, without my help, she wouldn't be able to move around as freely as she does now, right?)

"Your help? What did you do?"

(It's no big deal. It's just about fanning their faith fervor and, through prayer, strengthening the connection to the faith network to the extreme. And then... uh, you know what a faith network is, right?)

Aize nodded, and the mechanical voice in his mind rose a few degrees, as if a little surprised:

(You really know? Ha, as expected of the Brave Aize, the number of people who know this stuff is not much more than the number of people who know the complete story of the Succubus Queen's romantic exploits. Anyway, with my abilities, it's not difficult to deal with these poor fools. You should have guessed the specific method, right?)

"Yeah, I guessed it."

Even if the original body is still possessed in a person's body, it can still communicate with Aize through telepathy.

By the same token, it can also use this method to communicate with all believers present.

By packaging his words as oracles, he could easily make these fanatics believe that the so-called goddess whom he worshipped, believed in and prayed to had really responded.

In this way, it is easy to incite religious fanaticism to an unimaginable level.

It is understandable that the faith network was so active before.

(These guys are now connected to Hero Rosaline as never before. Similarly, the pressure Hero Rosaline is bearing will be shared by each of them, and she will naturally be able to resume her actions. See, it's really simple, right?)

"whispering sound."

(Don't be so mad. You're finally here, how about we play a game? From now on, for the next thirty minutes, I promise not to change hosts or leave my body to manifest. In other words, if you kill my host, I will die too.)

(But you and your pet witch seem helpless against my abilities. But that doesn't really matter. All we have to do is kill everyone present. Over a thousand useless, idle fanatics for one demon leader—that's a pretty good deal, right? What do you say?)

Chapter 119 Playing the piano to a cow

Facing the proposal that echoed in his mind, Aize sneered contemptuously:

"There's a limit to jokes, you shameless bastard. If you want to provoke me, I suggest you use more aggressive words. This is really not enough."

To be honest, the moment he learned that the Faceless King was indeed here, Aize really considered carefully whether to kill everyone present.

The result of my consideration is, forget it.

In the previous confrontation, the Faceless King, as an infiltration intelligence character, showed extremely meticulous thinking and a calm and unpredictable personality.

Aize didn't think that he would do such a series of dangerous actions that would expose his identity and even cut off his own retreat just for the sake of provocation, ridicule or fun.

If you really do it, you will most likely get what he wants and end up suffering.

Besides, who can guarantee that it won't transfer its possessed object, or that it will die if the host dies? Who knows if it's just a lie or a game of words?

Just let it crawl.

In response to being rejected, the inorganic words sneered in my mind:

(Hmph, I only made this concession to make things fair, but the legendary hero Aize is so ungrateful. It really makes me sad. If you miss this opportunity, you won't have a next time, okay? If something happens later, it will probably be too late to regret it.)

"Whether there will be a next time or not is not up to you, but mine. Don't worry, it won't be long before I find you out."

Continuing to tangle with this guy won't get any useful information, it's just a waste of time.

Aize turned around and waved to Villian, motioning her to come over.

The latter lowered his voice and asked:

"What's wrong? He's been talking to himself since just now. Could it be that guy?"

"Yeah, that's the guy."

The witch narrowed her eyes, her face full of surprise and confusion:

"He's really here? And he's even talking to you? What on earth is that guy thinking?"

"I don't know, but let's not worry about it for now. First, use some trick to make these believers fall asleep... or even faint. Anyway, we can't go on like this."

The Faceless King's understanding of the faith network is even more thorough than that of Villian, the former great witch. He can even interfere with and utilize it to a certain extent. The reason behind this is intriguing.

But before finding out the reason, we must first stop these crazy people from committing suicide.

Villian was a little unhappy about this:

"Are we going to save these guys? Is that necessary? Aren't they in cahoots with that woman? Killing a few of them won't be a big deal, right? Anyway, even if we save them, they'll just roll their eyes and thank their so-called goddess, and won't even give you a second glance!"

"Of course I know, but the situation is unclear right now, so we must avoid any complications. No matter what, we must stabilize the situation first."

If a bunch of performance art of sudden death or death from overwork really happens because of praying, who knows what kind of panic it will cause in this already not-so-peaceful city.

This must be avoided.

The purpose of the Faceless King's series of actions also made Aize very wary.

Of course, that’s a story for later.

"Go ahead, but be gentle when you do it so you don't get caught."

"Good~"

As usual, Villian didn't object any further. She responded in a drawn-out voice, nodded reluctantly, and turned around to do her work.

Aize returned to Rosaline:

"Sorry to keep you waiting."