The Righteous Player(s)

Chapter 359: The Holy Grail Knight

Delicious Wind Goose wore the standard leather armor of a city guard and wandered around the Noah Royal Capital.

He was now roaming and mapping the city in the name of “patrol duty”.

While mapping out the path, Old Goose was occupied with thoughts.

He had successfully reported the information given by Annan to Prince Philip.

The previously forfeited meads were delivered to Prince Philip too.

With that, he had completed the two missions assigned to him.

Not only did he complete the contract he promised with the consul of the chamber of commerce, but he also successfully used the information given by Annan to mislead the Third Prince and influenced the prince to alter the plans.

At the same time, he had acquired Prince Philip’s trust too.

Or rather, a certain level of trust.

But in any case, a mere Bronze Rank Transcended could hardly prove useful to Philip.

Fortunately, Delicious Wind Goose’s profession was [Swordmaster].

This was a swordsmanship school that could learn the sword skills of other professions and quickly improve themselves.

After learning about Delicious Wind Goose’s abilities, Prince Philip gave pertinent suggestions for the Old Goose’s future growing direction.

He had suggested Delicious Wind Goose pick up the faith in the Cup-holding Lady and advance into a Holy Grail Knight.

It was an advancement mixed in with priesthood, similar to the Silver Knight.

After learning how to use various weapons, the Goose realized that “the human’s will” was the most potent weapon. By restraining his desires, he could obtain the pure power of the grail.

The “grail power” possessed by the Holy Grail knight was mighty even among all upright deities’ knights.

Simply put, it was an additional “energy deposit mechanism”.

When the Holy Grail knight worshiped the Cup-holding Lady, he could choose one of his “attributes” as a “vessel”. This vessel could be changed once a day, after which the “Blood in the Cup” would be emptied, but it would not disappear overnight until the following blessing.

The attributes that could be altered included “strength”, “energy”, “focus”, “accuracy”, “vitality” and so on. It would work as long as it was the ability the host’s body readily had.

Once selected, this blessing imposed on the attribute would be continuously consumed, just like how strength was consumed when raising dumbbells or how the focus was consumed when going through documents.

The consumed attribute would be stored.

Depending on the holy light engravings and the user’s self-control, the proportion that could be stored varies. Generally speaking, it was about 70% to 200%.

In times of emergency, like physical strength was thoroughly exhausted, mental power to focus was lacking, or life was at stake, the user could utilize the “blood in the cup” to replenish himself.

The grail power could be used to enhance and reinvigorate the body.

However, it wasn’t an overpowered ability, nor was the ability limited.

Instead, it was simple, stable, versatile, and powerful. That was what Delicious Wind Goose preferred.

The only constraint was that he would inevitably get the additional curse of “maintaining a pure body” when advancing.

However, if this condition was violated, it didn’t clear off the hard-earned levels. Instead, the Goose would become a “Fallen Knight”.

He would lose the “grail power” but gain the “blood power”. It worked like the vampire: to replenish his physical strength and temporarily enhance his abilities by sucking the blood of others. However, this ability was much inferior to the grail power.

In other words, the grail power was “virgin” in nature.

Only those who had never been in intimate contact with the opposite gender could harness the grail power.

Delicious Wind Goose was certainly not a virgin.

A man like him could definitely get a girlfriend, given his excellent family background, good humor, high education level, and solid physique, coupled with the advantages of high emotional intelligence and good looks.

Although he was now a bald monk and “neckless” because of his fat, he was once a youth with lush hair and well-proportioned muscles.

However, the body the players used in the Mist Continent appeared to be “absolutely pure”.

When he accepted Edict Wizard’s lie test, Prince Philip asked the Edict Wizard to check on the other qualities of Delicious Wind Goose.

It appeared that Old Goose had killed less than ten people since birth, had never been in intimate contact with the opposite sex, rarely lied, took on little exercise, had never ingested poison, and had never been cursed.

After such a result came out, Prince Philip finally regarded him as part of his team.

The process seemed to be the “political review” of this world.

It recorded everything the reviewee had done, like an invisible list of “achievements”. Although Edict Wizard couldn’t see this list directly, he could check on any of them and get a rough idea under Delicious Wind Goose’s permission.

Delicious Wind Goose got the above evaluation in the end.

If not for the people he killed, he would still be in a pure state where he had never killed anyone.

Seeing his qualities, Prince Philip immediately recommended him to take in the faith of the Cup-holding Lady.

“Cup-holding Lady has mastered the whole realm of ‘lust’. Abstinence is naturally part of it.” Prince Philip introduced enthusiastically, “The Cup-holding Lady likes people who are indulgent, but She is in favor of those who are abstinent.”

Through Prince Philip’s narration, Delicious Wind Goose roughly understood the other notable features of this profession.

The Holy Grail knight was a profession that focused on the Will attribute.

In addition to the grail power, they also had the strange ability of “increasing their attributes by one point every time they successfully resist a negative state from a new source that uses Will as the ability check factor.” The attribute increment was capped at 40 points.

The negative status afflictions included charm, fear, confusion, lethargy, rage, and other mental states. Everyone could add a point to the Holy Grail Knight’s attribute as long as the ability imposed was considered a “negative status”.

Conversely, if the Holy Grail Knight failed to resist the negative status, he would suffer a considerable temporary -2 debuff at the Will attribute. Worse still, this debuff was stackable.

The weakening effect was like a curse and would not regenerate naturally. The restoration could only occur through a ritual, atonement through Cup-holding Lady’s priest, or simply purifying the curse via Mr. Ray’s priest.

This ability made many of the Holy Grail Knights powerful but also made them vulnerable to premature death.

Apparently, the Cup-holding Lady encouraged the Holy Grail Knights not to practice abstinence blindly. Instead, She wanted her knights to proactively resist the outside world’s temptation through willpower.

In other words, She tempted the knights to challenge themselves.

Delicious Wind Goose managed to see through the system.

This growth mechanism was a temptation to overcome “abstinence”.

Those tempted by it had simply fallen into a trap.

Those who played with fire would eventually get burned.

The Holy Grail Knights couldn’t escape the control coming from the Blood Grail Church because of the need to atone.

In turn, the knights placed themselves under the power and control of others.

What was pure had once been controlled by what he desired. So the Holy Grail was grasped by the blood in it.

Thus, a conceptual cycle was formed.

“I’m feeling like the Tang Seng [1] right now.” Delicious Wind Goose complained.

If it weren’t for his vigilance, he would have simply believed in the Cup-holding Lady.

After all, She was also an upright deity, and there should be no problem with Her origin.

It was just that She seemed to have a naughty side.

“She likes to test the people’s willpower, encourages the people to use will in resisting the temptations, and enjoys people’s succumbing to their desire.”

Isn’t this an evil deity?

Delicious Wind Goose thought about it for a long time and finally decided.

“I still want to try it out.”

He wanted to see if his willpower, which he was proud of, could successfully resist this deitydess’ prank.

This was also the “desire” that was not deeply looked into in his heart.