They are all characters I control.

Claire looked up. At the end of the hillside was a small cemetery.

There are more than a dozen tombstones, of varying heights, some with flowers in front of them, and others overgrown with weeds.

At the far east end, there is a tombstone that is older and simpler than the others.

Claire walked over.

The tombstone reads: "William Redgrave, an elite knight of the Holy Lance Knights, who distinguished himself in the slaying of the evil god emperor and died in battle. May the goddess bless his soul."

Below that is a line of smaller text: "Standing as Mother Martha".

Claire crouched down and touched the tombstone.

The stone surface was smooth, without moss or cracks, indicating that someone regularly came to clean it.

“Your father?” Grace walked over and glanced at the tombstone.

Megan, meanwhile, started circling around, clearly interested in the cemetery.

Claire did not answer.

He stood up and walked behind the tombstone. "Grace."

"Ok?"

"Help me dig."

Grace froze. "Dig what?"

"Digging up graves."

Grace stared at him for three seconds, then turned to Megan and said, "He's crazy."

Megan did not speak.

She crouched down and placed the dead cat she was holding aside.

Then he started walking around and measuring the area with his own feet.

“Here it is.” After saying that, she squatted down and began to dig at the soil with her hands.

Claire had no doubt about Megan's professionalism, which was evident from the cat carcass in her arms that had been dead for who knows how long but had not decomposed.

Trust Megan on matters like corpses and coffins.

Without hesitation, Claire began digging at the spot Megan had indicated.

Grace sighed as she watched the two people digging in the dirt. "Fine, they've both gone mad."

She picked up two thick branches, tossed one to Claire, and took the other for herself.

As for Megan, that madwoman was laughing as she dug into the dirt with her fingernails; she seemed to be enjoying it so much that she didn't need any tools like twigs.

The three people squatted behind the tombstone and began to dig.

The soil was loose, so digging it wasn't too difficult.

“Are you sure your father is buried here?” Grace asked.

"uncertain."

"Then what are you digging for?"

"Looking for something."

"what?"

Claire didn't answer; he was obviously looking for evidence.

To prove that Mother Martha's words are true, and to find something that can prove Eleanor's origins.

However, he couldn't explain much to Grace until he was sure what he was looking for.

After all, no matter how you looked at her, Sister Martha didn't seem like someone who would arouse suspicion, and even Claire wasn't entirely confident in her judgment at this moment.

After digging for about half an hour, the thick branch that was being used as a hoe hit something hard.

Claire put down the branch and used her hands to remove the surface soil. It was a coffin lid.

"There really is one." Grace leaned closer, looking at the wooden board. "Should we open it?"

“Of course we have to open it.” Claire cleared the dirt off the wooden plank, found the gap at the edge, inserted a branch, and pried it open with force.

The wooden planks creaked and groaned as nails were pulled out of the wood one by one.

"Click".

The coffin lid was pried open.

Claire put down the branch, and Megan reacted even more excitedly than she did.

The gloomy woman lunged directly at the coffin, but then her face fell with disappointment, like a wilted eggplant.

Greta and Claire leaned over to take a look.

There was no body in the coffin.

There were only a few things: a broken sword, a charred cloak, a badge, and a bunch of dried flowers.

Chapter 37 This father is getting a bit old

There was no body in the coffin.

There were only a few things: a broken sword, a charred cloak, a badge, and a bunch of dried flowers.

Grace leaned over for a look, then pouted in disappointment.

"That's it? I thought I'd see your father, female knight. There's no sign of your father in his grave."

Megan squatted down beside the coffin, reached out and picked up the bunch of dried flowers, smelled them, and then put them down without much interest.

He picked up the charred cloak again, examined it several times, and then put it down.

Finally, she picked up the badge and handed it to Claire.

Claire took the badge. It was silver, with the emblem of the Knights of the Holy Lance engraved on the front and a number and name on the back. He turned it over and saw the small print: "William Redgrave".

It read the same as the inscription on the tombstone, but Claire noticed a detail.

There was a very shallow scratch on the edge of the badge. It wasn't caused by fighting; someone deliberately carved it with a sharp weapon.

He looked closer and discovered it was a symbol, very small and well hidden, almost invisible without careful observation.

It was the letter "K", but it was written in a very special way. It started with a hook and ended with a circle, like some kind of signature.

Claire's pupils contracted sharply; he was all too familiar with this symbol.

The "K" is an abbreviation for "gram".

Moreover, this signature is his own handwriting, and the circle on his arm is his personal habit.

How did this symbol end up on William's breastplate? Back then, there were very few people qualified to have Claire engrave their names on church knighthoods.

After all, most of the church knights were mindless, and were war machines completely brainwashed by the archbishops.

Therefore, Claire didn't have much contact with the church knights. The only one she remembered most clearly was indeed the church knight who possessed the 'Origin Weapon'.

I met that guy who kept talking about 'friendship' and 'bonds between partners' again later, but he had obviously grown from a hot-blooded kid into a mature man with a wife and children.

Claire finally faced him in a one-on-one duel, and she narrowly won.

However, he did not kill his opponent, after all, the opponent's wife and children were present, and this battle was more of a battle in which this 'Knight of Bonds' let go of his obsession.

Although he lost to Claire, he had a clear mind and understood what was truly precious.

In other words, this guy who used to fight Claire often developed a kind of rival-friend relationship with her, acknowledging each other's strength and thus respecting each other.

So Claire left her signature on that guy's badge.

It was from that time that Claire began to make it a habit to leave her name on the badges of some outstanding church members.

The first reason is that it can be used as a way to pass the time, since you're just killing time anyway.

Secondly, it allows one to toy with these enemies who are no match for them and can't do anything about them.

Thirdly, Claire also wanted to leave her mark. At that time, the battle between him and the Church of Goddess was not going well, so leaving her mark in the hands of her enemy would be a kind of memorial.

Claire closed her eyes, and memories of the past flooded back like a tide.

Unfortunately, Claire didn't ask the knight of the bond, believing that true men understand each other implicitly, even though the other party certainly knew her name.

The Bond Knight didn't die; he didn't kill the opponent. So, this badge might not belong to that Bond Knight?

Was the knight in Mother Martha's story just one of many church knights who challenged him, or was it even made up? Claire wasn't sure.

“Female knight, I have a question.” Grace squatted down to the side and exclaimed “Eh?”

Claire looked at her: "What's wrong? Is there a problem?"

"how old are you?"

Grace suddenly blurted out a sentence.

Claire was taken aback; he hadn't expected Grace to ask that.

Why ask this kind of question now?

"Twenty-two," Claire replied to Grace.

"Twenty-two?" Grace repeated, then pointed to the words on the tombstone: "When did your father die? He died more than a hundred years ago?"

Claire looked in the direction she was pointing.

The tombstone reads: Died in battle to defeat the evil god emperor.

The battle to defeat the evil god emperor took place more than a hundred years ago.

If William Redgrave "died" in that battle, he would have been dead for over a hundred years by now.

A man who has been dead for over a hundred years has a twenty-two-year-old daughter? This is exactly what Grace finds strange.

“It’s not impossible, or rather, it’s quite common in the Church of Goddess.” Megan, who hadn’t spoken much, spoke up at this moment.

She rarely showed interest in talking to Claire and Grace, probably because of the topic of death.

"Because of the power of divine magic, the stronger a person's divine magic, the longer their lifespan and the less their appearance will age."

"Although the 'saintess' of the Goddess Church looks like a young girl, it is rumored that she has actually lived for more than five hundred years."

"Even without mentioning the Holy Maidens, the acting Holy Maidens generally have very long lifespans, living to over 150 years old and being able to slow down aging, looking like they are in their thirties."

Megan paused, clearly a little out of breath, after speaking so much in one breath. Then, gazing at the tombstone in front of her, she said, "If a church knight is powerful enough to reach the position of knight commander, then living to the age of one hundred is normal."

"Although she was already very old at that time, it is rare for her to still be able to have children."

"Unless, there is some reason that compels him to do so."

After Megan finished speaking, she turned to look at Claire.

Claire naturally understood the meaning in her eyes.

In other words, it is possible that someone forcibly gave birth to a descendant with the outstanding talents of that powerful church knight in order to obtain his bloodline and talents.

That descendant was Eleanor, who indeed possessed exceptional talent in holy magic.

"A female knight?" Grace nudged Claire's arm. "Are you alright? You look worse than a dead man in a coffin."

Claire didn't answer. He stood up, tucked the badge into his pocket, and began to examine the rest of the coffin closely.

Megan squatted down beside him, watching his movements, and suddenly spoke up.

There's something under the coffin.

Claire stopped what she was doing. "What?"

Megan didn't answer; she just used her hands to dig through the soil at the bottom of the coffin, her movements becoming faster and faster, not caring that her fingernails were filled with black mud.

Claire squatted down beside her, watching her dig.

Grace joined them, and the three of them surrounded the coffin like prey about to break through the earth.

The soil is getting thinner and thinner.

Megan's fingers touched something hard, she stopped and took a step back.

Claire and Grace leaned closer to take a look and found it was a door with a rune radiating magical light on it.