What surprised Rod wasn't what Shalba was planning to do, but the person saying it.
"What is it?"
When she didn't get a response for a while, Jeanne sounded puzzled.
"I'm just wondering why you're telling me this."
This time, it was Jeanne's turn to fall silent for a long while.
"Actually, ever since I went back that day, I've been thinking about a lot of things. The most important of them was what you told me about the definition of a hero. Honestly, what you said was the complete opposite of what Cao Cao says. But I thought it through, and in the end, I decided you were right."
"A hero shouldn't become a hero for fame. A hero is someone who does certain things to protect others."
"At the same time, I carefully looked through the events of the Anglo-French war from a hundred years ago. Back then, my ancestor, the original Jeanne d'Arc, went from being an ordinary nun to becoming a general in order to liberate the people of France. Even though she failed in the end, right up until death came for her, my ancestor never regretted it, because she fought to protect the people."
"And the ideals of the current Hero Faction are wrong. A true hero shouldn't resent peace. A hero fights for peace."
"So, Rod... I want to become a hero. Can you teach me?"
"?"
Hearing Jeanne's heartfelt confession, Rod really hadn't expected that one day he would actually become a spiritual mentor.
Back then, he had only said those things because he thought it would look cool.
He didn't really care whether Jeanne changed or not.
But now that she had genuinely turned back from the wrong path, it would be hard for Rod to tell her that he'd only been messing with her.
So after a few seconds of silence, he said, "Jeanne, you're wrong."
"Huh?"
"The moment you want to become a hero, it means you've already lost the qualification to be one."
"I..."
Hearing that, Jeanne froze completely.
"I... I understand."
Even through the receiver, Rod could clearly hear that Jeanne's voice was trembling.
And at this very moment, far away in Europe, Jeanne took a long time to draw a deep breath after hearing those words.
Even so, her delicate body was still trembling slightly. It was obvious just how great a shock Rod's words had given her.
And this time, Jeanne had truly placed one hundred percent trust in Rod.
After all, someone who could say things like that, didn't he have even more right to be called a hero than Cao Cao?
Moreover, as one of the higher-ups in the Hero Faction, Jeanne was very aware of the orders their branches around the world had received recently.
The Three Factions had successfully formed an alliance, but that wasn't something everyone wanted to see.
The Hero Faction was one such example.
Peace was unfavorable to the growth of heroes. Because of that, Hero Faction branches all over the world had already received orders to launch attacks on various mythological factions soon, with the goal of using the power of gods and devils to train Sacred Gears while also disrupting the peace process as much as possible.
The reason Shalba had made a deal with the Hero Faction was because of that very point.
The Hero Faction would provide additional support, while Shalba would use the Hero Faction's strength to strike back at Katerea and seize Rias.
So Jeanne's purpose in telling Rod all this was to help him stop Shalba's plan.
"If there's nothing else, I'll hang up first. I'll keep infiltrating the Hero Faction, and if we make any moves, I'll let you know immediately."
Jeanne said this.
"Wait, don't hang up yet. There's actually something very important I forgot to ask you."
"What is it?"
"So... you can actually read? I remember Jeanne d'Arc came from a peasant village, so she was supposed to be illiterate."
"???"
When she heard that, it took Jeanne a while to even process what he was asking.
Two red clouds of embarrassment immediately bloomed on her cheeks.
This was actually a very old and widespread misunderstanding.
Although her ancestor Jeanne had come from a poor background, that didn't mean she had been illiterate. She could still recognize quite a few characters.
And by Jeanne's generation, because the Church had long since provided the necessary resources, she had received compulsory education at a Church academy as a child.
She hadn't gone to college, but at the very least, she had completed a high school education. Calling her illiterate was basically an insult to her dignity.
Fortunately, since it was Rod asking the question, Jeanne forcibly suppressed her irritation and patiently explained the circumstances of both her ancestor's era and her own, while clearly stating that she did, in fact, possess a high school diploma.
"Oh, got it~"
Hearing the slightly disappointed tone coming from Rod's end of the call, Jeanne found it very hard to keep herself together. But because she still carried a bit of admiration for him, she chatted with him for a few more lines before finally hanging up.
"If Jeanne isn't a village girl, then it just doesn't feel right."
Rod muttered quietly.
But he didn't dwell on it. After opening the system map, he saw that Shalba's coordinates had already shifted again.
His current location was now right inside the Khaos Brigade headquarters in Romania.
"What a coincidence."
Originally, Rod had thought finding Shalba might be a bit troublesome.
After all, even though he had teleport anchors, they were generally set in important cities. If Shalba had run off to some remote backwater, getting to him would've cost Rod no small amount of time.
"If only I had a Anywhere Door. Magic teleportation circles are way too weak. Black technology is still way more useful."
That said, Rod still selected the teleport anchor for Khaos Brigade headquarters.
Once confirmed, the scenery in front of him instantly stretched out, and in less than a blink, Rod had teleported from Kuoh all the way to Romania, thousands of miles away.
After leaving the teleport anchor, two devils noticed him and were just about to say something, when they heard a full-throated "Scram."
"Right away."
The moment one of them heard it, he scampered off without hesitation.
His companion, however, looked baffled.
"He doesn't have any entry record at all. Don't you think that's suspicious?"
"Are you stupid? If a human sees us and doesn't run, then there are only two possibilities. Either he's one of us, or he's stronger than we are and doesn't take us seriously at all. We're only making a few thousand a month here, do you really think it's worth risking our lives?"
"But... isn't there someone really important being held here? Infinite Dragon God Ophis is inside this villa. If something happened to her, wouldn't that be a disaster?"
After hearing that, his companion looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Do you believe that even if we got smashed into dust, Infinite Dragon God still wouldn't be in any danger at all?"
"That... does make sense."
"So next time you see someone..."
"First, check whether you can beat them. If you can, stop them however you want. If you can't, then act like you didn't see a thing. Even if they're standing right in front of you, you'd better pretend you're blind."
"Oh, got it!"
Meanwhile
Rod smoothly passed through the garden and entered the interior of the estate. Following the system quest's guidance, he found the quest target, Shalba, inside Ophis's room.
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