So I was kind of ticked that I had this quest on my list, I'm roleplaying a good character, and it seems there was no getting around completing the quest and murdering an innocent (I drew the line with Grelod, that [censored] deserved it.)

I researched getting around it, but even if you let guards kill the cultist, the misc task still appears, "Investigate the cultist"

I found no solutions online, and I think I figured out how to just cancel the quest in it's entirety.

To cancel the quest, it seems all you need to do is search the body, take the book, but DO NOT READ IT.

The misc tasks will end there, and the main quest wont start.

Throw it in a river somewhere, for the children of Skyrim to find and read.

At least you wont have innocent blood on your hands!

Just thought I'd post this, as I found no other plausible solutions online, other than who is the most evil follower to murder.

the trick to never getting this quest is never looting the body of the one who attacked you.

as for completing it as a "good" character there is no way. The quest does not end with killing an innocent trusting person. in theory you could find some random remote follower and RP that they did something horrible and deserve to die.

otherwise your OCD will just have to deal with the quest in your log.

I respectfully disagree. I thought the same thing. Like I said, I lured him to the Western Watchtower to get slaughtered by the Whiterun guards, and even when they killed him, (I didn't lay a finger on him), the topic still came up in my misc quests.

I tested my solution, it works.

JUST DO NOT READ THE BOOK ABOUT THE CULT, CHUCK IT IN A RIVER!

Haha, thanks for affirming the OCD thing. I just hate it when there are these quests in my log, that I don't want to do!

And I refuse to use the console, other than to fix graphical errors, like the tree in Whiterun.