I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 13

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 13
Cold air seeped into his lungs like a blade.
A thin sheet of ice clung to the surface of the Lake, dimly reflecting the emerging dawn light and the shadows of bare branches.
Leon’s objective was a small clearing beside the quiet lake.
A small clearing ringed the lake, and the Training Instructor sat at its center, tending a campfire.
The Instructor glanced around the empty expanse with the certainty of long experience, guessing it would still be hours before the first candidate arrived.
Considering the strength of the traps and the terrain of the forest, the first arrival would come no sooner than after the sun had fully risen.
He thought that the new recruit he’d been watching might prove different, but only four hours had passed since training began.
It was physically impossible for anyone to arrive within the next hour or two.
That was the moment the thought crossed his mind.
“……?”
A subtle presence stirred in the darkness.
For an instant he thought it might be a wild animal, but then a figure emerged, and the Instructor found himself rising from his seat without conscious thought.
Decades on the battlefield, and yet he hadn’t noticed someone approaching this close!
His astonishment deepened the moment he recognized who the figure was.
“A trainee?”
The one stepping out of the shadows was the very boy the commander of the 2nd Knight Division had brought not long ago.
Leon, wasn’t it?
“Token for verification, if you please.”
In contrast to the Instructor’s slackened jaw, the boy’s face remained composed.
Observing the boy’s calm request, the Instructor had no choice but to be amazed all over again.
There was not a trace of the forest’s struggle on the boy’s clothes.
Like a specter, as if crossing the woods through nothing but air—not a speck of dirt, not a single tear marked his pristine appearance.
Moreover, the boy showed neither the tremor of cold nor the marks of exhaustion.
“How could you already…….”
The Instructor’s words trailed off as his gaze flickered between the token and Leon’s face.
Less than four hours since training began.
It was a record half the minimum time the Instructors had predicted.
“There was a path.”
Leon answered briefly, then settled himself beside the campfire.
His manner suggested he had neither the thought nor the need to say more.
The Instructor watched Leon warming himself by the fire, his face a mixture of shock and wonder.
Yet contrary to the admiration in the Instructor’s gaze, Leon’s mind churned with discontent.
The time it had taken to cross the forest was merely four hours.
Though brutally swift by ordinary standards, it fell woefully short of what Leon himself demanded.
‘Four hours just to traverse this distance. Pathetic.’
【So you’re dissatisfied?】
‘Yes. Impossibly weak. This forest is practically the Order’s front garden.’
【You’re talking about stamina then. True—that’s something you’ll need to overcome going forward.】
While Leon grumbled with Ecrizae, time drifted slowly past.
And as the eastern sky began to flush red, the first group emerged into the clearing with ragged breathing.
Ilbar led the way.
His once-neat uniform was torn in several places where branches had caught it, cold sweat streaming down his forehead, and the other candidates following behind looked little better.
Every member of the group bore the unmistakable marks of a night spent battling the traps.
“Is everyone all right? Count off!”
Even as exhaustion weighed on him, Ilbar saw to the other trainees.
It was utterly characteristic of him.
But that characteristic composure shattered the moment Ilbar’s eyes fell on Leon sitting beside the campfire.
“……Leon?”
Ilbar froze mid-breath as he caught sight of Leon.
His composed expression hardened instantly.
It was not merely the fact that Leon had arrived first.
The stark contrast between their own bedraggled state after wrestling with the forest all night and Leon’s appearance—as though he’d just returned from a morning stroll—shattered something fundamental.
It was a sight that upended Ilbar’s entire belief that only patient training and methodical effort could yield the greatest results.
Behind Ilbar’s mask of calm, confusion and a creeping sense of crisis—as if everything he had built were being negated—began to bloom.
Ilbar was not alone in his shock.
The other candidates froze as well the moment they spotted Leon.
It was Kyle, his jaw set unusually tight, who broke the tension first.
Kyle spoke toward the Instructor in a tone barely containing his indignation.
“Instructor. I formally lodge a protest.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I request a review of Leon’s training performance. This time is physically impossible. Moreover, considering the level of traps we faced, it’s impossible for Leon alone to complete the course without a single scratch. The only logical explanation for such a record is that he avoided all the core objectives of this training—the breaching of obstacles and the associated processes.”
At Kyle’s assertion, the other trainees began to murmur among themselves.
They had worked through the night disarming traps and battling Illusion Magic with all their strength.
Yet Leon had bypassed it all and arrived first, without a mark on him.
Moreover, his pristine appearance felt like mockery of their efforts, and it was only natural that discontent began to swell in every heart.
As the atmosphere grew hostile, the Instructor regarded Leon with an uncomfortable expression.
With him, all eyes turned toward Leon.
Gazes mingled with blame, suspicion, and a hint of curiosity.
Leon received the weight of those stares and slowly rose to his feet.
He turned to face Kyle, who was glaring at him sharply, and opened his mouth.
“You’re right. I did avoid most of the traps you all encountered.”
Kyle’s brow contorted at the unexpectedly candid admission.
But the moment Leon spoke again, Kyle was struck as if he’d been hit from behind.
“But was defeating the traps the goal of this training?”
At Leon’s question, Kyle froze.
For someone like Kyle, who pursued perfect logic and efficiency, the equation “training equals obstacle breaching” had been so self-evident.
Yet Leon was denying the very premise of that formula.
He tried to find words to counter, but at Leon’s observation, Kyle’s mind went blank.
Meanwhile, one of the trainees standing a step back swallowed hard without realizing it.
The young woman felt a peculiar sense of liberation in Leon’s question, and her eyes gleamed with interest as she looked at him.
What she felt was not the same anger or confusion as Kyle, but a different kind of shock.
She had long harbored doubts about the Order’s inefficient methods of education.
The way it emphasized only established procedures and regulations while imposing solutions divorced from actual combat.
Yet while everyone else focused on solving the given problem, Leon alone had stepped outside of it to find its true intent.
What Leon had posed was an utterly pure question.
Pure enough to overturn a self-evident premise.
Leon slowly surveyed all the frozen trainees and spoke.
“I thought the goal of this training was to obtain the Token and return.”
Leon’s words flew like a blade, piercing deep into the trainees’ pride.
A way of thinking entirely different from those excellent students who knew only the prescribed method.
In that moment, the “form” and “rules” they had grappled with all night crumbled pitifully beneath Leon’s “results” and “survival.”
A cold silence settled over the Clearing.
This time, no one could speak.
Before Leon’s simple question, the justification for the process they had struggled with all night was wavering.
It was the Instructor who broke the silence.
The Instructor took up Leon’s words and addressed all the trainees, including Kyle.
“Leon is correct. The goal of the training was to obtain the Token and return. The traps placed along the way were merely obstacles.”
The Instructor stepped forward and continued.
His eyes were not those of a mere judge, but of a senior on the battlefield instructing his juniors.
“Consider this: in actual warfare, if you’ve located the enemy’s main position but anticipate an ambush along that route, would you deliberately take that path and exhaust yourselves breaking through the trap? Or would you gladly choose a detour to complete your objective with minimal losses?”
At the Instructor’s question, all the trainees lowered their heads in unison.
It was a question weighted with an authority that could not be refused—far different from the one posed by the young Leon.
“The battlefield is not an examination hall where you follow preset answers. Victory belongs to those who survive and complete their mission. On the battlefield, no matter how brilliant the process, if the result is death, it is meaningless.”
The Instructor’s final words filled the Clearing like a sentence of judgment.
He pointed to Leon again and declared.
“The rule of this training was ‘no interference with others.’ There was never any mandate to follow a specific route. Since Leon completed the objective first, first place belongs to Leon.”
The Instructor’s declaration ended the dispute.
Yet the ripples this created in the trainees’ hearts were only beginning.
Kyle stared at Leon with an expression that mingled anger and confusion.
His perfect interpretation and logic had shattered completely against the “Battlefield Logic” he had never foreseen.
Kyle could not understand Leon, and because of that, he began to perceive him as an even more dangerous variable.
Ilbar fell into deep thought.
Leon’s method was clearly different from the way Ilbar had been taught.
To overcome hardship through honorable means—that was the value he had learned and pursued all his life.
Yet he could not simply declare Leon’s method wrong.
And far away, from the highest point of the High Ground in the forest, a figure watched all that unfolded.
Ayla Harven, commander of the 2nd Knight Division.
Ayla gazed at the visible fractures now emerging among the trainees and at Leon, standing at their center, and smiled with satisfaction.
This was precisely the picture she had wanted.
An unpredictable stone cast into still water.
May that stone shatter the worn rules and bring forth a new order.
The ripples it would create were only now beginning to spread.
Continued in the next chapter ▶
A Paladin Who Made a Contract with an Evil God
Author
Ram Dat
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publishing House
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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