I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 14

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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 14.
After the night training ended, a different air hung in the Baekya Corridor—different from before.
It was a strange silence that mingled taut tension with subtle curiosity and hastily concealed bewilderment.
And at the center of that silence was, naturally, Leon.
…….
The moment Leon stepped into the common lounge, the faintly continuing conversation died as if it had been a lie.
And at the same time, every gaze turned toward him.
Those gazes held many different emotions.
Blatant displeasure, bewilderment at something incomprehensible, and a wariness that could not be ignored.
It was a stark change from mere days ago, when a single emotion—contempt for the “Parachute”—had unified them all.
【Laughable. Like a flock of pigeons that’s spotted a cat,】 Ekralize muttered with interest, but Leon did not respond, walking instead toward the most secluded sofa.
He felt seven pairs of eyes trailing him from behind, but he did not mind.
Such gazes were something he had endured countless times in his life before the Regression.
The only difference was that now a subtle fear mingled with the contempt.
‘Familiar enough.’
Leon sank deep into the sofa and closed his eyes.
The moment he had penetrated the essence of the training and proven his ability, he had already anticipated this situation.
He knew well that he had created a vast fissure in this proud world of top performers.
Above all, that fissure had only begun to open.
* * *
Change came faster than expected.
The next afternoon, someone approached Leon as he swung his sword alone in the Training Arena within the Baekya Corridor.
Unhesitating footsteps—light and clear.
Leon knew who it was without turning around.
‘The one who uses a spear… an Elite Knight Candidate specializing in Spearmanship, then.’
Among the candidates, including Leon, only one person wielded a spear.
The footsteps stopped about five paces from him.
Leon halted his movements and turned to face the newcomer.
As expected, it was a girl with long black hair tied high, a long spear slung diagonally across her shoulder.
‘……Sirent.’
【Do you know her?】
‘By face.’
Leon already knew Sirent.
She was the only candidate he had met before the Regression among those he had encountered in the Baekya Corridor.
The Training Arena was vast, and there were other candidates training, but the moment he faced off with Sirent, he could feel all eyes converging on them.
As if by agreement.
Leon felt sweat rolling down his chin as he opened his mouth.
“What brings you here?”
Sirent, the owner of those footsteps, regarded him in silence for a moment.
Her eyes held none of the wariness or hostility he had seen in others.
Instead, they were full of something else.
Pure curiosity, something like that.
Just as Leon was about to press her with a follow-up question, Sirent’s words came pouring out rapidly.
“Last night’s training—how did you know? That the path we chose was concentrated with traps, and the one you took was safe?”
Her question was direct, as befitted her usual nature.
At the same time, her perspective was intriguing.
Sirent’s question focused on the process behind the result, on Leon’s way of thinking itself.
Not criticism, but admiration.
Her attitude was starkly different from the other candidates, who had produced a breakthrough result yet criticized it as a “shortcut.”
【Hm. So there’s at least one among them with eyes that see properly.】
At least one who knows how to set aside her pride.
Leon thought thus as he opened his mouth with an impassive expression toward Sirent.
“I didn’t so much know as read it.”
“Read it?”
At the brief response, Sirent’s eyes gleamed all the brighter.
Leon pressed down the urge to smile and elaborated.
“It’s simply that path seemed most plausible. Everyone would go that way, wouldn’t they? If I were the one setting the trap, I’d naturally place the snares where the crowd goes. It’s the easiest way.”
“But there was no guarantee the path you took would be free of traps either. There could have been an even more dangerous trap hidden there. That’s gambling.”
“No, it wasn’t gambling. It’s a hunter’s way of thinking.”

“A hunter?”
“The state of the forest, the traces of beasts, the flow of air…. Beasts avoid places where traps are set. You see, anywhere a man-made trap is laid, the natural flow distorts, however subtly. The path I chose looked harsh and difficult, but it was the most ‘natural’ one. Because there were still traces of beasts on it.”
Leon’s explanation contained no complex theories or formulas.
Only the raw insight and logic that could be felt in the field itself.
Sirent fell silent for a moment.
It was an entirely different way of speaking from the world of textbooks and theory she had learned.
The fact that there was no other Elite Knight Candidate who could think the way Leon did suggested that all seven of them had grown accustomed to ‘orthodox training.’
It meant one could not distinguish whether Leon’s judgment came from battlefield experience rooted in Regression, or from the judgment of a talented child with hunting experience from a mountain village.
【Your lies are getting better and better.】
‘It’s not entirely a lie.’
【It’s not?】
‘I had no relatives in Elderit even without the corruption incident. What do you think an orphan from such a mountain village would have eaten to survive?’
A good lie, as it is said, always has some truth mixed into it.
The lie he told Priest Raftion at the Closed Sanctuary was like that, and so was this one—Leon’s lies always contained a thread of truth.
Because of this, Sirent accepted Leon’s explanation as the ‘insight of a seasoned hunter’ and cast aside her suspicion.
And in the very next moment, an unpleasant voice cut into the conversation from among the other candidates who had been watching the two of them.
“Hmph. Smooth words mean nothing. It was just good luck, wasn’t it?”
The voice belonged to Bercelo.
As always, Bercelo approached them with a face full of displeasure, glaring at Leon.
“Do you really think such tricks will work in actual combat? You think enemies will be kind enough to lay traps only on the orthodox path like an instructor would? That kind of success was only possible because of this training!”
Bercelo’s voice was loud, and it filled the entire Training Arena with its sound.
His words created an atmosphere of agreement among many of the candidates.
The other candidates besides Bercelo also seemed eager to attribute Leon’s victory to luck or underhanded methods rather than skill.
They must have felt as though the effort they had painstakingly built up through sleepless nights was being denied.
Their reaction was a kind of defense mechanism.
Only by denying Leon’s method could their sweat and effort be justified.
“But Bercelo, as a matter of fact, Leon completed the mission without any losses. That’s true.”
Surprisingly, it was Kyle who came to Leon’s defense.
Kyle spoke with his arms crossed, his sharp eyes fixed on Leon.
“However, the problem is that Leon’s method is an irreproducible irregularity. We’re training here to learn systematic tactics and countermeasures, but Leon’s approach produces vastly different results depending on individual ability. Attempting Leon’s method with inferior skill is tantamount to gambling. Therefore, applying such a method to ‘training’ is inappropriate.”
Kyle’s criticism was far more logical and rational than Bercelo’s.
He acknowledged Leon’s result while precisely identifying the danger and irrationality of his process.
In an instant, the atmosphere of the Training Arena split into two camps again.
Sirent saw Leon’s method as ‘a new solution that produced results,’ while Bercelo and Kyle dismissed it as ‘baseless tricks’ and ‘unreproducible gambling.’
Most of the other candidates’ thoughts aligned with Bercelo and Kyle.
They wanted to preserve the order of the world they had believed in and learned from until now.
All eyes turned back to Leon.
Everyone was curious how he would respond to this dispute.
Leon faced, one by one, the gazes of criticism and analysis directed at him.
And he opened his mouth quietly.
“……If you die, it’s over.”
Leon’s voice was surprisingly calm, speaking as though merely stating a fact.
“When you meet a bear on a mountain, you don’t have time to think about the orthodox way to escape. You get mauled to death. Only if you survive does any of that matter.”
His words struck deeper into everyone’s chest than any logical rebuttal could have.
An ice-cold truth.
What flowed from Leon’s lips was not something found in textbooks, but a harsh realism that could only be acquired in the raw, blood-soaked field of survival itself.
In the face of that raw example, both Bercelo and Kyle were momentarily left speechless.
They had realized that their logic held meaning only under the premise of ‘remaining alive.’
But Leon had undermined both their arguments by comparing that very premise against the reality he had experienced.
Leon offered no further explanation.
He simply slung his wooden sword over his shoulder and left the Training Arena.
No one moved to stop him.
The eyes of Sirent, watching Leon’s departing figure, shone now with even deeper interest than before.
Bercelo bit his lip in frustration, while Kyle furrowed his brow and seemed to be performing some complex calculation.
And standing somewhat apart, there was one person who had watched the entire scene from beginning to end.
Ilbar Lisend.
Ilbar stood leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, indifferent to the commotion in the Training Arena.
At first glance, he appeared to be absorbed in solitary meditation, but his closed eyes were trembling ever so slightly.
Ilbar had acknowledged Leon.
Both Leon’s skill and his insight—the ability to strike at a flaw no one else had imagined.
And yet, at the same time, it was difficult to accept.
Leon’s approach contained no order or principle that could serve as the foundation of Chivalry.
There was only the sense of a sharp, dangerous blade hurtling toward survival and victory.
Just as Leon had said moments before—like a beast’s instinct.
‘Can that truly be called the right way?’
Ilbar stood at the deepest point of the fissure Leon had created, earnestly reconsidering his own convictions more seriously than anyone else.
Honor leading toward death, and victory purchased by casting honor aside.
The answers taught by the order were being shaken to their very roots by Leon’s existence.
From that day forward, an invisible line was drawn throughout the Baekya Corridor.
On one side stood Sirent and a handful of others who understood Leon’s methods and sought to learn something from him; on the other, the remaining Elite Knight Candidates who still regarded Leon as a dangerous heretic and kept their distance.
And between these two factions stood Ilbar alone, neither belonging to either group, quietly observing Leon as the variable that would reshape everything.
Within the world of Elite Knight Candidates, Leon—a single stone—had begun to stir the waters with ripples unlike anything that had come before.
Continued in the next chapter ▶
A Holy Knight who Made a Contract with an Evil God
Author
Ram Dat
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
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※ Pentagram awaits your precious manuscript.

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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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