I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 26

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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 26.
“I’ll handle the scene. You two head back first.”
Aila’s command to Leon and Sirent was absolute.
The main force that arrived at the scene swiftly secured the perimeter, and Holy Law scholars and investigative priests gathered around the remains of the Corrupted Being and the bodies of Knight-Captains Ilbar and Sepian.
“But, Captain. We can help too. We still have strength left…….”
“No, Sirent. Look at your face. If standing is all you can manage, you’d only be in the way.”
Aila cut the words out sharply toward the ashen-faced Sirent.
It was cold but fair.
Despite the absence of any serious wound, Sirent’s condition looked distinctly poor.
Though her physical injuries were minor, her visibly trembling fingertips and her gaze that kept drifting toward the reddened earth beneath her feet spoke volumes of how devastating it had been to witness a comrade brutally murdered before her eyes.
“Leon, you’re no different. You’ve burned through considerable strength facing that creature alone. Return with Sirent. A transport cart will arrive to collect the bodies—ride it back together.”
“……Understood.”
Leon deliberately showed signs of fatigue and nodded in compliance.
In truth, he had plenty of strength left, but there was no reason to stay.
If anything, the presence of the two of them here would only hinder matters.
Besides, for Leon, verifying the Fragment hidden in his chest was far more urgent.
“Let’s go, Sirent.”
“……Yes.”
Despite Leon’s urging, Sirent’s feet wouldn’t move; she kept turning back to look.
As the stretchers bearing the bodies of Ilbar and Sepian receded, Sirent’s shoulders trembled faintly.
Even as she climbed into the cart, Sirent’s gaze remained fixed beyond the window.
Not until the dusty scene vanished completely from view.
In the jolting cart, Sirent held both her hands clasped tightly against her knees.
Her blanched knuckles testified to the weight of the emotion she was suppressing.
“If we’d only been a little faster……would it have made a difference?”
The voice that emerged after a long silence was thick with tears.
Leon stared at her for a moment, then spoke quietly but with absolute certainty.
“We did our best.”
“But Ilbar…….”
Her gaze, which had risen in denial, collided against Leon’s steadfast answer and fell again to the floor.
Guilt.
And lamentation over her own powerlessness.
Leon watched that flood of emotion with a bittersweet feeling.
‘So this was the turning point for Sirent.’
【What was?】
‘Before the Regression, you said Sirent ended up becoming Vice-Commander of the Second Knight Division instead of an elite knight.’
【Hmm. Are you saying she had a moment of reckoning here?】
‘Possibly. Sirent started appearing in regular Holy Knight training around this time.’
An elite knight’s is a lonely path—one must charge into desperate situations alone.
But today, Sirent had witnessed the cold death lurking behind that brilliant glory, and the cruelty of having to prioritize duty even in the face of a comrade’s death.
Sirent had too much compassion to endure watching a comrade die alone and desolate.
Perhaps that was why, despite sufficient skill, she abandoned the path of an elite knight.
In the Second Knight Division, at least she wouldn’t have to die alone, nor leave others to die alone.
‘I thought she’d simply fallen behind……but there was this reason.’
If Sirent’s choice had come from such a place, no one could fault her for it.
Sirent’s choice was not flight from an invisible future.
It was her own quiet resolve—never to abandon another soul alone.
Leon turned his gaze wordlessly to the window.
Any such tenderness had burned away from him long ago.
* * *
Once back at the Holy Fortress, Leon went directly to his quarters.
Several candidates he passed in the corridor hesitated at the sight of his disheveled state, but they didn’t dare approach him—cowed by the cold aura that radiated from him.
It seemed the news of the two’s deaths had already spread; the atmosphere was unsettled and heavy.
Besides, Leon’s room was a single occupancy.
It was all the easier to avoid others’ eyes.
“Ecrizé. Set up a Barrier. I don’t want any leakage of energy outside.”
【Always making work for me.】
“It’s important. Please.”
When Leon asked with unusual sincerity, Ecrizé grumbled but immediately exerted her power.
In an instant, a deep blue curtain enveloped the room, completely blocking out external sound and presence.
After confirming the Barrier was functioning properly, Leon withdrew an object from his pocket.
“What in the world is this thing?”
A deep crimson fragment that looked like a piece of something broken.
It was the object Leon and Ecrizé had referred to as the conduit.
【I’m not certain. At first glance it resembles some sort of jewel, though something was clearly contained within it……. Before it was used I couldn’t say, but now it appears to have exhausted its purpose.】
“Exhausted its purpose? You mean the Mutant drained all the power stored within it while using it as a conduit?”
【Indeed. That creature was something incomparable to an ordinary Predator. If it evolved from a common Predator, then it stands to reason that the power contained within was depleted in that transformation.】
Leon turned Ecrizé’s words over in his mind, holding the fragment up to the light streaming through the window.
The fragment was deep crimson yet translucent, allowing light to pass through completely.
At the same time, as light traveled through the shard, it created the illusion of a viscous, blood-red substance undulating from within.
“Hmm……, something about this feels familiar.”
【Like something you saw back in that Elderit place or wherever?】
“No, it’s more like…….”
After a long moment of thought, Leon’s gaze shifted slowly toward the sword standing to one side.
The old, rusted blade with a broken edge where Ecrizé dwelt.
As if in a trance, Leon picked up the sword and laid it across the desk.
Then he placed the fragment beside it in alignment.
“……No matter how I look at it, it seems to be the same material as your blade.”
【What? That’s impossible. Are you suggesting this body was put to such use?】
Despite Ecrizé’s indignant retort, Leon’s expression remained cold and unyielding.
If anything, it grew graver as he continued.
“I think it’s a match. Is there any way you could verify it?”
【……Grip that fragment in your left hand where the Holy Stigma lies, and grasp me with your other hand.】
“Then what?”
【Circulate your power. Isn’t it something you practice constantly in your training?】
Though displeasure was evident in the voice, Leon ignored it and did as Ecrizé commanded.
He gripped the fragment in his left hand, seized the sword housing Ecrizé with his right, and then slowly steadied his breathing as he circulated the power dwelling within his body.
Immediately, a response manifested.
Hum!
The fragment began to vibrate as though resonating.
Or more precisely, the power of Ecrizé connected to the Holy Stigma was surging.
“Ugh!”
The energy flowing through the Holy Stigma in his left hand was foreign, and as a result, Leon felt the Stigma grow blazingly hot against his will.
It was neither chaos nor corrupted thought.
Something far more fundamental and instinctive—yet familiar at the same time.
【…….】
Ecrizé’s silence stretched long.
It was not mere silence.
Though no words came, Leon could sense great agitation in Ecrizé’s mind, linked as they were.
Alarm and confusion, and a strange elation as though something lost had been recovered.
Alongside an indescribable revulsion.
【……How dare……】
The voice that escaped like a groan carried anger within it.
Ecrizé did not remember, yet knew it instinctively.
That this fragment was one of her lost parts.
【Place the fragment upon me.】
“Why?”
【Do as I command!】
A tone unlike her usual manner—domineering and sharp.
Though bewildered, Leon was pushed by Ecrizé’s urgency and carefully laid the fragment atop the rusted portion of the blade.
Then.
Sssss-crack!
Like water droplets striking a hot iron plate, the moment the fragment touched the blade, a deep crimson light erupted in a brilliant flash.
Leon furrowed his brows and instinctively shielded his face.
Hum!
With a resonance that shook the entire room, the hard fragment liquefied in an instant.
And immediately after, it was drawn into the blade housing Ecrizé.
The truly remarkable sight came next.
Where the fragment had been absorbed, the rusted and scale-like surface of the blade fell away, revealing beneath it a lustrous, deep black blade unmarred by rust.
Though but a small change, the size of a fingernail, it was unmistakably the form of Ecrizé’s true blade as Leon had seen it before his Regression.
“So it really was your fragment?”
【It appears to be.】
“It appears to be? It’s your fragment, and you don’t know?”
【I don’t know. I have no memory of it.】
“You have no memory?”
Leon found himself at a loss for words.
Ecrizé’s answer spilled out with an uncharacteristic depth of anguish that caught even the exasperated Leon’s attention.
【I have no memory of it, certainly, yet I can distinctly feel that this Fragment originates from me. Long ago, when I was sealed away, my power shattered and scattered in all directions—fragments of my strength cast across the realm. This is unmistakably one of them. Compared to my true form, it is but a speck of dust, and yet even such a small measure would have sufficed to transform a Predator into something far more terrible.】
“So you’re saying that someone deliberately turned ordinary Corrupted Beings into Mutants using your scattered fragments?”
【Precisely. It appears someone has been gathering my dispersed pieces and using them as a catalyst to enhance Corrupted Beings.】
Leon’s eyes went cold.
Creating artificial monsters by weaponizing Demon God fragments—it was the same method as the Eldrit tragedy.
No. This incident was far more intricate and malicious.
Far more calculated.
“So they’re hunting down your fragments and putting them to use.”
【There is no other way to interpret it. It is absurd. They have discovered pieces of myself that even I have forgotten, and fashioned crude monsters from them.】
Ecrizé’s voice was edged with fury.
Leon clenched his teeth, his fists tightening.
These were no common heretics.
They were enemies capable of handling the power of a forgotten Demon God—fragments of Ecrizé herself, the true form.
“Division-rank Holy Power in their knights, and now they’re acquiring and using Demon God fragments?”
This was no simple work of a heretic sect.
Impossible without intimate knowledge of the Order’s inner workings and the true nature of divine power.
“There’s definitely a rat in here somewhere.”
A rat.
A heretic buried deep within the Order itself.
Did they truly comprehend what Ecrizé’s fragments meant?
Or were they merely treating them as powerful tools?
No—whether they grasped the fragments’ true value was irrelevant.
What mattered was this: they wielded power they could not hope to contain, wielding it like a common instrument.
“The scope of this is bigger than I thought.”
He’d taken them for simple fanatics spreading corruption, yet they possessed the capability to collect and weaponize Ecrizé’s fragments.
It was an unsettling revelation, yet it presented an opportunity.
Simply recovering the Fragment that had been used had already restored a portion of Ecrizé’s blade.
If he could seize the fragments they possessed before they could deploy them?
There would be no need to search aimlessly across the land for Ecrizé’s pieces.
If he could claim what they had so painstakingly gathered—before they were used—he could restore Ecrizé’s lost power far more swiftly.
And that meant Leon himself would grow stronger.
“So if we crush these bastards and take the fragments they’re holding, you could become whole again.”
【It would be so. In that case, I too have acquired a proper reason to aid you.】
“A reason to aid me? What have you been doing until now?”
【I am bound to you until your life ends, so I have merely helped fulfill your desires. But now the circumstances have changed. Finding them is no longer solely for your benefit—it is for mine as well.】
A god-like being had found something more than mere diversion—a genuine stake in the outcome.
Leon gazed at the cold gleam of the restored blade and twisted his lips into something like a smile.
The identities of these enemies remained shrouded, yet at least the path forward was clear.
It was time to hunt.
Continued in the next episode ▶
A Holy Knight Who Made a Contract with a Demon God
Author
Lam Dat
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
※ This e-book is protected under copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and distribution are prohibited, and violations may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ 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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