I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 32

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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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Chapter 32.
Two travelers who had pressed forward since dawn first set foot in a small riverside village nestled against a rough waterway.
Thick mist rising from the Nerba River swallowed the village’s low buildings whole, scattering the view into chaos.
Thin, trembling lantern lights glimmered beyond the moisture-heavy haze, yet there was no sign of life.
In a place where the brisk, fishy smell of commerce should have thrummed, there hung instead a far damper and more oppressive dread.
“Something’s wrong with this place.”
Tristan muttered in displeasure, pulling back on the horse’s reins.
Though they had not yet fully crossed into the Eastern Region, the stifling air that pressed down on the entire village was no different from any remote corner of the East.
Barren and wary gazes.
Sharp eyes fixed upon the two of them.
These were not merely the exclusionary looks directed at outsiders.
These were the eyes of those who had endured something—eyes bristling with caution.
“It seems the informant wasn’t entirely wrong.”
Leon observed the strange ornaments hanging on every door of the tightly shuttered houses.
They appeared to be fashioned from animal bones, woven together haphazardly.
Some doorposts bore a coating of red pigment, amplifying the eerie atmosphere.
Tristan clicked his tongue and dismounted.
He approached an old man who stood watching them from nearby.
“Old man, I’d like to ask you something.”
Tristan spoke clearly, but instead of answering, the old man’s vacant eyes swept across the white cloaks both wore before he hastily turned away.
His manner was that of someone who had glimpsed something he should not have—or believed that any entanglement with them would bring misfortune.
“I’ve nothing to tell you no matter what you ask. What happens here is no concern of outsiders.”
With those words, the old man turned to leave, but Tristan was faster.
Rather than block the old man’s path, Tristan reached out and tapped the crude necklace hanging about his neck.
It was a talisman woven from withered animal claws and red thread.
“You claim ignorance, yet you wear something far too conspicuous around your neck.”
“I—this is—”
“Jackal claws from the wasteland. A talisman to ward off misfortune and drive away night visitors. Common enough in these parts, but not something one picks up carelessly, is it?”
Tristan’s mouth twisted with a bitter edge as he spoke.
Traces of Eastern folk shamanism—knowledge not easily gleaned by those unfamiliar with the region.
When Tristan struck precisely at this point, the old man’s pupils trembled violently.
“For an old man like yourself to own something this costly isn’t mere decoration, is it? You needed to obtain this because something required it.”
Tristan leaned forward, meeting the old man’s eyes level.
Amber pupils glinted with menace.
“Children have disappeared, haven’t they? Something’s happened here. Why would Ankhu appear in these parts?”
“Hic—help!”
When Tristan struck the nerve, the old man went pale and staggered.
Leon watched in quiet admiration.
To extract information from a hostile subject at once, and to ask apt follow-up questions—this was no mere intimidation or coaxing.
It required understanding precisely what the other feared, making it possible to ask such leading questions.
“So? Have you truly seen Ankhu?”
“It was Ankhu! That carriage surely belonged to Anacus!”
“Truly?”
Ankhu, or Anacus.
Leon did not know precisely what Ankhu was, but judging from the exchange between Tristan and the old man, he suspected it was nothing less than a local folk legend of these parts.
Like the phantom in the wardrobe one hears whispered at children’s bedsides long ago.
“If you speak of such things carelessly, those who remain will be taken too! You mustn’t!”
The old man shook his head in terror, but Tristan merely smiled back at him with dark amusement.
With a composure that rivaled the old man’s own, he added:
“Ankhu is certainly frightening.”
“Yes, that is why—”
“But I and the young one behind me are divine messengers sent to capture Ankhu.”
Tristan spoke thus and gestured to the white cloaks he and Leon wore.
From the old man’s vantage, the embroidered golden wings of Arseriel on their cloaks were not visible, yet they were there nonetheless.
“Tell me where you saw Ankhu, and I’ll teach you shamanic wards far more potent than that talisman.”
With that, Tristan drew a silver coin from his purse and pressed it into the old man’s trembling hands.
The whip and the carrot. And enticement.
After long deliberation, the old man finally raised a quivering finger.
“…Over there…”
“Over there?”
“When the sun sets, I’ve seen Ankhu pass over that ridge.”
The direction the Old Man’s finger pointed was toward the back of the village, where the Red Cliff Region loomed thick with mist.
More precisely, the path leading northeast.
As Tristan gauged the road in the direction the Old Man had indicated, the elder’s voice trembled as he continued.
“It was surely Ankhu. There was no sound of wheels. A massive cart being pulled by four horses……, but there were no hoof sounds either…….”
The Old Man muttered like he was screaming and lowered his head, while Tristan clicked his tongue and shook his head at him.
It was clear there was no point in engaging further with an old man paralyzed by fear—so Tristan simply turned away, leaving him behind.
“What is Ankhu?”
“Local folklore around here. You know the kind of stories parents tell children everywhere to keep them from wandering off at night.”
Tristan clicked his tongue in disbelief, but Leon pointed to the bone talismans hanging throughout the village.
“The old man seems to genuinely believe in Ankhu. It looks like the whole village does.”
“That’s how this region is. They believe those bone things actually work. The elders especially.”
Tristan tapped the Dual Swords at his waist as he spoke.
“If things like that could stop them, I wouldn’t need to carry a sword. If Ankhu is real, that’d actually be a relief. Ankhu only takes away children who’ve sinned.”
Leon nodded in agreement with Tristan’s words and gazed at the northeastern ridge the Old Man had pointed to.
As the sun climbed to its zenith and burned away the damp mist clinging to the river, the red sandstone beneath it revealed its ominous blood-red hue with stark clarity.
* * *
The two riders left the damp Riverside Village behind and spurred their horses northeast.
The mist from the Nerba River clung to them sluggishly, but as they pressed forward, that chill dissipated rapidly.
And finally, as the sun rose higher and the white curtain that had veiled the horizon lifted away.
Swish.
For a moment, it felt as though the very colors of the world had reversed all at once.
At some point, the moisture clinging to the riverbank evaporated like a lie, and what rose with each hoofbeat was not mist but acrid, rust-red dust.
“From here on, this is the real Eastern Region. Wrap your respiratory passages properly. Breathing will be painful until you adjust.”
The red dust-swept land, Nibia of the Eastern Region.
A barren land untouched by divine grace, where taboos hold more sway than law codes, and witchcraft and superstition wield greater power than prayer.
Just as Tristan had warned, the wind carried a sharp scent mingling iron and parched earth.
After riding for some time, a village appeared clinging like a parasite beneath a rocky mountain that had suddenly sprouted from the wasteland.
Crude, rough structures built from red clay, beast bone, and black stone.
A parched village with an atmosphere entirely different from Riverside Village—Karak, the Red Rock settlement.
As the two entered the village, what greeted them was an eerie, unfamiliar sound.
Clink, clink.
Clink-clink…….
Whenever the wind blew, hundreds of wind chimes hanging throughout the village rang out.
But what produced those chime sounds was not metal.
Shriveled beast bones, or finger bones of indeterminate origin, woven together and striking each other to produce a dry, brittle sound.
“Quite the taste you have here.”
“They say it’s the sound that drives away evil spirits. It’s just noise, if you ask me.”
Tristan clicked his tongue as though accustomed to such sights and entered the main road of the village.
The streets were sparse, though not entirely empty of presence.
Dark-skinned villagers wrapped in garish cloth watched the two from the shadows and gaps between windows.
Their gaze was different from the fear seen in Riverside Village or the Red Rock settlement.
It was the eye of a predator assessing prey, or the sharp enmity of those who utterly rejected outsiders, even as they studied the unfamiliar.
“Don’t stray from my side.”
Tristan’s voice dropped low.
“The people of this village fear no knight of the central realm. At the first opportunity, they’ll strip you bare—horse, supplies, and bones—so be careful.”
Tristan deliberately drew back his White Cloak to show the grip of his Dual Swords and swept his fierce gaze across all directions.
As his amber eyes flashed sharp, the humid stares that had clung to them slipped back, one by one.
“Tristan, it’s Tristan.”
“The Mad Dog.”
“Tristan, Mad Dog Tristan has returned!”
Whispers carried on the wind.
Dozens of voices calling Tristan’s name.
“Do you know this village?”
“Very well. I was born here.”
Leon turned to look at Tristan with sudden surprise at this unexpected reply.
Tristan smiled crookedly.
“We’ll regroup here. If they really did head northeast, there’s bound to be a witness in the village.”
As he said this, Tristan began to unload their supplies.
As if intending to move alone, he gave Leon a stern warning before speaking again.
“Don’t wander off alone without me. I know they’ll recognize you as part of my company and won’t cause trouble, but you going around poking your nose where it doesn’t belong is another matter entirely.”
“Understood.”
As Tristan disappeared deeper into the village, Leon gathered the horse’s reins and settled into the shade of a crude stone building.
Whenever the dry wind blew, the bone wind chimes hanging from the eaves swayed with an unpleasant sound.
The eerie noise felt so much like the screams of the dead that Leon couldn’t help but furrow his brow.
At a distance, children sat playing in the dirt, but rather than losing themselves in their games, they couldn’t tear their curious eyes away from Leon, the strange outsider.
And there was something else—an instinctive wariness.
“This place has a foul atmosphere,” Ecridze murmured quietly. “The unease hanging in the air settles as heavy as actual witchcraft.”
Leon shared the same thought.
The atmosphere of Karak was far more pronounced than it had been in Riverside Village.
If Riverside Village had been a place where fear made people hold their breath, here that terror had been transformed into sharp, violent aggression—a kind of self-armor.
Leon closed his eyes for a moment and focused his other senses.
An alien sensation riding the wind brushed against his keen awareness.
‘It’s not just imagination.’
When he opened his eyes again, something strange entered his field of vision.
A massive stone pillar stood at the center of the village square.
Beneath it, a man knelt on the ground, his forehead pressed to the earth, muttering something incoherently.
“……The wheel of night……, the shadow…….”
The surrounding villagers turned away from the mad muttering as though accustomed to it, but Leon observed the man carefully.
Tristan’s warning flashed through his mind, yet Leon rose from his place and approached the man.
As he drew closer, the man’s mumbling became increasingly clear.
“When the wheel of night swallows sound, a shadow that treads upon nothing shall claim substance. Flesh molded from red earth is but a vessel, its end already written. Ankhu, look down upon us with mercy.”
The man’s voice carried the incomprehensible, grotesque tones unique to indigenous faith.
Leon’s frown deepened at the alien quality of it.
‘He’s already lost his mind. Yet for a madman’s ravings, there’s a certain coherence to what he’s saying.’
Then the man slowly lifted his head.
His unfocused eyes were the same amber color as Tristan’s.
The man spoke.
“Did you see it too?”
Leon did not answer.
He knew well that there was nothing more futile than speaking with the mad.
Yet the man continued regardless of Leon’s silence.
“The end shall come. Those who endure suffering shall walk with a light that never fades through eternity.”
A light that never fades through eternity?
It was certainly a metaphor peculiar to indigenous faith, yet Leon found himself seized by an inexplicable, instinctive revulsion.
A primal rejection of some kind.
Then the man’s clouded gaze changed—as though he had glimpsed something extraordinary.
In the next instant, he lunged toward Leon.
To be continued ▶
Holy Knight But Made a Contract with an Evil God
Author
Lam Dut
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publisher
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Date of Publication
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and copying are prohibited, and violations may result in criminal and civil legal liability.
※ Pentagram is always waiting for 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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