I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 36

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 36.
As they descended the staircase into the underground, the acrid stench gave way to a sickly warmth that clung to the air.
A damp atmosphere, as though they were stepping into the belly of some enormous beast.
At the foot of the stairs, a massive iron door blocked their path.
Tristan approached slowly, listening intently for any sign of movement.
“I don’t sense anything unusual, but what about you?”
The iron door was thick, but bore no visible locking mechanism.
Apparently they’d deemed the locks above sufficient.
“I sense no living presence.”
“Though the way you say it makes it sound like something else is here.”
Leon did not deny Tristan’s observation.
No hostile presence, yet that keen sensitivity of his caught something restless in the air—a feeling he couldn’t shake off.
Still, having witnessed Leon’s detection abilities surpass his own on previous occasions, Tristan trusted his judgment.
“Ready?”
Tristan’s voice came low and measured. Leon answered by adjusting his grip on his sword.
Almost simultaneously, Tristan kicked the iron door open.
Bang!
The door swung wide with a deafening crash.
The moment the interior was revealed, Tristan’s breath caught in his throat.
“What in the—”
It was hell.
Perhaps hell itself would have been less terrible.
A vast cavern, packed wall to wall with dozens of iron cages.
Within each low, narrow cage—like kennels for animals—anywhere from four to fourteen bodies lay tangled together.
Every last one of them shackled at the neck or limbs with iron chains.
They were treated as beasts, not human beings.
Leon felt the blood drain from his face as he swept his eyes across the space, and then a second horrifying realization struck him.
“There are no living souls here.”
Dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of corpses lay stacked upon one another, yet not a single one drew breath.
Each body bore a massive wound at the neck or chest; dried blood crusted thickly around each wound, long since caked and congealed.
The reek of it mixed with the stench of rotting flesh.
This was the source of the foul odor that had assailed them from the stairwell.
Tristan, examining a far corner, gestured urgently to Leon.
“Leon. Look here.”
The corpses in the corner Tristan indicated differed starkly from those in the other cages.
They were no less drenched in blood, yet the pooled blood beneath them still held a damp sheen, glistening faintly.
“We’re too late.”
“These are the ones from the carriage?”
“Likely. They fled in haste. Rather than transport them, they slaughtered them all to eliminate the evidence.”
The state of the bodies was unspeakable.
All traces pointed to hasty butchery—cut down at random to lighten their load and silence potential witnesses before fleeing.
Tristan exhaled a bitter curse.
“By a hair’s breadth. We missed them.”
Leon’s gaze fixed on a large map nailed roughly to one of the chamber walls.
Crafted from leather, the map bore an intricately detailed rendering of the continent.
But unlike any ordinary map, it was marked instead by blood-red traces—lines that resembled the smears of gore itself.
“Are all of these their movement routes?”
Tristan, having only just noticed the map, drew in a sharp breath.
He’d already seen similar reports during his briefing from Ayla, yet witnessing the sheer scope of their operations laid bare across the entire continent—now it sent ice through his veins in a way no report ever could.
The fertile plains of the Western Region, the barren snowfields of the North, even the vicinity of the Arsella Mountain Range where the Order of Light’s fortress stood.
Like threads of a spider’s web, dozens of blood-red lines emanated from points across the continent, each and every one converging here—the Red Corridor of the Eastern Region.
At the starting point of each of those lines, a darkly crimson pin was planted.
Unmistakably, the marks of hunting grounds.
And as Leon observed both the map and the corpses together, the wrongness he’d been sensing crystallized into clarity.
‘The reason the bodies wear such different clothing…’
Soaked in blood and filth, they were nearly indistinguishable at first glance, yet closer inspection revealed something grotesque.
Those in the rough fabrics typical of the Eastern Region, or those wearing turbans, made up barely half. The rest were clad in garments utterly incongruous with this harsh, desolate East.
‘Half of them aren’t from the Eastern Region at all.’
【You’ve certainly got more corpses resembling you than that grumbler does.】
‘The phrasing ‘resembling me’ is oddly unsettling.’
【Then what am I supposed to say?】
Dismissing Ecrize’s mockery, Leon examined the corpses more carefully.
Some were half-decomposed yet still wore fine linen shirts, while others bore boots crafted in the Western style.
Even more unsettling were the bodies dressed in furred overcoats that belonged to the frigid northern wastelands—garments utterly at odds with the sweltering, humid Eastern Region.
This meant that people had been selected from across the entire continent, either at random or by specific criteria, and dragged to this place.
Transporting such numbers from such a wide reach without a whisper was beyond the capacity of mere bandits or heretical sects.
‘Damn it.’
【Why?】
‘The organization behind this is larger than I thought.’
【Wasn’t that already what you expected? Something more?】
‘The victims’ origins span far wider than anticipated. To abduct people from such a vast range and pass them through the checkpoints of each nation would be impossible without considerable power and connections.’
In other words, they controlled a massive corridor running across the continent.
They held sway over the logistics network that moved goods between empires and lesser kingdoms alike, rendering even the strictest border checkpoints utterly powerless.
If they had sympathizers within the Cult of the Three Demons, those contacts had to be high priests—or high nobility.
And not just one or two, but a web of them rooted in key positions across the realm, shielding these people in a giant network.
“There was… something like a ledger, I think.”
While Leon lost himself in thought, Tristan, searching the opposite shelf, murmured aloud.
Turning his head, Leon could see hurried streaks of dust and traces of something on the shelf Tristan examined.
If experiments had been conducted here, there would surely be remnants—documents, tools, the kind of things that left marks.
“Items used in the experiments, perhaps.”
“Something important. They wouldn’t have bothered to take it otherwise.”
“They killed the humans but took the objects.”
As Leon muttered this, his features twisted further into something grim.
The corpses, appearing not long dead, were uniformly in a horrific state.
Thin as if starved for days, every inch of them was covered in wounds.
The marks of abuse were so extensive that they might have died from the accumulation of minor injuries alone—had the wounds been less obvious.
‘It seems the condition of the sacrifices didn’t matter much to them.’
【The material didn’t need to be intact.】
‘…Material…were these people the materials for their experiments?’
【It’s obvious. There isn’t much to extract from a dying human. Unless you’re someone naturally gifted with power, like you are.】
‘Power…power, then.’
Now that he thought about it, the inconsistencies piled up.
What made the upper-level Corrupted Entity that resembled Ilseran different?
There had to be a reason why Ilseran alone, among all the abducted, received such special treatment.
Leon shelved his cascading questions and surveyed the surroundings methodically.
He needed to uncover as much as possible.
This was no mere dumping ground—it was the scene of an experiment hiding something vast.
Not a single clue could be overlooked.
The space was contaminated with blood and filth, obscuring shapes beyond recognition.
Leon and Tristan pressed on through their disgust, clearing away the debris and examining their surroundings with care.
How many times did they repeat this process?
As Leon scraped away a thick layer of bloodstains, he finally uncovered a Sorcery Circle on the floor—one resembling what he’d seen above.
“There’s a Sorcery Circle here too. Is it the same design as upstairs?”
“Yes, looks like similar content. Though the scale is much larger.”
Tristan clicked his tongue, studying the discovered circle.
True to his word, the circle’s size reached three times that of the one above.
Most of it was obscured by the iron cages, blood, and filth scattered around it, but the method was unmistakably identical.
“So they actually conducted experiments here?”
Having examined the full circle, Tristan exhaled heavily.
An empty shelf. A massive Sorcery Circle on the floor.
And slaughtered people.
While the exact nature of what had transpired and the specific purpose of the ritual remained unclear, one thing was certain.
The material was human.
Used to create Corrupted Beings.
“What kind of monsters would…”
Tristan’s voice trembled with rage.
It was more than the shared indignation of a Paladin’s calling.
Experiments using humans as material.
And the result of those experiments—Mutant Corrupted Beings.
For what purpose? For what possible end?
“Shall we head back to the village?”
“Yes. The two of us investigating this entire place would be wasteful. We’ll need an analysis priest at minimum—someone to confirm whether any other magic was used besides the Sorcery Circle.”
The investigation of Silvaren Forest had consumed several days, and this site would demand no less.
More than that—being in the Eastern Region, far from Arseriel’s stronghold, it might take considerably longer.
“The paperwork’s going to be a mountain. Damn.”
Tristan sighed low and squeezed his eyes shut.
Worrying about reports in a situation like this.
By his usual nature, he was clearly the type who despised paperwork.
“Would you like me to do it?”
“Huh?”
“The report. I’ve written one before during the Silvaren case, so if it’s all right to do something similar…….”
“……Yes. You handle it, then.”
Tristan dried his face at the cautious offer and nodded heavily.
Ordinarily he would have been delighted to pass off tedious work, but now he looked simply exhausted by the prospect of describing this gruesome scene at all.
【Why volunteer for something troublesome?】
‘Better I write it than risk him adding some unnecessary commentary.’
【So that’s your aim?】
‘That’s right.’
It didn’t seem Tristan had caught on, but still—the surest way forward was to block off possibilities altogether.
The inconvenience was worth bearing.
“Right, so the real problem is where these damned creatures have disappeared to…….”
Tristan swept his gaze across the surroundings with obvious unease, then turned to Leon.
“Can you do that again? What you did before?”
“That?”
“The way you found this entrance from above. It’s obvious the escape route is hidden by the same method, but my sensing in that direction is practically worthless.”
Leon, grasping what Tristan was asking, nodded and closed his eyes once more.
Everyone had their particular talents.
The problem, though—
‘……there are too many obstacles.’
Unlike the barren surface, the underground reeked of corpses piled high, with foul energies tangled in chaos.
Locating something anomalous—a hidden passage, a concealed gap—within that miasma was painstaking work.
That was when Ecrize came to aid Leon’s search.
【Don’t look for what’s anomalous—look for where the energy is unusually dense.】
‘Dense?’
【If they took something they’d crafted from these corpses and fled, that foul presence would have concentrated there, leaving a trace. Behind that wall, perhaps.】
To be continued ▶
A Paladin in a Pact with an Evil Deity
Author
Ramdot
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Contact
[email protected]
Publication Date
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission. Violation will result in criminal and civil penalties.
※ Pentagram welcomes your precious manuscripts.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————