I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 39

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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 39.
The two who arrived in Orden were scarcely granted a moment to catch their breath.
Through a dusty back alley, Tristan made his way toward a dilapidated pawnshop at its far end.
“Proprietor!”
“We’re closed.”
Behind a haze of stale cigarette smoke, the elderly owner spoke without lifting his head.
Yet Tristan paid it no mind, drawing a single Silver Coin from his pocket instead.
The owner’s expression shifted the moment his indifferent gaze fell upon it.
“I see.”
On the coin’s reverse side was engraved a broken wing.
It was the secret cipher of the Church of Light’s covert communication network.
Without a word, the owner retrieved a dust-covered Communication Vessel and Messenger Bird from beneath the counter.
“Urgent dispatch. Target confirmed. Coordinates: Forgotten Ravine, southwest below.”
“Request for reinforcements as well?”
“Yes.”
“The seal?”
“Here.”
Upon verifying the seal marked in red wax, Tristan turned directly toward the market.
Without even haggling, he procured two sturdy Thoroughbred Horses, and the pair rode hard toward the Forgotten Ravine.
“Hyah!”
The desert at night was bitterly cold.
The earth that had burned crimson throughout the day shed its heat the moment the sun vanished, embracing a cold that froze bone and marrow.
“Ha!”
The white breath erupting from their mouths was driven back by the wind before it could even disperse.
Though the horses they’d procured at great expense in Orden were of excellent stock, the relentless forced march had already worked white foam to the corners of their mouths.
The rough panting of the straining horses scattered into the desolate expanse of sand.
Yet they could not stop.
The traces left upon the ground were far too distinct.
‘It’s too heavy.’
Leon traced the wheel ruts that were clear even beneath the moonlight.
Had it been an ordinary cargo wagon, the sand winds would have obscured it by now, but their wagon carved the earth as if plowing it, leaving deep scars that stretched unbroken into the distance.
The depth of those tracks spoke to the weight of what the wagon bore.
Perhaps the weight of human lives yet breathing.
“Ugh!”
A stifled groan tore from Tristan’s lips beside him.
When Leon turned his head, he could see that Tristan’s knuckles, white-knuckled around the reins, were drained of all color.
Each time the horse bounded harshly, Tristan’s face twisted with pain, and cold sweat was already streaming down his brow like rain.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just watch the road ahead.”
The answer came sharp and quick, yet his complexion told a different story.
It was clear that the wounds from the battle with the Corrupted Entity were screaming under the relentless pace.
Should he have stopped to treat them in the village before leaving?
As Leon wrestled with the thought, he finally reached into his clothes and tossed a Painkiller toward Tristan.
“Take it.”
“…Damn it.”
Tristan caught the thrown medicine and immediately popped it into his mouth, cursing between his teeth.
It was closer to a numbing effect than true healing, but such details hardly mattered now.
What mattered was dulling the pain that gnawed at his nerves with every passing moment.
“Let’s move. Hyah!”
Once the medicine was swallowed, Tristan adjusted his grip on the reins and struck his horse’s flank roughly.
Leon swallowed back the sigh threatening to escape and kicked his own horse onward.
【The whiner’s slowing us down. You’re not thinking of leaving him behind, are you?】
‘Don’t be like that. You’ve never had broken ribs, have you.’
【How could I? This body has no use for such things.】
Ecrise’s mockery buzzed endlessly in his ears, yet Leon had no energy to answer back.
There was no time.
Beyond the horizon, the sky behind them was dimly brightening.
Dawn approaching meant either they would soon be active, or it was time to cover their tracks.
‘The presence is weakening.’
Once the air that had lain cold all night warmed, the faint traces they’d left would scatter into the atmosphere and vanish.
Leon bit his tongue against the anxiety, stretching his senses to their absolute limit.
How long had they been riding like this?
【Left. Now.】
Ecrise’s voice cut through the darkness like a blade.
At the same moment, a stench seeped into the edges of Leon’s expanded awareness.
A sickly, repugnant miasma rose from it—like vapor lifting from a pool of rotting water.
“The scent’s changed direction! To the left!”
“That’s scree! The horse won’t hold up!”
The place Leon pointed to was no road—just sharp stones scattered haphazardly across rough, barren ground.
Treacherous terrain where a full gallop could snap the horse’s legs.
Yet Leon did not ease the reins.
“If we turn back, we’ll be too late!”
At Leon’s resolute cry, Tristan swallowed a curse and wrenched the reins sharply leftward.
An almost-shriek tore from the horse’s hooves, but there was no stopping now.
Already the red sun was climbing behind them.
As the eastern sky bloomed blood-red, the shadows of the two riders stretched long before them—impossibly long.
As if the rising sun itself were driving them forward.
‘Day is breaking.’
Leon felt the light pouring down on the back of his head and clenched his teeth.
Before it was too late, he had to bring this pursuit to an end.
The two rode on without rest through the Desert, where darkness was being torn away.
Toward the distant Forgotten Ravine, its black mouth yawning open like a wound in the earth.
* * *
After riding a full day, the ravine greeted them with a sandstorm so violent that they could not see a hand’s breadth ahead.
As if someone had deliberately raised a barrier to prevent outside entry, an immense wall of dust had completely swallowed the ravine’s mouth.
“This wind is vicious.”
Tristan sucked his teeth and scanned the scene before them.
His breathing steadied by force of will, but his legs trembled faintly where they touched the ground.
It was not mere exhaustion.
The pain stabbing through his ribs had reached its limit, yet Tristan forced his upper body straight and glared into the sandstorm ahead.
“This is bad.”
The sandstorm that lay before them was dizzyingly fierce.
To be caught in it would be to disappear beneath the sand itself.
“We don’t have time to wait.”
“We have to wait. Going through that is madness. Can you even see anything in there?”
Though Tristan pressed his objection irritably, Leon’s resolve did not waver.
Instead, he narrowed his eyes and stared hard into the very heart of the sandstorm.
As if there were a path there.
“That’s suicide.”
“No. It’s possible.”
Leon stated it plainly and stepped forward.
To an ordinary person’s eyes, all was chaos and blindness, but to Leon’s eyes, it appeared wholly different.
In Leon’s vision, dark and noxious currents flowing on the wind traced their paths, scattered and distinct against the confusion.
The very path those creatures had taken with their carriage.
“Stay close. If you lose me, it’s over.”
“You can actually see something?”
Leon did not hesitate and moved forward.
Sharp grains of sand stung his skin and wind howled as if it would split his eardrums, but Leon kept his eyes narrowed, following Ecrise’s voice with each step.
【A bit more to the right. Five paces ahead, turn left again.】
How far they walked, guided by Ecrise’s voice and Leon’s heightened senses.
After some time, the sand that had torn at their skin began to ease, and the howl that threatened to burst their ears grew quiet.
And at last the two of them arrived at a space where, impossibly, all the wind and fury ceased—an island of stillness in the chaos.
“……”
At the center of the ravine, surrounded on all sides by the raging sandstorm.
A massive chasm gaped before them, the earth split clean as if by a knife blade.
A natural fortress and their hidden lair, concealed by an artificial barrier.
‘A place like this existed.’
【Those foul creatures, but their method is quite clever.】
A vast barrier, disguised as a natural sandstorm.
Which explained why it had remained unknown until now.
Even if someone had sensed the strangeness in the air, they could never have pierced that sandstorm to reach this place.
No one could have suspected it.
That such a vast chasm lay hidden beneath the savage winds.
“Buried in a godforsaken place like this—how could anyone possibly find it?”
Tristan muttered his disgust and stepped toward the mouth of the fissure.
But Leon hesitated.
The depth of the darkness spreading beneath his feet was impossible to gauge.
The furious sandstorm blocked out every ray of light from the world above, and the fissure before them resembled nothing so much as the gaping maw of an abyss that swallowed all things whole.
That was when it happened.
【Stop. Something’s there.】
At Ecrise’s warning, Leon dropped into a crouch by pure instinct.
Tristan, too, gripped his sword hilt silently and pressed close to Leon’s side.
Moments later, figures emerged from the pitch darkness—patrol guards carrying torches.
‘…Something’s wrong.’
The distance was too great to be certain, but the men moving about gave off no sense of life whatsoever.
And Leon sensed he wasn’t alone in noticing the wrongness.
“You see it?”
“Yes. Something’s definitely off about them.”
After studying them for some time, Tristan grasped the nature of the wrongness he felt.
Their movements were unnatural.
Like…….
“Marionettes from one of those puppet plays I saw once. Stiff. Everything’s stiff.”
“You mean their movements are unnaturally rigid?”
“Right. That’s the feeling.”
Tristan had merely remarked on the awkwardness of their gait, but Leon sensed something far more sinister in the wrongness.
It resembled the sensation he felt when face to face with Corrupted Entities—or rather, Mutated Corrupted Entities.
Familiar yet unfamiliar things.
Similar yet bearing some crucial difference.
‘Ecrise—could those be……?’
【No. Regrettably, I sense no trace of fragments within them.】
Just as Leon began to feel relief at the definitive denial, an unexpected answer cut through his mind.
【However, their aura resembles what you call Corrupted Entities. These creatures wear human skin like a mask—nothing more.】
‘…What?’
The words struck him like a blow.
No—they clearly appeared human, yet their outer form was all they had in common?
“Why?”
“Their aura……resembles that of Corrupted Entities.”
“What?”
At this stunning revelation, Tristan scrunched his face and narrowed his eyes.
“I don’t sense anything like that myself.”
“……It may simply be my imagination.”
“No. You’re perceptive enough that you’re probably right. And thinking back to what we saw in the Red Corridor, this isn’t altogether implausible.”
Tristan licked his lips and scanned the surroundings.
Then he spotted a strange structure tucked into one corner.
“That thing—it screams trouble, doesn’t it?”
“Yes……. It looks like some sort of power source.”
Leon glanced toward the sandstorm still raging around the ravine as he replied.
The storm that enveloped this gorge was unmistakably artificial by any measure, and the structure before them appeared to be its source.
“Even if reinforcements arrive, they won’t be able to enter because of this storm. We’ll need to open the way for them.”
“Destroy it? That won’t be quiet—we’d lose our chance to slip in unnoticed.”
“I’m not suggesting we destroy it now. We need to time it right.”
As Leon spoke, he read the faint current of energy flowing across the pillar’s surface.
Ecrise offered guidance at his ear.
【That’s not a wing that generates the wind—it’s an anchor that holds it in place. If you reverse the flow patterns running through the foundation, the pressure will become unbearable and the storm will simply disperse on its own. It’s like damming a river—eventually, the levee breaks.】
Understanding Ecrise’s explanation, Leon calmly opened his mouth as if the insight were entirely his own.
“From the structure, I can roughly grasp the principle at work. If we merely reverse the direction of the force, we can create a cascading failure over time.”
“……You can tell all that from this distance?”
Tristan studied Leon with a look of disbelief, but Leon replied with shameless composure.
“It’s simply a matter of calculating the nonlinear oscillations in the Mana Field that arise from phase interference coordinates. Adjusting the coefficients of variation slightly makes inducing collapse straightforward.”
……
“It’s definitely covered in Elite Knight fundamentals class.”
“Do you remember everything you learn and actually use it?”
“That’s what we’re taught for, isn’t it?”
Tristan shook his head with a look of exasperation, then abandoned any further questions.
Complex Magical Theory was nothing but a sleeping draught to him.
“Then we need to get closer.”
“We do.”
“Understood. Follow me.”
The two moved toward the pillar, their breathing carefully muted.
Up close, the patrol soldiers looked even more grotesque.
Their eyes were vacant and glassy, their complexions corpse-pale, and veins swollen from their necks down rippled grotesquely in the torchlight.
“Hurry.”
Despite the cold sweat beading on his brow, Tristan surveyed their surroundings with sharp eyes.
“The patrol intervals are regular. We can time it right. How long will it take?”
“It shouldn’t take long.”
“Signal me when you’re ready.”
One, two…
Following Tristan’s signal, both men crept toward the pillar.
As they reached the proper distance, Leon extended his hand and immediately poured his strength into it.
Hum—
The pillar trembled faintly, and the red light on its surface began to flicker in a slow, measured rhythm.
It was the beginning of collapse.
“It should take about half a day.”
“That’s plenty of time. Let’s go, before we’re discovered.”
Continued in the next episode ▶
A Holy Knight Who Made a Contract with an Evil God
Author
Lam Dah
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Published
March 27, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227066
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※ Pentagram welcomes precious manuscripts from writers.

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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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