I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 4

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

Episode 4.
【An intriguing idea.】
“Will it work?”
The reply took a moment longer this time.
【Well. It might be possible, but…….】
“But?”
【The question is what lies inside it.】
“I know that much. That’s definitely a Pollution Source.”
【That’s not what I meant.】
“Then what?”
He sensed something like a sigh.
And the explanation continued.
【Humans seem to lump everything caused by Chaos under the single term “Pollution,” but Chaos itself comes in varieties. If what’s inside is a type I can neutralize, there’s no problem. But if it isn’t, you might not be able to handle it.】
“Even with your help?”
【Even with my help.】
It was a warning of sorts.
Yet Leon’s hesitation was brief.
“It doesn’t matter. That’s not the same as certain failure, is it?”
It was a life he’d already lost once anyway.
He couldn’t afford to shrink back from a risk like this.
Besides, he wasn’t without his reasons for confidence.
“I have a natural resistance to Chaos.”
The reason Leon had always taken point on fieldwork, despite the jibes about being a half-fledged Holy Knight.
It lay in his constitution.
Outstanding resistance despite his meager Holy Power.
It remained an incomprehensible trait, but not knowing the reason didn’t mean he couldn’t put it to use.
【Do as you wish.】
Ecrilize didn’t object a second time.
Leon reached out his left hand toward the Fragment at the altar’s peak.
Then hesitated for a moment.
“How do I do this?”
【You came forward without even knowing the method.】
“No instructions?”
【It’s your idea. You solve it.】
Ecrilize declined to help further.
It wasn’t wrong.
‘When I use Holy Power, the sensation is always of drawing something from within and expressing it outward.’
Transferring power would feel similar to absorbing it.
Then….
What if he did the opposite of how he used it?
‘…The opposite of when I expend power.’
Like grasping inward.
The moment he thought it—
“……!”
A sharp sensation pierced through his left palm.
And with it came the sensation of something minute being drawn inward.
【You’ve done it.】
He didn’t need to be told.
An unfamiliar sensation had entered Leon through his left hand.
What was strange was that the Chaos felt different from what he’d imagined based on his understanding of common sense.
He’d expected it to feel similar to the substance causing Pollution and had braced himself for the corresponding side effects, but this sensation….
“……feels similar to Holy Power?”
That was when it happened.
Simultaneously with what sounded like an exclamation from Ecrilize, something seized Leon’s ankle.
【Oh no.】
Startled by the unexpected sensation, Leon looked down to see the half-corpse—which had lain motionless with closed eyes until now—gripping his ankle.
Leon reflexively kicked away the half-corpse’s arm that had clamped around his ankle.
Crack!
A impact sound that seemed impossible from striking human flesh echoed out.
Yet despite the force of the kick, the half-corpse’s hand around Leon’s ankle did not release.
Rather, it clung to him like a shackle.
“What kind of strength is this…!”
Was it just his imagination? The creature’s power seemed stronger than that of a living person.
Wait—was it not dead yet?
Confusion flickered across Leon’s eyes as he glimpsed a heart still beating through the gap split open in the creature’s torso.
‘Why won’t it stop?’
The moment that thought crossed his mind, something black and murky began to roil up from one side of the pulsing heart.
Thick and turbid as mud—something Leon knew all too well.
A Pollution reaction.
【It seems the finish was rather untidy.】
‘You’re saying I successfully destroyed the Pollution Source but failed to clean it up properly?’
【Indeed.】
‘That means the corpse has been tainted by Chaos!’
【Well, since it’s only one corpse, you could still call it a success.】
‘That’s not—!’
If I’m careless, I’ll die here!
With a sickening crunch of bone and sinew twisting, the corpse dragged itself upright.
No—”dragged itself upright” wasn’t quite accurate.
Its limbs, utterly shattered, trailed uselessly as entrails spilled from the split belly and dragged across the ground; the creature crawled toward Leon with nothing but obsessive intent.
Half-dead, one of its hands still gripped Leon’s ankle without letting go, while the other—its joint broken—pressed against the floor. Using that same arm, it heaved up its own torso.
Leon struck the creature’s head with Ecrilize’s blade, but the half-corpse paid no mind to the blow and continued looking for an opening.
“Damn it!”
The moment the creature tried to bite down on Leon’s shoulder, the wrist joint—already broken—snapped back into place with a sickening sound.
The split belly too began to knit closed as something black and viscous, seeping from the heart, slowly roiled upward and mended the wound.
Crushed beneath the creature’s weight, Leon thought desperately.
‘This is definitely a Pollution mutation response. The thing moving it—it has to be the power of Chaos that was in the Fragment!’
Then, couldn’t he absorb power from this half-corpse the same way he’d absorbed the Fragment’s power through his stigma?
Power was momentum.
Without momentum, a corpse couldn’t move.
‘Ecrilize, where is the core?’
【The neck.】
Having confirmed the core’s location through Ecrilize, Leon used his sword as a pivot and slid his stance lower.
The creature’s sharp teeth missed Leon’s hair by inches as its neck drew close enough for him to feel its breath.
Leon seized the moment and reached out his left hand.
“…!”
The instant his palm made contact, the force animating the creature flowed into Leon.
Unlike the colorless, odorless Chaos within the Pollution Source, the Chaos he absorbed from the corpse’s neck was like murky floodwater streaked with dark sediment.
The power itself was negligible, but intense emotions surged through with it.
Negative hues clung to him—pain, regret.
The emotions of a dead man’s final anguish poured into his mind, and a wave of sickening revulsion twisted through his gut.
“Ugh!”
Contrary to everything Leon had believed, the force that caused Pollution carried no color.
Even though the power contained in the Fragment must be closer to the essence itself.
That such negative thoughts could cling to something colorless and odorless—it surely was tainted by the influence of the dead.
As doubt formed in Leon’s mind, Ecrilize’s quiet voice pierced through.
【Did I not tell you that power itself has no good or evil?】
That was right. That was the truth.
This was an experience that inverted everything Leon had believed.
Only now did Leon understand: his past experience had confined him to aftermath and cleanup; he truly knew nothing of Pollution’s nature.
Moreover, as he had witnessed here today, there existed a force willing to intentionally break seals.
Elderit’s corruption and disappearance from the maps twenty years ago—it was no accident, but deliberate work by someone with purpose. Not a mere catastrophe.
Someone was scheming something, willing to risk dangers that threatened the very survival of this world.
Leon gathered his thoughts and rose to his feet, his gaze catching on the corpse as it disintegrated.
And near the neck, a strange mark he’d failed to notice before suddenly caught his eye.
‘…What is that?’
A twisted shape, drawn in dark bloodstains.
Something oddly familiar flickered at the edge of recognition, but he didn’t investigate in time.
The moment Leon tried to examine it closely, the corpse transformed entirely to ash and vanished.
Burning that afterimage into his memory, Leon alternated his gaze between the remaining bloodstains and his own left hand.
The sensation of the dead man’s suffering and regret that had flowed in through the Fragment the moment he’d absorbed it remained vivid even now.
‘This is… Pollution.’
Not merely death.
The sensation of existence twisted, dignity trampled beneath the final moment.
In his previous life, Leon had witnessed countless remnants of such tragedy, but absorbing it directly this time made the sensation viscerally, undeniably real in a way mere observation never had.
At the same time, as expected, the Chaos absorbed from the Pollution Source took root within Leon’s body.
The sensation of something dimly filling an empty vessel.
If he could gather more of this power, he could become stronger than he ever was in his previous life.
Separate from relying on Ecrilize’s strength.
“I can become stronger.”
Leon remembered every Pollution incident that would occur over the next twenty years, starting with Elderit.
What if he found and eliminated the Pollution Source from each of those incidents first?
He could claim all the Chaos within those sources as his own.
And save the countless people who would otherwise fall to Pollution.
Leon steeled his resolve and turned to Ecrilize with a question.
“I have a question.”
【Ask.】
“I felt no discomfort absorbing the Chaos from the Pollution Source. But from the corpse—which contained far less—I felt an overwhelming sense of revulsion. Why?”
【Power holds no emotion, but humans do.】
“What?”
The answer was brief, but it cut to the heart of it.
Leon realized Ecrilize’s response answered the very thing he’d dimly suspected.
The dying human’s resentment and suffering had tainted that power—a concept the Church would never teach, never allow him to learn.
Leon laughed hollowly and posed the more fundamental question.
“What exactly is Chaos?”
【Chaos is the Womb—the source from which all things are born, raw and unrefined power itself.】
“Raw? Chaos doesn’t originate in this world?”
【It was the foundation of all worlds, yet to yours it is pure poison.】
“What do you mean? Chaos is the source substance that causes Pollution, isn’t it? You’re saying it was originally the world’s foundation?”
【All things begin from Chaos. But it is so pure that excess becomes toxin, nothing more.】
“Wait. Then what you’re saying is that Pollution…”
【Yes. What you call Pollution is merely lesser beings bursting apart under the weight of Chaos they cannot bear.】
Leon had spent more than half a lifetime within the Church of Light before his return.
Ecrilize’s words spoke of a truth that overturned everything the Church had taught him, everything he’d made the principle of his life.
【Yet something troubles me. In your world, Chaos occurs naturally only in the most minute quantities. Pollution as you call it is not a common occurrence.】
“You’re saying it’s not a natural phenomenon?”
【Indeed. This world’s Chaos is sparse beyond measure compared to mine. For those fragments to accumulate and exert influence would require an immensely long time. It is unnatural.】
“As if someone deliberately induced it?”
【Yes. Like that corpse.】
Even Ecrilize harbored suspicion, and Leon’s resolve hardened into certainty.
After much deliberation, Leon spoke.
“Then I need to find whoever is causing these unnatural events.”
【And if you find them?】
“By absorbing all the Pollution Sources, I’ll understand why Chaos appeared in this world in the first place—and who’s behind it.”
【Do you have a way?】
“I’m going back to the Church.”
【The Church of Light?】
“Yes. Becoming a Holy Knight will make it easier to hunt down the Pollution Sources.”
Now, having returned twenty years, Leon remembered every Pollution-ravaged region he had trained in over those two decades.
And from more than half those incidents, he remembered where the Pollution had originated.
Even if he couldn’t remember them all, it hardly mattered.
All Pollution incidents had been handled by the three Churches that served the Three Gods—the Church of Light, the Church of Life, and the Church of Order.
It was the duty and responsibility of those who served the gods.
In that moment, Leon set his next goal.
【Leon. Someone approaches.】
Continued in the next chapter ▶
A Holy Knight in contract with an evil god
Author
Lam Dat
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publisher
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 duplication are prohibited, and violations may result in criminal and civil legal liability.
※ 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
—————