I’m a Holy Knight, but I Contracted with an Evil God - Chapter 42

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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 42.
At the end of the corridor Leon had chosen lay a cold Stone Chamber, ruled by the breath of the dead.
The space was wide enough for a search party of ten or so, but the oppressive weight radiating from the altar that glowed with its bizarre light rendered the interior suffocatingly silent.
And suspended at its center: a blood-red fragment.
It was unmistakably an Ekrize Fragment.
‘Ekrize, this is…….’
【That’s my fragment, yes.】
It seemed they were conducting some sort of experiment using the Ekrize Fragment again.
The problem was how nakedly it lay exposed.
The fragment before him was incomparably larger and more conspicuous than the pieces they’d smuggled out of the Red Corridor.
Unlike the previous fragments, which had been the size of a sesame seed, this one was nearly the size of a thumbnail.
And there was another difference, starkly apparent.
‘Its power hasn’t been consumed yet.’
【Right, that’s the crucial point. We absolutely must get our hands on this one.】
Remarkably, the fragment before him retained the untapped power of Ekrize within it.
That force—chaotic, unfamiliar to most, yet intimately known to Leon—churned and spiraled within the fragment’s core.
If Leon could seize this fragment, Ekrize would recover power incomparably greater than what she’d gained from the pieces obtained in Acalon or the Red Corridor.
‘This is troublesome.’
But there were too many watching eyes.
Eight pairs of eyes in total were fixed upon the altar before them.
Of course, their intent was not to surveil Leon, yet intercepting the fragment under the noses of trained Holy Knights at arm’s length, where even breathing could be heard, was nearly impossible.
What could be done about this.
It was the moment Leon was pondering this very dilemma.
“……!”
From the darkened corner behind the altar, a shadow burst forth and broke into a run.
Advanced Concealment Technique.
He exploited the moment when Leon’s and the knights’ gazes were fixed on the fragment, bolting toward the passage that led in the opposite direction from where Leon had entered.
“Stop right there!”
The knights belatedly drew their blades, but caught off guard, they lacked the means to close the distance that had opened.
Just as the figure was stepping into the opposite passage, about to vanish entirely into the darkness.
Thud!
A dull, explosive sound erupted from within the passage.
Along with a cry twisted by pain, the shadow that had been fleeing in such good form came hurtling backward like a rebounding ball, crashing and tumbling across the floor.
The one who had cut off his escape route and sent him flying was Tristan, charging forward from the opposite direction with terrifying momentum.
“In such a hurry, are we?”
A cheerful taunt poured through the cloud of dust.
Before the man embedded in the floor could even gather his wits, Tristan’s boot came down mercilessly on his chest.
Leon approached slowly, observing the man being pinned down.
The man seemed still dazed from the impact of Tristan’s kick, but his eyes burned with fierce clarity.
And Leon realized the face of the man glaring savagely at him seemed somehow familiar.
“Surely we’ve met before, haven’t we?”
“Isn’t he the one we lost track of in the Red Corridor?”
Tristan called back, still keeping his boot pressed firmly against the man’s chest.
Indeed, now that he thought about it, it did seem that way.
Rather than pressing the downed man for answers, Leon turned to Tristan and asked.
“Does the structure connect?”
“Yeah. The whole thing seems to be circular in layout. I just kept going straight and ended up here.”
Tristan replied as such, then lowered his stance toward the man still pinned beneath his foot.
A bloody smile spread across his face as he spoke.
“You got away pretty well last time. Why don’t you try running again this time?”
His amber eyes gleamed with savage intensity.
It was clear he remained thoroughly bitter about letting the man slip through his fingers in the Red Corridor.
“…….”
Yet despite Tristan’s menacing threat, the man did not speak.
Instead, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, he began to grin widely.
An unsettling response—he made no proper sound of pain despite what must have been considerable suffering from Tristan’s beating.
Tristan’s patience finally snapped at the man’s attitude, and he seized the man’s collar with savage intent.
“You bastard!”
The man’s body, flattened against the floor, was wrenched upward by that brutal grip.
Just as a round of violence was about to unfold, Tristan, still clenching the man’s collar, felt something distinctly wrong.
“……Wait.”
Tristan forced open the man’s clenched jaw with a rough hand.
The moment he looked inside, Tristan’s frown deepened further.
“His tongue’s been cut off.”
“The Oath of Silence? Something like that?”
Tristan’s expression darkened, and he released the collar he’d been gripping.
The man coughed repeatedly as if gasping for air, yet still couldn’t produce so much as a proper groan.
Only bestial whimpers escaped from deep in his throat.
“So that’s why he kept smiling.”
With his tongue gone, extracting reliable information would be difficult—or so the man clearly believed.
His eyes betrayed that conviction.
But it was a grave miscalculation.
Instead of the collar, Tristan seized the man by the hair.
He bent down to meet his gaze, staring directly at him, and spoke.
“Information doesn’t only come from a tongue, you know.”
“……Ah, ah!”
The man wasn’t foolish enough to miss what Tristan meant.
Fear flickered across his eyes for the first time, and he began thrashing, trying to wrench himself free from Tristan’s grip.
Tristan subdued the struggling man with one hand while turning to Leon. “You said Sion mentioned two High Priests waiting topside, right?”
“According to Efrizio, there’s also a Theologian among those on standby.”
At Leon’s words, the man’s struggles intensified.
He clearly understood what the presence of a High Priest and a Theologian meant.
A severed tongue would be no obstacle at all if either one was there.
As the man’s thrashing grew more frantic, Tristan clicked his tongue and struck the back of his neck, rendering him unconscious in one blow.
“I wish Corbin had come instead of Sion. That’s a shame.”
“You mean Corbin?”
“Yeah. Corbin’s good at this sort of thing.”
Heresy Interrogation, apparently—so that was Corbin’s specialty.
Leon found it hard to believe that the perpetually smiling man’s expertise lay in such methods, but stranger things existed.
Tristan gestured at the unconscious man and barked orders at his unit. “You two. Take this one up and hand him over to either the High Priest or the Theologian waiting topside. The rest of you, check if there are any other passages.”
“Yes, sir!”
After issuing several more instructions, Tristan turned to Leon. “Find anything on your end?”
“Clean so far, sir.”
“Mine too was similar.”
“It seems the patrol units that gathered at that Cavern with the blood trenches were likely the bulk of their forces, sir.”
“Makes sense. I can’t speak to the other sections, but that was the largest space I surveyed initially.”
“The kidnapped victims do seem to be held elsewhere, but……”
Leon trailed off, scanning the surroundings.
The number of cells fell far short compared to the corpses he and Tristan had witnessed, the stored blood, and the evidence of what had been done here.
Those people trapped in the slaughterhouse strewn across the Cavern couldn’t possibly be all the kidnapped victims.
There had to be another prison somewhere among the connecting passages.
“I’d wager another one lies in the direction Sion headed.”
“How many passages were there in total?”
“Five. Unless they all connect, we’ll need to call Sion back.”
“You mean Sion Arcadius?”
“Yeah. If we’re going to dismantle this thing, we’ll likely need him regardless—he’s got bad luck on his hands.”
As Tristan spoke, his gaze drifted upward to the altar at the center.
Upon the altar, the Ekrize Fragment remained sealed within its Barrier.
‘……Damn it.’
This was trouble.
If Sion arrived and retrieved the Fragment directly, the situation would spiral into irreversible complexity.
Tristan, duller in perception than Leon, might not sense it—but Sion was dangerous.
【What’s the problem?】
‘Sion’s Wide-Area Technique is plainly his forte. That doesn’t mean it’s healing or support like Efrizio’s, but it does mean he knows how to project power outward rather than inward.’
Most Holy Knights channeled their innate Holy Power to strengthen their own bodies, but a rare few like Sion Arcadius knew how to release that force externally and manipulate it.
This meant Sion also understood how to wield Holy Power as a sense beyond the five—just as Leon did now through Ekrize.
If Leon had awakened that perception through the Fragment to perceive the world differently, Sion would certainly have acquired that same sensitivity through the unique manner in which he deployed his power.
Once Sion touched the Barrier, there would be no hiding what lay beneath.
And if that truth escaped into the open, everything would unravel.
Leon clenched his jaw and turned away from the altar.

‘So then, Ekrize.’
【Are you going to put me to work again?】
‘And let that slip away right before our eyes?’
If the fragment made its way to the upper echelons of The Cult through Sion’s hands, it would be truly disastrous.
Not only would retrieving it become extraordinarily troublesome, but all the effort Leon had poured into blocking information would come to nothing.
Above all, there was the possibility that Sion might be one of them.
【Fine. Though you’ll have to accept some side effects.】
‘Side effects?’
It sounded ominous, but there was no retreating now.
If Sion arrived, even this present deliberation would become a luxury.
Sion would not only sense the foreign energy emanating from the Ekrize Fragment, but if fortune turned against them, might even detect both the Holy Stigma and Ekrize’s presence itself.
Whatever the side effects might be, there was no choice.
“I don’t think we need to wait.”
“What?”
“Have you forgotten what my specialty is?”
Even if it seemed reckless, even if it would appear unnatural—it no longer mattered.
Once things were set in motion, neither Tristan nor Sion would be able to undo what came next.
So Leon deliberately arranged his face into an expression of total ignorance and reached toward the fragment.
His left hand, the one bearing the Holy Stigma.
“Wait, this is too reckless, even for—!”
Before Tristan could finish his protest, the moment Leon’s hand touched the barrier, a blinding burst of light exploded outward.
Simultaneously, a violent torrent of power spiraled inward, drawn through the Holy Stigma into Leon’s body.
Crack!
‘Gh—!’
The raw, unspent power of the fragment struck with a force that defied all comparison to what had come before—a searing agony without mercy.
Burning, scalding, piercing.
As though venom were coursing through his veins.
“You fool!”
His lungs constricted; his heart writhed.
The world tilted sickeningly; strength abandoned his legs.
Feeling his life force drain away like vapor, Leon crumpled to the ground.
Continued in the next chapter ▶
A Holy Knight who made a contract with an Evil God
Author
Ram Dat
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publishing House
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
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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