The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 21

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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 21
The priest dispatched to Delheim Village came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the village entrance—a wasteland of destruction.
The Holy Stones that had been driven into the ground at the Main Temple to establish a consecration perimeter lay in total ruin.
Whatever rage had been unleashed here had been thorough; the stones bore the unmistakable marks of a heavy axe brought down with full force. The priest’s brow furrowed involuntarily as he traced the sign of the cross.
His purpose in coming to Delheim Village today was singular.
To verify whether the Saint Candidate had truly resolved the Demonic Corruption afflicting Delheim Village and whether she had genuinely wrought the Miracle of the Holy Water Pond there.
What his superiors truly wanted was not verification—it was a pretext to justify the Saint Candidate’s Burning at the Stake.
He would have to remain in the village for days, watching to see if the townspeople reverted to Demon Beasts during the night.
The moment the dispatched priest set foot in Delheim Village, he was taken aback. He had visited before to install the Holy Stones. The village that had been dying then, suffused with gloom, now brimmed with vitality.
Though there were no children, it finally looked like a place where people actually lived. For a moment, he doubted his own eyes—wondering if this was truly the same location he had visited before.
“You’ve come from the Main Temple?”
Before the dispatched priest could even accost someone and speak, the villagers who recognized his priestly vestments approached him first.
“Have you come to see the Holy Water Pond?”
At the old man’s blunt question, the bewildered priest found himself nodding almost reflexively, whereupon a woman beside him launched into an excited tirade.
“My goodness, my goodness, that Saint is truly miraculous, truly.”
“It’s not Saint—it’s Saint Candidate—”
“We heard the Main Temple would send someone to verify the Holy Water Pond, and here you are! We didn’t sell it or anything. It’s our only source of drinking water—we wouldn’t fence it off like that, would we? I mean, it took us months of suffering—ten people came by and couldn’t even figure out that the newly dug well was the cause—and we did without it for so long, so surely there ought to be something in it for us, right? That’s fair, isn’t it? It’s not like we’re asking for much. Asking for all the tithes we paid back? Admission into the temple’s rolls? All we want is to use this pond as our drinking water. That’s all we’re asking.”
As the woman’s words poured out like machine-gun fire, cutting through his own attempts to respond, the priest’s mind grew dizzy. He barely managed to gather his wits and choose his words carefully.
“I’ve come to verify that the report from Ciela Candidate is truthful.”
The moment those words left his lips, the villagers exchanged glances and began speaking at once.
“Oh yes, the Saint was absolutely right. Everything was right. She’s our savior. She created that pond for us.”
“At first we doubted too. We were afraid of Cardinal Norman’s fate. We received Purification three or four times over the course of two days.”
The woman who was speaking hastily waved her hand in denial.
“I mean we were worried, worried. But thanks to the Saint, even our daughter lived…….”
The villagers’ reaction to the Saint Candidate was excessively favorable. The priest’s brow twitched ever so slightly.
“Did the Saint Candidate perhaps use any Holy Relics?”
At that question, everyone shook their heads in unison.
“No. There was nothing like that.”
“She just grabbed us barehanded and channeled Divine Power into us.”
“Wait, at the very end when she destroyed the well, she swung that mace so fiercely—she must have created the Holy Water Pond with it too.”
“Oh, that’s right. There was that.”
The priest exhaled softly. So far, he had found nothing he could seize upon as a weakness.
“I would like to see this Holy Water Pond.”
At those words, the old man nodded and led him to the Holy Water Pond.
When the dispatched priest saw villagers arriving with water buckets and filling them generously with the holy water to carry away, his jaw dropped.
Heavens—they were using Holy Water as drinking water.
There was not a doubt in his mind that these villagers alone, beneath all of heaven, indulged in such extravagance. Even the cardinal patriarchs of the Order did not enjoy the luxury of using Holy Water as their daily drink.
Perhaps reading the priest’s astonishment, the old man offered an awkward explanation.
“This village has no other source of drinking water besides this pond. The Saint herself instructed us to use this pond for drinking.”
He didn’t even need to produce the Silver Ladle kept in his robes for validating Divine Power.
He could see plainly enough that this was identical to the Holy Water Pond that had appeared in the Holy Sanctuary at the Main Temple.
Still, he needed to gather evidence to bring back, so he carefully withdrew the Silver Ladle and immersed it in the pond water.
The moment the ladle touched the water, Divine Power flooded through his fingertips, unmistakable and tangible.
The priest’s hands trembled as he carefully transferred the holy water into a vial, fearful of spilling even a single drop. The old man, standing before the priest’s visible emotion, continued speaking without pause.
“And so when everyone saw this pond…….”
The old man’s voice wavered, and he paused to clear his throat.
“They thought: God has truly not abandoned us after all.”
In that moment, the priest knew with absolute certainty.
To these villagers, Ciela was no Saint Candidate. She was already a Saint.
He understood perfectly well what it would mean when that truth reached the upper echelons of the Main Temple.
The priest swallowed a curse silently. This was dangerous information no matter how he reported it.
If he wrote the truth, the justification for the Burning at the Stake that the Order’s hierarchy craved would evaporate.
If he lied, then as long as the Holy Water Pond existed in this village, the temple’s falsehood would inevitably be exposed to the world someday.
The priest desperately averted his gaze from the Holy Water Pond, clinging to the hope that he might yet witness the villagers reverting to Demon Beasts within the next few days.
He deliberately ignored the immutable truth: so long as Holy Water served as their drinking water, Demonic Corruption could never linger in their bodies.
For just a moment, he thought he glimpsed his missing colleague, Priest Lupus, somewhere nearby—but he convinced himself it must have been a mistake and moved on to find lodging for the nights ahead in the area surrounding Delheim Village.
***
A week had passed since the day the Archbishop summoned both me and Calianna Candidate to the Holy Sanctuary to hear the results of the Competition assignment.
Having finally been forced to acknowledge that the people of Delheim Village would never again transform into Demon Beasts, the Archbishop convened the Saint Candidates once more.
Wait—did you really have to camp out in that village for a whole week just to verify that?
He had emphasized bringing the mace as well, so I didn’t forget to pick up Wilson Junior.
The gathering place this time was not the Holy Sanctuary, which had been reduced to a storage house for the Holy Water Pond, but the Grand Cathedral, which was even larger.
“Saint Candidate Ciela, we have witnessed with our own eyes the miracle you displayed. We acknowledge, in the name of the Caritas Order, that you have magnificently brought a divine miracle to this foolish land.”
The Archbishop’s tone toward me had shifted in mere days to something far more respectful.
It almost seemed he was quite frustrated that he hadn’t been able to hang me from the pyre.
“Caritas commanded me to bestow a miracle upon that village, and warned that divine punishment would befall anyone who coveted that miracle.”
I knew well the dark intentions of those ecclesiastical superiors, so I placed my hand on my chest and sent the warning as though it were God’s will.
Our younger generation, raised as delicate flowers in a greenhouse, might not fully grasp the reality of divine punishment—but I was entirely prepared to demonstrate it myself using Wilson Junior.
I caught the moment the Archbishop’s gaze shifted from his nodding head to Wilson Junior in my hands.
“I shall faithfully obey God’s will. However, that weapon seems far too dangerous to bring into the temple.”
“Too dangerous? This is a gift given to me by Caritas.”
After all, in the suffering village, He had let me see a mace that looked exactly like Wilson—so it wasn’t exactly a lie.
“It is too fine a thing for a Saint Candidate to possess alone. All holy relics belong to the Order, and thus it is only proper that the Order keep this as well.”
“I think perhaps Your Grace is advanced in years and mishearing me. It’s not a holy relic—it’s a gift. A gift.”
“Every object imbued with divine power is a holy relic.”
See how they covet it the moment I call it a gift from God.
They already seized my Wilson and mounted it in the Inquisition Chamber—now they’re eyeing Wilson Junior too?
“Here, take it.”
Whether it was a gift or a holy relic or anything else, I stopped arguing and simply offered Wilson Junior. The priest beside him took the handle with one hand, rather rudely.
He must have thought that since I held it in one hand, he could manage it just fine.
But he was wrong.
The moment he took the handle from me, he staggered badly with Wilson Junior and collapsed directly onto the ground.

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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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