The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 73

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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 73
I pulled Lady Edeline forward and pricked her fingertip with the brooch fastened to my dress. She let out a small gasp. A bead of red blood welled at the tip of her finger.
“Draw one stroke—change the spelling!”
“I… what?”
“Quickly!”
The young lady of Norbert, who had inherited half the Count’s blood.
A single stroke was easily enough with her blood.
Lady Edeline’s trembling hand smeared blood over the signature. Then she drew a single stroke across the letter I indicated. The moment the “o” became a “d”, the nameless contract began to crumble.
The Count’s blood poured from the creature’s entire body.
I seized the moment and grabbed a candle from the wall, setting it to the canvas.
Flame licked at the canvas’s edge. The instant I poured Holy Power into it, ordinary fire blazed gold. It was Holy Fire.
The sacred flames spread across the canvas like they were consuming the dark, damp corridor itself. The golden blaze incinerated the red markings one by one.
The contract written in filthy blood twisted in the Holy Fire. The dark-red characters writhed like living worms, but the golden flames pursued them relentlessly.
Light flowed along the canvas’s grain, spreading as though washing away some ancient sin.
In an instant, the entire corridor was bathed in brilliant Holy Power. The stale air that had hung in the mansion all night seemed to grow clear for the first time.
And simultaneously, the stench of burning flesh filled the corridor.
As the canvas burned, the creature’s body began to burn along with it.
It started from the fingertips.
Fingers composed of dark-red pigment blackened and shriveled to ash. Then the arms, the shoulders, the melting face were consumed by flame.
The creature’s mouth tore open in a howl. That shriek sounded like an old man’s voice, like a beast’s cry, and like the desperate wail of countless people burning alive at once.
The creature clawed at the floor, crawling toward the canvas as if pleading for mercy.
But the contract had already shattered, the name had already vanished, and the Holy Fire consuming the hollow husk of sin would not cease.
The dark-red pigment that had poured from the creature’s body boiled and turned to ash. Things that resembled teeth fell one by one to the floor and burned black.
What remained until the very end was a twisted lump that mimicked the face of the previous Count Norbert.
That too crumbled in the flames. A final scream tore through the corridor, then cut off abruptly.
The creature was utterly annihilated.
On the floor remained only ash, charred canvas fragments, and a sickly smell.
I exhaled slowly, then cast Healing Holy Power upon Count Arden and Count Johan. The torn skin began to close gradually, and the bleeding stopped.
Count Arden bowed his head with a familiar expression, while Count Johan hesitated before offering a very brief, curt nod. He seemed grateful enough, at least.
Last, I looked down at Lady Edeline, whose legs had given out and who now sat slumped on the ground. She still stared blankly at the portrait that had turned to ash.
I spoke to her in a cold voice.
“Now it’s time for an explanation.”
The sun, which had risen at some point, was casting its light faintly through the heavy curtains of the first floor.
***
After we moved to the Reception Room, I was able to hear Lady Edeline’s full account from beginning to end.
A strange silence had settled over the Reception Room, which lay in disarray from the night-long struggle with the creature. Outside the window, birds had begun to chirp, and morning light was slowly seeping through the gaps in the heavy curtains.
Yet no one’s face bore the peace of a new morning.
Lady Edeline sat with her hands wrapped around a teacup, her head bowed deeply, while the butler stood behind her like a man whose soul had departed.
With Count Johan and Count Arden flanking me, I set down my teacup and opened my mouth.
“Tell me everything from the beginning.”
At my brief command, Lady Edeline’s shoulders flinched. She remained silent for a moment, then finally opened her lips as though resigned.
“Everything began the day… my father killed someone.”
Her voice, which had begun so calmly, soon began to tremble.
The previous Count Norbert struck a man down with his carriage and left the victim to die. To cover up the crime, he bought an Indulgence from the Temple. He believed he had purchased absolution for his sin with money, and at least to the world it appeared so.
But from that time onward, his skin began to show signs of decay.
At first it was merely small discoloration. Then his skin gradually peeled away and began to weep fluid.
The physicians of the territory, as well as renowned doctors brought with great effort from other domains, could find no cause. The Count eventually went to the Main Temple himself and received treatment after making a massive donation.
For a time, the symptoms apparently improved.
“But a few months later, my father’s skin disease returned.”
Lady Edeline murmured, her face ashen.
“My father believed that… the Indulgence had not completely absolved him of his sin, which is why he fell ill.”
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
Count Norbert had convinced himself, or so he thought. That the Indulgence had failed him.
That Divine Punishment would continue because his sin had not been fully absolved.
Of course it would. An Indulgence could perhaps secure forgiveness for sins in the afterlife, but nowhere did it claim to wash away the sins of the living world.
I do not know how the Temple peddles them these days, but when I first created the Indulgence business, that was the reasoning. Yet Count Norbert apparently believed the Indulgence to be a universal pardon that would erase all his sins in this life.
So he bought another Indulgence and received treatment again. But the disease returned once more.
From that point forward, Count Norbert ceased to believe in the Temple.
Or rather, the illusion he had constructed for himself simply shattered.
A truly shameless disbelief it was. To kill a man, to believe he had washed away his sin with money, and then to lose faith in God when it did not work as intended. Sometimes human self-justification proved more tenacious than any monster.
“After that, Father began looking for other methods instead of the Temple.”
At first, he was a wandering quack peddler.
Then an alchemist.
Then a sorcerer.
And finally, the Ecclesia Sect.
The moment that name was spoken, the air in the reception room grew heavier still.
“They promised Father salvation.”
Lady Edeline’s hands trembled as she spoke of her father’s ungodly descent.
“They said they would give him a body that need fear neither death nor disease.”
It was precisely the sort of method the Ecclesia would employ.
Healing for the sick, salvation for the desperate.
The same catchphrase as our Caritas Church, but hollow at its core—fundamentally different. What they called healing and salvation was nearly always the moment a person surrendered their humanity.
They always exploited our weaknesses.
Guilt, fear, illness, death, eternal life.
A man like Count Norbert—wealthy and powerful, yet terrified of death—would have made excellent prey for them.
“Father believed their promises.”
Count Norbert entered into a contract.
He would strip the flesh from his own body to fashion a canvas, offer his blood and bone dust, blend the blood of monsters into a portrait of himself—a contract to transcend death itself.
“And this was the result of that contract.”
As I spoke, Lady Edeline nodded slowly.
“…Yes.”
That single word carried remorse beyond measure.
What in the world were the Ecclesia thinking?
This village lay on the path to the Kroen Grand Duchy, where Raum sleeps. It was too strategically situated to dismiss as mere toying with a single nobleman, turning him into a monster. I couldn’t let it pass.
And to think—the Ecclesia had found the gap left by the Indulgence itself.
They had discovered the flaw in the Indulgence.
The Temple sold Indulgences and converted guilt and fear into coin, while the Ecclesia burrowed into the fear that the Indulgence could not satisfy. The illness did not heal. The sin was not erased. God was not merciful. Then there must be another way. It was a pattern both utterly predictable and viciously calculated.
I recalled the Indulgence business I had begun ages ago.
Count Norbert might have fallen to corruption by some other path even without the Indulgence.
He was a man who struck another down and left him to die through neglect. Such a man feared punishment more than guilt, bought an Indulgence to convince himself he was absolved, and when his illness would not heal, he cursed God and reached for Heresy. So I could not lay all blame on the Indulgence alone.
But it was undeniable that the Indulgence had nurtured his fear, and that the Ecclesia had exploited the cracks between that fear and his lost faith.
For the first time in a very long while, the word ‘Indulgence’ left a faint taste of revulsion on my tongue.

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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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