The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 84

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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 84
“I’m afraid I don’t know the exact year. My grandfather once told me that the castle as it stands now was built roughly a hundred years ago.”
“A hundred years ago…”
I repeated the words softly, and the old man nodded.
“Yes. The family that ruled this land at the time found the Old Castle Site too dilapidated and too distant from the Mine Road, making trade and administration inconvenient, so they built a new castle in its place.”
Economic reasons, then—as I suspected.
A mine opens, trade routes shift, people and goods move, and the center of the domain naturally migrates with them. It was plausible. Too plausible, which only irritated me more.
People inevitably drift toward what’s convenient, and later generations would have cared far more about the money pouring from the mine and administrative efficiency than about where some ancient Demon Lord had been sealed away five hundred years prior.
This is what happens when you treat a Saint’s warning like nonsense. I was sucking my teeth inwardly when the old man added carefully.
“However… I’ve heard there was some opposition when the new castle site was chosen.”
Croen’s fingers stopped. I turned to study the old man directly.
“Who opposed it?”
“The priests of this region at the time. They said there were places on this land where buildings should never be raised.”
Finally, something resembling a real lead.
“And yet they built the castle anyway?”
The old man nodded, his expression rueful.
“Yes. From what I understand, the lord of that time dismissed it as superstition, and the Main Temple didn’t oppose it as strongly as before. Later, they even accepted a substantial donation in the name of blessing the castle site and performed a Purification ritual…”
I found myself without words.
What a pack of characters my successors turned out to be. Not only did they fail to stop it, they took donations and performed a Purification that wouldn’t have helped one bit?
“Are there any records from those priests still preserved?”
“Some should remain in a small temple near the Old Castle Site. However, it’s barely used anymore, so it’s practically abandoned at this point.”
Should I be grateful the temple still stood at all, or should I have been giving those later idiots who ignored my warnings and withdrew the priests a piece of my mind?
“We’ll need to visit that temple. First, we must check those records. And do you happen to have the Castle Blueprint? Let’s search together to see if there are any hidden spaces even you don’t know about.”
At my request, Croen’s eyes narrowed again.
“Now you’re asking for the castle blueprints as well.”
“If we’re to understand how you became a victim of real estate fraud, shouldn’t we look at the repair records too? I suggested we search together so you wouldn’t grow suspicious.”
Croen’s mouth tightened imperceptibly. I smiled at him without concern and continued, perfectly at ease.
“Don’t worry. I’m not trying to strip your castle of materials—only to see what lies beneath it.”
I truly felt wronged. What I wanted to strip from Croen wasn’t this castle or this domain at all—it was his betrothal to me.
All I wanted was something so trivial, yet why did the duke insist on seeing me as a thief?
I had stationed priests in this region generation after generation, ordering them to monitor Raum’s condition, so why had they been withdrawn? Why had that lord suddenly decided to move the castle in the first place? Everything reeked of suspicion.
I could accept that my successors had been seduced by money, but the lord himself—what was his motive? Something didn’t add up.
While I was organizing my thoughts, studying the old man, Croen spoke first.
“Let’s visit the Abandoned Temple first.”
I turned to look at him. Croen’s expression remained courteous, but his eyes gleamed with the clarity of someone running calculations.
“Only if something concrete emerges from that place will I feel confident enough to trust Your Highness and provide the Castle Blueprint.”
So he had no intention of surrendering the blueprints without a fight.
I’d anticipated as much. From his perspective, my desire to learn the castle’s internal structure was inherently suspect, so asking me to produce credible evidence was reasonable enough.
And so we made our way to the Abandoned Temple near the Old Castle Site.
Where the old castle had once stood, only the Seal Site remained. The foundations of collapsed ramparts, stones buried beneath snow, the faint ghost of a path—that was all.
For the spot where an entire castle had vanished, it looked almost too clean. Could they have salvaged the materials?
Northern construction favored stone, so materials like that were worth reclaiming, and it wasn’t uncommon to salvage stones from an old castle when building a new one.
Still, something gnawed at me.
Demolishing the old castle, raising a new one near the Seal Site where the stone tablets were embedded, suppressing the priests’ objections in the process—it was hard to attribute all that to administrative convenience or the mine road alone.
The Abandoned Temple lay not far from the Old Castle Site—once a place where priests had dwelt and regularly monitored the Seal Site.
Now its door hung half-twisted on its hinges, cracks spiderwebbed across its walls, and the old stone tablet carved with the Caritas emblem lay thick with dust and moss.
I stared at that emblem for a moment, then sucked my teeth silently. What excellent maintenance.
As I stepped inside, a stale, ancient odor billowed forth—moisture, dust, the reek of rotted wood, and the faintest echo of Holy Power.
It was nearly gone, but traces of this place’s former sanctity remained.
“Search for the records chamber where the previous priests kept their documents.”
At my words, everyone scattered to hunt for the records room.
From my memories of two lives past, I knew how vital records were, so I had relentlessly pushed the Religious Order to document everything, no matter how trivial. If that discipline had carried through to later generations, records would definitely exist.
“We found the records room!”
Croen’s man shouted. Everyone rushed toward him.
As the door opened, dust came pouring out. I waved my hand, pushing it back gently with Holy Power.
Weathered ledgers, bound documents, and broken shelves lay in disarray. Many papers had already crumbled with age.
I unfolded several intact document bundles one by one. Records of Holy Power fluctuations at the Raum Seal Site, observations of Demonic Energy concentrations around Tiber Mountain, seasonal anomaly reports.
The earlier records had been meticulous. At least the first few generations had honored my instructions properly.
But from a certain point, the documentation dwindled sharply. And then, finally, the crucial document appeared.
An old Meeting Record. I carefully unfolded the paper. There, recorded in fading ink, was a dialogue between the lord of that time and the temple priests.
It was a record from the day the Lord declared he would relocate the castle’s foundation.
The Priest demanded he state his reasons, as he had to report to the Main Temple. The record noted that the area surrounding the Raum Seal Site was not a place where buildings could be erected arbitrarily, and it was land on which the Third Saint herself had left explicit instructions.
The Lord’s answer was this.
A Fortune Teller had said so. That if the castle’s foundation were not moved, the entire bloodline of Heros would die terribly, and the family line would end.
I raised my eyebrows as I read that passage.
The Priest naturally objected. How could they abandon the castle that the Saint herself had blessed, merely on the word of some Fortune Teller?
But the Lord replied. This was no mere Fortune Teller, he said. This Fortune Teller had already predicted every death on his mother’s side of the family, and now prophesied the Family Annihilation of the House of Heros.
Who would die of illness, who would fall from a horse, who would die without issue and break the family line—he had not wanted to believe it, but every prediction came to pass. Therefore, the prophecy of the House of Heros’s annihilation could not possibly be wrong.
The record-keeper added that the Lord’s hands trembled as he spoke these words, his face had gone pale, and he was nearly consumed by terror.
I set down the paper and pressed my lips together.
The technique was rather familiar.
This method of provoking fear in people to cloud their judgment was a specialty of heresy. I looked down at the old meeting record again.
The reason a castle had been built atop the calamity I had barely suppressed five hundred years ago.
The chances were extremely high that this Fortune Teller had been the beginning.

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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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