The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 88

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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 88
“Arden is part of the Imperial Secret Knight Order?”
The words tumbled out before I could stop them—genuine shock, pure and simple. But the Grand Duke’s expression darkened, his jaw tightening into something between frustration and disbelief.
“No, I mean not your guard knight, but—”
He faltered mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me.
“Are you messing with me, or do you genuinely not know?”
I stood there blinking, and confusion flickered across his face.
Then it happened.
Clang!
The sharp ring of steel cut through the air behind us. Arden had disarmed whoever had attacked him. The Grand Duke’s subordinate—presumably summoned by his earlier clap—knelt pinned beneath Arden’s grip.
But his face. Until moments ago it had been unblemished; now it was turning a sickly black.
In a great demon’s nest, the concentration of Demonic Energy was beyond what an ordinary person could endure. Even brief, unprotected exposure corrupted you from the inside out.
The corpse-like pallor and the black veins creeping beneath his skin were proof enough.
“Sian!”
The Grand Duke’s cry for his subordinate turned into a glare aimed at us both—a murderous glare.
“What did you do to Sian?”
“Nothing in particular. I simply stopped channeling my Holy Power to protect him.”
I shrugged.
“He attacked my companion without warning—why should I keep shielding him from the Demonic Energy?”
The Grand Duke didn’t realize it, but from the moment I’d opened the Stone Gate, my Holy Power had been moving with exquisite precision.
Since the very air itself was poison to humans, maintaining a protective barrier of Holy Power mattered greatly. Not that such fine-grained control posed any difficulty for one who’d been called the mightiest Saint across all ages.
The Grand Duke’s eyes darted between Sian and me, his wariness deepening.
“You already knew about Sian’s presence? What exactly are you?”
Fight Demon Beasts that pad silently through the darkness before lunging from behind, or beasts that synchronize with the terrain like chameleons and strike without warning. Your senses sharpen—or they don’t, depending on what the world teaches you.
But I wasn’t the Third Saint who’d survived every conceivable ordeal and even raided against the Demon King. I was a Saint barely elevated at thirty years old, and I kept such observations to myself.
While I said nothing, black veins began crawling across Sian’s skin. The way the Demonic Energy spread through his flesh looked bad. Very bad. The Grand Duke’s lips tightened. He clearly treasured this subordinate.
I shifted Wilson Junior’s weight on my shoulder and asked, “First, I’d like to know who exactly is in the Imperial Secret Knight Order.”
The Grand Duke’s gaze returned to me. He hesitated, then spoke quietly.
“Among the acolyte priests who came with you, is there one with a scar on his ring finger?”
My eyes narrowed.
A scar on the ring finger.
The faces and hands of the acolytes flickered through my memory.
One face, one pair of hands—those stood out. The moment that had confirmed my suspicion they were newly ordained deacons.
The hand that had removed the brooch from my clothes. The scar that ran cleanly across the second and third joints of the ring finger.
I’d seen it then and thought: *Poor novice, can’t even heal his own wounds properly.* But that scar wasn’t the mark of priestly incompetence—it was the mark of an Imperial spy.
I couldn’t even muster a laugh. How much contempt had I been held in?
To expose the Imperial Secret Knight Order’s insignia so brazenly to my face.
The Grand Duke, reading my expression, continued.
“A scar crossing the second and third joints of the ring finger—that’s the mark of the Imperial Secret Knight Order. Normally they hide it with gloves, but when posing as priests, I suppose that became impossible?”
True enough. Priests didn’t wear gloves as a matter of law.
Complaints had come in that healing with gloves felt like treating one’s own hands as unclean, and that wearing them during aid dulled the meaning of Caritas’s direct blessing upon them.
That tradition stretched back to my predecessor—the First Saint herself—and had been a rule of the Faith ever since. Even in my former life, I’d honored it; the Temple still did.
So because of that very custom, I’d learned the Imperial spy was watching me. The Grand Duke’s suspicion, it seemed, wasn’t entirely baseless.
I clicked my tongue quietly. The Second Prince’s handiwork?
While I sifted through likely candidates in my mind, the Grand Duke seemed to reach the same conclusion, muttering under his breath with bitter mockery.
“Likely one of the princes.”
“How are you so certain?”
My question drew a twisted smile from him.
“Simple. My dear elder brother wouldn’t assume I’m ignorant of the Imperial Secret Knight Order’s existence.”
His voice dripped with naked contempt.
“Even if I was once of the Direct Imperial Line.”
The Current Emperor’s youngest sibling. His mother’s house had weakened, removing him from the succession struggle, yet he’d been born unmistakably into the Imperial bloodline.
Pushed north and treated as a Cadet Branch, but he could never have been kept ignorant of secrets within the palace itself.
The Grand Duke loosened his grip on his dagger and went on.
“My nephews think of me as some minor Cadet Branch royal. They’d send the Imperial Secret Knight Order in disguise as priests—occupations that don’t even wear gloves—never expecting me to see through it.”
The odds the Second Prince had planted a spy on me climbed higher. I had arrived at the Grand Duchy at such a suspiciously convenient time—with engagement pressure bearing down on me.
The Second Prince would have wanted to know whether this miraculous timing was chance or design.
If this all resolved well and things went as planned, I’d have to move fast enough to leave him no opening for scheming.
But perhaps he was darker than I’d given him credit for. Imperial blood truly runs deep, doesn’t it.

The Grand Duke glanced at his subordinate, swallowed a measure of pride, and made his request with formal courtesy.
“Since you’ve explained yourself, can you put a protective barrier around Sian again?”
The Grand Duke’s subordinate now bore dark veins standing out in jagged lines across his face, extending down his neck. Left unchecked, he could undergo Demonization.
And once a man became a demon, things grew complicated. Very complicated. Especially here in Raum’s Nest.
“Fine.”
I extended my hand.
Holy Power spread outward like a thin membrane, wrapping around the subordinate. At the same moment, I pushed back the Demonic Energy that had burrowed beneath his skin with Purification.
Once I’d completed the cleansing, the black veins began to fade bit by bit, and the ashen pallor that had gripped his face slowly returned to something living.
Released at last from the Demonic Energy that had clung to him so persistently, the subordinate exhaled in ragged gasps. Yet he remained physically restrained by Lord Arden, so his usefulness as a hostage remained intact.
As relief flickered across the Grand Duke’s eyes watching his subordinate, I seized the opening and struck swiftly with my appeal.
“You see? If I’d truly brought the Imperial Secret Knight Order to bait you, I’d have had no reason to save your subordinate.”
The Grand Duke said nothing.
“And if I were a spy for the Ecclesia Faith, I wouldn’t be wielding Holy Power to purify Demonic Energy in a place like this.”
“Is that meant to make me trust you?”
“No.”
I adjusted my grip on Wilson Junior.
“You don’t need to trust me now. You’ll have no choice but to soon enough.”
The Grand Duke’s eyes narrowed.
I offered no further explanation. Words had carried me as far as they could. This man would never be fully convinced by speech alone.
So I would have to show him instead. There was an old saying, after all—seeing once with your own eyes beats hearing a hundred times with your ears.
“Follow me.”
I stepped forward, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Grand Duke fell into step behind me.
He still hadn’t lowered his Dagger. But he made no move to stop me either. It seemed he’d decided he needed to learn more about my intentions first.
His wariness remained, but at least he’d calculated that drawing steel here and now would gain him nothing.
Lord Arden followed in my wake, still gripping the Grand Duke’s subordinate.
The crimson sky of the Demon Realm rippled slowly beneath our feet. I walked across it without hesitation.

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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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