The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 89

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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 89
Following the path of memory, I walked with long strides until I finally reached the vast Abyss.
A black hole torn open in the red sky.
No—calling it a hole fell short of the truth. It was an abyss. A depth that light never touched. Darkness where no bottom could be seen.
Yet if you stood there gazing into it long enough, you could sense something breathing slowly from far below.
I pointed toward that chasm. Krouen followed my gesture and looked into it almost mechanically.
He staggered backward at once.
The cold mockery that had graced his features moments before had nearly vanished. In its place came the wariness and primal dread that surfaces when a human confronts something their instinct cannot fathom.
“Your Grace.”
I reached out immediately and caught his arm, steadying him before he could lean any further toward the chasm. His legs gave out—almost without his knowledge, one knee buckled beneath him.
For a man who’d been watching me with a drawn dagger mere moments before, it was quite a pitiful sight. Though I had to admit, the fact that he remained conscious at all was remarkable.
Few humans stand unflinching after their first glimpse of a Great Demon’s true form. Valente, perhaps. Myself, certainly.
In truth, even Valente had been startled when he first encountered Raum. I saw with my own eyes how his hands trembled on the sword hilt.
So strictly speaking, I alone had not flinched at the sight of Raum. And yes, I counted that as something to be proud of.
“That… that is….”
“The true body of the Great Demon Raum, slumbering in this place.”
I spoke without inflection.
“Rest easy. I won’t wake it today.”
Krouen could not answer. His gaze remained fixed on the Abyss, where Demonic Energy crept upward in dark mist. But the moment it touched the barrier of Holy Power I had woven, it dissolved like white flame consuming shadow. The speed of it was not slow.
Demonic Energy rose ceaselessly, and my Holy Power barrier pushed back without end. The collision was visible even to the naked eye—persistent, relentless.
Seeing this, the Grand Duke opened his mouth very carefully.
“Perhaps we should move….”
“Don’t worry. I’ve layered the Holy Power much thicker.”
“No, I mean—if our voices or your Holy Power causes it to awaken—”
His tone had turned deferential again.
He understood instinctively: if I withdrew the barrier here, he would be consumed by this Demonic Energy and transformed into a creature of nightmare.
What his retainer had just demonstrated was merely the weakest prelude. Standing so close to the Abyss without the protection of Holy Power—it was impossible for a human to endure.
“It won’t wake from such a disturbance,” I said.
I gazed down into the chasm.
“If it did, it would have woken hundreds of times over these five hundred years. There was even a time when a fortress was built upon this very spot.”
Krouen’s expression twisted.
“You’ve gone completely mad… building a castle over this place….”
He dragged his palm across his face.
“And then you sold off the territory without a word of warning?”
I understood something of his sentiment.
Learning that a Great Demon slept beneath one’s own lands was shock enough. Learning that the Former Emperor had purchased this cursed earth and granted it to you—all while this fact was deliberately concealed—was something else entirely.
Of course, I could not yet confirm whether the Former Emperor had truly known. But the previous landowner certainly had. And he had omitted this fact with clear intention.
For Krouen, there was no worse piece of property in the Empire.
I obliged him by moving to a spot some distance from the Abyss—a point where the pressure of Demonic Energy was relatively weaker. Still, I did not lower my barrier.
I had shown him enough. Now it was time to broach the real matter.
“The Ecclesia Sect—the heretics, as you call them—have been showing suspicious movements of late,” I began.
Krouen’s eyes narrowed as if I’d struck a nerve. He was wondering, I realized, if I suspected him of being their agent. A suspicion my later descendants had harbored too, so I felt no particular anger toward him for it.
“And their ultimate goal,” I continued, “is precisely what you just witnessed. To awaken Raum.”
“Why?” he asked.
I glanced back toward the Abyss, then returned my gaze to him.
“For the Demon King to be born, the surface world must become a Demon Realm. Chaos, despair, and death must reign.”
His face hardened.
“The Demon King….”
“It sounds like legend, I know. But legend is usually nothing more than someone’s bloody, brutal reality, aged and dressed up in respectability. The Demon King was real. And will rise again—of that I am certain.”
I pressed on, my voice steady.
“It’s likely they’re moving to awaken not just Raum, but other Great Demons simultaneously. If multiple Great Demons wake at once, the Temple cannot respond. The Empire will become a hell called the Demon Realm. When that happens, we cannot concentrate our strength anywhere, and no single Saint can hold back the tide.”
Even if I spent myself crossing every league of the Empire, preventing all the simultaneously awakened Great Demons was nearly impossible.
Worse, the Temple itself is rotting from within. Before I can face Raum, I must first purge the politics of the Main Temple.
“So I must seize true power within the Temple.”
Krouen listened in silence.
“Only then can I prevent this tragedy that is bearing down upon us. But the Main Temple has no desire to aid me now. On the contrary, they’re shackling my feet.”
This much was meant to convey the gravity of the situation—to make him tremble. Now came the real proposal.
I looked at Krouen directly and spoke.
“I will capture that Great Demon for you. Will you not betroth yourself to me?”

In that instant, his subordinate began to hiccup.
The man held fast by Arden looked at me as though doubting his own ears, and Krouen too froze in place.
We’d just been discussing Great Demons and Demon Kings and the end of the world, and suddenly betrothal had surfaced out of nowhere—I understood their shock. Still, did they have to look quite so stupid about it?
“I… beg your pardon?”
The Duke let slip a rare, vacant sound. I waved my hand before he could disappear further into confusion.
“I’m not asking for marriage to actually go through—just play the role of my betrothed for a few years. I need a card to deflect the Second Prince’s proposal.”
“Is the Second Prince attempting to force a betrothal upon you?”
Reason returned to Krouen’s face.
“The Sect’s authority shouldn’t have fallen so far as that.”
“The Main Temple has no reason to stop it. Their goal is to remove me from power by any means necessary.”
I’d need to reveal enough of my own situation to earn his trust. I chose my words carefully as I continued.
“You’ve heard, I’m sure, that Caritas selected two candidates for the position of Saint.”
The Duke nodded.
“But I’m the one who became Saint after the ordeal, and the Main Temple views that with great displeasure. Since I took eternal vows before Caritas, marriage would break those vows, and the title of Saint would be tarnished.”
I lifted my shoulders in a shrug.
“So how could the Temple stop my marriage to the Second Prince? If I actually married him, their eyesore would remove itself—it would be a gift.”
I didn’t mention that the Temple was backing the First Prince as the next Emperor, or their plan to dispose of both me and the Second Prince. After all, the Duke was still a member of the imperial family.
Revealing enough to win trust was different from scattering every card I held across the table.
“So until I control the Temple’s real power, I need someone to shield me from the Second Prince’s pressure.”
Krouen studied me for a long moment.
The overt wariness and killing intent that had filled his eyes moments before had faded considerably.
In their place settled a gravity I hadn’t seen before. The mockery, the cynicism, the calculation hadn’t vanished entirely, but at least now he was taking my words seriously instead of dismissing them out of hand.
“If we become betrothed, the scrutiny will only intensify. Are you prepared for that?”
“I’ll have to be.”
“It’s not a burden you alone will bear.”
The Duke’s voice settled into a calm, measured tone.
“As you’ve witnessed, the Northern Territory’s circumstances are not favorable.”
I regarded him in silence for a moment. Krouen closed his eyes slowly, then opened them as he spoke.
“And this land, which I have chosen as my domain for life, was granted to me by my father—the Former Emperor.”

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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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