The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 9

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 9
Before I could even register the shock, another monster I hadn’t yet subdued reached out toward the woman who had returned to her human form.
“First let me restore that one, then we’ll talk!”
“Shouldn’t you be saying ‘her’ instead of ‘that’?”
“Is that really what matters right now?”
Just as with the woman before, I succeeded in using Arden as bait to purify what appeared to be a village man back to his human state.
Only then, with a measure of relief, did I collapse beside the two villagers who had lost consciousness.
“Cough!”
Arden expelled a weak cough while clutching at his ribs. The monster’s grip seemed to have cracked his ribs.
Having made direct contact with demonic energy twice over, Arden looked far from well, so I immediately cast both Healing and Purification on him simultaneously.
His ragged breathing gradually grew calm, and the skin that had been blackened by demonic energy slowly regained its natural color.
In Arden’s eyes, I glimpsed a tremor similar to the one that had crossed them when I granted him my Blessing at the Village Entrance.
“Could it be…….”
Looking down at Arden’s hand gripping my arm, he startled far more dramatically than I did at being grabbed—and hastily released me.
“Why? Why do you always react like that whenever I use Divine Power on you?”
“……It’s nothing.”
Arden bit his lip hard, closing his mouth before he could ask me whatever was on his mind. His expression suggested he wanted to strike himself.
Well. The first way to irritate someone is to start speaking and then stop mid-sentence.
“Monsterification. Prolonged exposure to demonic energy causes people to transform like this. The fact that they only change shape at night, when divine light cannot reach them, suggests they can still be fully restored to humanity.”
Arden smoothly redirected my attention—and the conversation—toward the two unconscious villagers.
Of course it was all information I already knew, but there was no reason to heighten Arden’s suspicions and wariness further, so I nodded as if hearing it for the first time.
‘No wonder the village people have somehow survived with monsters around.’
Monsters prey indiscriminately on anything living, whether beast or human. The priests who had perished in this village were likely consumed by the villagers after they had transformed into monsters.
“Now it makes sense why those Holy Artifacts were ineffective. Healing artifacts can’t purify demonic energy.”
And symptoms of demonic contamination are remarkably similar to those of plague.
Now the puzzle pieces were finally beginning to fit together.
Of course the board was still full of empty spaces, but I could gather the remaining pieces properly once daylight came.
“Do you think the Main Temple didn’t know demonic contamination was spreading through this village?”
Arden’s face darkened as he spoke quietly against the wall.
“It would be stranger if they didn’t know.”
I lifted myself up and answered.
“The priests who returned to the Main Temple were quarantined and died of plague, remember? Now you know as well as I do that what spreads here isn’t plague.”
Surely they’d been quarantined after showing signs of monsterification caused by demonic contamination.
‘Whether they actually died or were simply cast out, I can’t say.’
The more I learned of what lay beneath, the more starkly I realized just how vicious the temple that sent me here truly was.
If I hadn’t possessed the memories of my past life slaying monsters, Arden and I would have become nothing but a meal for the creatures.
No number of strikes with an un-enchanted blade could kill a monster.
And that was precisely why the Caritas Church wielded such influence throughout the Arkenos Empire.
I glanced absently through the shattered window at the view beyond, then frowned and took a few steps back.
“Damn it. If they were just ordinary monsters, I’d slap Holy Enchantment onto an axe and sword and be done with it.”
Monsters were surging toward the Inn in a horde.
Now that I knew they were villagers contaminated by demonic energy—and that they could be restored through Purification—the only path available to us was a difficult and perilous one.
Of course, that path would be somewhat more treacherous for Arden, who would have to serve as bait.
“It looks like we’ll have a long night ahead, Arden.”
Arden gave a short laugh at my words—half jest, half earnest.
“Isn’t it the duty of a guardian to aid their Candidate through their trial?”
In that moment, the man assigned as my protector finally felt truly reliable.
***
Gasp. Gasp—
With each person who collapsed into unconsciousness in the guest room, our breathing grew increasingly ragged.
The darkness of the night sky, as black as the demonic energy itself, was gradually pushed back by the pale blue light of dawn. And with it came the end of the monsters’ relentless ravaging of the room.
“They’re finally withdrawing.”
Arden’s voice came low and exhausted.
In the distance, several figures moved to escape the sunlight growing brighter in the sky, their grotesque, swollen bodies slouched in bent, sluggish steps.
The sun I had waited for so long finally flooded the world with light. As though ignorant of the previous night’s horrors, the world returned to stillness and peace.
Listening to the even breathing of those sprawled across the floor, the ordeal we had endured felt like nothing more than a midsummer nightmare.
“Arden, are you alright?”
I caught him hastily as his body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.
I had been steadily restoring Arden’s strength with my Divine Power to allow him to endure his role as bait through the night, so his current state was due purely to demonic exposure and injury.
“……I’m fine.”
Arden’s eyes, as he managed barely a reply, were shadowed by fatigue as deep as the color of his hair.
His mental reserves had been depleted.
And no wonder. His bones kept breaking and mending, his skin rotting and regenerating, his body drowning in Demonic Energy only to be purged—how could any mind not wear thin under such repetition?
That he hadn’t lost his sanity proved Arden possessed a will of exceptional fortitude. For now, there was nothing to do but rest.
I dragged his slumped form to the wall and propped him against it to sit. Even exhaustion couldn’t dim the beauty of his face.
“You rest for now. I’ll go check on the Village myself.”
Of course, I was sharp as a blade—my past life had given me that edge. If I tired from this much Divine Power drain, I should’ve quit being a Saint long ago.
I began moving the furniture that had been barricading the door, wanting to slip out before the villagers woke.
But Arden, shaking his head, forced himself up with visible strain and moved to help with the furniture.
“I cannot allow you to venture alone into a Village this dangerous, Candidate.”
“At this point you’re not protecting me—I’d be protecting you. Just rest, will you?”
“I am quite capable of safeguarding both myself and your safety.”
The moment the wardrobe blocking the door came clear, the shattered wood of the door itself crumbled inward in a cascade of splinters.
“How hard were they hitting this thing from outside?”
I clicked my tongue at the sight of the barricade materials—half-destroyed—that had been wedged against it from without. Not far from our room, Rufus lay sprawled unconscious.
True to form for the descendant of an ex-lover’s family line, Arden proved as stubborn as his ancestor, and I hauled him out of the Inn, pressing my palm flat against the ground.
‘So that’s why I didn’t notice.’
I clenched my fist against the earth and exhaled slowly.
The reason I’d seen the villagers yet failed to sense the Demonic Energy corruption—the reason I’d kept thinking it was simply plague.
The earth of this Village bore no Demonic Energy corruption. It was clean.
Had the soil been tainted, I would have sensed it the moment my feet touched it.
Finally gathering his wits, Rufus followed us out. I turned back to him with a benign smile.
“Have you found the will to tell me what’s really been happening in this Village?”
It didn’t matter if he hadn’t. There were many ways to loosen a tongue.
As a warm-up, I cracked my knuckles lightly. This, too, was my specialty.
Back in my day, a Saint had to do the inquisitor’s work as well.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————