The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 91

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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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Episode 91
As the silence stretched on, the Grand Duke’s gaze wavered. His attendant standing beside him felt the same tremor seize his eyes.
The Grand Duke opened his mouth carefully.
“Your Highness, surely… you don’t mean…?”
I laughed. At that sound, the last vestige of composure drained from the Grand Duke’s face, color fleeing with it.
“Please don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“I’m thinking about it right now.”
“That means you don’t know the method yet, does it…!”
The Grand Duke looked at me with reproachful eyes and tore at his own hair in frustration.
What I needed now wasn’t that reproach, but unwavering trust in me. The certainty that someone believed in me. The unshaken gaze of: there must be some way if it’s the Saint. I turned my eyes toward Arden, who might grant me that.
But even Arden’s pupils were trembling—barely perceptibly.
“Arden? Don’t you trust me either?”
“No, Your Highness. It’s not that…”
Arden stumbled over his words—rare for him. Even my reliable guard was shaken by this situation.
I looked ahead again and drew in a slow breath. Don’t panic. Not knowing the way out doesn’t mean we’ll be trapped here forever.
It’s only that I lack experience—not that the way doesn’t exist.
I reached back into memory. In my past life too, I’d always focused on closing rifts in the Demon Realm; I’d never learned much about leaving them safely.
If you shatter the Rift Core, the Demon Realm’s rift closes, and in that moment, the Demon Realm classifies humans as foreign matter and expels them beyond the rift.
The problem was that to obtain the Rift Core, I’d have to capture Raum, who ruled this nest.
That would be like burning down three buildings to catch a flea. So there was only one way: leave by the path we’d entered.
We’d come through a rift opening in the ground. So in the Demon Realm too, the rift entrance we’d passed through should be in the ground.
The problem was that Raum’s Nest was a realm of Inverted Heaven. Here, the ground was above our heads.
In other words, the rift exit we needed to reach was likely fixed somewhere far above, clinging to the black earth.
I lifted my head.
The black earth spread out like a sky. At one point among it, I glimpsed the faintest trace of a distorted rift. The entrance we’d come through.
But climbing to it was impossible. Under the laws of the Demon Realm, we stood upon the red sky, and that black land above was quite literally the heavens.
Then there was only one method.
To restore the sky and earth to their proper places.
I clapped my hands together with a sharp crack.
“I’ve found it.”
The Grand Duke seized my hand as though grasping at a rope descended from heaven itself and asked urgently.
“We can truly escape safely? Truly?”
“My, I’ve done nothing but deceive you, have I? Anyone would think I was some chronic liar.”
I clicked my tongue and withdrew my hand from his, then drew in a slow breath.
Holy Sanctuary Declaration.
It was no mere purification. It was an authority—a declaration that a certain space would be brought under my dominion and the order of God.
When a Holy Sanctuary spreads across human lands, Demonic Energy recedes, profanity burns away, and corrupted laws return to their original order.
But in the Demon Realm?
Raum’s Nest was a realm of Inverted Heaven.
A space where the very laws of the world had been overturned. Where sky was earth and earth was sky, where human direction and the laws of existence were all twisted.
If I proclaimed a Holy Sanctuary there, then at least within it, divine order would be restored.
In other words, the inverted sky and earth would temporarily return to their proper places.
I drew up Holy Power, aiming it at the space before my feet.
“By the name of Caritas, I declare: let the order of God descend upon this land.”
My voice rang out clearly through the Demon Realm’s air.
A white, brilliant light erupted from beneath my feet.
The Holy Power didn’t spread in a simple circle. It surged upward, centered on the rift above, then cascaded back down. As though driving an invisible axis through reality, I drove the laws of the material world into the heart of this twisted realm.
As the Holy Sanctuary expanded, the red sky beneath us convulsed.
The Demon Realm screamed.
The space let out a sound like agony.
The red sky before my feet split open, and the black earth above it trembled. Inverted mountains and cliffs warped in unison.
Within the bounds of the Holy Sanctuary, sky and earth began to find their proper places. The red sky was forced upward, and the black earth descended below.
As the Demon Realm’s laws inverted, the space where we stood was forcibly restored to reality’s shape.
As a result, the rift entrance that had clung to our heads descended to the ground before us.
A phenomenon only possible within a Holy Sanctuary.
The Grand Duke stared at the Holy Sanctuary spread before him with an entranced expression, then turned to me with eyes full of respect and awe and murmured.
“So this is what it means to be God’s representative…”
“Exactly that.”
I accepted his words with a grin.
Beyond the sanctuary—where we stood—the world was still Inverted Heaven. The red sky lay below, and the black earth bore down from above; that dreadful landscape remained intact.
But inside my Holy Sanctuary, things were different. The ground was ground, and the sky was sky. And the Rift we needed to escape through gaped like a black mouth in the floor.
Declaring a Holy Sanctuary in the Demon Realm clearly came at a cost—the Holy Power bleeding away was staggering.
In that moment, the Demon Realm launched its true counterattack.
The Demonic Energy that had been hammering at my Holy Power barrier until now proved to be nothing but a prelude. An overwhelming tide of it converged from all directions.
Blood-red mist surged like a storm toward the sanctuary. Raum’s Nest as a whole bared its malice against me, intent on restoring itself, on smothering everything again beneath the laws of Inverted Heaven. The very edges of the sanctuary trembled and hissed.
Demonic Energy gnawed at the sanctuary’s boundary.
At the same moment, something like black tentacles erupted from the threshold where floor and sky—newly restored to their proper places—met, lashing toward me. I gritted my teeth and poured more Holy Power into the barrier.
This was indeed a space that demanded a powerful demon’s full strength to contest. The pressure itself was different.
Merely maintaining the sanctuary drained the Holy Power from my body at a terrifying rate. With each breath, it felt as though my chest burned from within.
But if the sanctuary collapsed here, it was over. The Rift would rise back above our heads, and we would be trapped once more beneath the laws of Inverted Heaven.
“Jump through before the sanctuary falls!”
At my cry, Croen, who had rushed inside the sanctuary, nearly threw his subordinate toward the Rift Core. The man’s body was swallowed by the black opening.
Immediately after, the Duke himself gritted his teeth and hurled himself through the fissure. The edge of his cloak rippled one last time before vanishing.
Now only Arden and I remained.
“Go! Get through now!”
I shouted at Arden. To maintain the sanctuary, I had to be the last one out.
“That’s an order! Move!”
But Arden didn’t move. Instead, he stepped forward in front of me.
“Forgive me, but this is one order I must disobey. Protecting Your Highness takes precedence over any command.”
The next instant, Arden gave me a gentle push from behind. I tried instinctively to resist, but my body wouldn’t respond as it normally would—all my strength was devoted to maintaining the sanctuary.
Arden pushed me deeper into the sanctuary, closer to the Rift. Then he drew his sword and took position at the very edge of the Holy Sanctuary, where the Demonic Energy would strike first.
His consecrated blade traced a pristine white arc. The surging wave of Demonic Energy split the moment it touched the sword’s edge, and where the Holy Power had passed, the black mist scattered and dissolved like burnt parchment.
The moment I saw that, my eyes widened. He could cut through Demonic Energy?
Only Valente, when he was the Hero, had ever been able to do that. Those who could wield Holy Power could push back or purify Demonic Energy, yes.
But to truly “cut” through it—that was different. It required perceiving Demonic Energy as a material thing, overlaying Holy Power and blade qi with perfect precision.
Perhaps five hundred years had been enough time for such a technique to become commonplace. The image of Valente’s back—always standing before me until the very end, always protecting me—overlapped with Arden’s.
Arden continued to swing his blade. Under his sword, the speed of the Demonic Energy pouring into the sanctuary slowed, bit by bit. Thanks to him, I was able to plant my feet safely within the sanctuary’s bounds.
But he couldn’t hold it long. Like waves that never ceased, no matter how much he cut through them, the Demonic Energy filled every gap anew. The edges of the sanctuary began to crumble.
“Arden!”
Just as the sanctuary was about to collapse, I reached out and seized him.
The rules of the Demon Realm seeped into the sanctuary, and the world began to overturn once more.

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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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