Volume 2, Chapter 23 – Professor? When Did You Get Here?

To the Valentine family’s Blackthorn Guard, the Family Head’s orders were a collar biting deep into their flesh.

Heavier than life, more urgent than breath.

Even though the silver-haired girl who was their target was surrounded by pale bones that made Riko tremble from the depths of her heart, even though the bloodline suppression emanating from a higher being seeped through her skin and chilled her almost to the bone, Riko still did not choose to retreat.

Before gripping her blade and launching another attack, she had no choice but to give herself a brief moment to catch her breath.

Yet Riko’s heart only grew more urgent, as though she were measuring the road to death with a ruler as thin as a strand of hair. One wrong step would mean being shattered to pieces, beyond all hope of salvation.

Fear?

No… she absolutely could not fear. Fear was the little death that brought total destruction.

She would face her fear and let it pass through her body.

The Family Head’s secret order had to be completed.

Even if she had to sacrifice her life, she had to complete it.

“For the glory of Valentine.”

Riko tightly gripped the rapier covered in thorny, poisonous barbs and poured all her magical power into it without reservation.

She stomped deep cracks into the marble floor, her entire body turning into a resolute streak of black. The air filled with the shriek of wind being torn apart as she slammed straight into that seemingly insurmountable pale cage.

Clang—!

With one muffled impact, shockwaves surged back and forth along the long corridor. Not a single intact pane of glass remained nearby, and even the entire building began to sway precariously.

Ordinarily, a strike like that would have been enough to shatter dragon scales. Yet Riko could only watch as the blade capable of slicing through dragon scales disintegrated the instant it touched the pale bones.

Countless tiny metal fragments exploded outward like shards of crystal, cutting across her cheeks and leaving behind fine trails of blood.

The enormous recoil surged backward through the sword hilt. Riko even heard several cracking sounds from the bones in her wrist. At first, she had been too dazed to properly register them and did not feel much pain, but only now did she gradually come back to her senses as the agony set in.

The strike she took such pride in had failed to leave even a single white mark on those pale bones.

“…”

Riko stared blankly at the broken half of the sword still clutched in her hand.

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Stella Darkfallen.

She recalled the name of the target in the secret order.

Hadn’t the intelligence said she was merely a lowly illegitimate daughter who had been abandoned outside the family?

Then how was she supposed to explain this oppressive presence, as though she were standing before the Abyss itself?

This terrifying rank could even be said to surpass that of ordinary higher demons… Was this truly something an illegitimate daughter who had only just been discovered by the family could possess?

Riko opened her mouth, but her throat had gone so dry that she could not make a sound.

The intelligence report she had read before accepting the secret order had stated with absolute confidence that Stella Darkfallen had used despicable traps and underhanded methods to luckily defeat Miss Cheryl, the legitimate heir.

‘What an absurd joke.’

Riko wanted nothing more than to twist the head off the intelligence officer who had written that report.

‘With this kind of power, why would she need traps? Why would she need schemes?’

That previous duel had never been some lucky, narrow victory. It had been a crushing defeat. Miss Cheryl had absolutely not lost unjustly. The opponent she had faced had never been some lowly mongrel demon or ordinary illegitimate daughter.

The Valentine bloodline alone could never have produced a monster like this.

‘Family Head Vivian… Just which Abyssal sovereign did you unite with back then to give birth to such an unnatural calamity?’

‘And why did you exile such a calamity in the first place?’

‘You even personally issued a secret assassination order against her.’

‘What exactly is your plan?’

Riko could not understand it at all. It was as though she had suddenly fallen into a dizzying, empty abyss. Fragments of intelligence flew chaotically through her mind, impossible to piece together into the truth.

Stella blinked.

Riko had charged at her far too quickly, so quickly that Stella had not even seen her clearly and had only caught a blurry afterimage.

As a member of the clergy, close-quarters combat had never been Stella’s strong suit. For an instant just now, she had even felt the same kind of fright as when walking down the street and a stray dog by the roadside suddenly started barking furiously at her.

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Fortunately, the Pale Sacred Remains from her bargain-bin mother were extremely sturdy.

Stella lowered her eyes and met the gaze of Riko, who was staring blankly at the broken sword in her hand.

Since the other party had already lost her weapon and did not seem particularly mentally stable either…

She might as well deal with her while she was at it, then go eat dinner.

Stella tilted her head slightly. With a thought, one of the pale bones extended outward and swept across. It looked slow, but in reality moved with astonishing speed.

Thud.

Dull, yet somehow heavy.

Riko did not even have time to scream before her entire body was sent flying backward in a straight line, crashing heavily into the wall at the end of the corridor.

Cracks spread across the wall as chunks of stone tumbled down.

The Blackthorn Guard Captain slid limply to the ground and completely lost consciousness.

It was finally over.

Stella dismissed the skeletal frame around her, and the pale ash slowly dispersed into the air.

“Alright, done.”

“Uh…”

Stella clapped her hands and looked around, only to see rubble scattered among shattered stone, broken pillars standing beneath the blood moon, and what had once been a perfectly good courtyard reduced to ruins. The walls were riddled with holes, the floor had been torn up, the demon crystal lamps flickered erratically, unfamiliar demons lay sprawled all over the place, and then there was… Lainia lying in a pool of blood.

“…”

Stella stared blankly at the devastation before her.

Now that her protective anger had completely faded, the rationality of an impoverished student once again seized the high ground.

‘I’m finished… How much is this going to cost?’

Even if she didn’t count the labor costs, just these enchanted floor tiles with several hundred years of history…

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Even if she didn’t count the floor tiles, just these load-bearing walls…

If that little shorty found out… she’d definitely go insane, right?

She’d definitely drag Stella off and sell her for money, right?

“I’m finished…”

Stella muttered to herself, feeling as though her future had gone completely dark.

‘Now… What am I supposed to do?’

Maybe she should grab Lainia and run while no one had seen anything.

This was the most remote part of the campus, after all. They had caused this much commotion and no one had noticed. If she took the opportunity to slip away now, there was a good chance she would never get caught.

But what about all these unfamiliar demons lying around?

What was she supposed to do with them?

Destroy the bodies and erase the evidence?

But she didn’t know how.

Just as Stella’s head filled with thoughts of how to destroy the bodies and erase the evidence.

The next second…

Bonk.

A not particularly gentle chop landed squarely on Stella’s forehead.

“Ow…”

Stella covered her forehead and looked up with tears in her eyes.

At some point, Professor Katerina had appeared right in front of her.

Her pitch-black robes billowed in the night wind. Fury burned within her deeply sunken black eyes, and her expression looked terrifyingly gloomy.

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“…Professor?” Stella swallowed and instinctively asked, “When did you get here?”

“When did I get here?”

Katerina’s icy words echoed beside her ears.

An elegant, slender hand, as cold as that of a corpse, pinched her chin.

That dark, cold, slightly violent rasp sounded once again, like the voice of a demon just before devouring a human.

“Miss Stella Darkfallen.”

“I seem to remember specifically warning you before I left, never recklessly use this thing in front of outsiders.”

“Your hearing and memory are both perfectly fine, I assume?”

Translator Note

Stella’s debt got increased again ahahha xD

Anyway~! ♥

Starting from the next chapter, the chapter’s length somehow increased quite a lot, like, really a lot, 2 to 5 times the usual length…

So…

I’ll split each chapter into several parts if it’s too long. Each part might contain uneven length because I’ll try to not split it at a cliffhanger moment.

And previously, I had said I’ll translate 10-30 chapters/day… Maybe it will become 10-30 chapter parts/day…

Uh, F my life… I hate long chapters… Imagine there are just 13 chapters remaining for this volume, but turns out I still have to translate over 40 worth of chapters. Long chapters make me can’t correctly calculate how many chapter parts I have to translate because each chapter’s length varies… TvT