Volume 2, Chapter 24-1 – I Won’t Disturb You, I’ll Be Going Now

“Forgot.”

Stella blinked and answered with perfect confidence.

In a situation like that, who would still have the presence of mind to remember some warning or other? Besides, she did not think she had used anything particularly remarkable. She had only grabbed a few bones and used them as shields.

Thump.

Katerina gave her another chop on the head.

This time, however, she used much less force. Rather than punishment, it felt more like helpless exasperation.

“I knew it.”

Katerina withdrew her hand.

“Do you have any idea how much effort I have to spend cleaning up the mess you leave behind because of a single ‘forgot’?”

“You have absolutely no idea.”

“Once your identity as the Pale Daughter is exposed to the world, it won’t just be the Valentine family’s watchdogs coming after you.”

Katerina snorted coldly.

“When that happens, the people preparing to swallow you alive and skin you whole could form a line from the Nexus Council all the way to the school gates.”

That sounded pretty terrifying.

‘Had the Pale Lord really offended that many demons?’

It seemed that the bargain-bin mother Stella had never even met really might have gone around blowing up the ancestral graves of the entire Abyss back in the day, leaving behind a whole pile of romantic debts and old scores for Stella to repay.

Just imagining that sort of scene really did feel… troublesome.

Although she was only a Saintess candidate who had come to the Abyss to endure things until graduation, then return home and get promoted to cardinal, the grudges between demons had nothing to do with her. But judging by the current situation, no matter how vehemently she denied it, there probably would not be many people willing to believe her anymore.

“Then… Professor, when did you arrive?” Stella instinctively covered her forehead and asked tentatively.

“When?”

Katerina turned around, her gaze sweeping across the wreckage littering the ground.

“I sensed them the moment those filthy rats slipped through the barrier. How could I possibly fail to notice?”

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“If you noticed that early…” Stella muttered softly. “Then you were watching from the side the whole time? Mm… keeping an eye on me like a nanny?”

“…”

Katerina said nothing and turned slightly, blocking Stella’s line of sight.

The two of them simply stood there without saying anything, and for a time, the atmosphere became unbearably awkward.

Seeing the Pale Sacred Remains once again did not make Katerina feel good.

She knew Stella’s face. She had watched Stella’s every movement. And that only made the face buried deep within her memories become painfully clear once more, as though she had returned to the moment they first met, when they encountered each other in an alley barely wide enough for a person to stand.

And she could not avoid Stella’s face.

It was as though something were quietly stirring the soft sediment buried deep within her consciousness, leaving her with no choice but to stare without blinking, with nowhere to escape.

Like gentle fingers. Like icy fingers. Faintly brushing against her heart, leaving it sensitive and easily wounded.

After a long while, Katerina drew in a deep breath and turned around, once again wearing that cold, impenetrable expression.

“…Shut up. Go stand over there.”

Katerina stopped paying attention to Stella. She walked over to the unconscious Riko and crouched down.

She extended a hand, placed it between Riko’s brows, and began chanting an incantation.

Since it had already happened, complaining was useless. All she could do now was clean up the trouble Stella had caused.

She could not exactly leave the Valentine family’s Blackthorn Guards lying here and ignore them. Erasing them outright was technically one option, but considering that the Valentine family was one of the school directors providing funding, they could not afford to offend them. That left only one choice.

She would have to erase their memories.

As the newly appointed Vice Principal, Katerina was no stranger to spells that tampered with memories. In fact, she could even be considered extremely proficient in them.

“——Obliviate.”

Pale purple magical power flowed from her fingertips and seeped into the center of Riko’s brow.

“You were simply unlucky.”

“You unfortunately encountered a leak in Lilith School’s aging pipelines, which caused an explosion of highly concentrated magical dust.”

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“The enormous shockwave knocked all of you unconscious and caused your mission to fail completely. Remember to go back and remind your Family Head to pay the school development fund that’s already two months overdue.”

“Do you hear me? That is the truth.”

Using a magical-dust explosion as an excuse sounded incredibly stupid, but in a place like the Abyss, where causing trouble and chaos were treated as everyday occurrences, the more absurd an accident was, the easier it was to accept.

After all, who would believe that the mighty Valentine family’s cleaners had been completely wiped out by a dishwasher maid and a few bones?

Compared with that, getting blown away by the school’s poorly maintained pipelines was obviously far more convincing.

“Sigh… Why did I ever agree to Gehenna’s deal?” Katerina wove false memories into the Blackthorn Guards one by one, while still remembering to turn around and glare at Stella standing nearby. “You… really are exactly like your mother. A complete and utter troublemaker.”

Stella obediently stood in the corner and pretended she had heard absolutely nothing, treating herself as a stone statue without the ability to hear.

As long as Professor was willing to help clean up the aftermath, forget being sniped at with a few sarcastic remarks. Stella would not even mind if she helped clean up after her a few more times in the future.

The final wisp of purple light faded away.

Everything was over.

Every witness had been implanted with a reasonable explanation. That fleeting glimpse of pale white had been buried beneath a blood-colored lie.

The courtyard returned to silence. Only the whimpering sound of wind passing through the ruins remained.

Katerina stood up and dusted off her hands.

“Now, let’s settle the accounts.”

“Accounts?”

“Accounts?” Stella blinked innocently. “What accounts?”

“Playing dumb won’t help you.” Katerina sneered. She pointed at the devastated surroundings. “Look around. Look at the load-bearing wall smashed apart in front of you. Look at these floor tiles that were blasted away. And those shattered stained-glass windows, those broken antique columns…”

Every time Katerina named another item, Stella trembled.

She could not afford to pay for this.

“By a rough estimate, the cost of the materials alone would be more than you could repay even if we sold you to a Succubus Grand Duke as some kind of… plaything for a hundred years.

“You should be grateful this wall is still perfectly intact. You should know that back then, it was…”

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Katerina patted the courtyard wall.

It was already covered in cracks and teetering on the verge of collapse.

Boom—!

With nothing more than a light pat, the already precarious side wall finally gave way under the strain and crumbled into rubble.

“…”

Katerina stared blankly down at her palm.

She had not even used any strength…

Through the haze, Stella heard someone shouting.

“——I’m here, I’m here, finally! Hmph, this time I’ll definitely stop them before those muscle-brained idiots make their move. My year-end bonus is safe!”

Broken stones flew through the air as clouds of dust billowed everywhere.

Amid the dust, a nightmare beast wreathed from head to hoof in ghostly blue flames came charging in with a shrill neigh. Its hooves slammed heavily onto the rubble-covered floor, sending a trail of sparks flying.

On its back sat a messenger dressed in the Valentine family’s uniform, holding high a roll of parchment tied with golden thread and shouting at the top of her lungs.

“Stop—!”

“Orders from the Family Head! Spare her under your blades…”

The messenger’s voice abruptly stopped.

She sat astride the horse, still holding the secret order high above her head.

“…Uh?”

The messenger blinked.

The dust finally dispersed completely, allowing her to see the scene before her.

The squad of Blackthorn Guards sent by the Valentine family lay scattered all across the ground, their lives or deaths unknown.

Captain Riko, famed as an executioner, was slumped limply in the corner as though she had taken a thunder beast head-on.

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Meanwhile, the target of this execution, Stella, the legendary illegitimate daughter of the Family Head, stood expressionlessly in the middle of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, like a crimson rose blooming atop a sheer cliff.

The three of them stared at one another without speaking.

Silence.

Deathly silence.

No one moved. No one made a sound.

If not for the wind still blowing, even the earth itself would have seemed to lose all signs of life.

The messenger swallowed and suddenly felt as though the secret order in her hand was nothing more than scrap paper.

The corner of her mouth twitched. She looked upward, then downward, opening her mouth several times but stopping herself each time.

“…I won’t disturb you. I’ll be going now.”

“Think you can leave? Not a chance.”

Almost the instant the messenger tugged on the reins and prepared to make herself scarce, Katerina’s figure had already swept past Stella like a pitch-black hunting falcon, violently pinning the fleeing messenger and her horse to the ground together.

She moved so quickly that the messenger did not even have time to cry out before her face was already pressed tightly against the cold, rubble-strewn floor.

“N-no, wait… I’m just a messenger! All this fighting and killing has absolutely nothing to do with me!”

The messenger looked ready to burst into tears as she was helplessly pinned to the ground. The parchment secret order tied with golden thread rolled from her hand and came to rest beside Katerina’s feet.

“I really don’t know anything! Please don’t kill me. I’m even working overtime for this trip, and I didn’t stop once along the way. At least let me collect my overtime pay before…”

Translator Note

That last thing that got destroyed was definitely Katerina’s fault, right?! HAHAHA xD