Volume 2, Chapter 33-2 – Eat Me, Elder Sister

Old chapel.

Small, yet quiet.

Only the ankles of a plaster statue remained. Candles flickered in the breeze, their weak light illuminating the surroundings.

The blood moon was full. Beyond the glass windows that fractured its beams of light, it seemed as though a huge, curious eye had opened in the heavens, gazing down upon the long and silent ritual within, generously casting its gigantic candle-like crimson glow across the pure white tablecloth and the curtains covered in the Valentine family crest.

No one knew why the first principal had built such a deeply religious facility when the school was originally founded.

Was it blasphemy and mockery toward the gods?

Or perhaps demons also had unspeakable gods of their own?

No one knew the truth anymore. As the years passed, this place had long since been forgotten.

And now, the abandoned altar happened to be used to hold the vessel symbolizing the Valentine family’s highest authority and curse.

The Sacred Blood Grail.

Cheryl stood alone before the altar, her eyes closed as she softly hummed a nursery rhyme.

“When Solomon’s flowers bloom until even the morning light has faded, when Lilith’s skirt is stained with the fragrance of poppies…” The girl sang softly and slowly. “I too begin to softly sing along. I raise gravestones for countless departed souls, then inscribe epitaphs upon them in blood, like crimson spider lilies blooming atop their graves…”

The song abruptly stopped.

Her gaze fell upon the center of the altar.

Sitting there was a wine goblet, a cup forged entirely from gold, its entire surface engraved with vine-like patterns as though it were being embraced by an ancient golden tree.

It looked so ancient and solemn, yet extravagantly luxurious, that no one would doubt something sacred was contained within it.

But it was no sacred object.

It was a tomb.

It was the Valentine family’s mobile mausoleum, the collective burial place of the souls of every successive Family Head.

Within the endlessly churning blood slept countless souls that had fought to the death for the glory of the family.

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Every last one of them submitted to a single sovereign, Mia, Lord of Blood.

Cheryl had heard the legends of Mia.

She was not the Valentine family’s oldest ancestor, but she was the most arrogant and brutal founding figure in the family’s history.

It was she who unified the scattered blood demons a thousand years ago. It was also she who personally created the breeding-pit ritual known as the Laxia Ritual in order to select the most perfect descendants.

She thirsted for blood as though her life depended on it, and her desire for conquest was overwhelming. Even though her physical body had long since perished, her will still ruled over the blood within the Grail, watching over every deathmatch that took place.

Cheryl’s fingers slowly slid downward along the inscriptions on the Sacred Blood Grail.

Engraved upon it were the names of past victors.

Carula, Elizabeth, Rosalind…

Finally, the pad of her finger stopped over a familiar name.

Vivian Valentine.

Her mother, the current Family Head of the Valentine family.

A succubus famous throughout the Abyss for her cruelty, promiscuity, and unpredictable temperament.

Cheryl’s gaze became somewhat complicated.

According to the old butler Sebas’s carefully guarded account, her mother had not been like this when she was young.

Back then, she too had once been a girl who would cry when a rose thorn pricked her finger, and who secretly hid romance novels beneath her bed.

She had also once had a twin younger sister whom she adored dearly, named Shirera.

Twin sisters raised in the same family and given the same upbringing might sometimes become difficult to tell apart, but sisters were strange things. They argued today and laughed tomorrow, grew annoyed when they were too close and missed each other when they were apart, worried when they could not see one another and found each other irritating when they could. You could bully your own sister, but no one else was allowed to.

Until the blood moon became full that year.

Until that Laxia Ritual began.

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Until the two sisters entered the Corridor of Blood.

All Cheryl knew was that Vivian Valentine had walked out of the Corridor of Blood.

As for what had happened inside, she knew nothing.

But from that point onward, Vivian began indulging her desires.

She became promiscuous and was no longer the person she had once been. Her temperament became impossible to predict, gentle one moment and irritable the next, considerate yet inconsiderate. She was a madwoman who followed the god of wine.

She was desire itself.

“What a… pitiful story, Mother.”

Cheryl withdrew her finger and gazed at the churning blood within the Sacred Blood Grail, the corners of her lips lifting as she laughed softly.

“Because you were too afraid to love again, you chose to become a heartless monster?”

She had no intention of becoming someone like her mother.

Though she worshipped strength and longed for victory, she would never accept killing someone she acknowledged with her own hands.

If one person was destined to be sacrificed, if the Valentine family’s curse was destined to be ended through blood…

Then she would choose to break it herself.

She would die.

She would die at the hands of the most perfect Elder Sister.

She would use her own blood to pave Stella’s path toward the throne.

She would make Stella the one and only person in the Valentine family’s history who did not need to bear the pain of killing her own kin, who did not need to become cold-blooded and promiscuous, and who could still arrogantly laugh at the world.

Cheryl knew that if she lost her bloodline, status, and power, she would have nothing left.

But there was one thing no one could ever take from her.

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Her conviction.

Rumble.

The chapel doors were pushed open.

At the doorway where moonlight and shadow intertwined, two rows of Blackthorn Guards dressed in black-and-white maid uniforms silently formed ranks and knelt.

At the end of that deathly black procession, a petite figure slowly walked in against the light.

Stella Darkfallen.

Her silver hair billowed and fluttered, as though supporting her while she drifted downward through the air little by little. Her long eyelashes veiled her crimson eyes, while the moonlight stretched into thin slivers and fell diagonally across her body.

The girl’s face carried a cruel and noble majesty. Her posture seemed relaxed and at ease, unmistakably the composure of one who possessed absolute strength, an arrogance that stood above all mundane rules.

Cheryl recalled her first encounter with Stella, their first conflict, their duel, her humiliation… all the way to the most recent commission.

She had encountered a merciless opponent.

She had encountered the scolding of an elder sister.

She had encountered unconditional acceptance.

She had encountered a kind of… exceptionally pure salvation.

She had encountered a great love that transcended the petty selfishness of human nature…

She had encountered Stella.

And then she had lost herself, along with all her arrogance and tyranny.

All of it.

‘Ah… yes, just like this, Elder Sister.’

‘Please keep that arrogance.’

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‘And then… eat me.’

At last, the blood moon reached absolute fullness.

As though responding to some kind of summons, the Sacred Blood Grail on the altar suddenly erupted with dazzling crimson light.

Crack.

The ground beneath their feet shattered like the surface of a mirror. Endless blood surged out from the cracks, instantly flooding the altar.

A sensation of weightlessness struck them in an instant.

The two of them fell at the same time toward that bottomless crimson space, the Corridor of Blood.

In the instant they began to fall, just before the blood-red world swallowed them whole.

Cheryl’s lips parted slightly.

Her voiceless words traveled through the rushing wind and reached Stella’s ears.

“Let us begin…”

“…My dear Elder Sister.”

Translator Note

Cheryl turning from a tyrant, to a masochist, then yandere, and now melancholic TvT

but seeing this chapter, I think she’s not really masochist, but more like… feeling guilty? She has everything since birth while Stella has nothing, even though Stella is more talented than her. And since she doesn’t know how to apologize, she want her elder sister to hate her instead.