Volume 2, Chapter 34-1 – Laxia, the Outcome Has Been Decided

BOOM—!

Four Tail Thorns condensed from demon blood came crashing down with a shriek that tore through the air.

Stella twisted aside, narrowly avoiding the blood thorn that smashed down beside her feet. Scarlet blood splashed upward as the hard stone bricks shattered like biscuits.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you fighting back?!”

After her first strike missed, Cheryl grew even more agitated.

She controlled the other three blood thorns and swept them across once again.

“Is this your arrogance? Or do you think I’m not even worthy of making you attack?!”

“Kill me. As long as you kill me, you can get out! You can have everything!”

Expressionless, Stella weaved left and right through the pool of blood, the tips of her feet lightly tapping against the ground.

Cheryl’s attacks looked incomparably fierce, powerful enough to shatter rock, but even in Stella’s eyes, they were simply far too slow.

There were no tricky angles and no follow-up attacks anticipating her reactions. It was as though Cheryl were deliberately exposing every opening she had and throwing herself straight into Stella’s hands.

Stella could see it now. Her idiot younger sister was absolutely determined to feed her a free kill.

But the current situation was extremely troublesome.

The thorn mark in her palm continued to throb, which meant the ritual was still underway.

If they did not end the ritual, then even if she called Dorothy out, the Sacred Blood Grail would instantly drag them back into this damned place like someone reeling in a kite.

She had to make the ritual stop.

But for it to stop, one person had to die.

Who should die?

She did not want to die, and Cheryl could not die either.

Stella hated seeing innocent people or creatures suffer or die because of something she had done.

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Perhaps there were times when even she felt that she was contradictory, but constrained and suppressed as she was by the innate sense of justice she had been born with, she had always believed that innocent people should not die.

“You’re still the same. So unbearably proud, never willing to lower your head. Or do you think I’m not even worthy of making you draw your sword?!”

Cheryl was getting desperate.

She controlled the Tail Thorns and swept them across the entire corridor, trying to force her arrogant elder sister to respond.

Inside the picture frames lining both sides of the corridor, the Family Heads of generations past stared without blinking.

“Faster! Faster!”

“Boring. I want to see rivers of blood.”

Mia, the Lord of Blood, laughed wildly, even leaning half her body out of the picture frame.

Half of her laughter was terrifying, while the other half carried smug delight. It sounded like something that could only have come from hell, as though the tormented souls condemned there and the devils cheering over their damnation were howling through the same throat.

Stella’s brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

So damn noisy.

She inadvertently glanced at the old woman sitting loftily inside the picture frame, and a sudden bolt of realization flashed through her mind.

‘Wait… the rules said…’’

Once a challenge to the Laxia Ritual was issued here, no one had the right to refuse.

One person had to die before the ritual could end.

The rules only said one person had to die. They never specified… that it had to be one of the original challengers, right?

What if a third person suddenly entered this ritual?

If she challenged that noisy referee right now, then according to the rules, wouldn’t the other party also be unable to refuse?

A bold thought, one that could even be called sacrilege against her ancestors, rose within her.

She had no idea how powerful this so-called Lord of Blood was, but there was no other way out of their current predicament. She could only take the gamble.

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Cheryl finally could not hold herself back any longer. She shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Stella, don’t make me look down on you! Fight back!”

She gathered all the blood thorns together into an enormous drill and charged toward Stella with reckless abandon.

“…Are you done making a scene?”

Stella stopped walking.

She no longer dodged. A black prism suddenly appeared within her right eye.

Stella slowly raised her left hand and grasped at the empty air. In an instant, enormous ribs burning with pale embers appeared out of thin air, shielding her within their center.

“What is that…?”

Within the picture frame, Mia, the Lord of Blood, who had remained lofty and aloof this entire time, frowned slightly.

Throughout the Valentine family’s thousand-year history of blood, she had seen demon blood boiling like magma and venomous blood as cold as frost, but she had never seen anything like this.

Pale, deathly still, utterly devoid of the warmth of life, yet carrying the aura of embers capable of burning the soul.

This was absolutely not an authority belonging to blood.

“A bloodline ability never once recorded in the family genealogy. Just who did Vivian have this child with…?”

Mia murmured to herself.

BANG!!!

With a tremendous crash, the Pale Sacred Remains met Cheryl’s blood thorns head-on.

The seemingly ferocious blood thorns were completely unable to break through the defenses of the pale bones. Stella merely tilted her head slightly, and with a thought, one pale bone extended outward. It seemed slow, yet was actually astonishingly fast as it swept across like a hand swatting a fly, smashing Cheryl and her thorns straight into the pool of blood.

“All flash and no substance.” Stella muttered.

“Ugh…”

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Cheryl let out a muffled groan. Half of her body was pinned beneath the blood, leaving her completely unable to move.

The world was finally quiet.

“Good, that’s it!”

Mia, who had been watching from the picture frame the entire time, clapped excitedly.

“That’s right, this is the bloodlust of a Valentine! Hurry, crush her skull! Let her lowly blood become the red carpet for your coronation. Perfect blood!”

Cheryl struggled to raise her eyes. Tears quietly slipped down her face beneath her smile.

Wasn’t this exactly the feeling she had been waiting for all this time?

She had thought she should have come sooner. Still, it was not too late now, though she had never expected it to feel so desolate.

‘At last… is it going to end?’

Although she had no idea what those bones formed from pale flames around Stella were…

As long as she could die by Stella’s hand…

‘Come, Elder Sister.’

She closed her eyes and bared her neck, awaiting death.

Yet the pain she expected never came.

Stella ignored Cheryl on the ground.

She slowly turned around, and the enormous pale skeleton rotated along with her.

“According to the first rule, once someone issues a challenge to the Laxia Ritual here, no one can refuse, correct?” Stella’s voice was very, very soft. “The rules say one person has to die, but they never say it has to be one of the challengers, do they?”

Mia’s applause abruptly stopped.

Inside the painting, she leaned forward slightly.

“…Little one, what are you thinking?”

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“I demand a Laxia Ritual.” Stella’s voice turned sharp. “Accept my challenge, or… die like a coward.”

“…Elder Sister? What are you saying?”

Cheryl froze for a moment, then became ecstatic.

Stella was finally getting serious. She was finally going to deliver the final blow.

She was happy. She was excited. But she was also sad. She cried. She laughed. She laughed as she cried.

“…I accept,” Cheryl said in a trembling voice as she struggled to climb back up. “Come, Elder Sister. I’ve been ready for this for a long time…”

“No.”

Stella cut her off coldly.

She pointed directly at Mia, the Lord of Blood.

“The one I’m issuing my Laxia challenge to is you.”

Translator Note

Damnnn skipping the junior and challenging the ancestor immediately! ><

Anyway, brace for the very long chapter part!

This chapter supposedly can be split into 4 parts including this one, but I merge the second, third, and fourth parts into one because it basically contains a single battle. You don’t want a cliffhanger in the middle of battle, don’t you?

Anyway…

Stella Darkfallen vs Mia the Valentine ancestor!