Volume 2, Chapter 35-3 – Is She Still the Same Person?

The candlelight flickered once or twice, casting hazy shadows across the full-length mercury mirror.

Ripples spread across the mirror’s surface. Dorothy controlled the Girl in the Mirror, plunging her fingers into the mirror and accurately grabbing Cheryl by the shoulders before yanking her out.

With a muffled thud, Cheryl fell onto the clubroom floor.

Just now, it had felt as though she were plummeting from a great height into a dark abyss. Pain and dizziness washed over her together with a sense of relief.

Strangely, Stella’s face kept surfacing in her mind.

That incomparably beautiful face had also vanished into the darkness.

Cheryl simply sat there, her long hair hanging messily at her sides and covering most of her face.

“Where… am I?”

Cheryl lowered her head, her voice somewhat dazed, as though she had yet to recover from the crimson sea of blood.

“The Lionheart Society’s clubroom. We pulled you out.” Remedios stood in the shadows, her platinum-blonde hair glimmering faintly in the dim light.

“Pulled me out? How is that possible…”

“Normally, once the Laxia Ritual seals and devours its participants, its only exit remains completely closed until a victor is decided.”

Remedios turned slightly, her azure gaze falling upon the rippling mercury mirror.

“But Stella made use of Dorothy’s ability. She didn’t try to break through the ritual’s gate. Instead, beneath the walls of the deathmatch arena, she dug out a back door large enough to escape through.”

Remedios turned her head and looked at Cheryl on the floor.

“Simply put, she cheated. That way, you wouldn’t die inside.”

“Breaking out through the Mirror Realm?”

Cheryl murmured to herself.

“At first, I only thought we might as well give it a try. I didn’t expect it to actually work.”

Remedios turned around, her azure eyes fixed on the mirror.

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It truly had been unexpected.

Even the Corridor of Blood, an independent space, could be entered and exited through the Girl in the Mirror.

Then by the same principle, she could absolutely try stepping into the world inside the mirror herself and personally see what it was like.

“Hm? Stella hasn’t come out?”

Remedios pulled herself from her thoughts and looked at the girl sitting on the floor.

“Where’s Mom?” Dorothy also blinked her large eyes and looked at the mirror in confusion. “Why isn’t she ready to come out yet?”

Cheryl fell silent.

Stella’s words before they parted kept echoing through her mind.

—You aren’t worth killing, foolish little sister.

What did she mean, not worth killing?

What foolish little sister?

They were all lies.

An illegitimate daughter who had returned for revenge, an elder sister who tortured her with dark cursecraft and humiliated her before the entire school, yet at the very brink of life and death, she had used the cruelest words to carry out the gentlest act.

So Cheryl wouldn’t die in the Laxia Ritual, Stella had declared a Laxia Ritual against Mia, forcibly stripping Cheryl of her qualification to participate.

So Cheryl could live, her arrogant elder sister had remained alone in the Corridor of Blood to face the Lord of Blood whom no one had ever dared challenge.

“You’re clearly just an illegitimate daughter… You clearly came back for revenge…”

Tears welled in Cheryl’s eyes, her voice growing choked.

The haughty Young Mistress of the Valentine family finally let every mask fall away.

She couldn’t accept it.

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She couldn’t accept being the one who was protected.

She had clearly already prepared herself to offer up her heart, wanting to use her own blood to pave a crimson carpet for her elder sister’s path to the throne.

‘Why… Did Stella want to die so badly?’

‘Why wouldn’t she plunge the silver dagger into my heart…’

‘I was nothing more than a filthy existence…’

‘I was the one who had occupied everything that should have belonged to Stella.’

‘My birth had caused Stella pain and driven Stella mad…’

‘I should have been the one to die…’

Cheryl had never once thought of taking care of herself.

She had been born with a self-sacrificing nature.

Cheryl’s greatest fear was that others would ridicule her feelings, and that fear had grown so immense and deep that it was almost pathological.

All of a sudden, the confidence she had so carefully constructed seemed to collapse completely.

“I greatly admire what you did out of sisterly affection.” Remedios said.

Noticing a small tear hanging at the corner of Cheryl’s eye, she paused.

“However, emotional impulses should be governed by reason. In my view, when a person does their utmost, they should do so to precisely the right degree.”

“So, can you tell us what happened inside?”

Remedios opened her mouth and was just about to ask the question when she immediately saw Cheryl’s second tear.

That teardrop was even larger than the first, glimmering as it gathered at the corner of her left eye like a transparent pearl.

‘Hm…’

Now she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

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Cheryl couldn’t answer Remedios’s question either.

How could she possibly say that Stella had gone to challenge Mia for her sake?

In every historical record of the Valentine family, Elder Mia herself had been the creator of the Laxia Ritual.

She received the blood tax from every Laxia Ritual throughout history.

She was the incarnation of its rules, and the entire Corridor of Blood was her incarnation.

No descendant of Valentine possessed the ability to defeat her.

For Stella to remain behind meant certain death.

How could Cheryl possibly tell such a despairing truth to these two people who were waiting for Stella’s return?

“Wait a moment.”

Dorothy suddenly tilted her head, breaking the silence in which Remedios and Cheryl had been staring at one another.

She walked straight up to the full-length mercury mirror and pressed both hands against its surface.

“Mom called me. You two keep talking.”

Cheryl abruptly turned her head, disbelief filling her eyes.

Violent ripples spread across the mirror once more.

Immediately afterward, the Girl in the Mirror very respectfully supported someone out from the depths of the mirror.

It was unmistakably Stella Darkfallen.

But…

She seemed to have changed tremendously.

Most of the silver in Stella’s long hair had already faded away. The streak of crimson was no longer confined to the tips. It had now domineeringly occupied more than half of her hair, silver strands interwoven with scarlet like remnants of snow burning amid flames.

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The bat wings at her waist had nearly doubled in size, their edges sharp as blades. Their streamlined bone structure left no doubt whatsoever that they could carry her soaring through the clouds.

Even the curved horns on her forehead and her tail had completely changed in appearance.

They were no longer slightly immature features, but were now almost identical to Cheryl’s.

No.

They were even more perfect than Cheryl’s, blending beauty, bloodline, and some rarer gift into something everyone could only call charm.

There was no doubt about it.

The most orthodox Valentine.

Stella slowly opened her eyes.

The darkness around her was illuminated by the light in her pupils, and it seemed as though molten lava flowed within their depths.

Her face was frozen like ice, yet she carried the bearing of one who ruled over all beneath heaven.

“What the hell… What’s going on now!?”

Remedios instinctively took half a step back.

“Is this even the same person?”

Translator Note

The True Stella Valentine! ><

Next is the last chapter of Volume 2! Get ready for the long chapter again because I don’t split it at all!