Volume 2, Chapter 36 – The Unquestionable Heir

Dorothy slowly lowered Stella onto the velvet sofa.

“Stella, are you alright?”

Remedios stepped closer and bent down, her azure eyes reflecting Stella’s current appearance.

Even for someone like her, who was accustomed to all manner of bizarre sights in the Abyss, the scene before her could only be described as truly eye-opening.

The changes had not stopped.

They were still continuing.

Remedios could see the thorn marks across Stella’s body pulsing as though they were alive and breathing.

They spread upward from beneath her collarbones. Each time they throbbed, another layer of bewitching crimson stained Stella’s skin.

Among her silver hair, a scarlet hue was gradually spreading and assimilating it, like a drop of thick ink falling into clear water and diffusing irreversibly.

Remedios estimated that the scarlet would probably dye all the hair along the inner layer, while the rest would most likely remain silver.

Dorothy stood off to the side, looking somewhat at a loss.

“Her scent… changed.”

The little succubus tilted her head in confusion.

To her, Mama smelled a little different now.

Under normal circumstances, Dorothy found it difficult to imagine something that could be both coldly alluring and warm, yet Stella’s scent now gave her precisely that feeling.

Stella barely managed to open her eyes.

“Ugh… This feels awful…”

She felt as though she was not lying on a sofa at all, but floating in a scalding sea of blood.

Laxia’s reward.

The essence belonging to Mia, Lord of Blood, was now surging madly through her veins, as though a fire were burning where her heart was. This flame could not be extinguished with a cup of water, nor could she simply wait for it to seep from her pores like sweat. She could only let it roar and rampage through her body. It was practically as though all the blood taxes Mia, Lord of Blood, had ever collected had been condensed into a single drop of poison and forcibly poured into her.

And it was not merely the scorching heat brought by the blood essence. Her Holy Light was also confronting the challenge with fearless momentum.

Stella felt as though she had lived through all four seasons.

Winter had invaded her bones at birth, yet immediately afterward, spring surged forth and brought hope.

She experienced swelling spring buds, the ravages of summer heat, drifting autumn leaves, and the bone-piercing cold of winter.

Fervent desire and icy will were locked in an endless argument.

What she was feeling now was far more intense than Mara Nightsong’s medicinal bath had ever been.

Stella could only force herself to remain conscious. She was genuinely afraid that if she fell asleep, she would never wake up again.

“Could it be…” Cheryl murmured. “…Elder Sister defeated Mia, Lord of Blood, inside Laxia?”

Cheryl could think of no other explanation for the changes Stella was undergoing now.

‘But…’

‘How is that possible…’

The opponent Elder Sister had specifically chosen to challenge was the departed spirit residing within the Sacred Blood Grail, the creator of Laxia, the curse and destiny of the Valentine family, Mia, Lord of Blood…

Within the family’s epics, Mia was an unbeatable nightmare.

She herself was the Corridor of Blood, a monster that had collected the blood taxes of the defeated through countless civil wars.

Cheryl could not imagine what means Stella had used to win that deathmatch, nor could she imagine what price Stella had paid merely to preserve the life of a worthless younger sister.

As she stared at Stella lying on the sofa, her body covered in demonic markings, Cheryl wore an expression of blank bewilderment that even she could not explain.

Only now did she vaguely realize that if Stella truly had come for revenge back then, she would never have challenged Mia. And if Stella had truly intended to seize Cheryl’s blood through Laxia, then there was no possible way Stella would have failed.

Cheryl even blamed herself as though she were a thief, as though everything she had possessed in the past had rightfully belonged to Stella, and every moment she had failed to think of Stella was equivalent to stealing something from her.

“Elder Sister… right now… just what do you think of me?”

Cheryl sat hugging her knees and murmured to herself.

—————

“Digesting the essence?” Remedios said thoughtfully. “If that’s the case, then it does make sense. Your current condition does indeed match the description in Advanced Demon Physiology regarding the forced devouring of a higher bloodline.”

“…What description?” Stella laboriously opened her eyes. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Simply put, your blood vessels are being reconstructed, and your magical circuits are being forcibly widened.” Miss Book Demon explained. “In most cases, when an adult demon devours essence from another demon of the same rank, they need to enter a deep sleep for several days.”

Remedios looked Stella up and down.

“However, constitutions differ from demon to demon. From what I can observe, your constitution may be… considerably weaker than that of most demons.”

Stella could not be bothered to respond to Remedios’ mockery.

No kidding.

She was human. Although things did seem to have gone just a tiny bit off course now, no matter how you looked at it, she was still an orthodox Saintess.

Comparing the constitution of a human Saintess to a bunch of thick-skinned, tough-bodied demons was simply bullying.

But from what Remedios was saying, Mia’s blood essence was assimilating her and turning her into a real succubus?

‘No, no, no…’

Once her espionage mission was over, she still had to return to the Holy See and collect her retirement pension.

If she really turned into something like a second-generation Lord of Blood, then the first thing the Inquisitor would do when she returned would be to smash her head open with a cross.

“Mm… but I feel like I’m about to sleep myself to death.”

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Stella spoke weakly.

“Feeling drowsy is normal. I think… you’ll probably be asleep for quite some time.”

Remedios pulled out her notebook, preparing to open a dedicated section for research logs.

“Anything you want us to take care of?” Remedios continued on her own. “We’ll handle it for you while you’re sleeping your head off.”

Why did she make it sound like Stella was giving her last words?

Stella complained inwardly.

But there really were several things she could not stop worrying about.

“My human slave, Lainia…”

“Don’t let her starve to death. Remember to top up my meal card for her in time… Charge the expenses to Cheryl’s account.”

“And the Lionheart Society…”

“Make sure they behave themselves… Don’t let them… cause any trouble while I’m gone… especially Dorothy and Patolize… keep those two pinned down…”

Remedios closed her notebook and nodded.

And right at that moment.

Tap, tap, tap.

From the corridor outside the Lionheart Society’s activity room came a sudden jumble of footsteps, as though a large group of people had arrived all at once.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

“Lionheart Society? Quite an interesting name.”

A slightly languid female voice sounded.

All the color drained from Cheryl’s face.

She knew that voice far too well.

It was Vivian Valentine.

The Family Head had arrived.

—————

Vivian Valentine had just returned from the old chapel with Principal Gehenna and the others.

Contrary to expectations, the victor of Laxia was not standing before the Sacred Blood Grail waiting for her arrival.

Apart from several solemn-faced Blackthorn Guards, the entire old chapel was empty.

Vivian could not help feeling disappointed.

At first, she thought it had ended in the tragedy of mutual destruction.

Throughout the brutal history of the Valentine family, Laxia often ended with the death of one side, but there were also precedents where both participants died inside.

Vivian had even begun considering how she should arrange the funerals for her two daughters.

Yet when she lifted the Sacred Blood Grail that symbolized the family’s curse, she discovered that the crimson liquid which had churned within it for a thousand years was now as clear as freshly melted snow.

There was no curse, no resentment, and even the ancient aura belonging to Mia, Lord of Blood, had somehow vanished completely.

The Sacred Blood Grail at the burial ground where generations of Valentine Family Heads had been interred together had dissolved without leaving so much as a trace. The marks of countless centuries had simply disappeared, as though some domineering existence had washed away both the filth and the history together until nothing remained.

Vivian had absolutely no idea what had happened.

But as an Archdemon, she keenly detected traces of Cheryl’s magical power.

They stretched onward until finally stopping before the doors of the club called the Lionheart Society.

The victor was undoubtedly Cheryl.

Vivian thought this absentmindedly.

As expected, compared to the illegitimate daughter that the Pale Lord had forced her to keep and give birth to, was the pureblood carefully cultivated by the family ultimately the stronger one?

“Who founded this club?” She tilted her head and asked Katerina beside her.

The Vice Principal’s expression was gloomier than her black robes.

Katerina shot her a cold glance and replied in an extremely unfriendly tone.

“Naturally, it was the illegitimate daughter of our great school trustee… Stella Darkfallen.”

“Oh, her.” Vivian nodded thoughtfully, then turned her gaze toward Gehenna on the other side. “Gehenna, how has that child of mine who grew up away from me been performing at school?”

Gehenna fell silent.

For a moment, she had no idea how to answer.

As Principal, a whole series of scenes capable of giving any educator a heart attack flashed through her mind.

Abusing the privileges Mara had given her to swagger around as she pleased, beating Cheryl until she rolled across the ground before everyone’s eyes in the training arena, founding an ambitious radical club, conspiring to overthrow the rule of the Electors, forcibly breaking into the Forbidden Forest and beating the Lord of the Forest who guarded Gehenna’s treasury into severe injury, while also destroying a large amount of public school property along the way.

“She’s doing all right.”

Gehenna gave her assessment without expression.

“All right? So just average?”

Vivian’s brows furrowed almost imperceptibly, and a trace of disappointment flashed through her eyes.

She had still held a sliver of expectation just now.

Since the child carried Vilpana’s blood, surely she ought to have behaved a little more outrageously.

She merely founded a club?

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How boring.

Vivian pushed open the doors of the Lionheart Society.

The candlelight inside was somewhat dim.

The first thing she saw was Cheryl sitting on the floor.

Vivian stepped gracefully over the threshold and walked straight toward her.

“Congratulations, Cheryl.” Vivian looked down at Cheryl from above, her voice carrying the arrogance and approval of a Family Head. “You survived. You have proven to the entire Abyss that you preserved the glory of the legitimate Valentine bloodline. The victory of Laxia belongs to you…”

The eldest daughter who had always been so proud now had disheveled hair and reddened eyes.

She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the velvet sofa.

“No… Mother.”

Cheryl said softly.

“The victor wasn’t me.”

“The true victor… was Stella.”

“Elder Sister specifically challenged Mia, Lord of Blood, within Laxia… To protect me, she stripped me of my right to participate, and all by herself… killed that monster.”

“???”

Vivian Valentine, an Elector who ruled one region of the Abyss, looked as though she had just heard some utterly absurd story. The smile on her face froze.

‘Challenge Mia?’

‘That terrifying, irresistible departed spirit who was like the family’s curse itself?’

‘How was that possible?’

Mia was not merely a departed spirit. She was the embodiment of the entire Corridor of Blood, the nightmare that had haunted the Valentine family for a thousand years.

Whenever she discovered an opportunity to activate Laxia, she would cling to each successive Family Head like a maggot gnawing into bone, coercing them into a deathmatch so she could collect her blood tax.

Vivian understood that sense of helplessness better than anyone. She too had been unable to resist Mia’s will and had been forced to personally drive a dagger into the heart of her younger sister, Xirila.

How could an illegitimate daughter who had never received any systematic training possibly have survived?

Vivian refused to believe such an absurd account.

Her gaze instinctively shifted toward Stella.

Across Stella’s skin, beneath the bewitching crimson patterns and within the thorn-shaped demonic markings pulsing like living things, Vivian clearly sensed the scent of Mia’s essence.

There was no mistaking it.

It was the fruit of victory from Laxia.

How had she done it?

Vivian’s thoughts fell into immense turmoil.

On the sofa, Stella forced herself upright with the armrest.

“So…” Stella panted, taking a step forward. “You’re the one who bound the two of us to Laxia?”

Vivian came back to her senses.

She gazed at the perfect daughter before her, who possessed both Vilpana’s cool aloofness and the Valentine family’s brutality, and a smile once again curved at the corner of her lips.

She nodded gladly and opened her arms.

“Yes, my child.”

Vivian’s voice was filled with aria-like praise.

“You are even more perfect than I imagined. Come, come to me. You may now formally call me…”

Stella said nothing.

She took two steps forward and stopped before Vivian, then she raised her hand.

Sitting on the floor, Cheryl watched with gratification.

Elder Sister was finally going to take the title of heir for herself. Cheryl was happy for her Elder Sister. At least there was still one happy person now…

Smack!

In the next instant, Cheryl heard a loud slap.

She saw Stella’s raised hand come down mercilessly across Vivian’s fair cheek.

The crisp sound of the slap rang out.

The scene inside the Lionheart Society’s activity room seemed to freeze. Everyone present was dumbstruck, stunned, mortified, and utterly speechless.

Katerina watched as the student she hated most slapped the woman she hated most across the face.

The laughter in her heart boiled like scalding water and accidentally steamed its way onto her face.

If not for her position as Vice Principal, she would have wanted to applaud on the spot.

Gehenna covered her face with one hand.

Vivian was the source of her largest sponsorship donation this year, and now that sponsorship had just been slapped hard enough to produce a crisp echo. Gehenna went completely numb, her head filled only with thoughts of the school trustee’s sponsorship money about to fly away.

Cheryl stared with her eyes wide in shock.

Her Elder Sister, Stella, the illegitimate daughter, had actually slapped her own birth mother across the face in front of everyone without the slightest concern for appearances.

Cheryl froze in place, completely at a loss.

The quill in Remedios’ hand slipped to the floor.

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She had read countless face-slapping scenes in books, but she had never witnessed one quite this literal, or quite this loud.

Dorothy blinked.

She looked at Stella, then at Vivian.

Mama hit Mama’s mama.

Did that count as domestic violence?

Click.

The Prophet Weekly reporter who had followed at the very back silently pressed the shutter of her magical camera, relying entirely on the instincts she had honed over years of chasing major stories.

Everyone gradually recovered from the stunned silence.

They looked at one another with awkward expressions, as though each of them had ten thousand thoughts and feelings, yet not a single one could be spoken aloud.

“…”

Vivian fell silent as well.

Her head remained turned slightly to one side, one hand resting against her left cheek.

That slap had not carried much force, yet her cheek still burned painfully.

How many years had it been?

To this day, not a single person had ever dared make such an insolent gesture toward her.

The pain felt unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar.

In a daze, the scene before her seemed to twist.

The pain buried deep within her heart awakened once more.

It was not an intense pain.

It was merely the memory of one.

The person condemning her no longer seemed to be Stella, but her younger sister Xirila, who had once trusted her so deeply.

Xirila had not died beneath her dagger.

Instead, she was standing right before her now, her face covered in tears and disappointment as she slapped her fiercely across the face.

—“Elder Sister, why wouldn’t you resist?”

—“Why did you submit to a departed spirit?”

Right up until the moment of her death, Xirila had trusted her completely.

She had not even raised the slightest will to fight, her heart filled only with thoughts of how the two of them could find a way out together.

And Vivian, in order to survive, had personally snapped that trust in two.

After stepping out of the Corridor of Blood, whenever she remembered that she had killed her younger sister with her own hands, whenever she thought of their past as sisters and all the memories they had shared, an unprecedented sense of dejection, selfishness, and guilt would surge into her heart, filling it with contradiction and pain.

And so, she had begun indulging herself in every possible way.

Vivian stared at Stella, who stood panting heavily before her, and fell into a long silence.

If Xirila had not died beneath her dagger back then…

If Xirila had somehow managed to come out alive…

She probably would have slapped her cowardly Elder Sister just like Stella had, wouldn’t she?

Vivian’s gaze slowly lowered and landed on the side of Stella’s face, now covered in scarlet patterns.

The essence belonging to Mia, Lord of Blood, was being assimilated by Stella.

The departed spirit that had loomed over the Valentine family for a thousand years, the departed spirit that had forced Vivian to kill her own blood relative, had now been completely torn apart by a child.

In a certain sense, this slap had also been delivered on behalf of the powerless person Vivian had been back then, and on behalf of Xirila, who had fallen in a pool of blood.

Stella had not merely won Laxia.

She had even devoured the dealer who had made the rules.

Cheryl was still alive, but that no longer mattered.

Stella had broken the family’s thousand-year curse and stripped Mia, Lord of Blood, of her authority before merging it into herself.

Who else could possibly inherit the Valentine family but her?

Vivian’s gaze passed over Stella’s shoulder and landed on Cheryl behind her.

Mother and daughter’s eyes met in the dim candlelight.

Cheryl met Vivian’s gaze without the slightest trace of unwillingness.

She folded her hands together and lowered her head with utmost obedience.

Using the Valentine family’s oldest rite of submission, she willingly surrendered her position as first heir.

Stella panted heavily.

That slap had almost exhausted the last of her strength.

But Stella was genuinely furious at such vile behavior, treating lives as betting chips and placing family bonds on the gambling table.

Of course, with her current strength, actually beating Vivian up was something she could only fantasize about.

One slap was already her limit.

‘She would definitely retaliate afterward, right?’

‘She might even execute me on the spot?’

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‘Whatever.’

Stella’s vision began to blur.

Drowsiness enveloped her little by little like a curtain, and she could hear the wind spiraling and howling between the crumbling walls.

Just as she was about to pitch forward, a pair of fragrant hands caught her steadily.

Vivian did not become angry.

Nor did she cast any dark magic.

She lowered her head slightly.

One arm wrapped around Stella’s falling shoulders, while the other hand very gently caressed the side of Stella’s face covered in demonic markings.

“Stella Valentine has been confirmed to have defeated Mia, Lord of Blood, during the Laxia Ritual.”

Vivian’s voice echoed through the deathly silent activity room.

“According to the family’s blood laws, she is now…”

“The sole, complete, and unquestionable lawful heir of the Valentine family.”

The instant Stella heard those words, only one enormous question mark remained in her mind.

‘No, seriously, lady.’

‘I literally just slapped you across the face?’

‘Does everyone in the Valentine family have some kind of serious problem?’

‘Mother and daughter are exactly the same.’

‘The more I hit you, the more excited you get, huh?’

‘This godforsaken place…’

‘I can’t stay here for even one more second…’

Just as Stella was blankly thinking this, drowsiness suddenly crashed over her.

The situation took a sharp turn for the worse, like a stage fading from light into darkness.

An angel of the Lord barged into the room from who knew where, wielding a great hammer, and without a word brought it crashing heavily against the back of her head, as though she were about to be plunged straight into the abyss of sleep.

“Congratulations!”

Remedios was the first to bring her hands together.

The crisp sound of applause broke the frozen air.

“Congratulations, Mama!”

Dorothy followed immediately after.

The little succubus clapped her hands excitedly, her eyes sparkling.

“What even is happening every single day…”

Gehenna lowered the hand covering her face and let out a long sigh, which counted as giving this newly minted heir to a school trustee a little respect.

“Tch.”

Katerina clapped with a cold expression.

The sparse yet sincere applause echoed between the dilapidated walls.

Filled with profound doubts about the demons’ mental states, Stella completely lost consciousness and collapsed limply into Vivian’s arms.

Click.

The flash lit up once again.

The reporter looked at the magical photograph in her hands with satisfaction.

In the image, the beautiful Family Head gently cradled the face of the girl covered in demonic markings.

The girl, in turn, leaned dependently into the Family Head’s embrace, her silver-and-scarlet hair falling along the side of her face, making her look peaceful.

There was even an obvious flush across the Family Head’s left cheek.

Without question, it was the most touching reunion between mother and daughter in the Abyss this year.

The reporter swiftly wrote tomorrow’s front-page headline in her notebook.

《Shocking! A Loving Mother and Filial Daughter at Lilith School? Internal Footage from the Valentine Family Leaked! Heir Stella and Family Head Vivian Share an Intimate Interaction!》

Very soon, this photograph overflowing with familial warmth would spread throughout the entire Abyss!

Translator Note

Katerina be like: Damn seeing that slap was so satisfying HAHAHA xD

Meanwhile loli Gehenna: RIP my money…

Anyway…

Volume 2: Apprentice of the Night Queen ends here!

Damn author can’t give a proper volume title. What apprentice, the loli principal didn’t teach Stella anything at all smh