Volume 4, Chapter 3-2 – Poaching Talent

“Come on.” Franleya linked her arm through Stella’s again. “I’ll take you somewhere else. You still haven’t met the most important Faust heir. Besides, if the two of us stand in one place for too long, people will start gossiping.”

Stella was dragged two steps forward, then stopped.

“Wait.” She pressed. “What exactly did you mean when you said we’d have plenty of time in the future?”

Franleya looked back.

Stella noticed that the corners of her lips were still raised, a lingering trace of amusement in her smile.

“Guess?”

Stella couldn’t guess.

But she had a rather bad feeling about it.

Franleya had laughed so happily. She obviously knew something Stella didn’t.

Vivian, as her bargain-bin mother, had definitely hidden something shady from her.

Considering how Vivian had mercilessly thrown her into the Abyss Supremacy Tournament, Stella had more than enough reason to suspect that Vivian had dug a bottomless pit for her and was just waiting for her to stupidly jump into it.

But…

What was she hiding?

It couldn’t be that she’d sold her off, right?

Stella was amused by her own thought.

Impossible.

She was the legitimate heir of the Valentine family now, after all. No matter how inhuman Vivian could be, surely she wouldn’t casually sell the family heir off to someone else.

She was the future of the family.

‘Mm… could it actually be like the Primordial Doctrine said, and she was about to get married?’

‘A marriage alliance?’

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Stella nearly laughed out loud.

Just thinking about it was absurd. At the end of the day, she was a human Saintess. If her identity were ever exposed, wouldn’t the entire Abyss explode?

“Look.”

Franleya leaned close to Stella’s ear and pointed with her free hand toward a group of dragon demons ahead.

“They’re from Samael.”

At their head stood a tall male demon. He wore a suit of dark-gold heavy armor, with thick, vicious dragon horns growing from his forehead. His golden vertical pupils swept across the surroundings, and wherever his gaze fell, the nearby demons unconsciously took several steps back.

“And he is the current Family Head of Samael,” Franleya introduced softly. “He’s also one of our main opponents. The very embodiment of Wrath and Conquest.”

Stella shifted her gaze to the side.

Beside the Samael Family Head stood a blonde girl.

The girl’s clothing was extremely luxurious.

A crystal core from a high-ranking magical beast was set into her collar. Fine dark-gold scales extended across parts of her skin, and a pair of horns that had yet to fully grow protruded from either side of her head. But the most eye-catching thing about her was the pair of bat wings behind her.

Her wings were strange, incomplete to the point that only bare skeletal frames remained. The missing portions of the wing membranes had instead been forcibly filled in with expensive gemstones and colored crystals.

“She’s Veronica.” Franleya said softly. “The heir of Samael. She’s the product of the dragon demons’ pursuit of absolute bloodline purity. I heard most of them chose to reproduce with close relatives for that purpose. As a result, Veronica was born with the purest dragon blood, the most complete inheritance, and the strongest talent.”

“But I’ve heard the price is obvious too. Her mind and thought processes don’t seem entirely normal. Sometimes she’s as innocent as a child, and sometimes she’s as cruel as a beast. She also possesses destructive power that’s difficult to suppress, so she’s rarely allowed outside and seldom attends formal Nexus Council occasions.”

Stella froze.

Veronica.

The Veronica who treated Lavinia like a toy.

She subconsciously took a couple more looks.

Veronica seemed to sense something. She turned her head and met Stella’s gaze.

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Golden vertical pupils.

Golden vertical pupils exactly like Lavinia’s.

“What’s wrong?” Franleya asked.

“Nothing.”

Stella tried hard to make her voice sound normal.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed that Gehenna and Katerina were also standing beside the Samael Family Head.

One tall and one short, neither of them looked particularly pleased.

“They seem to be arguing about something.” Franleya muttered, then pulled Stella a few steps closer. “Come on, let’s get closer and listen.”

“…A Nexus Council Observer and a higher demon. How could she just disappear for no reason?” The Samael Family Head’s voice carried obvious anger.

Gehenna stood in front of him. Although she only came up to his chest, she did not lose out to him in presence at all.

“Perhaps the Bone Dragon did it,” Gehenna explained calmly, neither servile nor overbearing. “After all, we really did receive reports of the Bone Dragon appearing on Nightmare Street recently. And Lavinia just happened to go to Nightmare Street on a mission during that same period. If she encountered a demon guilty of severe crimes, then anything happening would be perfectly reasonable.”

“Reasonable?” The Samael Family Head sneered. “A severely wounded fugitive who escaped from the White Tower could kill three higher demons by herself?”

“The Bone Dragon was once the sharpest sword of your Samael family,” Gehenna replied without yielding. “You should know her strength better than I do.”

The Samael Family Head gave a cold snort.

“Even if she killed them…” He said. “Where are the bodies? The ashes? Something should have been left behind. We can’t find anything.”

“The Abyss is vast. It’s far too easy to make someone disappear without anyone knowing whether they’re alive or dead.” Gehenna answered flawlessly. “What? Are you expecting to find the culprit among us?”

Hearing this, Stella started to feel a little guilty.

Gehenna really wasn’t wrong. The actual culprit was standing only a few meters away.

“Who do you think did it?”

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Franleya casually asked Stella.

“Huh?” Stella swallowed, her eyes wandering. “Right, who could’ve done it? How strange…”

Franleya narrowed her eyes slightly.

As a higher Nightmare who wielded authority over dreams and emotions, her perception of other people’s emotions was extraordinarily acute.

Stella’s brief answer was practically dripping with guilt.

Could the disappearance of the Nexus Council Observer really have something to do with this little succubus?

Franleya secretly glanced at Stella.

‘Later, I’d find a chance to sneak into her dream and take a look.’

The Pale Daughter’s dream.

Just thinking about it sounded interesting.

After all, Nightmares had always fed on nightmares. What they excelled at most was infiltrating other people’s dreams, weaving illusions, creating nightmares, and prying into secrets.

The more terrifying a nightmare was, the more nourishing it was to a Nightmare.

Last time at Cloudtop Manor, she’d simply been careless. If she prepared properly this time, perhaps she could fill her stomach while also seeing a few interesting secrets, then use them to threaten and tease the Pale Lord’s daughter.

“Mm… let’s go look somewhere else.”

Stella felt that she couldn’t stay here any longer.

As the number one culprit who had swallowed Lavinia alive, standing in front of a group of victims and her principal while listening to them reconstruct the case on the spot was simply far too great a test of her nerves.

If she couldn’t afford to provoke them, couldn’t she at least hide from them?

However, Stella had only taken a couple of steps before she was forced to stop.

Someone had grabbed the corner of her dress.

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Stella instinctively assumed it was Franleya.

She sighed and turned around.

“Franleya, stop messing around, we…”

Stella turned back helplessly, already preparing to complain, but her voice immediately shriveled away like a crumpled piece of wastepaper.

Because the person clutching the corner of her black evening dress wasn’t the pink-haired Nightmare Young Miss at all.

It was a blonde girl.

A pair of incomplete bat wings embedded with multicolored crystals were less than half a meter away from Stella.

The heir of Samael, Veronica.

Veronica raised her eyes, her golden vertical pupils staring directly at Stella.

“Hello…” Stella said dryly. “Is there something you need?”

Veronica did not answer.

She simply stood there quietly, clutching the corner of Stella’s dress.

A few seconds later, she coldly uttered a single word.

“Mom.”

Stella: “???”

Translator Note

Another wild daughter appeared! xD