Volume 1, Chapter 44 – Day of Rest

Day of Rest.

The final day of the Destruction Calendar, a day when all things returned to silence and awaited rebirth.

But at Lilith Academy, there had never been a moment of peace. Only clamor was worthy of the demons born here.

Obscene dances, unclean feasts, homosexuality, vengeance, the slaughter of sacrifices, and blasphemy against God. These were the so-called Six Commandments of demons.

Cheryl Valentine sat silently before the mirror in the lounge.

A maid knelt on the floor, holding the formal dress that had been passed down through the family.

As the first heir of the Valentine family, Cheryl had to maintain her arrogance and nobility at all times. Flaunting violence and wealth had always been the glory and pride of the Demon Realm.

Cheryl reached out and stroked the satin.

Valentine.

In the Demon Realm, this surname was far more than a mere designation. It represented the seat of one of the Seven Abyssal Electors, an authority capable of influencing the succession of the Queen of Eternal Night.

Since ancient times, the women of the Valentine family had been renowned for their madness and brutality.

They did not engage in production, nor did they concern themselves with politics. They neither feared savagery nor respected it. They knew only how to use the most primitive violence to measure their territory and weed out the weak.

Her mother was like that, and so was her grandmother.

The current family head, who was also Cheryl’s mother, was an outright lunatic.

Even now, many years later, Cheryl could still remember that distant afternoon when her mother had brought her along to watch humans wail amid a sea of flames.

Cheryl stood up, and the maids immediately stepped forward to dress her in silence.

As the eldest daughter of the family head, Cheryl’s birth was the product of a union blessed by the Abyss and Eternal Night, the culmination of a marriage between two ancient bloodlines.

Rеαԁ on ΚαtRеаⅾіngСаfe

Noble, and unique.

But that did not mean she was the family head’s only Valentine offspring.

The family head had so many affairs outside the family that even the family historians could not be bothered to record them all. Most of those children were products of lust and deception, with muddied blood flowing through their veins, scattered ignobly throughout every corner of the Demon Realm.

Cheryl had never taken any of them seriously.

Lowly demons, nothing more.

In the entire family, bloodline was everything.

So-called illegitimate daughters were nothing more than rats in the gutter, utterly unworthy of bearing the Valentine surname. They deserved only to cling to life in the darkness.

If any of them dared appear beneath the sunlight, Cheryl would not even need to lift a finger. The family’s cleansers would turn them into fertilizer for the garden.

Of course…

Cheryl fastened the final button at her collar and looked at herself in the mirror.

There was something faintly humiliating about becoming the first heir.

It was beneath the nobility of an enlightened one.

No one was her predecessor, and no one would be her successor.

She stood alone, towering like a mountain, unprecedented and never to be repeated.

There was no possibility that any illegitimate daughter could ever become her opponent.

Of course, unless there happened to be an illegitimate child whose bloodline was purer than hers, whose power was even more brutal than hers, and whose talent completely surpassed even that of the legitimate heir.

But a moment’s thought was enough to know that such a thing was absolutely impossible.

Rеad οn КatRеαdiոɡСаfе

If such an existence really did appear…

Cheryl looked at herself in the mirror, the corners of her lips rising slightly.

The entire Valentine family would erupt with excitement.

Those elders who feared nothing more than a peaceful world, along with that lunatic mother of hers, would definitely throw a grand banquet in delight, then toss a knife into the middle of the table and watch the sisters slaughter one another until whichever one survived became the new monster.

A bloody struggle over inheritance rights was the Valentine family’s favorite form of entertainment.

Unfortunately, there was no such possibility.

Cheryl knew very well that she was the strongest of this generation, beyond dispute.

She even found it somewhat regrettable.

How boring it was to be invincible. She longed to be bitten and torn apart. She longed to be scorched by stronger flames. She longed to prove, in the depths of despair, that she alone was the one and only.

“Young Lady, it’s time.”

An attendant’s voice came from outside the door.

Cheryl drew back her thoughts and made one final adjustment to her hair.

“Let’s go.”

She pushed open the door.

The passageway stretched long before her, dazzling white light shining from its far end.

Beyond it lay the training arena.

Reаⅾ оո KаtRеαdiոɡСаfe

A tremendous roar of cheers crashed toward her like a tsunami.

Countless succubi were screaming and howling. They yearned for blood. They yearned to see the noble fall into the dust, or to see the challenger torn to pieces.

Cheryl stepped out of the passageway. Her gaze swept past the boiling crowd and landed precisely on the opposite end of the ring.

Someone stood there.

Stella Darkfallen.

The silver-haired girl stood quietly at the boundary between shadow and light. She wore her signature black gothic dress, its hem swaying gently in the wind like a black lily.

She did not look at the cheering crowd. She did not look at the professors seated on the raised platform. She did not even look at the opponent she was about to face.

She merely lowered her head, seemingly adjusting her cuff, or perhaps simply staring absentmindedly at some point beneath her feet.

An utterly unconcerned attitude, a kind of cold indifference that treated everything around her as though it did not exist.

It was arrogance practically carved into her bones, the lofty bearing of someone looking down upon all living beings.

Cheryl’s breathing stopped for an instant.

Yes.

Exactly like this.

That attitude of holding everything beneath contempt heated the blood in her veins far more than any provocation ever could.

No fear, no attempts to curry favor, not even the slightest concern for the slaughter that was about to begin.

The cheers around them suddenly seemed noisy and superfluous. The shrieking of those common, gaudy women was practically a desecration of this duel.

Only Stella was quiet.

Rеаⅾ οո КatReаԁiոɡСafе

Only she was special.

Only someone like her was worthy of being broken by Cheryl’s own hands…

Her gaze sharpened. Cheryl keenly caught sight of a certain detail.

At the ends of Stella’s silver hair, which flowed like moonlight, the originally pure color seemed to have been corroded by something, stained with a trace of crimson so faint, yet so piercingly conspicuous.

‘That red…’

It was exactly the same color as her own hair.

‘An illusion?’

Cheryl did not think too deeply about it. The blood in her body was already beginning to boil in anticipation of the coming slaughter, leaving her no attention to spare for such trivial details.

She stared at that stretch of pale neck, suddenly wanting very badly to bite something apart.

Something hard, perhaps a bone.

Or a windpipe.

All it would take was one gentle bite.

“Stella Darkfallen…”

Cheryl stepped forward.

“Let’s begin.”