Volume 1, Chapter 52 – My Dear— Elder Sister

The instant the blood touched the Eye of the Abyss, an unexpected change occurred.

Stella was startled to discover that the eye, which had previously been giving off a faint purple glow, had begun to tremble.

She could clearly sense the Holy Light hidden within her blood treating everything powered by Abyssal magical power as filth and attempting to purify it, while the medicinal effects of the Valentine elixir desperately exerted themselves in an attempt to assimilate the Holy Light.

Even with Vice Principal Mara’s medicine and Stella’s own willpower holding everything together, the Holy Light and magical power within her body had only barely achieved a delicate balance.

Just like the warning written in blood on the title page of the ancient alchemical code, The Fragments of Hermes:

Never place the purest dawn and the darkest night within the same cauldron, unless you wish to glimpse within it the nonexistent thirteenth hour.

The moment they left the buffer provided by her physical body, that balance would immediately collapse.

Since ancient times, supernatural creatures had possessed special abilities, while demons wielded magic and humans could only take faith as their shield and forge virtue into a blade. Yet according to the laws of magic, two forces so utterly opposed had never been compatible.

It was like grinding a unicorn’s horn into powder and scattering it into highly corrosive basilisk venom. The two would not neutralize each other. They would only produce some unknown substance born from chaos.

The so-called bloodflame she had used before was precisely the result of those two forces twisting and merging together. Once those opposing powers escaped her control and restraint, there could only be one final result.

Ignition, followed by an explosion.

If that was how it worked…

Stella froze.

A terrible premonition suddenly came over her, and a faint trace of worry crept into her heart.

‘Didn’t that make me a walking sack of explosives?’

‘If the balance collapses, I will explode?’

A chill ran through Stella.

‘No, now is not the time to worry about something like that.’

‘The bloodline examination still isn’t over.’

‘Heaven only knew what the result would be.’

Stella lowered her eyelids.

During the brief moment she had been distracted, the Eye of the Abyss seemed to undergo another change.

A tiny spot, almost too small to notice, appeared on its crystal shell as cracks began spreading outward. It trembled faster and faster, more and more violently. As the two extremes of Holy Light and magical power drew ever closer, dry cracking sounds began to come from it.

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Yet it continued to operate.

Human?

Not human.

What human blood could burn through the cornea of the Abyss while carrying such an obvious mark of the Valentine family?

Succubus?

Not a succubus.

What succubus could have a sun hidden within her blood, one where even the slightest opening would be enough to purify every trace of desire?

It was both polar night and daylight.

Both deadly poison and antidote.

The Eye of the Abyss was confused.

Bewildered.

It searched through tens of thousands of years of racial records, attempting to place a label on the existence before it, only to discover that every established framework failed before this single drop of blood.

Since the existing genealogy could not define it…

Then it could only trace it back to an even older source.

Crack.

The first obvious fissure appeared across the crystal surface.

“Don’t tell me…” Stella murmured.

She had a sense of déjà vu.

She had experienced this exact same thing at the entrance ceremony.

And there, she had successfully used Holy Light to wreck one of the school’s centuries-old antiques, the Mirror of Desire.

The corner of Stella’s mouth twitched.

She knew what was about to happen next.

If she didn’t have to pay for it, then it could explode all it wanted.

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But if they made her pay…

Before Stella could calculate how much this antique would cost, the Eye of the Abyss finally reached its limit.

With a crisp shattering sound, the Eye of the Abyss cracked apart.

Above a cloud of shattered crystal dust, several lines of blood-red ancient Demon Realm script shakily appeared, as though the Eye of the Abyss had exhausted everything it had just to barely reach this conclusion.

♥════════♥

♡ Bloodline Origin Traced to Valentine.

♡ Rank Determination: Daywalker.

♡ Purity: Unknown.

♥════════♥

“Ancient script?”

“The bloodline is exactly as I suspected, but Daywalker…” Mara murmured to herself. “I’ve never heard of this rank designation at all. It seems the Valentine family has some secrets of its own.”

As for Gehenna…

Although she still maintained the posture of propping her chin up with one hand, the expression on her face had clearly turned ugly.

It exploded again.

She blew up the Mirror of Desire during enrollment, and now she had blown up the demonic eye during her physical examination.

But none of that was the main issue.

The real issue was that rank designation.

Daywalker.

Gehenna clutched her head and let out a sigh longer and more exhausted than any she had given before.

“The Abyssal Eye exploded… I have to write a decommissioning report for this too… and apply for a separate budget… The accountant in Finance is going to lecture me for another half hour…”

“And she’s an SSS+ Valentine… a Daywalker…”

“I still have to send an official letter to the Valentine family. Sooner or later, someone from their family is going to come to the school and make a fuss… Hell knows what those succubus nobles are going to do… Every last day of my upcoming vacation is going to be ruined…”

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Gehenna raised her head, her pale golden eyes staring directly at Stella.

“You… really are… nothing but trouble.”

Stella’s expression didn’t look much better.

It was over.

This time, she genuinely couldn’t afford to pay for it.

And what did the words written by the Eye of the Abyss at the end even mean? She couldn’t understand them at all…

Just then, a faint movement came from the sickbed.

Cheryl woke up.

Her eyelashes trembled. She pushed herself upright and studied Stella before speaking.

“Date of birth.”

“…Huh? What?”

Stella stopped what she was doing and stared at her in confusion.

“Your date of birth.” Cheryl repeated herself.

“???”

Stella warily took half a step back.

‘What is she trying to do?’

Some kind of instant-death curse that required a person’s true name and birth date to activate?

Cheryl really was up to no good. Fortunately, Stella was using a fake name, and even information like her birthday was encrypted in the Holy See’s records.

Stella narrowed her eyes slightly.

She absolutely could not give the date according to the Holy Calendar.

But if she simply made one up, it would also be troublesome if she accidentally picked some special day of mourning in the Demon Realm.

She lowered her eyes, her thoughts drifting back to the countryside convent.

She remembered that the old nun had found her sometime in the middle of November.

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Back then, the bells for evening prayer at the convent were always accompanied by frost coating the window lattice. The potatoes in the cellar froze as hard as stones, and even throwing two extra handfuls of firewood into the stove couldn’t cook them soft in the stew.

Converting the Holy Calendar into the Demon Realm’s calendar…

It was a little troublesome, but hardly enough to stump her.

“Demon Calendar, year 1543. Frostfall Month, fourteenth day.” Stella answered without really knowing why it mattered.

Cheryl gave a soft snort, then murmured to herself.

“So… I’m the younger sister…”

“????”

Stella only had even more questions.

‘What the hell… are these succubi even talking about?!’

Cheryl laughed contemptuously.

She had happened to hear everything Mara and Gehenna had said.

Blood ties truly were a frightening thing.

No matter how far apart they were, no matter how different the environments in which they had grown up, they could still sense the kinship of shared blood. It was something that could never be severed, no matter what.

‘Now, how should I treat you after being trampled and defeated by you?’

‘My dear… elder sister.’

‘Stella Valentine.’

Translator Note

I knew it. The secret wouldn’t be revealed to us that fast. So the item just detected a false alarm again… the mix of Valentine blood and Holy Light…

And… that last one sounds like a yandere xD