Volume 1, Chapter 62 – Lionheart Society

Inside the Spiritual Flogging Club’s lounge, Stella lay limp on the velvet sofa, staring blankly up at the ceiling. For a moment, she had no idea how she was supposed to react to the club presentation she had just given.

She had to admit that just now, she really had gotten… a little carried away.

Fine, she could remove the words ‘a little.’

“AAAAAAAH—!!”

“…What the hell did I just say?”

Stella covered her face as the impassioned lines from her speech uncontrollably looped through her mind.

—“It is precisely their decadence that has kept us trapped in the Land of Eternal Night to this day.”

—“We need a ruler… a new Queen of Eternal Night!”

—“Our deeds will surely be remembered for generations to come!”

Stella wished she could grab her own tongue by the throat like a chameleon’s long tongue and yank every word she had just said straight back out.

She had to admit that she had completely lost control just now. The more she spoke, the more carried away she became.

And this really could not be blamed entirely on her.

She had only wanted to bluff her way through things with these succubi and somehow smooth over that lethal question about why the demons had lost.

At first, she had only planned to ramble a little, say a few things that suited the mood, borrow some criticisms from human scholars, and muddle her way through the club presentation.

Granted, she was at least a failed Saintess candidate of the Holy See. Preaching to believers was an instinct engraved into her very bones, but demons obviously were not included among them.

But… why?

Why was it that the moment she stepped onto that platform and saw the lost lambs below gazing at her with eyes yearning for guidance, her occupational habit became impossible to suppress?

Once the atmosphere built up and her blood began to heat, that switch inside her just snapped on.

She did not even need to think. Those inflammatory turns of phrase automatically arranged and combined themselves into the most impassioned manifesto possible.

Reаԁ оn КаtReаⅾіոɡСafe

And the result was…

She got too immersed in the act and screwed herself over.

Wonderful. Her already mountain-high record of sins had just gained another particularly striking entry.

She, an undercover Saintess dispatched by the human Holy See, a fake succubus who only wanted to scrape by and coast through life, had not only incited the succubi to unleash their true natures, but had also openly attacked the most powerful Electors in the Demon Realm, calling them out by name and declaring that they were a bunch of hopeless pests. She had even made a grand declaration concerning the throne of the Queen of Eternal Night.

‘May the Lord have mercy on my soul.’

The corners of Stella’s mouth twitched several times.

The more she thought back on it now, the more wrong it felt.

What school club presentation?

That had clearly been a declaration of war against the Electors. She might as well have written ‘Demon Realm radical’ across her forehead.

And right now, she was also the Valentine family’s bargain-bin ‘illegitimate daughter.’

An illegitimate daughter openly condemning her own ‘main family’ for its decadence while shouting about choosing a new ruler…

‘I am so dead.’

‘…No, this is fine!’

Stella forced herself to calm down.

If everything she had experienced lately had given her anything besides a face that never changed no matter what happened, it was an excellent mentality. A mentality tempered by suppressing pain over long periods and enduring whatever came her way.

Maybe the succubi outside had simply treated everything she said as hot air.

After all, everyone had only come for the excitement. Who would actually believe that kind of pretty rhetoric?

As long as she refused to acknowledge it afterward, then it was merely exaggerated rhetoric, artistic embellishment, a stage performance!

Rеaⅾ οո ΚаtRеaԁіngСаfе

As long as she was not embarrassed, the ones who would be embarrassed were…

Bang!

Before Stella had any time to hypnotize herself or distance herself from the whole thing, the lounge door was violently shoved open.

Patolize squeezed her way inside unsteadily while carrying a mountain-high stack of documents that nearly blocked her entire field of vision.

“A tremendous success, a tremendous success, President!”

“What is that?”

Stella’s right eyelid twitched.

She had a bad feeling.

“Club applications!”

Patolize dropped them directly onto the coffee table.

“Within ten minutes of the presentation ending, we received fifty applications to join the club. There are even quite a few upperclassmen who want to quit their current clubs and join ours!”

“Everyone is talking about your speech, President. They said you ignited the fire in their hearts, that you are the only morning star in the Demon Realm’s endless night. There was even a succubus freshman who wanted to write down your entire presentation and archive it—”

“Stop! Enough!”

Stella’s scalp was going numb from listening.

She really could not take this anymore.

Did these succubi think she was not heretical enough already and intend to roast her over a fire?

‘Please, could they develop even the slightest ability to distinguish right from wrong and stop actually believing all the nonsense I had been feeding them!’

“Please review them, President.”

Reαⅾ оո KаtReαԁiոɡСаfе

Patolize respectfully pushed the club seal and the thick stack of application forms in front of Stella.

Stella’s vision nearly went black.

She genuinely wanted to dissolve the club on the spot.

“Although this was only an initial screening, every one of these applicants is among the elite of their respective years. Everyone is asking when the Spiritual Flogging Club’s first club activity will begin…”

As Patolize spoke, she seemed to notice something. Her brows furrowed slightly as she fell into thought.

“Based on the philosophy you just presented, President, I feel that Spiritual Flogging Club no longer seems suitable as our club’s name.”

“Should we consider changing it?”

“Whatever.” Stella answered numbly as she flipped through the application forms.

One of them belonged to a succubus freshman named Dorothy.

The handwriting was neat, yet the strokes had bitten deeply into the paper. It was obvious just how excited the writer had been at the time.

The name, age, and class listed at the beginning were all perfectly normal. Even her hobby was art.

Until Stella’s gaze moved downward and landed on the section marked 【Reason for Applying】.

There, written crookedly in thick, bold ink, was a large line of words——【Make the Demon Race Great Again!】

‘Make… Make the Demon Race Great Again?’

Stella’s movements froze for a moment.

“During your presentation, President, you mentioned that we are lions, a group of lions bound by shackles, lions that are noble and proud animals…”

Patolize pondered it for a moment before seriously analyzing.

“And ours is a club that releases the hearts of lions.”

Reаⅾ оn KаtRеαⅾіոɡСаfе

“Why don’t we rename ourselves the Lionheart Society?”

Truthfully, Stella’s head was currently filled entirely with thoughts of how to dissolve the club. She had absolutely no mood to think about anything else.

She was so tired.

Truly.

Compared with the mountain of messes she was dealing with right now, what the club was called really did not matter.

But since she had already boarded this pirate ship, jumping overboard now would only get her drowned.

So all she could do was grit her teeth and keep acting for now.

Then find some way to dissolve the club outright.

Expressionlessly, Stella raised the seal in her hand and brought it down heavily onto the application form bearing the words “Make the Demon Race Great Again.”

Bang!

Bright red seal ink spread across the paper.

“Not a bad name,” Stella heard herself say. “Lionheart Society it is.”

‘You bastards have really screwed me over.’

Translator Note

AHAHAHA she is so screwed xD