Volume 1, Chapter 73 – Lord of the Forest

A person’s brain was like an empty little attic. One should selectively furnish it with certain things. Only an idiot would cram every piece of junk and rubbish they came across into it all at once, then try to piece it all together.

Sometimes, Stella really wanted to crawl into Remedios’ head and rummage through it herself to see exactly what scraps and odds and ends were stuffed inside.

Otherwise, as a normal person, she truly could not understand what kind of thought process succubi had.

Her life was really too difficult.

“We’re here,” Remedios said softly. “According to the map, the Lord of the Forest should be here, and the Eye of the Black Mass you’re looking for should also be somewhere around here.”

She pushed aside the final layer of thorns ahead, and the view suddenly opened up. A cloyingly sweet scent rushed toward them.

“Hold your breath, Stella,” Remedios warned. “Up ahead is Principal Gehenna’s creation… the Lord of the Forest.”

Stella followed Remedios’s gaze.

Before a cavern in the mountains, illuminated by the flickering fluorescence of glowing plants, Stella saw a tree…

No. It was not a tree.

It was a mountain of flesh formed from countless vines, slime, and branches tangled together.

A gigantic translucent slime enveloped black demon vines, slowly pulsing like a heart. Several petals dotted the wet black branches, and at the very center, an enormous flower bud lay closed in slumber, with an ominous red glow faintly visible within.

The Lord of the Forest slept before the cavern.

“So that’s… the Lord of the Forest.” Stella swallowed.

Was this the kind of thing Principal Gehenna normally tinkered with?

Looking at the monster large enough to fill half the valley, Stella remembered that Principal Gehenna had lived for nearly a thousand years and was still only around one hundred and forty centimeters tall. An extremely inappropriate thought suddenly popped into her mind.

A creation on this scale…

Just how much psychological pressure did the Principal usually suffer to make something this enormous to compensate for her height?

‘Small body, huge ambitions,’ Stella thought.

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‘Mm…’

Her habit of thinking nonsense whenever she got nervous was acting up again.

“Are you ready?” Remedios interrupted Stella’s thoughts. “According to the plan, I’ll use Pseudo-Soul to overwrite its cognition and make it temporarily mistake me for Principal Gehenna. While that lasts, you can enter the cavern without worrying.”

“Mm… are you sure this will be okay?”

Stella was a little worried about Remedios.

It was not that she did not trust Remedios’ abilities. The Lord of the Forest simply looked beyond the difficulty she had expected.

At first, she had assumed it would be nothing more than a large slime at most.

But now that she was looking at it…

The Lord of the Forest was not an ordinary monster at all. It was a freak created by Principal Gehenna using demonized slime technology.

The sea of vines dancing through the sky would become a gallows for any infiltrator, to say nothing of the ring of highly concentrated sleep spores surrounding it.

Remedios’ Pseudo-Soul might be exquisite, but trying to pull off a cognitive substitution in front of a monster capable of instantly draining an intruder’s magical power and dragging them into an eternal dream was far too extreme.

If the frequency of Pseudo-Soul deviated even slightly, or if the enormous flower bud noticed something wrong in advance…

Stella could already picture the elegant Miss Book Demon being wrapped up like a rice dumpling by the vines, tossed into the slime’s mucus, then slowly drained of magical power.

‘…It ate people, right?’

“Don’t underestimate my mastery of incantations, Stella.” Remedios wagged a finger. “Wisdom and genius are the forces that drive the world forward, not the so-called brute strength of monsters. No matter how powerful the Lord of the Forest is, it’s still nothing more than a monster without much intelligence.”

“And I’m not trying to overwrite its recognition of Principal Gehenna’s orders. I’m merely making it mistake me for her. There’s no real risk.”

“Trust me. Everything is under control.”

‘Alright…’

Since Remedios had put it that way, Stella did not intend to say anything more.

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If Remedios herself was that confident, what objection could Stella possibly have?

“Cognitive Overwrite, Magical Power Mimicry · Gehenna.”

Remedios stepped forward, and purple ghostly light instantly flashed across her fingernails.

The instant the incantation was spoken, the atmosphere around them changed.

An ancient pressure erupted around Remedios. Although it was only a simulated magical power frequency, it was enough to deceive creatures that did not possess true brains.

For Remedios, as long as she had made sufficient preparations, there was no predicament too great for her to handle.

“…”

Stella watched as the wildly thrashing black demon vines circled around Remedios, cold sweat breaking out across her skin.

She kept feeling as though the Lord of the Forest’s flower bud was staring directly at her.

…It hadn’t failed, had it?

“Done.” Remedios proudly puffed out her chest.

The enormous writhing mountain of flesh paused for a moment, and the wildly thrashing black demon vines completely settled down.

Then the gigantic translucent slime even voluntarily withdrew to both sides, revealing the cavern entrance that had previously been sealed tight.

Even the flower bud radiating ominous red light lowered itself slightly, assuming a posture of submission.

It worked.

Remedios smiled confidently.

Maintaining such high-level mimicry consumed an enormous amount of mental strength, and fine beads of sweat had already appeared on her forehead. Yet as she watched the colossal creature obediently lower its head, the sense of accomplishment that came from crushing it with sheer intelligence filled her with incomparable pleasure.

“Go, Stella.” Remedios did not look back, maintaining her casting gesture. “The path is open for you. You should have around fifteen minutes.”

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She glanced behind herself from the corner of her eye.

Stella nodded without the slightest hesitation, strode forward, and walked straight into the cavern, leaving Remedios alone before the writhing mountain of flesh.

Stella’s figure had only just disappeared into the darkness when, before Remedios could even let out a sigh of relief…

Squelch.

A wet, sticky thud echoed through the forest.

The Lord of the Forest, which had just been submissive, suddenly began to move strangely. The black demon vines hanging down to the ground surged violently.

Remedios stopped smiling, sweat running down her face.

‘What is going on?’

Her Pseudo-Soul was clearly still functioning. It was still continuously telling the Lord of the Forest that she was Gehenna.

By all logic, the Lord of the Forest should have submitted to her.

But now, why had the Lord of the Forest ignored Gehenna’s pressure and become more active than ever the instant Stella entered the cavern?

Layer upon layer of fleshy petals curled outward, revealing dazzling scarlet patterns within. An ominously glowing hypnotic pattern pointed directly at Remedios’s position.

The flower bud bloomed.

Sleep spores began spreading through the air, filling the surroundings with pink mist.

The vines and spores dancing throughout the sky had already revealed the monster’s hunger for her magical power.

‘Wrong.’

‘Wrong…’

‘Something is wrong.’

Principal Gehenna had already controlled the Lord of the Forest through seduction. Her plan of imitating Gehenna’s magical power frequency could not possibly have gone wrong.

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Like a bolt of lightning flashing through her mind, a conjecture suddenly emerged in Remedios’s thoughts.

‘…Hm?’

‘Wait!?’

‘Wasn’t the Lord of the Forest’s master supposed to be the Principal?’

‘Could someone have overridden Principal Gehenna’s seduction?’

An Archdemon.

Only an Archdemon exceptionally skilled in seduction could do that…

But… if that was the case, why had the Lord of the Forest allowed Stella to enter?

Remedios no longer had time to think.

A shadow descended and engulfed her.

Translator Note

Could it be… Vice Principal Mara?

It’s so strange that she deliberately gave Stella a clue…

More importantly, Principal’s height is only 140cm, with age almost 1000 years old…

Loli baba!