Volume 1, Chapter 74 – No Overtime Tonight?

Remedios really was dependable.

Thinking back on everything, Stella realized that if she ignored the little problems between her and Remedios caused by their differences in race and values, Remedios really was quite a good friend.

Whether it was the breadth of her academic knowledge or her decisiveness in taking action, she was outstanding in every respect.

Without Remedios, Stella probably wouldn’t even have made it to the outskirts of the Blasphemous Forbidden Forest, much less swaggered into Principal Gehenna’s private treasury like she was doing now.

Thinking about it carefully, Remedios seemed to have always helped her far more than Stella had ever helped Remedios.

As the saying went, friendship went both ways, and the feelings one invested should be mutual as well.

To Stella, friends were people who helped one another in times of danger and respected each other’s beliefs and ideals…

Mm, correction.

Considering her current mission as a spy, Remedios still couldn’t completely count as her friend.

In any case, constantly taking from someone without giving anything in return inevitably made Stella feel a little embarrassed.

If Remedios really asked something of her in the future, Stella genuinely would have a hard time refusing.

Provided it wasn’t anything too excessive. Stella still had her own limits when it came to this relationship.

Good sisters, for life.

“…Uhh.”

For some reason, a faint, peculiar sting ran across Stella’s cheek before vanishing in an instant.

Maybe it was static electricity.

Stella let out a long breath and focused her gaze inside the cavern.

Hundreds upon thousands of ghostly blue candles floated in midair. The space inside the cavern was far larger than it had appeared from outside. Gehenna seemed to have hollowed out the mountain with an undetectable extension charm to make room for her collection.

It could absolutely be called a private museum.

The steep rock walls surrounding the chamber had been carved directly into floor-to-ceiling stone bookshelves that extended dozens of meters upward, disappearing into the shadows of the vaulted ceiling.

The shelves were crammed with books, scrolls, and all manner of strange and unusual magical implements.

Stella saw a fairy imprisoned inside a crystal jar angrily pounding on the glass, an unattended quill automatically writing across a long sheet of parchment, and a pair of ancient knightly swords challenging each other as though they possessed minds of their own.

The corners were piled high with mountains of miscellaneous objects.

Dragon scales, the withered horn of a unicorn, and even a gigantic treasure chest that was currently snoring.

An Archdemon who had lived for a thousand years really did have a ridiculous number of rare treasures piled up.

Stella thought about it.

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No wonder Gehenna had placed her treasury deep inside the forbidden forest. If a succubus like Remedios caught sight of the things hidden in here, she would definitely rack her brains scouting out the place and find some way to swipe a few things to take home.

With Remedios’ personality, she absolutely would, unless she’d already suffered some serious consequences from trying before.

‘Heh heh heh, Principal.’

‘The ghost student you fear is about to steal your treasure.’

Stella had originally wanted to wander around a little longer and admire Gehenna’s collection, but considering Remedios was outside buying her time, she went straight to the point.

It wasn’t particularly difficult to find.

Stella felt that Gehenna hadn’t deliberately hidden it. Perhaps she’d been too busy with work, or perhaps she trusted the Lord of the Forest to give any intruder a brutal lesson. Whatever the reason, Stella easily found her target right in the center of the stone chamber.

It was an isolated stone pedestal naturally formed from pure black obsidian, shaped like a half-enclosed container and standing utterly still.

And within it, an eyeball quietly floated.

Its entire surface was pallid white, but deep within its pupil was sealed a wisp of ember that would never be extinguished.

The Eye of the Black Mass.

Stella had found her target.

It was just that, for the moment, she couldn’t simply take it.

“There’s only one? Then where’s the other one?”

Stella tentatively reached out. Her hand touched a pale blue barrier, and immediately afterward, a line of faintly glowing text appeared before her.

【Quod est summum bonum?】

Stella had seen symbols like these in Ancient Demonic Inscription Analysis and Archaeological Study of Ruins.

Translated, it meant, “What is the supreme good?”

Or, to put it more plainly, “What is the greatest happiness?”

“An arcane lock?”

Stella froze for a moment.

It was an extremely ancient encryption method that required her to speak the preset passphrase before it could be unlocked.

Generally speaking, humans rarely used this kind of encryption method. After all, people seldom forgot something as important as the password to their own treasury. Only long-lived races used them frequently.

After all, they could live for way, way, way, way too long.

This was troublesome.

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Remedios might have helped her get here, but this was still the Principal’s private treasury. A password like this would definitely only be known by Gehenna herself.

Stella folded her arms and sank into thought.

‘What is the greatest happiness?’

If it were an ordinary high-ranking demon, perhaps the answer would be power, eternal life, or chaos.

But what about Principal Gehenna?

How would she answer?

Stella recalled the scenes she’d occasionally glimpsed in the principal’s office.

In Stella’s eyes, the little Principal spent every day buried beneath mountains of documents, lifelessly reviewing all kinds of materials and reports, occasionally having to deal with problem students like Stella who kept causing trouble.

The dark circles under her eyes were heavier than her eyeshadow, and she drank coffee like water…

A flash of inspiration struck Stella.

She cleared her throat and tentatively said,

“…No overtime tonight?”

Ding!

The barrier vanished.

‘Huh…? I actually guessed right?’

The corner of Stella’s mouth couldn’t help twitching.

‘Seriously?’

‘Was that really appropriate?’

The private treasury of the principal of one of the Demon Realm’s highest institutions of learning had a barrier whose password was actually such a miserable little wish?!

“Principal, just how hard is your life normally…”

Stella sighed helplessly.

She reached out and, with nothing left obstructing her, touched the black domain and grasped the floating pallid eyeball.

‘Hehe, got it.’

Stella brightened with delight. The trouble caused by the Sanctity of the Heart inside her was finally about to come to an end. She would no longer have to worry about all the abyssal magical power in her body being purified away by the Sanctity of the Heart, causing her to completely revert to her original state.

Except…

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Only now did Stella remember something.

Crap, she forgot to ask Remedios.

How exactly was she supposed to use the Eye of the Black Mass?

Was she supposed to swallow it directly? Or did she have to gouge out her own eye and replace it with this one?

The latter was way too hardcore. She couldn’t endure that kind of pain.

‘Hm?’

‘What’s wrong with the Sanctity of the Heart?’

Stella noticed her left hand beginning to glow. The cross-shaped sacred mark flickered faintly beneath her skin, and the Sanctity of the Heart, now lacking anything to suppress it, was beginning to stir restlessly.

She was still wondering about it when a delirious murmur suddenly rang out inside her mind without warning.

“——At last, a sacrifice, a vessel, a breeding ground.”

“After so many centuries of imprisonment… At last, fresh flesh has been offered to me once again. My subordinates truly haven’t forgotten me.”

‘Who…’

‘Who is speaking…?’

Stella’s hand trembled, nearly causing her to throw the eyeball away.

Before Stella could recover from her shock, the Eye of the Black Mass instantly locked eyes with her. The ember deep within its pupil flared to life, and invisible tentacles carrying a soul-seizing presence erupted from it in an instant, surging into Stella’s eyes along with all of its extraordinary abyssal magical power.

“There is no need for confusion, scion of Valentine.”

The voice of the Eye of the Black Mass was filled with arrogance and ecstasy.

As a remnant soul of the Pale Lord, it could sense the Valentine blood flowing through the body of the succubus before it. Though she couldn’t compare to the Pale Lord’s own offspring, she could still be considered an almost perfect vessel and starting point.

As long as it seized her body, even if it could only attach itself to her, it would be able to return to the world and gather itself together once more.

“Open your heart and offer up your shell! I am the Pale Lord, I am the truth of…”

It had only gotten halfway through its words.

Szzzzzt—!!!

The Eye of the Black Mass seemed to have crashed into something scorching hot. Inside the girl’s body, it was as though a blazing sun hung high at the center of the world, with sacred light spread across every inch of the land. Beneath that radiance, there was nowhere for it to hide, as though everything illuminated by the light would itself be transformed into light.

Scalding, suffocating, searing, unbearably oppressive. It was enough to make its remnant soul tremble until it nearly burst apart.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!?!”

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Its majestic voice instantly turned into an incomparably shrill scream.

The Eye of the Black Mass desperately tried to retract its tentacles, desperate to flee from this walking humanoid incinerator.

Although it possessed abyssal magical power that couldn’t be underestimated, its consciousness was still only a remnant soul and retained only a tiny portion of its memories. It was incapable of truly fighting against this.

But it was too late.

The Sanctity of the Heart clung to it like an ulcer eating into the bone, surging backward along the tentacles and charging directly into the eyeball itself, eager to pick a fight with something that was merely one fragment of a remnant soul.

Confusion, anxiety, fear, all of it dissolved into nothing within the light.

The only things the Eye of the Black Mass could perceive were itself, its opponent, and the battle. Gradually, even its consciousness began to drift farther and farther away, blazing hot and moving at tremendous speed, breaking into a realm deeper than instinct.

The Sanctity of the Heart was getting completely fired up too.

All Stella could feel was the magical power and Holy Light inside her smashing into one another and circulating through her blood. Brilliant sunshine and torrential rain. Two utterly incompatible armies crashing head-on into each other across a narrow battlefield.

Stella had already gone through something like this once before.

Out of habit, she followed the same method she’d used last time, carefully protecting her fragile heart, internal organs, and brain, once again forming a white barrier around them.

“What is this?!”

“Light?! Why would a demon like you have Holy Light of such purity inside?!”

“Who… Who sent you?”

“No, if it were the other one…”

“Let me out! I don’t want to possess you anymore—!”

Pop.

A faint sound of something rupturing rang out, and every voice came to an abrupt stop.

The world fell silent.

Translator Note

RIP Pale Lord.

Also, that ‘No overtime tonight’ password had me… HAHAHAHA XD