Volume 1, Chapter 76 – Holy Light Eruption

“Remedios!”

Stella shouted her name.

Remedios did not respond from inside the tree cage. Layer upon layer of thorns coiled around her like pythons, the barbed vines piercing deep into the girl’s slender limbs.

All Stella could hear were the muffled groans escaping her by instinct.

Stella did not know what horrifying change had taken place outside during the few minutes she had spent inside the cavern, but the scene before her was already enough to explain everything.

Remedios, who had always calculated everything without error and remained elegant and composed, had now completely become food for a magical beast.

Principal Gehenna’s guardian of the secret treasure clearly wasn’t there just for show.

The demonic vines pulsed as though breathing. A ghostly blue radiance of magical power visible to the naked eye flowed continuously along the patterns of the thorns, being drawn from Remedios’s body before finally converging upon the Lord of the Forest’s flower bud.

As a Saintess, even though Stella wasn’t skilled at combat, she was particularly sensitive to the draining of life force.

If this intense extraction of magical power continued, sooner or later Remedios would be reduced to a dried-out empty shell.

Stella knew that, when all was said and done, the scene before her was her fault.

Remedios had never needed to take this risk, yet she had agreed without hesitation.

No matter how she looked at it, Stella knew she owed her a huge favor.

Even if she couldn’t defeat the Lord of the Forest, at the very least she had to find some way to rescue Remedios.

Squish, squish.

The Lord of the Forest’s enormous scarlet flower bud had completely locked onto Stella. As though deliberately trying to lure her in, it raised Remedios even higher.

This made it seem nothing like the magically corrupted slime Remedios had described earlier, something that acted purely on instinct.

“Stella… watch out for the vines… don’t, come over…”

“Don’t let them bind you… don’t breathe in the powdery mist…”

Perhaps faintly hearing Stella’s call through her haze, Remedios opened her eyes and weakly warned her.

The Lord of the Forest seemed to grow annoyed with its prey for talking too much. Several vines abruptly tightened, and the warning Remedios had been trying to give instantly turned into a string of distressing, muffled sounds beneath their constriction.

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“Mm, ah!”

“Stop… let go…”

“Mmphghghghmm——!!!”

The pink haze around them spread completely through the air, and Stella immediately held her breath.

Once she inhaled too many sleep spores, she would quickly weaken and collapse, becoming food for the Lord of the Forest.

‘What should I do?’

Stella stared at the tree cage and began thinking.

She did not have many methods available to her right now. She still had no idea how to use the changes she had obtained inside the cavern. The only thing she could rely on was Valentine’s bloodflame.

There was no time to hesitate.

Stella understood that her situation was not hopeless. Whether she could succeed or not still depended on her own efforts.

In any case, there was still hope. Hope lay in herself, not in someone else.

Stella gritted her teeth and tore open a wound. In an instant, blood gushed out like a spring.

Stella clearly heard it rushing forth before it transformed into scorching blood-colored flames that surged into the sky, instantly devouring the tentacles attacking her.

Wherever the bloodflame passed, even the black demonic vines as tough as iron emitted piercing sizzling sounds and curled inward like lingering snow beneath the blazing sun.

It worked!

Stella’s heart leapt with joy.

The Lord of the Forest roared. Abyssal plants were naturally countered by bloodflame.

After suffering such a heavy blow, the tree cage in midair began trembling violently, and the thorns wrapped around Remedios were forced to loosen their grip.

Now!

Stella couldn’t even be bothered to complain about why the Valentine family’s method of fighting was so brutish.

She tore open another wound. The bloodflame transformed into a sharp blade and precisely severed the main vine suspending the tree cage.

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The tree cage collapsed apart, and the deathly pale Remedios fell free.

But the heavy impact of hitting the ground left her already weakened consciousness even hazier.

“Thank goodness…” Stella murmured.

Sure enough, even something created by Principal Gehenna, before the “glory” of Valentine it still…

No!

Stella suddenly noticed the ground beneath her trembling, a terrifying disturbance spreading outward.

Before she could react, the thick layer of fallen leaves beneath her feet flew into the air as countless demonic vines that had been lying dormant underground suddenly awakened.

They were the main vines, thicker and longer than those above.

“What…!?”

Almost in an instant, the main vines accurately wrapped around Stella’s ankle, followed by her waist, her arms, and finally her neck.

“Mmph… ngh!!”

Stella cried out in alarm as her entire body was violently yanked upward, directly facing the Lord of the Forest’s flower bud glowing with a dim red light. Like a cicada caught in a spiderweb, she was imprisoned inside a new tree cage.

The vines tightened, their barbs tearing through her robe.

The Lord of the Forest’s strength was astonishing. Stella had just tried to activate her bloodflame again, but she couldn’t even tear open another wound to summon it.

Now she was completely screwed.

Stella struggled with all her strength.

The feeling that everything was about to end was far more terrifying than actually having it end.

‘What should I do? What should I do?’

Stella desperately searched for a solution. She couldn’t stop thinking now. What would happen if she stopped thinking?

She didn’t know. She only knew that something greater than fear and deeper than despair would quietly begin spreading through her heart. She had to fill her head with thoughts and force that thing back down.

She had to find a way to break free, but she couldn’t use bloodflame, and she didn’t know how to use what she’d obtained inside the cavern either.

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‘Break free… break free…’

A thought erupted like lightning, and a certain Holy Art suddenly surfaced in Stella’s mind.

‘Holy Light Eruption!’

A Holy Art that instantly released accumulated Holy Light in the form of an explosion, indiscriminately shattering every target around the caster.

Even while restrained, it could be forcibly activated.

The only problems were the dizziness that might come from weakness and the fact that Remedios would very likely witness her using Holy Light.

…Still better than dying here.

Stella closed her eyes. She stopped paying attention to everything in the outside world and focused all of her attention on the sacred mark on her left hand, synchronizing with it wholeheartedly.

“May the Lord have mercy.”

She began chanting the incantation.

There was a kind of power that came from the deepest reaches of the heart.

It originated from the deepest part of one’s emotions, a place no outsider could touch.

It was faith, and it was perseverance. It was not constrained by religion or morality.

Unceasing and undisturbed, it gradually surged higher within her chest, an irresistible energy so overwhelming it was suffocating.

Because it was connected to her ideals.

“Ste… Stella…”

Remedios struggled to lift her heavy eyelids. Through her blurred vision, she saw Stella being hoisted high into the air by that hideous magical beast.

She stretched out her hand, trying to trace the most basic explosive spell through empty space, hoping to win Stella even the slightest chance of survival.

But her body was already completely empty.

The magical circuits drained by the Lord of the Forest were not merely dried up. Waves of stabbing pain came from the strain of having been pushed far beyond their limits.

Remedios couldn’t even utter a complete incantation. She could only collapse heavily back into the cold pile of fallen leaves, her consciousness gradually fading.

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“May the Lord have mercy.”

The second chant.

The divine power of the Sanctity of the Heart and the abyssal magical power of the Eye of the Black Mass had originally been two completely unrelated parallel lines. Yet as they moved alongside each other, their directions changed and they intersected. A subtle sensation began sparking little by little inside Stella’s heart, delicate and soft, carrying the clean sweetness of melted sugar.

Stella’s lips moved. Just before the vines could completely strangle her into unconsciousness, she spoke one final time, her voice firm and calm.

“May the Lord have mercy.”

The instant the third incantation fell, Stella abruptly opened her eyes.

——Holy Light Eruption.

Hazy colors gradually spread within her eyes. Specks of dazzling radiance began to rise, and amid that oppressive, painful darkness, a sea of pallid light suddenly bloomed like brilliance piercing through the night.

“Stel… la?”

Remedios stared blankly at the figure blossoming at the center of the surging light.

That figure spread her arms wide and forcibly shattered layer upon layer of restraints.

That figure stood within the halo, the abyss’s sole streak of pallor.

That figure remained only as a silhouette amid the broken demonic vines falling like rain.

At the final edge of consciousness, Remedios remembered that prophecy.

——At the end of Eternal Night, the Pale Daughter who burns with a blood-red shadow shall become a solar crown.

Translator Note

Stella the Pale Daughter! xD