Volume 1, Chapter 77 – Now Both Parents Are Accounted For

The tide of light receded.

Just as dazzling as it had been at the instant of its eruption, its disappearance was like a fleeting flame streaking across the horizon. All the Abyssal vegetation within dozens of meters turned to drifting ash in an instant.

Stella dropped from midair.

“…Pale Holy Light?”

She stared blankly at her own hand.

In the Holy See’s scriptures, Holy Light symbolized the sun and life. It was an absolute warm color, a gentle radiance capable of melting accumulated snow.

But the Holy Light that had erupted just now had clearly carried the deathly stillness of all things withering away, cold enough to pierce the bones.

‘Why exactly was that?’

‘Forget it. Now isn’t the time to dwell on something like this.’

Stella forcibly endured the dizziness brought on by casting the spell and struggled to her feet, narrowing her eyes as she examined the Lord of the Forest.

The Lord of the Forest, which had been at the very center of the tide of light, looked incomparably miserable at this moment.

Huge swaths of its iron-tough demonic vines had snapped apart, while more than half of its slime body had been purified. Everywhere she looked, the ground was littered with withered vines and remains.

Yet the Lord of the Forest was still writhing like some beast crouched low against the ground. Whenever the cold wind swept across it, it let out a mournful howl, making it all the more horrifying.

“One Holy Light Eruption still wasn’t enough to kill it? The monster Principal Gehenna made is way too ridiculous,” Stella muttered. “Do I really have to use Holy Light Eruption again?”

Perhaps the anemia caused by excessive use of bloodflame had already weakened her, because the aftereffects of Holy Light Eruption finally began to show themselves as well.

In an instant, she didn’t want to move. It wasn’t just her body that refused to move. Even her brain seemed unwilling to work, as though she had suddenly fallen into a dizzy, empty abyss.

‘Tch…’

Staying alive came first. She had to use Holy Light Eruption one more time and finish it off in a single blow. She couldn’t afford to care about anything else anymore.

The instant Stella stood up, the Lord of the Forest suddenly froze.

Through her hazy vision, she noticed that the strange scarlet patterns within the Lord of the Forest’s flower bud seemed to be gradually dimming and fading away. Along with them vanished the hostility that had once made cold sweat break out all over Stella.

Upon seeing the silver-haired girl right before it, the Lord of the Forest seemed as though it had just awakened from a nightmare. It trembled instinctively, all of its earlier cunning and viciousness vanishing without a trace.

“Guu…?”

Stella heard a whimper almost like that of a young animal.

Then, right before her eyes, this enormous Abyssal monster suddenly behaved like a stray dog whose backside had been scalded, scrambling and tumbling as it retracted every one of its severed tentacles.

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It didn’t even care about its injuries. Its enormous body writhed desperately across the ground, moving at the fastest speed it had ever achieved in its life before plunging headfirst into the darkness deep within the Blasphemous Forbidden Forest.

Accompanied by a thunderous succession of collapsing trees, the Lord of the Forest fled in utter panic, leaving behind nothing but devastation and scorched earth still smoking black.

“Phew… It ran… ran away?”

“That’s fine too.”

Stella’s body swayed, and the world before her eyes seemed to spin.

Holy Light Eruption was powerful, but its side effects weren’t small either.

Having her Holy Light drained dry in an instant felt like staying awake for three straight days and then going out to run a marathon.

This was killing her.

“…I almost collapsed right there.”

Stella bit her pink lip, forcing a trace of clarity back into her mind.

She couldn’t sleep.

At least, not yet.

“Right, where’s Remedios?!”

Stella no longer cared about the world spinning from her dizziness and stumbled toward the spot where the tree cage had collapsed.

Among the chaotic heap of broken branches and withered leaves, Stella finally found her.

Remedios looked utterly wretched. Her face was pale, her uniform and robe had been torn to shreds by the thorns, wounds covered her body, and bruises left by constricting vines still remained around her neck.

“Hey… Remedios?”

Stella reached toward the girl’s nose. Only after feeling warm breath against her fingers did she finally sigh in relief.

There were no fatal external injuries. Her vital signs were weak, but very stable.

Although the amount of magical power that had been drained from her was enormous, for a demon, as long as the source itself wasn’t damaged, it wasn’t a major problem.

“Good. It’s just deep sleep caused by severe magical power exhaustion and mental shock.”

Stella withdrew her hand and tidied Remedios’s disheveled bangs.

“Some rest, or replenishing a little magical power, should be enough for her to recover.”

Seeing Remedios in such a miserable state, Stella let out a soft sigh.

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Although she had no idea what exactly Remedios had witnessed just now, there was no question that Stella owed her a huge favor now.

“Phew… Anyway, I’ll sit down for two minutes and recover some strength first.”

Without caring about her image in the slightest, Stella plopped straight down onto the ash-covered ground and was just about to relax.

Clap, clap, clap.

Applause suddenly rang out without warning.

“Who’s there?!”

Stella raised her eyes and looked over.

The applause and footsteps slowly drew closer.

Amid the smoke and dust that had yet to disperse, Stella saw a tall figure walking out at an unhurried pace.

She wore a meticulously tailored professor’s robe. Her slightly brownish-black hair fluttered gently in the night breeze, while the seven rings on her fingers glimmered faintly in the darkness.

Mara Nightsong.

“Excellent. This pale light is indisputable proof that you are my Lord’s descendant.”

Mara stopped applauding and tilted her head slightly.

“As expected, I wasn’t mistaken about you.”

“Stella Darkfallen, our Young Mistress.”

“Young… Mistress?”

Stella blinked in confusion.

What nonsense was Mara talking about?

“Professor, your joke isn’t funny at all.” Stella shrank backward. “If you’re going to expel me because I trespassed into the forbidden forest, just say so. There’s no need to humiliate me with some strange form of address.”

“Humiliate you? Oh, no, no, no. This is no humiliation. It is the highest honor.”

Mara chuckled softly.

“Stella, do you really think it was that simple for you to be evaluated as having SSS+ talent during your entrance test? Have you never wondered why you, and only you, were SSS+?”

‘Of course it’s because I blew up the Mirror of Desire with Holy Light…’

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Stella silently grumbled.

“Stella,” Mara said unhurriedly, “from the moment you stepped through Gehenna’s gates, I noticed you. Because you resemble my Lord far too closely.”

“At first, I only had my suspicions, but your SSS+ talent destined you to be extraordinary.”

Mara stepped across the dead branches and fallen leaves littering the ground, drawing closer to Stella.

“So I granted you privileges. I let you move into the best single dormitory room and gave you private guidance. Even when the eldest daughter of the Valentine family questioned you in class, I never doubted you. Although at first you behaved quite ordinarily, or rather… a little nervous? I continued observing you from the shadows and gave you the greatest possible leniency.”

“I wanted to see whether you truly carried that great one’s bloodline and what kind of opportunity would finally cause you to awaken.”

“…”

At this moment, Stella had no idea what to say anymore.

Her head felt even dizzier.

So the reason she had caused such huge messes at Lilith School yet never been expelled was because Mara had been running some kind of long-term cultivation observation project on her?

“Until eventually, I could no longer wait, so I prepared an awakening pool specifically for you.”

A sharp gleam flashed through Mara’s eyes.

“That dosage was enough to drug a Titan demon unconscious. Any demon who entered it, even a pureblood demon like Cheryl, would undoubtedly have died on the spot.”

“And only you… Not only did you emerge completely unharmed, you even caused all the magical liquid in the awakening pool to boil for you, and you awakened the power belonging to the Valentine family.”

“At that moment, I knew you could never be ordinary.”

Stella was completely dumbfounded.

No wonder she had nearly died in the awakening pool.

She had always thought it was because the rejection between Holy Light and magical power had been too violent. Turns out this crazy woman Mara had dumped in a full-on lethal dose of drugs?!

“The bloodline rank of the Daywalker further proved that point.”

Mara stopped in place, her tone becoming utterly certain.

“Of course, the final piece of the puzzle was tonight. I deliberately hinted that you should come searching for the Eye of the Black Mass.”

“I even risked exposing the identity I have kept hidden from Gehenna for all these years to charm the Lord of the Forest, all so that you could perceive your true self, so that my Lord could personally possess you, and even so that you could be driven into a desperate situation to verify the purity of your bloodline.”

“What a sacred fusion that would have been… Your body, Master’s soul, the two becoming one and reforging our former glory.”

“Though… that little Book Demon’s trick was rather cute, so I played along and let her pass.”

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Mara glanced at Remedios before pointing toward the devastation caused by Holy Light Eruption.

“And you, as expected, did not disappoint me.”

If that was the case, Mara’s absurd degree of indulgence and preferential treatment toward her, even the blatant hint outside the principal’s office, could indeed all be explained.

Stella thought it over.

So the Lord of the Forest had deliberately allowed her inside, while what happened to Remedios had obviously been an action Mara ordered the Lord of the Forest to take in order to eliminate outside interference. The Lord of the Forest’s later attack on Stella had also been part of those orders.

Everything had been done entirely to verify the “purity” Mara spoke of…

She really was a crazy woman.

As for the master Mara kept talking about.

It seemed Stella’s Holy Light had purified her so thoroughly that not even a hair remained.

This misunderstanding… seemed to have gotten absurdly huge?

She really was a pureblood human Saintess, as pure as anyone could possibly be!

“Blood shadow as the guide, pale light as the end.”

Mara suddenly spread her arms wide.

“The evidence is conclusive. There is no longer any need for doubt. Stella Darkfallen, you are the only direct bloodline that great one left behind in this world!”

“The unquestionable Young Mistress we Ash Drinkers have sought for so long!”

Stella: “???”

The second week of her career as a spy.

Saintess Stella von Einzbern had finally acquired a complete set of family in the Demon Realm.

Translator Note

HAHAHAHAHA a complete set of family xD