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I gotta hand it to our little acid-tongue… not just anybody can dig out a person’s black history and lay it out so bare for everyone…not anybody at all…

“Weep…”

Ah… she’s crying. She’s burying her head in my chest and bawling her eyes out now… my poor baby.

Just look at what you did, little girl, you made our resident timid girl cry. You went too far.

Seeing her so affected by that verbal lashing, even I panicked a little. I quickly gave her a head pat, then gently comforted her. “Don’t cry… even if you’re useless, your master will never abandon you.”

“Wahh… even master is bullying me now…”

Wait. Why is she crying even harder now? Did I say something wrong?

Upon hearing the word master being uttered from Jezsere’s lips, Aishael’s brows immediately jumped, clearly amazed by the implications of that simple word. No matter how useless Jezsere was, she was still a daughter of Paliseth. Yet here she was addressing me as her master while her mother seemed to have no problem with that at all. This was the stronghold of the Shadowhunters, exactly who had the power to enslave their Matriarch’s daughter here?!

Just like that, there was now a hint of seriousness in that little girl’s eyes. She no longer held that arrogance in her tone as she addressed me. “May I know your name?”

“Me? I’m just a bystander.”

Honestly, I was more intrigued than angry at this little acid tongue. Even though she made Jezsere cry, the sight of a little girl bullying another girl to tears had its own… charms as well.

“A bystander?”

“That’s right, a bystander.” I winked at her. “I have to leave sooner or later after all.”

“Then what is your identity?” Being denied the direct answer she wished for, she furrowed her brows even more. “I mean your identity in this place.”

“That really has no meaning now, it is whatever everyone else wants it to be.”

“Alright, let me ask something else. Are you an Angel?”

“I guess so.” I shrugged. “A fallen one though. So no matter how much you pray to me, it’s not going to work.”

“Why would I even pray in a world where there’s no god.” She was still as cold as before while she said that. But there wasn’t that stinging quality to her words; perhaps it was because she still wasn’t sure how to interact with me.

“Shael, that’s his holiness.” Seeing the two of us in a miniature cold war, Paliseth took the initiative to break the ice for us, summarizing my position in the clan in a few words. “Sir Mo Ke is the child of the goddess, Lolthe.”

She then gave me a fervent look, one which I couldn’t be sure if it was even real. However, that simple bit of explanation was a like revelation for the little acid tongue, as if she had unlocked the very secrets of my existence.

The child of Lolthe! It was only then that the others living here understood how revered my position was in the clan. I was basically the master of the entire clan. As long as I willed it, I could command anyone to die with a single word.

Even Aishael was a little affected by the gravity of the situation now, but she still maintained that frigid coolness. “Your holiness… what is an important figure like yourself doing here?”

As expected, the truth of my identity did affect her treatment of me. She treated me with the utmost respect. Even if her face was still that same ice block, it was a fact that she hadn’t whipped out the acid yet. Furthermore, I could see that sense of deliberation behind her words, like she wanted to make sure her words weren’t going to offend me.

Even so, I had a feeling that there was a different reason why she was so affected by my identity.

“Because I wanted to.”

Now that we were on the topic of my visit, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about this whole situation. At the end of the day, Aisha’s death had a lot to do with me. At least that was how I genuinely felt.

I wasn’t hiding it or anything, but humans enjoyed a wide berth of leeway from me. In all likelihood, because I was once one of them. That was also why I still couldn’t sign on fully to the whole Apocalypse and end of the world setting. I did not want to invade the Western Human Realms. But if I didn’t, I would be the one to be killed instead… and my safety came first. Having secured that, I would find some way to spare the humans. My only concern at that time would be if I suddenly forgot my principles in the heat of the moment.

Either way… if saving the world wasn’t possible, I could still save people, right?

That was the burden I bore right now. And that was the lens through which I saw Aisha and her daughter. The burden of the Apocalypse was the proverbial sword of damocles over my throat. It weighed on my heart and I couldn’t tell anyone about it either, so when I saw Aisha just die like that during my first return to the Western Human Realms, it was no longer a simple death. It was a herald of what was to come. What were if the Three Hells won? Would the humans all end up like Aisha? What about Nicole? And Roscar?

These were all questions I did not have to ask myself back when I was in Purgatory. Everyone there was a creature of Purgatory so they naturally wouldn’t understand how I felt. In fact, I could easily numb myself to the nagging voice in my head while there. Now that I was here however… everything came swarming to the forefront with that one single death.

This suffocating pressure was mine to bear alone, but I needed some way to cope as well. That was why I had this frivolous attitude right now; it was how I pushed aside all the uncomfortable questions I had piled up.

The fate of an entire race really shouldn’t be decided by the hands of just one Devil… at least not me anyway.

“Well, that’s a reason.”

“Yes, it is…” I wasn’t sure how to explain away the attitude I had now, so I quickly tossed a look at Paliseth. Given how observant that old hag was, she probably already saw my predicament.

As expected, she quickly picked up on the hint and came up with a cover-up. “Shael. Actually we came here because…”

“Because of my mother?” Aishael interrupted her before she could fully explain herself. “Other than my mother, I can’t think of any other reason as to why such a strange group would come before me.”

I had to say, this little acid tongue had some wits about her.

Seeing us fall silent, she continued with her deductions. “My mother left for the colosseum two days ago, so according to the rules, she has to stay there for at least seven days. Of course, there’s always that off-chance that a male Dark Elf would come challenge her, but what are the odds…”

Because of the increasing number of slave gladiators in the colosseum, the Dark Elves came up with the Slave Chasm to accommodate them. At the same time, they had the Half-Elves sent off to this new area to guard the slaves. A classical case of killing two birds with one stone. After all, if you couldn’t see those mongrels, did they actually exist?

The colosseum had its own share of rooms used to accommodate the slave gladiators that were up for selection. When it was the slave’s turn to be sent to the colosseum, they would be placed in these single rooms. For one week, they would be available for challenge. After that, the next round of slaves would replace them.

In actuality, there were also slaves who were permanently stationed in these rooms, but these slaves were the exceptions. Solar-sama used to be such a slave… probably because every Elf wanted a piece of that action…

The size of a clan’s slave stock was actually a show of strength as well. A very important one, in fact. The thirteen clans would sometimes have a slave exchange. Strong slaves were basically breeding stock to be exchanged, barring slaves like Solar-sama, of course -that kind… you kept locked up like your prized possession.

“Is she… dead?” Came Aishael’s cold voice.

“…” How should I answer that… directly or perhaps in a roundabout fashion.

“Shael, I need you to be calm…”

“I am very calm.” Aishael narrowed her eyes at Paliseth. Like she said, she was the picture of calmness right now, or rather, coldness. “So she’s dead then.”

From the look on our faces and our deafening silence, there was no doubt that she was dead. That was why she did not bother waiting for us to answer before asking, “and the body?”

The body!

I paused for a second then quickly looked at Paliseth. “The body?”

“It has been retrieved… it can be laid to rest at any time…” Paliseth nodded towards me awkwardly then turned back to face Aishael. “I intend to have your mother buried beside Lewell… your father… do you wish to pay her your last respects?”

“Who was it?”

Who? I guess she means who killed her mother.

“It was Sarkath… don’t worry, he’s dead by my hands.”

The moment Paliseth said Sarkath, I swore I could see an aura of iciness burst out from her little body. But that was quickly snuffed out when Paliseth mentioned how he died.

This display actually wasn’t my imagination at all. It was a typical sign that a Magister had lost control of his or her emotions. That aura was a mix of uncontrolled mana and Fighter’s Aura combined. That bone-chilling coldness was the result of the two energies colliding with each other, and was also a sign that she was of the ice element.

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If you liked my work translating Devil’s Evolution Catalog, feel free to check out Song of Adolescence. Also, every comment is appreciated even though I might not reply. I do read them.