“Since you were little? If you awakened the bloodline of the Greed Demon King since childhood…”
As Ange aimlessly wandered outside the dormitory with Sakika, she kept searching for topics to distract her — and to calm the pounding of her own heart, which felt like a beating drum.
“It’s actually quite unbelievable that Sakika is as poor as I am. I heard that the famous successors of the Greed Demon King in history were all wealthy enough to rival entire nations.”
She tried her best to make her tone sound like casual small talk, even adding a hint of a mentor’s curiosity toward a student, though her mind had long since flown back to the room where a disaster was currently unfolding.
Sakika was momentarily stunned by the abrupt question, her black eyes appearing exceptionally calm under the moonlight.
She seemed to think seriously for a moment before replying in her characteristic flat tone.
“The accumulation of wealth requires capital and opportunity. I am just an orphan, and my initial capital was zero. Moreover, the Power of Mammon leans more toward Equivalent Exchange and Precise Acquisition rather than a Touch of Gold. Of course, even with those two, I cannot achieve much right now.”
“Oh… I see…”
Ange replied absentmindedly, her ears perked up as she tried to catch any unusual sounds coming from the dormitory.
Unfortunately, she heard nothing but the night wind and the chirping of insects.
She pushed through, racking her brain for topics about bloodlines, Demonology, and even academy gossip, forcing Sakika to stay outside for nearly twenty minutes.
Only when she felt that enough time had passed and that staying out any longer would seem suspicious did she use the excuse that “the night weather is nice, and a long walk helps with digestion.”
She hurriedly ended the agonizing nightly tutoring and watched Sakika return to her own room.
After confirming that Sakika had closed the door, Ange let out a long, silent sigh of relief.
She steadied herself, feeling a tragic and uneasy resolve like someone walking onto an execution ground.
She turned, reached out, and pushed open the door to her room.
Then, she froze at the entrance as if under a paralysis spell, her pupils contracting sharply at the sight before her.
If she had only left a single stain on Huayin’s sheets that morning that needed washing, then what Huayin had done to her room now was nothing short of an indiscriminate, devastating strike!
First to catch her eye was a wine bottle shattered into pieces on the floor.
The glass shards were like blooming red flowers, splashed everywhere.
The wine had already seeped into the cracks of the old wooden floor, leaving dark, ugly stains, and the air was thick with the heavy scent of alcohol.
Ange could already visualize her own feet being pierced by shards when she tried to put on her slippers.
But this was merely the appetizer.
Her gaze trembled as it moved toward her desk, the place where she usually piled junk and occasionally — very occasionally — prepared for her classes.
At this moment, the desktop was a complete mess.
Several pitiful books had been swept onto the floor, the pen holder was overturned, and various pens were rolling everywhere.
The surface of the desk clearly held a large wine stain and several eye-catching glass fragments, making it another disaster zone visited by the wine bottle.
‘Is this girl’s destructive power this strong when she’s drunk?! Should I be thankful she didn’t set a fire?’
Ange felt her temples throbbing.
However, when her gaze finally and inevitably fell upon the bed in the center of the room, all her previous shock and headache were instantly replaced by a much stronger emotion — a mixture of absurdity, shame, and disbelief.
Huayin was lying there.
Her fiery red hair was like the dim embers of a fire, spread messily across the pillow.
Her bright and flamboyant face was exceptionally quiet now due to intoxication and fatigue, even carrying a trace of fragile childishness, like an exquisitely made doll that had been discarded.
Her dress was wrinkled, outlining her youthful curves.
But the most glaring sight was what lay beneath her.
The originally plain-colored bedsheets now featured a large, dark, irregular damp patch centered around her body.
It seemed to silently declare that, in her final moments of losing her reason, she had indeed thoroughly replicated Ange’s actions from that morning.
In the air, besides the smell of alcohol, there was a faint, indescribable scent…
The smell rushed into Ange’s nose, making her stomach churn and her mind go blank.
‘She actually… really did it…’
Even though she had been prepared, witnessing this high-impact scene in person made Ange feel as though her worldview had been violently refreshed.
She could not imagine how this noble Eldest Miss, who always prioritized her appearance and etiquette, could do something so… so out of bounds under the influence of alcohol, and then fall into a deep sleep amid such a mess and foul smell.
Shock, helplessness, a hint of amusement, and a deeper layer of guilt triggered by her own responsibility mixed in her heart like a collection of overturned spice bottles.
She stood at the door, staring blankly for a long time. Eventually, all those emotions transformed into a long, heavy sigh.
She wiped her face hard with her hand, as if trying to wipe away all the fatigue and chaos along with it.
It had already happened and could not be undone. In the middle of the night, it was impossible to clean it immediately.
She accepted it.
Ange tiptoed carefully, avoiding the glass shards on the floor as she walked to the bedside.
She looked at the unconscious Huayin with a complicated gaze, then reached out and gently pulled the only pillow that was still relatively clean and had not met a “vile end” from beneath Huayin’s head.
Clutching the surviving pillow, she looked around the messy room and finally chose a relatively clean corner without glass shards.
She tossed the pillow onto the cold floor, collapsed down beside it, and then slowly lay down as if resigning herself to fate.
The sensation of her body touching the hard floor was not comfortable, but compared to the “battlefield” on the bed, this place at least made her feel a little more at ease.
She turned on her side, turning her back to the bed that smelled of wine and bodily fluids. She stretched her body and closed her eyes.
‘Forget it… just sleep…’
‘We’ll talk… tomorrow…’
‘Let that Phoenix Miss handle it herself…’
Fatigue washed over her like a tide, dragging her final bit of consciousness into the deep darkness.