Survival Guide After Accidentally Kissing a Demon - Chapter 330

Chapter 330

Black snow lay beneath her feet, while swirling nebulae and a melting moon formed a wondrous night sky overhead.

Black snowflakes drifted down from above.

Beili had the Morpho Butterflies conjure a leaning tree in front of her, with a flower-adorned swing hanging from one of its slanted branches.

Then she replaced the black snow on the ground with pale blue tulips and misty purple flowers.

Whenever the swing swept past, the flowers released golden fireflies.

She could change the scenery in the Dream Domain however she pleased, and she could even conjure small animals. It only cost her a little Mana.

That amount of Mana was negligible to her now.

…

Beili had no idea how long she had been swinging in the Dream Domain when she heard someone approaching through the snow.

As the figure drew closer, the crunch of footsteps on snow softened into the faint rustle of someone walking through flowers.

The person appeared behind the swing and gently took hold of her hand.

Beili tilted her head slightly and saw his pale, slender fingers.

Her lashes stilled.

“I don’t think I…”

She swallowed the words “conjured you.”

Saying that would reveal that the thought had, in fact, crossed her mind.

She had considered conjuring a boy identical to Ashera in the Dream Domain.

He could stand behind her and push the swing, keep her company, indulge her every whim, and never go mad.

How wonderful would that be?

The only drawback was that he would have no feelings.

Beili blinked her red eyes, and the words on the tip of her tongue became something else.

“I don’t think I invited you here.”

Only after the words left her mouth did she realize how emotionless she sounded, her tone as hard as stone.

A trace of confusion surfaced in her immediately afterward.

She had essentially pushed him away.

She wasn’t sure what would happen after saying something like that.

…Rather than confusion, it was closer to regret.

“You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

The boy didn’t seem to mind. He explained softly, then gave the swing a push.

It began to sway gently.

Beili sat on the swing.

The boy’s hands only touched hers whenever he pushed it.

They were ice-cold.

Beili parted her lips, wanting to say something else to him, but she was still angry about what he had done.

Even if the consequences had already been undone.

Perhaps the boy felt the same way about her.

Their resentment was like the thorns of a bramble, still lodged in their flesh, never truly gone.

Their relationship should stop where it was. It shouldn’t progress any further.

That was what Beili told herself.

So, after sitting quietly on the swing for a while, she closed the Dream Domain.

She withdrew from the Dream Domain and woke on the bed.

The boy lying beside her had turned back into the man with Black Goat Horns.

The man held her within the circle of his arms and lowered his head to ask, “After seeing him, do you still think of me?”

…

The room was utterly silent.

The house conjured from Mana kept the howling blizzard outside from reaching them.

The faint glow of the broken Fluorite Lamp fell across the man’s eyes.

He seemed a little sad.

No, more than a little. Sorrow was already spilling from his voice and his gaze.

It was like a slender crescent moon shattered into pieces and dissolved into the night.

Beili suddenly remembered the displeased look on his face when she had summoned him at the end of the Dream Cage.

Ashera cared.

He must have seen her spending time with his other form.

That was why he cared. That was why he was angry.

Beili sensed his sorrow, but her anger made her deliberately ignore it.

“Yes. The moment he appeared, I forgot all about you.”

Beili blinked her red eyes and said coldly, “Besides, you’re asking the wrong person.”

“Don’t worry. The person you love hasn’t suffered through everything I have, and she won’t have my feelings either.”

As she spoke, his lowered golden eyes darkened, and the curve of his lips deepened.

“She’ll never know which of you I loved more, either. Once I’m dead, you’ll be able to start over and-”

She had no idea which part of that had enraged him, but before Beili could finish, a pale, icy hand seized her face and cold lips crushed down on hers.

Sharp teeth sank viciously into her lips.

Beili let out a muffled cry of pain and instantly activated Beast Transformation, desperate to get as far away from him as possible.

But less than a second after she transformed, icy fingertips pinned her wings to the bed.

The next moment, she was forced back into human form against her will.

The silver-haired, golden-eyed man extended his blackened hands and pressed down on her shoulders.

His golden eyes stared down at her.

His long, straight silver hair spilled over his shoulders, the ends falling against her neck as though they had been soaked in icy water.

The cold pierced straight to the bone.

Beili tried to activate Beast Transformation again, only to discover that she had lost control over her form.

A second later, ribbons formed from dense black mist wrapped around her wrists.

“What are you trying to-mmph!”
The ribbons of black mist covered her mouth as well.

Fire blazed in Beili’s crimson eyes as she glared at him.

Then the black ribbons covered her eyes too.

Layer after layer.

The weight above her bore down heavily, trapping her within the circle of his arms.

Beili thrashed and cried out through her gag.

The black ribbons only bound her tighter.

Sharp, vicious teeth suddenly sank into her shoulder, then her arm and the side of her waist.

They continued moving lower.

“Mmph!”

Beili was furious now. She wanted to fight Ashera to the death.

Dense black mist lifted her by the waist.

She was flipped over, and her face, tense with resistance, was buried in the fluffy white covers.

Her long, silver-gray curls spilled across her back like silk, gathering around her shoulders.

A sharp pain pierced her ankle, then her calf.

Beili tried to kick him, but a cold hand clamped around her ankle.

Her black nightgown was pushed up.

The stabbing pain shifted to the back of her knee.

Something icy slid gently behind her, stroking her over and over, radiating a frigid chill.

At last, it forced its way inside.

A shudder like an electric current shot chaotically through her mind.

It was like lightning tracing a serpentine silver edge across a vast bank of storm clouds.

Beili’s shoulders trembled, and a muffled cry escaped her.

But at that moment, she wanted to kill Ashera.

She wanted to kill Ashera.

The instant the thought surfaced, it consumed her mind.

Its intensity drowned out the endless shudders wracking her senses.

Pride, greed, desire, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth cycled through her thoughts. In the end, only one remained: wrath.

She nearly lost all reason.

A vast swarm of Morpho Butterflies appeared around her. Their wings had turned entirely black, reflecting opulent edges of light like black diamonds whenever they fluttered.

They packed the room.

They tangled and fought with the flowing black ribbons drifting through the air.

The sounds of shattering, tearing, and collapse rang out from every corner of the room.

The walls seemed to crack apart. She heard a raging gale howl, yet felt no wind against her skin, as though a shield covered her body.

Her consciousness moved with the Morpho Butterflies as they battled the ribbons swirling through the air.

…

A long time later.

All the black Morpho Butterflies in the room had been wiped out.

A huge portion of her Mana vanished in an instant.

The hundred dark creatures that had been thrown into her Mana Pool like swelling bombs had exhausted all their Mana in the battle.

Beili suddenly felt the weight on her disappear.

At some point, the man behind her had released her.

The restraints around her body came undone, and the black ribbons covering her eyes dispersed as well.

Beili spun around, seized his throat viciously, and used all her strength to pin him to the bed.

Her long, sharp black nails dug into the pale skin of his neck.

“Little Butterfly.”

Ashera called to her, an untimely note of amusement in his voice.

The sound briefly pulled her back to herself.

She looked at her hand and saw that it had turned black without her noticing.

An irregular border ran from the web between her thumb and forefinger to her wrist, as if she wore half of a black glove molded tightly to her bones.

Thick black mist poured from between her fingers.

It condensed into black rain and dripped onto the fluffy white covers, staining a large patch black with a corrosive hiss.

The gloom had vanished from Ashera’s face.

In its place was a tender yet overwhelming love.

As though anything she did right now would be justified.

Even killing him.

Beili breathed heavily as she gradually returned to her senses.

Did she want to kill Ashera?

No. She didn’t.

Why would she kill him…?

Reason pulled her back from the brink of rage.

Ashera had only mistaken her for someone else. He had placed the love he felt for that person onto her.

This was not something that required anyone’s death to resolve.

When her gaze met the man’s besotted golden eyes, Beili faltered.

She withdrew her hand from his throat and sat back weakly on her heels atop the bed.

“Does it hurt?” she asked in a muffled voice.

Her dark crimson gaze swept around the room. The house was perfectly intact, and every piece of furniture remained exactly where it had been.

Even the cup she had casually left on the armrest of the chaise longue had not fallen to the floor.

“What just happened?”

Beili felt dazed.

Had the battle between her and Ashera never happened?

It was as though part of her memory had been erased because her human body could not contain it, leaving behind nothing but a lingering sensation.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

The man answered her, but only her previous question.

Beili looked down at him. Blood was seeping from the wounds on the side of his neck, staining the covers such a deep red that it was almost black.

Her fingertips twitched. She instinctively wanted to heal him with magic, but quickly remembered that he was a Demon.
And then there was the strained relationship between them now.

The thought circled through her mind, then vanished.

A cold hand gently smoothed out her slightly disheveled black nightgown, then brushed over the bite marks on her body.

She couldn’t tell whether he was distressed by them or savoring the memory.

“Little Butterfly, I want to hold you.”

As the words left his lips, the man reached out and pulled her into his arms.

By the time Beili came back to her senses, her face was already pressed against his broad chest, her cheek resting lightly against his collarbone.

She wanted to push him away, but she couldn’t seem to muster any strength.

Ashera raised a hand and cupped the back of her head.

They held each other in silence.

“I don’t want you to hold me.”

That was all Beili could say. The moment the words left her mouth, a mist clouded her vision, and traitorous tears began to spill warmly down her cheeks.

Ashera tightened his arms around her.

Stroking her head soothingly, he said without the slightest concern, “I know you don’t.”

“Even though I don’t know how to wake her up…”

Beili’s voice was icy. “Even if there is a way, I won’t sacrifice myself to give the two of you what you want.”

“I know you won’t. And you don’t have to.”

Ashera’s voice was low and gentle.

“I’ll never become her. Not in this lifetime.”

“All right. You won’t.”

“…”

Ashera had never been this patient before.

Yet somehow, that only made Beili sadder.

She liked Ashera.

But by the time she realized she liked him, she had also discovered that the person Ashera truly loved was someone else.

His fondness for her, his help, his tolerance, and every intimate gesture had all been because of another person.

That was the true source of her anger.

Suddenly, she understood Doctor Cassius.

She understood why, when she had opened the lid of Doctor Cassius’s coffin, he had said she shouldn’t have awakened him. Why he had said it wasn’t time yet.

Because Doctor Cassius had wanted to wait until this life of hers was over.

He wanted to wait for that person to appear.

Looking at it now, Doctor Cassius had made the wise choice.

…

Time continued to pass in the darkness.

Whenever Beili was awake, Ashera still went out to gather Mana from dark creatures for her, though the number had gone back to the usual ten.

Beili wasn’t sure whether accumulating Mana would cause her to become the person from her dreams, but she still remembered the curse that person had placed upon Tilisha.

If she wanted to break the curse, she had no choice but to keep absorbing Mana.

She poured all her attention into that.

Beili had tried going out to search for dark creatures herself while Ashera was away from the house.

But the moment one foot crossed the threshold, the silver-haired, golden-eyed man appeared beside her.

“I want more Mana. Ten dark creatures aren’t enough.”

After he brought her back inside, Beili spoke frankly to Ashera.

She wanted to accelerate the accumulation of Mana.

His cold fingertips caressed her cheek as Ashera offered a rare explanation.

“Ten is just right. Any more than that, and your mood will deteriorate.”

Beili’s red eyes remained calm, and she didn’t push him away.

She was working hard to think of Ashera as a housemate, a butler, or the Black Bone Scythe.

“That’s fine.”

After absorbing Mana from a hundred dark creatures last time, Beili had already figured out part of what was happening.

Without a gradual adjustment period, absorbing a large amount of Mana at once, or allowing the Mana to exceed a certain threshold, would cause changes in her.

Beili said evenly, “If it’s only a worse mood, I can endure it.”

After all, she already knew that the emotional changes were a side effect of absorbing too much Mana.

“Can you endure every kind of change?” Ashera suddenly asked.

Beili’s red eyes flickered. She didn’t understand why he was asking that.

Still, she nodded.

“All right.”

Ashera didn’t stop her, but he took sole responsibility for gathering the Mana.

He still didn’t want her leaving the house.

Later, Ashera returned with Mana from another hundred dark creatures. Through the entanglement of their lips, he transferred it into her Mana Pool.

Only then did Beili finally understand what Ashera had meant by “every kind of change.”

Intense desire.

Desire was one of them.

It surfaced when she closed her eyes to sleep and the silver-haired, golden-eyed man naturally gathered her into his arms.

The faint scent of blood he had already suppressed lingered around her.

His cold palm gently stroked her head again and again.

This was how Ashera usually lulled her to sleep.

Even though she didn’t need to be lulled to sleep.

With her red eyes closed, Beili raised a hand to press against her inexplicably racing heart. After a moment’s thought, she decided to roll over and sleep with her back to him.