Estelle

Estelle, first named Preta by Kim Gong-ja, is the being formerly known as the Devil King of Fall Rain. She begins as a formless predator, takes a sick village girl's memories and shape by devouring her, becomes a saintess, and turns into a world-destroying Constellation after the village she protects is burned. Gong-ja later kills that same Devil King and raises her through Hundred Ghosts Reincarnation with her memories and appearance retained. Preta is therefore not an unrelated copy or successor: she is the dead Devil King's continuing memory-pattern under Gong-ja's summoning authority. After receiving an independent living body, she chooses Estelle as her own name and enters the Death King Family as Gong-ja's daughter and advisor.

Biography

A borrowed life and the Devil King of Fall Rain

Estelle's earliest self has no name, fixed shape, or human morality. It awakens as a shadow in the rain and learns existence by consuming other creatures: a frog, snake, eagle, and lion each give it a new body, memories, and forms of happiness. Its decisive transformation comes when it kills a sick rural girl named Estelle, who had left home because she wanted to walk and breathe outside before illness ended her life. By absorbing the girl's memories and appearance, the predator returns to Estelle's family as their apparently recovered child. The human identity is thus stolen, but the desires and attachments carried in those memories become real pressures on the continuing being. (Chapters 38–39)

Living as Estelle, she discovers that she can consume illness and becomes a saintess to the surrounding poor. She builds a village where sick and unwanted people can live, treating its residents as her children. That refuge makes her politically intolerable to the surrounding powers: armies representing rival authorities unite to burn it, and Estelle watches the people she protected die. She consumes their burned remains and converts grief into black wastewater and blood-red rain, preserving the village from ordinary flame only after the massacre has already supplied the rain's source. Her conclusion is that humanity and the world that ignored the weak deserve the same destruction, and the saintess becomes the Devil King of Fall Rain. (Chapters 39 and 44)

As the Devil King, she destroys the Aegim Empire's world and later controls the Tower's stages from the twelfth through twentieth floors. Rather than rely only on force, she offers each leading hunter a private “betrayer” reward: kill the other rankers, gain her authority, and advance directly to the ninety-ninth floor. The proposal turns distrust into part of her weapon and reflects the lesson she drew from the village's destruction—that human cooperation is a disguise that pressure will tear away. Gong-ja refuses both the Goddess's assigned heroism and the Devil King's bargain, then challenges the stage itself in order to confront the being behind those roles. (Chapters 28–37)

Defeat, death, and retained service

The Devil King meets Gong-ja with a red greatsword, emotion-fed aura, black wastewater, and an army of monsters called from that water. He insists that the monsters are the shadow of human evil, while Gong-ja answers with an army formed from his own repeated deaths. The fight does not end through a single stronger blow. Gong-ja repeatedly revises the stage's history, preserving the village while removing the conditions that made a Devil King necessary; with each revision, Estelle's wastewater, title, and Constellation authority fall away. Reduced to the frightened creature beneath the role, she can no longer support her sword and is killed by Gong-ja. (Chapters 38–46)

Before the killing, Gong-ja upgrades Hundred Ghosts Summon into Hundred Ghosts Reincarnation, specifically adding the option for his dead to retain their memories and living appearance. He then kills the fallen Devil King, summons her through that skill, and names her Preta. The sequence establishes direct continuity: the monster, saintess, Devil King, dead Fallen Constellation, and retained ghost are one remembered life, although the summoned form initially cannot use its living abilities. Preta's first submission is not freely affectionate. A historical revision again brings the allied armies toward her restored village, so she offers service, slavery, or anything else if Gong-ja will save it. He accepts the obligations of lordship, stops the armies, and protects the people whose survival binds them together. (Chapters 45–47)

Service gradually becomes more than a bargain made under duress. Preta continues living in her restored village and admits that Gong-ja's disappearance would erase the memory and meaning preserved through his skill, giving her a self-interested reason to worry about him. Yet she also uses her knowledge of death and monster command for his goals: she directs skeletons, reconstructs maps of the ruined Murim, and gathers carefully selected ordinary dead so Gong-ja can recover lives ignored by grand histories. She later supervises the construction of the Alchemist's pharmacy with an orderly skeleton workforce. These acts redirect experience once used to drown a world toward preserving communities and helping Gong-ja bear responsibility for the dead. (Chapters 74–80 and 88)

From Preta to the Death King Family's Estelle

As a retained ghost, Preta repeatedly fights beside Gong-ja and the Demonic Cult. A temporary Constellation blessing restores her prime Devil King form and abilities during the defense of Raviel Ivansia's wedding, allowing her to cut through a massed ghost legion with red aura. The restoration also exposes a limitation of borrowed prime: when the supporting apostle falls, the blessing ends, and Preta is again vulnerable to the enemy's sleep effect. Nevertheless, she stands among the people Gong-ja summons before the Tower Master, proof that his shadow holds continuing lives rather than disposable monsters. (Chapters 115–119 and 228–231)

Preta's status changes permanently after Gong-ja asks whether she wants to live. She calls herself a sinner and questions whether someone who killed so many may continue, but accepts his answer that life remains possible. Gong-ja then stores her complete memory-pattern in the Earth Bone Dragon's Box, asks her consent to become his daughter, and creates an independent body from that archive. Given the rare chance to choose a name at her own birth, she selects Estelle. The choice does not make her the original murdered girl or undo the killing; it is her decision to carry that name forward while living with the memories and guilt that produced Preta. (Chapters 233–234)

The new body returns her to the power she held as a living Constellation. Estelle wields the Devil King's greatsword, splits the rain clouds and sky with a red aura beam, and enters ordinary social life through work at Cafe Planetarium. Gong-ja replaces “lord” with “father” and asks her to use what she learned while destroying a world to protect their new family; she removes the bone mask of her ghost life and accepts appointment as the family's eldest daughter and advisor. In the race stages she leads the main army, prepares bodies with race points, coordinates with Uburka, and joins her aura to Gong-ja's Infernal Heavens Formation. Her red rain gives the shared formation a battlefield-wide medium, while her familiarity with Gong-ja's martial art lets her stabilize him emotionally and tactically. Her loyalty now includes counsel and disagreement rather than automatic compliance. (Chapters 234–250 and 282)

The Garden of Withered Flowers and return to Aegim

When Gong-ja builds the Garden of Withered Flowers, Estelle supplies its sea. She activates Hate Flows Like Rain over the sanctuary, transforming blood she witnessed into the red rain that fills its landscape. The act reuses the symbol of her vengeance as water for a refuge made for wounded lives. Gong-ja then asks her to help guard the garden with Shiny and Kim Yul, two people tied to the Aegim world she destroyed. Estelle resists because she feels unfit beside its former protector and founder, but accepts when Gong-ja frames precisely that history as a reason for shared guardianship. She takes responsibility as a gardener while preserving time to visit the village she once protected. (Chapters 380–382)

By the ninety-eighth floor, Estelle and Shiny jointly administer a restored Aegim stage. When Gong-ja returns after a long absence, Estelle's furious greatsword beating expresses an expectation that a family head must come home, not the fear of a ghost awaiting orders. She and Shiny then recreate their old competing quest messages as a playful mechanism for sending him onward. The former Goddess and Devil King, once locked in a struggle over a ruined world, now cooperate as examiners and ask the same person to return to them. Estelle's latest role therefore joins, rather than erases, her past identities: the rain, sword, and authority remain, but they now defend a garden, family, and home she has chosen. (Chapter 395)

Appearance and personality

Estelle's original existence is a nameless, formless shadow that takes the bodies of what it consumes. After eating the human Estelle, she appears as a sick rural girl restored to health. Her Devil King form is larger and bestial, with long, mane-like black hair and a body continually shedding dark red or black wastewater. When historical revisions remove that authority, the imposing shell collapses into a small, weak creature unable to hold its sword. (Chapters 38–46)

As Preta, she can appear in the delicate shape associated with the girl she consumed or in a ghostly form with faded blond hair and a bone mask covering part of her face. Her independent body is that of a small platinum-blonde country girl with violet eyes, initially dressed in simple clothes suitable for carrying a farm basket. The enormous dark-red greatsword on her back is deliberately disproportionate to that body, yet she handles it with ease. (Chapters 115, 233–234, 247, and 380)

Her personality combines hunger for continued existence, severe guilt, hierarchical discipline, and sharp pride. As Devil King she turns grief into universal judgment and treats manipulation as proof of human corruption. As Preta she initially prefers the clarity of orders because obedience gives her a role that cannot vanish without explanation. Over time she becomes blunt, combative, and capable of teasing or scolding Gong-ja, while still falling back on formal service when intimacy embarrasses her. (Chapters 28–47, 74, 116–118, and 247–282)

Estelle does not treat rebirth as acquittal. She identifies herself as a sinner, hesitates to accept life, and feels unworthy to guard the same home as people harmed by her former reign. Her development lies in accepting responsibility without making self-erasure the only moral answer. Loyalty gives her a chosen structure, family permits disagreement within it, and gardening turns her familiarity with ruin into sustained protection. (Chapters 233–234 and 380–395)

Abilities and skills

Estelle's abilities change with her ontological state. The living Devil King possesses Constellation authority, three documented high-rank skills, assimilation, monster command, aura, and a greatsword. Hundred Ghosts Reincarnation preserves her memory and appearance after death but normally removes her former abilities; temporary blessings can restore her prime, and the independent body created in Chapter 234 permanently returns her to a living Constellation-level state.

Assimilation and consumed identity

The nameless shadow can consume a creature and take on its physical form, memories, and experienced happiness. It progresses through several animal bodies before consuming the human Estelle, after which it can speak, recognize human relationships, and live inside the girl's family. The ability transmits memory strongly enough to create real affection and desire, but it does not retroactively make the predator and victim the same original person. That unresolved responsibility is why the later Estelle treats her chosen name as an obligation rather than proof of innocence. (Chapters 38–39 and 234)

As the rural saintess, she also swallows illnesses from other people and restores them to health. The corpus demonstrates the cures and the growth of the protected village, but it does not fully explain whether disease consumption is a distinct skill or an application of her broader assimilation. Her later living body restores her former Constellation power, yet the final chapters emphasize combat, rain, and administration rather than showing whether she resumes healing pilgrims personally. (Chapters 39, 44, 74, and 234)

Hate Flows Like Rain

Hate Flows Like Rain is an S−-rank skill that turns blood Estelle has personally witnessed being spilled into red rain. Blood outside her awareness does not qualify. The skill's scale therefore grows from witnessed suffering rather than an unlimited environmental water source; during the destruction of her village, the blood of its dead becomes the fall rain with which she floods the Aegim world. Its rain is both a physical phenomenon and an expression of accumulated grief. (Chapters 34 and 44)

After embodiment, Estelle combines the rain with Gong-ja's Infernal Heavens Formation. Their resonating aura spreads her resentment and enmity across the battlefield, strikes the Venomous Snake's many possessed bodies together, and supplies rainwater that Gong-ja incorporates with his family's sand and petals into predictive attacks. Much later, she deliberately rains over the Garden of Withered Flowers to create its sea. The same mechanic remains, but its application changes from indiscriminate vengeance to coordinated restraint and refuge-building. (Chapters 248–250 and 380)

The Heart Cries Echoing

The Heart Cries Echoing is an A+-rank skill through which strong emotion amplifies Estelle's aura. Revenge, hatred, grief, and other emotions can all serve as fuel; the source does not require one specific feeling. Its cost is progressive addiction to the emotion being used, a limitation that helps explain why grief and vengeance become self-reinforcing during her Devil King reign. (Chapter 34)

The skill supports the enormous red trajectories released through her sword, but the corpus does not isolate a numerical multiplier or duration. Her later development does not remove the danger by a stated mechanical upgrade. Instead, family formations and chosen duties give powerful emotions other channels: resolve can support allies, anger can defend a relationship, and grief can become rain for a sanctuary. (Chapters 38, 116, 234, 247–250, and 380)

Greatsword, aura, and Infernal Heavens

Estelle's signature weapon is the Devil King's greatsword, a massive blade that emits red aura beams. In her prime she cuts through massed ghost soldiers, destroys lines of possessed bodies, and produces a strike capable of splitting rain, clouds, and the visible sky. Her strength and aura are exceptional, but her early swordsmanship relies heavily on power and skills: once her authority is stripped away, Bae Hu-ryeong identifies poor stance and no reliable fundamentals, and Gong-ja breaks the blade she can barely lift. (Chapters 38, 45–46, 116, 234, and 247–250)

She later gains deep understanding of the Infernal Heavens Demonic Art by observing Gong-ja's training at close range and resonating aura with him. This does not establish that she independently mastered every form. It does let her help produce the extra law Gracefully Raining Grief of Heaven, merging her fall rain with the family's shared mental image and battlefield formation. Her mature combat is therefore strongest when individual Constellation power and family coordination reinforce one another. (Chapters 74–80 and 247–250)

Monster command, armies, and stage authority

As Devil King, Estelle pours black wastewater across the ground and commands it to produce thousands of goblins, orcs, and other monsters. She describes the army as humanity's evil made into her shadow. Later, as family advisor, she claims the ability to turn ogres, orcs, goblins, and many monsters into the rain that forms her army, and she has practical command experience sufficient to lead the Death King Family's main force. The exact relationship between the wastewater army and her three named skill cards is not specified, so monster command should be treated as a demonstrated Constellation capability rather than assigned to an invented fourth skill. (Chapters 38–39, 247–250, and 282)

Her original stage authority lets her issue private quests, define competing reward routes, manipulate the top hunters' incentives, and promise direct movement toward the ninety-ninth floor. Gong-ja's historical revisions remove that authority along with her Devil King title. By Chapter 395, Estelle again has bounded administrative power as a designated examiner of the ninety-eighth floor: she can present a Devil King reward and authorize passage, but does so jointly with Shiny and within the stage's assigned rules. (Chapters 28–30, 45, and 395)

Death, summoning, and independent embodiment

Hundred Ghosts Reincarnation belongs to Gong-ja, not Estelle. Its SSS-rank version summons beings Gong-ja killed and can preserve their memories and appearance at his choice, but it denies them their living abilities and originally permits summoning only once a week. Preta's ghostly persistence depends on Gong-ja's continuing memory-box, which is why she initially fears that his disappearance would erase her life. Constellation blessings can temporarily restore a summoned ghost's prime, but losing the supporting blessing removes that borrowed access. (Chapters 45–47, 74, and 115–119)

The Earth Bone Dragon's Box changes that condition. With Preta's consent, Gong-ja stores her memories and creates a living body from them; Chapter 235 contrasts the former “Hungry Ghost” penalty with the returned bodies and abilities of the dead. Estelle can thereafter act without being a weekly manifestation from Hundred Ghosts Reincarnation, retain new experiences, and use her Constellation abilities in her own body. Her memories remain continuous across Devil King, Preta, and Estelle even though the physical and mechanical conditions of those phases differ. (Chapters 231 and 233–235)

Power progression

Relationships

• Kim Gong-ja: Gong-ja defeats and kills the Devil King, then preserves her memories as Preta. Their first lord-retainer bond is compelled by her need to save the restored village, but continued service becomes chosen loyalty. He later asks her consent to live as his daughter, gives her an independent body, and accepts her as advisor; she protects, counsels, and openly scolds him.
• Raviel Ivansia: Raviel is Gong-ja's spouse and the strategist whose wedding Preta helps defend. Estelle enters the family Raviel and Gong-ja head together, and her role as eldest daughter and advisor places her under Raviel's exacting household authority as well as Gong-ja's.
• Shiny: Shiny protected the Aegim world that the Devil King destroyed. They later guard the Garden of Withered Flowers together and jointly examine the ninety-eighth floor, converting former mortal opposition into shared responsibility without denying what happened.
• Kim Yul: As Lefanta Aegim, Kim founded the empire Estelle destroyed. Their later work as fellow gardeners forces both former world-destroying enemies to protect damaged lives together.
• Uburka: Estelle's younger brother and fellow commander in the Death King Family. She directs the main army while Uburka leads the vanguard, and their battlefield cooperation establishes her authority as eldest daughter.
• The Demonic Cult retainers: The retained cultists share ghostly dependence on Gong-ja and later receive living bodies alongside Estelle. She commands their main force as advisor and understands the Infernal Heavens they preserve.

Items

Estelle wields the Devil King's Red Greatsword, also described as dark or pitch-black in some scenes because of its shadowed manifestation. The enormous sword is closely tied to her soul and returns with her independent body. It channels her red aura and is strong enough to erase ranks of ghosts or possessed soldiers, but the supplied corpus does not give it a stable personal name or enough independent history for a separate item article. (Chapters 38, 46, 116, 234, and 247–250)