Demonic Dragon: Harem System

The space in front of the three women distorted before any of them could continue the conversation.

The energy of Tartarus contracted as if an invisible hand had seized the air itself, forming a black rupture surrounded by small fragments of spiritual light.

Strax stepped through first, wearing the calm expression of someone who had just returned from an ordinary walk despite the enormous amount of new energy hidden inside his body.

Thana appeared right behind him, her robe still partially destroyed, her hair disheveled, and an expression suggesting that over the last few hours she had reconsidered several times whether continuing to exist near that dragon was really worth it.

Cerberus did not come through with them. His size would turn the palace into a structural problem, so Strax had left him waiting outside the narrower regions.

Lithara, Albedo, and Persephone stared at him.

The three of them had interrupted their conversation at the worst possible moment, and the sudden silence, combined with the different expressions on their faces, said more than any attempt at concealment.

Strax looked from one to another, spent a few seconds assessing the situation, then let out an amused sigh.

"I didn’t mean to interrupt the conversation about sex."

Lithara immediately narrowed her eyes.

"How do you know the conversation was about sex?"

Strax did not answer immediately.

He simply turned his face slightly and discreetly gestured with his chin toward Persephone.

The Regent of Tartarus still had flushed cheeks after the stories Lithara had told, although she was making a considerable effort to recover her composure in front of him.

"That one looks like she’s about to melt."

Persephone opened her mouth.

Strax had already moved on to the next one.

He looked at Albedo.

The demoness was far too stiff, holding her hands together in front of her body and uselessly pretending she had not declared only minutes earlier that she wanted to try her master too.

Strax watched her for one extra second and raised an eyebrow.

"That one is way too turned on to pretend she’s acting normal."

Albedo turned red all the way to her ears.

Lithara started laughing, but Strax turned toward her too.

"And you’re releasing your lust pheromones."

The laughter disappeared.

Lithara raised an eyebrow, discreetly brought a hand near her neck, smelled her own skin, then checked the air around her as if genuinely expecting the accusation to be unfair.

It took only a few seconds for her to notice the subtle concentration of pink mana naturally leaking from her body.

She looked back at Strax.

Then shrugged.

"I want to have sex. It’s normal."

Strax nodded as though he had just received an administrative report.

"We’ll take care of that when we get back to Asgard."

Albedo raised her head so quickly it almost looked as though something had struck her.

"ME TOO!"

Her voice came out much louder than she intended.

Silence returned.

Persephone slowly turned her face toward Albedo.

Lithara began to smile.

Thana, who had just arrived and lacked enough context to understand how the conversation had deteriorated so quickly, simply stood there staring at everyone.

Strax, on the other hand, showed no surprise at all.

He simply looked at Albedo and nodded.

"Okay."

That was all.

Albedo stood still.

Her thoughts took several seconds to catch up with the simplicity of the response.

Was... all I had to do was ask?

All that anxiety, all those conversations with Lithara, all those days watching the other women, and all that accumulated frustration had been answered with a simple "okay."

Albedo slowly looked toward Lithara.

The Succubus Queen also seemed to have just realized the same thing.

Neither of them spoke.

Thana finally pointed at them with an expression of profound confusion.

"Is sex really that good?"

Persephone immediately interrupted before Lithara could begin another lecture that would probably last for hours.

"Did you get Hades’s soul?"

The change of subject was so abrupt that Strax almost laughed.

Even so, he nodded and walked toward the central table of the hall.

His expression became more serious as he returned to thinking about what had happened inside the cathedral.

"I got what remained in usable form."

Persephone approached.

"And?"

"It’s useless for the main objective."

Thana frowned.

"Useless?"

"Not completely."

Strax opened his hand and let a small amount of black energy appear above his fingers.

There was something different about the manifestation.

The demonic mana seemed much heavier and carried fragments of an authority that had not originally belonged to him.

"I became stronger. Much stronger. I also absorbed parts of Hades’s authority. But I didn’t gain a complete divinity, didn’t develop a concept of my own, and wasn’t recognized as a god."

Persephone kept watching the energy.

"So the heart wasn’t enough."

"No."

Strax closed his hand and the energy disappeared.

"But it gave me raw material."

His expression changed.

He looked at Persephone.

"Send me the Helm of Darkness. I want to test something."

Persephone remained still for several seconds.

The Helm of Darkness was one of the oldest relics associated with Hades, and even now that he was dead, she did not treat the object carelessly.

Even so, Strax had just absorbed part of the former King of the Underworld’s authority.

If anyone there had a chance of making the relic respond, it would be him.

She raised one hand.

A black circle appeared above her palm.

Space opened.

The Helm of Darkness slowly fell through small streams of dark smoke.

Persephone held the object for a few seconds before throwing it to Strax.

"That thing is useless. I couldn’t even use it properly because—"

She did not finish.

White Fire exploded in Strax’s hands.

"STRAX!"

The Helm of Darkness began to melt.

Persephone went completely still, staring at Hades’s divine relic being transformed into a glowing mass before her eyes.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"

Strax ignored her.

The White Fire was not simply destroying the helm.

It burned away external layers, impurities, and structures that locked the artifact into its original form, leaving only the material impregnated with Hades’s authority.

The black mass began to float above his hands as ancient symbols broke apart and reorganized themselves within the metal.

Then came the Black Ice.

Strax wrapped the molten material in his own authority and began shaping it.

The process was crude compared to the work of a true blacksmith.

Strax knew that.

He did not possess enough techniques to create a perfect weapon with his bare hands.

But he did not need to create the object from nothing.

The Helm already carried thousands of years of history, divinity, and adaptation to the authority of the Underworld.

He only needed to force it into another form.

The metal began to extend.

First it covered his fingers.

Then the palm.

Then the forearm.

Black chains formed along with the structure, winding around his arm in a spiral from the wrist almost to the shoulder.

The heaviest portions concentrated over the knuckles and the back of the hand, while smaller plates protected the joints without completely restricting movement.

Persephone looked horrified.

"You melted the Helm of Darkness."

Strax kept working.

"I noticed."

"It was a divine relic!"

"It still is."

"IT WAS A HELM!"

"That was the problem."

Thana watched in silence, but even she seemed unable to decide whether what he was doing was brilliant or simply offensive to every tradition of the Underworld.

Strax finished shaping the object and examined the result.

The gauntlet was black, almost completely matte, with small golden lines running across certain areas like veins of light.

Thin chains spiraled around his arm, not as decoration, but as extensions of the magical structure itself.

They carried part of the old artifact’s authority and created a direct connection between Strax’s hand, arm, and core.

There were still problems.

Small imperfections on the surface.

Some areas had different thicknesses.

Mana circulation was not completely uniform.

Strax put on the gauntlet.

The reaction was immediate.

Black demonic energy exploded around his arm.

Persephone instinctively stepped back.

Thana widened her eyes.

The imperfections began to disappear.

The artifact itself was correcting them.

The energy of Hades that Strax had absorbed recognized the material of the Helm of Darkness and began rebuilding the malformed sections.

The metal adjusted around his fingers, the chains tightened to the proper degree, and small symbols appeared over the back of his hand before disappearing once more into the surface.

When it finished, the gauntlet looked as though it had been created in that form from the very beginning.

Persephone pointed at it.

"What do you think you’re doing?"

Strax raised his hand in front of his face and opened and closed his fingers a few times.

"Turning something I would never use into something useful."

"You could just use the helm."

"No."

"Why?"

Strax looked at her as though the answer were obvious.

"I’m not wearing a helm."

Persephone fell silent.

"That’s your argument?"

"Yes."

"You destroyed a relic thousands of years old because you don’t like helmets?"

"It isn’t destroyed now."

Strax turned toward one of the side walls of the hall.

"Now it’s better."

He pointed his hand.

He cast no spell.

Spoke no word.

Did not even concentrate a large amount of energy.

The gauntlet responded on its own.

The chains around his arm lit up, and a black sphere appeared before his palm.

There was something inside it beyond simple demonic energy.

The surrounding space seemed to weaken, as though the very existence of the wall were temporarily considered less important.

Strax slightly closed his fingers.

The attack fired.

There was no explosion.

The wall simply disappeared.

Stone, runes, metal, and part of the palace’s spiritual protection were pulverized along a perfect line.

The impact passed through several layers of the structure and only faded dozens of meters later, leaving an enormous hole open toward one of Tartarus’s outer regions.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Lithara slowly stood.

Albedo smiled.

Thana looked first at the missing wall, then at the gauntlet.

Persephone looked very close to suffering some kind of crisis.

Strax discreetly blew away the smoke rising from the gauntlet’s fingers.

"Interesting."

Persephone pointed toward the hole.

"YOU JUST DESTROYED PART OF MY PALACE!"

Strax turned toward her.

"Looks pretty functional, right?"

Persephone stared at the dragon for several seconds.

Then looked at Lithara.

Then at Albedo.

Both turned their faces away.

Thana also decided not to participate.

Persephone took a deep breath.

It was at that moment that she began to understand why so many people in Asgard always looked exhausted.

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