Limitless Evolution As a Snake

[System: Mate, I don’t think that’s food safe.]

It’s not supposed to be food; it’s supposed to be a statement.

It’s how my granddad trained me to shut up; if I complained, this just feels right.

The oil starts to smoke almost immediately, thin at first, then thick, then bright red and rolling off the pot like something out of a fire safety video. It hits the air and just keeps expanding, spreading across the whole market in this rolling wave of pure chemical nope.

Somewhere behind me, somebody starts coughing. Then somebody else. Then it’s a whole chorus of coughing and gagging and someone yelling that they can’t see.

I stand there in the middle of it, breathing totally fine, because I grew up eating this stuff for breakfast. Literally, grandpa used to put it on rice like ketchup.

Old mate’s practically giddy.

[System: Oh that’s brilliant, that’s actually brilliant, you’ve gone and made a war crime out of chilli oil, mate, ten out of ten, here’s 500 exp because you did this without me!]

The two orc grunts finally snap out of their shock and take one lungful of the red cloud, and go down coughing so hard they’re basically folding in half.

I give them a polite nod on my way past.

"Manners," I say, and slip off into the smoke like I’ve got somewhere to be.

Which, I guess, I do.

I scoop up Cherry, who’s sitting behind the stall laughing at people falling over, and we take a taxi towards the penthouse.

Cherry looks up at the building, her eyes wide and sparkling.

"Is this for real? Where am I going to live? It’s okay, right?"

"Of course, love, you’re mine."

Cherry blushes and looks eagerly towards the entrance.

We go into the lift, and I click the penthouse button with my tail and Cherry beams.

The elevator doors open, and there’s Lyra, standing in the middle of the penthouse in some huge soft hoodie that swallows her whole, sleeves flopping past her hands, looking so comfortable and warm it almost knocks the stress right out of me.

She looks up, sees me, and her whole face just lights up like someone flipped a switch.

"Matt!"

She’s across the room before I even get a word out, and then she’s airborne, jumping straight into me with zero warning, arms wrapping around my nape like she’s been waiting by that door the whole day. I catch her on reflex, stumble back half a step, and just let my head rest down on top of hers, breathing her in, feeling my shoulders finally drop for the first time since the market lit up.

"You’re okay," she mumbles into my chest. "You smell like smoke."

"Long story."

She pulls back just enough to look at me properly, eyes doing that wide green thing they do, and then she spots Cherry standing awkwardly by the elevator, coat still clutched tight, horn stumps twitching.

I brace myself. This is the part I didn’t plan for; this is the part where things usually go sideways in every harem anime I’ve ever half-watched at 2 a.m.; I just brought the mistress home like a pet cat.

Instead, Lyra just lights up again, hops down off me, and walks straight over like she’s greeting an old friend.

"Hi! I’m Lyra."

"C-Cherry," Cherry stammers, and then they’re just hugging, actually hugging, like they’ve known each other for years, already talking over each other about something, coats and horns and I don’t even know.

My tail gives an involuntary twitch.

[System: YEAH SISTER WIVES!!!]

Yeah, okay, sure. That’s a normal reaction to have.

"Wait," I say, because my brain hasn’t caught up yet, "So, this is okay?"

Both of them stop talking and turn to look at me at the same time, same exact expression, like I just said something so stupid it looped back around to concerning.

"Why wouldn’t it be okay?" Lyra asks.

"I gesture with my tail vaguely between the two of them. "I mean, this. All of this."

Lyra tilts her head, horn stumps twitching. "My dad had three wives growing up, it’s not that weird, what would be weird is if you only had one, people would be worried your dick didn’t work."

Oh my god.

Lyra then just shrugs like I asked if water was wet, then her eyes catch on the state of me properly: the soot, the burn marks, the general look of a man who just crawled out of a chemical warfare demonstration.

"Wait, what happened to you?"

So I take a breath and just start talking, because ripping the band-aid off feels easier than dancing around it.

"Okay, so funny story, there was a minotaur with a hammer."

Lyra’s face doesn’t move.

"A big one. Like genuinely huge, way past anything I should’ve been fighting, and long story short I sort of died a little bit."

"You sort of died a little bit," Lyra repeats, very slowly, like she’s checking each word for a hidden joke.

"He threw me in a dumpster."

"He threw you in a dumpster." She stares at me deadpan, while Cherry is upside down on the couch with a big smile on her face, watching on.

"Yeah. After the hammer thing, I was pretty out of it by that point, so the details are fuzzy, but there was definitely a dumpster involved, and then there were bubbles, a whole lot of bubbles with bombs in them, and luckily the bubbles hit him instead of me, but anyway, there shouldn’t be any cops left."

Lyra’s eyes go wide, then wider, then she looks over at Cherry like she’s hoping for a translator.

"He killed them," Cherry offers helpfully, horn stumps twitching. "All of them. It was actually really impressive; he was bleeding so much!"

"Not the point right now," I cut in.

Cherry shrinks a little, mumbles a sorry.

"So I’m basically bleeding out in an alley in a dumpster next to a pile of dead cops," I continue.

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